Brood of Vipers Read online

  “What do you mean?” Helena wonders, mopping the remnants of her soup with the hardest crust of her bread to soften its texture. The formless, tasteless lump is gummy in her mouth. Still, it’s better than starving, she reminds herself, forcing her body to swallow the sticky mass before it becomes too thick to move with her tongue.

  “I mean, oh Entitled One, that the kitchens don’t supply any of this for you. I make your meals, so you’ll get what I give you or nothing at all,” Ithel grumbles, lowering his gaze to the table as he waits for her to respond. “You think I like spending my evenings skulking in the kitchen kneading dough and stirring a kettle while you dream of finer things in the infirmary beds?”

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” she chokes, wondering when Ithel finds the time to shop for supplies in the markets outside the palace walls. I am a kept woman. She silently berates herself, hating the idea of owing Ithel for this kindness. Helena has no doubt that Ithel provides this food out of his own pocket; Alaric may have great wealth at his disposal, but he’d never dip into his coffers to feed her. Guilt and embarrassment churn in Helena’s stomach as she whispers, “I didn’t know, and I did not mean to insult you. Thank you for feeding me, Ithel.”

  “Wouldn’t do you any good to starve,” he grunts in response, his cheeks turning pink at her gratitude. “We’ll see if you still want to thank me after this afternoon. Now, I haven’t forgotten that you neglected to answer my question twice, Helena. Tell me your greatest fears. Immediately.”

  “What have I to fear?” Helena exclaims bitterly, pointing to the scars on her wrists from the prison shackles. “I’ve been captured, whipped, and branded a traitor. I’ve lost everything and everyone that I have ever loved. I’ve spent my last years in the dark, dank cells of this horrible place. I’ve starved and longed for fresh air and sunlight. I’ve witnessed murder and grief and experienced every other foul human emotion we’ve got! What more can be taken from me, Ithel? What could I possibly have left to fear?”

  Her guardian ceases his meal, his jaw clenching shut as he stares hard at her. “Everyone has something that terrorizes them, Helena. Maybe you know what haunts your footsteps. Maybe you are truly blessed to live in ignorance of what terrifies you. It doesn’t matter really; I’ll find out soon enough.” His words chill her to the core as she wonders at his cryptic meaning. “Are you finished eating?” Ithel wipes his face, reaching across the table.

  As she hands him the weathered ceramic bowl, a movement catches her eye from inside it. Long, black claws curl around the rim. An eye appears next, then a wicked set of elongated, grimy teeth. “What the hell is that?” she screams, tossing the bowl to the ground. It shatters, pieces of glass skewering the shrieking monster that writhes at her feet.

  “Hello, betrayer,” An eerily familiar voice whimpers from the wide-open mouth of the creature. Though it never articulates its tongue or lips, the words are clearly spoken in the king’s singsong tone. “You are a lovely liar, aren’t you? Don’t you think I know what you’re hiding? Don’t you think I’ve already seen what haunts your darkest dreams?” The monster cuts its dark eyes toward Helena when it hears her breathing hitch, its mouth finally closing into a cunning smile. It scuttles along the floor, creeping closer to Helena’s side with long, grimy claws reaching for her pearly flesh.

  “Ithel?” Helena whimpers, her head whipping to keep one eye on the creature while turning back to her guard. “I don’t understand, Ithel! What is this?”

  Yet Helena does not find Ithel standing beside her as anticipated. Instead, he lies on the stones at her feet, his body sliced to ribbons by the shards of her bowl. “Why do you hurt me, Helena? Why do you always hurt me?” His voice grows faint as she watches the light fade from his eyes, the piercing blue color leeching out of his irises with every rasping breath. “All I ever did…was love you. Was that so wrong?”

  “No! Ithel!” Helena lurches toward his shattered body, her feet splashing in Ithel’s still warm, sticky blood as it pools around her. Helena balks, jumping clear of the gore. And when she looks back down at her feet, both the monster and Ithel’s body are gone.

  “Remember what I told you about being drugged during our first training session?” The real Ithel asks as he edges closer to Helena’s wide-eyed form, his mouth a grim line as he waits for her to comprehend his meaning.

  “You rat bastard! What was in that soup?” Helena steps forward, only to hear the crunch of bones under her feet. Skulls, hips, legs, ribs, and all other bones from countless human bodies are now mortared into the floor. There’s nowhere to step without landing on some poor soul’s decaying body.

  Helena shrieks, jumping up into the chair as she surveys the gaping maws and eyeless sockets of the skulls that seem to laugh at her from their cement beds. “Hello, traitor,” they bellow and groan. “See what you’ve done? See how you’ve hurt us? How many must die before you see the real problem is yourself?”

  Around the legs of the chair where Helena stands, a few grasping fingers, still connected by rotting ligaments and fetid tissues, clutch at the wood. These hands wrap around the rungs and feet of the chair, almost as if they are still alive, clinging to a raft to keep from drowning in the sea. Their haunting voices keen and wail as they reproach, “You did this to us, Helena! You betrayed us into the hands of our enemies! We are dead because of your selfishness!”

  Then, these hands reveal their true purpose, slowly dragging the chair legs deeper down into the cement. Skulls light up with fire in their eyeless sockets, their mouths chattering with laughter as the monsters plunge Helena and her perch toward its mortar grave. “You will join us soon,” their voices groan as their jaws creak and clack to form the words. “Your bones will lie among ours before the sun sets!”

  “Ithel! Help me!” Helena wails, rocking back and forth on the chair as she searches for an escape.

  “Helena! You’ve got to learn to focus!” Ithel’s voice sounds like churning gravel, and when she looks at him, his eyes glow like burning coals. “Control it, Helena!”

  She screams, jumping backward, only to wail when she demolishes another skull and hipbone under her heels. The sightless eye socket of the skull accuses her of the damage, its jaws clicking in disgust.

  Ithel’s hands grip her shoulders, his touch scorching her exposed skin. She bellows and thrashes in his grasp, but the guard does not let her move. “Helena! Listen to me! You’ve got to calm down!”

  “Please help me! It’s all my fault!” She wails as the skull under her heel bites her foot. She feels blood pooling as she scuttles out of reach. “I’m so sorry, Ithel! Please, make it stop!”

  “Slow your breathing rate,” Ithel instructs, his tone gentle and soothing. It matters little; Helena screeches as his fingers elongate into tightly coiling snakes that wrap around her arms. Tighter and tighter, they bind, slithering closer to her neck with each passing second.

  “Get them off! Get them off now!” Helena flails her arms in a feeble attempt to remove the hallucination. “Oh gods! Ithel! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Ithel’s hand burns as it cracks across her cheek, but the pain manages to stifle her fears long enough to free her mind to listen. “Helena, focus on your breathing. There’s going to be things around you that frighten you, but you’ve got to remember that they are not real. You’ve been drugged. Say that to yourself if it helps you calm down.”

  “I’ve been drugged,” she repeats, shuddering as she takes a deep breath. Closing her eyes only brings a momentary comfort. Without Helena’s sight to terrorize her, auditory hallucinations begin. A child’s voice screams in terror while a deep man’s voice whispers of his love and devotion. Both are far more devastating than anything she’s endured so far, for deep down, Helena knows these voices are real memories bubbling up to the surface.

  “Alaric may do something like this to you in the tunnel, Helena. You’ve got to be prepared. Keep your breathing
in check. Stay calm and climb. Ignore the hallucinations and just keep your feet moving.”

  “I can’t do this,” she moans, her hands covering her ears as she attempts to block out the voices in her mind. “I can’t see them again! I can’t face the horrors that happened to them! I can’t relive the moments when I watched them die!”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Ithel replies grimly as he pushes her closer to the edge of the building. If you could only see how much I hate this for you, he sighs as he drags her flailing body to the edge of the patio. I wish there was another way or something I could do to spare you this trial. I really do. I wish you knew I take no pleasure in what I’ve done to you; I hate myself for it. But this is the only way I can prepare you for what is coming…. As much as Ithel longs to tell her his true feelings, his voice is harsh as he pushes her over the edge and demands, “Catch yourself before you hit the ground, Helena, then climb back up to me!”

  As Helena plummets toward the ground, the drug in her system wreaks havoc on her mind. “I am a vulture,” she screeches, struggling against the wind as she attempts to hold her arms out at her sides as if to soar on the breeze and circle over the city. Despite her Windwalker abilities, she cannot control the gusting winds that whip around her helpless body. Not with the drugs in her system. “I cannot fly!” she cries, clenching her eyes tight as her stomach roils. The hallucination changes, twisting Helena into a small animal, scurrying to find shelter as a dark shadow looms overhead. “I will die! Ithel! Help me!” she bellows, her ears filling with an unseen beast’s gravelly snarls. She imagines blood-stained teeth nipping at her legs as the monster slowly gains ground. Fire rips through her limbs as if long claws have sliced through sinew and muscle, cleaving joints and bones from their meaty flesh. A guttural howl bursts to life from her body as she falls, so lost in her mind’s fears that she cannot see the ground hurtling closer and closer.

  You fear the monster, you fear being prey; your only comfort is that you die this day, a grotesque image of Ithel sings as it floats beside her. His eyes are replaced by twin flames, and his mouth gapes wide. Where teeth still stand in those grey gums, they are cracked and bleeding. The monster’s mouth closes to a grim smile, blood oozing down either side of its lips as it delights in her fear. You are beyond worthless, Helena. You’re good for nothing but the gravedigger’s shovel. And even he won’t have much use for you after you splatter yourself against the stones.

  “Not real, not real,” she whimpers against the monstrous sight, scratching her hands until they bleed, focusing on the pain to regain some control over her mind and abilities. “I can’t stop, Ithel!”

  Then you will join me in death, the voice of the man she’d lived with in Cassè shivers up her spine. And I will torment you for eternity for all the hell you put me through. She sees the faint outline of the man, his eyes shrouded in darkness, and a too wide smile ripping through his ethereal face.

  “No! No, please!” Helena fights, fixing her eyes on the stones that are far too close for comfort. Small changes in coloration, glittering veins of quartz and gold are now easy to distinguish. The murmuring cries of horrified observers rise up to meet her as she continues to drop. Feebly her hands shiver as she coaxes her abilities through the fog of hallucination and despair. Yet despite her greatest efforts, nothing slows her fall.

  Ithel listens to every painful moment, praying Helena can get control over herself. He’d already made precautions, placing several healer slaves at the base of the palace to attend her if she failed. Yet that safety net doesn’t do anything to ease his conscience. This is an all-time low even for you, Ithel chastises himself as he waits for the inevitable moment when Helena reaches the bottom. “There was no other way to prepare her,” he reminds himself in a broken whisper. But that doesn’t make it right. I just pushed a drugged woman off the roof! What kind of monster does that make me?

  “She spoke of them,” Ithel repeats the word as his mind replays Helena’s last words. The ones she left me for, Ithel adds bitterly, the unhealed wounds in his heart breaking open once more. It was the first time he’d heard her mention the family she’d had in Cassè since she’d been freed from the prison. The ones she loved more than she ever cared for me.

  A sour taste rises to Ithel’s tongue as he recalls the early days of their relationship. He’d been the lead guard at the border station in the heart of the Devil’s Spine when she’d joined his ranks. She’d marched into his office with her head held high and handed him the transfer orders. “Why come here? Thinking of making a name for yourself?” he sniped, surprised that someone of her background would take a job in a wild, rangy outpost at the border.

  “I’ve come to see if the stories I’ve grown up hearing are true,” Helena replied, her voice lacking all empathy and emotion. She’d been a colder, harsher woman in her younger years. “I want to see if the people in Cassè are really as barbaric as I’ve been led to believe.”

  “Dangerous choice,” Ithel remarked with a smirk, secretly admiring her spirit. “Not many would willingly leave the comforts of the palace just to question their king’s version of the truth.”

  “I’m not most people,” Helena shot back, staring at Ithel in cool detachment. “I prefer to make my own choices.”

  “And what will you do with the information you discover out here?” Ithel couldn’t help but wonder as she strode toward the door. “What will it solve?”

  It was the only moment in Helena’s introduction that her resolve faltered. In that single backward glance, she appeared completely vulnerable and lost. “I…I don’t know what I’ll do. I just have to see it for myself. I couldn’t bear to sit through another meeting listening to the terrors of Cassè without actually experiencing it firsthand. Once I know the truth, I’ll figure out the rest.”

  He’d let her leave the office and settle into the barracks, wordlessly adding her name to the guard’s roster for the next evening. But he knew what she’d discover; he knew how bitter and disillusioned she’d become when she realized everything she’d been told was a lie. The people of Cassè were not monstrous at all. The life they led was just as refined and amicable as you could find in Déchets—and that was the real problem for their king. Alaric wasn’t afraid of this neighboring land’s barbaric ways; he was jealous that they were thriving without his leadership. He was afraid that Cassè was doing better than Déchets. It was pure greed that fueled the king’s desperate feud with the people of Cassè, nothing more.

  We might have changed the world together, Ithel recalls as a single tear slips down his cheek. I would have followed you into Cassè. I would have helped you fight alongside them. I’d have given you anything you wanted if you’d only stayed true to me. But Helena had strayed; she’d disappeared into Cassè without a trace once she’d learned the truth. She found someone else over in that land; she loved another and had a family. That realization is a rusty dagger slicing into Ithel’s chest so that every next breath brings an excruciating ache in his heart.

  Ithel lets his tears fall as he listens to Helena’s terrorized sobs as she plummets to the ground. Then, silence. A blessed, terrifying silence. “Helena?” Ithel whispers the name, praying that her blood does not paint the stones below. Nothing. If she’d gotten control, she would have answered. Even if it was just to call me atrocious names.

  “We’re doing our best,” one of the healer slaves shouts in response, his voice betraying the worry he feels for his patient. “But we may need more….” The healer’s words die off as he gives his final breath.

  Ithel races into the infirmary, shouting orders as he moves. “All available healers report to the ground floor. Priority patient in critical condition!” he demands, grateful to see a handful of healer slaves racing to the window, using their Windwalker magic to speed their arrival to their patient’s side. Hurry, hurry, Ithel urges even as he follows them, lithe and graceful as he flies out the window and drifts down to
the ground floor on the breeze.

  It feels like an eternity before Ithel’s heels strike the paving marble on the ground floor. He hears the soft wails of onlookers, frozen in place as the healers attempt to save Helena. Ithel’s eyes land on a young girl, her mouth hanging open as tears pour down her face. “There was nothing we could do,” the young girl’s mother insists, racing over to cling to Ithel’s arm. She desperately tries to pull her daughter’s gaze away from the gory scene. “She was falling so fast; there was just no time to react,” she adds as silent, grieving tears well in her eyes. “We tried to use our Windwalker abilities to slow her fall, but there wasn’t enough time.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Ithel whispers hoarsely, wishing there was someone to blame besides himself. The little girl’s haunted expression does not leave his mind’s eye. How many more will be traumatized this week? Because if Helena survives this, if she truly wishes to succeed in the tunnel, she’ll have to endure this training. Again. And again, until she’s mastered it.

  Ithel shakes off the woman’s clinging grasp, forcing his feet to carry him closer to the scene. Voices hiss and murmur as waves of watchers part the way for Ithel to reach Helena’s side. His stomach drops as his shoes slide on the stones, blood making them slippery. Helena’s blood. My gods, I’ve killed her! Piles of sand form as the bodies of the dead healers disintegrate. More slaves take their place, pouring their life forces into her broken body. Helena’s neck lies at a severe angle, her sightless eyes staring accusingly right at Ithel. Her legs are black and swollen from broken bones, and blood pools under her back.

  Suddenly, she moans, and the sound is both soothing and excruciating to Ithel’s ears. “She lives! But my gods, what kind of life will she have? The healers aren’t miracle workers, you know? She’ll wish she died, you mark my words!” someone shouts from the crowd of onlookers. Soon, Helena’s screams are too gut-wrenching for them to witness, and they disperse from the scene.