They were in a tunnel. No, a hallway. The walls a gold colored stone hung with tapestries of red and gold. Darkness crawled over them, slow and sluglike. The human lay unconscious on the brightly polished floor. The Silent One stood protectively over the human but had no power to drive the shadows back. Blindly, they oozed towards both of them, tentacle-like stalks reaching out to touch.
Belle dreamt she was falling from a tower set at the top of a Pyramid.
Avonlea.
It was a children's tale. Half-awake, half-dreaming, she remembered it. Avonlea, the Lesser Pyramid. It had existed ages ago—if it had ever existed at all. Even in the Hall of Scholars, no one had ever learned if there were any truth to the tale.
It had been smaller and weaker than the Pyramid Belle knew. Fearing either the growing weakness of the Pyramid or the closeness of even its highest points to the dark land below, they had fortified their watch stations in ways Belle's people had never needed to (unless they did, now that the Pyramid's light had already faded once. Thanks to her).
Living inside that Pyramid, so the tale said, had been a beautiful maiden.
Of course, all heroines in ancient tales were beautiful maidens. Being too lovely for words and still unmarried was required for adventures. Well, Belle had one of the two down. Though, if irresistible beauty really counted, maybe she should have talked Ruby into doing this.
The beautiful maiden of this tale was the daughter of the Master of Defense for the Lesser Pyramid. Like Belle, both father and daughter had seen the signs that their Pyramid was failing. Like Belle, the daughter of the Pyramid had sent her cry out into the Night, hoping against hope for a voice to answer hers.
Far off in the Pyramid Belle knew, one of the Monstruwacans, the watchers against the Night, had heard her and answered. Armed and trained, he had set out across the darkness.
The Silent One reached out and touched the shadows. They were different than the small crab it had scattered to dust before. Those were the barest scraps of nightmare. These were something else. The Silent Ones themselves were made from darkness like them. It . . . remembered.
No, that was a foolish thought. Its kind did not forget. Its memories, when it bothered to recall them at all, were pure and clear.
This feeling . . . it was as if it were imagining the world itself had once had another shape, another meaning.
And, yet. Light. Darkness. Voices hissing in its mind. Dark deeds and darker. Screams. Orders that could not be disobeyed.
The shadows were made of such memories. They hungered for more. That was what they were hunting for in the human, the Silent One realized as they touched it. A specific memory. It feel the quarry they were searching for: a name, a face, somewhere in her mind.
Why? it wondered. It was used to understanding its world and it thought it knew all its creatures. Why were the shadows hunting knowledge in this human's mind? And what would they do when they found it?
Trapped in the Night, Belle envied the hero his preparation. He had had training. He had had warnings what to expect in this world.
Hearing the tale as a child, other things had caught her attention, like the call the maiden had sent out. She had imagined it again and again, a cry with so much strength and desperation, it could be heard at the far borders of the world.
She had even made up her own version of it, along with the rest of the story, writing it out neatly to read to her mother later. It was nothing terribly poetic. "Help! Help! We're dying! Can you save us?" was about as far as her literary gifts had gone as a five-year old. She had imagined the beautiful maiden, her father, and a few other defenders gathered in their Pyramid's final stronghold as monstrous hounds, creepers, Silent Ones, Abhumans and other creatures of the Night gathered outside their gates. When all seemed lost, the hero appeared, offering to save them from their enemies in return for the beautiful maiden's hand. . . .
Only, that wasn't the way the story really went. The Lesser Pyramid, if there ever was one, had fallen. The hero had arrived too late. He had arrived only to find the gates broken, the light of its barrier gone, and the bodies of the dead lying crushed and broken within.
The human seemed as confused as the Silent One was, remembering everything through a twisted haze. It caught glimpses of a story, a hero, a maiden (maiden, it thought, rememberingthe word. Yes, this human was a maiden, a woman. There were other words: Mother, Father, Daughter, Son.
Child.
That word was important. It couldn't remember why. It remembered screams of pain, the pain of the dying, the pain of those forced to live. The pain of a mother weeping for its—for her—lost child.
The Silent One should know this darkness, should understand it, but it didn't. It couldn't suck the small illusion of life out of them. So, it tried to drive them back instead. But, the shadows oozed past it. It might more easily try to hold back the tides of the sea.
Tides. Sea. The words nibbled at the edge of its thoughts. It knew them. It almost remembered what they meant, stories from long ago. . . .
Some of the tales ended with hero finding her among the dead. Belle had dreamed that ending over and over again. The maiden fled to the tower with her father and a few others. As the creatures of the Night broke through, slaughtering all they saw, she had chosen the quicker, cleaner death, throwing herself from the Lesser Pyramid's tower.
There were other versions of the tale. Some said, when the hero saw the fallen Pyramid and called out in despair into the Night, she had answered. Somehow, without armor or diskos, she had survived, alone in the night, till he had found her. But, sick and wounded, she had already been fading as they fought their way back across the Night to the one refuge which still stood. She had grown weaker with each step. He had carried her those last miles (as a little girl, Belle had imagined him carrying her in his arms. When she was older, she realized it was more likely the beautiful maiden had been slung across the hero's back, piggyback style, like a rather large backpack. It was less romantic but it would have been much more practical, especially when he needed a hand free to hold out his diskos and fight).
The shadows pressed hungrily, trying to push the human to think of the thing they needed, the fugitive memory that still escaped them. The images of the story shimmered in the human's mind. The Silent One caught a glimpse of a man, the face obscured. It wore armor like the human's. But, not like. The Silent One caught a glimpse of another image beneath it, a figure in scaled leathers, like pieces of dragon hide. . . .
The hero had run the last few miles, struggling to stay ahead of the creatures that had scented life and blood. He had reached the Pyramid at last, only to find she had died sometime during that last, desperate flight.
Or perhaps he had known. Perhaps, despite all the dangers of the Night, he had been unable to leave her corpse behind to the monsters that would have defiled and (eventually) devoured it, even at the risk of his own life.
There was, naturally, a version of the tale (told by mothers to their impressionable daughters) where this was not the end. There was a great memorial. For some reason, it was held in the necropolis of the Pyramid. The body (not yet reduced to ash) had been set out, and light from the Barrier (what had things been like in those days that there was so much light they could even imagine such a thing happening without any weakening of their defense?) had gathered round the still maiden's form, reviving her.
As a child, Belle had assumed it was light from the barrier. Now, having seen the light of the Tomb of the Sleeping Prince, she wondered if there were something more to it—and if there might be more truth to the tale than she thought.
Not enough. There was no answer. Frustrated, the shadows pressed closer, drinking in the warm glow of life from her body, licking at the gentle glow of her soul.
Or perhaps, Belle thought, feeling the pain in her body, all the tales were wrong. Perhaps the creatures had captured the maiden after all.
In her dream, Belle imagined a woman's voice (not her mother's, she couldn't remember who this was).
"They were cruel to her," the voices hissed. "They tortured her with scourges and flaying.
"Till she threw herself from the tower. She died."
Died.
Belle remembered falling.
She felt the crushing blow of stone rising up to meet her.
She threw herself from the tower, that was how the story went. And, really, there was only one ending that had ever made any sense.
She died.
The Silent One watched as the human's breathing slowed, the glow of life beginning to fade as the darkness moved in to finish its feast.
No, Belle thought. No. Even in her dreams, she felt her hand tightening around something hard and round. The wheel warmed in her hand.
You're lying, she told the dream voice. I'm real. I'm alive.
The beautiful maiden never gave up. She believed in him. She believed in herself. She never stopped fighting.
And, beautiful or not, this maiden doesn't die from a little fall.
Another voice, familiar, unfamiliar, seemed to fill the room.
With a high pitched giggle, it said, Do you know something? She's right. Her deal is struck.
And then darkness rose up out of the gold, darkness stronger and angrier and hungrier than the small shadows crawling around them.
You wanted to see my face? the shadow asked. Well, dearies, here it is.
The Silent One watched as the oozing, shadowy slugs were torn to shreds. It heard their silent screams, and it watched as their tattered remains tried to fly away.
They didn't make it. The Silent One wasn't sure what it saw. The wheel, it was certain, was as dark as anything in the room, but it may have burnt away the shadows like summer sun.
Or it may have hungrily gathered them in, like stray threads from spinning, and devoured them.