Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

It stared at them for what seemed forever until Anna thought it had not understood what Matthias said, only mimicked the sounds. The dogs sniffed at her feet, and a hundred prickles ran like poisonous creatures up and down her back. The Eika procession would return at any moment.

The creature flung up its head as a dog does at a sudden sound. “Quickly,” it said. “Beyond the tower stair lies a door to the crypt. In the crypt lies the path you seek. Go free.” That fast, it changed before their eyes to a mad thing. It grabbed the heavy chain that bound it and yanked violently. It threw back its head and howled, and the dogs set up such a yammering and howling and barking that Anna was deafened.

Matthias grabbed her hand. Together they ran into the shadow of the colonnade and all the way back along the nave while the daimone hammered the chain against the stone paving like a wild beast and the dogs leaped and barked around it, some nipping in at its body to be met by elbow or fist.

“God help the poor creature,” muttered Matthias. They came to the end of the colonnade and into the long entryway which ran perpendicular to the nave, itself now draped in shadows as the sun set outside and the interior darkened and the poor mad daimone finally ceased its frantic and useless efforts to free itself. Magic it might have, to control the dogs, but not magic enough to free itself from the Eika enchanter.

The door that opened onto the stairwell which led to the crypt stood before them, dark, somber wood scored with deep scratches as if someone had clawed at it, trying to get in. Matthias set a hand on the latch, jiggling it tentatively to make sure it wasn’t stuck or squeaky.

In the new silence Anna heard the noise first, the scuff of a foot on stone. She whirled and then, because she could not help herself, let out a low moan of fear. Matthias looked back over his shoulder. She felt him stiffen and grope for the knife he always tucked in at his belt.

Too late.

An Eika stood in the shadows not ten strides from them, next to the great doors. It stepped out from its hiding place and stared at them. It was tall, as most of the savages were, but more slender than bulky; its body winked and dazzled in the last glint of sun through the high windows because it wore a girdle of surpassing beauty, gold-and-silver chains linked together and bound in with jewels like a hundred eyes all storing at them, who were at last caught.

She was too terrified even to whimper. She loosened her hand from her Circle and traced it, a finger all the way around the smooth wood grain, the Circle of God’s Mercy, as her mother had taught her many years ago: the only prayer she knew.

The creature moved no farther, not to retreat, not to charge.

But Anna saw the strangest thing she had yet seen in her entire life, stranger than slaughter and death and the horrible dogs and rats feeding on a bloated corpse. The creature wore a necklace, a plain leather thong knotted in several places as if it had broken more than once and been tied back together, and on that leather thong, resting against its gleaming copper-scaled chest, hung a wooden Circle of Unity, the sign of the church. Just like hers.

Still it did not move, nor did it raise its head and howl an alarm. But, just like her, it lifted a single finger and traced the round shape of the Circle, as she had done.

Matthias shook himself as if coming out of a dream. He lifted the latch, grasped Anna by the arm. “Don’t look,” he said. “Don’t look back. Just follow me.”

He dragged her inside, shutting the door after them though there was no light to see by. Together they stumbled down the stairs into the black crypt.

No one—no thing, no creature, no sound of pursuit—came after them.

“It’s a miracle,” she whispered, and then stumbled as she took a step down only to find there were no more steps; the impact jarred her entire body. She lost hold of Matthias and groped frantically, found him again, and clutched his hand so tight he grunted in pain, but she would not lessen her grip on him. She could see nothing, not even her hand in front of her face.

“Look,” whispered Matthias, and his whisper faded into the blackness, and she heard it filter away into some vast empty unknowable expanse.

She saw it first as luminescence, a faint glowing light. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she gasped and gagged, for the crypt before them was filled with skeletal corpses and all of them in the same stage of decay although they no longer stank of rotting flesh.

“Look there,” whispered Matthias. He pointed, and she could see his arm lifted in the gloom and see beyond it a throbbing light as faint as the soul’s breath might appear if it were visible to the human eye. “Come!” he said urgently, and they began the gruesome task of picking their way through the litter of corpses.

“Fighting men, these were,” he said. “Look. Some are still wearing surcoats, what you can see of them.”

Some indeed wore gold surcoats bearing the sigil of a black dragon. Anna did not know what this meant, only that the one time she had seen a procession go by, bearing a banner to mark the passage of a noble lord or lady, it had not been this one but some other creature, a hound perhaps or a horse. This mystery—who were these soldiers? Had they died in the last battle, when the city was overwhelmed? How had they come to be dumped in this holy crypt like so much refuse?—she could not answer.

Gaping skulls grinned up at them, but Anna no longer feared them. They were dead; they had fought to save their kin, their human brothers and sisters, and so they would not disturb her and Matthias now. In this way she was able to find a path through their bodies, to nudge them gently aside when necessary. Once, when she saw a knife protruding from a rib cage, she carefully pried it out and took it for herself, thanking the poor dead soul who had in this way saved it for her. You never knew when you might need another knife.

Beyond the dead soldiers they followed the light farther into the crypt, past the gravestones of the holy dead, those who were once biscops and deacons and good men and women who labored for the church, until they came to a secret corner and found there what the daimone had promised them: a staircase leading down into the earth, illuminated by the whisper of light that had led them there.

Anna felt hope swell in her heart, of itself a light against the darkness of despair and dread.

Matthias hesitated and then, not looking back, started down the stairs, testing each one carefully before he set his full weight on it. Because he still held her hand, because she feared more than anything else in the world losing him, she had to follow. Yet she looked back over her shoulder—though she could see nothing but darkness behind them—and spoke a solemn vow:

“We’ll come back for you, Papa Otto, for you and all the others but especially for you.”

The stairs led down a long way and all of it in darkness. They felt their way along, groping along the wall with the flats of their hands, and when at last the stairs ended and the wall curved and then straightened, a breeze caught her lips and she tasted something strange on it, something she had not tasted for many months: fresh air untainted by a city’s death, and green things growing in plain good earth, not in the crevices between fallen stones.

They walked for a long while, resting a few times although never for long.

When they emerged from the tunnel, it was dawn.

They came out of a cave’s mouth to see a field of oats run wild and a few buildings that looked abandoned. Behind the narrow cave mouth rose a ridge of rock and up this Matthias scrambled, Anna right behind him. From the ridge they looked back over the empty countryside to the city below, resting like a jewel on an island in the middle of the broad river. From this distance one would never guess what lay inside. It looked like a perfect toy model of a city, untouched, gently gleaming in the early morning sunlight.