Page 52 of The Iron Vow

Every face turned toward me, and each one of them was someone I knew. Ash, Puck, Keirran, Ethan, all staring at me with betrayal and anguish in their eyes, before they threw back their heads and screamed. Jaws gaped, unhinging like a snake’s as they howled in unison. If the noise had been unbearable before, it was ear-splitting now. As I staggered away, feeling like my skull might explode, the walls and floor started to tremble. Rocks began dropping from the ceiling, crashing to the ground and adding to the din shaking the cave apart. The Nightmare thrashed, still screaming, and something hard stuck me in the temple, sending pain and a stab of dizziness through my head.

Deafened, half-blind, I lurched away, shielding my face, and felt a cool hand latch on to mine. Without questioning, I let it pull me back, away from the frenzied, shrieking Nightmare, as rocks continued to rain down around us.

I ducked into the tunnel with Ash, darkness closing around me as the cavern behind us collapsed with a muffled roar.

When the dust cleared, the tunnel entrance was filled with rubble and stone, the way back to the cavern blocked. The Nightmare was gone, and nothing but blessed silence throbbed in my ears.

19

DREAMS WITHIN DREAMS

“Is everyone here?”

Nyx’s voice sounded distant and muffled, like she was underwater. My ears buzzed. I gave my head a shake, which was the wrong thing to do, as a jab of pain immediately shot through my skull. The ground beneath me tilted, and I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

“I believe so.” Gilleas’s skull glowed faintly in the darkness as he gazed around, taking note of everyone. “No one is missing, though none of you appear very healthy. And the queen is not looking steady on her feet.”

The walls were starting to spin. I clenched my jaw, feeling something warm trickle down my neck, as the ringing in my ears grew louder. Nausea rippled through my stomach. I turned to Ash, to tell him that I needed to sit down for a minute, but even that slight movement sent a wave of vertigo crashing into me, and I fell back into darkness.

I stood at the edge of a cracked, decaying stone staircase that curved up toward the entrance of the castle. Plinths and broken statues lined the stairs, most of them nothing more than shattered legs. I still could hear the Wailing One, crying her endless litany, but her voice sounded far away. Streams of water ran down the stairs, pooling in cracks before falling off the side of the mountain. I could smell the bitterness and despair that saturated even the stones of this place.

At the top of the steps, a figure wrapped in shadows waited for me.

I blinked.This is a dream, I realized.But...none of this is real. How can there be a dream within a dream?

Knowing that the answer to that question could probably twist my brain into noodles, I started walking up the steps. I took the center path, as the rivulets of tears mostly streamed down the sides. The castle loomed above me, crumbling stone towers looking fragile and almost skeletal against the slate gray of the sky.

As expected, the shadow figure didn’t wait for me, but turned and vanished through the doorway before I was halfway up the steps. At the entrance to the castle, I paused, looking around, and saw it gliding up another flight of stone stairs, going higher into the keep.

Grimly, I followed, trailing it through a castle that was more shattered than whole. Entire sections of wall were destroyed, crumbled from either time or some terrible attack. Once-dazzling stained-glass windows lay in shards across the floors, glinting with razor-sharp colors. And water, the tears of the Wailing One, flowed, dripped, and trickled down nearly every wall, every surface, forming pools, waterfalls, and streams as it made its way down the mountain.

Eventually, I came to the bottom of a dilapidated tower, a flight of stairs spiraling up into the darkness. The shadow glided along the steps, toward the highest room of the keep.

All right, mysterious shadow, whatever you want me to see is on the top floor.Let’s get this over with.

The stairs were soaked with tears, both flowing down the steps and trickling from the floor above. As I started up the staircase, the flow seemed to get heavier, trickles turning to waterfalls and rivulets becoming streams. I avoided the water as best I could, but my narrow dry path was rapidly shrinking.

I was nearly to the top when a roar made me pause and look up. A deluge of water crested the top of the stairs and came crashing down at me. There was just enough time to brace myself, holding my breath, before the wave engulfed me and everything went white.

Gasping, I opened my eyes.

“Easy,” a low, familiar voice murmured in my ear. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

I slumped against Ash, feeling the surrealness of the dream fade as reality took its place. By the feel of stones beneath me, I knew we were still in a cave. Several yards away, someone had started a fire, which meant that the cavern we were in had to be fairly large, or at least not airtight. I would’ve turned my head to look, but dizziness still lingered, and I was feeling fairly content to lie against my husband and not move, for a few minutes, at least.

Something felt different, and after a moment, I realized what it was. The cave, except for the faint pop and crackle of the fire, was quiet. The constant screams and wails of the Elder Nightmare had faded. I hadn’t gone deaf, though my ears ached, and one felt strange, like it was full of water. Annoying, but not debilitating. It could have been far worse.

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“Not long,” Ash assured me. “We’re a little deeper into the mountain. Puck and Nyx were able to get a fire going, and everyone agreed it was a good idea to rest for a while. Grim and Gilleas are both fairly certain that this chain of tunnels will bring us out close to the top of the peaks. So this might be our last stop before we reach the Wailing One.”

I nodded. “How is Keirran?” I whispered.

“I’m here.”

He materialized from virtually nowhere, making me wonder if he had been lurking just out of view, waiting to see if I was all right. Kneeling beside us, he took my hand. “I’m all right,” he told me. “The voices have stopped, at least for now. Maybe they’re tied directly to the Wailing One, and she’s not crying at the moment, though we have no idea why. What about you?”

His voice echoed strangely in my ears, like he was standing across the room instead of two feet away. “Getting there,” I said, giving him a wry smile. “I think I might’ve ruptured an eardrum, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

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