Page 84 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
“With you as their king?”
His crown pulsed brighter. “As you say. But what are you waiting for, little Empress? I think you had better run.”
Lightning split the sky and thunder roared, shaking Eda from her vision. She jerked her head back to see another crack opening in the world, more and more spirits coming through.
“Eda!” Morin cried.
The spirits shrieked, pinning their wings to their sides.
They dove.
Eda grabbed Morin’s hand and pulled him through the yawning doorway into Tuer’s Mountain, Tainir at their heels.
Part Three
STARLIGHT AND SORROW
At last they reached the doorway to Tuer’s Mountain,but a spirit with a burning sword barred their way.
Chapter Thirty-Six
EDA RAN BLINDLY INTO THE DARK, MORINbeside her, Tainir at their backs, her claws clicking on stone.
The spirits came after them, teeth snapping, wings scraping the sides of the passageway. Ahead, there was nothing but blackness.
“Light.” Eda breathed it out like a prayer. “Just a little light.”
Her forehead pulsed again with heat and started to glow, enough so she could dimly see a foot ahead of her, no more.
She ran faster, and Morin matched her pace, stride for stride.
She glanced back. A mistake.
The spirits were only a heartbeat behind, forced to come one at a time through the narrow passage. One of them leapt at Tainir, who met it head on with a roar, slashing at it with her huge paws.
Morin clung to Eda’s hand. They hurtled on.
Whispers echoed far off. Laughter coiled near. Lights flickered into being and winked out again, in shades of violet and blue and green, like they had yesterday out in the snow. Eda thought she saw a blur of faces in the lights, dead eyes, moaning lips.
Terror coursed through her, and she tightened her grip on Morin’s hand, nails digging into his skin. She wished they’d had time to put their climbing harnesses back on. She got the feeling the darkness had grown hands and wanted to separate them.
They ran on, their footsteps echoing overloud in the stone tunnel. Tainir loped at their heels, a blur of white.
And then Eda and Morin and Tainir ran through a carved wooden door that slammed firmly shut behind them, an iron bar locking into place across it. The spirits clattered shrieking against the door, scraping it with swords and teeth and talons.
A shadow person stood beside the door—the one who’d shut and locked it. A girl, no older than Tainir and so faded that Eda could see all the way through her. She bowed her shadowy head and pointed on down the tunnel.
They didn’t need to be told twice—the door would not hold against the spirits forever. They ran on.
The passageway widened around them. Lanterns sprung up in the dark, illuminating a cavernous hall. Massive stone pillars stretched up from the floor and were lost somewhere far above. More shadowy people crouched behind the pillars, peering at Eda and Morin and Tainir as they raced by. Eda realized they were ghosts, souls lost and wandering with no one to guide them to their rest. Anger twisted sharp between her ribs. She hated that, despite her best efforts, her world had expanded to contain more than her thirst for vengeance. She wanted justice, now. Justice for all these wandering souls, and for the ones she’d killed as well: the Emperor. Rescarin. Niren.
She’d killed them because it suited her. She’d traded their lives for an Empire. And yet Eda was brazen enough to seek out a god, to demand he answer for his crimes when she had yet to answer for hers.
She kept her gaze fixed ahead as she ran, but she was still aware of the ghosts, more and more of them, leaving their pillars, following silently in line behind her and Morin and Tainir, like the strange wistful tail of a kite.
“Look,” said Morin softly, pulling her to a stop. Tainir pressed up warm against the backs of their legs.
They’d come to the end of the hall, where a rectangular wooden door stood shut beneath a carved stone frame. An … entity stood beside the door. It was something like a tall silvery figure, its form angular, thin, but at the same time it had no shape. It wavered like water or smoke, the only thing solid about it a pair of fierce bright eyes.
