I stayed in the water until my skin should have been blue with cold yet when I came out I felt no difference in the temperature of the air in the cave or in the water. Arianell hurried over with her cloak and offered to help me take off my wet things, cover me up in her cloak while she dried off the wet things by the fire. When she took my arm, she hesitated at the coolness of my skin.
“Aren’t you cold, Toby?” Her large silvery eyes glowed in the dim light.
“You are so beautiful,” I whispered and tore myself away from her, striding awkwardly towards the fire. Once there, I removed my clothes and wrapped myself in the folds of the cloak. I heard the hiss of the fire as its heat steamed the water in my clothing.
“Toby, tell me what’s wrong,” she pleaded. “What did they do to you?”
I sat mute, looking not at her face but at my bare feet, my long toes and high arches. The skin was pale with blue tray series of veins showing.
“The Wizard learned of the curse,” I started. “He made a bargain with Averon. My return for a breach in the Wall, permission to attack and invade the Borderlands–both sides want the technology of the Old World.
“The Wizard Blackfin killed a man, a Sergeant named Tolliver. His blood spurted across the room. Gallons of it. Some fell into my mouth. I swallowed. It was good, he used a magic spell to gather up every last drop and put it in a cup. I drank it all and it stayed down. Satisfied both my hunger and thirst, Arianell. From then until the day you found me, I have been living off the blood of murdered men, women and children.” I paused and was afraid to look in her face, to see the horror and hate in it.
“Oh, Tobias,” she whispered and I heard her with my enhanced hearing. I could almost hear her thoughts. She called me the same name Blackfin had, Dracule.
“Did he curse my mother this way, too?” I asked bleakly. “But no, I would have noticed if she had drank my father’s blood.”
“The curse does not always work that way. It is geared to each individual, the magic chooses what the most appropriate spell is. Besides, it must be spoken within sight and sound of the victim and is more potent on our side of the Border Wall.”
“I’m afraid I will lose control and attack you, Arianell,” I said into my hands.
“Have you killed anyone?”
“I told you. Three men and the girl.” I went on to explain in dry tones how they had died.
“Don’t you see, Toby? He didn’t kill the girl, the soldier did. Blackfin killed those men–he put you in there knowing you were faster, more powerful and could use the Dracule’s glamour to entice them. They had no chance against you and their deaths were easy compared to the fate that waited for them at the block. And you did not bleed me even when you wanted to do so. You stopped yourself.”
“Because I recently fed. What happens when I need to eat and the craving becomes impossible? Is there any cure for this condition?”
She hesitated. “There are legends that there was once a cure in the old technology. Lyr Averon knows how to reverse it, it is his curse.”
“It would be worth it to get out from under this horror,” I returned flatly.
“He will never let you go,” she said and shook her head. “He will not let you choose your life companion, every moment of every day of your life will be structured and set in stone.”
“But I won’t have this need, this craving for blood,” I said.
“What better way to control you, Tobias? Just because you return to his knee, does not mean he will release you.”
“He has blood in his veins, too,” I snarled darkly.
“He also knows what your kind is capable of, Tobias and he will not allow you near him. He will only bind you tighter in the chains that you already wear.”
“I can eat the blood of animals, too. It fills me but is like the difference between soup and broth, and leaves me wanting more.”
She pulled me into her arms and rested her head on my chest. “I trust you, Toby. I know you would never hurt me.”
“You don’t know what this beast inside of me is capable of, Arianell. I don’t trust myself. Promise me, if I try to hurt you, you’ll defend yourself. Promise me that or I’ll end it right now,” I threatened.
“If I suspect you mean to harm me, Tobias, I will end your life,” she said calmly staring at my eyes. “But know this, once the light leaves your eyes, I will follow after you.”
She held me all night and I fell asleep, waking every hour in fear of what I would find but we spent the night in relative peace.
In the morning, she stretched, gave me a kiss on the cheek and started breakfast. Fed the horses and brought me a cup of tea. It tasted like nothing and came back up so quickly that it barely inconvenienced me. “Are you hungry yet?” She asked me.
I shook my head. “My last…meal should last me several weeks, maybe even two months. The blood has changed me in other ways, Arianell. Sunlight hurts me. I’m stronger. Faster, I can hear and see better than any human. I can see in the dark, I can sense a beating heart through a wall of stone.”
“The legends said that these beings were like gods, that they could become weightless and fly through the air like night birds.”
“Does it describe how evil they were? That they reveled in the bloodletting and murder?” I asked sardonically.
“If that were so, Toby would I be standing here and you wallowing in despair?” She returned reasonably.
I said nothing but approached Diomed. He sniffed me, trembling all over but stood still as I put my foot in the stirrups. Once on his back, he turned his head to smell my boot, his skin twitched and he broke out in a heavy sweat that indicated he was terrified yet he remained still under me.
“Ready?” Arianell asked and we rode down the cavern’s floor and into a world of crystal spires, frozen rock waterfalls and scenes of such beauty that it awed me.
She called it the Kingdom-Under-the-Hill and said it had been last used two thousand years ago by the last Lyr to escape bandits who had managed to invade from the south. What they called their No Man’s Strip, a section of bare scrubland that produced nothing but strange glasslike rocks that glowed in the dark and in black light.
I could see very well in the cave and was in utter awe at the crystals and jewels that stuck out of the walls like apples ready to be plucked from the tree. There was enough wealth here to make every Newlander as rich as the Emperor.
“Arianell, where does this exit? Near a seaport where we can book passage back home?”
“If you want. We can come out wherever you wish, Tobias. We are Underhill. Distances do not conform to natural norms under here. You cannot map it, quantify or qualify it. Under-the-Hill just is.”
Sometimes, she said things I just wanted to scream at–they made no sense to anyone but her and the more she tried to explain them, the more convoluted it became until I was totally lost. Like I was becoming in this underground maze. The horses and Arian seem to find nothing strange about it yet it bothered me the more I found it comfortable. I had never liked dark, closed in or underground places. I had never been one to want to explore old mines or caves where the entrance was a narrow hole one had to slither inside.
When I spoke, my voice jumped out of the air as if a giant bell had clanged in the Wakeroom at a solemn funeral, startling us both. Even the horses reacted.
“If only I could stay here forever,” I said. No sun, no sky, no colors of the earth, just quiet and the ethereal beauty of the darkness and the riches all around us. Arianell was more prosaic which surprised me as she had lived with magic all her life.
“There’s nothing for us to eat down here. Just worms and bats.”
And you and the horses, I thought and hated myself for the thought. I saw her glance at me in the dark as if she thought I could not see her. And she added, “And the horses and me, of course.”
I knew she had been serious when she said she’d kill me and then herself after. “Arianell, I believe the only thing that will kill me is a silver coated weapon. You need to remember that if–.”
“So the legends stated. I’ve also read it must be wooden but our translations were haphazard at best. Large portions of the books were destroyed and the films unreadable.”
“Films? What are films?”
“I’ll show you when we get there.” She fell silent and we rode on. We stopped several times so she could feed the horses oatcakes as there was no grass here to supplement them. She ate some herself and drank from the water that followed beside the trail.
There were other branches off the main one I was following yet I unerringly picked out the path that descended slowly and headed seemingly east and south. Almost as if it were a memory. Sometimes, I could even tell a certain structure would be just ahead, a curve or particularly beautiful rock waterfall, pipe organ or gem display. Once, I broke off a chunk of amethyst the size of a melon and gave it to Arianell, saying that it resembled her eyes in the dark. She told me that mine looked like blood rubies and the horses’ were yellow green diamonds. I gathered samples of all and placed them in her hands like a bouquet of jewels. She told me I was giddy with treasure fever and it would soon pass. I did not tell her that to me, they were only colored rocks–that her heart was a glowing gemstone more beautiful than any here.
She said we had been three days on the dearmad way and surely pursuit would have given up by now. Especially since our travel would have been four times the distance they could have made. I nodded, I had not sensed any men behind us, not since we had left the estate of my grandfather.
I started thinking about a way up and the next rest stop, I explored the different passageways I saw offering another way out while she fed the horses. They were in relatively good shape, not thin from the restrictive diet yet they were clearly unhappy and nervous. I could sense their unease and read that they wanted the sun, its golden rays and cheerful brightness. But here in the darkness, their eyes were losing their function and their bodies breaking down because of some lack that only being outside would address.
I took what I sensed was an exit and a dim memory told me that it was the shortest route to the surface yet it still took four more rest periods before I could see a bright glow down the passageway that hurt my eyes. Arrow straight, the tunnel led up into a backbreaking climb that taxed the horses so we walked beside them and it made our calves ache and my breathing falter. I heaved and whistled worse than Beau or Diomed, the first time I had difficulty since I had drank of the sergeant’s blood. I refused to stop and eventually, we stepped out on the edge of the small balcony of rock atop a mountain. Below us was a valley and in it, untouched by humans and nearly by time was a vast city the likes of which I had never seen. Huge buildings hugged the cliffs in needlelike spires. Smaller ones rose three or four levels cantilevered to the slopes like giant spiders clinging to their webs.
Laid out in a circular grid pattern, all the streets led to a central hub and there, two great, giant black towers rose like God pointing his fingers to the sky. Sunlight flickered off the obsidian surface and made it seem as if the buildings were winking at us.
“What is this place?” I asked in wonder.
“One of the lost cities of the Ancients,” Arianell said. “Here, you may find any answer to any question you may think to ask. If the power is still on.”
“Power?”
“The ancients had a magic that powered their cities and machines. Provided light, heat and the means to both cook and store foods. Sometimes, it still functions.”
“You’ve been here before?” I was astonished that she could look on this site and not be awed.
“Not this one but others. The Borderlands have many as the Cataclysm that destroyed the Old World started there.”
“You mean this place is over five thousand years old?”
“Maybe more,” she shrugged and started looking for a way down.