Poisoned, p.25
Poisoned, page 25
Jeremias shook his head. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous. We’ll go,” he said dismissively. He started to stand, but his legs shook so badly, he had to sit down again.
“I can do this. And I will,” Sophie said. “Things have changed since you both set off from the Hollow. I’ve changed.”
Jeremias’s eyes roved over her, taking in her tunic and trousers, her cropped hair, the scars from the snakes and scorpion. Walking for days had made her limbs lean and hard. Sunlight had bronzed her skin. But the biggest changes were the determined set of her jaw and the confident light in her eyes.
“Yes,” he said at length. “I can see that.”
“We found the tunnel.” That was Joosts. The food and water had brought a bit of life back to him. “We were just about to head into it, when the vines came after us. It’s not far. About twenty paces south of the tree where you found us. Go. Hurry. It’s almost nightfall.”
Sophie and Arno set off. Sophie led the way back to where she’d found the brothers. Once they’d located the tree, Arno oriented himself toward the south, counted off twenty paces, and found himself staring at the entrance to the tunnel.
It was nothing more than an opening between two boulders, maybe eighteen inches wide, veiled by cobwebs. A sinkhole of dread opened in Sophie’s chest as she regarded it. Who knew what waited for them in that darkness?
Arno quickly fashioned two torches from green branches he snapped off a tree, dry twigs, and pine cones sticky with pitch. He ignited the torches using a flint, a steel, and a bit of char cloth, all of which he kept in a small tin in his jacket pocket.
Sophie pulled the cobwebs down and ventured inside. Dampness hung in the stale air. Thin fingers of moss dangled from the ceiling. Water trickled down the walls and pooled on the tunnel’s floor. Black millipedes, shiny and fat; glossy green beetles; and lanky white spiders scuttled away from the torches’ light. Before Sophie and Arno had ventured fifty yards in, they had to step over the bones of a skeleton that was slumped against the wall. Sophie gripped her torch tightly. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that smaller tunnels branched off from the main one. The floor dipped down as they walked. Cold, murky water rose up over her ankles.
“It’s quiet in here,” she said as the tunnel rose again and the water drained away.
“So far,” Arno said. “I’ll be amazed if we make it through without coming across a makaber or two. Maybe a troll as well.”
The tunnel snaked sharply to the left, and as they rounded the curve, they saw that part of one wall had caved in. Stones and dirt were heaped on the ground. Luckily, the rubble didn’t entirely block their way; there was an opening, about two feet wide, at the top of it.
Arno stopped and looked at it, one hand on his hip. “We can squeeze through that,” he said.
Sophie went first. She climbed up carefully, mindful of her torch, expecting the stones to slide out from under her feet at any second, but they stayed in place. Just as she was about to crawl through the opening, she heard Arno gasp.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, turning around.
Arno was staring down the tunnel, back the way they’d come. He didn’t look scared, though. In fact, he was smiling.
“Arno? What is it?”
Arno’s smile broadened. He took a few steps away from her.
“Matti?” he said in voice soft with wonder. “Matti, is that you?”
The hair on the back of Sophie’s neck stood up. Matti was the name of Arno’s dead son.
“My child … My darling boy,” Arno said. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Arno?” Sophie said uncertainly, climbing back down the rubble. She looked past him into the darkness, hoping to see what he saw. But there was nothing.
Arno knelt down. He stretched his arms out before him. “Come, Matti,” he said, his voice breaking. “Come give your papa a hug …”
“Stop this, Arno!” Sophie demanded. “You’re scaring me.”
“Matti? Matti, no! Don’t run away! You’ll get lost down here!” Arno cried. The happiness drained out of his voice. Fear took its place.
Sophie reached for him, to shake him and snap him out of the strange trance he’d fallen into. As she did, she felt something land on her shoulder, something damp and cold. With a cry, she batted it off. It hit the ground with a wet splat. Where did it come from? she wondered. Raising her torch high, she looked up.
Clinging to the ceiling like a colony of bats were hundreds of small, quivering creatures, no more than eight inches high. Their thin, jellylike bodies were translucent; Sophie could see black veins through their gray skin, and pulsing yellow hearts. Their eyes were large and pale, their mouths puckered. Sucker-like cups on their long fingers and toes kept them attached to their perches.
Sophie’s stomach tightened. She knew what the creatures were. “Wunschfetzens,” she whispered.
Arno had told her about them. They stuck their long fingers into your ears, pried out your memories, and made you think you were seeing someone who wasn’t there, someone you loved and longed for. Several of the creatures tensed their bodies, ready to jump, but Sophie thrust her torch at them, and they scattered across the ceiling, screeching.
“Arno, it’s an illusion!” she shouted, reaching for him again. “Matti’s not there!”
But her hand closed on air.
Arno wasn’t there anymore, either.
Sophie ran.
“Arno! Arno, wait!” she shouted, following him back the way they’d come.
But Arno, desperate to catch up with his son, was running fast, and Sophie couldn’t keep up. He turned down a twisting side tunnel and then two more.
“Left, left, right …” she said aloud—like a chant, a prayer—as she pursued him, adding a directional every time she turned so that she could remember the way back.
There was more standing water in the narrow tunnels. Scuttling things clutched at her ankles as she moved through it. Sophie kicked them away without a glance. She kept her eyes on the light of Arno’s torch, but he was moving so fast that it was growing dimmer by the second.
Arno took a sharp turn and then another. Sophie caught her toe on something as she tried to keep up, and tripped. Frantic to keep her torch from falling onto the damp ground and snuffing out, she came down hard on one knee, stopping her fall. Pain shot through her leg, slowing her.
“Arno, stop … Please …” she cried, scrambling to her feet.
Arno’s footsteps faded into the darkness. The light from his torch winked out.
He was gone, and Sophie was alone. Her chest was heaving. She could hear her own breath, rapid and shallow, echoing off the tunnel walls. Her heart urged her to keep going, to save her friend. Sophie looked at her torch. The flames were not as high as they had been. They would burn out soon. She knew she couldn’t be down here when they did, or she would become another skeleton slumped against the wall. Who would fight for her people then?
“I’m sorry, Arno. Please, please forgive me,” she whispered to the darkness.
And then she turned away, tears slipping down her cheeks.
“Left, right, right …” Sophie said, reciting her directionals in reverse, trying to make her way back to the main tunnel.
As she rounded each turn, she stopped to scratch an arrow in the dirt, pointing the way out, just in case Arno came to his senses and tried to retrace his steps.
She wanted to stop, to sit down on the ground and weep for her lost friend, but she forced herself to keep going. She would mourn Arno later; grief was a luxury she could not afford now.
“Left, left, right …” Sophie said, praying that she was remembering the turns in the correct order. As she neared another fork, her memory suddenly failed her. She could not recall which way to go. Trying not to panic, she stopped and held her torch out to her left. Its weakening glow illuminated yet another endless tunnel snaking away into the darkness. Then she moved the torch to her right.
What happened next made her scream.
A face, pale and eyeless, framed by a shock of white hair, loomed out of the darkness, snarling loudly. It raked its dirty claws through the air, aiming at Sophie but missing, then it scuttled back into the tunnel and crouched down over something.
Sophie saw that the something was a corpse and that the creature was stealing its toes and putting them in its pocket.
“A makaber,” she whispered.
Arno had told her that makabers were possessive of the bodies they found and would fight anyone who tried to take them. The creature was gruesome to look at, with its ragged clothing, and tattered flesh, but it seemed to be too obsessed with its prize to want to pursue her. “Ugh,” Sophie said, revolted. But at least she now knew which tunnel to take. She hadn’t passed the makaber, or the body it was robbing, as she’d chased Arno, which meant she’d come down the tunnel to her left. Quickly, she made her way up it and after only two more turns found herself in the main passageway. A few minutes later, she was back to the place where the wall had caved in. She crawled through the opening to the other side, careful of her torch.
As Sophie started walking again, she noticed that the tunnel was sloping upward. She very much hoped that meant she was nearing the end of it, for her torch had begun to sputter. A few minutes later, her hopes were rewarded as the passage gave way to a flight of moss-covered steps, hewn out of rock. Sophie carefully picked her way up them and found that they brought her to a wooden door. It was old, pocked with wormholes, and as mossy as the steps were. Its large iron handle and hinges were covered in rust.
“This opens into the castle; it must,” Sophie reasoned. “Please don’t be locked. Please,” she added, trying the handle. But it was.
“No,” she whispered, distraught. She leaned her head against the door. Had she come this far only to have to turn back?
“No,” she said again, louder this time, banging her head against the soft, spongy wood. She thought of the pale, powerful king, untouchable in his castle. She thought of her stepmother sentencing Tom to ten lashes. Of Captain Krause and his men setting St. Sebastian’s on fire. And as she did, her despair hardened into something dark and lethal. “No,” she growled angrily. “No, no, no, NO!”
Shaking with rage, Sophie kicked the door. Again and again and again, harder each time. Yelling. Shouting. Screaming. At the King of Crows. At her stepmother. At Haakon and Krause. And then, abruptly, she stopped. Because her foot had gone through the rotten wood.
Sophie’s eyes widened. She kicked at the door again, and the bottom half crumbled away. She dropped to her hands and knees, crawled through the hole she’d made, still protecting her torch, and stood up in a cavernous vaulted cellar.
Huge oak barrels of wine lay stacked in rows in the center of the room. Casks of brandy lined the walls. Sophie’s fizzling torch cast enough light to illuminate another flight of stairs at the far end of the room. She was up them in no time. Just before she reached the top, the flames finally died. She threw the torch down and let her hands guide her the rest of the way. Her fingers found the door; they closed on the handle. Would it be locked, too? She turned it and the door opened on squeaking hinges.
Sophie’s heart was beating a staccato rhythm. She gathered her courage and stepped into Nimmermehr.
Lifeless swans hung from the ceiling on silver hooks. A basket of shiny black eels stood on the floor. A dead stag lay on a wooden table.
Sophie had walked out of the cellar and into a larder. Warily, she crossed the room, then leaned her head out of the doorway, glancing around for cooks or servants, but she didn’t see any. She had no idea where the King of Crows kept the hearts he’d taken, but she doubted they were in the larder. Moving slowly, she left the room on silent cat feet. The stag’s dead eyes followed her.
A dimly lit hall led her to an enormous kitchen. Careful to stay in the shadows, Sophie peered around the edge of the doorway, but the kitchen, too, was strangely empty.
Cautiously, she ventured into it, ready to bolt out again if anyone appeared. Pots simmered on a large iron stove. A boar’s body roasted over glowing coals on a revolving spit. Its fierce, tusked head sat atop a platter on a wooden worktable that stretched half the length of the room.
It appeared that someone was in the midst of preparing supper. Cheeses stood on boards; some had ink-black rinds, others were furry with green mold. Baskets held mushrooms that were dark purple, bright green, or speckled yellow. A beautiful charlotte russe towered on a cake stand. It took Sophie a moment to realize that the ladyfingers edging it were real ones, with crimson nails, still wearing their rings.
With a shiver, Sophie made her way to another doorway on the opposite side of the kitchen. As she disappeared through it, the boar’s head let out a loud, gusty snort. And from behind the coal bins, under the worktable, and beneath the huge stone sinks, a dozen frightful creatures emerged.
They were all about six feet tall, pot-bellied and round-shouldered, with gangling arms and legs, and skin as warty and mottled as a toad’s. They wore black tunics that reached down to their knees.
Had he been there, Arno would have recognized them. They were kobolds, a particularly vicious strain of goblin. They smiled as Sophie left the room, showing mouthfuls of needlelike teeth, their dark eyes glittering.
Sophie saw a spiral staircase as she emerged from the kitchen and quickly climbed it. She was in a dangerous man’s domain and didn’t know where the stairs would take her. She had no idea where to even begin looking for her heart. All she knew was that she had an impossible task ahead of her and that the only way to finish such a task was to start it.
The stairway stopped at one end of a long hallway, paneled in ebony. She walked down the passage, trying to be as quiet as a mouse, and came to the castle’s trophy room. Its tall wooden doors were open. Slowly, cautiously, she entered it and looked around. The room’s walls were studded with the heads of glassy-eyed deer and elk. Predators, their preserved bodies frozen in a crouch or a pounce, stared down from tree limbs or stood atop logs.
Sophie threw open cabinet doors and searched shelves. She lifted the top of a desk and rifled through it. Just as she was lowering it again, the top slipped out of her hands and slammed down. A dead fox stood on it, snarling.
Gasping, Sophie stumbled back. A deep growl rumbled from behind her. She whirled around and saw a black wolf walking toward her, its head low, its teeth bared. A shriek sounded from across the room. A panther had leapt onto the mantel and was tensed to spring.
Terror propelled Sophie like an arrow from a bow. She shot across the room toward the doors. A split second later, the panther landed exactly where she’d been standing. Scrabbling on the smooth wood floor, the big cat tried to gain purchase but slipped and crashed into the desk. The wolf ran past it, gaining on Sophie. She burst through the doorway, grabbed both doors, and pulled them shut behind her.
Panting with fear, she took a step back and then another. A heavy thud against the doors made her jump. Something scratched against them furiously. She heard more snarling.
Will the doors hold? she wondered frantically, then decided not to wait to find out. Running down the dark hallway, she came to another doorway. She skidded to a stop in front of it and looked inside.
The room was an armory. Banners hung from the ceiling. Pikes and halberds were crossed on the walls. Suits of armor stood in rows in the middle of the room like silent sentries. Sophie dashed inside, slammed the doors closed, and leaned against them, eyes shut, struggling to catch her breath.
She had made a great deal of noise. Someone—the King of Crows, his servants—must have heard her. She stood perfectly still, listening, her nerves taut, for several long moments. But all she heard was the thumping of her own heart—no voices, no footsteps.
“Get moving,” she told herself.
At the back of the room were dozens of wooden chests. Sophie decided to search them. The first one held leather gloves. The next one contained chain mail hoods. Quivers filled a third. Nothing held a heart in a glass box.
“Where is it?” she said aloud, her desperation growing.
As the words left her lips, she heard a high, metallic scraping. One by one, the helmets atop the suits of armor turned sharply toward her. The darkness behind the sightless visors seemed to sense her. Metal-covered fingers clenched into fists. Metal-covered legs wrenched themselves off the floor and crashed down again.
The suits of armor were slowly coming to life. With a strangled scream, Sophie forded her way back through them. A chain-mailed hand swiped through the air and connected with her back, sending her sprawling. She hit the floor, then rolled away as an armored foot stamped down inches from her head. Crawling on her hands and knees, Sophie dodged more blows and managed to get to the doors. She scrabbled to her feet just as a halberd’s blade came down. It kissed her back, neatly slicing into her tunic, barely missing her skin. She raced across the threshold, grabbed the doors, and heaved them shut.
There was clanking and crashing from behind the doors. Sophie flattened herself against the wall opposite them. She imagined a set of armor toppling over, and another and another until they were all piled up. At least, she hoped that’s what was happening; it would keep them from getting out.
Shaking, she set off down the hallway again. Her search carried her into a small theater, where marionettes with painted-on eyes swiveled their heads and jerkily pursued her, trailing their strings and crossbars.
She stumbled into a wallpapered drawing room with dark furniture and velvet draperies, a music room, and a library with thousands of leather-backed tomes. Nothing chased her in those rooms, but nor did she find what she was looking for.
Exhausted, she sat down on a tufted leather bench in the library and lowered her head into her hands. “Where is it? Where is my heart?” she whispered. Images came to her of the bodies she’d seen in the Darkwood the first time she’d left the Hollow. “Where are all the hearts?” she asked.
