Page 106 of Anathema
MAEVYTH
Stars twinkled, as I lay curled on my side, staring through the barred window. In the muck of memories I wanted to forget from home, the ones I most loved were of the nights I would sing to Aleysia while staring out at the stars. Tears formed in my eyes, and closing my lids over them, I hummed her favorite song, fighting to hold back the trapped tears as my voice hardly carried over Dolion’s snores in the next cell. Covering my ears to drown the noise, I raised the pitch, and for the briefest moment, I was back in my own bed, with my sister lying beside me.
When the song ended, I opened my eyes, and caught a flicker of movement from the shadows, only noticeable beneath the sconces burning outside my cell. Frowning, I sat up, trying to discern what it was I’d seen.
Quietly, I waited.
Was it a mouse? A mouse I could’ve dealt with. Even a rat, as awful as the thought might’ve been.
Not daring to step off the bed, I watched that corner of the cell for what seemed like minutes. Still, nothing appeared.
I exhaled a sigh and fell back against the pillow.
Perhaps I’d imagined it.
I went back to humming the song, and as I prepared to close my eyes, something shifted in my periphery again. My first thought was of the Deimosi that Zevander had told me about, and I hesitated to look for a moment. Then I turned my head, and the breath deflated from my lungs. A black spider, perhaps the size of a cob loaf, stared at me from the other side of the bars, the sight of its long, hairy legs casting a shiver down my spine. I let out a shaky breath, my eyes scanning for something to throw at it, but all I had at my disposal was the book Dolion had given me and the firelamp on the table beside my bed.
My thoughts wound back to the cell with the guards and the bug that had multiplied into hundreds of smaller bugs, and another shiver rippled through me. In as subtle a gesture as I could muster, I reached for the book, knowing hundreds of little beady eyes were watching my every movement.
Just as I raised the book, the spider slipped back into the shadows.
“Oh, shoot!” I shifted on the bed, scrambling to the foot of it for a glimpse of where it might’ve scampered off to. When nothing moved again, I hummed again in hopes of drawing it out, assuming that had been what’d drawn it both times before.
The spider skittered to the side out of the shadows again and, unless I was imagining it, seemed to sway with my singing.
Frowning, I lifted the book as I kept on with my humming, ready to throw the damn thing if it attempted to come inside the cell.
Instead, it remained where it was, staring, seemingly lulled into a trance.
The book slipped in my hands and something sharp bit into my finger. All I imagined were spider fangs piercing my skin, and my head spiraled into a panic “Ouch! Damn it!” I dropped the book to search for the culprit, and glanced back to see the spider scampering off again.
Scrambling for the firelamp, I turned it up to full flame, but found nothing in that corner of the room. Exhaling a breath, I turned to my finger to where a tiny drop of blood slid over my skin, falling onto the cover’s maze. The blood slipped through the maze quickly, like a bead of mercury moving of its own will, until it filled what looked like a skinny vial, no bigger than a grain of rice. A click echoed through the cell, and I flinched, my muscles still on edge as I glanced back toward where the spider had stood moments before. Thankfully, it hadn’t bothered to return.
The machinations of the book quickly became clear, as small gears wound on their own and the bird’s eye opened over a lever. I stared at it a moment, attempting to puzzle its purpose, then reached into the eye and turned the lever with a click.
The cover popped open.
Why I hesitated, I couldn’t say, but after a moment, I flipped the cover open to an elaborately illustrated image of people and bird-like creatures and dragons that spanned across two pages. One so rich with detail, my eyes could scarcely focus. At the center of the image stood an impressive castle with stone walls and creeping vines. Silver, embossed markings beside it appeared illegible, but when I ran my finger over them, they shifted on the page.
My breath hitched with a gasp, and I snapped my hand back, watching the word fade to its original form. Hesitating, I touched it again, and the markings shifted to the word a second time, in a stretch of letters I understood. Corvus Keep. A breath of a laughter escaped me as I tried it two more times, marveling at mystical movement on the page.
I studied the illustrations of the people in the image, who wore thick furs, their hair pulled back in tight braids. Painted over their eyes was a shadowy depiction of a black bird. A raven. Each carried a crude weapon that looked like a handheld scythe, while some wore quivers strapped to their backs.
More markings lined the bottom of the image, and I ran my finger over them, somehow changing their shape with the contact, just like the first.
The ashes of our dead protect us in battle, the goddess, in death.
Tracking to the right showed a woman with long, black hair, surrounded by a white mist and black birds flying around her. I thumbed the strange symbols beside her, revealing the word Morsana.
“Morsana,” I whispered, noting the striking silver of her eyes that seized my attention.
Above her flew bird-like dragons, colossal-sized beasts that made the humans look small by comparison. Some flew in the sky, breathing a silvery flame as they circled overhead, while others attacked armored figures, whose severed heads and limbs lay scattered about in pools of red. Each creature carried a silver marking, like the one I’d seen on Raivox—a crescent moon.
The same mark that marred my eye.
I dragged a finger over the peculiar symbols beside the creatures, like the ones before, which reminded me of etched runes.
Corvugon appeared.