The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy

  “Because he would never come without a reason. He needed an incentive—and that’s you,” Jonathan pointed out.

  “He’d come after me, you mean?” I started upright. “I hadn’t thought of that—do you think he would do that?”

  “Silly girl—what do you think?” he chided gently.

  I was swamped by a wave of guilt. I hadn’t thought he would be in danger, never. He hadn’t offered to come with me to the underworld after Jonathan and it was plain that he feared the underworld more than anything he’d feared on earth. For that reason alone, I never considered that he might come after me. I thought I would be sick. “But why—why is she interested in Adair? What could he have possibly done?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. The queen has been careful not to say anything about Adair in my presence. I doubt her guards know, either. I get the sense that she plays her cards close to her vest. She’s a lonely woman. Something has made her very unhappy, but she never talks about it.”

  Our foreheads bowed together, we contemplated this troubling mystery: the queen was unhappy and Adair had something to do with it . . . but I couldn’t begin to imagine what that might be. Perhaps he’d stolen the wrong soul, the soul of someone important to her. Or perhaps it had to do with one of his companions, someone he’d wronged horribly. Then I thought of what she had done to Dona, how she didn’t seem to feel compunction or sympathy for anyone. Whatever was between her and Adair, it was most likely personal.

  I thought again of the vial. I could still feel its shape in my palm, a phantom, and wondered if our little trick had worked, if Adair had tried to bring me back and failed. I wished there was a way to send a message to him now—don’t come after me, don’t—but I supposed that power resided with the queen alone.

  “What comes next, do you think?” I asked.

  He ran a finger over my brow, brushing hair out of my eyes. “We wait for Adair to show up. I think you’re safe, for now. The queen has no reason to hurt you—as far as she’s concerned, you’re bait and nothing else,” he said, and I was just about to say that I’d never been so happy to be overlooked in my life when the door flew back, and a pair of demon guards rushed into the room—followed by the queen.

  I almost felt sorry for her, to see the look on her face. She was jealous, it was plain—jealous and frustrated. I sensed no love between her and Jonathan, but the look on her face was frozen, hard, murderous—as though she could have obliterated me at that moment with a look, and yet she was holding back . . . with great effort.

  She raised a hand and pointed at me, and I flinched. Then her finger started to tremble and she croaked over her shoulder at the demons: “Apparently this slattern cannot be trusted, not with any man. Take her from my sight! Take her away—and throw her in the pit.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The island did not suffer the ill effects of the deluge for long. Adair quickly surveyed the grounds and found that the sun and brisk sea winds had gone a long way toward stripping away the excess moisture and drying things out. The floating dock had been lost and would have to be replaced. Only time would tell if the trees would grow back. The goats were gone, of course, and Adair decided he would not replace them.

  Terry and Robin, too, appeared to have been swept out to sea—there was not a trace of them on the island. He was certain that those vindictive witch sisters had possessed them, and although he wished things had turned out differently, he would not beat himself up over it. What was done was done. Whether the powerful witch sisters, Penthy and Bronwyn, had been taken care of, he wasn’t sure. They could be looking for another pair of vessels to take over. The whole incident made him uneasy, so Adair resolved not to think about it, not for now.

  He decamped to the study, where he felt most comfortable and at his strongest. He built up a luxurious bed for Lanore directly on the floor, a feather mattress bolstered by a wall of pillows, and laid her out there, covering her in a blanket of fine cashmere, the color of moonbeams. He’d checked her hand earlier, hoping against hope that she’d managed somehow to hold on to the vial, but it was gone, undoubtedly lost to the sea.

  A strange occurrence happened to him that night: he had a dream. Adair rarely dreamed. He didn’t really need to sleep, and did only because it was a bodily pleasure, as enjoyable as smoking or eating. There were times, when he was upset or depressed, when he would seek the sweetness of oblivion, too, and this was why he slept now. Since sending Lanore to the underworld, Adair would hibernate around the clock if it meant time would pass more quickly and would hasten the day when she would return to him.

  He hadn’t dreamed any of the other nights since sending her to the underworld, but that night, he dreamed. It was one of those odd dreams, the kind that made him conspicuously aware that he was dreaming, and he had been so distracted by this very conspicuousness that he now could remember very little of it. As a matter of fact, he remembered only one crucial moment, and the vision had been so horrible that he had been thrown out of sleep and awoke sweating; he had to touch Lanore’s hand to reassure himself that she was still with him, that no one had snatched her away while he was asleep.

  In this dream, he’d been brought to a chamber, a squalid stone room with a dirt floor, a dank prison cell not unlike many he’d seen with his own eyes. In an odd twist for a prison cell, instead of a cot or pallet, there was a fully dressed bed in the center of the room, taking up nearly all the space. Lanore was on the bed, her hands bound, her eyes blindfolded. She struggled against her restraints. Naturally, he tried to rush to her side but was prevented by an invisible wall. He was helpless, being forced into the role of an observer. He knew, by the twisting of his gut and the terror expanding in his chest, what would happen next.

  Within a minute, the door opened and a dark figure, huge and hulking, slipped into the room. Adair couldn’t make out what this figure looked like until it came closer to the bed, and then he saw that it was a demon of some kind, a horrible monster worse than anything he recalled being described in mere stories. This creature was bestial, an animal with only vestigial traces of man. It was as large as an ox, with a broad, strapping back. Its muscle-bound haunches were as massive as boulders; its hocks were like pistons. Long threads of saliva dripped from its maw. It hovered over Lanore, its shadow eclipsing her, swallowing her up so that Adair could no longer see her, he could only hear her whimper in distress.

  In a panic, Adair threw himself at the unseen barrier again and again, but whatever it was held as firmly as the accursed wall in the basement of the Boston mansion, the one that had held him for two hundred years. The beast put its hands on Lanore’s shoulders, pinning her to the bed. He began to shift his weight over her, to climb her in preparation for mounting her, and Adair thought he would lose his mind. He tried to force himself to wake up. He couldn’t watch what was about to happen.

  He snapped awake on the floor next to Lanore, drenched in sweat, feeling as though his stomach had been ripped out. Now he understood why Lanore had been so desperate to go after Jonathan. No one would be able to endure such scenes, not about someone you loved. Even being fully aware that it was only a dream hadn’t kept him from being completely consumed with horror. The dreams were exercises in torture, and he couldn’t believe that a dream like that had come from his subconscious. He fully believed that the dream was a message.

  He rose from the floor and paced around the room, trying to work out this wild, unsettled feeling inside him. He expected this feeling to dissipate like morning fog once he was fully awake, but it didn’t. He thrummed with apprehension: Do something to help Lanore, and do it now.

  It was plain what he must do: he must call her back to the land of the living. Now that she’d been stripped of the vial, she had no way of contacting him from the underworld, and her safety was obviously more important than any mission to save Jonathan. Let her be mad at him for bringing her back too soon, he decided; he didn’t care. He would be doing it for her safety. Onc
e he’d decided, he was rewarded with a huge sense of relief, like a weight lifted from his chest.

  His decision made, Adair sprang into action. He knew which spell he’d use to bring her back; he’d selected it in advance and had put it aside in a special place so it would be at hand when the time came. He spent the predawn hours preparing the room: surrounding her with candles; drawing the proper magic circle on the floor, making it large enough to protect them both; anointing her with purified water and oils.

  He wondered, fleetingly, as he toasted certain buds and leaves and ground them into a fine powder, if such steps were still necessary. After all, he’d been able to summon the sea to return Lanore to him with no ceremony, no trappings or incantations, nothing more than desire, and that success seemed proof enough of the power he had at his command.

  Adair waited until midnight, the time when the two worlds were closest. He went through with the old steps—he lit the candles, smudged Lanore with ashes, splashed her with the potion he’d prepared. If nothing else, all that was ceremony, a way to still his mind and help him focus, not unlike any religious service. He likened it to going into an oracular trance, losing himself in the deep concentration required for the task that lay ahead. Unlike an oracle, however, he was not making himself a channel through which the gods might speak, but preparing a channel through which he could access a power on the other side. He was readying himself to wield—dare he say it?—a godlike power. But that was the feeling exactly: when he tapped into the hidden realm, he felt he was a god among men.

  Tonight, as he attempted to reach the underworld, he felt at once that something wasn’t right. The space between the two worlds didn’t feel charged and electric, as it normally did. When he’d sent Lanore into the underworld, the void had felt alive, a living stream that he could move and shape with his two hands. Tonight it felt sluggish and unreceptive, almost as though it was actively trying to resist him. He needed to reach into that river of energy, find Lanore’s soul from among the masses, and bring her back to earth. But it wasn’t working out that way tonight.

  Adair had thought it would be similar to bringing Jonathan back from the hereafter, which he had done one cold night in St. Andrew, Maine, at the graveside. Half of the work in a resurrection was done by the body, as the bond between body and soul was strong. A soul wanted to be with its body. This was why a soul would remain closely tethered to the earthly plane for thirty, forty days before returning to the infinite beyond, where all energy eventually returned—at least, this was how ancient religious stories had described the process. Lanore’s body should be calling to her, too, but for some reason her soul wasn’t responding. It made Adair think that perhaps someone was stopping her from returning; someone was actively holding on to her soul.

  Adair kept trying, nonetheless. He kept searching through a murky emptiness, trying to find the presence—the thin electric feeling that connected him to his companions—that would lead him to Lanore. He wandered in the void for hours until he was exhausted, and broke off just before dawn. He woke, still kneeling beside Lanore in the study, to find the candles had guttered and the fire had long gone to ash. His head ached, and he tumbled to the floor in a swoon.

  Revived, Adair sat on the floor in the cold gray light of morning, going over his options. Trying to call Lanore back was futile without the vial. Which meant there was only one way left for him to get her back, and that was to go into the underworld after her . . . which was exactly what he’d hoped to avoid. But this whole business with Lanore meant that someone was out to trap him, and his inability to recall Lanore’s soul might be the final proof of this.

  He looked restlessly at Lanore’s still figure, pale as chalk in the silver light of early morning. What choice did he have? If it had been anyone but Lanore, he would’ve left her in the underworld. Adair allowed himself one last fleeting recrimination—hadn’t he’d told Lanore several times that she shouldn’t go? Clearly the girl couldn’t think straight when it came to Jonathan—but he caught himself before his emotions got the better of him. That would be unfair to Lanore; now that he’d experienced the dreams for himself, Adair could see how frightening they were. Lanore had been enticed into going after Jonathan, just as he was being enticed into going after Lanore. Whoever was responsible for this trap was diabolical, Adair resolved.

  The time for equivocation had passed, Adair decided as he clambered to his feet. If he had any reservations about descending to the underworld, it would be better to demure now. But he had no doubts, not really. His only regret was that he wasn’t ready for his life to be over, but if living on meant losing Lanore, there was no choice.

  He was ready to go into the underworld after Lanore—and on making this decision, Adair experienced something like a frisson at the back of his mind. It was the briefest memory, a stab of immense pain and frustration. It quickly rippled across his consciousness like a wave crossing a lake and then ebbed away. This peculiar sensation set his teeth on edge. Was his subconscious trying to tell him something, a fragment of his deep, distant past trying to come back to him?

  Or perhaps, he thought wearily, he was reading too much into it. It might’ve been nothing more than a single memory breaking away from the shoals of the past and rising to the front of his consciousness, like a bubble breaking on the water’s surface. Surely these blips of memory were to be expected. He knew exactly how he would descend into the underworld; he’d do it by force of will alone, just as he’d summoned the sea. He made only two preparations: One, with a single thought, he sealed up the fortress so no one would be able to get in, either accidently or by stealth, while he and Lanore lay helpless within. And second, he used strips of silk to bind himself to Lanore, tying one of her wrists to his, and doing the same with their feet—so that if she awakened and stirred, he might be wakened, too.

  It was a risky journey. There was no one on earth he could ask to stand over him the way he’d stood over Lanore. There was no one he could petition to be the fail-safe who would bring them back. Once he’d found Lanore, if it wasn’t within Adair’s power to return them both, they’d be trapped in the underworld, quite possibly forever. But if that was the result, so be it, he resolved. He’d rather be with Lanore in the underworld than remain on earth without her.

  Good-bye, world, he thought as he pressed next to Lanore on the pillows and took her hand in his. Good-bye, life. It was time for his last great adventure. On one level, he looked forward to it, for there had been a time when he liked to tempt fate and didn’t worry about risking his neck. When had he gotten so concerned about his own safety? he wondered. He’d been rattling around the fortress for a long time, waiting for Lanore to return to him. It felt good to be doing something.

  But part of him was anxious. No one could possibly wish to go to the underworld. It seemed, by its very definition, to be a place one went unwillingly. What’s more, Adair couldn’t help feeling that he’d been this way before, even though he knew this couldn’t be true. He’d never died. Here was a question for the philosophers: Could a thing be true and untrue at the same time? He supposed he was about to find out. Without an oath, and with only a backward glance at the dark abyss that seemed to follow him always, Adair slipped away.

  NINETEEN

  The demons wasted no time in fulfilling the queen’s order. While one guard held Jonathan, a nasty-looking brute descended on me. They whisked me out of the chamber and hustled me down a long circular staircase that went on forever, like a corkscrew burrowing to the center of the earth.

  The stairs finally petered out, dumping us into the very bowels of the castle, where we proceeded to travel down a long catacomb, skulls and bones peeking out at us from where they’d been lined up on deep shelves. We passed narrow doorways that seemed to lead to dark hollows and from which could be heard the occasional groan or moan.

  At last we arrived at our destination, a low-ceilinged circular room. The mouth to the pit sat at the center, the opening perhaps eight feet in diameter and c
overed with a huge iron grate. I watched the demons lift the grate using brute force only, no pulleys or winches. The muscles in their arms and across their massive backs popped and strained from the effort, as they lifted it off the ground and pushed it aside to reveal a black hole. One of the demons waved his torch over the opening so we might see into it, but the light barely made any headway at all against the darkness. “You’ll fall for days before you reach the bottom of this pit, sweeting,” he told me matter-of-factly.

  “You don’t really mean to throw me in,” I said in a frantic attempt to reason with him.

  “No worries, love,” said the other demon. “When you finally reach the bottom, you’ll find you have some company. There’s a right villainous fellow down there waiting for you, an enemy of the gods. He hasn’t seen another soul for a thousand years. Imagine his surprise, when you drop in on him.” The two demons laughed snidely.

  “It won’t matter if you’re broken from head to toe from the fall. He hasn’t had a woman in a thousand years—he’s going to swive you in two, he is,” the first demon said gleefully. He stumbled on some loose stones with his clumsy cloven hooves, and almost pitched headfirst into the pit, much to his companion’s amusement. To cover up his embarrassment, he turned on me with a snarl and shoved the torch into his companion’s hands, and then took me by the arm and, with one clean jerk, threw me over the edge.

  I fell down, down, down through open space. Instinctively, I flailed my arms and kicked my feet, but it made no difference. I seemed to be centered in the shaft, for I fell straight down, not brushing or bouncing against the jagged walls. My flailing hands caught nothing. I tried very hard not to scream, not wanting to give the demons the satisfaction, but failed, a high, thin scream slipping past my lips.

  It did indeed feel as though I fell for a very long time. It felt so long, in fact, that I was still falling when I started to recover my senses and the feeling of panic began to subside. I could think objectively about what was happening to me, as Alice in Wonderland had. And eventually my journey came to an end. As impossible as it seemed, I started to decelerate. Now descending as slowly as a feather, I saw the bottom of the pit come toward me. Oddly, it was lit with a soft, suffused glow. As I got closer, I saw someone waiting for me—an ordinary man and not a demon as I’d begun to fear. He was dressed in rags, with a cloth that wound around his neck and covered his head, like a monk’s cowl, so that I couldn’t see his face.