Young Immortals

Twenty: Door II (2)

Silas has not brought me to draw for him.

Silas has brought me here to die. 

"The dead are deader!" Silas calls. He stands over a pile of bones scattered up and down the hall, breathing heavily, his sword dangling from his hand. "You can come out now!"

I do not move. I do not even breathe.

"Isobel?" He turns around, just as I emerge from the table. He sees the intention in my eyes, and his entire demeanor shifts. "Isobel," he says warningly. "Isobel–"

I turn on my heel and sprint down the opposite hall. More undead awaits me, but I don't try to brute force my way through like Silas. I am smaller, and I duck and weave through the hordes of grabbing hands, hearing loud rips of my dress as I sprint through the masses to emerge clean on the other side. 

But for the next hall, I am not so lucky.

A long corridor stretches before me with a row of identical chambers on both sides of its walls. At the end, there are more bodies than free space, packed so densely the undead form a wall. I jerk to a halt, and they all turn in unison, dozens of glowing orbs fixed on me. 

I pale and whip around – only for another hoard of the undead to block my only other exit. Desperately, I turn around the corridor as the undead narrow in from both sides, and run to the first door at random, slamming it locked behind me.

Inside is a bedchamber, complete with a bed, night stand, desk, and two doors. I check each, hoping to find another exit, only to discover a washroom and a closet – both of which lead to nowhere. Suddenly, a loud thump rattles the main door. 

I run for the desk to barricade the door, just as another thump sends it flying open. I stop dead in my tracks. Silas stares at me with wild eyes, breathing hard. His hair sticks out in spikes, and his shirt has been torn to his navel. 

One of the undead sticks their skeletal hand through the crack in the door, and without taking his eyes off me, Silas stomps backward to slam the door shut, severing the arm in two. Then he takes a step toward me, so I shove the desk between and run for the closet. 

I turn the lock just as Silas reaches the door. He curses and jerks the handle back and forth to no avail. My whole body starts to shudder with fear, which only gets worse when he presses his mouth against a crack in the door. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Did you even try to protect your past scribes?" I burst out. "Or is this job nothing but a ruse to recruit sacrifices? Either way, I quit! If you want the text copied so badly, do it yourself!"

"Or –" Silas pushes his fingers through a crack in the door. The aged wood splinters like chalk, and the gap widens enough for me to see his face, and for Silas to stick his hand into the closet. "I could just open the door."

He feels around the door until he grasps the lock, only to pause at the horror on my face. I pause, too, bracing myself in tense silence. Silas' hand tightens on the lock – and then he releases it. "What you just saw are not bodies of dead scribes," he says. "The tunnels only open once every century. This – with you – is the first time I've entered the mountain."

I cross my arms over my chest. "So whose bodies are they?"

Silas withdraws his hand from the door and leans against the wall, taking a seat just outside the closet. He faces ahead rather than looking at me, so I can only see his profile. 

"The Green Court is built over the bones of another. The Summer Court. They were the most powerful court in the realm, until a natural disaster swept them into myth and obscurity – or so the public thinks. The Vanguard royal bloodline guarded the Summer Court's true demise for generations, passing down the secret from king to king to king. In truth, the Summer Court tore itself apart after the Erlking's favorite daughter, Cordelia, fell in love with an ogre."