Wakeworld (22 page)

And the other monstrosity had gotten itself free of the cave. It was the size of a small mountain and stank of brimstone and sulfur. Steam and flame erupted out of its nostrils with every breath. Vivian tried to encompass one small loving thought toward this creature born of her own soul, but fear and loathing was all she could manage.

And the creature grew larger.

They were doomed.

Weston’s father pulled the trigger. A crack like thunder from the gigantic gun. Vivian’s heart suspended beating, waiting for Zee to stagger or fall, but he stood unwavering. Beside him now, a small black-and-white form. Oh God, Poe.

Another shot. Rock fragments flew through the air with a sound of an explosion. A line of blood opened on Weston’s cheek.

Following an instinct she didn’t understand, Vivian lifted the bloodstone close to his face so that a drop of blood fell on it. The color of the stone darkened to almost black and it pulsed, once, as though it were alive.

Memory stirred again. “Zee!” she shouted. “To me.”

She feared he would not come, would have used the Voice on him at last, but there was only an instant’s hesitation before he raced toward them.

“Poe!” she screamed, but the penguin held his ground, right in the path of the dragon.

Zee slid behind the rock beside her and saw what she held.

“Dark magic,” he muttered.

“You know what must be done?”

“I remember.” He held out the blade of the sword toward her, as needed. Without her asking, he ran the back of his wrist against the edge. As his blood struck the stone, it pulsed once more, glowing now with an ominous, lurid light.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” Weston said. “This can lead to no good.”

“Hush, we have no choice.”

“What of Poe and the raven?” Zee asked.

“Poe!” she called again. He didn’t move so much as a feather, but stood undaunted, staring down a creature that could roast him in the beat of a heart.

“Can’t get rid of the damned raven, no matter how hard I try. They’ll probably find us.”

Vivian drew a deep breath and ran the heel of her own hand over the keen edge of the blade, watching the thin line of blood well up and spill over onto her white skin. She twisted her wrist, letting the bright drops fall onto the bloodstone.

The stone began to beat like an exposed heart, expanding and contracting, emitting an ever-increasing light with every pulse.

“Now what?”

“Hell if I know.” Maybe she was supposed to talk to it or something, but the only phrase that came to mind was
Calgon, take me away
. She gazed into the center of the stone, taking a deep breath and letting go of all her rational thoughts and preconceptions. Listening.

And then she spoke to it her deepest need. “Take us to the Gates.”

The world began to spin, the three of them at the center of a cyclone, whirling faster and faster, trees, water, walking dead, dragon monster, dark, repeating over and over until it was all one solid blur, all of the things joined into one and spinning around the beating heart at its center.

And then, darkness.

V
ivian was unable to see a single thing in a dark so intense that it pressed against her eyeballs. The bloodstone in her hand was quiet and inert. She shoved it into her pocket and reached out her hands to find Weston and Zee on either side of her. Poe pressed up against her leg. With a quick rush of joy to find him present and unharmed she bent to hug him but didn’t speak, still trying to get a sense of where they were and whether there was danger.

Little by little, sounds began to trickle into her consciousness. The liquid flowing of running water. Not the babbling of a brook or the noisy rushing of a stream, but the sound of a large river flowing between banks worn smooth by its passing. A murmuring and rustling came to her next, like a large group of people, hushed and waiting. Shifting position from time to time, asking a brief question, uttering a reassuring word.

A light appeared in the distance. “Come, let’s go closer.” She meant to whisper, but her voice seemed loud and harsh. Zee and Weston took her hands, one on each side, so as to stay together, and she took courage from their strength. Measuring her steps, testing each before she set it down to be sure she remained on solid land, she led them right up to the edge of the river, still invisible in the dark.

The light drew closer and brighter, until her eyes could make out the shape of a boat with a man standing in the stern, a long oar in his hands. He was cloaked all in black, with a hood covering his face.

“If that is who I think it is, I’m going to kill you,” Weston said.

“Hush. If this goes badly, you won’t need to.”

She should have been frightened, but she felt strangely easy.

The Ferryman’s head swiveled in their direction. His chin lifted. Out of the dark his eyes shone green like a cat’s. He altered his course, steering the boat around to come in close to where they stood, using his long oar as a pole to anchor him there while the boat swung about in the slow current.

“This is not the landing, nor are you the dead. What do you want of me?”

“Passage to the Black Gates,” Vivian said. “Can you get us there?” Her voice surprised her, rolling out strong and confident. Downriver to the right she could see, thanks to his light, the people who waited on the landing, cloaked in gray, huddled together for warmth or comfort.

“Passage to the Black Gates? That I cannot give, even if I would. I owe nothing to the living.”

“We have coin such as is hard to come by, in this land or in any other.”

“Even so. I cannot take you to the Black Gates.”

“You can tell me, though, whether there is a way to reach them across this river.”

“I might be able to tell that, if the coin were of sufficient value.”

She selected a small bloodstone from the sock bag and held it up to the Ferryman. “And this?”

His face went cold with desire. “Now that is rare coin indeed. Is it real?”

Vivian tossed it to him. He caught it neatly, held it up to look through, touched it with his tongue. His eyes glittered.

“Well?”

“There may be a way for one such as you. It lies across the river, and is dark and perilous.”

“So be it. Will you take us across?”

“If you pay me.”

“What is your fee?”

“Two of the stones for each human, one for each of the birds.”

“Done. I will give them to you when we reach the other side.”

“Or I can step ashore and take them now, and leave you stranded.”

“Their value will be lessened if you take them by force. Heart’s blood must be freely given. You know this, Charon.”

The words came from deep within, beyond knowledge, but she knew they were the right ones. They rang out in that dark place with a power long dormant.

He snarled. “You delay my true work.”

The throng of the dead pressed up against the river, sighing like a wind in the treetops.

“The dead you have always with you,” Weston said. “Sooner we go, sooner you can get back to your task.”

“A bargain then,” Vivian said. “Passage across the river for the three of us and the birds. Eight bloodstones. And you direct us to the path that will lead to the Black Gates. I will pay you now, in full, if you give me your word to fulfill your end of the agreement.”

“We have a bargain.” She thought she caught a flash of sharp white teeth, lit by the glowing eyes.

Zee touched her arm, and she knew he too had seen it. The Ferryman was holding something back that gave him pleasure. He was not to be trusted, but there was no choice. Already he had brought the raft to shore. Weston shrugged, picked up Poe, and leaped aboard, holding out his hand to Vivian.

The moment her foot touched the deck, the Ferryman stood blocking her, hand outstretched. If she took one step back, if he pressed one hand against her, she would topple into the river. She shuddered at the thought of what that would mean, to fall undead into those black depths and be swept away. She felt Zee’s hand on her arm, steadying her, knew if she fell he would do his best to catch her.

“Toll,” the Ferryman said.

Vivian counted the bloodstones out into his palm.

“There are only seven here.”

“I gave you one already.”

“True.”

He looked up, and she gasped to see his face. Not deformed or scarred, or ugly. A beautiful face, one Michelangelo might have used for a David or an angel.

“What will you do with them?” she asked.

He smiled, his lips a sensual curve over white teeth. “I have my own debts to pay. Keep to the center of the raft if you would not fall in.”

Turning, he picked up his long oar and shoved the boat out into the current. Vivian took uncertain steps toward the center of the boat, Zee’s hand still warm on her arm. A strange and silent trip in the wide dark followed, lighted only by the Ferryman’s lamp and the glow of his eyes.

The light reflected on the water in a radius around the boat. The current rippled and flowed. No sound but the water slapping against the bow. Vivian was deathly cold, her muscles clamped tight, racked by shivering. Zee’s hand on her arm ceased to be warm, and then she ceased to feel it at all. Frost glinted in Weston’s beard.

How wide the river was, she could not tell. Neither bank was in the range of sight. There was nothing but the small island of light, the Ferryman’s movements, Weston’s and Zee’s breathing, a small rustle of feathers as the birds shifted restlessly.

The change began as a kernel of warmth at her core. Cold as she was, she welcomed it without thought, grateful and encouraging it to grow. It did so, fist-sized, hotter now, until her belly was full of the growing heat. It flowed through her veins, throwing off the cold, expanding her senses, filling her with strength.

Charon turned as though he felt the change. The green glow in his eyes spiked and again he smiled that dangerous smile. “Ah, My Lady, I fear I did not recognize you. I should tip you into the river before you come into all of your power.”

“I mean no harm to you.”

“Not now, perhaps. Still, a bargain is a bargain. And you have a dark and dangerous way to go.”

The Ferryman stopped paddling for a moment, lifting his lamp to look at them all more clearly. In the light of his lantern Zee appeared clad in chain mail, bearded and fell as though he had stepped out of a painting of one of the knights of old. Weston was in leather, a bow in his hand, a quiver of arrows slung on his back, hunting knife belted at his waist.

“So now I see. The River reveals what has been hidden. You, My Lady, are many things. As for your companions—you are well protected. The Warrior and the Hunter. The bird who does not fly, and the raven. All headed for the Black Gates. And there are bloodstones in play. Truly, time has moved apace in the world above.”

The boat gave a little shudder. Vivian glanced up to see the light sparking against cliffs of glistening black stone. A narrow path wound like a gash up the side.

“There is the way,” the Ferryman said. “It is steep. There are—barriers.” A new respect had entered his voice and he swept his hood back and looked Vivian clearly in the eyes, with no mockery or treachery in his. “There is little I am permitted to say. Because of what you are, it is possible that you will find the way out into the land above. It is probable that your death awaits you.”

“In which case,” she said, “I will see you again very soon.”

“Ah. There is much you do not know.”

“What? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Of this, I may not speak. Beware. Death has no favors for one such as you.”

The boat bumped up against the stone wall. Weston was first to leap out, carrying Poe. Zee followed. They stood waiting for Vivian, but she lingered, shivering and afraid.

“You could stay with me,” Charon said, lowering his voice. “You are the first in lifetimes of humans who would be fit to be a companion to me, and I would keep you safe.”

“It is long to be alone in the dark,” she said, “but I must decline. I have oaths to fulfill, if I can.”

He nodded, and to her great surprise, bowed to her. “Go then, My Lady. Beware.”

His last word echoing in her ears, Vivian turned and clambered off the boat to join the others. Charon lifted his hand in a salute and began his journey back across the river.

H
e might have warned us,” Weston said.

“He did warn us.” Vivian sounded tired and frail, but Zee was not misled by that. The strength of will that drove her was a mystery and an amazement to him.

They stood at the very edge of a precipice beneath a sky not black but gray. As they had followed the path a dim light gradually emerged, enough to allow them to set one foot in front of the other, steadily increasing until now they could see the sheer drop-off at the end of their way, thousands of feet straight down to where the river flowed beneath them.

Here it was not the smoothly flowing entity that Charon had ferried them across, but rather a seething mass of white water, spiked by sharp spits of stone. It was hungry.

“Do you feel it?” Vivian asked, stepping up beside him.

Zee put out an arm to fence her in, to hold her back. “It wants us.”

At his touch a shudder went through her, and she blinked as if waking from sleep. “Can’t have us.” Her head turned to follow the river’s course to the place where gray light filtered in through the roof of the cave. “There’s our exit.”

“I still don’t see how we’re to get there.” Weston had stepped well back from the edge and was clinging to a spar of stone, looking dizzy and sick. The cut on his cheek had bled freely into his beard, which contributed to a sort of mad-prophet look that might have been amusing at another time.

Here, in this place, even the memory of humor was hard to find.

Zee assessed the options. The path ended here; the rock between them and the opening downriver was nothing but a jumbled mess of sharp pinnacles and crevices that would be impossible to navigate without climbing gear. Even then, only an experienced mountaineer would be able to do it, and it would take time. Going back would accomplish nothing. There was only one path, and no way back across the river.

“What now?” Weston asked.

“There is only one thing we can do,” Vivian answered.

Zee’s heart twisted into a knot so tight he wondered that it kept on beating. Already his pain ran so deep he could scarcely contain it, and now there was more. He had known the moment they reached this point what she was going to do, although he had hoped to be wrong.

“We’ll have to fly,” Vivian said.

She glanced up at him, her eyes deep wells of hurt, and he wanted to say something, to tell her he was sorry, that he loved her for all the things that she was, but the words were all knitted into the pain and he held silence.

A grim smile twisted her lips. “It appears to be the way of things,” she said. “Neither of us can argue with fate.”

A glimmer of hope lit Weston’s eyes. “I thought you couldn’t shift.”

“I can shift. The question is whether I will remember that you all are my friends and allow you to ride.”

“Or try to roast us,” Weston said.

“The question really is,” Zee said, speaking the truth they were all avoiding, “whether the shift will kill you.”

“There’s no other option. This goes so far beyond my life, or yours, that they don’t even weigh in the balance. We need to reach the Gates. We need to stop her. You saw what the dream stuff does—I don’t even want to think about what will happen if that leaks into Wakeworld somehow. Grab Poe, somebody, and step back. There’s not a lot of room for the shift.”

Zee needed to say something, to hold her, to press his lips against hers, but was blocked by memory of his betrayals. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and keep her there, safe and sheltered. But he couldn’t protect her from what faced them, and much as he loved her, she deserved the right to choose the manner of her death.

“Weston, stuff my clothes in your pack, will you, so I’m not naked on the other side?”

“Vivian, there must be another way—”

“There’s not. You know there’s not. Please don’t make this harder than it is.”

She turned her back on them then and began to undress. Zee meant to look away, but his eyes lingered on the smooth curve of her back, the fall of her hair, the long lean legs; he had painted her so many times from dream that he knew the curves intimately. He had always hoped there would come a day when he would be given leave to explore them in the real world, but that was not to be.

Folding the clothes in a neat little pile, she turned and retraced her steps up the path, her white body almost like flame in the gloom. She stopped in a wide space, spread her arms wide, and closed her eyes.

This too, Zee had seen in dream, the shift from woman into dragon. It had hurt him every time, but he had earned the pain, it was all he deserved, and he forced himself to watch as her body bulged and changed and transformed at last into the green-gold dragon.

“Vivian,” Zee called out to her, remembering that she must be named to be held to herself. He had no right to name her, to hold her, and yet it must be done.

“Vivian,” he said again, softer now, noticing the blood that gushed from an unhealed wound between foreleg and belly.

“Vivian,” he whispered, because his voice was breaking, but she must be called three times.

Weston came to stand beside him. “It won’t heal. Not ever. We’ll need to hurry before she grows too weak to fly.”

Zee wanted to protest, to insist that she change back now, at once. But her words came back to him—
this goes beyond my life, or yours.
And so he said only, “How shall we climb aboard? I think the tail, yes?”

“If we can get there—we’ll have to climb those rocks to reach it . . .”

But the dragon lowered its head to the ground, making a small flameless snort. Vivian, Zee reminded himself, not some stupid beast. She could hear and understand. “Or, we get up this way.” He scooped up Poe and stepped onto the broad skull, holding to one of her horns for balance. The head lifted like an elevator until her long neck was level with her body, and Zee walked it like a plank and settled himself at its base. The scales were smooth and hard as stone, sharp edged. They could cut you if you weren’t careful, but he was taken aback by the jewel-like brilliance of their color. He’d been too busy killing dragons to much notice the beauty of their scales.

Weston settled beside him, the raven on his shoulder. The dragon wings unfurled and beat once, twice. A thrust into the air as she pushed off with all four feet, and then the wings were lifting them all, carrying them out and above the river, heading for the dim light that offered hope of an exit.

Zee felt the pull of the river at once. It sucked them down in a sickening plunge, like a glider on a downdraft. The dragon beat her wings harder to gain altitude and carry them back aloft. A foot she gained, two, but no matter how hard she labored she could do no more.

They flew about a stone’s throw above jagged rocks thrusting up out of the water, spray tossing so high into the air that he could feel it against his face. It slicked the scales beneath him, so that between the slipperiness and the pull of the river it was a battle to hold to Poe and keep his place.

Out of the corner of his eye Zee saw Weston begin to slide. The old man scrabbled with both hands on the dragon’s back, trying to find purchase. There was nothing else to hold on to, no friction. Zee flung out a hand, but he was too late and too far. With a cry, the old Dreamshifter slid away into empty air.

An answering cry from the dragon echoed through the cavern. Her wings stopped beating and folded back, and she plunged downward after the falling man. The river rushed up toward them, rock spikes reaching, seeking. Weston was going to crash, and the rest of them immediately after.

Zee braced himself, wondering if it was possible to survive that foaming stretch of water without being impaled or beaten to death on the rocks. A small jolt, and then the wings were working again, faster and harder, straining to lift up and away from the rocks. Cautiously peering downward, Zee saw Weston dangling just above the water, his backpack snagged in a dragon claw.

One of the straps snapped, and the Dreamshifter’s body jolted again toward the long fall. He flipped around and grabbed hold of the pack with both arms, clinging.

Zee stared, horrified, at what lay ahead.

There was no way they were going to make it.

The river dropped off in a falls that plunged a thousand feet into a swirling cauldron of foam and spray. Glimpses of stone teeth emerged and vanished again in the ever-shifting waves and white water. Beyond the falls, at the far side of the cauldron, a narrow ledge intersected the cliff. A faint light filtered in through a small opening in the stone—just big enough that a man might crawl through it flat on his belly.

No dragon would ever fit through that gap, nor was there room for her to land on the ledge. There was nowhere else for her to go, except back, and she would never make it. She was weakening, each wing beat more difficult and desperate than the last.

The cliff came at them with dizzying speed, and Zee knew they were too low to catch the ledge. He felt her intensify the effort, the great wings straining, beating harder and faster, gaining a few inches at a time. She had to see it, had to know there was no way there was room for her to set down there. Maybe the switches between human and dragon had disoriented her and she couldn’t see.

Zee braced himself as well as he could for the crash, clutching Poe, ready to roll or leap or whatever had the slightest chance of bringing them to safety. But at the last instant the wings curved and checked. The dragon swerved. Momentum pushed Zee sideways with too much force for his tentative hold on the slick scales. Across the wide back, into the air over the wing, fingernails scraping for an instant at the last hope of gaining a hold. Then he was flying, the tumultuous water reaching up for him from below, on an arc that carried him onto the ledge with a crushing jolt that squeezed the air from his lungs and left him dizzy and winded.

Unable to draw a breath or so much as lift a finger to intervene, he saw the dragon roll in the air so that her talons were extended upward, still grasping Weston by the strap of his pack. He clung to it with both arms, embracing it as salvation, his beard and hair wild and windblown. Another roll, a twist of dragon legs, and Weston was dislodged and barrel rolling through the air toward the ledge, still clutching the pack to his chest.

He was coming too fast and at an angle that would take him along the edge and shoot him back out over the water.

Zee managed to get his body in motion and flung himself forward to catch the spiraling Dreamshifter, both of them crashing down and rolling to a slow stop against the cliff face.

Zee was up again in a heartbeat. “Vivian!” he shouted, knew he shouted because of the strain on his throat, but his voice was sucked up into the roar of the waterfall and made no sound.

The dragon’s wings trembled once and then hung limp, doing nothing more than passively slowing her as she spiraled downward. He could see the hole in her breast, the black blood still falling, falling, to hiss into steam when it struck the water below. Her golden eyes were glazed and unseeing. She struck the water like an immense stone, without protest or struggle, creating a great drenching spray that rose all the way to the ledge. Zee’s face was wet with the droplets, tasting of grief, bitter and sharp.

Poe joined him at the edge of the cliff, perched precariously with his webbed toes over the edge. He stretched out his flipper-wings as if he were going to fly, and then dove, free-falling into the dark water below without so much as a splash.

Zee huddled there, watching, hoping against hope. Maybe Vivian would come back up, despite all the odds. Dragons were tough and hard to kill. They had magic. Surely Poe, at least, would bob back to the surface.

But the penguin was small, for all that he was at home in the water, and Vivian had been sorely wounded by the dragonstone. His doing, his fault. If she was dead, it was because he had killed her. This was knowledge he could not endure. He would rescue her, or die with her, one or the other. He took a step back, prepared for a running leap out over the chasm.

“No!” Arms around his waist restrained him, pulled him away from the edge.

Zee tried to fight, but he was off balance and Weston was using all of his weight to pull him down and back. He hit the stone with a jarring pain in the injured arm that shot red-hot spikes through his vision, but still he struggled and rolled until Weston’s shout stopped him. “Careful or you’ll take us both over!”

“Let me go.”

Stronger in spite of the injury, he twisted himself free of the Dreamshifter’s hands. Weston promptly doubled up his fists and delivered strategic blows to one laceration, and then the other. The pain made Zee gasp, froze him for long enough to hear Weston shout, “You can’t save her! Think! She’s a dragon. What are you going to do, drag her to the surface?”

“Let me go—”

“No! You haven’t earned a death! You have to save the Key. That’s why you’re here. That’s why she saved you. Both of us. Well, that and because she’s Vivian. We have to do this thing. It’s the only way to make right the wrong.”

A part of Zee stood here on this ledge, and the rest of him, the part that mattered, had plummeted into the water with the dragon. She had gone down never knowing how much he loved her, or how deeply he had betrayed her. And she had gone out of her way to save him, to save them all.