Nightspell

Darri awoke to complete darkness and to muf led sounds coming from outside her door. For a moment she thought she had woken too early, and turned her face into her pil ow. Then she remembered: if there was no light creeping in around the draperies, that meant it was night, and here, that meant it was day.

Darri groaned and buried her face in the silk pil ow. Her eyes were blurry, and every one of her limbs protested the thought of moving. Yesterday the light creeping through the narrow spaces between drapes and wal s had kept her tossing and turning for hours before she slept. And that had been after similarly fruitless hours spent wandering the hal s looking for her sister.

Then someone knocked on her door, and Darri rol ed over and sat up instantly. “Cal ie?”

“It’s me, Your Highness,” a voice said. The door opened, let ing in the sounds of movement and conversation from the hal outside. “Meandra, your maid? I was wondering if you might need assistance?”

Darri just looked at her, so long and intently that the maid flushed and stepped back, drawing her shoulders together. She’s afraid of me, Darri recognized with astonishment, and felt a wave of relief. Surely the dead didn’t feel fear.

“Of course,” she said, and the maid looked at her wide eyed. She was young and drab-looking, with a round face and brown hair tied back in a bun. “I’m not accustomed to—that is, I can dress myself. But I may need your assistance with other things.”

The girl’s eyes went even wider; clearly she suspected “other things” was code for something foreign, dif icult, and immoral. But she crept into the room and closed the door behind her.

The room plunged back into darkness. A moment later the tinderbox near the door sparked into light. The maid—Meandra—carried a candle around the room, solemnly lighting every one of the five lamps in it. When she was done, the room was as bright as day.

They must go through barrels and barrels of oil. On the plains oil was scarce, and once the sun set people worked in the dimmest light they could manage with—or, bet er yet, just went to sleep. Of course, that wasn’t an option here.

The thought of home sent a wave of hope through her, almost painful in its intensity. For so long . . . for weeks, or truly, years . . . she hadn’t thought of the plains as home. The stretches of long grass, the horse races, the hunts and the firelit feasts that fol owed, the quiet dark nights with the wind beating at her tent . . . every bit of happiness she’d felt had been tinged by guilt, because Cal ie wasn’t there to enjoy it with her.

Ever since her father had announced his new plan, she had been prepared to give it al up. To trade herself for Cal ie and leave the plains behind, spend her life trapped in a nightmare so Cal ie could escape it. Until last night, when she had found out that the prince was dead, that there was no reason for either of them to stay. If she handled it right, she and Cal ie could ride out of here side by side. And once they were back on the plains, Darri would never let anyone take her sister away again.

Keeping her eyes on the floor, Meandra clasped her hands together and addressed the braided rug at the foot of Darri’s bed. “I was instructed to ask whether Your Highness would be interested in joining tonight’s hunt.”

“Yes,” Darri said instantly. She swung her legs over the side of the bed before her mind caught up with her mouth. “Instructed by whom?”

The girl dared a glance at her, then hastily returned her eyes to the rug. “Your Highness?”

“Who invited me along on the hunt?”

“The—the court, Your Highness.”

Darri forced herself to sound patient. “Which specific person instructed you to ask me?”

“M-mistress Annabel, Your Highness. The housekeeper.”

Right. No help there. Darri sighed and slid of the bed. As she started toward the clothes chests lined up along the wal , she said, “Do you know if my sister was invited along?”

“I’m sure she was, Your Highness. But Lady Cal ie does not enjoy hunting.”

Darri turned around and stared, which was a mistake. It reduced the maid to a quivering mass of terror. “She doesn’t enjoy hunting?”

Meandra stumbled over a quick protestation that she might be mistaken, it probably wasn’t true, she should not have presumed. A few more pointed questions did nothing but increase the ratio of stut ers to words.

Final y Darri gave up, dismissed her—a bit shortly—and turned her at ention to finding appropriate clothes.

Darri loved to hunt. It was the primary form of entertainment on the plains, and even among a tribe of warriors who rode before they walked, she was one of the best. She could use the opportunity to talk to some of the nobles, try to figure out what had happened to Cal ie to make her so unreachable.

And in the meantime, it would be fun to show this castleful of overdressed courtiers what a Rael ian princess could do.

A sudden sound made Cal ie sit straight up. She could stil feel the impression of the couch fabric on her neck and back; she rol ed her shoulders instinctively, but they didn’t ache, even though she must have been asleep for hours. She had fal en asleep on the couch long after the card party ended, because she’d had nowhere else to go. She was sure if she had gone to her bedchambers, Darri would have been there waiting for her.

to go. She was sure if she had gone to her bedchambers, Darri would have been there waiting for her.

The lamps had gone out, and the windowless room was pitch-black and cold. She had been asleep for a long time. In the darkness, someone had just knocked something over.

“Jano?” she said, ignoring her pounding heart. This was the sort of opportunity he would love. Scaring the living, and especial y scaring her, was one of his favorite pastimes.

Reminding herself firmly that she was no longer easy to scare, Cal ie reached over the arm of the couch, groping for a lamp.

A hand clamped over her wrist. “Don’t.”

The hand was cold and clammy, but the voice was worse: dry, raspy, and gut ural, as if it was being forced through a mouthful of dirt. Cal ie twisted and went for the lamp with her other hand.

Two seconds later she was on the floor, her head slamming against the far wal ; she had been lifted by her arm and tossed across the room. Cal ie drew her knees up and bit her lip to keep in a whimper.

That inhuman voice rat led out of the darkness: “I said ‘don’t.’”

Suddenly Cal ie felt very much like the terrified child she had been when she first arrived in Ghostland. She didn’t even think of get ing to her feet, or running, or fighting. Something about that voice drained every ounce of wil from her. She hugged her knees to her chest and forced her voice through her tightening throat. “What do you want?”

“I am here to do you a favor.”

That was bet er than to kil you. But only by a lit le; Cal ie was familiar with Ghostland “favors.” She took a deep breath, trying to figure out who was doing this. “Lovely,” she said. She had learned long ago how wel sarcasm masked fear.

“Or rather, to do your siblings a favor.”

“Even bet er,” Cal ie said. “I’m eternal y grateful.”

The laugh was worse than the voice. “You think you don’t care about them? Then you need do nothing when I tel you where they are.”

A prickle ran up Cal ie’s spine. In this castle there were places—people—whom it was wel -advised to stay away from. Darri would have no way of knowing that.

She tried to tel herself Darri deserved to know what it felt like, but she couldn’t make it convincing. Darri was here, after al . She had come wil ingly to this terrible place, where the dead walked with the living as if they belonged on this earth. And she had come for Cal ie. Cal ie pushed herself up from the floor, her mouth set.“Where,” she said, “are they?”

Chapter Four

It didn’t take Darri long to discover that being the best rider on the plains was of lit le relevance on a Ghostland hunt.

When the horns blew in the distance and the riders around her streamed forward, she found herself enveloped by darkness. The foliage overhead hid the light of the moon, and the enclosed torch on her saddle pommel, ingenious as it was, barely lit the area past her horse’s head. She couldn’t see what was in front of his hooves at al . She hesitated for a moment—a moment too long, al owing the lights of the other saddles to get ahead of her. Then she grit ed her teeth and dug her heels into the stal ion’s sides.

It had been years since Darri had been afraid of fal ing of a horse. But as her mount plunged through darkness, fol owing the baying of the hounds, fear rose in her throat and lodged there. She had seen it happen —horses losing their footing on uneven terrain, going over, crushing their riders beneath them. Her horse stumbled several times, and with each stagger she nearly stopped breathing. She couldn’t prepare for a fal because she couldn’t see.

Branches whipped out of the blackness at her, slicing at her face and hair and arms, invisible until they hit her. She crouched low over the horse’s neck, so low it made her feel even more of balance, but a sturdy branch would knock her to the ground more surely than a misstep. She had never seen that happen, because no Rael ian rider would ever be so careless.

This was madness. Even if al the courtiers on this hunt were outpacing her, it was stil insanity. Shame bat led fear, and she felt herself pul ing back on the reins despite her best intentions. She had not asked how many people died on a typical night ime hunt. Maybe the Ghostlanders didn’t fear death the way normal people did.

She thought again of the contempt in their eyes, and loosened her grip. Her horse surged forward, his powerful muscles sliding beneath her; then, just as she was leaning into his pace, he stumbled and came to an abrupt stop. Darri, completely unprepared, was thrown forward.

The last time Darri had fal en of a horse without being pushed, she had been seven years old and trying to switch from one steed to another at ful gal op. The second horse had pul ed a bit too far ahead, and she had fal en flat on her face in the thick prairie grass. Varis had laughed at her, then helped her round up the horses.

Now she pitched forward into darkness, her hands stil on the reins, her face scraping against her horse’s hide. The world inverted as she somersaulted in the air, and the reins jerked away from her fingers. She landed on her back with an impact that knocked the breath out of her.

But even before her breath was back, she was on her feet and had found the reins. Gasping for breath, her face hot with shame, she clenched them in one sweaty hand. At least there was no one there to see. The sounds of the hunt had faded into the distance.

“Need help?”

Darri swore and looked up. A young boy with slightly crooked teeth was sit ing on a horse a few feet away.

Only the dim light of her pommel-torch lit his face; his saddle had no light, and his horse was perfectly stil . He looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember why. He also looked far too young to be along for the hunt. And he was grinning at her in a way that her bruised pride interpreted as mockery.

She bit down the words, I’m fine, which were patently untrue and would only make the smile worse. “I think I can manage,” she said. “It wil take a lit le time to adjust to riding in the dark.”

“You should have taken one of our horses. They’re trained for it.”

She turned her back on him. He watched in silence as she swung herself back into the saddle. Then he said, “Cal ie was the same way. Wouldn’t touch another horse until the steed that brought her here died.”

She turned sharply in the saddle, exactly as he must have intended her to. The mocking smile was worse, but now she recognized him. He was the boy who had been sit ing with Cal ie last night, when Cal ie had avoided Darri’s eyes and leaned over instead to talk to him.

“Who are you?” she said.

He bowed from the saddle. “Jano. Bastard son of Duke Salir the Fourth.”