Demon's Cradle (Devany Miller Book 3) (10 page)

“I’m afraid I don’t know. Unless there was some sort of magic used that blocked the dreams.”

“If you think of anything, let me know, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, did Danni tell you about her feeling that she was being watched?” The creamy dip dripped from the tip of my carrot back into the bowl and I wondered if Zech would think me rude if I ate it while we were talking. Probably.

“She did. I expanded the perimeter, placed a few more lodestones further out. I haven’t noticed any disturbances.”

Well, damn. “Are you looking for magic users too?”

“What?”

I sighed. “It’s a long shot, but what if there’s a Skriven dabbling? Or someone else? It couldn’t hurt to keep an eye out for all possibilities.”

He cursed, then said, “Thank you. I didn’t think of that but you’re right.”

We said our goodbyes, and then I ate the crisp orange veggie as I ruminated on what to do next. Perhaps I would pay another visit to Lizzie, now that I knew what had hurt Kroshtuka. She might know how to combat the Rider. She could also give me the Wydling version of the story Zech had told me, and perhaps I’d get a fuller picture of what went down last time Midians drove back the Riders.

It had only been a few minutes since my dad and kids had left for the zoo. If they wouldn’t be home until tomorrow, I would have plenty of time to talk to Lizzie, check on Kroshtuka, and maybe even make a quick sortie to Ketwer Island—depending on what Lizzie told me about the place, of course.

I put the veggies in a baggie to bring with me and hooked to the Dreaming Caves.

***

No one was there to greet me this time. I wasn’t sure if that was bad or good. Bad, I decided, because I wasn’t sure how to get to Kroshtuka from here, and didn’t want to spend the time I had, wandering around lost in a cave. “Hello?” My voice bounced frenetically off the cave walls and disappeared into the darkness beyond the main cavern.

I waited. No answer.

“Damn it.” That echoed too and of course, someone heard that.

“Who is it?” A form came into view. Caterpillar Eyebrows. Goody. He didn’t like me very much. Then again, that might’ve been my insecurity peeking out from the dark corner where it lurked in my mind.

I do not see lurker. See shadows.

“Devany,” I told him. “I came to talk to Lizzie. Do you know where she is?” And inwardly, I said, ‘Shadows? What the hell?’

He huffed, panting a little as he made his way to me. “She is Dreaming. Dreaming, the old fool,” he said, the spaces between his words filled with shallow gasps of breath.

“Is she okay? She hasn’t run into the Rider, has she?”

“Rider?” His voice was sharp.

“Yeah. I came to tell you guys that there’s someone out there with a hitchhiker in their brain. And whoever gets a visit by it in their Dreams, gets the potential for a Rider that will hatch into full-blown parasite at the next moon.” I hated the thought of Lizzie getting infected too. Wasn’t there any way to protect yourself besides staying out of the Dreams? “Is she okay?”

“Young lady, she is Dreaming. It is her specialty. If she were in trouble, she would let us know.” He laced his fingers and rested them on his big belly. “I suppose you want to see the young warrior.”

“If I may.”

“There are rituals, customs, centuries of handed down lore and tradition. I don’t see the value in having an outsider come in and upset it all. The witches sometimes send envoys, well-meaning, passionate missionaries who want to convert the savages. ‘Rescue your people from the tyranny of wild magic.’ Of course, they don’t want us in their cities. Not in their regulated cities where magic isn’t allowed to wend its merry way down hill and dale, changing the world as it sees fit. They find no beauty in change.”

His voice had stopped echoing. I wasn’t sure when that happened. The silence that settled on my shoulders and stoppered my ears felt manufactured. I shifted, wondering if I had anything to fear from this seemingly harmless old guy, then figured I most certainly did.

“So I ask you, world-walker, do you find beauty in change?”

I quelled my temptation to answer right away. It wasn’t a question I was supposed to answer fast and perhaps not at all, though it didn’t have a rhetorical feel to it. Did I like change? Find beauty in it? My life had been all about change, ever since meeting Zech at the sugar tent and stepping into the hook. But did I find beauty in it? In the things that had led to my children being kidnapped and terrorized? In the things that had led me to kill? Hoping I wasn’t condemning myself to being ousted, I said, “I don’t know that I do.”

He looked triumphant, had that, ‘Ha! I knew it,” look on his face.

“Listen. Change isn’t pretty. Okay, some change is. The shift from day to night, that’s pretty. The moon’s phases are pretty too. A woman’s body when she carries her children or as she ages, all that change can be quite lovely. But the change that plunges raw ore into fire and melts it down, that’s not something I’d call pretty. Transformative, maybe. And you can’t tell me it’s easy on that butterfly in its chrysalis. I know I’m an outsider here. I don’t want to offend people, turn you all human, impose my values on you all. Kroshtuka helped me when I needed it. I helped him. I’d like to see where that goes. That’s all. And maybe figure out how to keep people I care about from turning into parasite-ridden murderers. You know?”

“The witches have been dismissing us as children, as monsters, beasts. Intellectually and magically inferior. They use that as an excuse to steal our people and sell them. To kill us and push their order on our lands.”

“I’m not a witch. I’m not a Wydling. I’m only an outsider, like you said. I can tell you that I’ve talked to your people and to the witches. I hear the bigotry and it depresses me. But you know, Kroshtuka told me that the relationships between his people and some of the border-dwellers has gotten better. That’s a start.”

He snorted, yes, but he didn’t immediately counter with another argument, though from the look on his face, he was trying to come up with something. Finally, he said, “Some of the Elders have wondered if you will open a hole between our worlds, and lead an army through to kill us all.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“How do we know you wouldn’t?” That echoed. I wondered if his control had slipped.

Oh for the love of … I crossed my arms. “You don’t.”

We stared at each other, neither of us willing to blink or look away. We were rescued from severe dry eye by the susurration of voices coming from a tunnel to my left. Led by an ancient looking woman holding a bowl with a bobbing light inside, a procession of Elders wound into the main cavern where Caterpillar Eyebrows and I stood. I really had to find out again what his name was. I’d known it, once upon a time.

The Elders settled themselves on the flat rocks that sat in a rough circle in one vast corner of the cave. Different than the first room we’d talked in, this space looked like there might be a raised dais at one end, giving the configuration a vague horseshoe shape.

“Come on, they’ve decided you must hear a story.”

“I don’t really have—”

He grabbed my elbow with a grip strong enough to make me wince and guided me to the gathering. I jerked my arm away with a glare and the old woman with the bowl chided him. “Fisli. Enough. You must lay your personal feelings aside now. To hold onto your anger is not Our Way.”

“Ellisi.” He gave her a slight bow and found his seat—as far away from me as he could get.

A smile played on her wrinkled lips as she turned her rheumy eyes on mine. “Our Mother asked me to tell you a story.”

Although I wanted to say I didn’t have time, I couldn’t say no to that smile. I couldn’t be rude. Kroshtuka had told me stories. They were part of who he was and who his people were, they were important. I sat myself on a rock and nodded. “Thank you.”

She patted my head as if I were a child—I really was, in relation to her age—and toddled to the dais. A younger member of the Elders hurried over to help her up the slight step. He leaned in and said something that made her laugh and swat him away. When he retook his seat, she shook out the front of her gown and smoothed the material with her knot-knuckled, bony hands. Her eyes graced each of us in turn before she started. “It is the tale of Sephony and the witch king.” Several of the Elders leaned to the side and spit at that. “Of a gift stolen and misused.”

***

“Long ago, Before the People pinned down our histories on Gumma paper, long before the first hooks opened up and anyone thought beyond food, shelter, sex, and survival, two tribes grew strong. Each group originated in a different way. One had been born from the egg of a Dak dak bird, the other from the egg of a Wysta lizard. Two eggs, so similar in appearance that if I held them in my palms,” the old lady held out her hands, the barest tremor in them, “you would not be able to tell me which egg was which.”

Around me there were murmurs.

“Two eggs, so alike, eh? One group became the witches. One the Wydlings. Two groups, so unalike. You would think the gods and goddesses had jokes in their hearts, instead of compassion and love, when they created both peoples and set them to live on Midia.” She paused to take a drink from the glass sitting on a rock shelf behind her, then continued with the story.

“King Sorgen was a young man, fourteen if he was a day, when he came to the crown. Used to getting what he wanted, that one, and his people indulged him because he was a handsome lad, very handsome indeed. Perhaps he would have lived his whole life flitting from one party to another, but uncertainty came to his kingdom in his twentieth year. The chythraul needed new territory, new food. They were raiding the borders, taking skins, killing and poaching.”

On the wall behind her, the shadow of a giant spider crept. I turned to look behind me but there was nothing but cave, stretching out into darkness. Inside me, Neutria came forward, her interest filling me. I hoped this little story didn’t give her any ideas of leading a great chythraul army.

“The fighting changed Sorgen from a boy to a man. He became a great warrior, talked about throughout the land. But even with his fierce prowess, the witches couldn’t hold against the invaders alone. They had to call on our People, our Warriors. They would not admit it, but our People were the superior fighters.”

A cheer went up around me. I dipped my head to hide my smile as Neutria hissed in my head.

Stupid duallies. Chythraul always win. Kill and eat. No need for stories.

“Our People were also invaded, by a parasite known as the Rider.”

Shock thrummed through me. I glanced, wide-eyed at Caterpillar Eyebrows, who didn’t look as surprised as I felt.

“It traveled through Dreams,” continued the old woman, “infecting the People. The only way to stop it was to kill the infected before the parasite could spread, but they were mothers, sons, daughters, and fathers and no one wanted to kill them. Because the witches did not travel in the Dreamscape, they could not be infected. It was for this reason that Tyrstan, leader of First Clan, sent his warrior-children to parlay with the witch king. They would offer to help drive back the chythraul if, in return, the witches would help the People defeat the Rider.

“Tyrstan’s children stood out at court. They wore leather, fur, and wool, things they could grow or catch to fashion into clothes. At court, there were fabrics made from the threads of caterpillars, from metals, from chythraul web, in ridiculous colors hunters would never wear.” Not just shadows behind her now. Colors spashed across the wall and I watched, entranced as they formed the vaguest outlines of people dancing, surrounding the muted colors of what had to be the warrior siblings. And then, the colors parted and a shimmering gold form appeared. “Court life was wildly different from clan living. Alliances were made and broken, sometimes in the turn of a single day. Tyrstan’s children, all but one, had sworn to take no lovers, have no families, and live, fight, and die for their people. Their vows were challenged at every turn by the witches. And of course, there was no one more persuasive than the witch king himself.

“King Sorgen was not just powerful. He was beautiful and Sephony, Tyrstan’s youngest daughter, found him very pleasing indeed. He was not like her brothers, tall, hairy, and blonde but shorter, smooth-shaven. His lips were sensuous, his eyes heavy-lidded and full of promises. He spoke in a husky drawl that made the women at court dizzy with lust.” The old woman cackled, rubbing her hands together, clearly enjoying the telling. “‘I am Sorgen,’ said the king, ‘and I welcome you with open arms to my kingdom.’ Sephony made her introductions but knew as soon as he pressed his lips to the back of her hand, that he would be her downfall.”

On the wall, despite the fact it was only shadows and shapes, I saw the whole thing fall in place before me. It was a wonder. It made my heart ache because it couldn’t end well. Stories like this never did.

Mate, then kill. No need for pain in heart.

‘Shh,’ I said, in my mind.

“Although they were there for parlay, to decide how best they could help each other, from that moment on it was about the king’s lust for Sephony and her growing love for him.” Several elders hissed. They didn’t appreciate the witch king playing fast and loose with Sephony’s affections. I didn’t particularly like it either. “She had taken vows. This troubled her deeply. To love a man, to take him to her furs was to break her vows. She’d given up that life in favor of serving her people, her clan.