Chapter Nine

Entombed

Stone World

The darkness overwhelmed Dorotea.

Unable to help herself, she pressed her face against the gargoyle’s back. He felt reassuringly solid in this small air pocket surrounded by stone. She didn’t like the dark, but it was the thought of being sealed in with no room to move and no way out that drove her crazy.

She bit her lip to keep from screaming at him to open the wall and let her back into the Cathedral. If he did, they would both be arrested for treason. He would be refrozen, and she would be exiled. Thrown Above to die in the violent sandstorms and the scorching, harsh sunlight.

It still sounded better than being entombed.

Dorotea panted. The air already tasted stale. How soon before she suffocated?

“If you breathe slower, the air will last longer,” the gargoyle said with hateful condescension.

“I can’t,” Dorotea admitted, chest heaving. “Are they gone yet? Can we go back out?”

As if in answer to her question, a rhythmic pounding started. It was the sound of mauls being swung against stone.

“They’re trying to break through into our chamber. We need to move farther away.” The gargoyle swiveled the two of them around, placing her nearest the Cathedral wall. “I’m going to tunnel forward. Keep close. The bubble of space will move with me.”

He turned away. Dorotea couldn’t see what he was doing, but moments later, he moved ahead, and the back wall of the cave touched her calf. She stumbled forward a step. Stone brushed her arms on both sides, the chamber only two feet wide. From necessity, she laid her hands on the gargoyle’s back. At first, her touch was light, but when she nearly lost contact in the dark, she curled her hands around his sides. His skin felt cool and smooth under her fingers, like a pebble smoothed by water.

What if he deliberately left her behind? She would suffocate. He might wear a collar, but he had all the power here, beneath the stone.

After ten more shuffling steps, the gargoyle stopped. “We should be safe from the mauls here.” The clangs had turned into muffled thuds.

“Safe?” Dorotea wanted to howl. She dug her fingernails into her palms and fought down the hysteria. “This is a tomb. Take me someplace that’s really safe.” Except now that they knew her name and face, she would be branded a traitor. And the Goddess intended to bring the caverns down on all their heads. Nowhere was safe.

“As you wish.” He began to tunnel again.

She hung onto him, despising herself for her cowardice but unable to stop shaking. She was so scared—for herself, for Marta, for everyone. How had things gone so wrong? Two days ago, her life had been normal.

“So aren’t you going to thank me?” he asked. “Or at least acknowledge that without my help, you would have been caught?”

“Thank you,” she said cautiously.

He grunted but said nothing more. Apparently, she hadn’t been effusive enough.

After ten minutes of traveling in silence, she couldn’t abide it any longer. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

“Someplace safe,” he mocked.

“Where?”

“I doubt you would know the spot. It has lain vacant since my brethren were enslaved.” His voice was bitter.

“The gargoyles tried to enslave humanity first!” Dorotea said hotly. “What did they expect?”

“They expected their human guests to listen to their hosts,” he retorted. “Especially after we generously opened our homes up to you. We didn’t have to share, you know. We could’ve left you to die Above. We should’ve known the same people who’d destroyed their own home would turn around and try to destroy ours—”

“Enough!” Dorotea said fiercely. “I’ll hear no more of your lies.”

“I do not lie,” he growled, the sound frighteningly bestial, as if he would have gladly ripped out her throat if not for the collar.

“No more,” she insisted.

“I—” His collar glowed golden, and his back muscles spasmed. He stopped talking, and the collar ceased glowing.

Dorotea felt a flicker of guilt. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t talk at all, I just don’t want to hear any more lies about humans being responsible for the rebellion.”

He didn’t reply. The silence felt as heavy as an anvil.

She lasted perhaps three miserable minutes in the dark before asking, “How much farther?” Her voice quavered horribly. She cleared her throat, adding, “You have my permission to speak.”

More silence. Hateful silence.

Fine. She could be silent, too. It’s just a game of wills. You need to win this, or he’ll have the upper hand.

She managed another minute, stumbling forward. Then another. The darkness pressed in, crushing her. Her breathing grew more frantic. Still, the silence continued.

She felt as if she were cracking apart, pieces of her flaking away, until she feared there wouldn’t be any of herself left, only a screaming madwoman.

A sob bubbled up her throat. “Please. Please talk to me. I’m so scared.”

He paused.

“Please.” She was crying openly now. “Please say something.”

“What do you want me to say?” he grated.

Even though he was still angry with her, the mere sound of his voice gave her something to cling to in the dark. “I don’t know. Tell me we’re not lost,” she implored.

“We’re not lost.” Pause. “I’m following a vein of silver.”

Keep him talking. “You can see a vein of silver?”

His body tensed. “It’s just silver, not gold.”

Why did that matter? “But you can see in the dark?” she persisted.

“I don’t need eyes to follow the path of metal.” He began to move forward again.

She tripped and smacked into his stone back for at least the fifteenth time. Sands, she wanted out of here. It was hard to explain why this was so different from being in the crawl tunnel. Even in the dark, the tunnel hadn’t panicked her because it had an entrance and an exit. This didn’t. The way the space melted ahead of them and then reformed behind made her worry that if she lagged back, the stone would re-solidify around her foot, trapping her forever.

Another dream image flashed through her mind. A man’s body sinking into the stone floor. A gargoyle pushing him down.

Fear tightened her throat. To distract herself, she kept the conversation going. “If not with your eyes, how do you sense it?”

He hesitated. “It…sings to my ears and buzzes against my fingertips.” A shrug. “I know where it is as I know the nose on my face.”

What a handy talent. Her Artisan mother was always complaining about the cost of gold and silver.

“What else can gargoyles do that humans can’t?” she asked, curiosity easing her distress. Martin always complained that she asked too many questions. She hoped the gargoyle wouldn’t get angry, but she desperately needed something to take her mind off the dark and the stone cocoon all around her.

Were the walls growing closer? She shuddered and plastered herself to the gargoyle’s back.

“Gargoyle eyesight is better underground.”

Dorotea focused on his words. “So you can see right now?”

“Yes.”

“So gargoyles are made of stone, impervious to most harm. You’re taller and stronger, you have claws and fangs, you can tunnel through walls, and you can see better than humans?” It wasn’t fair.

“Yes. Except we only see better underground. Humans see better in the light.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. “That’s not much of a disadvantage.” It’s not as if humans lived Above anymore.

“We also cannot swim,” he reminded her. His voice had an edge to it.

Silence fell again like the chop of a blade. The gargoyle kept creating a tunnel in the dark, steadily walking forward. Dorotea followed in his wake, on and on and on.

She gritted her teeth and concentrated on how tired her legs were, how hungry and thirsty she was. How much time had passed in this moving tomb? Would they be forced to sleep here?

“How much longer? Estimate,” she added before he could put her off again.

“We may break through in the next few minutes, or it may take an hour yet. It has been a long since I last came this way.” His voice was accusing.

“That’s not my fault,” she said, stung. “I was only a child when the rebellion happened.” Which hadn’t stopped Martin and the others from sneering at her Stone Heart blood.

“So was I,” he said coolly.

His words bothered her. Gargoyles were much longer-lived than humans; all the tales said so. “Do you mean a child by gargoyle reckoning? How old are you?”

“That depends on what year it is now,” he said.

“I’m seventeen. The rebellion happened when I was five.”

“Then I am eighteen by human reckoning,” he said.

“But…” She trailed off. A child of six couldn’t be judged guilty of treason. Had the Elect imprisoned a child? That seemed wrong.

And yet, what else could they have done with him? How could they have trusted a gargoyle child to roam free? He would have been certain to betray them later. Still… A lump formed in Dorotea’s stomach. Frozen as a statue from the age of six on.

It was horrible to contemplate.

But wait. He neither looked nor acted like a child. “You’re lying to me to gain my sympathy,” Dorotea accused him. “I order you to never lie to me again.”

“I did not lie, Mistress.”

His collar didn’t glow. So he was telling the truth. But— “If you were frozen as a child of six, how did you age?”

He shrugged. “The spell did not hinder physical growth. And though I could not move, I could speak with my brethren through the stone at our feet. They taught me our history and as much as they could of mathematics and other subjects. There was little enough else to do,” he added bitterly.

At least he hadn’t been alone. But conscious and unable to move was almost worse. Dorotea had assumed the stasis spell kept the gargoyles asleep. Reluctant sympathy welled inside her. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”

He jerked under her hands. She had the sense that he was staring at her.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m surprised,” he said dryly. “I didn’t think your kind knew how to apologize.”

Stung, she fell silent. Another thirty paces. The darkness pressed in. They could be going in circles, and she would never know…

She dredged up another question. “Are you the youngest gargoyle?”

“Yes. The next youngest is Chert. He is seventy-eight.”

Seventy-eight! That was a large gap. Was it difficult for gargoyles to conceive, or were they just uninterested in children because they were so long-lived?

“Are they really your brothers?”

“Chert treats me like a younger brother—I think he was very glad when I replaced him as ‘the baby.’ The others are more like aunts and uncles or grandparents.” He ventured a question of his own. “And you? You mentioned a sister. Do you have other siblings?”

A pang tore through Dorotea. “Just Marta. She’s my half sister. She was injured in the latest earthquake when a tunnel collapsed on her.” A harsh sob caught in her throat, making it difficult to go on, but for some reason, she needed to make the gargoyle understand why she’d started all this. “She’s been unconscious ever since.” The words tasted like bile. “The healer doesn’t think she’ll ever wake.”

“I’m sorry,” the gargoyle said.

His kindness brought tears to her eyes.

“May I ask you a question?” he asked. “Why did you pick me out of all the gargoyles in the cavern? Why did you wake me instead of someone bigger and stronger?”

A choked laugh escaped her. “I picked you because you were small.” And something about him had called to her.

“I am not the smallest!” He sounded insulted. “Rose Granite is shorter than I.”

Dorotea remembered a pink granite gargoyle. “She was holding a battle-axe and looked ready to chop off my head. You looked…less intimidating. More human and less beast.” Except he probably thought that was an insult, too. “I mean—”

“We’re here.” He steered her through the opening into a larger space. How much larger, Dorotea couldn’t tell in the pitch-blackness, but the relief of being released from her moving tomb made her legs wobble.

She felt her way along a wall and sank down with her back against it and her legs sticking out. She inhaled great lungfuls of air and shuddered. Never again, she vowed. No more trips through stone.

She’d almost rather be caught.

Misery settled over her like a heavy cape. Now that her life was out of danger, the magnitude of her failure was sinking in. This was only a temporary reprieve. As soon as she came out of hiding, the Elect would exile her.

And she’d accomplished nothing. The Goddess had refused to heal Marta, might not even be capable of healing if the gargoyle was to be believed, and the cave system was in danger from Her.

Tears gathered in Dorotea’s eyes. She didn’t sniff, not wanting to alert the gargoyle that she was crying.

“I’m sure your sister will recover,” he said awkwardly.

She blinked in surprise, then realized he could see in the dark. Her tears fell faster.

Footsteps told her the gargoyle was walking around. She heard stone shifting but couldn’t bring herself to care.

“I found a candle. Would you like me to light it?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded hoarse, and she swiped at her cheeks. “I would like that.”

A match flared, and the gargoyle’s stone face became visible as he lit the candle. Despite the flickering shadows, his expression struck her as intent, not savage. He blew out the match, then brought her the candle in a holder.

She swallowed. “Thank you.”

The sound of trickling water made her aware of how parched her throat was. She followed the sound to a small seep against one wall framed by two baby stalagmites no more than four inches high. A tin cup rested on the ground. She rinsed it off then waited impatiently for it to fill. She drained it four times before feeling satisfied.

She wondered longingly if some food had been left here along with the candle, but no doubt it would have rotted by now. The cavern had an air of long disuse.

Holding the candle aloft, she wandered around. The red-and-orange marbled walls were pretty, but the chamber was so small—only about fifteen paces long and half as wide. Aside from some dusty blankets, the cave was empty.

Her breath caught in her throat when she completed her circuit of the blank walls. “Where’s the exit?” she demanded, her voice shrill.

“This is a gargoyle haven,” he grated. “We have no need of tunnels, only air vents. You said you wished to go someplace safe. No one will find us here.”

Dorotea shuddered. His decision had been logical, but her skin crept at the thought that she would have to enter the moving tomb again in order to leave.

“What do you want? Do you want to go elsewhere?” the gargoyle asked cautiously.

“Want?” Dorotea repeated. Her voice sounded too shrill to her ears, almost hysterical. “I want my family. I want the last two days of my life erased. But I can’t have those things.” She sank to her knees.

He crouched beside her, golden gaze thoughtful. “You want your sister to be well.”

She nodded listlessly.

“You are a good sister to do so much, to risk so much, for her. Most people would just wring their hands and hope for a miracle.” He almost sounded admiring.

“But I failed,” she whispered. Tears welled again.

He shrugged. “Your first plan did. You can make another.”

Could she? Her mind felt thick and dull.

“Perhaps there is a cure for your sister’s illness Above.”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing Above but death.”

“Not so,” he disagreed. “Your human cities are not yet deserted. Remnants remain.”

Dorotea harrumphed. “Scavengers.”

“Mostly. But my people tell stories of strongholds where the Elect yet seek to reverse the blight upon their land. And even if they are a myth, there may be lost repositories of knowledge.”

Libraries. It was the thinnest of straws, but she had nothing better to grasp at. Nor could she go back and sit by Marta’s side until the end. They would arrest and exile her. She might as well go on her own, foolishness or no.

Still, she wasn’t stupid. The gargoyle must have his own reasons for suggesting this, but she couldn’t puzzle out why. Gargoyles lived below. “Why would you help me?” she asked.

“This coma you speak of sounds a little like stasis.”

Dorotea tensed, waiting for him to gloat or blame her.

“Only, your sister is alone, while I had the company of my brethren. I would not wish such a fate on anyone. I will help you, if you promise to free me.”

His unexpected offer flummoxed her and brought a lump to her throat.

“I—” Was she really going to agree to this? Back in the Cathedral he had proved to be a formidable ally. It would be so much easier if she didn’t have to fight him every step of the way. And against all odds, she was starting to trust him. “Thank you for your offer. I accept. But right now I can’t think. I’m going to sleep.” Tomorrow she could start working on a plan to appease the Goddess and save Marta. Right now, it seemed too hopeless.

The gargoyle was still watching her. Why? Oh, yes. He was waiting for her to close the loopholes, to forbid him from leaving the chamber. But if they were to work together, she needed to know if she could trust him, before she could even consider removing his collar. So she said nothing.

A small voice inside shrieked that she was risking her life. Too tired to care, she lay down on the blankets beside the spring. She didn’t even bother to shake them out.

Heartsick, confused, exhausted, she shut her eyes and instantly fell asleep.

In the dream, she was a little girl again.

“Grab your doll, sweetie. We’re going on a little trip.” Her father was smiling, but something too intense in his voice made her hang back, uneasy.

“Someone is coming,” Flint rumbled. “No time to run.”

Her father’s smile turned sharp enough to cut. “Then we fight. Dorotea, hide.”

“But I can’t find my dolly.”

Before Dorotea finished her protest, her father scooped her up and shoved her in the large woven basket that served as a laundry hamper. “Pull the clothes over your head, and be very quiet. I mean it, Dorotea. I’ll throw away your doll if you make so much as a peep.”

He closed the lid. Enough light filtered through the basket weave to see, but Dorotea’s heart beat faster in fright. She pulled her mom’s red dress over her head. Her thumb crept into her mouth, even though her mom said five was too old to be sucking her thumb.

The beaded curtain made a clashing sound, and people started yelling.

“Traitor!”

“Get him!”

“What you’re doing is wrong!”

Then worse sounds than shouting: rock breaking, furniture being thrown, screams of rage, gargoyle growls.

Whimpering, Dorotea sucked her thumb harder.

Another loud crash hurt her ears, and then something hit the laundry basket. It tipped over, and Dorotea spilled partway out. The dress still covered her head, but now she could see, and what she saw paralyzed her with terror.

A gargoyle pounded her father’s head against the ground. Her father strained, trying to push away the gargoyle’s wrists, but he couldn’t budge them. The gargoyle was too strong.

“Papa!” Dorotea whimpered, but no one heard her.

“Kill him!” a man shouted.

The gargoyle’s stone hands grasped her father’s head and twisted.

The crack of breaking bone—

“Dorotea.”

—her father’s body went limp. His gaze grew fixed, his face slack. Dorotea wailed soundlessly.

Her eyes opened. She gasped. A dark shape leaned over her. A gargoyle. Stone hands gripped her shoulder and neck— He was going to break her neck, just like her father.

“Don’t touch me!” She scrambled away, disoriented in the dark. Where was she? The hidden cave where the gargoyle had taken her. How could she have been so stupid, letting her guard down while alone with him? Her head pounded viciously.

The gargoyle spoke, but his words were just noise. “Stupid girl, you’re going to—” He reached for her.

She screamed and kicked his stone shin. “Die!”

Light flared along his collar. The gargoyle stumbled, and she scrambled away from him in the dark, panic choking her. Her teeth chattered, and her heart thudded in terror. He’d killed her father, tried to kill her. Her legs tangled in her robe. Unable to stand, she crawled away, expecting at any moment for those stone hands to catch her. Goddess help her. The chamber was too tiny; there was nowhere to hide. She was trapped with a killer.

(look into the mirror)

The gleam of the small spring caught her eye. The candlelight allowed her to glimpse her reflection in the dark water, wavering and odd, almost like a stranger’s face—

(look deep)

She met her reflection’s furious eyes. Vertigo hit her like a punch in the stomach as she fell into her reflection.

And fell out of her body into a new one.

Leah took control of Dorotea’s body and looked around the dimly lit cavern.

Gideon’s otherself, the gargoyle, writhed in pain on the ground. He clawed at his neck. Red sparks flashed off his glowing collar.

The sight made Leah frantic. Her heart raced, and her mouth dried. “What’s wrong? How do I make it stop?”

He tried to answer, choked. “Tell…it.”

“Tell what?” Leah didn’t understand. She wrung her hands. What if he died like Gideon?

He clawed at the collar again. “Stop.”

Did he mean she should talk to the collar? “Stop, collar! Stop hurting him!”

The collar’s glow winked out. The gargoyle remained curled up in a ball, groaning.

Ashes, what was that thing? She concentrated, and the answer sprang full-blown from Dorotea’s memory. It was a slave collar, designed to control gargoyles. Dorotea had put it around his neck on purpose.

Leah put her hand on her stomach, suddenly nauseated. The evilness of the device appalled her. How could her otherself be party to slavery and torture? It made her sick to think that she might have the same capacity for cruelty.

“What is wrong with you? Why did you attack me?” Hurt and anger mixed in his gravelly voice.

Leah didn’t know how to answer so she just shook her head. “What can I do?” She knelt beside him and stroked his stone shoulder, so cool compared to Gideon’s dragon heat. “Did the collar burn you? Would water help?” She started to rise.

In one quick move, he yanked her against his chest. He locked an arm around her neck and growled in her ear, “One twist and I could break your neck. You wouldn’t have time to stop me. How does it feel when our roles are reversed?”

Leah relaxed into him. She could never fear Gideon’s otherself. “Dorotea may deserve it, but please don’t kill her. I’m afraid the slave collar might cause you eternal pain if you did.”

His grip loosened in surprise. “What do you mean ‘her’?”

Leah met his golden gaze calmly; his eyes weren’t so different from Gideon’s diamond ones. “I’m not Dorotea. I’m Leah, her otherself.”

“Otherself?” His brows lowered over his eyes, giving him a brutish look.

“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later, but first, wouldn’t you like me to remove that horrid thing around your neck?”

Another glower. “Is this some sort of trick? We both know you’re too scared to free me.”

Leah shook her head, speaking gently, as if to a wounded animal. “No trick, I promise. Here, I’ll take off the armbands.” She slipped them down off Dorotea’s arms and offered them to the gargoyle.

When he didn’t take them, she dropped them on the cave floor. “There, now I can’t control you. Will you let me take it off?” She turned within the circle of his arm and set her hands on his neck.

He laid one hand over hers, expression wary. “Why aren’t you afraid of me anymore? Of these?” He flexed his claws and lifted his upper lip, exposing fangs.

“Dorotea was afraid of you. I’ve ridden on a dragon. You’re not nearly as terrifying,” Leah said dryly. “I know you don’t trust her, but let me take the collar off. What do you have to lose?”

He released her wrist, but he still watched her as if she might betray him at any moment.

Stupid, stupid, Dorotea. She’d not only damaged her relationship with her soul mate, she’d wounded him. A tear trickled from her eye. Leah wiped it away impatiently.

Leah put her arms around his neck to undo the clasp. The move pressed her body against his unyielding stone one.

Click. The collar hinged into two pieces and fell into her hand. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her as if she were amazing. Her heart clutched up: Gideon used to look at her like that.

“There, now you’re free.” Suddenly breathless, she shifted to sit beside him and held the collar out. “Destroy it,” she said firmly.

“I don’t have to obey you anymore,” he said, slowly taking it.

She smiled tenderly. “No, you don’t. But unless you have another use for it, why leave the threat of it hanging over you?” She hesitated, then admitted, “I can’t keep Dorotea out of her body forever.” Nor would she truly want to. From the little she’d seen of Stone World, it was just as strange and disorienting as Water.

“It’s disturbing when you talk about yourself as another person,” he rumbled. But he did pick up the collar and the bracelets, melting them into slag with a casualness that took Leah aback. The gold puddled on the ground but didn’t give off heat like metal melted in a forge. “Who are you supposed to be again?”

Leah shook her head. “Sorry. I promised you an explanation, didn’t I?” She told him about the Mirror Worlds, the True World, and otherselves.

He stared at her. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Leah uttered a pained laugh. “I can’t disagree.”

“So if you’re not her, where is Dorotea?” He scowled suspiciously. “Did you hurt her?”

“I’m surprised you care,” Leah said, taken aback.

“I don’t!” He touched his neck. “She tried to kill me.” He frowned. “First, she says maybe we can work together and then— All I did was try to wake her out of a nightmare.”

“Dorotea isn’t hurt—not that she doesn’t deserve it. She’s in my body on Fire World.” About to say that Dorotea was perfectly safe, Leah swallowed the words back. Fire World wasn’t safe for anyone, but Dorotea would survive for a few hours. Or a day.

The gargoyle shook his head. “None of this makes sense. Maybe you’re just pretending not to be Dorotea.”

Leah shrugged. “I suppose you’ll have to decide for yourself.” She was confident what his decision would be. He was just as smart as Gideon and Ryan, after all.

She wondered whether it would be a bad idea to tell him he was her dead soul mate’s otherself. Even in this rugged form, he already reminded her of Gideon. But it was dangerous for her to think of him that way. She didn’t want to make the same mistake she’d made with Ryan. Gideon’s Water self wasn’t Gideon, and neither was his Stone self. Gideon is dead. As always, the thought stabbed like a dagger to the heart. She shook off the pain. “What’s your name?”

He stared at her. “I begin to believe that you truly are someone else.”

With a pang, Leah realized that Dorotea had never asked his name—because Dorotea had been taught not to consider him a person.

He seemed to come to a decision. “My name is Jasper,” he said. “Red Jasper, if you want to be formal.”