Faces of Deception (20 page)

Finally, Seema reached a rocky alcove on the opposite wall, perhaps one more traverse from the bottom of the dangerous area. Even before she turned to signal, Rishi was bounding along in her footsteps, his dark avalanche cord trailing in his wake.

Above, Tarch had descended nearly half the glacier’s length. Unless he met with one of the hazards Seema had spoken of, he would catch the company long before they completed the final traverse. The thought of fighting him again sent a chill down Atreus’s spine. He could not forget the fear he had experienced when Tarch touched him, nor the tongue of flame that had nearly engulfed Rishi. Perhaps “tailed devil” was not an exaggeration at all. The slave master certainly had the magic of a creature from the Thousand Hells.

Atreus’s thoughts were interrupted by Yago’s deep voice. “I suppose you meant what you told the girl?” The ogre’s gaze was fixed on Tarch. “About not killing that devil thing, I mean.”

“You know I did.”

“I was afraid of that” Yago glared down at Atreus with one big bloodshot eye, then shook his head, saying, “You humans and your mating games. ltd be simpler for everyone if you just claimed her.”

Atreus felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

The girl,” Yago said, gesturing vaguely in Seema’s direction. “She looks a good prize, from what I’ve seen of how humans judge.”

“She is a good prize,” Atreus admitted, “but you’ve been around people. You know we can’t just wrestle a female down and expect her to start keeping the cave.”

Too bad,” said Yago. “She’d let you win.”

Atreus rolled his eyes.

“You don’t think so?” Yago asked. “She don’t want us killing that devil that’s after her, and if she’s just trying to outrun it, we sure ain’t speeding her up any. So what’s she doing here, if she ain’t waiting for you to claim her?”

Yago’s question was a good one, though Atreus suspected the answer had less to do with him than what lay beneath the Sisters of Serenity. Trust me, Seema isn’t here because she wants to wrestle me. No woman would. I’m too ugly.”

Yago considered this a moment, then shrugged. “You’re a good enough fighter,” he said, as though that should account for more than appearance, “but I don’t see why you made her that promise.”

“You know why,” Atreus said. “You were there.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. So a woman who won’t have you doesn’t let herself get caught by a slaver she won’t let us kill.” For an ogre, the irony in Yago’s deep voice was a rare show of wit He shook his head, then added, “If someone’s missing something here, it ain’t me.”

Yago glanced up the glacier. Three hundred paces above, Tarch was just leaping a crevasse, arms flailing and tail whipping. He landed in a billowing puff of snow and crashed through the wind crust, launching a ship-sized circle of broken slabs down the slope. Why the whole mountainside did not break free and sweep him away, Atreus did not know. Either the snow was more stable than Seema claimed, or the slave master was the luckiest devil this side of the Abyss.

Rishi reached the far side of the glacier, and Seema waved.

Yago nudged Atreus forward and said, “Go on.”

Atreus shook his head. “If you break through again, you won’t have a chance against Tarch..”

“But I’m the bodyguard.” When this did not work, Yago growled, “we’ll go together,”

“And let him bury us both in an avalanche? We’re better off spread out,” Atreus said, shoving the ogre forward. “Now stop wasting time and go.”

Reluctantly, Yago started across the slope. He could not run for fear of plunging through the wind crust, but his long strides covered ground rapidly. He was soon scurrying along the top of a serac field on the far side of the glacier, just a dozen paces from the sheltered alcove where Rishi and Seema stood waiting.

Tarch rounded a crevasse only twenty paces above, turned away, and continued straight down the slope. Atreus was so astonished that he merely stood there collecting his safe, Tarch could hardly have missed seeing him—Atreus was standing in plain sight—so the only conceivable explanation was that the slave master did not think him worthy of attacking.

Atreus charged out onto the glacier, as angry at being ignored as he was apprehensive about the coming battle. He whirled the chain over his head, filling the air with a metallic thrum. Tarch continued to angle down the glacier toward the alcove where Seema stood waiting.

“Up here!” Atreus’s voice echoed across the canyon.

A snow slab broke loose beneath him and started down the slope, nearly sweeping him off his feet. Tarch continued to ignore him. Atreus pumped his knees furiously, his footsteps reverberating off the wind crust as he closed with the devil to a little more than arm’s reach. They circled below a crevasse and started to pass above another one, then Tarch pulled up short, stopping so suddenly that Atreus crashed headlong into his back.

Tarch’s tail lashed out, trying to sweep Atreus’s feet from under him. Atreus jumped, avoiding the attack, and whipped his chain at his foe’s head. He never saw the devil’s foot come up, only felt the big heel sink into his stomach and double him oven He sensed himself flying backward and saw Tarch leaping after him, then felt himself crashing down on the wind crust and the slave master slamming down on top of him.

The mountain sighed, a deep silent rumble that Atreus sensed down in the hollow of his stomach. Tarch felt it too and sat up, startled, taking his weight off Atreus’s chest. The devil looked up the slope.

Atreus noticed the glacier wall sliding past, remembered the crevasse below, brought his chain up and slammed it into Tarch’s head. The devil roared, lashed out, and gouged at Atreus’s throat A snow slab the size of an elephant caught them from above and hurled them backward through the churning air, still battling. Atreus whipped his chain up again and felt it catch around the slave master’s neck. White sugar snow poured down around him, falling from above, rising from below, pouring in from all sides, Tarch clawed at Atreus’s face and caught the corner of an eye.

They tumbled again. Atreus’s head exploded into pain as the claw slipped free. He could not tell whether or not he had been blinded. Everything was white. A deep, breathless cold rose up to swallow him. The chain tugged at his hand, snapped his arm out full length, and strained the socket. He clenched his fist until the nails bit into his palm, felt the crushing pain of the chain tightening around his hand.

The avalanche rolled Atreus, slower, twisting his arm around behind him until he thought the chain would rip it off. He began to sting with cold and sensed the world dropping away. The chain went slack. Whether Tarch was tumbling closer or slipping free, he could not tell. Everything was cold, churning whiteness, sugary and soft.

The tumbling stopped, and Atreus had the sensation of floating. The snow cradled him, closing in around him. He remained frozen in the same awkward position, one arm twisted around behind him, dimly aware by his queasy stomach that he was sliding. He tried to pull his arm forward but found it too packed in snow to move. He tried to twist around to dig, found his body as caught as his arm. Tried to pull his hand free, could not retract his elbow. Circle his wrist, clench his fist, wiggle a single fingertip… all stuck fast, stuck fast as a beetle in amber.

The sliding sensation vanished. The snow pressed in from all sides. He felt it in his ears, against his eyes, in his nostrils, growing heavier and colder with each heartbeat His pulse began to roar, and he knew he was panicking, but panic in these helpless circumstances was a mere cruel joke. Could he flail about madly? Run blindly to his death? He could do nothing but lie motionless and stare into the unimaginable whiteness of the snow.

Funny that it should still be so white, with him buried so deep. His bones ached from being crushed, his ears rang front the pressure, his lungs burned for air. He pushed his lips apart and tried to suck in a breath through the snow, but he could not expand his ribs, could not move all those tons with only his chest

The white never vanished. The pain faded, the pressure diminished, the roar of his pulse ebbed away, the yearning for breath became a distant memory, and the white remained.

Atreus found himself standing beneath a pearly sky in a valley of white marble, facing an alabaster palace surrounded by snowy ponds filled with white lotus. At his side stood a white-caped figure with a long, translucent tail and silvery-white scales.

The form turned, and Atreus saw that it was Tarch, now with a flowing white beard and blond eyes. All the brutality had left his jagged features, and his face radiated the same serenity and contentment as did Seema’s. He saluted Atreus with a clawed hand, then climbed the palace steps and disappeared through a door. Atreus was alone.

He stood before the palace, studying its asymmetric majesty. It had an ancient, guileless beauty, with a large open rotunda on one end and a square balcony room on the other. Connecting the two was a long gallery of scalloped arches and slender columns, with a Y-shaped staircase that descended down to the lower porch. The bottom story was painted in bright horizontal stripes, while the upper was decorated with swirling, ornately carved relief’s. The architecture could hardly be called balanced, and no part of the building seemed to belong with the rest, yet it was the most stunning palace he had ever seen, casual and warmly unpretentious and all the more magnificent

Atreus climbed the stairs to the gallery and found himself standing in an icy wind, staring into the rotunda where a brilliant silver flame flickered in a bronze brazier.

“All is not harmony and balance.” The voice was Seema’s. “If you see beauty in yourself, so everyone will see it”

Still staring into the silvery fire, Atreus walked into the rotunda Now that he was inside, he could see a cowled silhouette standing behind the brazier, its identity, even its gender, masked by the brilliant glow of the flame. The figure placed its hands over the brazier and slowly spread them. The flame broadened into a shimmering silver square.

“Look.”

Atreus stooped down to obey, then cried out in shock.

There was a face in the silver square, as unbalanced and misshapen as his own, with the same beetling brow and sunken eyes, the same oversized nose and twisted mouth, but this face was handsome, rugged and happy and utterly at peace with itself.

“What would you do for this?” Now the voice was Tarch’s, deep and raspy and rough. “What would you give to have this face?”

Atreus looked up at the cowled figure. “Anything,” was his answer. “I would give anything…my fortune, my life …”

“Wrong answer.”

The figure brought its hands together and the shimmering square shrank to a single tongue of guttering flame.

“Your fortune means nothing to me, and I do not want your life.”

Atreus stared at the fading flame and asked, “What then? Tell me, and you shall have it!”

The cowled figure lowered its hands and the last wisp of flame winked out, revealing the face beneath the hood.

“You know what I want” The voice remained Tarch’s, but the face was Seema’s. “Give it to me, and you shall have what you want”

Now the voice as well became Seema’s. “Give it to me,” she said, “and you shall have Langdarma.”

She reached out and leaned across the brazier as though to embrace him. A sense of serenity and contentment flooded ever Atreus and he understood at last what the figure wanted from him. He stretched out his arms and stepped forward to accept the embrace, then suddenly grew dizzy and pitched forward and found himself hovering over the brazier, staring down at a single white ember still shining in the dead charcoal.

“Too late,” the voice, now distant and sexless, said. “He’s for the dead book now.”

Atreus craned his neck around to look up beneath the hood and found himself staring into the empty stone eyes of a statue. The statue reached down, grasped the edge of the brazier, and the brazier turned into a thousand-spoked wheel, the white ember its burning hub.

“The Seraph spins the wheel round and round.” The statue twirled the wheel as it spoke and the white ember became a six-pointed snow-flake, feathery and beautiful and cold, Motionless in the heart of the spinning circle. “Round and round and nobody knows where falls the dead man’s soul.”

Atreus’s stomach became light and empty and he began to fall, whirling down toward the white crystal brilliance.

The fall took… how long? To Atreus, it seemed the mere flash of an instant and the endless drag of forever. Beneath him rose the thousand-spoked wheel, still spinning, as vast and as flat as a dead calm sea. The feathery snow-flake in the center hovered motionless, growing neither larger nor smaller, but growing more brilliant with each passing moment The long plummet made his stomach qualmish and hollow, and the brightening snow-flake filled his eyes with a cold, scratchy ache. The chill air whipped past his face, tickling his flesh, drawing the heat from his body. His joints stiffened and his bones grew as heavy as ice. He plunged toward the frigid oblivion of the dead, banded by the glare of that feathery, six-pointed star.

An eternity later, the snow-flake melted into a dark-hearted halo. Something pressed itself against Atreus’s frozen lips. His numb flesh sensed only the weight, not the touch. Warm air swirled down through his throat and flooded his lungs. His pulse boomed to life. Blood rushed in his ears. The halo grew dim, and he saw Seema’s smooth cheek pressed close, her brown eyes staring down at him, her dark hair making a tent around their faces. Her soft lips were pressed against his and her mouth was working, her hot breath mingling with his. A sense of joyous wonder welled up inside him, and something more primal stirred lower down. He reached up, twined his fingers into her silky hair, and returned the kiss.

Seema pulled away, her brow arching in surprise.

Atreus took his hand out of Seema’s hair, dimly aware that he had made a terrible mistake. “I, uh… I thought…” he trailed off, fearing he would only make matters worse. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It certainly felt like you meant to!” Seema’s cheeks darkened, then she laughed lightly and called over her shoulder, “Have no fear for your friend. He only lured me down here to steal a kiss.”