THE KINGSBLADE CHRONICLES
BOOK I
DREAM’S EDGE
BY DYLAN HENRY CASTAÑO
Prologue
Jaynie was sobbing again, her body shaking violently under the blanket as she moaned. Every night it was the same quiet crying at first, then she would begin to scream and claw at the feather mattress, calling for her father until the wild, broken howling started, as if she were possessed by some demon. The other girls in the cell cursed her angrily in hushed voices. No one liked Jaynie.
“Not again…” Drea groaned.
“Shut her up!” hissed Arna.
They shifted restlessly in their beds, whispering threats that changed nothing. Jaynie grew louder and louder, her tormented moans reverberating off the thick walls of their prison.
“Please, Jaynie, stop it…” begged Thula.
“You will wake him if you go on like that!” Arna whispered urgently.
“And he’ll punish us all…” Drea moaned.
“I’ll smother her with my pillow, I will,” Reah said.
They began congregating around Jaynie’s bed, begging and bullying, all but one. The girl in the bed furthest from the rest lay motionless, listening intently for footsteps from beyond the iron door. Down the old corridor where the torches burned with blue and green and violet flames, up the spiral stone stair they were never allowed to climb. To the freedom of crashing waves, stormy skies and death.
“Where is he?” she wondered, fiddling with the shiv under her blanket. Tonight was the night, the plan was set, and her will was yet unbroken. The cold steel had taken months to sharpen; the runes carved into it even longer. She had spent the long winter months cleaning the library, just to reach the books she needed. She had painstakingly hidden the scraps of forbidden knowledge, etchings of runes she had learned haltingly, one every few months at best. She had drawn maps in her mind of the dungeon’s corridors, doors, and blind routes, yet none of the paths led out. Through the labyrinth of corridors and cells where they were kept, to the great stone stair that seemed to reach the heavens, she knew that freedom was not up there, among the stars, but down below, in the pits of the great tower.
There was only one way out, and the voice within the lidless, lockless box was the key to her escape.
Thinking of the box made her shudder and pull the blankets tightly over herself. It was not a sound, not truly. Not like words spoken or breath drawn. It was something that pressed against her thoughts, patient and insistent, like a hand against glass, yet burning through her temple if she tried to ignore it.
Yet despite her fears and reservations, her mind was set. How hard it had been for her to not get into trouble, to bite back her pride. The humiliation, the pain, the fear. She would not let it all be for naught. Tonight she knew she would escape this wretched dungeon, this tower of sorrow, and her impending death.
“Come now, dears,” Aella said, “let Jaynie be.”
The girl by the door frowned.
Aella was the eldest, and somewhat of a mother to the others in their cell, though she could not be older than fourteen. By all accounts she had been born in the dungeon, and had never known life outside of it, yet somehow she remained the sweetest and kindest of them all. And they all loved her fiercely for it. All save the girl by the door.
“Come now, my sweet, all will be well,” Aella cooed as she sat on Jaynie’s bed, “do not cry, twill all be well, I promise…”
She began humming softly. It was a motherly tune, simple and sweet, yet powerful. Jaynie’s sobbing gradually stopped, and even the fearful rage in the other girls was quelled. Aella kept humming for a while as they wandered off to their beds and quietly fell asleep.
The girl by the door was livid. She would not wait another night, she could not. Cursing Aella’s kind heart under her breath, she crept from the bed and quietly made her way to Jaynie once all her returned to their cots, clutching the steel shiv in her hand. She moved quietly, her feet barely making a sound on the cold stone floor. As she reached Jaynie’s bed she looked down on the pathetic girl, who had bundled herself up in her sheets. Her unloving black eyes burned like coals as she held the shiv so tightly her knuckles turned bone white.
“Your father will never come for you,” she whispered in Jaynie’s ear, “he wanted to be rid of you, so he sent you here. He gave you to the bad men, for them to hurt you, to prod you, to maim you. He wants you dead, and he will never, ever, come back for you. You will die here, cold and alone. Cold and alone forever.”
She barely had a moment to run back to her bed and cover herself under her blankets before the bellowing started. Jaynie screeched so loudly it made her wince. The other girls bolted out of bed and began screaming and crying too. It was madness. And it was all going according to plan.
Then she heard it. Faintly at first, but sure enough, the soft steps of the beast drew nearer. The others could not hear it yet, they were too busy trying to quiet Jaynie’s screams, and when the steel door creaked open, and the strange lights from the corridor flooded their cell, the girls jumped with fright and dropped to their knees, pleading for mercy.
At the door stood the beast, silhouetted against the blue and green and violet flames from the stone corridor beyond. It was hunched unnaturally, laboured breathing could be heard through its snouted mask. Its horns were long and bent with age, and one of its tusks had broken off.
“Please, don’t! We will be quiet, we promise!” Aella pleaded.
The other girls dared say not a word as the beast slunk in, its breathing soft and its smell sickly sweet as it made its way towards Jaynie’s bed.
“No… no!” cried Aella, jumping in front of the beast. “I will not let you take her, she’s a child, she’s scared. Leave her be!”
The beast gave no one a moment to admire the girl’s bravery. With one lazy twitch of its lanky arm it swatted Aella away, hitting her with such force her skull shattered as she hit the cell’s stone wall. The brave girl slid down and fell into a heap of broken limbs.
As the beast bent over Aella’s body, the girl with the black eyes pounced. This was her moment, and she clenched her teeth in icy silence as she stabbed.
The shiv dug deep into the creature’s back, and the runes she had painstakingly etched into the blade shone gold with fiery flame. The beast let out a gasping snort as she stabbed and stabbed and kept on stabbing even after the creature lay dead, not stopping until her arm was numb and her fingers ached. Its mask fell and cracked upon the cold stone floor, though none dared look upon the very human face of their captor.
“What have you done?” Drea whispered, horrified, as she staggered away from the corpse, breathing heavily. Her dark eyes flashed cold anger at the other girls.
“She… killed… it…”
“It can’t be…”
“No, no, no, no…”
They were looking at her as if she had the rot.
“You’ve killed us!” Arna said accusingly.
“They will never forgive this, you know it...”
She did not stay to hear the rest, sliding the shiv out of the beast and waving it around, spraying the nearest girls with triumphant black blood. They shrieked and stepped back, giving her a moment to bolt out of the room and slam the door behind her, locking the others into the cell.
“Where are you going?” she heard, as she hurtled down the corridor.
“Don’t leave us!”
“Help! What are you doing! Help!”
Their pleas grew fainter and fainter as she rounded the corner, reaching the grand spiral stair that seemed to lead both to the heavens and to the hells. Upward, the stairs disappeared into a blanket of stars, while the way down seemed to lead into the mouth of darkness itself.
Her heart was racing and her mind was a mess. She could still go back, she thought. Sure, none of those girls had ever been her friends, save for Aella. The motherly girl’s face came to her unbidden, bright and gentle in the darkness of her thoughts.
Aella, stupid, kind, brave Aella. She had resented the others, even hated them, yet Aella had always been good to her. Aella had always brought her food when she had been mischievous and they had punished her with no meals. Aella had brushed her hair and talked to her. None of the others talked to her or even came near her. Aella had held her during her first night in their cell and sung to her as she cried herself to sleep, just like she had for Jaynie. And now Aella was dead, and it was her fault. Now she was leaving the rest of them to their doom. Her steps slowed as she descended the spiral stair. The air grew colder with every turn, the stone beneath her feet damp and ancient, as if the tower itself were sinking into something without a bottom. Above her, the cries of the other girls had faded into distant echoes, swallowed by the walls of the tower.
She did not look back
The truth was, they would only slow her down.
She took the stairs down towards the fluting voice calling to her from the depths of the tower, the voice that promised freedom.
The voice within the box.
The strange colours of the torchlight shifted as she descended deeper into the depths, blue to green, green to violet, until even they began to dim, for it seemed that light itself struggled to live in such darkness, and the voice called out to her, hungry and cold like snow on flesh.