Page 109 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

She recoiled, dragging Wen to a stop.

Scores of gray shrouded figures danced in a torrent, moving in endless formation to the sighing of the Billow Maidens’ harps. They were clothed in shadows, slippery gray garments that ate up the light. They did not speak as they danced, following the everlasting stepswith quiet solemnity.

To get to the Billow Maidens, Talia and Wen would have to pass through them.

And they would have to do it quickly, before Rahn noticed them.

They stepped into the ranks of the dead, the embodiment of the ghostly faces that had haunted her during her long descent to the Hall: men and women, children and babies, queens and princes and sailors alike. Patches of gleaming bonesshowed through their cold, dead skin. Every face was twisted into soundless torment, every pair of eyes unblinking, unseeing, unknowing.

All were intent on their dancing, wholly silent.

Talia and Wen wound through them, fighting against the tide to reach the edge of the Hall where the Billow Maidens sat. The dance flowed the other way, but the shadows let them pass, bony fingers whispering throughTalia’s hair as they went. She held tight to Wen with one hand, and the pulsing Star-light with the other.

They drew close enough to the Billow Maidens that Talia could distinguish them from one another.

Their faces were various shapes, some round, others thin, some sharp and birdlike, some sleek, almost feline. They had long, lithe fingers, and their skin was speckled like stones. Shells andsea stars and threads of gold were woven into their hair, but they, like the dead, were clothed in gray. Their harps were intricately carved, each resembling a different creature: a winged horse, a lion, a griffin, a bird. The instruments seemed to be strung with strands of their own hair.

The Wave in the center of the sisters had seafoam hair and a harp carved like a dragon. There were burnmarks on her face, and her eyes stared out into nothing, as blank and unseeing as the dead: Endain, blinded by Rahn for her rebellion, trapped in darkness for four hundred years, cut off from the man she loved. Her fingers slipped along her harp strings, and the saddest notes of the music seemed to come from her.

Talia’s heart broke for her many-times-great-grandmother. Her hand moved from theStar-light to the glass-and-iron casket containing the sliver of the Tree. She fiddled with the latch, undoing it and brushing her fingers across the wood. A blaze of power seared through her, and she clamped her teeth together to keep from crying out. The splinter felt the nearness of the Tree as her Star-light sensed the glory of Rahn’s Star, as a small part of her felt she belonged here, in thedepths of the shadowy sea.

She and Wen were only a few paces from the Waves now—they had almost reached them. And then a tremor passed through the dead, and the light from the high dais grew so bright Talia had to screw her eyes shut against it.

A voice seethed through the Hall, and it sounded like iron and wind and raging sea.“There are trespassers in my Hall. Bring them to me.”

And thensuddenly the dead were shrieking, skeletal fingers sliding over Talia’s shoulders, pulling at her arms, wrapping around her waist, propelling her toward the dais and that high, terrible throne.

They ripped Wen away from her.

“Wen!”

He craned his head around to hers, his eyes wide with terror.

She grabbed the Star-light from the knapsack and hurled it at him, light wheeling in the darkness.He reached out a hand to catch it—

And then the dead crawled over her, obscuring her vision, hurtling her on as if she was a stone caught in a horrible gray sea. She tasted shadow. The music of the Billow Maidens twisted into her, in and in and in, until she thought she would go mad.

And then a strong hand closed around her wrist, yanking her out of the mass of dead, beyond the reach of theunstoppable tide. She stood, shaking, and looked straight into the eyes of her mother.

Or the thing that once had been her mother.

Her face was waxen and gray, her mouth twisted into a soundless scream. Her skin was translucent as tracing paper, her hair white and ragged, hung through with brown weeds and bits of jagged seashells. She was clothed, like the other dead, in a shapeless garmentthe color of despair.

But her eyes were almost alive, and she was staring at her as if Talia were the ghost, and she the one being haunted.

“Mama,” Talia whispered. “Thank the gods. I’ve come to save you. Bring you back to the light.”

Her mother said nothing, just stared and stared, seawater rippling through her colorless hair.

A voice came from the thing that was her mother, but her lipsremained frozen, her eyes unblinking. “What are you?”

She laid a hand on her mother’s arm, trying not to shudder at the feel of her skin, cold and dead beneath the tremulous sleeve. “I’m your daughter. I’m Talia.”

“Talia,” whispered her mother. This time her lips did move, half a breath after she spoke. The dead thing lifted her hand and brushed hesitant fingers across Talia’s face. “Talia.Talia.”

“Yes. We’re going home, Mama.”

And then her mother blinked, and a single silver tear slid down her ashen cheek. “But I am … but I am dead.”

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