Page 112 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

And everywhere I looked, I saw Olden beings, as if all the tales I’d ever been told, all Gareth’s lectures I’d patiently sat through, had suddenly come garishly to life. No one seemed to notice us, and no traps magicked to catch trespassers sprang up to snare us, so it appeared mysong was working, but the impossible horror of it all nearly stole my voice from me. There were pale vampyrs in rich brocade coats, their eyes black and glittering. Hulking wolfmen skittered up the walls, water nymphs and wood nymphs held court at the edge of a lake rippling with fountains, and furiants—who could move objects using only their minds—tossed doors and tables and trees at one another as lightning crackled up their arms.

Seeing such extraordinary beings on their own would have been surreal enough, but they weren’t alone.

There were humans too. Humans everywhere. Humans in chains, humans in cages. Ankaret’s words took on new, sinister life.Taken humans are there in chains and cages, on tables and stages.

And she was right. At first it was as though my mind couldn’t understand what my eyes were seeing, and then, as I found my courage and looked harder, I saw the truth. Those axes were being thrown at humans forced to dodge them. The water nymphs and wood nymphs were fighting each other, some sort of playful war game, with their elements as ammunition and pet humans on chains as the targets. The wolfmen chased frantic humans, limping and in rags, across the gleaming rooftops. They were entertainment, I realized, my bile rising. They wereprey.

A vampyr sprawled luxuriously across a claw-foot couch on a breezy veranda. I watched in horror as she lured close a man who was absolutely goggle-eyed for her, unaware that others around him were pointing and laughing, for he was wearing a ridiculous costume: too-big shoes, a too-tight velvet suit, his limbs heavy with jewels wrapped so tightly that they were cutting into his flesh. As he approached, leaning in for a kiss, the vampyr—who I realized with a shock of horror held a knife—opened his throat with one quick flick of her wrist. Blood came pouring out of him in sheets. She held him to her until her goblet was full, then let his body fall and took a long drink.All around her, an audience cackled—other vampyrs, tittering light-nymphs with glowing teeth and hair, a huge muscled man gobbling down fistfuls of wriggling raw fish. He had sleek blue skin, sea-foam hair, and a long beard tangled with weeds. A titan, I thought, hot-cold with terror. A titan of the sea, who’d decided to take solid form and join in the fun.

Worst of all, there wereother humansamong the giddy onlookers—some in finery, some in rags, some gaunt, some well fed. Their eyes were wide and white, all of them laughing and smiling as the dead man’s blood pooled at their feet.

I nearly got sick watching them. I felt like I was quickly losing my wits. I had known, of course, that Olden beings existed. They populated our lore and decorated our storybooks. There were whole courses about them at the university, and my own sister patrolled one of the boundaries between their world and ours. But to see them in reality, to see so many of them here together, populating a city that, if Ankaret and Nerys could be believed, existed solely to imprison and torment humans…

I faltered in my song; for the space of a breath, the notes broke.

An eerie, cold feeling swept across us A dark hound lounging at the feet of the feasting vampyr raised its head. The wind whispered with a sly voice, and the sea titan stopped eating, scaly wads of fish flesh clutched in his giant hands.

“Farrin, keep singing,” Ryder said tensely. He touched my lower back, making me jump. I recovered myself, my heart pounding, and continued my song. After a few seconds, the eerie feeling faded, the sea titan resumed eating, and the hound lowered its head. My own spun with wild relief.

“I know it’s terrible,” Ryder murmured, “but you’re doing wonderfully. Please keep going. I…” His voice cracked a little, and I looked over at him in alarm, but he wasn’t hurt. He wasfuming, his jaw tightand his eyes blazing. An impudent little jay perched on his shoulder, chirping quietly into his ear.

I didn’t dare stop my song to ask even a single question. Instead I touched his arm, trying to ignore the nightmarish sounds from the veranda.

“Alastrina is nearby,” Ryder explained. “Three different birds have told me so. She’s…” He shook his head roughly. “Their words are disjointed, slow, like they’re drunk. They say she’s…fighting? They say there’s a hole in the ground not far from here.”

He glanced at me, saw the question on my face. “They’ve said nothing about the moonlight road,” he said grimly. “I’ve asked in five different languages, and each one confuses them. They think I’m talking about the moon or the stars or the road we’re walking on now.”

My heart sank. An arrow whizzed past us, so fast and close that Ryder had to duck. I shrank against his side, and he held me there, his arm like iron around me.

“Can we go to her?” he said, very low, his voice thick. “If there’s even a chance we can find her in all of this, take her home with us…”

I found his hand, squeezed it, and tried not to cry when he whispered his thanks and bent to kiss my brow. But my tears were perilously close, tingling behind my nose and eyes; it was this awful place, the smell of it, the beautiful rot of it. We waded through ankle-deep water, warm and clear as the Citadel baths. Huge white blossoms floated atop it, pushed along by some magical current, and fireflies bobbed lazily from bloom to bloom. Exquisite. Breathtaking.

And yet from everywhere came the sounds of tortured screams, frantic music, rapturous moans. I gripped Ryder’s hand hard as we followed his birds upstream, trying not to imagine the monstrous things that were being done in every house we passed. Shapes undulated against windows framed by gauzy curtains; bodies floated lazily in courtyard pools—alive? Dead? I couldn’t tell, didn’t try to find out.The image of the humans back on the veranda had lodged itself in me. How ecstatically they had celebrated the execution of one of their own. It didn’t make sense to me. Either their happiness was a lie, and they smiled and laughed only because, that time, the doomed person hadn’t been them. Or perhaps they were not themselves at all.

There were any number of Olden beings who carried the power of Jaetris, god of the mind. My own mind frantically ran through a list, the echo of Gareth’s voice eagerly whispering each word. There were readers, who could study and influence others’ thoughts; figments, who could trick others into believing illusions; furiants, who could manipulate objects with their minds; and dreamwalkers, who could enter someone’s mind, and even travel from person to person, using dreams as their conduits.

And then there were others, like the greater demons—like Talan—who were descendants of Jaetris and Zelphenia, goddess of the unknowable. These greater demons could not only create disguises but also read, possess, and even alter the minds of their victims.

And beyond that, there was Kilraith, whoever he was,whatever he was. How far did his powers extend? How much could he control?

“There she is,” Ryder murmured, wresting me from my frantic recitation. He pulled me to a stop, and when I followed his horrified gaze, all hope drained from my body.

We stood at the edge of a huge sunken arena—a hole in the ground, the birds had called it—and at the bottom, on the hard-packed black earth, stood Alastrina.

A chimaera faced her—huge, quick, and clever, with the head of a mountain cat, giant bony pincers, and a dozen scuttling legs. It scrambled toward Alastrina and lunged for her with one of its claws. She rolled at the last moment, and the pincer stabbed the ground, cracking it open. Steam escaped, blasting the chimaera in the face. It reared back, shrieking, and Alastrina took advantage of its confusionto dart under its body toward a crude spear lying on the far side of the arena.

The crowd gathered in the surrounding seats—hundreds of people, Olden and human alike—roared their approval at her maneuver. They pumped their fists, threw coins and flowers and silk ribbons. Clearly they adored her, and it was easy to see why. She was fearless, nearly as fast as the chimaera, and when she flung the spear, it landed true, piercing the creature’s exposed soft belly. Bright green blood spurted across the arena, splattering the crowd.

But they didn’t care about the mess, or its boiling, sour stench. They were on the edge of their seats; the chimaera wasn’t yet done fighting. The spear stuck out of its belly, and it trailed a thick swath of green blood wherever it went, but that was no deterrent. It reared around just as Alastrina threw another spear and knocked it from the air with one of its pincers. It advanced on her fast, crossing the arena in mere seconds. She shouted at it, some ferocious growling command in a bestial tongue, but whatever she’d said only made the chimaera falter for an instant. It stumbled, shrieking with anger, and reared up once again to strike—but that brief distraction was enough. Alastrina grabbed its right pincer with one hand, a broken spear clutched in her other hand. She dangled twelve feet in the air, barely managing to hang on as the chimaera snapped its jaws, trying to snatch her legs—but its last confused effort wasn’t enough. With a triumphant scream, Alastrina thrust her spear right into its exposed throat.

Its death was quick—a waterfall of green blood, a stumble left, then right, and then it crashed to the ground, releasing Alastrina to roll out from under its tumbling bulk. It did not move again.

The crowd’s applause was thunderous. They surged to their feet, shouting two unfamiliar words over and over again. I couldn’t interpret them, nor could Ryder, judging by his frown. He glared downinto the arena as two hulking figures in armor ushered Alastrina away. They clapped her in chains but didn’t drag her through the door in the arena’s far wall. No, she walked there herself, her head held high. I thought I saw her flash a grin up at the bellowing crowd.

I licked my dry lips and kept singing—no matter what, I couldn’t stop singing—but my legs were shaking with fear, and when Ryder pulled me away from the arena, his grip strong on my elbow, I was glad for it. I wasn’t sure I could have moved on my own.

“We have to find her,” he said, his voice thin with anger, and then he murmured something to our jay friend, who had not stopped flitting back and forth over our heads. The jay gave a raucous cry—an answer to Ryder’s question?—and sped away.

---