Chapter 10 : AREN - The Nightmare77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLW1eKPKGHI
He was back in the snow.
The village was burning, and that was wrong, because snow didn't burn—everyone knew that, even six-year-old boys who'd never been further south than the Frostwood's edge. Snow melted. Snow turned to water and ran away downhill and disappeared into the streams. It didn't burn. But the longhouses were blazing anyway, orange and red against the grey sky, and the smoke was thick and black and tasted like fish racks and old wood and something else, something meaty and sweet that made his stomach clench and his throat close up.
The Lament was standing over him.
It was bigger than it had been in the real world. Bigger than the mountain that loomed behind Frostwake in the winter, its peak lost in clouds. Its head was lost in the clouds too, and its feet were planted on either side of the village, and when it breathed, the wind screamed through the cracks in its stone skin and the smoke swirled and the fire bent sideways. Its eyes were two deep holes, blacker than the smoke, blacker than the sky, and they were looking straight at him.
Aren tried to run. His legs wouldn't move. His feet were frozen in the snow—not just buried, but frozen solid, the ice crawling up his ankles, his knees, his thighs. He could feel the cold in his bones, a deep, grinding ache that made him want to cry. He opened his mouth to scream for Eira, but no sound came out. The cold had taken his voice. The cold was in his throat, his lungs, his heart. The cold was everywhere.
The Lament bent down.
Its head came through the smoke like a mountain falling, slow and massive and unstoppable. Aren could see the cracks in its stone skin, the moss hanging in dead brown sheets, the waterfall that had dried to a trickle of black ichor that dripped down its face like tears. Its mouth opened. The darkness inside was vast and old and full of voices—hundreds of voices, thousands, all the memories it had ever eaten, all the pieces of people it had taken over five centuries of covenant.
Aren.
The voice wasn't the broken thing from before—the jumble of stolen words, the screaming, the fragments. It was clear. It was quiet. It was the sound of rocks grinding together deep underground, slow and patient and old. It was the sound of something that had been asleep for a very long time and was just beginning to remember how to speak.
Aren Voss. Little brother. Little witness. Little boy who saw the mountain walk.
He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. The cold was in his chest now, wrapping around his heart, squeezing. He'd wet himself again—he could feel the warmth spreading down his legs, turning cold in the snow, the sharp smell cutting through the smoke. He'd been doing that every night since the Lament came. He couldn't stop it. His body did what bodies did, and his mind was somewhere else, somewhere far away, watching from a distance.
The god didn't seem to notice. Or maybe it didn't care. Gods didn't care about wet trousers. Gods didn't care about anything except the covenant, and the covenant was breaking.
Your sister hurt me, the Lament said. She gave me a memory that burned. Not like the fire burns—different. Deeper. She gave me the moment your mother died. She gave me the blood and the silence and the weight of you in her arms. She gave me the worst thing she had, and it burned.
Aren's teeth were chattering. He couldn't feel his fingers. The cold was in his bones now, deep and permanent, and he didn't know if he was awake or asleep or somewhere in between. He didn't know if this was real or a dream or something else entirely. He only knew that the Lament was talking to him, and the Lament had killed twenty-three people, and the Lament was looking at him with eyes that were full of something that might have been sorrow.
The hurt woke something up, the Lament said. For a moment—just a moment—I remembered who I was. I remembered the covenant. I remembered the prison. I remembered what I was guarding. The thing inside me—the thing that has been eating me for five hundred years—recoiled. It doesn't like pain. It doesn't like grief. It feeds on the sweet things, the happy things, the memories we give willingly. Your sister's memory was not sweet. Your sister's memory was a blade.
The god's eyes, those deep black holes, flickered. For just a heartbeat, Aren saw something moving in them—something vast and pale and hungry, coiling like a snake at the bottom of a well. It wasn't the Lament. It was something else. Something that had been inside the Lament for so long it had forgotten it wasn't part of the god. Something that was waking up.
The plague is not a sickness, the Lament said. Its voice was changing now, the clarity cracking, the old madness creeping back in at the edges. It is a god. The oldest one. The First Dreamer. The one we imprisoned. The one we have been starving for five centuries. We thought we were protecting the world. We were just feeding it. Every tithe, every ceremony, every memory—we were feeding it. And now it is hungry, little brother. It is so hungry.
Aren tried to speak. His throat was frozen, his tongue a dead thing in his mouth. But the god heard him anyway. The god was inside his head, the same way the cold was inside his bones.
Your sister made a door, the Lament said. When she fed me her pain, the thing inside me tasted it and woke up. Just a little. Just enough. It is waking up in all of us—the great gods, the small gods, the god-speakers, the dead. It is reaching through the cracks. It is speaking with our voices. It is trying to find a way out.
"What does it want?" Aren's voice came out as a whisper, small and cracked. He didn't know how he was speaking. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe the god was speaking for him.
It wants to be free. It wants to finish what it started. It wants to consume every memory that has ever been given to the gods. Every piece of every person who ever tithed. It wants to become one with all of us. And it will. Unless your sister stops it.
"How?"
The Lament's eyes flickered again. The thing inside them—the pale, coiled thing—was getting closer. The god's voice was fracturing now, the clarity slipping away, the old madness surging back. When it spoke again, its voice was a chorus of stolen voices, a hundred dead people speaking through the same mouth.
The cold was the first word, and the cold will be the last. The cold was the first word, and the cold will be the last. Tell her—tell her to find the god-speaker. Tell her to find the river. Tell her to find the prison before the door opens. Tell her—
The smoke swallowed the god's face. The fire swallowed the village. The cold swallowed Aren, pulling him down into the snow, into the dark, into a silence so deep it felt like drowning. The last thing he heard was the Lament's voice, fractured and wrong and screaming with a thousand stolen tongues.
TELL HER THE PLAGUE IS A GOD. THE OLDEST ONE. AND IT'S HUNGRY.
He woke up screaming.
His throat was raw, and his face was wet, and the blankets were tangled around his legs, soaking. He'd wet himself again. The smell was sharp and hot in the dark room, and he was shaking so hard his teeth clicked together. His chest was heaving, and his heart was pounding, and the dream was still in his head—the Lament's voice, the cold, the thing moving in the god's eyes.
The door slammed open. Eira was there, her knife in her hand, her eyes wild. She scanned the room—the window, the corners, the shadows—and when she saw nothing but Aren in the bed, she dropped the knife on the floor and crossed to him in three quick strides.
"Aren. Aren." She sat on the bed and pulled him against her, not caring about the wet blankets, not caring about the smell. Her arms were tight around him, and her heart was beating hard against his ear. "I'm here. I'm here. It was a dream. Just a dream."
"It wasn't." His voice came out cracked and small. He was crying, he realised. He hadn't even noticed. The tears were hot on his cheeks, dripping onto her shoulder. "It was the Lament. It talked to me. It talked to me in my dream."
Eira went still. He felt her whole body tense, the way it did when she was tracking something dangerous. "What did it say?"
"It said you hurt it. It said the hurt woke something up. The thing inside it—the thing that's been eating it." He pressed his face into her shoulder, trying to remember the exact words. The dream was already fading at the edges, but the god's voice was still echoing in his skull, clear and quiet and old. "It said the plague isn't a sickness. It's a god. The oldest one. The one the other gods imprisoned. And it's hungry."
Eira's arms tightened. "It said that? In those words?"
"Yes. It said—" He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to catch the memory before it slipped away. "It said the thing inside it tasted your pain and woke up. It's waking up in all the gods. And the god-speakers. And the dead. It said you made a wound, and the wound was a door. And it said—it said the cold was the first word, and the cold will be the last."
"Fuck," Eira whispered. It wasn't a word she used around him usually. That was how he knew she was scared. That was how he knew it was real.
"Is it true?" he asked. "Is there a god inside the gods?"
Eira didn't answer for a long moment. She just held him, her chin resting on his head, her breathing slow and steady. The wet blankets were getting cold, and his legs were starting to shiver, but he didn't want her to let go. He never wanted her to let go.
"I don't know," she said finally. "But the Prince thinks so. The Prince thinks there's something old and hungry trapped under everything, and the tithes have been feeding it for five hundred years, and now it's waking up. And the god-speaker—the one who survived the Elk—she spoke a name last night. Yska. The First Dreamer."
"The Lament said that. It said the plague is a god, and the god is hungry, and you have to find the prison before the door opens."
Eira pulled back and looked at him. Her face was tired and pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but her gaze was steady. "It said that? About the prison?"
"Yes. It said—" He frowned, trying to remember. "It said to find the god-speaker. The river. The prison. It said you have to stop it before it wakes up all the way. Before it eats everyone."
"The river," Eira repeated. "The god-speaker was bound to the Warden of Shallows. A river-spirit. She's been carving a map into her thighs—the Prince told me. A map that leads north, into the Frostwood. To a prison."
"The Lament was going north. When it walked away. It was going north too."
Eira stared at him. Her hand, the bandaged one, was resting on his shoulder, and he could feel the heat of the wound through the cloth. "The Lament is heading toward the prison. The god-speaker is heading toward the prison. And the thing inside them—Yska—is trying to get out."
"Are you going to stop it?"
"I'm going to try." She stood, pulling the wet blankets off the bed. "But first I need to tell the Prince about your dream. He needs to know that the Lament spoke to you. He needs to know what it said."
"He said you wouldn't believe me."
"Who?"
"The Lament. In the dream. It said you wouldn't believe me at first. It said you'd think it was just a nightmare."
Eira stopped. She was stripping the bed, bundling the soiled sheets into a pile with quick, efficient movements. But her hands stopped moving when he said that, and her face did something complicated.
"I believe you," she said. "I just don't know what to do with it."
She crossed back to the bed and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers. Her bandaged palm was rough against his fingers, and he could feel the heat of the infection, the way the wound was still fighting to heal.
"Listen to me," she said. "If you have more dreams—if anything talks to you again—you tell me. Right away. Even if it's the middle of the night. Even if I'm with the Prince or the surgeon or anyone. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
She pulled him into another hug. He pressed his face into her shoulder and closed his eyes, and for a moment—just a moment—he could almost pretend they were back in Frostwake, in their own longhouse, with the smell of fish soup on the fire and their mother's voice humming in the next room. But their mother was dead, and the longhouse was crushed, and the Lament was walking north with a voice in its head that wasn't its own.
"We're going to be all right," Eira said. "I'm going to make sure of it."
Aren didn't answer. He just held on tighter. Outside the window, the wind was rising, and it sounded almost like a voice—whispering words he couldn't quite catch, words that made his teeth ache and his eyes water.
The cold was the first word. And the cold will be the last.
He pressed his face into Eira's shoulder and tried not to listen.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjb8b29Sxmm
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