Page 170 of Quicksilver

Luckily, Carrion and I had one thing in common: we were both very good at climbing. We'd spent most of our lives scaling the walls of the Third. Walls which were, unbelievably, even taller than this cliff face and far more dangerous to boot.Andthe Widow's Bane was kicking like a mule.

“Are we doing this, then?” Carrion asked, craning his neck to peer up at the very tops of the cliffs.

Fisher was up there.

I knew he was. I couldfeelhim.

I blinked up at the cliffs, too, and was taken aback when I saw that it had started to snow. The air was full of fat snowflakes, drifting and swirling down from the sky in lazy circles. One of them landed on my cheek. It was only when I brushed it aside and my fingertips came away marked with a fine grey powder that I realized it wasn't snow at all.

The sky over Gillethrye was raining ash.

As I placed my first handhold on the cliff face, an explosion of sound boomed out into the night. It was so loud, so many crazed voices bellowing and screaming all at once, that it made the pebbles beneath our feet rattle and quake.

“Annorath mor!”

“Annorath mor!”

“Annorath mor!”

“Climb,” I shouted.“Climb!”

We made it in minutes.

Somehow, by the grace of the gods, in one piece, too.

Our hands were full of deep cuts and slick with blood, but that didn't matter. When we hauled ourselves up over the edge of the cliff, the scene that spread out before us was like something out of a nightmare.

A huge amphitheater, open toward the lake, rose up around us. Tiers and tiers of seating stretched up forever, the structure so overwhelmingly massive that my mind couldn't grasp the sheer size of it. The building, if it could even be called that, was some kind of megastructure. Hundreds of thousands of people sat in the stands, roaring at the top of their lungs.

“Annorath mor! Annorath mor! Annorath mor!”

The terrible chant rocked me to my bones. These were the first words that the quicksilver had hissed at me back in the forge at the Winter Palace. The words that had affected Fisher in a way I hadn't expected. He'd seemed afraid. And now I knew why. This wasn't just an amphitheater. It was a slaughterhouse. And we were standing on the killing floor.

“What are they screaming?” Carrion breathed.

Lorreth answered in a horrified tone. “Release us.”

Release us! Release us! Release us!

I heard it now, as if the words had been translated in my mind. Hundreds of thousands of people, begging to be released. I couldn’t bear to look at them.

I focused on the deep pit that had been dug into the ground before us instead. At the sprawling labyrinth within it. On theother side of the labyrinth,I could make out a raised dais, but barely. There were people sitting atop it. And at the foot of the dais, at the top of a set of stone steps that lead down into the labyrinth, was Fisher. He was just a smudge of black, tiny in comparison to the colossal structure surrounding us, but I knew it was him. Oh, yes, it was him, all right.

“What in all five hells am I looking at?” Lorreth whispered.

The voice that came from behind us made my blood run cold. The last time I'd heard it, it had been screaming for mercy back in the Hall of Mirrors in Madra's palace. Now it said, “Actually, this is only the first circle of hell, Lorreth of the Broken Spires. But I'd be very happy to introduce you to all five.”

The captain of Madra's guard, Harron, stood inches from Lorreth's back. His eyes were orbs of scuffed metal, pure quicksilver, gleaming inside the sockets of his gaunt skull. His lips were thin and peeling, his skin wrinkled and translucent. He broke into a wide grin, displaying shattered teeth, when I noticed the dagger he was pressing against Lorreth's throat.

“I'd slit your throat right here and now just to get to the girl,” he wheezed into Lorreth's ear, those freakish eyeballs swiveling around in his head. I could only tell he was looking at me by the way his face was angled toward me. His smile took on a sinister twist. “You've caused all kinds of trouble lately, Saeris. You were supposed to die for me like a good little pet. But never mind, never mind. Perhaps this will be better.”

Harron.

How could it beHarron?Here, in Yvelia? The sight of him just…made no sense.

Lorreth could have easily taken him. He was a full-blooded Fae warrior, and the captain was human. A very unwell human by the looks of things, but still. It would have been nothing for the warrior to spin around and disarm him. I was sure that'sexactly what he would have done, too...if it hadn't been for the hundreds of feeders crawling up over the cliff face behind him.

They scuttled along the ground toward us on all fours, thick strings of venom-tainted saliva hanging from their mouths. These feeders looked fresh, which made them all the more terrifying. Their clothes were a little dirty, but they were mostly intact. The flush of life still clung to their skin. It would fade soon enough, but for now, they still looked like Fae. And they wanted toeatus. They crept forward in an encroaching tide, but a twitch from Harron's hand kept them at bay. What power couldHarronhave over these monsters?