“Sarvi,” Death warns. “Just because she can hear you, doesn’t mean I can’t. Stop yammering about the weather and get us to Shadow’s End.”
Yes sir, Sarvi says after a moment. The unicorn beats its wings faster, which causes my grip to tighten as we pick up speed. Soon we’re cresting over the mountains and a whole new landscape opens up before me.
We’re at the very bottom of the land. If Tuonela were a continent, this would be the Cape Horn of South America. Here there are green pastures above dark gray cliffs dropping off to a rich blue ocean below, the waves churning with kelp and lashing at the rocks. It’s a formidable and harsh place where the clouds are the darkest and out along a narrow isthmus of rock and sodden pasture, lies a castle.
I have to blink a few times to really accept what I’m seeing. I don’t know if I had been imagining an actual castle this whole time, but now that it’s in front of me, I’m taken aback. It’s a castle alright, built on a narrow peninsula of rock, a long iron road snaking along the crest of land connecting it. The castle is huge and foreboding, like something from a dark fairy tale, or a nightmare, black as obsidian, both gleaming and matte, depending on how you looked at it, as if the rocks were made of smoked crystal and iron. There are impossibly narrow towers with dagger-like turrets rising hundreds of feet above the ocean, the castle comprising of two similarly sized structures connected by walls and walkways. Everything is sharp and pointing, as if the castle is a weapon itself.
It’s a place firmly rooted in the past and the future, a castle of this world and the next. It doesn’t just sit on that rocky outcrop, it waits. Like a cat on its haunches, it’s watching. Alive. Biding time before it pounces on the prey.
The question is, who is the prey?
Is it me?
Or is it everything living?
“I’ll take your silence as being impressed,” Death says.
I’m not proud enough to pretend otherwise. I nod, unable to find the words as Sarvi swirls down in sweeping circles, narrowing in on one turret. The pointed roof rushes up at us at increasing speed and I close my eyes just as Sarvi brings us to a stop.
I open my eyes to find us on a large slab jutting out from the tower, like a balcony with no railing. The ocean is at least a hundred feet below.
“We’re home,” Death says, swinging his leg over Sarvi and then holding his hands out for me, as if he were some gallant knight helping a fair maiden. I stare down at his armored hands, then glance at his shadowed face and once again I see a flash of white. Like the whites of someone’s eyes. My mind puts together a ghoulish image of a bare skull with round eyeballs placed in the sockets.
The disgust must be showing on my face because he drops his hands and growls and yanks the chain. Before I can react, I’m being pulled off Sarvi, landing in a heap on the cold stone platform.
Pain shoots up through my hands and knees and I’m wondering if I have enough distance between us to do some damage. I figure I could go for it, drop kick him right off the side like I did to his daughter, and maybe the gravity of this world will help me like it did the last time, but the only thing that stops me is that I’m attached to Death. Where he goes, I go. He’ll survive the fall—you can’t kill a God, as far as I know—but I definitely won’t.
And now he’s staring down at me, the electricity in his unseen gaze felt but not seen. “I think I just saw my future in your eyes,” he says quietly. “And I saw your future too. Think before you act, little bird. You’re not ready for flight yet.”
He raises his hand, the chain wrapped around it, threatening me.
I get to my feet, grinding my teeth. If it weren’t for my father, perhaps that long fall over the edge would be worth it, even if it ended with my demise.
But my father is what matters most. He’s here. He’s why I’m here, why I came. And I can’t fuck it all up now because I want to break Death’s shiny skull with my own hands.
Careful, Sarvi says to me as the unicorn walks past me, the size of a Clydesdale. I may have given you a safe ride here, but I serve but one master.
Sarvi walks toward the huge glass doors into the tower, so big they must stand at least twenty-feet high. They open by people or mechanics unseen until the equine disappears inside. For whatever reason, I didn’t expect a unicorn to waltz inside the castle, but at this point I clearly know nothing.
I look over at Death, who is still holding the chain in a threatening manner.
“Sarvi seems pretty loyal,” I say to him. “Seems odd that you would need protection since you’re a God.”