Crown of Shadows (57 page)

The real Almea-shadow was behind them, as clear as if no illusion had ever hidden her. The false one was gone, or maybe just invisible, which was almost as good.

“Would you have really walked into it?” Karril asked him. Damien said nothing. At last the demon sighed. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.” He glanced at Tarrant, and with a thin smile said, “Just remind me not to play poker with him.”

“You and me both,” the Hunter whispered, and it seemed to Damien that for a fleeting instant there was a smile on his face, too.

Up the slope they went, Almea gliding easily, the two men struggling behind. Much to Damien’s surprise Karril stayed with them, and when he caught his breath long enough to question him about that choice the demon would only say gruffly, “Someone has to keep the two of you out of trouble.”

We’ve won,
he thought. But it was only the journey that was finished. Ahead of them lay Shaitan, and a Working so deadly that no man might attempt it and survive.

They climbed. In places the trembling of the ground was so subtle that they didn’t hear it, only felt it beneath their feet and hands; in others it was like a genuine earthquake, and Damien’s teeth chattered as he pulled himself higher and higher up the broken slope. Sometimes it felt like the very planet beneath them was about to crumble, and he had to shut his eyes and draw in a deep breath and summon all his self-control in order to ignore it. The shadow waited. And Karril climbed behind them. And inch by inch, foot by foot, they made their way toward their destination.

At last they came to a place where Karril signaled for them to stop. The Almea-shadow seemed content to obey, so Damien and Tarrant did likewise. The ground was so steep they could barely stand upright, but supported themselves by leaning against cracked boulders of congealed lava.

“It’s over!” Karril cried out to the mist surrounding them. “You couldn’t stop them from getting here, and now you can’t stop them from doing what they came to do. Let them see it for themselves!”

For a moment it seemed to Damien that the whole world hesitated. The rumbling of the earth, the crackling and hissing of nearby lava, the pounding of his own heart ... all quieted for a moment, as if waiting. Then, slowly, the mist surrounding them began to thin. White smoke gave way to thinner tendrils, and that in turn gave way to air clear enough that the side of the mountain could be seen.

With a gasp Damien leaned back hard against Shaitan’s flank, and he saw Tarrant do the same. A hundred feet beneath them he could see clouds—real clouds—gathering about the mountain’s peak like a flock of broad-winged birds. Between them the air seemed to stretch downward forever, until the flank of the mountain crumbled and flattened and merged into the valley floor so very, very far below. Had they really climbed that far up? he wondered. His eyes found it hard to believe, but his muscles were wholly convinced.

He turned his gaze upward, toward the peak of the great volcano. A short climb farther would bring them to its lip, a jagged rock line silhouetted by the orange glow of Shaitan’s magmal furnace. The black clouds overhead seemed almost close enough that he could touch them, and their undersides flickered with all the colors of fire, reflected from the crater and its attendant vents. The entire sky seemed filled with fire, a universe of burning ash, and thank God that Almea had brought them up on the windward flank, because the stuff spewing forth from that crater looked hot enough and thick enough to choke even a sorcerer.

He looked back down at Tarrant and was startled to find yet another figure beside him. Black and sharp-edged and oh so very familiar. Instinct made him reach for his sword, even though he knew in his heart that steel would do no good against
that
kind. It was a gut response.

“Give it up,” Calesta commanded.

Tarrant turned away from him and began to climb. From the crater above them a spray of fire seemed to spew forth, and a hail of molten pebbles clattered down around them. He kept going.

“You can’t kill me!” the black demon cried defiantly. “All you can do is waste your own life, and throw away eternity. I can give you what you want!” Tarrant climbed on. A lump of rock directly ahead of him split open and lava began to pour forth—and then Karril cursed and muttered something and it was gone.

“I think he has what he wants,” the god of pleasure told his brother. “Despite your help.”

There were other figures appearing on the slope now, some human, most not. Shapes wrought of gold and smoke and writhing colors, that gathered on the smoking ground to watch Tarrant’s ascent. Some were as fine as glass, and almost invisible to Damien’s eyes. Others seemed to be made of flesh, as Karnl was, and only a sorcerous feature or two hinted at nonhuman origins. One was made entirely of silver, neither male nor female but more beautiful than both combined.

“Family,” Karril told him. And in answer to Damien’s unspoken question, he added, “They won’t interfere.”

Up out of the crater itself something was rising now, that was neither lava nor smoke nor any volcano-born thing. A swirling of color, that lit the ash from beneath. A cloud of images, that blended one into another so quickly Damien had no time to make out details. Faces—planets—the softness of flowers—the faceted light of jewels ... those images and a thousand more swirled in the center of a cloud of light, no more solid than a Iezu’s illusion, no more lasting than a dream. Damien felt as if he were staring into a great mirror, that reflected back at him all the fragments of his life in no special order, with no special meaning: a chaos of consciousness. With a sudden burst of fear he realized what it was, what it must be ... and he prayed that Tarrant wouldn’t look up and see it, lest it drain him of the last of his failing courage.

“Is it—?” he breathed.

“As I said,” Karril’s voice sounded strained. “Family.”

Tarrant had climbed as high as he could now, without trusting his weight to the last crumbling bit that might betray him. With effort he rose up to his feet, and the light of the lezu’s creator combined with the hot orange glow of Shaitan’s furnace backlit him with a corona hardly less bright than the sun’s.

“Hear me, Calesta!” His voice was strong despite his obvious physical exhaustion; reaching his goal had clearly renewed him. “I Bind you with sacrifice. With the Pattern that has served man since his first days on this planet. I bind you to me as a part of my flesh, a part of my soul, indivisible—”

“Go to hell!” the demon cried.

The Hunter drew his sword then, and its cold power blazed with furious light. Along the channel that bound them, Damien could feel the Hunter’s will reaching out, the coldfire his source of fuel, his burning hatred a source of strength.
Come join with me,
the power urged. Damien tasted the Hunter’s hunger, and his cruelty. He ran through the Forest in the Hunter’s place, and tasted the sweet fear of women on his lips. The hot bouquet of blood filled his head like a heady wine, so that he had to put out a hand to steady himself. The joy of killing, the pleasure of the hunt, the ecstacy of torture ... they surged through him like a flood tide and they surged through the demon also, a temptation too terrible to resist. Drawn by the power of the unexpected feast, Calesta moved forward. A thousand figures circled about, human and otherwise, watching. It seemed to Damien that the mother of the Iezu was watching also, and he prayed desperately that she wouldn’t interfere with this.

“With this sacrifice,” the Hunter pronounced, “I bind you to me.” And with that he heaved the sword up high, over the jagged rock edge of the crater, into the hidden depths beyond. An explosion shook the ground beneath Damien’s feet, so powerfully that he thought the earth might open beneath him. But it quieted, and over the beating of his heart he could hear the sizzle of lava in the distance, the muffled roar of fire. Shaitan had accepted Tarrant’s offering.

Then the adept met his eyes—his alone—and the fear that shone in those pale glittering depths was only matched by their determination. “You must understand, Vryce. I honestly believed that somewhere, somehow, I could find an answer. I believed that in the month remaining to me I could discover a way to break my compact and survive, and ultimately cheat death anew ... and I chose this instead. This sacrifice of life, which is the ultimate altruism. The sacrifice of eternity, made in the very face of Hell.” He held out an arm to Calesta, and it seemed to Damien that he smiled. “Come share it with me, demon!”

And he opened himself up to the full force of Shaitan, the raw, bloody power of Erna’s wildest currents. For an instant Damien could see the world through his eyes, could feel his agony as the fae roared through him, too much force for any one man’s soul to contain ... and he saw the hillside blaze with a heat so terrible that the sight of it could burn out a man’s brain, and he felt the Hunter’s soul catch fire as the man screamed—as he screamed—and through it all he knew that it had
worked,
that Calesta had absorbed the full force of Tarrant’s altruistic sacrifice, that the terrible gamble had paid off—

The Hunter’s body lay crumpled and still, and when drops of burning dust fell upon it, it didn’t stir. The swirling colors that had hovered above the crater had gathered over him now, but that didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore. The Hunter was dead.

And then it was suddenly more than he could handle, all of it. He let himself down to the trembling earth, and he put his head between his hands, and he let down the barriers that had protected him for so long, from fear and sorrow both. Never mind if the Iezu saw him cry. Never mind. They would mourn, too, if they understood. Any sane creature would.

In the east, a new dawn was just beginning.

They had stopped their march to eat and to feed the horses. The men and women who shared his mission were trying to rest, to renew themselves for the next hour’s march. He couldn’t even pretend. How could you relax when all the demons of Hell were battering at your skull?

For a long time he remained on his horse, and though Zefila and a few others narrowed their eyes as they noticed him there, no one bothered him. But then the Patriarch came over and as usual didn’t say anything—as usual, didn’t have to say anything—and with a hot flush of shame he dismounted at last. The alternative was trying to explain that his gut churned at the mere thought of making contact with the Forest soil, and he couldn’t do that. Flinching as his soles touched the damned earth, he tried not to let his terror show as he walked to the place where rations were being doled out. How could they know what the Forest was, or what it was doing to him? How could he explain to them that it wasn’t just a collection of trees, or even a complex ecosystem, but a single creature, living and breathing in perpetual darkness, that seemed intent on swallowing him whole?

What good would it do to tell them?
he despaired, as he received his allotment of food. The thought was not without bitterness.
They’d be happy if it devoured me.

It was getting worse and worse as they went on. He had hoped that the hours of riding would dull his senses until all feeling ceased, but it had done just the opposite. Every hoofbeat that brought him closer to the heart of the Hunter’s domain was like a nail driven into his flesh, and it was all he could do not to scream, not to beg them to turn back, turn back! and take him out of this place that was slowly remaking him, turning him into something he was never meant to be.

How could he explain to the Patriarch what was happening ? He didn’t understand it himself. Shutting his eyes, he remembered the moment when they had first come to the Forest’s border, when he had stood so close to it that he could feel its power like a chill breath upon his neck. He had been afraid to go forward then, as any sane man would be, and for a moment it seemed to him that he would truly be unable to ride on. Then the Patriarch came up beside him, and he put his hand across the vast space separating them and clasped him upon the arm. Strength flowed through the contact, enough that Andrys could gasp out a few words.

“I can‘t,” he whispered. “I don’t have the strength.”

The hand on his arm tightened for a moment, and he quailed at the thought of the anger that might now be directed at him. But the Patriarch’s voice was quiet and level, with no condemnation in it. “Then trust in God, my son. He does.”

Andrys looked at him, and for a moment their eyes locked. For a brief moment he sensed the deep well of strength in the other man, a reservoir so vast that all the trials of a lifetime could never empty it.
Give me one drop of that in my own soul,
he begged silently.
Let me taste it, just for a day.
Then the moment passed and he was on his own once more. Heart numb, he urged his horse forward, into the point position. Past the Patriarch. Past Zefila. Forward, step by step, into ...