her hand, scanning the stone-walled corridor behind her, trying to determine from which direction the yelling had come. She was sure it had echoed to them from the right, opposite the way she had entered. Her eyes returned to Varen, tracing the split above his lip, and she dreaded having to say the words she needed to now.
“Varen.” She kept her voice measured. “Do you hear that? I have to go help Brad.”
He lifted his eyes to hers, and, despite their blackness, she could not mistake the hatred that burned within their centers. She swallowed, choosing her words carefully. “They—they’re hurting him,” she said. “He may deserve a lot, but he doesn’t deserve to die. I know you understand that. I’ll come back to get you, too, okay?”
“Because,” she said with a gasp, unable to fathom the source of his question, or his tone. “Because I love you, that’s why.”
He turned his head and looked away from her, back into the chamber.
“Listen.” She gripped the window frame. “We’ll fix it, okay? We’ll find a way.”
“It’s too late.” It was scarcely a whisper.
“Don’t say that! There
His eyes regarded her once more, and this time she searched them for her reflection, for any evidence of light. But they returned only a blackness so pure, so frighteningly bottomless, that it took all of her willpower not to turn away.
“Say okay. Please?” she pleaded.
He stared at her.
Another scream split the stillness. The shrill sound of it ratcheted up her spine and, reaching through her like a clawed hand, seized her heart with a clutching grip. She winced. “Varen, they’re killing him. I have to go try to stop it. But you have to say okay first. Please. Say that you know I’m coming back. Just say okay. For me?”
He looked down.
She shook her head. “Don’t you believe me?” Her eyes stung with the threat of tears. She could hardly stand to see him this way. It was as though the Varen she knew had been consumed, replaced by this husk of despair, his soul recessed so deeply within that no light could reach it. If there was only some way she could prove that it was the real her who stood before him, and not some phantom imposter. If she only had something to give him, some sort of proof. Or just something to leave with him. A token. A promise. Anything, as long as it was something as real and solid as her.
Isobel ran her hands over her dress, fingers fumbling, grasping for something to give him.
Then her hands stopped on the ribbon tied around her waist. She let her fingers follow the smooth satin fabric to the bow at her back. With nimble fingers, she unlaced the knot and it slipped free from her waist with a soft whisper.
“Here,” she said. Reaching through the jagged hole in the window, she offered him the ribbon. “Take this,” she said. “It’s mine, and I’m coming back for it, so
At first he only stared at the ribbon, but then he lifted one of those elegant hands to touch the fabric. Then their fingers brushed as he slowly pulled the satin free, winding it around his own hand. As she drew back, she saw his fingers curl around it in a fist. Clutching it, something within him seemed to stir. His brow furrowed in confusion, as if there were something about the pink ribbon now encircling his hand that he couldn’t quite understand.
“Listen,” she said. Around them, Brad’s screams continued, building in volume, curdling into a crescendo of utter terror. Isobel struggled to concentrate on her words with the sound of Brad’s anguished shrieks echoing in her ears. “Try—try to open the doors. Reynolds—My friend says that if . . . that if you know you’re dreaming, then you can control things. So try to open the doors, okay? Try. If you can’t, then just wait here for me.”
She stood and began to edge backward, away from the window, hardly able to stand the thought of leaving him there, alone. But she had to do something for Brad. She couldn’t let him die or continue to be tortured like this. Whatever was happening to him, she had to make it stop.
“Isobel?” Varen called to her in a whisper.
“Hold on,” she said. “Hold on and wait. For me.” She turned away from him, toward the direction of the screaming, which came now between bursts of a pounding sound like someone beating their fists against a bolted door. She began to run.
“Isobel!”
“I’ll be right back, I promise!” These last words echoed through the passageway around her.
43
The Oblong Box
The passageway ahead grew colder, narrower, and more maze-like. Her breath clouded in front of her, visible even in the fading light.
She listened again for the sound of screams but heard whispers instead. They seeped through the walls.
Isobel slowed her run and pressed closer to the damp stone, her fingers trailing as she strained to hear. The voices seemed to be moving along beside her, through whatever room lay on the other side.
She hurried along the passageway, struggling to keep up with the lingering sound of a long, low moan, one that had issued from the midst of the hissing snickers and low cackles. One she knew belonged to Brad.
She rounded the next bend, suddenly finding herself within a large circular room. Dark doorways lined the walls, each like the gaping mouth of a monster. Knowing there was no time to deliberate, she took one on her left, a tunnel-like entrance. This snaking pathway of stone, mortar, and dampness seemed to take her down and down. So far that the whispers and groaning faded. Along the walls and clinging to the stone overhangs, Isobel could make out the edges of a crystallized white substance. She hesitated, wondering if she should turn back, if she’d taken the right way. Was there a right way?
She pressed forward, lured through the blindfold of darkness by the promise of a glimmering, uneven light that danced against a portion of the stone wall far ahead. Shoulders hunched against the damp and cold, she passed one hand along the gritted wall to guide her. Something hard crunched under her feet, and Isobel willed herself not to look, not to even imagine what sort of matter covered the floor.
She stepped into the pocket of dim light, which illuminated a bridgelike portion of the passageway, one that overhung a vast and open vault of catacombs. Her eyes followed the orange-yellow flickering to its meager source —a torch. There, far below, a man worked in solitude. Divested of his cloak and coat, a trowel in one hand, he busied himself in laying a brick wall across a gaping black archway.
A clanking echoed from within the hole, as though from chains. A tingling of bells issued forth, and Isobel froze, her eyes widening with the realization that there was someone inside the recess. At once she recalled the pair of men she’d heard when she had first stepped through the doorway that had transformed into the ebony clock. There had been one with a mask and a cloak, and hadn’t the other worn a hat with bells?
The man working to wall up the hole paused, a brick in one hand. Slowly he turned his head until his eyes met with hers. She fell back with a gasp, then plunged headlong down the darkened path.
She ran, the floor snapping and popping underfoot.
Around the next corner, at the end of the long corridor, Isobel saw a shaft of soft blue light. It streamed through an open archway, and she sped toward it. Her footing slipped on the jagged edge of something hard, and she tripped forward, slamming onto the stone, sending up a rush of dust.
The light confirmed her worst fears. Bones and ash scattered the floor.
Her fingers curled in the grit as she pushed herself onto her knees.
Hand shaking, Isobel slid her fingers beneath what had looked to her a moment before like the cap of an ancient skull. It was, instead, the broken sliver of a porcelain face, the curve of a cheek all too evident in the
