AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ana bent low to examine the doors. The wood was rotted. The metal bars where the bolt went were so rusted, one was crumbling away at the edges. But the rust had been disturbed; the wood was damp but not sodden.
She slid the wooden bolt back and tossed it into the snow.
After she verified Magda wasn’t lurking over her shoulder, ready to pounce, she tugged on the handles. A low, burping groan emerged from the musty darkness. She regretted not bringing a lantern, but it was too late now.
Ana angled her body to lower it onto the first step when she backed up and decided to bury the bolt in the snow, out of sight. The last thing she needed was for Magda to see the open doors and lock her in.
She stepped slowly, blindly, down what seemed to be the longest staircase in the world. But it wasn’t a cellar so much as a cave, she noted, at last reaching ground and a corridor that could have ended in several feet or several thousand. Her vision reached mere inches.
Lairwas the word that jumped into her head. But the area was old, judging from the condition of the door and hinges, so it wasn’t Magda’s creation. Whoever had built the lair, they’d had more than storage in mind.
With one hand on the dirt-caked wall, Ana moved tentatively down the dark path. Something large and fur covered skittered over her hand, and she screamed, slamming against the wall on the other side. It had to have been a spider, those mythical arachnids the vodzhae, their spiritual leaders, preached about. It was ever too cold in the Cross for any but the most hearty creatures, but under the ground, in caves, and in the mountains, lurked all kinds of horrors.
“What horrors will I find at the end ofthisrow, Magda?” The sound of Ana’s voice steadied her, grounding her. It helped her dust herself off and keep moving forward, despite doubts of different shapes and sizes nagging at her to go, to turn back... to run and keep running until she was back to safety.
But safety was an illusion. It had been since the day Magda of No Family Name had arrived at Fanghelm and claimed it as her own.
On Ana pushed. One foot. The next. She counted each step to give her anxiety something to chew on, but it was also the right thing—the practical thing—to memorize details she’d need on the return trip.Audacious of you to assume there’ll be a return trip.
The air grew colder the deeper she traveled, the wall harder. Running water trickled ahead but seemed so far away, but soon she was passing her hands over a tiny system of waterfalls pouring down the walls, turning them to mud.
Ana left the peace of the waterfalls behind her. The soothing rush faded into the distance, as though she’d stepped from one world to the next. The air thinned, leaving the sound of her harried, raspy breaths her only companion. She turned her flimsy courage into a chant, to battle the urge to race back to the entrance.
“I will not run. I will not close my eyes. I will call upon the strength of my ancestors, who are always with me. I will not turn. I will not blink.”
Niko’s sweet face filled her scattered mind. Her inhalations were strained, wheezing. “I will not run. I will not close my eyes.”
Her father’s bright laughter rang in her ears. She ran her sleeve across her eyes to clear the sweat. There were tears there too, but she could no longer discern the difference. “I will call...”
Ana paused to catch her breath. She felt Tyreste’s hand cupping her face, the warmth of his breath as he whispered about a future she could never have. “Upon the strength of my ancestors, who are always with me.” Varradyn’s hopeless stare seized her. She bowed over, gasping and steadying herself to continue. Straightening, she slapped the wall and took another step. “And face whatever waits for me. I will not turn.” Another step. “I will notblink.”
The passage narrowed. Ana slowed her pace to anticipate the rest of her course. She couldn’t know if she was halfway there... almost there. The mountain range was the deepest and tallest in the kingdom. It could be miles before she found anything, if she was even on the right path, which she couldn’t be certain of because she hadn’t checked to see if there were others before marching bravely down this one.
Two thousand and twenty. Two thousand and twenty-one.“I will not run.” Ana coughed through fatigue. She spat the bile rising into her throat. It disappeared into the darkness. “I will not close my eyes, not even for a fucking second, you wretched, cursed hag.”
Ana lost her count somewhere around three thousand and thirty. She stopped thinking of Niko or Father or Tyreste or even the raven up on the surface, who was probably wondering if she was ever coming back. She murmured her chant in a daze, shuffling forward by sheer will alone. Her hands fell away from the walls, and she swayed with each step, no longer bothering to clear the sweat or tears or dirt. The creatures crawling over her feet became an afterthought, a surreal nightmare she didn’t have the strength to address.
Ana screeched when the floor dropped out, and she went sputtering forward. She looked up and found herself in a small room. The ceiling was covered in crystal protrusions, glittering off the light.
Light. Ana straightened and looked around. Seven torch baskets hung around the perimeter of the space, half of them lit. Her eyes squinted to adjust as she stepped farther in. There wasn’t much else in the passage. Just the torches, a chair, and—
Ana narrowed her eyes and approached the far wall. Whatwas...She recoiled, taking a backward step. Was that a series of drawers—a chest—builtintothe cavern wall?
She folded her arms over her chest with a hard shiver. She was both cold and scalding hot somehow, sweat and chills fighting for dominance.
Torches didn’t light themselves.
Magda had been there recently.
She might still be there, lurking in corners and shadows only she understood well enough to command.
“I will not run,” Ana said, rallying her courage as she inched toward the rows of drawers. “I will not close my eyes. I will call...” She stretched a shaking hand and snapped it back. With a grimace, she tried again. “Upon the strength of the Ancestors, who are always with me.” A sharp, inward gasp rang across the cave as she wrapped her hand around the metal handle of the left uppermost drawer. “Imryll, hold me close,” she whispered, and pulled it open.
Ana’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle a scream. She had never wanted—needed—to look away more, but she’d promised herself not to close her eyes, not to run. She lifted onto the toes of her boots and widened her eyes to keep them from shutting involuntarily. Then she made herself look closer.
The organ was old and shriveled, no longer fleshy but gray and crumbling. Ana had helped her father dress enough deer and swine to know a heart when she saw one. The one in the drawer was neither deer nor swine though.
She licked her cracked lips, opened a second drawer, and found another shriveled heart. The next revealed the same, and she flung them all open one by one, each slightly less decomposed than the one before, turning the wall into a macabre tableau of time and horror.
