CHAPTER 78

The wet, twisting labyrinth hallways wrap together like the bowels of a beast gone insane. The bloodgorged walls pulse in rhythm, the water rises, and the smell of meat lies heavy in the pit of my throat, choking me to insensibility. Katha, Rev, and my father’s screams mingle and meld in the tunnels. I search and search, but though the screams get louder I never find a trace of them. I reach a crossroads, the one comes from all of them, unison. I turn endlessly, in place, unable to decide on a path, unable to block out the sounds. When the screams turn to sobs, I wake.

I’m in bed. It’s deep night. I know with the certainty of a light sleeper that something loud just took me out of my nightmares, forced me to break through the dream surface into complete wakefulness. I focus on the noises deep inside the keep. Far, far away, someone laughs while mugs are slammed against tables. Godtouched never truly sleep.

My room is thrown into a checkerboard of shadows and moonlight. Deeper than the rest of the dark patches, Rue rests on my bedside table and purrs softly, a comforting hum. I can’t tell if he’s sleeping. I close my eyes, let the humming wave ease my galloping heart.

The last few days haven’t been kind.

Lysander gone, Delos gone, and Gedden leaving soon after, the fight, telling me he needed to make sure everything was alright in Hollow House. I couldn’t follow him if I wanted to; Lysander’s amulet is still in Valkas’ possession. So I let him go, and gone he’s stayed since.

I was surprised to find that no one cared about whether I stayed in Lysander’s quarters or not. Valkas has agents watching me – I’ve noticed Teryon’s guards too often and in too many locations to doubt it. But they watch me as a matter of fact, the same way they watch Essa and Wyl: Challengers are a valuable commodity, belonging to different Patrons each Challenge, yes, but to the entire guild when it comes to the pride of the Black Sword as a whole. Though they seem to trust Meriana’s cruelty is enough deterrent for Hilde. The door to her private room of darkness is still closed, and no matter I raise my fist to knock, I never seem to be able to complete the gesture. Sometimes I hear Meriana’s screaming, raving about Hilde’s lack of progress in Caligomancy. Still, I have to trust Hilde is alright. She’s a Challenger. Challengers are worth something.

It’s probably why Valkas reacted the way he did. With Lysander gone, he turned my victory into a victory for himself, getting a new Challenger entirely free from the whims of his Patron, sweeping Rao’s defeat under the rug of the upcoming Dungeon. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen Rao since the fight. He was swept under the rug as well.

The only thing the guild leader said to me since the day of the fight, once when he passed me by in a courtyard watching Essa practice her swordsmanship, was: “We must find you a Patron, I suppose.”

He didn’t wait for my answer or opinion on the matter. For days now I’ve been dreading receiving his call, or to waking to find I’d been given to someone as relentless and monstruous as Hilde’s Patroness.

Maid Meriana. The center of… something. Something I was intimately connected with.

I summoned the misty pages again, as I’d been doing again and again in recent days, and leafed through the various options until I found what I was looking for.

Twisted Minds (Local)

In Black Sword Keep, servants talk about the strange and labyrinthine rooms in the catacombs where no one is allowed to enter apart from a few select Godtouched.

Meriana seemed vexed that someone apparently knows her secret.

You have found the door to the forbidden rooms, surrounded by tortured and broken prisoners, your father Medrein among them. All the prisoners were wounded on the forehead. Why?

Persons of interest: Thomas, a servant. Maid Meriana, a Godtouched.

The last sentence had been added when Lagos took me down into the darkness of the keep’s catacombs to see my father, a threat and a warning. I hadn’t checked the misty pages until after the fight. Hadn’t thought of Medrein until I read the new information.

It had made two things apparent. One, the elaborate iron door at the end of the two rows of cells led somewhere important. Whatever it was, it would bring me closer to solving a Secret, which could grant me new rewards and make me stronger. I would need that if I did go into the Challenge again. And two, my feelings about my father were complicated. I was just as happy to use him as an excuse to stay and fight Rao as Valkas was to use him as a hostage. But when the fighting was done and I was face to face with guild leader, it hadn’t even occured to me to beg for his release.

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Why not?

Was it that I’d forgotten, in the excitement of victory, that Medrein’s life was used to bargain for my compliance? Or did the reason run deeper, had I managed to forget about him precisely because I wanted him to suffer, to be subjected to Valkas’ torture for what he’d done to Katha? Even after he’d helped me get into the Challenge.

So I’d returned to the misty pages, to the Twisted Minds entry. The truth was, if I had to pick a reason to interfere with Meriana’s schemes, Hilde’s plight and the chance for a deeper understanding of my Archetype would always pop up first before Medrein’s sunk and pained expression, painted with dried blood, forced itself into my mind.

I tried not to think of it as a hierarchy of reasons. Tried to force myself instead to think of it as three very good motives why I should go into the catacombs and find out what the Godtouched were up to. Tried.

“Maybe I do hate him,” I murmur out loud.

“Hate who, Malco?” Rue asks, like he was just waiting for me to say something.

“Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t wake me, Malco,” Rue’s singsong child-like voice doesn’t stray far from the small bubble that only he and I occupy. “I never wake. I never sleep, either.”

“I didn’t know that. So you just stay there all night, watching me?”

“Yes, Malco. And I sing.”

I turn my head to face the distant ceiling, watching a mote of dust travel in the moonlight. The room hasn’t been cleaned since Lysander disappeared. Maybe only he can authorize it, or Valkas ordered the servants to leave it, or the cleaners don’t really care either way until a Godtouched complain. Will I complain? No. I like my little corner of solitude. I can care for it myself.

“Isn’t it boring?” I ask finally.

“What is boring, Malco?”

A chuckle escapes my lips, shakes my body against the mattress.

“This is your language, Rue. You know the word, no?”

“Yes, Malco,” the little blob of darkness admits. “I know the hum and I recognize the shape of the word, but I haven’t felt what it describes. What does it mean to you?”

I think about it. It’s been a while since boredom played any part in my life. From the agony of losing Katha, the nervousness and fear of the trip to Red Harbor to the sheer terror of the Dungeon, losing Rev as well, the awe of meeting Arbiter, of getting my levels, and then the days of mistrust covering budding hope at Hollow House, and back to nervousness now, trapped in Valkas’ domain, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. No, boring is not a word that fits my current life. But I remember when it did.

I make an attempt at conveying the feeling.

“Boredom is when there’s a whole world out there and you’re stuck here. It’s saying, ‘there’s a thousand things I could be doing, and instead I’m doing this’, but still you don’t get up and do something else.”

Rue ponders this.

“I’m right,” he buzzes finally. “I don’t know the feeling.”

“You’ve never wished you were doing something else? Not even in your cell?”

The buzz changes, rises and falls like laughted.

“No, Malco. I knew I had tried every way out, that there was nothing I could do but wait and sing. So I wait and sang until you came along.”

“What if I hadn’t come along?”

“Maybe I’d still be there. Waiting and singing.”

So would I, if Katha had never been taken. I’d be in Reach, following Dala along her routes, losing my way and finding it again in the hills, talking to Katha about everything and nothing. Maybe that would have been my life forever. Slow, smooth, comfortable. Boring.

“What if…” I ask out loud. “What if there were many exits from your cell, but they were all bad? They would all put you in danger?”

“I’d pick one and leave my cell,” Rue answers without wasting a second.

“What if other people could get hurt? People you cared about?”

This time he stops and thinks. His hum turns inward, growing sharper and more frantic.

“I’d pick one and leave my cell,” he finally buzzes. “But I’d pick carefully.”

In the darkness, a little smile creeps up my cheeks. I breathe in, breathe out. My heart has slowed, and the conversation has eased my anxiety. I’m no longer spinning in place, growing dizzier with every revolution.

“I know where my father is,” I say suddenly. “He’s being tortured by Maid Meriana, who’s Hilde’s awful Patroness…”

“Oh no,” Rue buzzes. “I like Hilde.”

“…and going there, facing her might even make me stronger. And my father. If I don’t do something about him I think I might go crazy, but just seeing him again might make me go crazy anyway.”

“Is going crazy bad?”

“I… I’ve never tried it. I think so.”

Rue doesn’t answer, but his particular brand of silence – busy, modulated, melodic, leaving me always unsure whether he makes it up on the fly or if he follows a secret script in his heart – fans my imagination. Meriana’s door, Meriana’s torture chamber are in the center of the web. Go find it, and confront the spider in the process, or keep away from it. Pick one.

“I think you should go,” Rue buzzes. “Like you said, facing the fear will make you stronger, even if something terrible happens.”

“Hah. No, I meant it more literally. It will give me more Perks, which in turn will give me more power. Maybe. I’m not sure how it works yet.”

“How do you know that, Malco?” he asks.

“Oh, it’s this thing I got after we spoke to Arbiter. Remember that? It’s like mist in front of my eyes, like…”

“Oh!” Rue buzzes excitedly. “The misty pages!”

I’m about to say yes and move on when something more alert in the depths of my tired mind shakes, trembles, sniffs the air.

“Wait. How do you know about them?”

“I have them too, Malco. After our conversation with Arbiter. Remember that?” he echoes my words playfully. “I almost forgot about them. Wanted to talk to you before I picked.”

Long seconds stretch in the darkness. Rue’s buzz is slow and effortless, without meaning or direction. Finally, I raise myself up on my elbow, focus on the quietly vibrating blob of darkness on the bedside table.

“Picked what?”