Author: Leah Cypess

“Why would you do that,” she said, “when you were the one who told them to kil us?”

The darkness drew itself upward. Darri’s breath ran through her, swift and cold and clear. “You didn’t send Cal ie to save us. You sent her so she would be kil ed with us. That’s why Jano had a silver dagger. To use on Cal ie.”

“No,” Cal ie said. “He didn’t know—” She stopped.

“No one knew you were dead,” Darri agreed grimly. “Except the person who kil ed you.”

Cal ie made a sudden, jerking motion, but no sound.

“It had to be done,” the darkness whispered. “You are, al of you, more dangerous than you know. You are pawns in the hand of someone much more powerful than yourselves.”

“When haven’t we been?” Darri said. She moved two steps to the side, so that she was standing next to the dropped dagger. Darri had never yet kil ed anyone, but she had grown up on stories of kil ings brave and true; the yet had always been there, just waiting for a reason. “My sister,” she said, very quietly. “You took my sister from me.”

“She’s stil here,” Clarisse said. “Don’t you understand? We mean dif erent things when we say ‘dead.’”

“My sister is dead,” Darri snarled, and she knelt and rose the way she had been taught. If you did it right, you would never be of balance. She did it right. The dagger was in her hand, ready to be thrown.

Clarisse shouted a warning. Darri threw.

The dagger struck something, point first. It made the wrong sound, though, piercing something softer than skin, and al at once the cavern was fil ed with light.

A man stood before them, the hilt sticking out of his chest. His form was more blurred than Clarisse’s, but he was undeniably a man, and a rather unremarkable-looking one: black hair, pale skin, a long face, and an was undeniably a man, and a rather unremarkable-looking one: black hair, pale skin, a long face, and an aquiline nose.

Darri had nothing else silver on her, but she balanced on the bal s of her feet, ready to fight, eager to fight.

The Defender looked like a man, and that sent a wave of relief through her despite the silver dagger jut ing harmlessly from his chest. She could fight him. Even if she was bound to lose, she could fight him. She couldn’t fight a shifting nonentity of darkness.

The man took hold of the dagger, pul ed it out of his chest, flipped it around, and of ered her the hilt.

Darri hesitated, her instincts screaming at her to take it.

The man smiled at her. “Did you never wonder,” he asked, in a quite normal voice, “why silver hurts ghosts?”

“I’ve spent the last couple of nights around dead people,” Darri said tersely. “My sense of what’s questionable may be a lit le of .”

“Ghosts can’t bear the touch of silver because I made them that way,” the Defender said. “A safeguard, built into my spel to keep them from being unkil able. The safeguard does not apply to me.”

The silence was broken by Cal ie. “Your spel ?”

“Of course.” The man’s smile widened—but it looked, al at once, nothing like a smile. Nothing like a human expression, for al that it was on a human-looking face. “I created the spel , and was the first person brought back from death by its power. I am older than you can imagine, and more powerful. Age does not hurt me, nor silver.”

“Nor sunlight,” Cal ie whispered.

Darri, somehow, was no longer in a fighting pose. She didn’t know when that had happened. Instead of returning to it, she reached for Cal ie’s hand, and was surprised when her sister accepted her grasp. Cal ie’s hand was smal and cold and trembling.

“Why kil me?” Cal ie asked. “Why wait four years and then kil me?”

The Defender made an irritated gesture and said nothing.

“Why drown me?”

“The spel is bound in the earth of our country. That’s why it only works within the borders of this land.”

The Defender grimaced. “I thought it might not work on water. I know bet er now.”

Darri drew back in disgust, but Cal ie didn’t flinch.

“Then why are you doing nothing?” Cal ie shouted. “I’m here now. You have a silver dagger in your hand.

Why not kil me now?”

Darri should have been proud of her sister’s bravery. But she knew, despite Cal ie’s defiant tone, that this wasn’t a chal enge. It was a plea.

“Kil ing you now would accomplish nothing,” the Defender said.

Now, but not on the hunt. The dif erence, then, must be that now Darri knew her sister was dead.

Darri opened her mouth, then closed it, the taste of unsaid words bit er on her tongue. You could kil me too. Then no one would know. She should be wil ing to die, if it would set her sister free. She owed Cal ie that.The words wouldn’t make a diference. The Defender must already be aware of the possibility. Just as her father had always been aware that he could have sent his older daughter instead of the younger. Even if she had said to him, “Send me instead,” it wouldn’t have changed anything.

So she had told herself, night after night, as she woke from dreams of her sister being devoured by darkness.

It was true, but the truth didn’t help. She stil should have said it.

This time I’l do bet er, she thought. But before she could draw in breath to speak, Cal ie whispered, “I can’t take vengeance on you. I can’t do anything to you. I’m looking straight at you, and I know you kil ed me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I’m sorry,” the Defender said. He sounded sincere.

Cal ie choked out a sob. Darri gripped her hand, feeling more helpless than she ever had in her life.

“I’l be unavenged forever,” Cal ie said, with such despair that even the Defender frowned.

“You’l grow accustomed to it,” he said. “They al do, in time.”

The sound that came from Cal ie this time was almost inhuman; not ghostly, but the cry of a wounded animal. She tore her hand from Darri’s grip and threw herself bodily at the black-haired man.

The light vanished. In the darkness, Darri heard a thud, and a shriek. And then, as she made her way across the now-empty ground and knelt beside Cal ie, the broken sounds of her sister’s sobs.

Varis had just reached the end of the glit ering gray trail when he realized that someone was fol owing him.

He covered his torch immediately and stood stil . He heard nothing; the silence was so intense it was practical y a sound, more terrible even than the darkness. That meant either that the other person had stopped as wel , or— “Darkness doesn’t mean much to ghosts, you know,” Kestin said.

—or hadn’t been making any sound in the first place. Varis uncovered his torch just as the prince rounded a curve in the passage behind him. Despite himself, Varis’s first reaction was not wariness but relief; relief that he was not alone, here in the darkness and silence beneath the earth. “You can see in the dark?”

was not alone, here in the darkness and silence beneath the earth. “You can see in the dark?”

“So it seems.” Kestin smiled. “Every day I discover a new advantage to being dead.”

Varis couldn’t tel if the statement was meant to be bit er or not. He chose to believe it was, because that was less disturbing. “Your Highness,” he said cool y. “How did you get here?”

“I wanted to find out what your sister was up to, so I had my men bring me in my lit er. And I ordered everyone else not to fol ow me on pain of death, which gives us perhaps half an hour before they fol ow me anyhow. So we shouldn’t stand around talking.” Kestin moved closer. The torchlight flickered over him, but he cast no shadow. “How do you know where to go?”

Varis hesitated, but couldn’t think of a reasonable lie. He gestured at the ground, where flecks of steel glit ered when the torchlight hit them.

Kestin raised his eyebrows. “Ingenious. The steel is coating silver, I assume?”

“Of course not,” Varis said. “That would be a breach of our agreement.”

“Of course not,” Kestin echoed, without the slightest trace of sarcasm. “Why did you stop walking?”

“The trail ended. Either the metal powder ran out, or she sheathed her dagger.”

“I doubt your sister would do something that stupid. There are ghosts everywhere in these caves.”

Varis looked around nervously, then tried to cover it by drawing his own silver dagger with his left hand. He had been carrying the torch in his right, despite his injured shoulder, in preparation for doing just that. “But Darri wouldn’t know about them. Where are they?”

“You won’t see them. These caves are where the older ghosts go when they grow tired of being among the living. Most of them have forgot en what their bodies look like.”

Varis’s left hand tightened on his dagger, and Kestin said, “They can, however, stil be kil ed; that dagger wil make them nervous. You should probably put it away before I cal them.”

“Before you what?”

“It’s up to you, though.” Kestin shrugged and, without appreciably raising his voice, said, “Tel me where the foreigner went.”

A sound like wind rushed past Varis, though there was no wind. Kestin nodded and walked past Varis into the darkness.

Varis almost turned and went the opposite way. He felt ice cold down to his bones. The wind had stirred shadows that slid past the wal s, wavering over the curves and cracks in the rocks. He swal owed hard, looked straight ahead, and fol owed the dead prince. He did not sheathe his dagger.

Kestin didn’t look back, and Varis did not try to move up beside him. They walked in silence down several turns in the passageway, through a large cavern that seemed ful of malevolent awareness, and final y came to an open area surrounded by surreal rock formations. There Kestin stopped, and Varis kept moving until he stood beside the dead prince. His grip on the dagger was so tight his fingers hurt. He would be the happiest man alive on the day he rode out of this cursed land.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Beneath the castle by now, I suspect.” Kestin sounded distracted. “There are ways to get into these caverns from the castle. None of the living know that. Even the newly dead aren’t told.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I’m the prince of the dead.” Kestin trailed his hand along an outcropping of rock. “Have you not realized yet how powerful I am? Do you think any ghost could command the elder dead as I just did?”

A soft sound swirled around them, suggestive of mirthless laughter. Kestin chuckled. “I suppose that explains why you would come here with me, alone and surrounded by the dead. I thought it foolishly brave. But you didn’t realize how dangerous it was, did you?”

Varis changed his mind: the day he conquered Ghostland would be the happiest of his life. “I don’t see my sister.”

“They’re in the shadows.”

“Then why—”

“I’m not sure why. I suspect it’s just your usual flair for the dramatic. Isn’t it, Clarisse?”

Despite what was obviously his best ef ort, his voice choked a lit le on her name. As he said it, Clarisse stepped out of the shadows, so beautiful she looked unreal. It was a moment before Varis noticed both his sisters trailing behind her, Darri’s face even more sul en than usual, Cal ie’s eyes red and swol en.

“Hel o, Your Highness,” Clarisse said, slowly sweeping her lashes down. “Imagine meeting you here.”

“I know this is where you’ve been,” Kestin said. “And you must have known I wouldn’t al ow foreigners to wander through these caves alone.”