The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (different e readers txt) 📕

“Aren’t you a pretty couple,” she croaked, slinking forward. The zlyzen fell into a pack on either side of her, creeping belly-low to the ground. “Out for a nice stroll, are you?”

Leato took Ren’s hand in his own. “She’s just another nightmare.”

“No,” Ren whispered, staring. Her skin was trying to crawl right off her body at the sight of the zlyzen… but that was nothing compared to the woman. Old and decayed, her teeth sharpened to points, she was still recognizable—by the ruins of her voice, by the way she caressed the zlyzen, by aren’t you a pretty couple.

“Ondrakja.”

The old woman cringed back. The zlyzen clustering around her hissed and growled. “How do you know that name?” she snarled. Then yellowed eyes widened, catching the light of the moons. “You! You ungrateful little bitch. You poisoned me!”

The amphitheatre echoed with the sound of Ondrakja’s delirious screams the night Ren killed her. Or tried to kill her?

No—it’s a nightmare. Don’t be drawn in.

Breaking into giggles, Ondrakja leveled a clawed finger at Ren. “But look at this. I poisoned you right back!” Her laughter crawled over Ren’s bones like maggots.

Leato looked as sickened as Ren felt. “You’re the one who caused this?”

“This? Yes, this. Though I never expected it to blossom so beautifully.” She bared her sharpened teeth. “Is that your doing, my pretty girl? You may be a traitorous little rat, but you always were my best.”

It called up the feeling Ren had in the Charterhouse—that her connection to Ažerais was the reason this had all been unleashed.

But she was fucked if she’d let Ondrakja—even some horrible nightmare vision of Ondrakja—know that. Ren might be a traitor who bound herself to a knot and then turned against it; she might be responsible for all the horrors tonight… but she wasn’t going to give Ondrakja the satisfaction of the truth.

She fought down her nausea, closed out the oil-slick movements of the zlyzen. Made herself focus. “Me? I was only ever a Finger. You were the hand moving us.” She eased a half step closer, mimicking the body language of years before. Sinking once more into that familiar habit, trying to figure out what to say or do to escape the nightmare around her. “But I cannot have been your target. You didn’t know I was here.”

“You?” Ondrakja edged closer, feigning friendliness, but it was as clear as glass that she only wanted to dig her claws into Ren. Her sweetness had always been nothing but a mask… and now the mask was rotting. “No, him. Indestor. He’s going to pay me like he promised, or I’ll make him swallow all the chaos I can shove at him.”

Ren was only half listening. “The wellspring,” she murmured to Leato. “It might be our way out.” The edge of it was visible, the ring of ancient stones rising above the amphitheatre’s stage the way it never did in the waking world.

But getting there would mean getting past the zlyzen.

“Might be?” Leato muttered, but his hand tightened on hers. “Right. Too bad you don’t have a sword—and another year of lessons. Stay close.”

Releasing her hand, he drew his blade and charged the zlyzen.

Ren snatched the knife from Leato’s belt and slashed right and left as she followed in his wake, screaming as if that would keep the zlyzen back. Instead it drew them in, feinting at her legs, snarling and snapping with their inhumanly sharp teeth. Then something seized her by the collar, and she choked.

It was Ondrakja, moving faster than any crone should. Her grip was like iron, twisting Ren’s collar tight, and the medallion she’d put on for the masquerade was strangling her, the chain pulling taut across her throat. Ren stabbed backward with the knife and hit something, but Ondrakja didn’t falter.

Then Leato was there. He slammed into them both and the pressure broke, the chain snapping. Ren stumbled forward, seeking the waters of the wellspring like a lodestone, praying to Ažerais—

The ring of stones yawned in front of her, an empty, dry pit.

She tried to halt her momentum, but it was too late. For an instant she teetered on the edge of the pit… and then, screaming, she fell.

Something caught her arm, stopping her momentum and swinging her body into the wall. Leato, leaning halfway over the edge and clutching with both hands. His fingers caught and tangled in the open, belled cuff of her shirt, and he grunted with the strain of holding her weight. “I’ve got you. Take my hand. Can you find a foothold—”

He convulsed, howling in pain, and his grip slipped. A zlyzen had pounced on his back, its twisted, blackened limbs raking. Then a second joined it, and a third.

“Leato!” She tried to grab hold of his sleeve with her other hand, but her palm was slick with blood from her cut arm. He dragged her upward anyway, but the zlyzen were tearing into him, their maws red and wet, and there were more and more of them until they blotted out the stars—

His grip went slack, and she fell.

Fell, into darkness, into the dry and echoing void of the vanished wellspring, into nothingness—

—and then her desperate hands caught a shimmering, iridescent thread.

Slender as a thought, it should never have supported her weight. But Ren wrapped her fingers around it, and it held. She climbed, staining its brightness with blood, and the thread grew thicker as she went, from thread to cord to rope, and around her were both the nightmare of the empty pit, and the luminescent waters of the true Wellspring of Ažerais.

Above her, a circle of grey broke the blackness. Something was there, reaching out to catch her: a black-gloved hand that caught her by the wrist, and for an instant she thought it was Leato, whole and unharmed.

“I’ve got you,” he said, pulling her upward. “You’re safe.”

The Rook. As real as the waking world he stood in. Which