The Death of Yorik Mortwell (10 page)

“No,” said Susan. “Someone must care for Lord Ravenby, whatever else might happen.”

The Matron’s lip curled as her Dark Ones whispered. For a moment she leaned over Susan. Then she pushed past the girl and stomped away.

Yorik slipped into the shadows behind Thomas.

“Thomas,” he said, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Thomas turned, startled. “Yrk!”

Susan hurried away toward the kitchens, the supper dishes clattering on the tray.

Thomas started after her. “Szz.”

“No,” said Yorik. “Thomas, listen. I spent weeks watching out for Susan too, just as you did before you died.”

Thomas stopped and looked at Yorik.

“Yes, I saw you,” said Yorik. “I’d been told you were going to murder her. But I realized that was a lie.”

“Blb!”

“I followed her everywhere,” said Yorik. “The
Dark Ones told her terrible things. They told her Lord Ravenby was going to turn her out into the snow, and she should slip poison into his drink.”

“Glg,” burbled Thomas angrily.

Yorik shook his head. “None of it worked. She is strong, like your father. Maybe even stronger.”

“Fa—” croaked Thomas, lurching toward the study.

“Wait,” said Yorik, grasping his arm. “Thomas, there is only one way to help them now. We have to find a way to defeat the Dark Ones. I believe you know something more about them.” He gave Thomas a searching look. “I need to know what happened.”

“N—!” said Thomas, shaking.

“You must tell me!” ordered Yorik sharply. “Little time remains.”

Thomas shrank away.

Yorik paused, thinking of the Princess’s terrible shame. “I know it’s hard,” he said, more gently now, releasing Thomas. “But you must tell me, for your father. And for my sister too.”

Thomas nodded. His broken neck turned the
nod into an odd bow. And then, his face grim, he shuffled forward, leading Yorik along halls and down narrow stairways, into the depths of the Manor.

Down, deep down, below the servants’ quarters, below the wine cellars to the cold rooms where meat was stored. Down, to unlit passages where old things lay hidden under layers of dust, to deep levels of the subterranean Manor basements where no one had set foot for years. Or so Yorik thought at first. But as the dust thickened, Yorik discerned a trail of footprints. Here in the still air of these rooms, the footprints were undisturbed.

In a dank passage at the dead end of the deepest basement was an antiquated iron door, rusted and ajar. Beside it in the churned-up dust were tools—scattered mallets, pry bars, and expired torches. Someone had recently pried open the door.

As Yorik puzzled over this, he heard sounds: hammering, the groans of protesting iron—and a boy crying. The sounds came from directly in front of him.
Dead echoes
, he realized. Echoes of what had happened here, not long ago.

Behind the door was a stone wall. On it was an inscription too old to read. Some of the stones had been smashed away, and behind them a narrow passage veered deeper down.

Yorik looked at Thomas. He could only imagine how this must have seemed to a living boy—the depths, the cold darkness, the utter silence—as he worked long, dark hours to open these sealed paths.

They moved through the stone wall and walked along the passage, followed by the dead echoes of whispers and tears and crackling torches. Soon they passed windows in the walls. The windows had bits of shattered colored glass in them.

“I saw this building before,” said Yorik. “Ten thousand years ago.” He told Erde’s story to Thomas as they went.

Thomas, nodding, pulled Yorik farther down the passage. In an alcove, Thomas pointed to a leonine skeleton with snapped and shattered bones.

“Yes,” said Yorik. “The red lion.”

Nearby were shovels, and fresh earth piled around a sloping pit. At the bottom of the pit, the rocky mouth of a cave appeared. As they descended,
Yorik noticed a track where someone had slid down. There was blood too, as he imagined hands unaccustomed to labor might have bled from the punishing work of smashing and digging in the dark bowels of the earth.

At last they emerged from the cave into an immense, vaulted cavern. Yorik gasped. “A mammoth graveyard!”

Filling the cavern were the massive skeletons of creatures so large they could only have been mammoths. Yorik had heard legends of such things—mammoths burying, and mourning, their dead. This graveyard was ancient, the bones brittle. In some places the skeletons were piled atop each other, and some had fallen apart into mounds so high that their tips nearly reached the ceiling.

“Yorik, dear Yorik,” sang a girl in a hollow voice.

Yorik turned. Atop a mammoth spine sat a girl in a tattered dress, her bedraggled hair falling over her face.

“Doris,” he said. “It’s really you.”

Doris brushed her hair aside. She was gaunt and pale, her cheeks were sunken, and her eyes were empty pits. “Yes, dear Yorik,” she rasped. “But not for long.”

“Ds!” shouted Thomas. He stumbled past Yorik.

“Oh, Thomas,” moaned Doris. “You shouldn’t have come. Neither of you should be here. The Dark Ones will return at any moment. You have to flee.”

Thomas kept toward her. “You mustn’t touch me,” Doris said, shrinking away. “I am filled with darkness.”

“Doris,” said Yorik. “Tell me what happened. What did Thomas do? The Dark Ones made him open these passages, didn’t they?” Thomas stopped below his sister, moaning, ghostly tears streaking his face. “Mm s—”

Doris spoke quietly, her voice weak. “I know you’re sorry, dear Thomas. I know it was hard. I saw things better after I died. I saw how Father expected of you things that you couldn’t give. I saw all your sadness and pain. I wish I had been kinder to you while I lived. But now there is nothing to be done. You must run.”

Yorik did not see any Dark Ones in the high,
arched cavern. But he did spy a blackness in its center. He walked closer. There was darkness here, a floating void that reminded him of a Dark One. Something was inside it. A scent wafted out, of rotting vegetation.

“Yorik, no!” said Doris in alarm.

Beside the void was an old stone tablet, broken in half. Beside the tablet was a sledgehammer.

There were two runes carved into the tablet, carved so deeply that they would survive centuries, even millennia. The runes were dyed red with blood, and as Yorik studied them, he felt a warm thrill course through him. He could see that if the broken tablet were whole, it would completely cover the void.

“This tablet,” Yorik said. “It blocked this portal. The Princess told me that there was only one Dark One here, until recently. Then the others found a way to come through. This is how they did it, isn’t it? The single Dark One made Thomas come here and break this seal.”

“Perceptive, Yorik,” said Doris softly. “Our ancestors made this seal long ago, and our family has
guarded it for millennia. Over the long centuries, we forgot our duty. Now my father is the only thing holding back the horde, though he is unaware of the true depths of the struggle. But his will is fading. You have only moments left. Please take my brother and run.”

“Can I repair the seal?” asked Yorik. His ghost hands passed through the stone, tingling as they did.

“No, Yorik, you can’t,” replied Doris. “And your time is gone.” Behind Doris, Yorik could hear Thomas’s burbling cries.

Yorik thrust his head into the portal. Doris screamed.

A warm stench blew over him as he blinked in a sudden wash of raw blue light. Confused at first by what he saw, the images slowly came into focus. All around him, for what seemed like thousands of miles, was a vast blue expanse. The light was not blue like the sky, but blue like the color of cold flame. Floating everywhere were rich green masses, stinking like rotting plants dug up from loamy earth. And there were Dark Ones, millions of them,
numbers beyond counting. Some were small like the ones he had already seen, and some were as immense as mountains or moons.

Yorik pulled his head from the opening and turned. “Doris,” he began.

But Doris was no longer there. In her place stood Dark Doris, the girl he had met on the stone bench, the girl with the beautiful dress and expensive hat and perfect shoes. The girl with the proud laugh and flashing eyes, behind which Yorik could now see lurked the
Yglhfm
.

And behind her, filling the mammoth graveyard, perched on ribs and skulls and spines, were countless
Yglhfm
, thoroughly blocking the passage out.

This land was once ours
, said Dark Doris.
Now we will possess her again
.

“She is dying,” said Yorik. “If Erde is dead, you can’t possess her.”

Dark Doris chuckled.
She is not dying. She is only returning to our service. Now you will serve us as well. Come, Yorik
.

Dark Doris drifted raggedly toward Yorik, her body dragging like a marionette on a string.

Yorik backed away. But there was nowhere to go. The
Yglhfm
were everywhere.

Then Thomas, crying, waddled toward his sister.

“Ds!” he cried. “Ds!”

“No, Thomas!” shouted Yorik. “Don’t touch her. You can’t—”

Thomas grabbed his sister’s shoulders.

Blue flame coursed over him, and he staggered. When he straightened, his neck cracked into place and his eyes flashed with the cruel, angry look Yorik had last seen when a large rock came hurtling at him in the elm.

Yorik
, said Master Thomas.
It is time
.

A
wave of chittering laughter swept over the
Yglhfm
horde. As Yorik listened, he felt a tremor in the air, and a lambent blue light flickered through the cavern.

Come, Yorik
, said Master Thomas, sweeping forward.
Lord Ravenby has broken at last. Everything changes now
.

Dark Doris approached too, murmuring sweetly, her teeth bared in a maniacal smile. She and her brother glistened with new strength. The darkness beyond, full of Dark Ones, was deepening. There
were more and more of them each moment, the floor of the cavern slowly filling like a pond in a downpour.

Dark Doris reached her small white hands for his.

Then Yorik spotted a faint red glow, a space on the floor of the cavern where there were no
Yglhfm
. The broken stone tablet lay there.

With a leap, Yorik was astride the tablet, one foot on each broken half. Power tingled in his feet.

Master Thomas chuckled, then cleared his throat. When he spoke, he sounded almost human again. “Give in, will you, Yorik? My father has. Let us take back what is ours.”

“Erde isn’t yours,” said Yorik. “And you’re not Thomas.”

Dark Doris’s pretty laugh echoed through the cavern, piercing the sea of
Yglhfm
whispers. “Oh, dear Yorik. Erde was ours for many millennia, more than you can imagine. Long before the humans came and spoiled things. For ten thousand years, we longed to draw her back into us, to embrace her, to drain and diminish her, to bring her back into bondage.” She licked her lips. “And now we have.”

“You can’t take her completely,” said Yorik, his eyes casting about for a means of escape. “You’re still scared of the Princess.”

“Dear Yorik,” sighed Dark Doris. “Our masters have nothing to fear anymore. Look!”

She gestured to the portal. Yorik saw that it was no longer small enough to be blocked by the tablet. Now it dwarfed even the mammoths. With faint
pop
s, giant
Yglhfm
were bubbling out, one after another. Ignoring Yorik, they rumbled toward the cavern entrance, stretching to fill it completely with their vast bodies, squeezing up toward the surface.

Thousands more of the tiny
Yglhfm
surged around them. The cavern was filling, pools of Dark Ones flowing in swift currents all around the tablet but never close enough to touch it. He felt their hunger grasping for him, as it had outside the mews. And as before, he felt a crawling sensation of panic and fear. His head filled with nightmare images of Erde enslaved by the
Yglhfm
, her defenders lying dead around her.