Heaven's Gate (32 page)

“Unquestionably, sir,” Rugan responds, “one of their Elders in particular I think, all this has been about gaining the power of the Gate for himself.”

“Why do you presume there is only one of them behind this? For all we know they have restored their numbers in six years,” the General says, suddenly realizing that his complacency about Rugan’s warnings might extend to other matters, “there is no way for us to tell how far they have already gone. If Nathaniel has always been their creature they may have been manipulating us, as they did the old barons, from the very beginning.”

“It is possible that they have been manipulating us, I am afraid, the Strigoi prince or princes behind these recent events may even have used us to destroy their rivals. However, everything we know of the Strigoi tells us that they do not grow to their full power in six years. The Strigoi as a whole cannot have undone the harm done to them at Golifany.
 
I believe that it can only be one or two of the Elders, who were not present at the destruction, behind all this. They do not have strength of numbers, they seek to achieve their ends by circumspect means and at the moment, think they have succeeded in hiding their involvement, this is a weakness. If we act now we may even be able to turn their tactics against them.”

“Except that they are already off seeking the Gate, together with Captain Blake and that treacherous Carter
bitch
, for all we know.”

“Or perhaps not, after all Tenechi did not escape with the fugitives, when he could have.”

“He only waited to avoid rousing suspicion and immediate pursuit, you said yourself he warned them.”

“So if we give chase now there must still be hope of thwarting them, the enemy believes that you have swallowed the lie. What better time to strike?”

Rugan pauses, fixing the General with a look that brooks no argument, “whatever our doubts, one thing is certain they must be stopped, the Strigoi cannot be allowed to reach the Gate and Nathaniel must not be allowed to split the
Union
. We have an advantage however small.”

“Indeed! As yet Nathaniel does not know that his treachery is revealed, he rode off with his forty remaining Pardoners many hours ago, supposedly he was going to apprehend the fugitives but now it seems more likely that they are going to seek the Gate together. We must find them as soon as possible, while Nathaniel has only a small force, he must be killed and the Gate claimed by its rightful inheritors, the true children of the Inquisition. Then we shall see about hunting down any Strigoi princes that may have survived Golifany and this time I will not stop or be diverted from that holy path by the advice of fools”

Still squatting next to the body of the dead colonel, Leedon looks up at his old advisor, “`I shall need you in this, Rugan, your ability to penetrate the shadows and lies employed by our enemies is vital if we are to succeed in holding the Union together. Can you find them as you did once before?”

“I shall pray, Angus and God willing, we shall find them once again.” The corpse says, granting benediction with a hand still as cold as the desert night.

Chapter 16:

“Pilgrims”

Heat merciless and fierce sends thundering blows down on the wind swept Anvil of sand. High above birds circle, rising and falling like moths or ragged angels desperate to reach the burning heights, but repelled by the sun’s brilliance. It is not common to see the black winged birds this far out, this is the deep desert, there is no moisture here not even sweat. Life in these extremes is rare, only one thing could draw the shameless scavengers so far out and that is the dark line of riders trudging through the twisting haze of smoldering air and ash fine dust.

Of all that grim host only one soldier still pauses to look up at the circling shadows.
 
The brightness and discomfort remind him of his youth, his father had been an unholy man leading his family from town to town, despite the heat and the risk. It had been far more risk for the pimp and gambler to stay in one place, where his creditors or God fearing people might catch up to him. So they had tramped from town to town, the boy’s skin turning red then brown. His father sold his mother and the strength of his slim arms at every town where they stopped, until the night when his father had found a degenerate who preferred the idea of the boy over his empty eyed wife.

The boy had never been able to tell if the man who wanted him, wanted him more because he preferred the vice of sodomy or that he knew the boy would scream in a way that his mother no longer could. The man had certainly enjoyed pain and the boy had obliged him by screaming. He’d screamed till the deaf walls seemed to shiver, then when it was over, he made sure that he was not the only one to scream that night. The one thing his father had ever done for him was teach him to use a gun. More than once the degenerate gambler had used the shock of being shot at by a child to buy him a few moments.

The boy had not killed his tormenter with the gun he found amid the man’s discarded clothes, though, just put a well aimed bullet through his knee. His father had rushed in then, dispelling all doubt that he had not been heard. It had taken him a second to kill his father for that betrayal and then he had found the blade he kept hidden even from his parents in the ragged pile of his own clothes. He had killed many men since that day one way or another, riding with his boys, who he had made the most feared gang in the Union before he was even sixteen, then the priest had come and he had been reborn and refocused. He had killed many but no blood had been as hot as the blood that flowed from the man with the busted knee in the back room of a Drycreek tavern, as hot as the days marching through the desert, as hot as today.
 
It takes him a long while to force the images to the back of his mind and refocus on what the man in priest’s robes beside him is saying.

“We are close now, General,” the dead man reassures his commander, “we made the right decision to press on. I can only imagine one place in this desolation where they could be heading.”

“Silversnow.” The General replies through cracked lips, surprising the lich with both his depth of knowledge and the fact that the man can still speak, let alone recall something so obscure, he could only have found it in one of the old texts that Tenichi had had him reading.

“Was there ever really snow out here?” The General asks no one imparticular, staring around at the flat expanse of burning sand. The only respite might lie in the tall walls that rose above them but the General was loathe to go any closer, if there was any choice he would turn away, away from the heat the thirst and the ghosts that lurked in the shadows cast by that natural stone wall. There was no choice, though, because that was where the traitors were going and if he did not find them soon, he would be dead. Indeed he was amazed that no one had died already. Almost every one of the men he had taken into the desert had collapsed at one point or another but Father Rugan seemed to be possessed of a strength to rival that of the Christ man, when he spent forty days in the wilderness. Rugan had personally helped each man to his feet again and after only a few words from the confessor the unfortunate straggler seemed to find the strength to go on, becoming an inspiration to his fellows through his endurance. Even the horses seemed to respond to the Father’s encouragements

Only one man had died and been left in the desert, so far, the suicidal madman who Rugan had seen slashing the water skins. Unfortunately the priest had noticed that something was wrong too late, by the time he raised the alarm the water was gone. The man confessed and was dealt with accordingly but that had not changed their predicament, they were past Limit and four days away from the line and any hope of renewing their supply. Rugan had argued that they were no more than two days from the fugitives and that there would be water enough to be had from them, besides as Rugan correctly pointed out, seventy men probably wouldn’t make it through four days under the desert sun and there was too much at stake not to take the risk. It was near the end of the second day now and last night Leedon had been able to see the camp fires of Tenichi’s forty men. He’d sworn,
 
as he sat huddled in the cold, surrounded by his sickened men that they would take the Pardoner’s water and make him walk back to the line.

Now it seemed that the time for that retribution had come, Rugan assured him that even though Lillian and her group had not lit a fire and given themselves away, they were struggling to keep a few hours lead on the Pardoner and his party.

“We ride through the night,”
 
the General says, recovering from his heat induced malaise.

“It would be best to set up an ambush, if we do it right, we can ensure that we capture the girl and none of the others escape.”

Rugan agrees. “Are you sure you have the strength for a final push though?” Rugan does not particularly care whether the General answers in the affirmative or not, the rest of the troop is his and he would just as soon kill the man if he refuses to go on. However, some part of the lich can not help but be fascinated by the General’s continued survival. What drove the man beyond the limits of all the rest of the men he had brought? The General seems to keep his body going with the same will that Rugan used to animate the men and horses around them, making a lie of everything that Rugan believes about the weakness of the flesh.

“I will do what I must,” the General answers ignoring the misgivingings, he has about his own strength or that of the men. “If they can endure this then how can I do less? Besides if we do not we will die.” Thus murmurs the last living man in the company, urging his dead horse to the head of the column.

*

At first glance Silversnow seems as bleak and featureless as the rest of the desert. Wind blasted stone stands all around the sight like some natural amphitheatre, eroded into the side of a diminutive mountain. Centuries have caked the sight with grit and sand, making the whole place indistinguishable from any other stand of stones or atoll in the desert. Inside the high rock walls, there are mounds of sand marking ancient ruins, mounds that seem unremarkable until one notices the twisted metal that protrudes
 
from many of
 
these apparently natural structures. Here and there centuries of accumulated dust and stone have fallen away to reveal collapsed walls and the gleaming metal, scoured by wind and stand that lies beneath.

“I still don’t see why they call the place ‘Silversnow’,” Lillian comments, having satisfied herself that at least some of the partially buried structures are man made.

“Over there,” Blake answers, indicating two monoliths that stand before them like ruined gateposts. Lillian urges her horse forward with a click of her tongue against her teeth and stares up at one of the thick columns. Even up close they seem unremarkable, until she notices movement beneath the sandstone surface. Lillian blinks, unable to believe that the strange movement is not some trick of tired eyes but once she has noticed it, there is no way not to see that the whole column is undulating with strange patterns of black and white.

She dismounts and walks still closer, reaching out a hand to touch the gravelly surface but before her fingers can connect Blake calls out a warning.

“Lillian no!”

She pulls her hand back and turns to face him, “Why? Is it dangerous?”

“Yes, they have been known to kill those who touch them and I cannot take that risk.”

“How can stone kill?”

“How does stone move or shine?”

“It shines?”

“You can’t notice it as well now but when it gets dark, the silver falling through the pillars will glow. You can see it, even a long way off.”

“Hence Silversnow?”

“Precisely.”

“What kind of stone is it?”

“I don’t know, I have come here several times, since this place seems to be somehow linked to the Gate, but I have never been able to penetrate its secrets. All I know is that these columns do not form the Gate, I am not even sure that they are stone at their heart I think the sand has encased something else and turned hard over a long time but since to touch them is to risk death it is not a mystery we can solve.”

“You think the Gates are here?”

“Most sources would seem to suggest that but as I say, I have never been able to find anything. I do not think that Yorick chose this place to meet at random, I only hope that he has more insight and feels inclined to share.”

“Well where is this great prophet then?”
Aden
asks irritably, “I don’t think that those Inquisitors are more than a few hours behind us and I don’t want to wait here for them to catch up.”

“He is Strigoi, he will not come before dark.” Blake shrugs.

“So we just sit out here waiting to get caught in the meantime?”

“That’s about the size of it unless you have a deck of cards on you.”

“How reassuring, jokes! Now I guess we can at least die laughing.”

“I don’t see what good being miserable about it would do.” Blake answers softly, “Besides what’s death to you? You believe that you’ll just end, simple as that.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it.”