Now she was sure the darkness was moving. U-ri squinted and was able to make out a vague outline. Whatever it was, it was huge.
“Gulg!” Ash called out again. He sighed. “Weep here for another century if you like. Nothing will be resolved, and nothing new will begin. This is your best chance to atone for what you’ve done. Miss this moment, and you will never be saved, not for an eternity. You know that.”
From someplace near the floor came the sound of something wet sliding across stone. A memory rose in U-ri’s mind, jarringly out of place. Her mother was washing the whole family’s blankets. She did it once every year, using a special detergent for wool and lots of fabric softener. U-ri had helped her. It was hard keeping the blankets from falling on the ground. It had taken both of them just to pull the things out of the washing machine—
“Master Gulg,” Dr. Latore joined Ash. “Please.”
“Perhaps he objects to his new name,” Ash remarked, a sharpness to his voice. “We could call you by your original name, Ichiro Minochi.”
U-ri’s eyes went wide. She took a step back. Behind her, the candle on the wall sizzled, sending up a plume of inky smoke.
“Ichiro Minochi?” My great-uncle? The one who owned the cottage in the mountains? The eccentric, rich hermit who traveled the world in search of ancient books is here?
U-ri knew him only by his name. She had never seen his face. Up until the previous year, she hadn’t even known he existed. Of course she knew more about Ichiro Minochi now than she had ever wanted to. About how he had been trying to raise the dead, and how he had obtained the Book of Elem.
A face loomed up, pale and white behind the bars. It appeared so quickly, and so low to the ground—about the height of U-ri’s knees—that U-ri gasped and practically jumped out of her skin.
She could see his face clearly from the hairline down.
It was that of an old man—Japanese, with streaks of white in his eyebrows. His cheeks were sunken, the skin dry, and the flesh below his drooping eyes and around his mouth was torn and scarred.
But his eyes were the bright eyes of a boy in his tenth summer looking up at a cotton candy cloud scudding through a blue sky. Red veins ran through the bloodshot whites—it was his pupils that were islands of youth, floating amidst an aged face. Tears began to streak down his thin cheeks, leaving his skin red and sore where they passed.
“Great-uncle?” U-ri called out, and the old man’s face fell even closer to the floor, his eyes cast downward in shame.
“You’re really Ichiro Minochi?” U-ri said. “I’m Yuriko, your brother’s granddaughter.”
U-ri took a step forward, then hunched over to get nearer to the face. She reached out a hand and her fingers touched the bars in front of her. She grabbed one. Then she knelt even lower. She had to in order to look Minochi in the eye.
“I’d heard that you were dead. They said you died in France—but you left our region and came here, to the Haetlands. Why? I’ve been to the cottage, and your reading room. They’re just as you left them.”
Minochi receded into the cavern. The darkness swallowed his face. There came another sound like something heavy and wet scraping across the floor, and the tiny choking sound of a man holding back sobs.
U-ri pressed her forehead to the bars. “I know that you had the Book of Elem. After you disappeared, my family visited your cottage in the mountains, and we found the reading room. That’s where my brother found the book. The Hero got him, Mr. Minochi. My brother became the last vessel.”
U-ri heard more weeping from the darkness, coming from a spot just above the floor. The sound seemed to creep along the bottom of the cavern, wrapping itself around her ankles, traveling up her legs, then her entire body to her ears.
“I’m looking for my brother. Ash said you might have information that would help me find him. That’s why I’m here. Please,” U-ri said, lowering herself so she was now lying on the floor. “Please. If you know anything about where my brother might be, tell me. You know a lot about the Book of Elem, don’t you? You know what happens to people who are taken by the Hero? You know how I can find my brother? What am I supposed to do? Where do I go—”
Without a word, Ash grabbed U-ri by the shoulder and pulled her away from the bars.
The pale face of the old man reappeared from the darkness. He had given up trying to hold back the tears and wept openly now. His eyelids were red and swollen.
“I’m sorry.”
The dry lips opened and he spoke. His face floated closer to U-ri, then quickly drew away. U-ri smelled something in the air, a musty, raw stench. What is that? His breath? It smelled like the old fishing net wrapped around a rotting post at the corner of a dock she had discovered on a trip with her parents to the aquarium the summer before. It had been so dirty and smelly that even when her father told her what it was, she didn’t dare go near it. She had been convinced the abandoned net was a sea monster, up from the depths of the ocean to sneak onto shore for a bit of sun.
“Forgive me,” Minochi was saying, bowing his head over and over. U-ri caught a glimpse of something above the face.
What was that?
It looked like hair growing out in a bundle from the top of his head. It was jet black, a stark contrast to the peppered eyebrows on his face. Then it seemed to her that the dark clump was too thick to be hair. It was more like a large rubber hose—or maybe I’m seeing things.
“It is all my fault. I brought the Book of Elem into our region. I deciphered it and called forth that which slept within its pages.”
Though the man’s voice was almost entirely strangled with his sobbing, she could make out the words quite clearly. It reached her ears unfiltered by the vestments of protection. He was speaking Japanese.
“I was punished,” Minochi continued, tears dripping from his eyes. “The severity of my punishment was such that I could no longer remain in my own region, and so I fled here. I wanted to forget my transgression, cast away my responsibilities. I left my cottage and all my books and I ran.”
U-ri’s heart had begun to strain against her. It wanted to leave. Soon her entire body joined in the rebellion. It wanted to flee. Every bone in her body wanted to be as far away from this place as possible. U-ri had to grab onto the bars tighter to keep herself from running away.
“Are you talking about how you tried to raise the dead? That is why you sought magical power, isn’t it?”
The weathered, pale face nodded.
“And that’s why you wanted a record of Kirrick’s life? Because of the clues it might contain to the spells he used?”
Minochi’s face, still twisted in grief, shifted from one side of his enclosure to the other. U-ri watched it move but couldn’t comprehend what was happening. His face slid about six feet to the left, maintaining an even height of a foot or so off the floor. She couldn’t see how someone could move like that, even crouched on the floor or lying on their side.
Warning bells went off in U-ri’s head. This is too much, her body was screaming. It’s not natural! I can’t stay here any longer. Something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong! U-ri gripped the bars so tightly her joints ached all up and down her arms.
“U-ri,” the thing said in a thick voice that rumbled in its throat. “That is your name here, is it not?” Minochi’s eyes looked at her. His head lifted until it was even with her shoulders. “It is my fault for bringing the Book of Elem to your brother, my fault that he became the last vessel. I cannot apologize to you enough. You have the right to blame me, to take my very life for what I have done to your family.”
U-ri was speechless. Even in the weak candlelight that seemed so ineffectual against the concentrated darkness of the cavern, her eyes were beginning to adjust. She was starting to see more beyond the bars—whether she wanted to or not.
The outline of Ichiro Minochi’s body came into view on the other side of the gate. U-ri didn’t even have to strain to see it now.
He was enormous. Large enough to fil
l the entirety of his solitary cell. And he wasn’t human.
“That’s enough of your maudlin prattle,” Ash said from somewhere above U-ri’s head. His tone was even and devoid of emotion. “If you want to die so badly, take your own life.”
Ash grabbed U-ri by the arm then, lifted her to her feet, and pulled her away from Minochi. But U-ri’s fingers still clung to the bars. They were frozen, hooked around the metal like claws.
She had never felt so terrified before. I can’t even move.
“Just tell us one thing before you die,” Ash was saying. “Where is the Hero? You of all people should know, after the power you drew from the Book of Elem.”
Ichiro Minochi’s pale face looked down at the floor. She could see him even more clearly now. The thick strands growing from the top of his head weren’t hair. They looked like tubes of rubber, shining darkly, with many jointed segments along their length. When the tubes bent they made a faint rattling noise, like a beetle walking across a crisp sheet of paper.
“If the Hero used the Book of Elem as its key to escape—” Minochi was talking. U-ri now realized that what had sounded at first like a rasp or a tremble in his voice was just noise resulting from an inhuman physiology. Her great-uncle’s voice wasn’t coming from a throat as she knew it but from some other organ entirely.
The rattling sound grew louder. Ichiro Minochi’s face swayed from side to side, as if a breeze rocked the bundle of cords that stretched down from the ceiling.
The heavy, wet sliding sound drifted up again from the floor.
“It will seek Kirrick’s flesh.”
“You mean Kirrick’s body?” Ash asked sharply.
“Indeed.” The pale visage nodded. “After his death, Kirrick’s body was divided into eight pieces, each placed in magically sealed coffins and buried in the earth. The Hero will try to retrieve those coffins, revive Kirrick’s flesh, and inhabit it.”
U-ri heard the sound of someone breathing quietly. It was Dr. Latore. He had come up close behind her and was now reaching around her on both sides, his hands touching hers where they clutched at the iron bars. Gently, he began removing her fingers from the bars, peeling them off one by one.
He began with the thumb on her right hand. Then her index finger. She could hear him breathing by her ear.
“There is no talk of what you say in any of the legends or records,” Ash protested. “What the legends do say is that Kirrick died in battle. His remains were tossed together with those of a hundred other soldiers. He doesn’t even have a grave!”
For the first time, Ichiro Minochi laughed. “Yet what I have told you I had from Kirrick himself! His spirit still resides in the Book of Elem, you know. It spoke to me.”
The fingers on U-ri’s right hand were now completely free of the bars. Dr. Latore began working on the left. One hand free, U-ri began to tremble like a dry leaf in the wind.
“Tell me where the graves are, then. All eight of them.”
Minochi’s face drifted to one side. “Tell you? No, knowledge is not to be dispensed, but seized by one’s own hands. Only then is it truly useful.”
“I’ll show you useful, you fiend,” Ash said, raising his voice.
U-ri’s left hand slipped from the bars, and Dr. Latore dragged her quickly backward just as Minochi’s face came lunging forward. With a loud clang, his forehead smacked against the iron bars.
He was laughing loudly, his mouth a gaping hole bordered by sunken cheeks in that pale face. His eyes burned with a wild black flame.
U-ri clung to the doctor. He wrapped the sleeves of his robes around her.
“Gulg! Remember who you once were. Remember Ichiro Minochi the human, the one they called a sage. This little one is of your blood!”
He can’t hear. He can’t hear a single thing we’re saying. He’s gone completely mad. The realization filled her with enough fear to freeze the blood solid in her veins. Her great-uncle was no longer human. He was no longer sane. His mind had become unhinged.
“In order to employ magic powerful enough to raise the dead,” Minochi said, grinning evilly, “the spell-weaver must surrender his own body as a reagent. It is the mage’s body that acts as a battery, gathering up the life energies that flow through the Circle, bringing them together, storing them.
“Life energies are the energies of chaos,” he continued, beginning to ramble. “It is the raw primal force. The more one gathers, the greater the pressure one must face—only those who can control it, who can fight it and win, can pass that energy on to the dead.”
Minochi giggled. “I was successful. But still a far cry from what Kirrick was able to accomplish—”
“Why?” U-ri asked, though she found that she didn’t particularly want to know the answer. “What did you lack?”
“I…I gathered the life energies, and—”
“We’ve heard enough, Ash!” Dr. Latore said. “We need to leave now.”
Dr. Latore began to move back toward the gate, still clutching U-ri in his arms. U-ri dug her heels into the cavern floor, resisting. She couldn’t take her eyes off her great-uncle. She couldn’t escape the burning black flame of his gaze.
“No! What happened after that?”
“U-ri!”
Ichiro Minochi’s mouth opened wide. A black tongue snaked out. U-ri noticed that all of his teeth had fallen out.
“My body could not withstand the energy, no, no—I did not lose. I merely changed into a form better suited to contain the energies I sought!” Minochi’s eyes flared then, and his laughter was full of pride. The light from his eyes grew until all darkness was abolished from the cavern. U-ri could see the entire chamber now, from corner to corner. On the other side of the bars, Ichiro Minochi’s shape was revealed.
“Witness, young allcaste. This is my true form. This is my true power!”
He looked like a black lump of foulness, a heap of putrescent mud piled high into a mound. His skin was black and wet; it glistened in the light and was stacked in layers, here retracting, there bulging out. It was impossible to tell which parts had originally been arms and which legs. He looked like a collection of rubber hoses tangled in a mass of rotten seaweed.
Then the mass moved, and she spotted tentacles rising from it. One, two, three rose from the black mound, snaking out into the cavern. Each tentacle was covered with countless suckers, like an octopus’s legs. The suckers opened and closed with every twitch of the mound. They were hungry, thirsty, lusting for nourishment, lusting for everything.
And Ichiro Minochi’s gaunt face hung from the end of one of those tentacles, like someone’s devilish idea of a lantern.
U-ri screamed. She didn’t make any words, just screamed, and screamed, and screamed some more. Dr. Latore carried her from the cavern in his arms. With her head hanging back, she screamed the entire way.
Dr. Latore sped like the wind through gate after gate, gently holding U-ri’s head to him with one hand. She buried her face in his chest, her screams eventually becoming one repeated, frantic demand: Get me out! Get me out of here! Get me out!
Her last gargled scream trailed off, and U-ri slumped in the doctor’s arms, her breath exhausted. U-ri’s eyes closed and she lost consciousness, slipping from the darkness of the cavern bottom into a darkness even more total and silent.
“Hiroki?”
U-ri stood in a darkness so pitch black, she felt like she had lost the power of sight completely.
“Hiroki, are you there?”
Then, in the distance, she saw her brother’s face. He was pale, frail, and thin—but it was him. It was Hiroki Morisaki. He was smiling. He lifted an arm and waved to her.
Goodbye.
“Wait! Don’t go!”
U-ri wanted to chase him. If I run really fast, I can still catch him. But her feet wouldn’t move. Though her mind willed them to race ahead, she took not one step.
Hiroki’s pale face receded even further into the distance.
“Hiroki!”
U-ri not
iced that something was wrong with his hands. They had turned into black tentacles. U-ri flinched, then looked at her own hands as they reached out for him.
They were transforming into something longer, something sleeker—glistening black.
“No!” U-ri shouted, leaping from her dream back into reality. She was sitting up in bed, a blanket falling from her. In front of her stood not Hiroki, but Sky. His purple eyes met hers.
U-ri’s entire body was tense, and cold sweat ran in rivulets down her skin. She noticed her bed felt unusually hard. She looked again, and found that she was amongst the rubble of the Katarhar Abbey ruins. She had been lying not on a bed, but on the top of a fallen square pillar.
“Lady U-ri—” Sky stood from where he had been squatting next to the pillar and reached out a hand to support her. U-ri shrank away. Sky stepped back in surprise, his open arms hanging stupidly in the air for a moment before he thought to cross them at his chest.
U-ri felt something cool on her cheek. It was wet. I’ve been crying. It’s so cold here.
The blue sky stretched above U-ri’s head. White clouds drifted off to somewhere along the horizon, their bellies pink with the late afternoon sun.
U-ri took a deep breath. The cool, clear air filled her lungs. The rhythm of her swiftly beating heart began to slow. She took another breath, deeper this time. She coughed, but with every inhale, her breath came easier to her.
“U-ri, it’s us.”
That’s Aju’s voice. Where are you?
She spotted him on Sky’s shoulder. He crinkled his nose and shook his whiskers in the air. “You mind if I come over? You aren’t going to flinch and knock me off, right?”
Aju’s ears and the tip of his nose were red in the chill air. Sky hugged his arms to his shoulders against the cold.
“Both of you come here. You too, Sky.”
U-ri reached out her arms. Aju jumped to her and she slipped him inside her collar. She took Sky by the hand and pulled him close, hugging him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m all right now.” U-ri began to cry.