Page 50 of Tomb of Ancients
Betrayers betrayed. Liars lied. The Devil deceived. Or else Mr. Morningside was not as clever as he thought.
Scorpion was not the answer, but I knew what was.
Chapter Twenty-Three
1247, Tuz Gölü
I was about to mount my horse when I heard Ara’s screams.
The dog nestled in my robes fussed and poked his head outof the collar, leaning into the sound of her agony. I tracked it, too,then, powerless to stop myself, I trotted back toward the center of the salt. Malatriss presided over a gruesome sight. Ara was on the ground, writhing, holding both hands over her eyes, her legs kicking at the diamond-hard ground.
“What did you do to her?” Henry shouted, falling to her side.
“I can see into her heart, as I see into yours, Dark One,” the lion creature said. A droplet of blood, perfect and red, clung to the open mouth of her strange white snake. “You are truly willing to enter the tomb. She is not.”
“That’s hardly cause to attack!” I said, out of breath from sprinting to reach them.
Malatriss, eyes glowing and gold, smiled at me, displaying pointed, regular teeth, all of them sharpened to gleaming daggers. “This is not a game for little children,” she whispered, her smile never failing. “Through that door, you play with cards of flesh and dice of bone, you wager in blood and sinew. Your friend the demon learned that the hard way. He did not take it well when Nira sucked the fingers from his hands.”
The pale snake around Malatriss’s neck bobbed its head andcoiled more tightly around its mistress.
Ara’s hands dropped away long enough for me to see that one eye was shut, blood weeping down her cheek. I had never heard her cry that way, in such childlike anguish, raw and helpless.
“Come away with me, Henry,” I whispered, kneeling with them and taking him by the arm. “Have you not seen enough? This place is cursed. Come away.”
“No.” He wiped furiously at the tears on his face, tilting his head up to the doorkeeper. “No. The book must be destroyed. I have not come this far for nothing. I want answers, do you hear me, wretch? I want answers.”
“That is my desire, too,” Malatriss purred, unmoved by his shouting. It occurred to me that many had probably discovered clues to the Binders and made this journey, making similar appeals. Any who encountered the books would want to understand their power and know how such things could be made. How many bumbling adventurers had she tortured and turned away? “I make a meal of answers, or flesh, as the case may be. I harvest them. Riddles are the tool with which I till the field.”
“Yes, the riddles.” Henry was in a constant state of weeping, trying not to weep more, and wiping at his mouth with sloppy, desperate pawing. “I will answer your riddles, witch. Proceed.”
She laughed. The constellations above us spun and surged, so bright it hurt to look up.
“Bold. Bold and arrogant. I almost like you; your flesh would taste of pride,” Malatriss whispered, lightly petting the body ofher pet snake. “You would do well to listen to your friend. You may be willing, Dark One, but this place is not for you. Only the dead may enter here, and you have so very much longer to live.”
Malatriss showed us her teeth again, and then, as if the whole sordid scene had been a nightmare, we woke, and she was gone. The salt crust broke under us and we sank into the shallow water, daylight returned, the sun beaming over a cloudless sky. But the wound Ara had suffered was real, and though her hysterics had calmed, Henry’s had not.
“No!” He beat at his chest, standing, turning in every direction. Slicking both wet hands through his hair, he giggled, a deeply mad sound. “No, it... it cannot be. The book.” He stared at it, soaking in the salt lake. “The book... I was so close. No.”
Henry didn’t notice that I had helped Ara to her feet. That she leaned against me, that she had taken up the book to carry back to the horses. He did not notice Bartholomew trying to lick at his hand, the only consolation he was likely to receive.
Helmsley Castle, a fawn-colored spike reaching up from a low hill, stood abandoned. Someone had maintained the grounds, but I heard no farmers or townsfolk from Malton out for a stroll. The grass was slick still from the rains as we climbed toward the structure, and I felt compelled to stare holes into the back of Dalton’s head.
The medieval ruin towered above us, just one lingering facade, the rest of it long since crumbled away. Which made it look, upon reflection, rather like a gate.
“Why didn’t they follow us?” I asked. Khent and Mother flanked me, though I could sense them watching Dalton, too. “It seems foolish to just let us go.”
“Henry told me he would create a distraction,” Dalton said, stopping. He put one foot up on the higher level of the hill and twisted, resting his hands on his raised thigh. The fabric over his eyes was damp with sweat. “He had to, or I never would have been able to go to Judgment and steal the book.”
“Judgment,” I repeated. “Is that where you take people to be Judged? Sparrow took me there once. It’s another realm of some kind?”
“Yes. Only accessible by us. You could only see it because Sparrow forced you to go.”
“Was the book difficult to take?” I asked. He wasn’t volunteering much, and that only made me more nervous. I now knew Mr. Morningside was inadvertently or intentionally trying to sabotage me; I didn’t need his old lover doing the same.
“To be frank with you...” Sighing, Dalton shook his head and then began his way up the hill again. “It was unguarded. There was no one there at all.”
“Well,that’snot suspicious.” Khent picked up the pace, overtaking me and then Dalton, charging his way ahead. I was not going to let them beat me to the ruins, so I ran to catch up,hoping Mother would do the same.
