The Doorway and the Deep (40 page)

“BARGHEST, NO!”

The Barghest did not heed Lottie's shout. It pinned Dorian beneath its heavy paws and ripped its teeth into his shoulder. The sound, wet and grisly, turned Lottie's stomach. Dorian screamed. Blood stained the sand beneath him, blooming out from his arm and soaking into the Barghest's paws.

“Where is it?” the Barghest barked. “Where is the addersfork?”

“No!” Lottie shrieked. “I
command
you, Barghest. Don't you dare hurt him!”

At last, the Barghest turned to Lottie. It tilted its head down, as though in reverence. It flattened its ears, as though in remorse. Lottie felt her senses return to her. She shivered,
but with relief as well as chill. Whatever horrible thing had just happened, at least Lottie still had command over the Barghest. Now she just had to think this through, come up with a plan. She had to save Dorian, had to—

Fingers gripped Lottie's shoulder. A heavy weight pressed against her back. The Barghest lifted its head, lips pulled back from its bloodied teeth. It was
smiling
at her.

“Take her,” it said. “The boy, too.”

The grip on Lottie's shoulder grew tighter. She wrenched away.

“Eliot, run!” she screamed.

It was too late. Eliot had already been thrown to the ground, face-first. His glasses lay broken in the sand, next to his bloodied chin. A red-cloaked sprite leaned with her knee pressed into Eliot's spine and was binding his hands with rope. Then hands were back on Lottie, harder than before. They jerked her arms so roughly, Lottie felt sure they'd been ripped clean off her body. She cried out in pain. Something wound about her wrists, cold as metal. Lottie fought against the hold, but it only grew stronger. Then she saw it on her captor's wrist: a white circle. She recognized it as well as she had the red cloak of Eliot's captor. These were Southerly soldiers.

The soldier at Lottie's back turned her to face the Barghest once more.

Only what Lottie saw before her now was no longer the Barghest she knew. Its fur was changing color from black to lightest gray. The fur itself was different, too—smoother and far less textured. The Barghest leaned back on its hind legs, and for a moment it looked like a strange circus animal, performing for a crowd. It was an unnatural sight, so unfitting for a creature as majestic as the Barghest. Still, it remained on its legs, fur transforming until it was most certainly not fur but
fabric
—the fabric of a long, gray cloak. The Barghest's front paws were no longer clawed, but fingered. Its arms turned smooth with skin. Where there had once been a muzzle was now a set of pale lips. Where there had once been ears hung a mane of a different sort, long and blond. The pinprick eyes were gone entirely, replaced by over-wide ones—
a woman's eyes
.

Only one feature remained unchanged: Iolanthe still wore the same bloody smile.

They say she's a splinter of the worst kind
, Reeve had said.
The absolute worst
.

“What did you do to the others?” Lottie said. “It's me you're after, so just take
me
.”

Iolanthe ignored Lottie. She was watching a third Southerly soldier, who had pulled the satchel from Dorian's writhing, gasping body. The solider sifted through the satchel's contents.

“Here,” he said, pulling out a linen-wrapped bundle. “This, m'lady. I can taste its potency from here.”

“Careful with it.” Iolanthe's words still came out like the bark of the Barghest. “Put it back. Carry the satchel. Follow me. You two, bring her and the boy.”

Iolanthe turned her back to Lottie and strode down the beach. The one soldier scurried after her with satchel in hand, leaving Dorian in the red-stained sand.

“Move, you,” Lottie's soldier grunted, pushing her forward.

But Lottie's legs felt as moveable as two bricks. She stared at Dorian's bloodied body. He was no longer writhing. He wasn't moving at all.

“Dorian,” she said. “Dorian, hold on!”

She knew how stupid the words were, even as she said them. Hold on for
what
? Who would save Dorian? Who would save any of them? Who possibly could?

“
Move
,” said the soldier, jabbing his mace into her back.

Lottie cried out. She placed one foot in front of the other, but not fast enough to match the soldier's pace. She stumbled again and again.

“That's it,” said the soldier, stopping.

For one ridiculous moment, Lottie thought he might have given up trying to make her walk and decided to just let her be. Instead, he grabbed Lottie about the waist and hauled her over his shoulder. Lottie wanted to beat against
his back, but she could not. She wanted to scream again, but what good would it do? There was no one to hear her but Iolanthe ahead and a dying Dorian behind and, beyond that, the unfeeling waves crashing upon the shore.

She watched the sand pass beneath her, watched the soldier's footprints form, then quickly shift away. And at the very edge of her sights were the buckled boots of the soldier in charge of Eliot. Lottie strained her neck just once to see that this soldier, too, had resorted to throwing Eliot over her shoulder. Weak with exhaustion, she dropped her cheek to the soldier's back and closed her eyes, listening to the slip of boots on sand, to the jostle of metal latches and buckles on the soldier's uniform, to the drag of the tide, and to the frantic
thud-thud-thud
of her own heart.

The sounds carried on for minutes piled upon minutes. The slip of boots, the jostle of metal, the drag of the tide, the thud of her heart. The noises bled together. Lottie's feet had gone numb from cold. Strange pains and thoughts dragged across her mind.

How much farther? Where was Iolanthe taking her? Where were the others? Was Dorian still alive?

Then the jostling stopped. Lottie felt the world slip from under her, felt earth at her back. She opened her eyes to a cloudless sky above. She heard labored breaths beside her.
Eliot
. Lottie wanted so badly to reach out and take his hand in hers.

“It's going to be okay,” she whispered, even though she had begun to believe less and less, with each passing minute, that things would ever be okay again.

“Lottie!” shouted a voice, not Eliot's. “Puck's sake, don't tell him anything! Don't
give
him anything. We're all right. Let him do what he wants but don't—”

“I thought I told you to gag the wisp.”

Lottie's joy at hearing Fife—he was alive!—turned sour at the sound of the second voice. She had not heard it in more than a month, but she recognized it instantly. It had haunted her dreams in Wisp Territory and still sat pungent on the back of her memories.

“Lottie!” yelled Fife. “Don't—”

Fife's warning was muffled. Lottie strained hard to see around her, but she could make out nothing save sky and sand.

“What's the meaning of bringing her here, Iolanthe? I told you—”

“I thought—I led her this way to bring her to you—” Iolanthe took a breath. “I think she may yet know something, Your Majesty. Something the others do not. She has now been to the Wilders. She has seen—”

“
Excuses!
” roared the Southerly King. “I gave you one simple task. Weeks it's been.
Weeks
, and still you've failed me. I'd do better to throw you to the Northerly Vines, same as I did Grissom.”

“Most excellent sire, if you'd only—”

“All it took was a slip of a knife, an arrow properly nocked, a sword to the heart. Now, fifty of my finest soldiers slaughtered, and you dare approach me with your own neck unharmed, dragging that abomination behind, still breathing? I told you I wanted her dead. I told you I wanted her before me
in pieces
.”

Lottie shook so hard that her teeth knocked against each other.

“She's as good as dead, sire. Look at her. Wouldn't you rather she suffer?”

Starkling's voice, so wild before, now took a horribly soft turn. “I would rather she be a corpse, buried beneath my feet, no longer a nuisance biting my heels at every turn. She started as a gnat, Iolanthe, and you have let her turn into a snake. And you bring her to me
now
, of all possible times. You bring her just at the start of my war.”

“I thought you would consider it a bounty, sire. I thought you would be glad to have her underfoot once and for all. A celebratory gift, if you will, to commemorate the dawning of a new age. The age of your people.”

There was the sound of movement, slight but rough.

“My people,” said the youthful voice of the Southerly King. “Do you presume to know anything about
my people
?”

“Forgive me, my king. I only meant—”

The sounds, the sights, the sensations came in a flurry. Lottie found herself hoisted to her feet, held up by a vicious grip.

“Stand up, you.
Stand
.”

Starkling held her by the coat collar, as though Lottie were nothing more than a worm caught in his talon. She struggled to find her footing, but the sand slipped under her toes, and she kept lurching forward, unbalanced. Then came a slice at her wrists, and scalding pain. Starkling had cut her bonds, but he had cut into her skin, too. The hot blood felt strange on her frigid skin. At last, Lottie found her balance. She turned, arms raised, ready to beat against the king's chest, to inflict whatever pain she could. Starkling didn't give her the chance. He grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her after him. As he did, Lottie got her first good look at the Southerly King.

The damage Lottie had seen working on Starkling's skin the last time she'd stood before him, in the throne room of the Southerly Palace, was now far more advanced. Gone was the king's unblemished face. In its place was a bony, sallow complexion. His arms were scaled like a fish's and covered in sludge-filled boils. His eyes were reddened and murky. His grip on her, Lottie now saw, was the grip of five fingers rotted down to nothing but bare, black bone.

“Stop it!
Stop!
”

Lottie's attention snapped away from Starkling to those he was dragging her past. Fife, Adelaide, and Oliver all sat
in a circle, backs to each other, wrists bound. Fife had been gagged. Two Southerly soldiers stood guard over them, maces in hand. Adelaide was watching Lottie with wet eyes.

“I'm so sorry, Lottie,” she cried. “We didn't know it wasn't the real Barghest. We swear, we didn't know until it was too late.”

“It isn't your fault,” Lottie said, and though she meant for the words to come out strong, they fell flat from her lips, papery and barely audible. She was too preoccupied with whatever Starkling had in store for her.

The king dragged her on, past the others, past Oliver's grim, slate-green stare. Lottie wanted to say something. Goodbye, perhaps, or her own apology. But before she could form words, Starkling threw her to the ground. Lottie's bloodied hands caught the fall, her open wounds filling with sand. Lottie shrank against the pain. Then, pushing past it, she looked ahead.

She found herself staring at a sight unlike anything she'd seen before on Kemble Isle or in all her journeys through Limn. She was kneeling at the edge of a vast chasm. Its edges were not composed of sand, but silver—a strange shifting color that seemed almost liquid. And deep down, at the pit of the chasm, was blackness—utter blackness.

As Lottie stared, she was overcome by the sensation that the chasm was
growing
, yawning out even as she watched.

But that was impossible.

Wasn't it?

Lottie blinked. She took another look. But the illusion had not vanished. The gulf really was growing. Its walls were pushing outward in both directions—one down the coast and one toward Lottie. Sand shifted under her boots and began to pour forward, disappearing into the silvery dark. Lottie scrambled backward, but her back rammed into Starkling's knees. He stood directly over her, grinning a red, toothy smile.

“One hundred apple trees,” he said. “One hundred silver boughs. Can you imagine the time it took? The things I had to do? But now all the silver has been extracted and placed in just the right positions. A hundred silver boughs, laid end on end, to rend the world.”

“A world gorge,” Lottie whispered.

“Never before has there been one of such magnitude—a gorge that will conduct the passage not just of a single soul, but of an
army
.” Starkling's smile disappeared. “And you've ruined the big moment. I asked Iolanthe to deliver your corpse. But they say if you want something done right . . .”

Starkling yanked Lottie to her feet. Fear rattled down her spine as the king leaned his rotting face toward her. Dark spittle flew from his lips as he spoke.

“Iolanthe believes that you and your friends have information I'd be interested in. But do you know what I think? I think dear Iolanthe's had a moment of weakness, just as Grissom did before her. I really ought to choose my right-hand sprites with better care.”

Lottie could hear sand sifting behind her, could hear the chasm groaning from new growth. Her fear grew, but so did her anger.

“My friends never did a thing to you,” she said. “Just let them go. You don't have any right to hurt them.”

“I haven't the
right
?” The smile returned to Starkling's face. “Oh
my
.”

He shoved Lottie, hard. She stumbled back, and a gust of wind warmed her bare neck.
Warmed
her, for it was a hot breeze, blown as though fresh off a desert plain. It was coming from the gorge, the edge of which was only a pace away from her boots. Lottie thought of the gaping blackness she'd seen below. When Starkling pushed her in, how long would it take her to fall? How long would she be aware of the end coming?

Lottie thought of Eliot, and of Dorian. She thought of ragged coughs and bloodstained sand. Her grief was suffocating her, but she couldn't
reach
them. She couldn't breathe—