Valley of the Dead (25 page)

“How can you brag about this?” Radovan asked. “How can you tell us all this? What if someone found out?”

Ahriman shrugged and smiled. “Who would believe you? And what would they do about it? Surely you’ve heard rumors before that I was alive, and you disbelieved them. Mothers tell such stories to their children to frighten them into behaving. I am the stuff of legend. I have accomplished the greatest trick of all: I’ve convinced people I don’t exist. They need for me to not exist. They need for me to have been killed by their just and noble ruler. And people always get what they need. Very seldom what they want, but always what they need. And I help them get that. So everyone’s happy.”

They all fell silent for a moment, and there was just the crackling of the fire and some whispers from the women behind the curtain. Dante glanced over at his companions. They looked as mesmerized by this man as Dante felt. Bogdana was the first to tear her focus away and look toward the door.

“May we still go?” Dante asked.

Ahriman looked surprised. “Of course. I’m sorry if I went on a bit, but you asked. I don’t get many visitors from the outside world.”

They were led back outside and continued their trek away from the mines, further up the slopes. For the first time in their journey, Radovan was not in the lead of their group, his strength and hope seemingly drained from him. The sun was nearly touching the mountaintops ahead of them. Dante had no idea how they could make it over these peaks. It seemed as though exhaustion and despair might finally defeat them, when violence and hate had not.

Chapter
40

We mounted up, he first and I the second,

Till I beheld through a round aperture

Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.

Dante,
Inferno
, 34.136-139

Dante kept looking over his shoulder as they made their way further into the mountains. He could see, from the corner of his eye, the other three did so as well, clearly fearing treachery and pursuit as much as Dante did. Leaving the camp, they wended their way through piles of blackish slag as tall as two men. In addition to these, there were smaller piles, still as tall as a man, of all kinds of trash from the miners: broken tools and crockery, shattered barrels and other pieces of wood and metal, scraps of food with the burnt bones and flayed flesh of animals. There were even a great many frozen bodies of the miners themselves – naked, most of them tinged with blue and green, all of them used up, emaciated, broken, and randomly mixed in among the other trash with no concern for their previous existence as men.

Perhaps it was because he kept looking back that Dante did not notice the dead lying in wait for them among the piles of rock and other debris. As Dante glanced backward, he heard Bogdana’s shriek, but before he could return his attention forward, he was hit from the side by a charging body that carried him down to the ground. All he could see, for an instant, was a bluish face pressed close to his. All he could hear was the rasping growl it made. All he could smell was stale air and rotted flesh, and all he could feel were its fingernails raking across his face. Its filthy claws bit into his flesh and ripped down from his forehead, across his left eye, and down his nose and cheek. Immediately Dante’s eye burned from the blood pouring into it. He tasted the bitter, copper tang in his mouth. He let out a scream of pain and outrage at this final attack, this last, grasping, tenacious obstacle.

The thing had a hold of Dante’s sword arm. The claws of its right hand were now at his throat, but Dante had instinctively lashed out with his left arm and now had a hold of the monster’s throat as well. He might’ve frozen there long enough for the dead man to tear his neck open with his ragged nails, but Bogdana’s scream pierced Dante and lashed him into a fury. His fingers sunk deeper and faster into the dead meat than the claws digging into his own flesh, for his were spurred on by something more than just hunger. The dead man was not larger than Dante, and like all the dead, his balance and coordination were none too good. Dante wrenched his body to the side, rolling the two of them over. When Dante was on top, he pulled up on the dead neck and proceeded to slam the head attached to it into the rocky ground, over and over. Dante only stopped the assault when the fingers around his own neck slackened, the ruined head lolling back like a rag doll’s before he let go.

Rising to his feet, he took in a ragged, wet breath through clenched teeth, his head swimming. He turned like a drunk toward Bogdana’s screams, and saw her struggling under a dead woman much larger than she. For the only time he’d ever seen, she looked to him frail and overpowered, weaponless and pinned down, thrashing about wildly and furiously, but with the woman’s cracked, yellow teeth closing in on her neck. Perhaps it would’ve made more sense to draw his sword, but Dante was not thinking clearly or logically. Scooping up a jagged, black rock the size of an infant’s head, he only thought how they were far too close to let this stop them; how they had been through too much for it to end like this. With an animal roar he charged, swinging the rock upward, smashing it right into the dead woman’s hideous maw. The blow threw her a little to the side and made her tilt her head backwards. Dante slammed the rock right down on her forehead, driving it into her skull in an explosion of brain and bone. Then he crouched and launched himself at her, catching her around the neck with his left arm and knocking her off Bogdana.

Dante landed on top of the dead woman. Though she no longer struggled or moved, he straddled her and continued to bring the rock down into the mangled flesh of her head, over and over, till the muscles in his arm burned from the exertion and each blow came more and more slowly. He could feel the blood from the cuts on his face mingling with tears and drool, as he tilted his head back and sputtered in frustration and sorrow, no longer able to look at his grisly work. But still the rock rose and fell, making sad, wet noises in the frozen, dead air.

Finally Dante felt Bogdana touch his shoulder, while her other hand cupped gently around his hand, easing his motions to a halt. “It’s done,” she said softly. She squeezed, and his hand relaxed. He let the bloody stone drop to the rocky ground with a clack. She pulled him to his feet, turned him around, and led him a few feet from the corpse he had made. He looked down at the ground. She pulled the sleeve of her blouse out a little, past the edge of the jacket sleeve, and wiped the blood from his mouth with it. “We’re done here.”

The four of them stood there for a moment, panting in the thin air, just staring at each other. Dante could see two corpses on the ground by Radovan, and another near Adam.

“We must make haste,” Adam finally said.

They moved again. The further they got from the mining operation, the more familiar Adam seemed with the land around them, guiding them quickly into the bare mountains behind and above Lord Ahriman’s camp. Though the rocky landscape looked utterly featureless from a distance, as they moved along Dante could see they were following the barest of tracks -- little more than the kind of line scratched on a mountain by the nimble goats living there. It was still freezing cold around them, but at least they no longer had to contend with the savage wind that had attacked them on the frozen lake, and there were no more creatures, living or dead, to assail them. The ground they walked on was frozen and there were patches of snow all around. Higher up the snow was much deeper. Poised on the slopes above them, Dante saw huge piles of dirty, grey snow remaining from the previous winter. Though it was cold this day, the spring time temperatures on other days seemed to have undermined these snow banks, carving them out into strange, undulating shapes, jutting out from the mountain face like claws or wings that defied gravity to pull them down to the valley below. Adam turned back several times and put his finger to his lips, to show they should be quiet, lest they start an avalanche.

The air was thin. They were all breathing hard when they stopped to rest under a rock outcropping. Adam looked around them as dusk crept up toward them. He pointed to another outcropping a few hundred feet ahead of them as he put his hand on Dante’s shoulder.

“There, you see that rock?” he said.

“Yes,” Dante said.

“The pass is just beyond that, and you’ll be on the other side of the mountain, out of this valley of death. Go to that outcropping, to protect yourself when the snow comes crashing down. Just press yourselves up against the rock and you’ll be safe.”

The other three looked at Adam.

“Where will you be?” Dante asked. “We’ve fought off the last of them. We can all leave safely. And why will the snow come crashing down? I don’t understand.” He looked up at the snow above them more nervously than before.

“I will return to the valley,” Adam said. “I fear some of these wicked men may try to follow us and find the way out of here. It must remain a secret the evil do not know, do not believe in. It gives us some power over them. The same way not believing in evil gives it so much of its power. God knows, they might try to lead the dead out of the valley if they knew this path, and befoul other lands with their plagues. Besides, one of us should return to save those children we saw before. It is my job to take them back to the monastery and raise them to fight this evil, but first I had to make sure you were safe. So you all go on ahead. The snows are very unstable this time of year. A loud shout and they will come tumbling down and obliterate the path.”

“I will go with you,” Radovan said.

Adam shook his head. “You are as brave as ever, my son, but you do not need to do this. I will sneak past the men in Lord Ahriman’s camp more easily if I’m alone, and I can take the children by myself.”

“This land is my home,” Radovan replied. He gestured to Dante. “I think you can say how difficult it is to live far from home, in strange lands. No matter how beautiful they are, they have made you sad and sick, haven’t they?”

Dante nodded. “Yes, they have, every day.”

“Then I will return with you, sir, to the valley. I think you may need some help, for Myra will need someone to lean on as she goes down the mountain.”

Adam looked between Radovan and Dante. “I see you two are alike in some ways, after all.” He smiled and shook his head. “Well, love for virtuous women is not a very bad thing to have in common, I suppose. Let us go before the darkness overtakes us completely. Farewell, my friends.”

Adam pulled Bogdana and Dante to his small but reliable chest. Dante had not felt such a paternal embrace in many years. He was glad the freezing cold had already made his eyes wet with tears, to save himself the embarrassment of his weeping being noticed. Radovan clasped the two separately and more briefly, but Dante felt reassured by his stoic strength, and again gladdened by his virtue and optimism. Having made their farewells there on the barren mountainside, Dante led Bogdana to the rock Adam had pointed out. They turned back to see the other two men waving to them.

“You will always have hope, you who have left this valley!” Adam shouted. As he did, Dante could hear rumbling and creaking all around them. “Go forward! The banners of the King advance!”

The sounds coming from the snow did not crescendo gradually, but all at once turned into a roaring explosion. Bogdana gave a squeal and Dante pulled her close as a thundering, rushing blast of snow engulfed them. Dante pressed his stinging nose and eyes into her hair until the sound stopped. When he opened his eyes, he could only see white for several minutes more, but gradually the world became visible. The trail to the valley was gone, a mountain of snow in its place. If Adam and Radovan were still back there, he could not see them.

As Adam had described, the trail ahead was clear, leading down through a crevasse free of snow. Dante pulled Bogdana along in the twilight and, in a short while, they had clambered far down the other side of the mountain. As they went, the temperature rose rapidly, turning from winter to spring in just a short while. Soon the terrain also transformed, from a rocky waste to a lush meadow. In the fading light Dante even saw flowers in the tall grass, and heard crickets calling to their mates. Looking at Bogdana, he risked a small laugh at this new landscape, though he feared a fragile spell might be broken and everything around them would erupt in ash and flame. But as they made their way down the mountain, the fields around them now lit by the moon, Dante wondered if it had really been the last three days that were under a spell. It now seemed like an evil dream from which he had suddenly been summoned, like a fever patient finally breaking through the wall of suffering and blindness that had been wracking his body and smothering his mind.

They walked more slowly. The lights of a town were ahead of them, down a gentle slope that they now traversed quite easily. Dante took the jewel-encrusted stone from his pocket and held it out to Bogdana. She took it, turning it over in the moonlight. Its enormous worth could be seen even in the night. She looked sideways at him and smiled. The curl of her lips and the sparkle in her eye were mischievous.

“For me?” she said. “You stole something for me? Is that a proper gift?”

He pretended to look shocked or hurt. “It was on the ground. That’s not stealing!”

She shook her head. “You are always so exact and precise, such a stickler.” She put the stone in her pocket and slipped her hand into Dante’s.

“Well, you have made me less so,” he said. “But I think you’ll need the jewels, to help you make your way in whatever land this is we’ve come to.”

He felt her hand tighten on his. “And where will you be, Dante?”

“I’ll stay near till you’re settled, of course, until after your baby is born. But eventually I will go back to Italy. Even if I never return to Florence, I belong in my own country. More importantly, I have a new purpose now. I have something to do that’s worthy of you. Something that just has worth, period. It will even have eternal worth. I will tell the world of what we four went through. Hundreds of years from now, people will know of your virtue, and Adam’s wisdom, and Radovan’s courage. All the misery you’ve been through will be for something – for goodness, truth, and beauty. And those will last forever, while the pain is just a memory.”

“You would leave me because you have to go off to make me immortal?” Her mouth, and especially her eyes, continued to look mischievous. “Perhaps you’re less of a stickler, but you are still a very strange man, I think.”

“Perhaps I am. But maybe that is not such a bad thing?”

Bogdana turned toward him and took both his hands in hers. She locked her gaze on his. “No. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.”

Bogdana tilted her head back to look up at the sky. Dante pulled his focus from her exquisite neck and face, and followed her gaze up to the myriad of tiny lights above them.

“It’s good the stars are out,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” Dante agreed. “It is good there are so many beautiful things in the universe. It is especially good that some of them are much closer than the stars.”