Vial of Tears, page 19
The farther she went, the thinner the fog became. The land was stony and barren. Walking inland, she soon found a narrow footpath. Ahead, an old woman with gnarled hands begged for money, and Sam smelled something acrid in the air. There was a fork in the road.
“Is this the pathway to Kition?” Sam asked the woman, pointing right.
“Doorstep to hell.” The woman nodded, peering closely at her. “You seek the girl.”
“The girl?” Sam repeated.
“The girl, the girl, the strange, foreign girl,” the woman chanted. She grinned, showing her swollen gums and her few yellow teeth. “In the dungeons, of course. Through the marketplace. Follow the lonely road.” She shrugged. “There, Môt will kill you.”
And then she pointed down the other fork in the road. Left.
“What’s that way?” Sam asked, following her finger.
The woman leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. “You seek the weapon?” she asked. She spread her arms wide and cackled. “You?” She pointed. “You!”
“The weapon,” Sam said. Somehow she already knew, but she asked anyway. “Is the cave of Marid that way?”
The woman nodded eagerly. “He will eat your corpse.” She leaned back and brushed her hands together like two dry leaves, as if indicating the end of something. Done.
Sam stood at the crossroads, weighing her choices. She felt like the old gray mare, waiting for a signal, a heel in her side.
She could go straight to Kition to find the dungeons of Môt’s temple. Without a weapon. With no way to fight. Or she could try to arm herself. Either way felt like a deathtrap.
She gripped her blanket tightly around her shoulders. How did it come to this? How did she end up here? She ground her teeth. She had always felt trapped, even before she fell into this world. No matter how hard she ran, she always looped back to the same place, over and over again. Nothing would ever change.
Unless she forced it to.
She drew in a long breath and chose the left path.
She followed it for some time. It descended, and eventually she could see the entrance to the cave, a hole in the rocks, an open mouth. She could still turn around. She could change her mind and take the other path, to Kition.
She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, and she was suddenly ten years old and in bed as Mom told the story of the ghoul who ate those who failed. His monstrous appetite for dead flesh would be forever satisfied, because men were full of hubris: Every one of them thought he could outwit the cave and solve the riddle. You know what the moral of the story is? Mom would ask as Rima hid underneath her blankets. Don’t go chasing after crazy-big goals. You don’t need to be a smarty-pants. There is nothing wrong with being average. To Sam, it never seemed like the right ending to the story. Where was the hero? Where was the reward for bravery and perseverance? And so she once asked, It’s okay to give up before you even try? Mom had nodded deeply. Bingo, she said.
Sam slowed her pace as she approached the cave entrance. Her heartbeat was so fierce it made her temples throb. She could hardly believe what she was seeing.
There he was, as if lifted from the pages of a book. Alive. Just inside the lip of the cave sat the monster of her childhood fairy tales, his spine so curved that his body resembled a question mark. Thick horns curled from his forehead. He wore a cloak made of skin, a patched garment bound by threads of human tendon. His earrings were small bones, his necklace a braid of hair.
That’s how the story went, Sam remembered. He clothed himself with the dead.
Her throat had gone dry. She struggled to swallow; her breath felt sharp and jagged. From inside the cave, there was the steady drip of liquid hitting water, like blood falling and pooling. The air was as cold as the breath of a corpse.
“Are you Marid?” she asked, her voice shaking.
The ghoul turned to her and nodded. “Come, come,” he said, standing. “I will not harm you. Only your choices will.” His breath smelled like rotten flesh, but Sam willed herself to step forward. His skin was the color of a scab. “Please. Welcome. You are free to search the cave.”
It seemed too easy. Behind him was a boat, smaller than the one she’d taken from Sidon. It was black and shiny as a beetle’s shell, a single oar inside. Marid motioned to it, and Sam realized that within the cave was a lake.
“Go, then. The weapon that kills a god awaits,” he said. “Rugzā is in plain view. Will you find it?”
She blinked at him. The sword was named Wrath, and it was in plain sight. This was the riddle. How could she find something that wasn’t even hidden?
Sam nodded and climbed into the boat, leaving her blanket behind on the rocks.
Marid handed her a bucket and she accepted it, looking inside. It was empty. The boat’s bottom was dry. “Will I have to bail out water?” she asked. “Is there a leak?”
The horned ghoul said nothing. He only pushed her out onto the water, which was as turquoise and bright as a well-lit swimming pool. Stalagmites rose from the floor and stalactites dripped from above, making ghostly fingers, drapes, and cages. The lattice of a bridge was suspended from the ceiling of the cave.
Sam paddled on. The lake became a waterway, winding deeply and silently into the cave, until finally a grand archway of stalactites—almost like marble pillars carved by human hands—opened onto a lagoon ending in a crescent-shaped shoreline. It was as though she were crossing a boundary, entering an unholy kingdom.
She stroked to the middle of the lagoon, dipped her oar into the water, and looked down—
—and then she saw it.
Just as Marid had claimed, it lay in plain view: a golden sword gleaming with a rainbow of gemstones along its guard. It was in the clutches of a dead man. His eyes were missing, his white face still contorted with panic, his beard moving with the underwater current. Sam would have to pry Rugzā from his fingers.
For Rima, she reminded herself. Her pulse pounded down to her bones. I’ll kill Môt or Eshmun or whatever godly or ungodly thing might get in the way of my sister.
Easing herself over the side of the boat, she plunged into the frigid water to dive down to the dead man.
For a moment, she wondered what his name had been. Did he have a family? Had they given up searching for him, wondering if he would ever come home? How long had he been here?
At the cold bottom of the pool, she steeled herself, reached out, and grabbed his wrist. She pulled, trying to loosen his grip on the sword. But to her horror, his arm separated from his hand, unleashing a chunk of decaying flesh into the water. His hand stayed firmly attached to the sword’s grip.
Sam nearly screamed underwater, her mouth bubbling. She kicked back up to the surface and sucked in a long breath, coughing and gagging, the water clouded with the dead man’s flesh.
I can’t do this.
She desperately wanted to climb back into the boat, to paddle away.
I have to do this.
I will.
Even if it meant she would have to take the dead hand along with the sword. Inhaling as deeply as she could, she dove. This time, she pulled the wrist loose… only to reveal another underneath.
Grimacing and aching for air, she felt her heart jolt with the realization that there were layers upon layers of other bones under the man’s. Thumbs. Knuckles. Grips of desperation, of determination. Hands that were bound to the sword, but detached from their bodies.
She let go again and swam to the surface. Sucking in a breath, she wailed it back out, her cry echoing and disappearing into the depths of the cavern.
A gray stew of skin and tissue floated around her as she thrashed back to the boat, pulling herself inside to lie empty-handed in the hull, staring up at the bulbous ceiling of the cave.
How many men had died trying to carry this sword to shore? Big, strong men, who each thought they would be the one heroic enough to finish the task? One after another had pried a dead man’s hand away—maybe carried the sword forward a bit themselves—before sinking and suffering the same fate.
She sat shivering, her teeth chattering. What had Marid said when he gave her the boat? He said she’d have a choice.
But there was only one magical sword, one Rugzā. So how could that be?
She sat up and paddled the boat farther across the lagoon, gazing into the water, looking.
There were more bodies. Each was pinned to the bottom beneath a magnificent sword, similar to the one she’d just fought for. Each twinkled up at her, winking and beckoning.
In plain sight, she thought. A choice.
She navigated toward the crescent shoreline and stepped out to wade through the shallow water, pulling the boat onto a mound of stalagmite-covered rocks. Once it was secure, she stepped ahead and squinted into the darkness past the lagoon, but what was beyond was impossible to see. The cave could have extended ten feet deep or a thousand.
She took a few more steps before looking down at herself, still dripping with water. Her dress glowed. The droplets of water that clung to the ends of her hair looked like lightning bugs.
The water, she realized. The water gives off light! She hurried back to the boat and pulled the bucket from the hull. Maybe this was what it was for. She filled it with lagoon water and held it ahead of her as she ventured into the darkness. It was like a lantern, providing a small circle of light around her.
She wasn’t sure how long she walked. But eventually, rows beyond rows of stone pedestals rose around her, maybe a hundred of them. Sam walked faster, her heart catching as she realized what they held.
On top of each rectangular pedestal was a sword.
Sword after sword after sword after sword.
She put a hand on one, icy and damp to the touch. Which was the right one? Some were gorgeously decorated, others plain. The biggest extended far beyond the edges of its pedestal; it was black from tip to hilt, glimmering like liquid tar.
But which could kill a god?
Mom’s voice came to her once again: Sometimes things aren’t what they seem.
Not what they seem. She bit her lip, thinking, passing up any sword that was studded with rubies, sapphires, or amethysts, any encrusted with gold. Instead she stopped in front of the smallest, the most innocuous-looking blade. It was the size of a kitchen knife.
“Is it you?” she asked.
How could such a sword yield any kind of wrath? But then she thought of Teth, transforming into a bear. It was true: Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Tears could be medicine. A coin could open a gateway.
Still full of doubt, she picked up the dull, rusted sword and tucked it into her rabbit belt. At least it wouldn’t take her to the bottom of the lagoon to drown.
Am I completely stupid? she wondered, continuing deeper into the cave, hardly paying attention to her feet until she nearly stepped over an edge and into sheer nothingness. A drop-off into the bowels of the earth. Her heart pounded inside her ears so loudly it seemed to echo across the chasm.
She turned around, gasping for breath and holding the bucket farther ahead of her, her hands shaking so badly the water sloshed over the sides. She retraced her steps back the way she’d come through the pedestals, tempted again by what might be better choices—a sword made of sharpened wood, another with a femur for the grip. But there was none smaller than the one she’d chosen. None more rusted and dull. She was torn with indecision, but she kept walking, and before she knew it, she had reached the shoreline, where she cried out with dismay.
The boat was gone.
Her legs went weak with panic. She spun back and forth, searching, but there was no sign of it anywhere.
“No,” she moaned. There was only one way to go: out into the luminous waters, back toward the entrance and Marid. She would have to swim, even though she was exhausted. She set down the bucket and waded out into the bone-chilling water. Soon it was too deep for her to touch the bottom, but there were small stalagmite islands, and she swam from one to the next, holding on to their slick sides before swimming again. From the bottom of the lagoon, the dead bodies watched.
Ahead, there was a daunting gap from one island to the next. She took a long breath before striking out. The glimmering water roiled beneath her with each kick, and then it suddenly darkened. A shadow.
She gasped, pulling in a mouthful of water and then choking it out. Something was circling beneath her.
Wheezing for air, she swam faster, but not before looking over her shoulder. She was halfway between islands. It would do no good to turn back now. The creature passed close below her. It was long, eel-like. Sam held in a scream and kicked hard and fast, the island still so far away. The creature brushed against her feet and knees as it swept by. She shrieked and floundered, her voice echoing through the chamber.
“Go away, go away!” she pleaded, but a moment later it emerged from the water just ahead of her, blocking her way.
Slowly it rose higher and higher, its flat head jutting forward. Blank white eyes sat near its mouth, where sharp whiskers protruded from either side. A torrent of water dripped down its blotchy gray sides.
Sam held up the rusty little sword, the only weapon she had. “Get back!” she screamed.
The thing opened and closed its gaping maw. Rows of small sharp teeth shone blue from the glow of the lagoon.
Sam splashed backward. “I’ll… I’ll kill you!” she spluttered. As she looked up, she saw the lattice of stalactites, the gnarled bridge suspended from the ceiling. Frantically, she scanned the edges of the lagoon for some sort of ladder or wall she could climb. But there was nothing.
And then, as slowly as the thing had risen, it lowered itself and slid beneath the surface once more. It would grab her by the feet. Pull her under.
But instead it only kept circling as she struggled forward, hardly making any headway, before it pulled itself up again, rising slowly to its full height and then dropping down, only to circle once more beneath the surface.
With a sickening wave of realization, Sam understood: It would wear her out. Soon she would be too tired to hold her head above the surface. The creature was a bottom-feeder, and it was waiting for her to sink. Its eyes were low and wide-set, just above its mouth.
She looked up at the bridge once more, pulled in a deep, long breath, and dove, holding the sword ahead of her.
As the thing wormed past, she grabbed onto its neck, clinging to it as it slowly reared out of the water once more, twisting with agitation as Sam dug in her heels. Higher and higher it rose, shaking its head—once, twice—but Sam held on, grimacing at the feel of its spongy skin against her cheek. Finally, when it steadied at its full height, Sam put the sword in her mouth. She scrambled onto the top of its head and stood, reaching for the slats of the bridge. With a grunt, she caught one with one hand and then the other.
The creature descended, and she dangled, her arms aching, her lungs bursting. The water was almost a hundred feet below. If she fell now, she would die. There would be no second chance.
I’m not dying, she thought. I have to save my sister.
With her last ounce of resolve, she swung a foot up to the stalactite structure, and painfully squeezed between the open slats of the bridge.
She lay sobbing on her stomach for a long time, gripping the small sword and praying it was the right one. That it had been worth all this.
Finally, she stood and walked, still shaking. She stepped over gaps in the bridge, gripping the wet stalactite railing. Slowly, it led her downward, ending near the entrance, where Marid still stood, his spine curved like a scythe.
He was hunched over a waterlogged corpse, eating the flesh from its torso, making an awful ripping sound like a torn promise. Marid likes his death old and rotten, she remembered from the fairy tale.
Sam hid the sword behind her back, edging past Marid. He sniffed the air and turned to face her, chuckling.
“The child emerges unscathed,” he said, tipping his head sideways. “Tell me. Did you find anything interesting?”
She almost showed him. She almost asked: Is this the right one? Did I choose correctly?
“No,” she said, swallowing down the lie. “Nothing.”
If Sam had the one Rugzā, then no one would come to look for it again. If no one came into the cave again, Marid would have nothing to eat. She backed away, keeping her eyes on the monster as he edged closer.
“Giving up so soon?” he asked. “If you did not find what you wanted, you should try again.” He swept his arm toward the cave once more. There was another boat waiting. Another bucket. “Go on.”
“Tell me, Marid,” she said, crouching to grab Helena’s wool blanket from the ground where she’d left it. “What would someone want with a drop of blood, a strand of hair, and a fallen angel’s feather?”
He wiped the drool from his death-stained mouth. “Why forge a dark obol, my child?” he asked. “It will bear no power to carry a soul to heaven. It will only hold the victim in living limbo.” He strummed his fingernails across his braided necklace of hair. “Is that what you desire? A soulless slave?”
“Why would I want that?” she asked.
“The body provides,” he said. “Without the conscience objecting.” He shuffled toward her. “The hearts of men are made of gold, malleable when the fire burns hot. So easily molded and corrupted.”
To make him mine, Sam thought. For a hundred centuries. That was what Zayin had said. Did she intend to trap Eshmun somehow, body and soul, with a false obol? His tears would be hers, whenever she desired.
Sam inched away from Marid as he slunk closer, still carefully hiding the sword, and then she turned and fled as fast as she could into the dusk light.
At the fork in the road, the old woman was no longer there, but Sam recognized the junction. She turned and headed toward Kition and its dungeons.
Through the marketplace. Follow the lonely road, the old woman had said, and soon Sam saw two towers rising up, marking the city entrance, a knot of dread tightening in her chest. The towers were made of skulls. Hundreds, piled on top of each other, reaching toward the dusk-muddled sky. Vacant eye sockets. Cracked jawbones clicking—whispering—as she approached.
