The pale eyes, golden in the Corelight, glittered with disarming intensity. “We already know he’s not watching us every minute. What else explains the Locatings I worked in Seth? The one I conjured while we were in flight was masked by an illusion meant to mislead us, but the one before that wasn’t. Such trivial games were of no concern to him when he thought he had us cornered. He has a war to fight, remember.” He nodded west, toward the distant Forest. “No doubt he’s anxious to focus on it.”
With a hot flush Damien remembered their flight through Seth, and his own angry cries. Dammit, man, you’re going the wrong way! Remember the map? He hadn’t noticed that the two images Tarrant had conjured didn’t match up. He had trusted in the Hunter’s power....
“In the face of Iezu illusion,” Tarrant said, answering his thoughts, “even my own Workings must be suspect.”
“How do you know he’s reading my mind?” he demanded. “What if you’re his source?”
“Unlikely. Of the two of us, I would be more likely to recognize signs of his interference. With you ...” He hesitated. “No offense, Vryce, but you’re hardly well versed in demon recognition.”
“He could fool you if he tried.”
“But he’d have to work much harder at it. And I’m willing to bet that the Iezu, like men, prefer the path of least resistance.”
“Yeah, but can we be sure of that?”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s a gamble. A last-ditch effort in a game where Calesta controls most of the pieces. I’m sorry I had to plan it alone, but sharing my fears with you would have meant sacrificing the effectiveness of the feint. And seeing how little we have going for us without it ...” He shrugged. “I apologize, Vryce. You deserved better.”
“No.” He sighed heavily and raised up a hand to rub his temples. “Don’t. You were right, as usual. Let’s just hope it worked.” He glanced toward the east, where the mountain cleft beckoned. “So what happens now?”
“If Calesta’s paying attention to us right now, then he’ll assign his local pawns to direct pursuit. But I don’t think he is. I think that he’s arrogant enough—and distracted enough—to believe that his current arrangements are sufficient.”
“But we can’t really know that, any more than we can know what his next move will be.”
“There are four dozen men waiting for us right now at Gastine Pass,” he said calmly. “That much is without question. Assuming my understanding of the situation is correct, I estimate two hours before Calesta realizes something is wrong, as that’s how long it would have taken us to reach his little trap. At that point it will be too late for anyone from there to catch up with us. He’ll have to make new plans, focusing on the western route.”
“And then what? If he can motivate that many to come after us ...” Four dozen! God in Heaven! “You said yourself that the towns bordering on the Forest would be ready and willing to protect their turf. What makes that region any safer for us?”
“Time, Vryce. Time.” With a jerk he tightened the strap securing his horse’s saddle. “He can give them all the dreams he wants, but few men will rise up out of bed at that instant to fight his battles. I’m willing to bet he can’t muster a lynch mob until morning, and by then we should be far beyond their reach.”
“Gerald.” He put a hand to the saddle of his own horse. “It’s more than a hundred miles to the pass from here. That’s a hell of a ride in one night, even for horses that are endurance trained. Do you really think these two are going to make it?”
“All they have to do is get us there.” His black cloak fluttered in the evening breeze as he mounted, like a vast pair of wings. “As for their endurance ... I did what had to be done to assure that.” He brought his animal about so that it faced their distant goal. “And no complaints from you this time. Two horses are a small enough sacrifice, if their expiration puts us ahead of the enemy.”
Hand trembling slightly, Damien touched his horse’s flank. He could feel no change in the animal’s substance, but that didn’t mean that nothing had been altered. How little effort would it take to refigure its equine biochemistry so that the beast devoured itself for energy, ignoring all signs of exhaustion? How many vital systems had the Hunter reWorked, so that the processes which would normally kill the beast were circumvented, redirected, thwarted? He felt sick as he swung himself up to his accustomed seat. He felt as if death itself were poised there between his legs, wanting only the proper hour to make its true aspect known. But what other option was there?
“No complaints,” he muttered. Swinging his own horse around, so that they faced the looming Ridge. “I promise.”
Full-out gallop: the rhythm of death.
He wondered if Calesta could hear it.
Hour melding into hour, knees aching as he gripped the animal beneath him. A short stop to dig food out of his pack, then hurried mouthfuls swallowed while riding. Trying not to feel sick over the decay that was taking place beneath him, only telling himself over and over that there was no choice. If they didn’t make the western pass by morning, then Calesta would have the whole day to mobilize the valley folk against them.
Innocent blood on his sword, now wiped clean from all but his soul....
Two horses are a small enough sacrifice....
God help him, what had he become?
Closer and closer to the great ridge they rode, until its shadow blocked out the moon setting behind them, leaving only Casca’s crescent to light their way. It was a vast mountain range, barren and forbidding, and its stark silhouette was as unlike the gentle rolling hills of the south as the cracked frozen surface of a glacier was unlike a cool mountain stream. A steep oceanic ridge birthed when this continent was at the floor of the ocean, it cut across the land like an immense wall, protecting the fertile human settlements from the winds and the poisons of the regions beyond. It was said there were similar mountains to the north, scoring the land in parallel welts like claw marks, but most were submerged in a frozen sea, and none but the Earth-ship had ever seen them. One was enough, as far as Damien was concerned.
They rode through its foothills—if that word could be applied to such a place—where the earth began its steep slope upward. The towns which had been built in this region were far to the south of them, clustered along the river that coursed down the valley’s center. And for good reason, Damien noted. There was a tem blor as they approached the ridge, and the cascade of sharp-edged rocks that came plummeting down the steep slope were an eloquent warning to any would-be traveler. Yet it was worth the risk for them, he thought, if it kept other people away. In this land where any human soul might be controlled by their enemy, isolation was a prerequisite for survival.
Mile after mile beat numbly into Damien’s flesh, his horse’s skin like fire between his legs, beneath his hands. God alone knew what was happening inside it, as the miles pounded underfoot one by one. Once he started to rein up to feed them, but Tarrant waved angrily for him to continue. Not necessary, his expression seemed to say. Or perhaps instead, No point. His heart cold, Damien obeyed. This ride would echo in his dreams for years to come, he knew, but not half so loudly as the ones he would have if they failed to get through the western pass before dawn.
Two horses is a small price....
What’s the third route to Shaitan’s valley? he had asked Tarrant, when the two pulled up briefly so that Damien might relieve himself.
A tunnel from beneath my keep, that exits there.
From the Forest? Damien had asked, surprised.
The Hunter nodded. I built it years ago, against the possibility that someday a human army might attack the keep itself. If I were to need an escape route, it stood to reason that it should be to a place where men would fear to follow. An unlikely event at best, but I pride myself on being prepared.
There was an army in the Forest now. What would happen if Jahanna fell? Would it affect Tarrant’s power, or only his mood?
None of that matters now, Damien told himself. Nothi
ng matters but Calesta’s death.
He hoped, as they rode, that the Hunter shared his sentiment.
“There it is.”
They pulled up beside one another on a flat stretch of ground. Beneath them the horses had gone past sweat, past blood-flecked foam, to a state so painful and degraded that Damien flinched to note its symptoms. They were truly members of the living dead now, who wanted only Tarrant’s approval to fall to the ground and expire. Damien hoped for their sake that the moment came soon.
Black Ridge Pass wasn’t like its eastern sister in scope or configuration, but it promised a tolerable climb. A past earthquake had rent the ridge almost to its base, and time and weather had worked at the flaw, carving a u-shaped saddle into its slope. The approach was a steep climb, but not so impossible that horses couldn’t manage it. He glanced down at his mount and shuddered. Or whatever horses have become.
Then Tarrant kicked his own mount into motion, and Damien had no choice but to follow. The fact that the Hunter made no attempt to Divine their odds of success, or to otherwise See what lay ahead, was a chilling reminder of their enemy’s Iezu capacity. If there were some kind of ambush here, Tarrant knew they would never see it; no Working of his, no matter how well refined, could change that fact.
Trust to his planning, Damien told himself. Trust to his understanding of the enemy. But even as his mount’s trembling feet bit into the harsh mountain slope, he couldn’t help but remember what Tarrant had said before. It was a gamble. No more than that. And if Calesta had foreseen their latest move ... Damien flinched as they climbed, half-expecting an arrow in the back at any moment. But none came. They were up a hundred feet above the valley floor, then two hundred, and still no one and nothing came at them. Four hundred. Eight. Still they climbed in safety, so far that Damien finally loosened his death grip on his weapon long enough to button the collar of his jacket closed. The wind this high up was fierce, sweeping as it did across the face of the ridge for hundreds of miles without obstacle, and every hundred feet the travelers gained in altitude cost them a few degrees of subjective heat. By the time they were high enough to see the whole valley spread out beneath them, Damien’s teeth were chattering, and not wholly from fear. The sky above glittered with starlight, but despite that warning the horizon was still dark. They had some time left, then ... but not much.
And then, with a lurch, Damien’s dying steed managed to gain the coveted ground at the end of the climb. The pass itself was a narrow passage that cut through the ridge at an angle, with crumbled rock and a thin film of ice underfoot; the horses stumbled as they negotiated it, while Damien fought not to look up at the two peaks that flanked them, snow-clad sentinels that reared up ghost-pale in the moonlight at either side.
Suddenly, without warning, Tarrant’s horse went down. The Hunter barely got clear of it before it began to convulse, horrific spasms coursing through its body in waves. Damien froze for a moment, horrified by the sight, and then quickly dismounted. It was not a moment too soon. Blood streaming from its nose and mouth, the animal that had faced death to bring him here went down on its knees, then screamed in terror and joined its fellow in dying. The sight of its suffering was too much for Damien. “Kill them!” he yelled at Tarrant. “You started this, damn you, you finish it!”
For once the Hunter didn’t argue. Damien saw the unearthly chill of the coldfire blade blaze to life, and the ice on the mountains to both sides flickered with eerie silver-blue light as its work was done. Not until Tarrant was finished did he look at the horses again, and even in death their suffering was so apparent that it made him sick to his gut to see it.
There was a time when even that small act of mercy would have put Tarrant soul in jeopardy, he realized. Have we come so far beyond that, that such fine distinctions no longer disturb his unholy patron? He watched for a moment as the Hunter worked at getting his saddlebags loose from his horse’s body, then stooped beside his own mount’s corpse to follow suit. The Unnamed expects him to die, he thought grimly. In the face of that, what transgression has any meaning?
The stars were bright overhead by the time they had their supplies freed, sorted, and repacked, but the horizon was still comfortably dark. That gave them at least an hour, Damien estimated, maybe more. Enough time get through the pass and find shelter, God willing. For the first time in days, he felt almost optimistic.
“Let’s go,” Tarrant urged, and he led the way north.
It was no easy path, that narrow divide. Mountain waters had dripped down the flanking slopes and frozen, making flat sections treacherous. Rockfalls had strewn the ground with thousands of knife-edged obstacles, some large enough to require climbing over, some small enough to lodge in the leather of a boot sole. It was a hard transition from twelve hours of hard riding to such a strenuous hike, and more than once Damien stumbled. But they had cheated time and Calesta both, and that knowledge gave him new strength with every step he took. The inhabitants of the valley would be less than happy about following them here, where the spirits of the dead were said to rule. Once they made it to the far side of the pass, Tarrant said, they would surely be safe.
And then they came around a turn and Shaitan’s valley spread out before them, as suddenly as if they had lifted a veil to reveal it. Below them the earth swirled with a gray mist that seemed almost alive. No, not gray: thin streamers of silver, that glowed with an eerie phosphorescence. He could see figures within it that appeared almost human, but they were too far away for him to make out any details. “Shadows of the dead,” Tarrant said quietly, following his gaze. Clouds hung low about the valley floor, their surfaces reflecting the stars as no real clouds should. And in the center of it all, rising up from the clouds and the mist like a mountain from the sea—
Shaitan. Its summit glowed with hot orange fire, and streams of that color cascaded down its flank, into the unnatural mist that obscured its base. Its steep cone reared up high into the sky, and the clouds of ash that surrounded it seemed to glow with their own inner fire, so fiercely did they reflect its light. Above it the sky had been blanketed with ash, whose undersurface rippled with orange and red highlights as a sea might ripple with froth. It made Damien feel strangely light-headed to stare up at it, and he forced his eyes downward again, to a more comfortable terrain.
“Do the dead really live down there?” he asked Tarrant.
“Shadows of the dead,” he confirmed, “which are not quite the same thing.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The real dead, if they survived separation from their flesh, would feed as other faeborn creatures do: upon the species that gave birth to them. While the shadows of the dead ... do not feed. Do not hunger. Do not expire. They’re like reflections in a mirror: perfect, but without real consciousness. The only world they know is the moment in which they died, and they only exist here, where the currents are so powerful that thought is practically the same as being.”
“They don’t sound very dangerous.”
Tarrant looked at him sharply. “Don’t kid yourself.”
“But if they don’t need to feed—”
“They’re perfect reflections, formed at the instant of death. Violent deaths mostly; those are the kind with the greatest power.” He gazed out at the vista before him. “You think of what that would mean, to have a creature whose only memory of life is the one moment when it betrayed him ... and then ally that image to that power, down there.” A sweeping gesture encompassed it all: the mists, the volcano, the unseen currents that swept like tsunami across the earth. “I’d call that very dangerous indeed.”
He glanced at the sky again, toward a place where it was clear, and saw the constellation of Arago rising over the top of the ridge. Why did that seem wrong to him? He shook his head as if to clear it, but the thought wouldn’t come to him. It was still dark, at least. Starlight might serve as a warning of the coming dawn, but in and of itself it wouldn’t hurt Tarrant—
And then there was someone else there
beside them, someone who gestured sharply down the slope and bade them, “Come quickly!”
He half drew his sword, then sheathed it again when he saw who it was. “Karril?” he asked. Not quite believing.
“Come,” the demon urged. Waving toward the slope behind him, taking a step in that direction as if to inspire them to follow. “There’s not much time.”
Damien looked back at Tarrant; the Hunter’s expression mirrored his own hesitation. “The Iezu can’t imitate one another,” he said at last.
“And they can’t kill humans either,” the demon reminded him, “But don’t bet your life on that.” Again he gestured down the hillside, and whispered fiercely, “Trust me, old friend! If nothing else, you know I respect Iezu law. Come with me!”
Something in his words or his manner must have decided Tarrant, for the Hunter nodded and began to follow him. Damien trotted alongside, praying that neither would lose his footing on the treacherous ground.
—And then they were sliding down the vast slope, so quickly and so recklessly that Damien couldn’t even pretend to control his descent. In what must have been no more than a handful of seconds, they dropped so far that Damien could no longer make out the pass above them, yet Tarrant continued to follow. Even when that meant descent through a grove of thorned brambles that tore at their clothing and skin as they forced their way through. Even when that meant dropping down from a ledge into utter darkness, trusting to the demon’s judgment. A demon which could be no more than Calesta’s newest illusion, and never mind that Iezu law forbade it ...
It was a ten-foot drop into darkness, and then there was earth to support their feet again. “This way,” the demon urged. He showed them a dark space that led into the mountainside. “Quickly!” With only a second’s pause to study his face—for motive, perhaps?—Tarrant passed within the cavern’s mouth and was gone. Damien hesitated, then moved to follow. But Karril’s hand fell on his arm, stopping him.