Crown of Shadows (50 page)

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.

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.
Nothing 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.

“It’s over,” the demon announced. Not to Damien. To the air above him ... or something in it. “You failed, brother! Give it up!”

—And the illusion was suddenly gone from Damien’s eyes, the false backdrop of night that had blinded him to a deadly truth. To the east of him dawn blazed brightly—dawn!—and even as he watched the white sun breached the horizon, filling the valley beneath it with fatal, unforgiving light. Had Tarrant been shelterless right now ... He felt sick just thinking about it.

“This way,” Karril said gently, and he led Damien into the cavern’s darkness.

Immersion in the blackness of the underearth was blinding after such a vision; he fumbled for his lantern and lit it with trembling hands, praying that Karril wouldn’t leave him behind while he did so. But the demon waited patiently, and not until he had the wick adjusted and the perforated door latched shut did he urge him onward, into the mountain’s heart.

Two chambers later, safely beyond the reach of the sun’s killing light, they found Tarrant. The adept was sitting with his back to stone, his eyes shut as if in pain.