Faces of Deception (37 page)

“I am also a man of my word,” said Atreus. “I swear on my life—no, on Yago’s memory—I swear to return the cup.”

Seema glanced out over the browning valley and considered his words for a long time, then finally pointed to the knife in his belt. “What of Rishi?”

Atreus closed his eyes and slowly exhaled, letting go of his anger, or trying to. Certainly, Yago would have expected a fellow Shield-breaker to avenge his death, and in his heart Atreus longed to do his friend this honor. But he could see for himself the harm that killing had already brought to Langdarma, and he knew that the Sannyasi had not been exaggerating when he claimed that Rishi’s death would destroy it forever. For now, at least, Atreus would have to put aside the ogre part of his nature.

“I doubt I can ever forgive what Rishi has done.” Atreus opened his eyes again and held out the knife. “But,” he continued, “I think I can find the strength not kill him.”

“Good. You will be a happier man for it.” Seema took the knife, then said, “I remember Rishi talking about the ways to leave Langdarma. If he and Yago investigated this as carefully as he claimed, he will know he can escape only by the Roaring Way.” “The Roaring Way?”

“The great gorge at the end of Langdarma,” Seema said as she turned and pointed toward the haze-shrouded cliffs at the far end of the valley. “It is the only route the Sannyasi will not block. There is no return, and no one knows where it goes, so no man has ever been brave enough to enter it” “Then that’s exactly what Rishi will try,” Atreus agreed.

Seema glanced up at the afternoon’s graying sky. “Let us go.” She started across the meadow, then added, “Even Rishi will not run the gorge in the dark. If we hurry, we can be there waiting at dawn.”

Seema led the way back along the ledge and through the cave, then they spent the rest of the day descending a long, steep trail into the main valley below. By the time they reached a tiny hamlet on the river, dusk was already falling over the little shanties perched on the shore. Even at this late hour, the townspeople were gathered in the village circle, murmuring in their strange language and lamenting the brown tide sweeping their valley.

As soon as Seema heard their angry voices, she took Atreus’s hand and circled around the outskirts of the village. On the other side, they found a dozen flat-bottomed boats beached on the muddy shore, half hidden beneath a copse of drooping willow trees. She selected a pair of huge oars from an assortment leaning against a low-hanging limb, slipped the nearest boat into the water, and quietly guided them into the current.

The river was one of those flat giants that swept along spinning off huge eddies and churning up water-heads the size of elephants, and it was not long before the swift current had carried Seema and Atreus hundreds of paces downstream.

Once they were safely beyond earshot of the village, Atreus asked, “Isn’t stealing frowned on in Langdarma?”

Seema shrugged. “Our need is great,” she said, “and I do not think the villagers would have been very kind to you had we asked.”

“I wouldn’t have expected them to be.”

Atreus glanced around at the deepening gloom. Already the light had grown so dim that the trees along shore were mere silhouettes. With no moon to brighten the sky, night would bring darkness as black as a cave. “How are we going to see?”

“With our ears,” Seema answered. “But now you must tend your wounds and rest. Whatever tomorrow brings, you will need all the strength you can gather.”

Atreus washed his mangled flank, pitching the gems from his wounds into the water, but rest proved difficult. As quiet as the river was, it produced an alarming array of gurgles and bubbles. He spent the entire night staring into the inky darkness, expecting to be overturned at any moment by some unseen log or sandbar. Once they actually struck the shore, but the broad-beamed boat was as steady as a barge and simply spun off, then hung idle in an eddy until Seema could collect her bearings. The few rocks they encountered came almost as a relief, as the stones caused such a loud rushing that it was easy to steer around them.

After many hours of tense darkness, the river seemed to grow slow and quiet Atreus began to feel a soft, almost imperceptible thunder in the pit of his stomach, and Seema started to row. When he offered to take her place, she only laughed and said she would rather trust her life to her own ears.

The subtle rumbling built to an audible roar, and soon the roar started to reverberate inside Atreus’s chest. A series of rhythmic booms echoed up the river, the sound of huge waves hurling themselves one after another against the granite walls of the Roaring Gorge. He could almost feel the river gathering itself beneath him, filling him with the water’s mad energy. He imagined being drawn down the canyon and sucked into the crashing cataracts in utter darkness, being hurled against an unseen cliff and splashing into the black water amidst the splinters of their boat, being swept to a watery grave in the unexplored vastness beyond.

Oblivious to Atreus’s growing concern, Seema merely continued to row. When the current finally began to draw them onward again, she abruptly changed directions and worked madly to maneuver upstream into the still shelter of a shore eddy.

“Now we wait,” she said. “Sleep, and I will watch for the dawn.”

“Sleep may be difficult,” Atreus said, settling down in the bow of the boat. “This isn’t the quietest place in Langdarma, and I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

But the pulsing crash of the Roaring Way proved surprisingly soothing. Atreus soon fell into a deep, rejuvenating sleep, and it seemed only moments later when Seema began to shake him, one hand covering his mouth to keep him from crying out.

“Wake up,” she whispered. “Rishi is coming.”

Atreus opened his eyes and found himself staring up into a huge willow tree, its drooping boughs silhouetted against the dim gray sky. Beyond the stern of the boat, less than a thousand yards downriver, loomed the soaring black throat of the Roaring Way. It was a narrow crashing slot of froth and foam, cut straight down the face of the towering granite cliff that shielded Langdarma from the unknown wilderness.

Seema was looking in the opposite direction, her gaze fixed on something well upriver. Atreus sat up and turned, then hissed in anguish as he tore open a dozen scabs. His flank was instantly coated in ooze, and his whole body felt achy and hot. Daggers of pain lanced outward from his swollen hip, shooting down his leg into his foot and up under his ribs as high as his shoulder.

Seema frowned and said, “Atreus, you are not up to this.”

“I’ll be fine,” he groaned. “I’m a lot bigger than he is.”

Seema looked doubtful, and said, “Getting killed for the Seven Gifts would be as bad as doing the killing.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Atreus reached into his cloak for the vial of shining waters, which was still swaddled in its protective rags and said, “As I recall, this can be almost as good as a healing spell.”

“What of your quest?” Seema asked. “I doubt an empty vial will please your goddess.”

“Don’t let it trouble you,” Atreus replied, then looked across the gray waters to the center of the river, where a lone boatman, completely oblivious to his hidden audience, was gazing into the throat of the Roaring Way. “I know where to get a refill.”

Atreus pulled the vial from its protective swaddling, and his heart sank. The water within looked no different from that in the river, save perhaps that it was a little clearer.

Seema touched his arm. “Atreus, I am so sorry.”

Atreus shrugged, forcing himself to swallow his disappointment. “It looks like Rishi was right after all.” He uncorked the vial and dumped the water into the river, then looked toward the Mar’s boat and said, “I guess I’ll have to do this the hard way.”

Seema studied him warily, making no move to take the

oars. “Do what?” she asked.

Atreus winced inwardly, but tried not to show his disappointment. She had every reason to be suspicious.

“Well, I won’t be needing this for it.” Atreus tossed the vial into the river, motioned at the oars, and said, “Now, will you start rowing or do I have to do everything myself?”

Seema smiled, took up the oars, and rowed out of their hiding place. Rishi was so intent on the Roaring Way that he did not notice them until their boat left the shore eddy, and even then he was so astonished that he wasted many valuable seconds standing frozen at his oars. Seema nosed into the main flow and began to row across the current, moving them into a perfect position to cut the Mar off downstream. Rishi began to row madly, aiming his prow at their midsection.

“He’s going to ram us!” Atreus said.

“He is going to try,” Seema sneered. “Stay in front and be ready. Do not worry about me or the boat.”

Atreus crouched on his haunches, bracing himself to jump. Though Rishi was rowing like a galley slave, it seemed to take the Mar’s boat forever to close the distance. Atreus glanced downstream. The Roaring Way was less than seven hundred paces distant, its dark throat growing wider and more ferocious-looking every moment. Whether there would be enough time to recover the fountain was anyone’s guess. The nearer they drew to the canyon, the faster the current seemed to flow.

Atreus looked back to find the Mar’s boat almost upon them, its sharp prow aimed just behind Seema’s oarlocks. He stood, gathering himself for a long leap.

“Wait,” Seema said.

She reversed her downstream oar and began to row in two different directions at once. The craft pivoted on its center, executing a graceful pirouette that brought it alongside Rishi’s boat so close that Atreus simply stepped across into the bow.

The Mar’s eyes grew wide. He dropped his oars and reached for something behind him. Atreus sprang toward the middle of the boat and cursed when his sore hip buckled and left him lurching into the oars. Rishi came up with a hatchet in one hand and the Fountain of Infinite Grace in the other.

“Put the hatchet down!” Atreus demanded, sinking into a defensive stance, ready to dodge or block. “The cup, too. I won’t hurt you.”

Rishi looked doubtful. “Indeed,” the Mar said. “You will only deprive me of all I have worked so hard for.”

The Mar raised the hatchet as though to attack, then turned and leaped into the stern of Seema’s boat as it passed by. Atreus scrambled after him, but by the time he had clambered past the rowing thwart, Seema’s craft was several paces upstream. He grabbed the oars and struggled to maneuver after her but could not reverse the boat’s momentum quickly enough to prevent the distance from opening even farther. Seema spun her boat around to meet him, but Rishi was on her in an instant, his hatchet poised to strike if she closed the distance.

Atreus’s boat began to tremble with the crash of the Roaring Way. He looked back to find the gorge less than four hundred paces away, its craggy mouth looming dark and wide. The current was picking up speed even faster than he had feared.

“You are as stubborn as a water buffalo!” Rishi called. He hefted the platinum cup in his hand. “But there is no reason we cannot strike a bargain. I will give you the fountain, and you will give me everything else.”

“What about Seema?” Atreus asked. He glanced down into the back of his boat and saw the other six Sacred Gifts lying among the Mar’s stolen supplies. “She must not come to any harm.”

“Do not worry about me,” she called.

“You said there could be no killing over the Sacred Gifts,” Atreus replied. He picked up the jade vase and displayed it, praying that Seema would understand he was trying to show her where the other gifts were. “I suppose that applies to you as well.”

Seema arched her brow. “I suppose it does,” she said.

Rishi smiled in relief and said, “Good.”

The Mar nodded to Seema and as she maneuvered their boat toward Atreus’s, Rishi called, “I cannot say how pleased I am to discover that you are a reasonable man who does not hold grudges for what could not be helped.”

“If you’re talking about Yago, thank Seema.”

The effort of rowing against the current made Atreus weak and feverish, but he did not slacken his pace. He could feel the power of the Roaring Way coursing through the boat, a constant reminder that every second was carrying them all that much closer to the canyon of no return.

“She made me promise not to kill you,” Atreus added.

Rishi’s smug smile vanished. “How unfortunate, then,” he said, “that we will not be traveling together.”

Seema drew her boat up alongside, and Atreus said, “Just leave the cup with Seema and come over. Everything’s here.”

“I am begging your pardon, good sir, but I fear that would be most foolish of me.” Rishi backed toward the stern of his boat. “I will stay in my boat while you come over here, and then when I am safe—”

“Now!”

As Atreus spoke, he raised his oar out of the water and swung it into Rishi’s arm. The hatchet fell free and clattered into the bottom of the boat, and Seema hurled herself from between the oarlocks, lunging for the fountain in Rishi’s hand.

The Mar pivoted away, at once drawing the cup out of reach and cuffing her behind the ear. Seema did not even have a chance to cry out; she simply flew over the side and splashed into the water.

Atreus dropped his oars and kneeled, grabbing a handful of long hair and pulling her over to his boat.

“Do not worry about me,” Seema sputtered, grabbing hold of the boat. She thrust a hand behind her, where Rishi’s boat was beginning to drift away. The Mar himself was stooping down in the bottom of the craft, no doubt retrieving his dropped hatchet. “The cup… we are almost too late….”

Atreus glanced downstream and saw the gorge rushing up fast. He could not even guess at the remaining distance. There was nothing ahead but a short stretch of shore eddy and the dark abyss of the granite canyon. Leaving Seema to pull herself aboard, he gathered his feet beneath him and hurled himself across the growing distance between the two boats.

He was still in the air when Rishi came up with the hatchet.

Atreus raised both arms, blocking with one and reaching for the Fountain of Infinite Grace with the other. His hand closed around the cup, but he was sore and feverish and too slow to stop the hatchet. The blade arced over his arm and bit into his back. He bellowed and lashed out, catching Rishi in the chest and sending him tumbling; only then did Atreus realize that he had crashed down on the side of the boat. He was hanging half in the river and half out, huffing like an exhausted carp and clutching the fountain in one bloody hand.