Nevernight. Jay Kristoff
Mouser.
‘You’re ready then?’ the Shahiid asked.
‘We’re ready,’ Tric said.
Mia smiled to hear his voice, almost a full octave deeper. He squeezed her fingers and closed his eyes, allowing Mouser to tie the blindfold. Tying Mia’s, the Shahiid grasped their hands, led them across the broken ground. She heard a word spoken – something ancient and humming with power. And then she heard stone; the great cracking and rumbling of stone. The ground shuddered beneath her, dust rising in a choking pall. She felt a rushing wind, smelled a greasy arkemical tang in the air.
Hands took her own, led her forward, across broken ground and onto smooth rock. The temperature dropped suddenly, the light beyond her eyelids dying slow. They were somewhere dark now; inside the mountain’s belly, she supposed. Mouser leading her by the hand, they reached stairs, climbing up, up in an ever-widening spiral. Twisting and turning, a soft vertigo filling her mind, all track of the direction she’d come from or the direction they were headed fading. Up. Down. Left. Right. Concepts with no meaning. No memory. She felt an almost overwhelming desire to call Mister Kindly back, to feel that familiar touch she no longer quite knew how to live without.
At last, after what seemed like hours, Mouser released his grip. For a moment she faltered. Imagining she stood at the mountain’s peak, nothing about her but a straight fall to her death. Arms outstretched to keep her balance. Breathing hard.
‘Come back,’ she whispered.
She felt the not-cat rush back in a flood, pouncing on the butterflies in her belly and dismembering them one by one. The blindfold was removed and she blinked, saw an enormous hall, bigger than the belly of the grandest cathedral. Walls and floor of dark granite, smooth as river stones. Soft arkemical light shone from within beautiful windows of stained glass, giving the impression of the sunslight outside – though in truth they could be miles within the mountain by now. Tric stood beside her, gazing about the room. Vast pointed archways and enormous stone pillars were arranged in a circle, soaring stone gables seemingly carved in the core of the mountain itself.
‘Trelene’s great … soft …’
Word failed as the boy looked towards the room’s heart. Mia followed his gaze, saw the statue of a woman, jewels hung like stars on her ebony robe. The figure was colossal, towering forty feet above their heads, carved of gleaming black stone. Small iron rings were embedded in the rock, about head height. In her hands she held a scale and a massive, wicked sword, broad as tree trunks, sharp as obsidian. Her face was beautiful. Terrible and cold. Mia felt a chill trickle down her spine, the statue’s eyes following as she walked closer.
‘Welcome to the Hall of Eulogies,’ Mouser said.
‘Who is she?’
‘The Mother.’ Mouser touched his eyes, then his lips, then his chest. ‘The Maw. Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Almighty Niah.’
‘But … she’s beautiful,’ Mia breathed. ‘In the pictures I’ve seen, she’s a monstrosity.’
‘The Light is full of lies, Acolyte. The Suns serve only to blind us.’
Mia wandered the mighty hall, running her hands over the spiral patterns in the stone. The walls were set with hundreds of small doors, two feet square, stacked one upon another as if tombs in some great mausoleum. Her footfalls rang like bells in the vast space. The only sound was the tune of what might have been a choir, hanging disembodied in the air. The hymn was beautiful, wordless, endless. The place had a feeling unlike any other she’d visited. There were no altars nor golden trim, but for the first time in her life, she felt as if she were somewhere … sanctified.
Mister Kindly whispered in her ear.
‘… i like it here …’
‘What are these names, Shahiid?’ Tric asked.
Mia blinked, realised the floor beneath them was engraved with names. Hundreds. Thousands. Etched in tiny letters on polished black stone.
‘The names of every life claimed by this Church for the Mother.’ The man bowed to the statue above. ‘Here we honour those taken. The Hall of Eulogies, as I said.’
‘And the tombs?’ Mia asked, nodding to the walls.
‘They house the bodies of servants of the Mother, gone to her side. Along with those we have taken, here we also honour those fallen.’
‘But there are no names carved on these tombs, Shahiid.’
Mouser stared at Mia, the ghostly choir singing in the dark.
‘The Mother knows their names,’ he finally said. ‘No other matters.’
Mia blinked. Glancing up at the statue looming above her head. The goddess to whom this Church belonged. Terrible and beautiful. Unknowable and powerful.
‘Come,’ said Shahiid Mouser. ‘Your chambers await.’
He led them from the grand hall, through one of the vast pointed arches. A great flight of steps spiralled up into the black. Mia remembered Old Mercurio’s willow switch, the accursed library stairs he’d made her run up and down so many times she’d lost count. She smiled at the memory, even as she thanked the old man for the exercise, climbing in long, easy strides.
They ascended, the Shahiid of Pockets behind them, silent as the plague.
‘Black Mother,’ Tric panted. ‘They should have named it the Red Stairwell …’
‘Are you well?’ she whispered. ‘Mister Kindly helped?’
‘Aye. It was …’ The boy shook his head. ‘To look inside and find only steel … I’ve never felt anything like it. Crutch be damned. Being darkin must be a grand thing.’
They trudged up the stairs into a long corridor. Arches stretching away into lightless black, spiral patterns on every wall. Shahiid Mouser stopped outside a wooden door, pushed it open. Mia looked in on a large room, furnished with beautiful dark wood and a huge bed covered in lush grey fur. Her body ached at the sight. It’d been at least two nevernights since she slept …
‘Your chambers, Acolyte Mia,’ Mouser said.
‘Where do I stay?’ Tric asked.
‘Down the hall. The other acolytes are already settled. You two are the last to arrive.’
‘How many are there?’ Mia asked.
‘Almost thirty. I look forward to seeing which are iron and which are glass.’
Tric nodded in farewell and followed Mouser down the corridor. Mia stepped inside and dropped her pack by the door. Habit forced her to search every corner, drawer, and keyhole. She finished by peering under the bed before collapsing atop it. Contemplating untying her boots, she decided she was too exhausted to bother. And dropping back into the pillows, she crashed into a sleep deeper than she’d ever known.
A cat made of shadows perched on the bedhead, watching her dreams.
She woke to Mister Kindly’s cold whisper in her ear.
‘… someone comes …’
Her eyes flashed open and she sat up as a soft rapping sounded at her door. Mia drew her dagger, clawed the hair from sand-crusted eyes. Forgetting where she was for a moment. Back in her old room above Mercurio’s shop? Back in the Ribs, her baby brother asleep beside her, parents in the next room …
No.
Don’t look …
She spoke uncertainly. ‘Come in?’
The door opened softly and a figure swathed in black robes entered, crossing the room to halt at the foot of the bed. Mia raised her gravebone blade warily.
‘You either picked the wrong room or the wrong girl …’
The intruder raised her hands. She pulled back her hood, and Mia saw strawberry-blonde