A Dawn of Dragonfire - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,69
in its skin. It hissed and stared with blazing red eyes. "The Guardian of the Darkness bit her, children! She will soon be a Withered One. Look at her arm!"
The bodies on the hooks stared and hissed. Tongues thrust out from their wounds and licked their blood. Lyana looked at her arm and saw that Nedath's disease had spread to her elbow. Her forearm was now thin as bone, her flesh gone, her skin dangling.
"Can you cure her?" Elethor said, raising his voice over their cries and laughter. "How can we stop the curse?"
The bodies on the walls growled, revealing fangs. "Feed us! Feed us and we will tell you. We know of a cure. Feed us and we will help."
Fingers trembling, Lyana opened her pack. She had brought food from Requiem: sweet apples, grainy rolls of bread, cheese, oranges, and dried fish. Maggots filled the food now, and Lyana grimaced.
"I have food for you!" she shouted. The bodies were twitching around her, legs kicking, as if trying to escape the meat hooks.
"We do not want your food of sunlight and soil!" one said.
"Feed us ourselves!" cried another. "Let us feast upon our comrades, upon our sweet hands and feet!"
They opened their maws wide, drooling, begging for meat. Those with arms reached out and pawed at her. Their bellies bloated, pulsing with eggs.
"Stars, they're cannibals," Elethor whispered. He was pale and his sword wavered in his hand.
Lyana wanted to gag, to weep, to run. How could she do this? To take a squirming body from the wall, hack it apart, feed it to its comrades?
"It would be like cutting meat, just like cutting meat!" they begged. "Feed us, feed us our comrades!"
"Tell me of a cure first!" Lyana shouted. Their voices rose so loudly, her ears hurt. "Tell me how to cure Nedath's curse and I will feed you then!"
A halved body, ribs white and twisting, hissed at her. "You must find the Feasting Table!" it said. "You must eat there from the sweet meats. Then you will be cured. Then you will be a Withered One no more. Then you must feed us!"
Elethor shouted, swinging his sword to hold back the groping arms. "Where is this Feasting Table?"
The bodies pulled aside, like sweeping curtains of flesh, and revealed a gaping doorway. Lyana could see nothing but shadows through it, but scents hit her nose. She could smell… food, real food! Fresh bread, and cakes, and fruits. The scents mingled with the stench of the hanging bodies, a sickening mix of the delicious and rotting.
"Enter and feast, child of starlight," said the bodies. "But choose wisely, so we may feast too."
Lyana looked at her arm. The disease was spreading up to her shoulder. Through her hanging skin, she could see the bones of her elbow, pale and full of worms. She no longer cared for danger. She rushed past the bodies into the dark chamber of scents. Behind her, she heard Elethor follow.
They walked for a moment in darkness until they saw candles burn ahead. The craggy walls widened, revealing a chamber with a tiled floor, white walls, and a chandelier.
A table stood in the room, and upon it lay a feast—such a feast as Lyana had never seen, not even in the courts of Requiem. Golden platters, bowls, and plates held roast ducks on beds of mushrooms, glazed hams, grapes and apples and peaches, thick gravy, bread still steaming from the oven, stewed vegetables, and every other delight Lyana could imagine. She realized that she was famished. Her mouth watered.
She would have leaped toward the food, were it not for the figures that sat around the table.
Seven chairs surrounded the feast. In all but one sat a Shrivel. Their limbs had atrophied into mere twigs wrapped in loose skin. Their spines were slung across the chairs, and their heads dangled over the backrests, forever looking at the walls behind them. Their faces gasped and sucked at their toothless gums. Dark liquid dripped from them, forming pools below their heads. The last chair, the one at the head of the table, was empty.
That chair is for me, Lyana knew.
A portrait of King Olasar of Requiem hung upon the wall, framed in giltwood. Somebody had smeared blood across it, giving the king horns and a forked tongue. The eyes had been gouged out. Words were scratched across the canvas, and Lyana read them, a shiver running through her.