Chapter 322: Tell Them The Lady Is Walking In Her Sleep

"My lady?"

She walked past him.

She did not hurry. She moved with a slow, steady, floating step, as though she were wading through still water. She went down the passage with one hand trailing along the wall, and the moonlight from the high windows lay across her in long pale bars.

"My lady," said Corin again. He took a step toward her. "Lady Morgana. Are you well?"

She did not answer.

He caught up with her at the head of the stair. He put out a hand, gently, and touched her sleeve. The linen was cold. She did not flinch. She did not turn. She only kept walking, and the sleeve slid out from under his fingers like water.

"Lady Morgana. Morgana. Please. Wake up."

Nothing.

He stood there, with his heart going hard, and watched her start down the stair.

She’s asleep, he thought. She’s asleep, and she’s walking. He had heard of it. His grandmother had walked in her sleep, in the last years, and the family had tied a bell to her ankle. You were not supposed to wake them. You were supposed to follow, and guide them gently, and bring them home.

He looked up the dark corridor, and down the dark stair.

I can’t carry her. I can’t stop her. And if I wake her now, in the middle of the steps.....

He had a very bad feeling.

"Perrin," he hissed.

The younger guard at the far end of the passage straightened, startled. "Corin?"

"Go to the kings. Tell them the lady is walking in her sleep, and that she’s heading downstairs, and that I don’t like it."

"Which kings?"

"All of them."

"They’ll have my head."

"They’ll have it a good deal faster if you don’t."

Perrin went white. He ran.

Corin did not wait to watch him go. He was already moving, quick and silent, down the steps after the white shape floating ahead of him in the dark.

***

Draeven woke with a gasp.

It was not a dream, not exactly. It was a pull. A hard bright jerk under his ribs, as though someone had taken hold of a rope tied to his heart and yanked. He sat bolt upright in the bed, his hand pressed to his chest, his breath coming fast.

INFERNUS was on his feet inside him.

"She is moving,"said the dragon. "She is moving, and she is being drawn."

Where?

"Down."

Down where?

A pause. Then, in a low, furious growl, a single word.

"Them."

Draeven was out of bed before the word finished. He had no memory of crossing the floor. He found himself in the middle of the room with his coat in one hand and his boots in the other, and the door was already banging open, and a pale young guard stood on the threshold with his mouth open.

"Majesty," gasped Perrin. "The lady, she’s...."

"I know," said Draeven.

He was already past him.

Down the hall, a door crashed. Another. He heard Kaelen’s voice, hoarse with sleep and rage, bellowing a stream of words so foul that the young guard went scarlet. He heard the soft, quick, unmistakable tread of Thorne, who made no noise at all. They met at the head of the main stair, all three of them, half dressed, wild-eyed, barefoot on the marble.

"The Sanctum," said Thorne.

"The Sanctum," said Draeven.

"They’re calling her." Kaelen’s face was white. "The old bastards. They’ve got her by the....by the...."

"Run," said Draeven.

They ran.

***

She went down.

It was a long way. The Sanctum lay beneath the east tower, under the foundations of the palace itself, and the way to it was a spiral of worn steps that led deep into the rock. She had never been there. She had never been told the way. But her feet knew it. They found the stairs in the dark and took them one by one, light and sure, and the walls slid by on either side, rough and cold and faintly wet.

The torches were lit.

She noticed it dimly. All the way down, in iron brackets on the stone, a line of low flames burned for her. Someone had lit them. Or something had. They leaned toward her as she passed, as if bowing.

At the bottom, a pair of great bronze doors stood open.

She walked through them.

The cavern beyond was vast. She felt it before she saw it, a huge cold stillness that swallowed the sound of her steps. The floor was black stone, smooth as glass. The walls rose into darkness. Along them hung long curtains of mineral, pale and gleaming, like the folds of frozen cloth, and far overhead, where the roof should have been, a thousand tiny points of light glimmered like stars.

In the center of it, three shapes lay coiled.

She stopped.

They were so big.

She had known they would be big. She had seen them once before, when Thorne had caught her with them and also in the dream.

They rose out of the floor like hills. Their scales were the color of old metal, crimson and silver and dull gold, and where the torchlight touched them they gleamed faintly, like the sides of ancient bells. Their heads were lifted. Six eyes, gold and enormous and unblinking, were fixed on her.

"Hello, little one,"said Aeris.

Her voice was soft.

It was the silver voice from the dream, light and curling, and it came from the nearest of the three. A great dragon with scales the color of moonlit water, and a wing folded against her side that was torn along one edge, ragged and old. She lowered her head, slowly, until her eye was level with Morgana’s face.

"You came," she said.

Morgana tried to speak.

Her mouth was dry. Her thoughts were thick and slow, as though she were wading through honey. She had the strangest feeling that she was standing a long way behind her own eyes, watching herself from a great distance.