Scavenger of Souls (9 page)

The crowd forced us upward at an almost inhuman pace. I tried to catch a glimpse of Aleka and the little kids, but Archangel's unbreakable grip prevented me. All I could see were spears and bare bodies, and all I could hear were pounding feet and the angry muttering of the mob. Asunder's cloak flamed ahead of me. The heat of the day and the heat of the warriors pressing around me made me feel light-headed and dizzy, and I wondered if, in the end, what they called the Scavenger of Souls was only a euphemism for pitching their enemies headfirst over the cliff to be splattered on the canyon floor.

Finally we stopped. The warriors grew instantly silent, their rumbling replaced by the moan of the wind. A combination of wonder and dread twisted my stomach.

We stood at the highest point of the canyon. At this height the gorge had divided like an opened scar, the western side hazy with distance. The trailhead offered enough room for everyone, but I leaned away from the drop, a feeling
of vertigo taking hold. Asunder stood where the trail cleared the rim of the canyon, his arms crossed over his scarred chest. But he didn't need to point for my eyes to find what he wanted us to see.

The table of black rock we'd walked two days ago stretched out to the east, its lifeless expanse gleaming in the sun. Nothing moved in that inky waste, no speck of dust stirring in the hot wind. None of the rock formations or mounds we'd seen farther south blocked our view. But a mile or so away, a single shape bulged out of the dead land: a towering heap of night-black stone, a hundred feet tall at least, topped with twin spikes like horns. Seeing it through the blur of heat and glaring light, I realized I was seeing the peculiar illustration from the first tunnel, painstakingly reproduced to mirror the real: the rough, irregular outline, the tapering peak, the perfect symmetry of the horns. It stood too far away for me to tell if it had been shaped by human hands. But it reminded me enough of the Skaldi nest that a shiver ran through me despite the pounding heat of the late morning sun.

I knew without asking, without even thinking, what this place was.

The altar of the Scavenger of Souls.

Asunder stood silent for a moment, his cloak snapping in the wind, his brilliant eyes piercing the molten air. Then, in a voice that echoed across the empty land like the crack of a whip, he began to speak.

“My children!” he said. “In this place, as we have done
since the days of our first becoming, we gather to cast the unrighteous from our midst. We have spoken to the darkness, we have relinquished to the void those tricks and traps of the despoilers that would poison our hearts and enslave our minds. We have glimpsed a new life, the life of the faithful.
Aya tivah bis, shashi tivah bracha
. We have vowed to pursue the way of the righteous, that the wickedness of those who came before might perish utterly from the land.”

His black eyes roved the crowd. His followers nodded fiercely at his words, or maybe at his commanding tone. I saw little Bea's head nodding too, though I couldn't believe she accepted or even understood half of what he said.

“In the days of old,” Asunder continued, “the despoilers laid claim to this land, and in those days the land sickened and failed, and the skies darkened, and the great many perished in fire and ash.
Shashi bis, tivah bracha
. And yet there was one”—and his voice rose to an exalted pitch—“one man who resisted the despoilers' ways, and who did not suffer their sentence. This man took himself out into the waste, to pray and to be healed, and there he wrestled with a demon of the pit, and lo! though his body was broken he heard a voice speaking through the purified vessel of his soul. And this man traveled the land, gathering those who would heed his word, and he foretold that the children of the despoilers would bow down before the children of the light. And in the fullness of time these accursed sons of accursed fathers would be marked for all the world to see, and bound to the altar
of the Shattered Lands, a fit sacrifice for the one we name
Nidach bar Tivah
. The malice-striker, the one who tears at flesh. The scourge of the unbeliever: the Scavenger of Souls.”

The wind had picked up in intensity, whipping around us. Asunder's voice creaked and whined as it poured over the glassy surface of the Shattered Lands. His people began to sway, their eyes closed, their fists clenched on their chests. A low chant arose from their throats, a mutter like wind or water or blood throbbing through secret veins. Asunder listened to the murmur as it rose and fell, then cut it off with a glance. It died as abruptly as if a single giant creature had let out a grateful sigh.

“Bring them,” he said.

Leaving Nessa in the hands of two warriors, Archangel stepped onto the black rock, forcing me ahead of him. Two additional warriors followed, bearing the prone form of Aleka in her stretcher. Getting my first good look at her since yesterday, I thought her face appeared thinner, the hollows around her eyes deeper than ever before.

Then, to my utter amazement, a final warrior detached himself from the throng, bearing the bound form of Wali.

He was naked to the waist, his uniform pants torn off at the knees to resemble the cave dwellers' costumes. Blood, whether his own or the dead guard's, streaked his chest and face, matted his hair. Though his eyes were open, he looked at me without seeing. As if in ridicule, they'd hung the ring they'd stolen from him around his neck, where it
gleamed against the bloody stripes that crossed his chest.

The guard threw him at Asunder's feet. Wali crashed to the ground, then struggled into a kneeling position. But his head hung to his chest, and he seemed too exhausted or battered to rise.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nessa fighting to free herself. Asunder looked straight at her and smiled, then reached for the white staff at his side. Eyes ablaze, he pointed it at Wali like a flayed bone. The warriors on the trailhead fell back, covering their faces with their hands as the staff touched Wali's forehead.

His head snapped back as if he'd received a stunning blow. For a second he remained on his knees, the ring around his neck wobbling as his body swayed. Then he went limp, chin lolling onto his chest, body collapsing to the stone. In the instant before his eyes closed, I saw something I'd never expected to see there. Not confusion, or surprise, or shock. Not even dismay.

What I saw was fear.

Asunder covered the ground to where Aleka lay and repeated the performance. At the touch of the staff, her body arched upward so violently she fell from the stretcher and thrashed against the stone, her injured arm snapping beneath her. I struggled to overcome Archangel's crushing strength, but he held me fast. Yet somehow Nessa wrenched free of her captors' hold, and I saw that she'd sliced the bonds around her wrists, maybe using one of the warrior's
own spearpoints when we were surrounded by them. She leaped toward Archangel and pounded on the giant's back, but she might as well have been hammering the trunk of a tree. Another warrior grabbed at her, but she spun, ramming the heel of her hand into his nose, and he fell in a spray of blood. Then a group of warriors from the trail swarmed her, and she went down. The next instant Archangel lifted my feet from the ground and rocked me forward, bringing me within reach of Asunder's staff.

He smiled. I saw myself reflected in his eyes, my face fractured in their black depths like a kaleidoscope. I felt the staff touch my forehead.

I had a momentary sensation of cold, freezing cold, then searing pain coursed through me.

It felt as if I was being torn apart by hundreds of razor-sharp teeth. They punctured me, penetrated me. They filled my mind, blotting everything from my thoughts. I couldn't tell if I was conscious or not, if Archangel still held me, if my feet rested on the ground or my body had been cast into space. I couldn't remember my own name, the touch of the little kids' hands, the sound of Nessa's voice. I had felt the pain of the Skaldi when they attacked me at their nest, felt as if everything inside me was being sucked away to fill their empty shells. This was worse. With the Skaldi, I'd had only one body for them to torture. Now it felt like I had a million bodies, and every one of them was being eaten alive.

I thought I heard Nessa scream. I thought I saw Asunder's
staff grow veins and muscle and flesh until it was no longer a staff but an arm, no longer one arm but two. Then I thought I saw the arms being torn from a child's body and blood exploding all around me. Then I thought nothing more.

I woke with my back against rock, my head a knot of pain.

My hands remained bound, but my shirt had been removed and my pants sliced like Wali's, leaving my skin to bake on the black stone. The figures of my companions surrounded me, all of them half-stripped like the cave dwellers. Asunder and Archangel were nowhere to be seen, but the rest of the warriors stood guard in a circle around us. The sky had turned the color of a day-old bruise, reducing the glow of the black desert to a dull gleam like burnished metal. I tried to stand, but found my feet bound too.

I counted my colony, and was relieved to find that of those who'd left the cave, only Wali was missing. But Nessa was tightly bound and gagged, Adem and the little kids under heavy guard. And when I saw Aleka, my heart froze.

She lay on her stretcher with eyes open but sightless, and for a second I thought she was dead. Then I saw her chest move beneath what was left of her uniform jacket, sharp and shallow breaths like a kid caught in a nightmare. Her face had turned a chalky gray that reminded me of nothing so much as the Skaldi's skin. The angle hid her injured arm, but I could see the blood that had soaked into her tattered uniform and the canvas of the stretcher.

I looked around frantically for a sign of Asunder and Archangel, and realized we'd been moved. At the time of the attack, the black mountain had been a blotch on the horizon. Now it loomed over our heads, gleaming like obsidian, its steep sides cut into sharp facets. At its base stood an assortment of stone shapes that looked like grotesque, twisted mockeries of human beings. As my eyes adjusted to the altar's solid blackness, I saw a rough stairway carved into the monolith, a series of narrow, uneven steps that spiraled to the top like a spinal column. The twin horns stood too high for me to be sure, but it seemed the stairs ended right between them.

I turned my attention to the cords knotting my wrists, but gave up trying to untie them when one of the guards leveled his spear in my direction. I cursed myself for not thinking to use one of their blades to free myself like Nessa had. I cursed myself even more for not using Nessa's own blade when I'd had the chance.

“Querry.”

I rolled over and saw Tyris, lying on the ground facing me, wrinkled and thin in her torn uniform. One side of her face was so badly swollen her eye was sealed shut, and blood crusted her nose.

“I tried to get to Aleka,” she explained. “They didn't like that very much.”

“How is she?”

“The fracture has reopened,” she said. “And the mistreatment she's
suffered has made it far worse. She appears to be in shock. Blood loss, maybe, or . . .”

I shuddered, remembering the staff. “Did he touch you, too?”

She shook her head. “I've never seen anything like it, Querry. It seems to be no more than a length of bone, but its touch—it's like a severe electric shock.” She gestured with her one good eye toward the mountain. “Archangel took Wali to the summit. None of the other warriors would come near him. It's as if they believe he's carrying some terrible disease.”

I rolled over again and struggled into a sitting position. My sunburned body ached, and the sharp stone scratched my exposed skin. The guard watched me but didn't raise his spear. I peered through the semidarkness at Aleka, and thought I saw a red mark on her forehead where she'd been touched by the staff, a perfect circle the size of a curled thumb and index finger. It was impossible to tell in the bad light, but I could have sworn that, with every hidden beat of her heart, the redness was spreading. I reached up to touch my own forehead and felt the flesh drumming like a second heart.

Then footsteps sounded behind me, and Tyris's one eye widened in warning. I turned, my head throbbing as if it remembered the touch of the staff. Asunder stood there, his giant lieutenant looming in the twilight, brother to the stone mountain.

“Nidach asa minach,”
Asunder spoke. “The Scavenger
awaits. Take them to the altar, and there let them be fed to the power that rules this land. Let them be clasped in his merciless jaws, and stripped of flesh, and harrowed for all eternity in the empty waste. Let them cry out for mercy, but receive none, and let them welter in their own blood and tears from now until the end of time.”

Two warriors approached me, their hands tightening on my arms, and I was dragged to the steps of the altar. I fought the best I could, but my bare feet slipped against the glassy stone. Nessa and the others remained under guard at the altar's base, but Aleka was lifted from the stretcher by Archangel, her ravaged body looking as frail as the old woman's in his oversize arms. Tyris shouted, her voice joined by Nekane's and Adem's cries. Zataias tried to grab a spear, but a thicket of lances forced him and the others back. I was first to reach the monolith, the warriors shoving me forward until my feet touched the stairs.