Page 86

I did not answer. The clack of her heels echoed off empty stone walls as she walked away.

∞∞∞

“Hello, Halja.” The same dark male voice from the night before. I stood in the fog-filled void.

“Tell me who you are,” I answered.

“I have many names. I am sure you already know most of them. Tell me more about yourself.”

“No,” I said.

“Sweet little lamb,” he rumbled. “All alone, no one here to help her, and she pushes away her only friend.”

“You are not my friend.”

“Not yet, but I should be. I will be. Soon enough.”

My dreams for the rest of the night were short and nonsensical, but fear roiled beneath the surface of every thought I had, every emotion I felt.

The haunting voice jolted me awake again and again. Sometimes speaking directly to me, trying to get me to reply to questions that I did not answer. Sometimes he just mumbled, seemingly without expectation of a response, as if he spoke more to himself than to me.

I slept briefly just before dawn, and I dreamed of Rhyanaes aflame. I saw children running, chased by armed soldiers. I saw my wolves fighting, I saw El wreathed in flame. All the imageswere dark, shadowed and dimmed by the malevolent presence, like he watched my dreams right alongside me.

I awoke exhausted. I watched the little square of light cross the room throughout the day and vanish again. I ate three simple meals, all delivered by Deacon Tessivia. When darkness fell, I used what power I could summon to light the candles. It was far more effort than it should have been. The wards of the Temple put so heavy a damper on my Source that igniting a simple flame felt like lifting a boulder.

I slept fitfully again that night, accompanied all the while by dark mist and the even darker voice. No light shone through my dreams, no landmark with which to orient myself. Just endless black void and that deep, haunting voice.

He told me that he knew me, that he’d expected to find me here, although where ‘here’ was, I wasn’t certain. Told me he had seen what I’d done, although was always vague about what acts it was he referred to. My answers to him were short and colorful despite the deep, unsettling feeling that overcame me whenever I found myself in his presence. Despite the terror I felt when he spoke. I entertained myself with conjuring my best curses. He laughed at them all, seemingly unperturbed by my resistance. Although I was not even entirely sure what I was resisting.

∞∞∞

Days and nights passed like this. During the days I meditated, as I had learned from Eilith. I was welcomed by the calming, indifferent expanse of the sea, lost myself in its embrace for hours at a time. Each day I reached for my power, tried to connect with Source. I practiced lighting and snuffing the candles. I practiced searching the Temple with my awareness,though was always stifled in my efforts. I had hoped to at least locate Eilith, but she was too far, and the force of the wards within the Temple was too great.

I tried to beat the bars off the windows, tried to break down the door, tried to chip away at the stone walls with my power. All of those efforts earned me long strings of verbal abuse from the guards and yielded no results.

In addition to meditation, I did my best to move my body each day. I did push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and jumps. I stretched, and jogged in place. Anything to get my heart rate up, to feel a connection with my body. But there was little food, and after several days of this even the light workouts felt more painful and exhausting.

I grew more and more tired, but sleep came less and less. Every time I closed my eyes, he was there. Every time I began to slip into a dream, I slipped into one of his disorienting, dark nightmares instead.

One night I found myself yet again in that shadowy void. Black fog roiled around me, and I shivered with the cold.

“Hello again, Halja.” That deep voice reverberated through the space, and my skin felt as if spiders skittered across it. “Pleasure to see you once more.”

I did not answer, but instead got up and began to walk away. I had no sense of direction, no idea where I was going. But I would at least try to leave that presence behind. I walked off blindly into the fog.

“Careful, little one. You don’t know where you’re going,” he said. Still near me.

“Away from you,” I replied.

“If you want to get out of here, you need only ask. All you have to do is join me, and I will spring you from this trap you’re caught in, wild one.”

Something about the way he saidwild onefelt too intentional, too familiar to be a simple guess. I paused my directionless marching.

“Do you like that name?” he murmured.

I felt him draw nearer, that dark, looming presence. Huge and invisible, a mountain above me in the dark. I shrank away.

“Wild One,” he purred. “I like it too. It suits you. Yet here you are, one leg in the crushing claws of Zisorah’s steel trap. I could get you out, you know. Or you can chew off your own foot.”