Scarlet Citadel (Walking Shadow Book 1) by Jack Fields

Author:Jack Fields [Fields, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Legion Publishers Ltd
Published: 2024-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

If you were to open a blueprint of Redspire, you would be struck by the fact that the tower does not have eighty-eight floors as is popularly believed.

For starters, there’s an extra bit of space at the top before you reach the roof. It’s only titchy, much smaller than the other regions. What could it be, this miniature eighty-ninth floor?

Don’t worry. We’ll get to it in due time.

For now, let the mind’s eye wander to the area below the ground floor. It’s far larger than the Lunarlight Wing, or the Grand Hall, or any two floors put together. In these cavernous depths, a door waits to be opened. Through it, evil without scruple does not wait, for it has much to do.

Following Cate’s instructions, Hughes rode the elevator to the ground floor. Upon arrival, he opened the handle lid of the elevator crank, exposing a little button he pressed hard with his thumb. The doors shut. Mechanisms clunked into place. Unseen motors hummed. Beneath his feet Hughes felt the unlit box begin to sink. Down and down the lift went, for so long he began to wonder if it would ever stop.

They ought to install lamps, he thought. You could start to worry. Dark of this kind—blind, helpless dark—sort of hikes up everything bad that might occur to you.

What bad things? he wondered, annoyed with himself for getting anxious before the adventure had even got going. What are you talking about?

He regretted this line of inquiry. Along the highways of his brain, unlikely roads were seeing a lot of sudden and terrible activity.

Unpleasant recollections drove through him, memories like:

(Hooyou?)

(I know all about it, cocksucker. She’s dead and you killed her.)

(Not ready)

“I won’t hear you,” he told these unexpected visitors from Memory Lane. “I won’t.”

But he did.

He listened numbly as they hounded him, rode him down. The elevator’s motor took on the snarl of freakish engines. He remembered each voice, each harrowing event, with a clarity that was almost supernatural. Maybe it was the dark. Blind. Helpless. Descending.

Leave me alone. He fumbled for the crank and gripped it feverishly as his visitors wheeled round for a second pass at his sanity.

(Hooyou?)

That was Laurana, her freckles spattered with blood.

(Cocksucker. She’s dead and you killed her.)

Walter, accusing Hughes of murder on the day they sent Laurana off to be buried under the blackberries.

(Not ready.)

This last from Hector. Wise, patient Hector.

Not ready for what? Why for Eurydice where something worse than harmless elevator-dark brooded. Something that required a robust knowledge of all three rules of swordplay to tackle, not just a cursory grasp of the first. Something that built towns, and castles, and which Wendy Dragontail believed him ready to fight.

The breath seized in Hughes’ chest. He felt wind blasted by an almost physical relief. His hand gave an involuntary shudder and released the crank. Because that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? The diversion that cut off the Memory Lane parade, that flicked on a little light no matter how blackly his doubt festered?

Hector the ghost thought he wasn’t ready.

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