Well of Souls

And then it looked at Ishep. Its dead eyes were flat and dull as gray slate. Ishep saw that it had the head of a woman, and all in a rush he understood that he stared into the face of Death itself, into the eyes of Uramtali, Goddess of the Well of Souls, and he knew then that he would die. But he could only watch, in horror, as her skin split open with a loud ripping sound, like cloth being torn in two, and then she didn’t have a face anymore: just a skull, and teeth curved and sharp as white knives.

Her voice, in his head: Are you afraid?

And Ishep, so terrified his heart pushed in his throat: Yes, yes!

Good—her knife-fangs parted, and her mouth gaped open until there was nothing else but the darkness in her throat that was a shaft into which Ishep tripped and began a fall that would last until time itself ceased, and that was forever— because you should be.

Screaming, Ishep woke.

The tomb was pitch black. His scream echoed, bounced off stone, then died. Ishep pushed up on his hands, his blood thumping in his ears. His sandals rasped upon cold stone, and the rock bit into the thin, sensitive skin of his thighs. He listened, but other than the hitching of his breath there was no other sound, not even the faint sizzle of candles guttering—a sound like frying meat—and that was because the candles had burned out. Darkness flowed over him, and when he moved, it was like swimming in thick black water. Although he was cold and stiff from sleeping on stone, his face was hot, and when he brought a hand up to his cheek, he felt the dried salt track of tears.

I’m still here.Moaning, Ishep jammed his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out. I’m still here and I’m going to die down here and no one will ever find me, no one will know that they’ve sealed me in by mistake, and my mother, oh, my mother…

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. Something was different, and Ishep seized on this because it gave him something other to do than wait to die of thirst in the tomb of a dead king. The darkness feltdifferent, almost as if he’d been moved. Walked in his sleep? Maybe. His father’s tomb had two other rooms besides the main burial vault, and he remembered that he’d fallen asleep next to the carved stone edifice of his father’s bier. There was treasure all around the reliquary—piles of gem-encrusted goblets and fat yellow discs of gold coin fa

And then his hands found something smooth and cool: wood. But not a chest—breath hissing through his teeth, Ishep sat back on his heels and ran his fingers up and down—no, this was something tall and slender, with three sides. A pedestal. He stood, his palms following the graceful taper of the wood until he came to the flat, triangular surface, and his fingers slid against something cold and metallic.

There was a soft, perceptible click.

Ishep started, gasped, snatched his fingers away as if he’d been burned. He waited, eyes bulging, heart knocking against his ribs.

The darkness began to dissolve. A sharp cry ripped from Ishep’s mouth, and he stumbled back as the light bloomed: not like the sudden flare of a torch, but as if the light from one of the world’s two moons had lost its way and come here, far underground. The light melted the darkness, and then Ishep saw that the room was bare except for a pedestal of ebony bloodwood. On the dais lay a silver mask.

The mask had no markings and Ishep saw immediately that it would cover his face from his brow to his upper lip. The mask was bathed in a silver glow: a bolt of light that beat down from somewhere high above. Ishep shielded his eyes but couldn’t find the source. Then, suddenly, the light intensified, flooding over the dais and spilling to the floor. The light was alive— like the thing in my dream, coming from my father’s mouth!—and it slithered along the floor in thick tongues that puddled like silver water.

Ishep’s mind screamed: Get out, get out,run !But his body wouldn’t obey, and where was there to run anyway?

Then a voice brushed against his mind: Come here.

Ishep’s blood iced. What? No, no, he wouldn’t! But even as his own mind protested, he felt a firm, steady pressure tugging at his brain, as if something had hooked in fingers of pure steely thought and begun to pull. No—he struggled to break free—he mustn’t, he hadto run, he had to…

Come here.

Incredibly, Ishep started forward, his movements as jerky as a puppet whose strings have gotten tangled.

Pick it up.The voice was a whisper, and yet it was so strong. Put it on.

“No,” Ishep moaned even as he reached for the mask. His fingers slid over the metal, and he was surprised that the mask wasn’t cold now but warm as blood.

Do it.Now.

“No,” Ishep said, as he slipped the mask onto his face. The metal curled; the edges grasped the skin of his face like greedy, clutching fingers. “No, please!”

A bolt of pain sizzled through his body. Ishep screamed. It was as if someone had poured hot, molten metal into his body. Fire coursed through his veins and licked at his heart; his brain exploded with a sudden white-hot flash that seared his mind.

Now. Turn around.Move.

And then somehow—Ishep didn’t know how, because he was burning up, he was dying, and there was something crowding into his mind, his body—Ishep was back in the main vault, and he was standing over his father, the dead Night King. The vault was still dark, though Ishep could just make out the hump of his father’s body.

Through the roaring in his ears, Ishep heard the rustle of cloth against stone, a sound like the feet of mice skittering over sand. And then his father moved, and his body began to glow.

What was left of Ishep wailed in terror.

The king’s mouth opened. Tendrils of something— the dream, my dream!—like luminous coils of thick white smoke billowed out, twisting and writhing. The coils mingled; they met; they coalesced and assumed a shape, now a woman, then a serpent, now a naked eyeless skull.

Suddenly, Ishep was aware of movement, a rush of air. Specters pulsed and streamed into the chamber, issuing from the walls like fog rising from a still pond. Ishep recognized the shapes of gods and goddesses, and strange chimeras that were part-beast, part-man, part-woman. They were as amorphous and indistinct as clouds shifting beneath a hot sun. And then the woman-thing, the one that had issued from his father’s mouth, gave a great cry and spread its wings and leapt into the mass of roiling shapes. The others closed around the woman-thing the way a man’s arms might encircle a lost lover, and in another moment, Ishep saw the woman-thing dissolve; and then, in his mind, Ishep heard the gabble of their voices—or maybe it was their thoughts because he knew there was no sound. Ishep sensed one voice detach itself from the rest, as if it had decided to step aside from a large crowd. The voice was clear and strong and rang through his brain with the clarity of a single, solitary bell.

You are not chosen.The voice-thought—a woman’s—paused then walked its spectral thought-fingers over the nooks and cra

The woman’s voice-thought trailed away, as if considering what to do next.

Ishep knew, without knowing how he knew, that the voice-thought was talking about the prince, Nartal. Nartal was Night, the prince of a Night King from a line of Night Kings. Nartal had been bred for Night, bred to carry the soul of an Immortal, a dithparu.