Page 27 of Sightwitch
Yet Cora added a new verse—words that sent chills down my back. When I asked her if she made them up, she simply said, “It is how the song ends. That’s what the ghosts told Lisbet.” Then off she went, chanting again to herself:
“One by one into the tombs,
One by one for sleeping.
Shadows, fissures, cleft in two,
As one by one comes creeping.”
When I asked Lisbet if she truly had heard these new lines from the ghosts, her response only made the chills worsen. “Of course, Dysi,” she said in that serious way of hers. “Don’t you hear them saying it too? They certainly want you to hear.”
“They want me to hear,” I repeated, trying to sort out what her words might mean.
She took it as a question, nodding sharply. “Oh, yes. It’s a warning for us all, but no one ever seems to listen.”
LATER
I noticed tonight at the evening meal that Lisbet’s eyes are clearing.
Yes, already. She has not even been Summoned to the heart of the mountain, butalreadyflecks of silver speckle her hazel eyes.
I do not know why this frightens me, and when I draw the cards, they offer me no help.
LATER — 9 hours left to find Tanzi
I was a fool to worry. The lower Crypts were not so different from the higher levels.
Yes, the Firewitched lanterns were fewer and farther between. And yes, the air turned heavier, the weight of the mountain pressing ever harder. The biggest difference, though, was how quickly the temperature plunged.
Level 6, I was comfortable enough. Level 7, less so. By the time I was halfway across Level 8, my teeth were chattering and my breath plumed. I had to huddle deep in my cloak with my hands stuffed into my tunic pockets.
Gloves, I thought.I should have brought gloves. I puffed an exhale, and it twined around ghosts that flittered close.
Fewer than I’d guessed. Far fewer. As if the memories here were so old, the ghosts had finally settled back onto the page.
I was especially regretting the absence of gloves when I reached the stairwell down to Level 9. So dark was its snaking tunnel that I had to stop and rummage the lantern from my pack—a Firewitched lantern, for at least in this regard I had come fully prepared. No flint nor flame to worry about. Just a whispered “Ignite.”
Then down I went.
When I eventually stepped out of the stairs and onto the balcony of Level 9, I drew up short. Where the ghosts had been silent and absent before, now they rushed at me. A tidal wave of whispers and wind that sent me doubling over.
I couldn’t see a thing. Only the fan of yellow light that sprayed out from the lantern at my feet.
The cold, the pressure, the ghosts, and the darkness—this is what death must feel like. Trapped, with chains of ice and whispers to pin you down. I wanted to return to the blessed silence, just for a moment—
“No,” I spat. “I am firmly gripped upon it.” Though I lacked the Sight, I knew how to follow rules. How to do what needed to be done.
After scooping up the lantern, I set off once more. Ten paces—that was as far as I could see ahead. Enough to descend the steep stairs onto the main floor of Level 9. Enough to set off down the central thoroughfare that bisected the shelves exactly like every other level.
The ghosts followed, clotting thickly. A haze to dampen my lantern’s glow. A roar of indecipherable voices and angry memories that somehow turned sharper, louder with each step I pushed forward.
Whatever records were on this floor, they were not happy ones.
Onward I slogged. One foot in front of the next. I lost all concept of time, all concept of space. It was simply me, the ghosts, and the cold.
Until abruptly it wasn’t anymore.
Between one row of stone shelves and the next, the ghosts fled. With a shriek that set my skin to crawling, they burst into a spinning wind. It knocked against me. I lost my footing and fell to one knee.
