Caprion's Wings (9 page)

She nodded, still holding his
eyes.

“We should begin our search,” Caprion
said, realizing how long he must have spent in this dank cell.
Talarin had given him an hour. He still had some time, but not
much. He had to hurry before Sumas noticed something amiss, or
before Talarin grew worried and came looking for him.

"Can you find the source of the
voice?" Caprion asked.

The girl shrugged. “I can lead you to
where the shadows accumulate the thickest. That is where the demon
will hide.” She hesitated. “This is very dangerous,” she
repeated.

Caprion stood and lifted his sword,
swinging it easily in his grasp, then sheathed it. “I can stand a
bit of danger,” he said.

That secretive look slipped across her
face again, her eyes glinting. “Then let’s go,” she
said.

Moss stood and walked
silently across the room. Caprion couldn’t help but notice her
smooth, liquid movement, like a well-trained dancer. Her chains
barely rustled with each step. She moved in a way he didn’t expect
from a young girl, controlled and assertive.
Trained,
he realized. So young, and
yet already knowledgeable in the ways of an assassin. It confirmed
his earlier suspicion. She was not as harmless as she
appeared.

Using the sunstone’s light, they
exited the small cell and entered the long, stone hallway. Moss
paused for a moment, glancing back and forth, concentrating…then
she turned to the left and headed down, deeper into the
earth.

Chapter 5

Caprion and Moss walked for quite a
distance. The tunnels became darker and steeper, the stone
crumbling with age. These corridors had to be at least a thousand
years old, protected from the elements by layers of earth. On the
higher levels, moisture clung to the walls, seeping through the
rock as though squeezed out by a giant, unseen hand. But as they
traveled farther, the air became stiff and dry, the tunnels smooth
and sandy, like worn-out husks of ancient bones. Shadows became
more solid and took on a menacing cast, like gauzy black veils
drifting in the air, almost tangible. Caprion pushed through them
like thin cobwebs.

As they walked, the strange sensation
grew in Caprion of being watched. The thickening shadows seemed to
contain entities and forms that he could not divine with his eyes.
Sometimes they seemed to move, shying away or pushing forward
against the light of the sunstone, which grew steadily muffled,
illuminating only a few feet around them.

This deep in the prisons, they didn’t
run across any guards. The halls seemed widely abandoned. Finally,
after almost a half-hour of walking through immeasurable darkness,
the tunnel came to an end. Caprion stepped down into a wide, long
chamber. Moss hung back behind him. The shadows expanded outward
like leaves blown into empty space. The sunstone brightened,
casting a broad circle of white light. Solid blocks of granite
defined the walls of this new room, dark and heavy, impenetrable.
The ground evened out, paved with broken slabs of flagstone. The
ceiling to his left had partially caved in and a great pile of
rubble blocked the second half of the room.

Caprion observed it all
silently.
This is it
, he thought.
The
crypts
. The air felt dense and hot,
difficult to breathe, like plunging into a furnace. It shouldn’t be
this hot underground. Sweat immediately sprang to his brow. The
back of his neck tingled. His eyes searched the visible corners of
the room, the collapsed stones and crumbling mortar to his left. He
could see no sign of a living thing, and yet he couldn’t shake the
feeling of being watched, of subtle movement at the corners of his
vision. A sense of unease crept down his spine.
Go back,
his instincts
murmured.
This is not a place for
you.

Moss took a step closer to his side.
Her expression drew into a tight frown, her eyes searching the room
cautiously.

Caprion turned to their right, the
only direction they could travel. He immediately saw two large
stone blocks. His breath caught and his eyes narrowed in curiosity.
He walked to the nearest one, a massive tomb more than eight feet
long and five feet high. The lid had been carved into the
impression of a body, a carefully chiseled face and folded hands;
in the near darkness, he couldn’t tell if it portrayed a man or a
woman. Six wings protruded from its back, embedded in the stone.
The tomb appeared to be sealed tightly shut.

Caprion studied it, unnerved. Harpies
were not buried in the earth like this. Over time, their bodies
grew brighter and brighter until they slowly faded into light,
returning to the One Star. If killed in battle, they were burned
and the ashes released to the wind. These tombs held something
other than Harpy remains—but he couldn’t guess what.

His eyes traveled to the second tomb.
He stared at it for a long moment. The far side was broken, as
though someone had taken a heavy sledgehammer to it…or, he hated to
think, smashed through from the inside. Crumbled rock littered the
floor around the damaged corner. The carved lid was split down the
middle, blackened and stained by soot. Scars from an ancient fire?
His glanced upward and noticed similar blighted stains on the
walls. No wood resided in the room, nothing that could naturally
hold a flame.

“Caprion,” Moss whispered.

“What?” he replied.

“I hear him.” Her voice faded to a
thin tremor. When he looked at her, he could see fear naked on her
pale face. She stared at the far right of the room, her eyes
transfixed on something unseen.

Caprion shifted uncomfortably. His
shirt became damp with sweat, sticking to his skin. He tried to
listen, but his ears filled with the rush of his own blood, his
heart pounding eratically. He tried to suck in a deep, calming
breath, but the shadows seemed too dense to breathe through, like
inhaling smoke.

“What does he say?” Caprion
murmured.

Moss’s mouth moved silently as though
trying to discern the words. Then she flinched. “Hateful things,”
she murmured. “Madness. We should go. We can’t be down
here.”

Caprion drew his sword and held it
before him, taking comfort in its long, sturdy length. “Where is
he?”

Moss nodded to the far right of the
room with a slight jerk of her head.

Caprion started in that direction,
straining his ears for the voice. The shadows moved to encase him.
“I need your sunstone,” he said softly to her.

Moss followed him reluctantly, keeping
a step behind. He wished he had a weapon to give her, anything she
could use to defend herself. He didn’t like how the gloom shifted
around the crypt, wavering on its own accord, responding to his
presence or perhaps that of the sunstone. Shadows shouldn’t move
like that—not in this deathly, slumbering place.

He climbed over a small pile of rubble
and found himself before a large granite wall—the end of the
chamber. A solid metal door stood embedded in the stone, slightly
bent and crushed inward, as though a heavy force had pounded it
shut. Darkness seemed to gather around it, seeping from cracks in
the mortar like dense mist. He paused, watching the shadows waver.
He passed a hand over his eyes, trying to clear his
vision.

“Over here,” he called to Moss, who
hung back as far as she could. She crept up and paused just behind
him, slightly to one side, displaying the light of the
sunstone.

He knelt and brushed the dust from the
door. The metal felt as hot as an iron brand; he gasped and he
quickly drew his hand away. Old Harpy runes marred the door’s
surface. He read them silently with a growing frown.

“What does it say?” Moss asked
softly.

“It’s a song-spell,” he murmured. “A
very old one.” He touched one of the letters again briefly and
shivered. “This door has been sealed.”

Sssssssss.
A sound reached his ears like steam escaping
through a pipe: a long, drawn-out hiss. Caprion stood abruptly and
raised his sword, sensing a new presence before him, one that made
his hackles rise. He gritted his teeth against it, unwilling to
show his fear.

“Who’s there?” he called.

The hiss slowly faded into silence.
Fear crawled up from his chest to his throat. He swallowed hard,
then called again, resonating his voice. “Who’s there? Answer me!”
He laced his tone with a silent command.

The echoes of his voice faded,
extinguished by the dense fabric of shadows. Then, in the new
silence, a low murmur reached his ears. A hoarse chuckle grated
along his skin, causing goosebumps to rise on his flesh. When the
voice spoke, it was no more than a croak issuing from the ancient
stone.

“You’ve come,”
it murmured.

Caprion steadied his
shaking hand.
I’m out of my
depth
, he thought suddenly, knowing he had
been quite foolish to come here. But he couldn’t run. Fleeing would
solve nothing.

He forced himself to call out again.
“Why do you speak in my dreams?” he demanded. “Why did you
interfere with my Singing?”

The silence gathered as thick as
night. The voice seemed to issue from inside the silence, speaking
as much through his mind as through the air.

“I spoke, and you heard
me. You sang, and you found me. Why listen to my voice, little
bird? Why are you here?”

Caprion glared at the door. “I didn’t
come for riddles,” he replied. “I am here to find my
star.”

The voice laughed, rising
in volume and strength. A maniacal cacophony echoed around the
stone chamber, ringing in his ears, a thick abrasion of
sound.
“You are a long way from the night
sky,”
it mocked.
“I am the star-eater, the nightmare’s mouth, the great
swallowing abyss of your dreams. I will consume you, little
bird.”

Caprion hesitated. This creature knew
his dreams. Of course it would. The demon had somehow found a way
into his mind, dragging down his subconscious, keeping him from his
star. He thought of the night sky in his vision, of the ground
tipping beneath him, of his inevitable plummet into darkness. He
could not fight the demon by groping futilely at the sky. No, he
needed to fall into the abyss, to confront the beast and destroy
it. Only then would he be free.

Caprion felt a stirring in his chest.
That strange, unknown Song swelled again in his throat, lending him
courage. He could almost hear its melody now; the first notes
teased his tongue, playing at his lips, low and rounded. He faced
the door squarely, staring at its rigid iron surface. “This ends
here,” he murmured.

The voice turned
insidious.
“Then open this door, little
bird,”
it taunted.
“And end me.”

Caprion’s eyes hardened. Moss shifted
at his side. “Don’t,” she murmured, and grabbed his arm. “Caprion,
don’t trust him. He’s a demon. He’s lying.”

Caprion shook her hand off, still
staring at the door. Perhaps the demon had other motives, but one
fact remained—he could not reach his star as long as it remained
alive.

He took a step forward. Moss made a
low sound and moved directly behind him, hugging his back, wrapping
her small arms around his strong torso. “Please don’t do this…” she
whispered.

“I have to,” Caprion replied. He
placed one hand over hers, the other gripping his sword. He held
her cold hands for a moment, trying to reassure her, then he gently
pried them off, pushing her away. His eyes focused on the door’s
seal. He summoned his song-magic from deep in his gut, allowing it
to rise and twist up through his lungs, his vocal chords and his
mouth. He began to chant the ancient words softly, adding rhythm
and tone. Certain marks above the letters told him when to slide
his voice up and down, manipulating the words into a melody. As he
sang, the runes glowed quietly in response to his voice.

He finished on a low, solid note,
fading into silence. The words continued to glow. At first nothing
happened. Then a low rumble reached his ears—the deep churning of
an iron wheel. The lock clicked open.

Darkness swelled through the cracks
around the door, like a great wave of water building behind it.
Moss tackled his back, dragging him bodily out of the way, just in
time. The door blasted off its hinges, crashing to the ground. The
sound ricocheted like a clanging bell, beating against his ears.
Dust and pebbles showered from the ceiling.

Blackness poured into the room like a
torrent of gushing ink. He and Moss scrambled backward until they
pressed against the far wall, taking cover behind a tall pile of
rubble. She curled next to him into a tight ball. She threw her
hands over the sunstone, extinguishing its light.

Caprion intended to meet the demon
head-on, but instead found himself cringing, paralyzed by fear. He
braced himself against a hurricane of hot, stifling wind. Every
part of his body told him to hide. Complete darkness surrounded
them, deeper than the abyss of his dreams, as though his eyes had
been scraped from his head.