Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (31 page)

The Sheason visually surveyed each of them, then turned to start down the path.

“Did you see it?” Mira asked.

“Yes,” the Sheason answered.

Tahn did not know what the Far meant until he came to the very edge and started his own descent. Enshrouded in a dense mist, the lowlands could not be seen. Somehow Tahn knew the mist was the work of Quietgiven.

The path wound more narrowly than the one they’d taken on the south side of the High Plain. Switching back on itself at sharp angles, the route became more circuitous, dropping hundreds of strides in a short distance. Before long, they dismounted and walked the horses down.

Tahn watched his feet, but found it difficult to look away from the roiling mists below. The mists bore the look of a storm cloud, dark grey and pregnant with thunder and sleet, except they moved silently as if with a patient, baneful intelligence.

Vendanj called a halt several strides above the fogs. Tahn looked out across the tops of the clouds, feeling as though he stood at the shore of a vast dark sea. He kicked a rock from the edge of the path. It tumbled downward, and Tahn jumped when a number of tendrils of mist rose like tongues and seemed to lick at the reception of the rock into its folds.

“Empty your minds,” Vendanj said. “Think nothing of what you know about any one of us or where we are going. Find a single, pleasant image and fix upon it.” He stopped and looked away at the menacing bank of dark clouds. “It is Je’holta. The caress of the Male’Siriptus. Be focused on whatever thought brings you comfort. Anything else will tear at the edges of your reason. Je’holta will inspire panic and madness by exaggerating your own fears. Mira, tie the horses one to another. Braethen, you will lead the animals. They are unaffected by the mists. Each of you will hold the hands of those next to you. The mists do not have the power to separate you.”

Sutter shook his head and muttered, “Here we go, come Quiet or chorus.”

Mira finished securing the horses, and Vendanj took Mira’s hand, each of the others joining in turn. Together they walked into the darkness.

The mists folded around them, thin streamers reaching out to wrap them and draw them in. The sun became a pale disk in the sky, the damp and cold instantly chilling Tahn’s skin. The mist touched his cheeks and fingers like icy velvet. Mira’s hand firmly gripped Tahn’s own, while Wendra’s grasp tightened once they passed completely into the swirling grey and black fog. Vendanj led them slowly, peering into the depths around them.

Tahn could see Penit holding Wendra’s other hand, but Sutter blurred to shadow and Braethen appeared as nothing more than a shape that might have been mists shifting and shaping themselves. The hoofbeats of the horses came as muted, dull clops, but the horses themselves were completely lost to sight.

Noises echoed in the depths of the dark cloud, faint sounds that Tahn felt more than heard—echoes like cries or laments, or death-side prayer offerings that traveled upon the mist. Desperation grew inside Tahn, manic and wild. He fought an almost irresistible need to turn and race up from the darkness, though he’d seen no evil. The mists would drive him mad if he stayed long in their velvet folds.

The shadows deepened as they further descended the north face. Soon, the sun disappeared completely. Charcoal-hued light encircled them, and Tahn somehow felt that they had become part of the mist itself.

The Sheason did not waver or slow, their progress cautious but steady. The Far, her eyes constantly searching and darting, seemed uncomfortable without a free hand to take up her sword.

Gradually, pressure built, constricting Tahn’s chest and making it difficult to breathe. The mists plumed in successive shadows, pushing in upon them, as soft as cottonseed but as oppressive and suffocating as a dozen wet blankets. Tahn gasped, drawing into his mouth and nose gulps of the dark mist. From the blackness, he heard others coughing and fighting for breath. Suddenly, a wave of warmth coursed through him, entering from Mira’s hand and passing to Wendra in an instant. His lungs expanded, and he breathed more easily. The Sheason had sent something through them, from hand to hand, and the coughing stopped.

Vendanj pressed forward.

Tahn had no idea how long they had been in the mists. His hands cramped from clutching the hands of Mira and Wendra. His eyes ached from the strain of trying to peer through the clouds that enveloped them. Finally, the path leveled out. They had returned to the lowlands.

In moments they were encircled by the mists on every side, and Tahn lost all orientation.

The languid calls from deep in the mists grew louder, more urgent. More than once Tahn thought he heard voices call his name. The words were shapeless and vague and sounded as though they were uttered from lips too pained to form them completely. Finally, the mists fell utterly quiet and calm.

Then distantly, a sound like tree roots pulling free from the ground rose in the fog. Deep, thunderous tones, like tall trees being felled, resounded all about them.

“What is it?” Sutter asked.

“Quiet,” Vendanj ordered.

The sounds grew louder, accompanied by wretched cries in a cacophonous chorus. The din was somehow visible in the mists around them. It began to swirl in tight, angry eddies. Through the dim light, Tahn saw forms darting at the edges of his vision, moving in every direction and vanishing as quickly as they came.

“Do you see them?” Sutter called out, his voice desperate.

“Quickly!” Vendanj commanded.

The Sheason pulled them forward into a jog. Something that felt like saplings whipped at their feet, the mists swirling in a frenzy as they rushed blindly through the dense fog.

“Hold fast!” Vendanj called back. But his words scarcely reached Tahn over the sibilant rush of the wind and the dark song of rending earth and tortured cries.

Then came the beat of a drum, struck only once, but with a sound so deep and resonant that it seemed to Tahn as if he heard some god beating on the very land they rushed to escape. The air throbbed with the beat, which seemed to echo out and back from the north face. The pulse came at them from above and below, like a quake disrupting the very fabric of the world. The Sheason abruptly stopped. Again everything was preternaturally still. Tahn could see mist frozen in the air before his face, unmoving.

Then the mist began to take form.

The darkness swirled in front of him, coalescing into an image of … himself. The disembodied mask mouthed words. Its eyeless sockets looked nowhere, but also somehow saw inside Tahn. Then its features were gone, and the image hung before him like a canvas to be written upon. Tahn averted his eyes, turning to Wendra for reassurance.

Before he could find her eyes, a scream erupted in the mist. Penit’s high, shrill voice pierced the cloud banks. The boy pulled his hands free and raced into the dark fog. Without hesitation, Wendra took off after him.

“No!” Vendanj commanded.

Wendra did not heed him.

“Find her!” the Sheason said to Mira.

The Far jumped into the roiling clouds and was gone.

A flurry of movement exploded in front of Tahn, as the misty face before him found its own voice. “Draw and release as you choose, dead man.” The words came in a malevolent growl.

In his mind, Tahn suddenly saw sunrise after sunrise, but the greater light was moving backward, retracing its arc back into the east, time and time again. It was as though a thousand days were being taken back, and each time the sky became blacker, more blurred. He saw a desert wasteland, where children walked barefoot in the sand. He saw crags and dried roots, and himself standing at the mouth of a stone canyon, tearing at its walls with his bare fingers. Burning pages floated in the wind, becoming cinders and sparks that winked out against a violet sky. His voice was gone. He witnessed himself speaking, but the toneless words lived only in his mind. He saw broken swords lying like kindling, and bodies dissolving to ash under the lesser light. He saw a great white mountain thrumming and quaking. Then he saw the face of a man, the same face that twisted and writhed in the mists before him. And the face was his own. Tahn screamed.

“Don’t betray yourselves!” Vendanj yelled.

But it was too late.

Tahn bolted from the line to escape the image. Blindly, he rushed through the mists, branches whipping at him, the black clouds hungrily licking at him as he raced aimlessly. He could hear someone in pursuit calling him, and he ran faster. Recklessly, holding his arms over his face, he thrashed through the foliage and undergrowth. He stumbled and went down hard, smashing his leg against a rock. But he did not stay down. He clambered back to his feet and rushed on, unsure which direction to go, only trying to escape the face and the voice that followed him incessantly no matter how fast he ran.

“You cannot outrun the consequence of another’s choice.” The menacing communication resonated in the mists around him, throaty and hushed. Tahn screamed again and redoubled his pace. The darkness descended upon him and still he ran, careening off trees and falling over boles. Forever he seemed to run, the images becoming stronger and more searing to his battered mind. His pursuer seemed to grow closer, to home in on the sound Tahn made in his flight through the wild.

Finally, the darkness began to break. The charcoal light softened to grey, and soon Tahn could see the faded disk of the sun through the mists. He lost his footing again, but scrambled on hands and knees toward the light, the pull of the mists strong in his mind and on his body. But he began to break free from the mists. A rushing scream of failure grew behind him, and suddenly with a cacophony of jarring thunder, he leapt from the mists into the full light of day. And collapsed.

Through the mists Tahn heard the voice of the Sheason call: “To Recityv!” Or did the cry sound only in his mind?

Gasping, Tahn touched his head and pulled away bloody fingers. The world turned and his eyes filled with blackness.

*   *   *

The mists rushed in, hindering Wendra’s pursuit of Penit, the dark grey clouds swirling and thickening to obscure her sight. She crouched as she ran, and could just make out Penit’s feet as he sprinted away from her. The boy dodged in and out of low alders and lunged through tight stands of bottlebrush. Images and forms moved maddeningly at the edges of her vision. Masses of dark fog leapt, encircling her arms, tendrils clawing at her. They lacked the substance to hold her, but their touch impeded her progress, filling her mind with thoughts of failure, of never catching Penit, of losing him as she had lost her own child.

“Penit, wait, it’s me!”

The dinsome rush of wind and distant, anguished voices rose to swallow her pleas, making their cries indistinguishable from her own. The lad pushed on as though manic and rabid and terrified that stopping meant death. Then, from the left, two huge hulking shapes materialized out of the mists. Wendra ignored them for only a single moment before something told her that they were not insubstantial like the other shapes constantly rising and dissipating in the mists around her.

These were Bar’dyn.

The first dove at her, launching its huge body in a powerful arc to intercept her. Wendra found a reserve of strength and jumped forward to avoid the attack. The Bar’dyn crashed into the trees behind her and howled its fury. The second closed in from behind her, waving massive arms through the air in deadly arcs. It would be upon her soon; she could not hope to outrun it.

The mists thinned to a lighter shade of grey, and Wendra could see Penit clearly now.

“Run, Penit! Faster!” she cried.

The boy still did not acknowledge her, continuing to run at a breakneck pace through the mists. She was gaining on him, but the Bar’dyn was only two strides behind her. Its huge, powerful arms whistled through the fog as it tried to strike her down. Wendra heard a guttural grunt, and turned her head in time to see the Bar’dyn dive at her legs. She tried to push herself faster, but her muscles would not obey. One of the Bar’dyn’s large hands clipped her ankle, the other her hip, sending her tumbling into the grass and brush. The Quietgiven’s body landed with a heavy thud, but the beast quickly regained its feet and bore down upon her.

Wendra rolled over, pulling a small knife from her belt. She instantly knew the futility of her own defense, and saw a sudden rush of images stream through her mind: Balatin and the warm fires and brambleberry tea they used to share on winter nights; Tahn and the way he had cared for her, she in turn sitting at his side to soothe him during many nights of restless sleep; the child that had so recently been in her belly, and the Bar’dyn that had ripped it from her and carried its lifeless body into the night. With the cascade of memories, something happened deep inside her. It began in her bosom, a warmth like fire, reminding her of Balatin’s anger the day he had driven the merchants away from the house when they came with bags of silver to trade for human flesh, but soft like tears of joy at seeing an infant learn to walk. The feeling shot through her and rose into her lungs and throat, needing someplace to go. As a thought occurred to her of where and how to release that feeling, the Bar’dyn arched its back and hissed, breaking her concentration. The Given’s broad features pinched tightly, the mists seeming to recoil as though they, too, were wounded.

The beast fell, revealing Mira standing close behind. With a blade in each hand, she took a step back, setting her feet and extending one sword, holding the other in front of her breast in a defensive posture. The Bar’dyn jumped up and whirled around, issuing a guttural curse Wendra could not understand. The warmth in her chest abated, and she forgot the thoughts of a moment before as the Far lunged again, this time so quickly that the mists appeared to pass through her rather than around her. In a crosswise motion, she pulled down her blades upon the Bar’dyn’s neck. The creature could not avoid the attack, but this time Mira’s swords scarcely pierced the beast’s thick skin. She backed up again as the Bar’dyn drew a pair of axes and started for her.