Lost Empires - Faces Of Deception Part 14

"I was afraid!" Yago moaned. "You needed me, and I couldn't move."

*Not your fault.*

The words echoed emptily inside Atreus's head. He could not make his lips work.

He did the same thing to me.

"Iamso... sor-ry!"Yagohadtroubleformingthislastword,whichwasasforeigntothe ogre tongue as the term for children won in a game of knucklebones was tohumans. "What happened to me?"

The ogre smashed his fist into the side of his own face. The blow struck so sharply that Ris.h.i.+ gave a start and nearly plummeted into the creva.s.se.

Yago spit an orange tooth out onto the ice, shouting, "Coward!"

Atreus fought through his pain and managed to grasp the ogre's arm. He shook his head. Yago's eyes grew gla.s.sy. "Am so!" the ogre insisted. "You saw me... just standing there!"

"Atreus does not blame you, my friend," said Ris.h.i.+. the Mar backed away from thecreva.s.se and came up to join them, grimacing at Atreus's condition. "The samething happened to him on the slave boat. It is the devil's touch."

"It don't matter," growled Yago. "I made the Vow. s.h.i.+eld-breakers aren't scared of nothing!"

"That is an impossible vow to keep. Every man fears something." Ris.h.i.+ graspedthe ogre's elbow and urged him up the hill, saying, "And now let us go. What became of Tarch I cannot tell, but it is too much to hope that a fall of only a fewhundred feet would kill him."

Yago started to rise, then caught himself and sat back down. "Let him come," hesaid. "I'm not running."

Atreus squeezed Yago's forearm and tried to nod. The effort sent waves of agony surging through his body, but he was terrified that the stubborn ogre would let hispride get them all killed. He could feel his own strength oozing out through hisscalded pores, but just as importantly, he could tell by the nervous edge in his friend's voice that Yago was not ready to face Tarch again.

"There, do you see?" Ris.h.i.+ asked, motioning to Atreus's nodding head. "The good sir wants us to go. He needs Seema's help."

Yago scowled in thought, then reluctantly nodded. "Well go," he said "but not because I'm scared."

"Oh no, there has never been any question of that," agreed Ris.h.i.+. "I am frightened enough for us all. You are thinking only of the good sir's welfare."

Still scowling, Yago started up the hill. Atreus's burns began to ache in earnest. He could not keep from moaning as the ogre's clothes rubbed against his raw flesh. His broken leg became a distant throbbing, and he slipped into a murky world of pain and delirium. He grew desperately thirsty and started to s.h.i.+ver. Yago's voice became a nightmarish roar, alternately trying to comfort Atreus and cursing himself for a coward.

Amazingly enough, Ris.h.i.+ proved the staunch one, continually rea.s.suring Atreus that he really looked no worse than before, perhaps even better. It was a terrible lie, of course, but exactly what Atreus needed to hear.

Sometime later * it seemed hours, but could not have been more than three or four minutes-Seema came bounding and sliding down the slope. *How bad?* she demanded, dropping the supply bundle at Yago*s feet. *Put him down where I can seehim. Get those rags off him. Pack him in snow. Ris.h.i.+, talk to him ! Keep talking ___*

Atreus's companions rushed to obey the healer's orders. His body roared with pain. When the tattered remnants of his clothes were pulled free, he could not helpscreaming. As much as it hurt to be touched, the cold slush had a numbing effecton his burns, and his anguish dulled to a raw ache.

Soon, he felt Seema's hands on him, rubbing his wounds with some minty-smelling potion. The sting faded completely, leaving him to a deeper anguish inside hisseared muscles. Seema uttered a spell in the exotic language of her magic, thenpressed her lips to Atreus's. He remembered the kiss of the day before and tried tosteal another, but she only wet his lips with one of her potions, using her own tongueto dribble it into his mouth.

A languid fog rose up to engulf him, and he prayed he would fall into insensiblesleep. Instead, he slipped into a terrible waking dream, aware of his anguish but apartfrom it conscious of what was happening but unable to do anything about it.

"What's wrong with him?" demanded Yago. "He's going to live, ain't he?"

"I have taken away his pain," answered Seema. "The rest is not for me to control."

"Don't you say that! You're a healer. Heal!"

"I have done what I can, but my magic is weak," Seema said. "What happened toTarch? Was there killing?""There will be if you don't do something... and fast!"Don't threaten her! Atreus wanted to shout the command, but he could not even whisper it, could not even shake his head. He was a spectator in his own body."I am sure Seema is certainly doing her best," said Ris.h.i.+. "She is as fond of Atreus inher way as you are in yours.""She has a bad way of showing it," snapped Yago. "If she would have let us killTarch in the first place..."

"I could not have done even this much for Atreus," said Seema. "Now tell me what happened. If you did not kill Tarch*" "He is most certainly alive!" said Ris.h.i.+. "I saw him moving in the bottom of the creva.s.se." This was not what the Mar had told Yago, but Atreus was hardly in a position tocorrect him.

"I will try another time."

Again, Seema uttered one of her spells, then pressed her lips to Atreus's and dribbled more of her potion into his mouth. He slipped further into his dream-world, so that events alternately rushed by in a blur or crept past in excruciating slowness. He did not feel any stronger.

"Wellllll?" Yago's voice was deep and torpid.

"I don't know," Seema replied.

"You mean it isn't working!" Yago was silent for a moment, then asked, "Whathappens to your precious magic if Atreus dies? You might as well have flamed himyourself, for all your high talk about not killing."

Seema recoiled from the anger in the ogre's voice.

"That is hardly fair."

"Is too!" growled Yago. "He should've never made you that promise. But how could the boy think straight, with you batting them pretty eyes and flas.h.i.+ng them white teeth? If he dies, it's on your head, not mine."

The conversation came to Atreus as though he were listening to a trio of ghosts.Seema fell silent. Some dim part of him realized he should be speaking in herdefense, that he should be telling Yago he knew exactly what he was doing, but Atreus could barely gather his thoughts, much less make them known.

After a moment, Ris.h.i.+ said, "n.o.body is to blame for what happened to Atreus exceptTarch. Perhaps my friend Yago, feeling that he may have in some way failed his master, is putting the blame he feels * "

"What blame?" Yago snarled.

"Then again, perhaps not," said Ris.h.i.+.

But Yago was not done yet "If not for Seema and her promise, we'd have been rid of Tarch a long time ago. He wouldn't never have touched me!" the ogre bellowed, shaking his head angrily. "Theblame here don't belong to me. You can't go fighting devils unless you mean to kill them."

"You are right, of course," interrupted Seema. "This is all my fault."

"You bet it is!" said Yago. "What are you going to do about it?"

Seema was silent for several moments, then said, "I have caused many deaths andmuch pain, and that is why my magic has grown weak." She laid a cloak over Atreus,and be could not help groaning at even its light touch. "We have no choice but to takehim to my valley."

"I doubt he can survive such a long journey," said Ris.h.i.+. "Surely, it would be betterto let him rest and take our chances that he will recover."

"what about Tarch? If he is alive, as you told me, he will come after us."Seema stood and started up the icefall. "Besides," she said, "my home is closer thanyou think, and we will be safe there."

Yago scooped Atreus up, but made no move to follow the healer.

"Where you going? I didn't see nothing but snow up there."

"Of course not," Seema answered, pausing to look over her shoulder. "It is not soeasy to see Langdarma."

Chapter 13.

In the purple afternoon shadows, the band of dark granite looked hollow and empty,like a giant fissure splitting the cliff down the center. Atreus could imagine following thecrevice through to the other side of the mountain, or down into the stony roots of the Sisters of Serenity themselves. As delirious as he was, Atreus could imagine a lot ofthings, such as the husky form behind them, appearing and disappearing as it twined its way across the boulder-strewn glacier below. The figure was holding its ribs andlimping, and it kept pitching forward onto its hands and knees. Every now and thenit glanced around behind itself, searching for a tail it no longer had, and sometimes itlooked up to check the progress of Atreus and his companions.

Atreus tried to point and found his arm pinned against Yago's chest. He groaned as the effort brought him back into his pain-racked body. Until now, he had pa.s.sed the tripacross the glacier a pleasant distance above himself, somewhere outside the searedand hideous form in Yago's arms, a spirit connected to his body by only a thin strand of memory. Time itself had ebbed and flowed, swirling past in slow eddies as his companions scrambled up the icefall, then rus.h.i.+ng ahead madly as they crossedthe snowy flats. Atreus had floated along, vaguely aware that Seema had promised to take them to Langdarma and wondering how she could offer such a thing. Sheherself had called it a myth, and he could not believe she would deceive him. Notabout something so important Seema reached the clef ting and stopped directly across from the dark band of granite. With the sun hidden behind the middle Sister, this part of the glacier was asheet of hard ice, so she had to stand in the tracks they had made that morning.Ris.h.i.+ stopped a pace below her, both feet planted comfortably in one of Yago's frozen footprints, and Yago stopped behind the Mar. Atreus found himself looking back downinto the basin. Their pursuer had vanished again, leaving Atreus to wonder whetherhe had been imagining the dark figure all along.

"This isn't Langdarma," said Yago. The ogre leaned past Ris.h.i.+ and peered down intothe frigid blue murk of the clef ting. "We been here before.""You searched, but you did not examine," said Seema. "This is the way to Langdarma. Ris.h.i.+ and I will go first. Then you can pa.s.s Atreus down to us."

The healer lowered herself into the clef ting, dropping onto the first of the boulders wedged between the cliff and the glacier wall. Ris.h.i.+ followed, and Yago stepped to thebrink of the chasm. As the ogre turned to straddle the edge, Atreus glimpsed adark figure below, angling up the slope along the course of their frozen tracks. Theform was hazy and indistinct, no more than a darker blue in the indigo shadow ofthe mountain, but it looked solid enough to set Atreus's heart pounding.

Look!

The word echoed around inside Atreus's mind, but could not quite find his lips. Hehad a little more luck trying to point. As Yago bent down to lower him into the clef ting,his arm came free of the ogre's grasp and swung toward the dark figure. A surge ofanguish rushed through his body, but he kept his hand raised.

"Don't worry," Yago said. "They know what'll happen if they drop you."

Atreus forced himself to keep pointing as he heard an agonized groan escape hislips."I do not think it is us he fears," said Ris.h.i.+. "Is he not pointing down the slope?"Atreus sighed in relief and let his arm drop. Yago scowled and pa.s.sed him into the waiting arms of Seema and Ris.h.i.+, then turned to look down toward the glacier."He must've seen our friend back there," said Yago. Tarch is coming up fast now."

Atreus nearly choked on his astonishment. If his companions knew about Tarch,what were they doing here? They would be trapped in the clef ting, with no room toflee and even less to maneuver.

"We must hurry," said Seema. Leaving Atreus to Ris.h.i.+'s care, she squatted at theedge of the boulder, then jumped down to the next one, landing as lightly as a feather."Come along."

Yago lowered himself into the clef ting, took Atreus from Ris.h.i.+, and descended to thebottom of the trench in two quick hops. Seema and Ris.h.i.+ followed close behind, and soon Atreus's companions were standing together in the bottom of abyss. The murkwas thick and frozen, as dense as resin and as cold as death. Atreus started to s.h.i.+ver and felt, absurdly, a ring of goose b.u.mps surrounding his burns. A fierynettling sank deep into his bones. His broken leg began to throb, and he sensed himself slipping away, aware of his pain yet apart from it.

Yago said something about losing him, and Ris.h.i.+ began to worry about Tarchcatching them in the trench. Seema spoke to them both in calm a.s.surance and tooktheir hands, leading the way to the dark band of granite. Atreus's perceptions musthave grown hazy and unreliable, for it seemed to him that she simply pressed herself against the face of the cliff and melted inside.

Yago and Ris.h.i.+ followed and gasped, and Atreus's stomach floated up toward hischest, as though he were falling. Seema walked ahead and became the only thingvisible in the darkness. Yago and Ris.h.i.+ followed, and the falling sensation continued.

After a time, a golden wheel appeared far below their feet, its scarlet spokes slowing revolving around the glimmering six-pointed star of a snow-flake. As theytraveled deeper into the murk, the wheel stayed beneath them, growing largerwith each step. The snow-flake began to pulse. As it grew larger, it became apparent that the different triangles inside its star were pulsing randomly, flas.h.i.+ng first sapphire, then emerald, ruby, diamond ... all the colors of the gems.

Seema continued to walk, and the falling sensation persisted. The wheel grew everlarger, its golden rim spreading outward until it became large enough to encircle themall. The scarlet spokes ceased their spinning, and Atreus grew dizzy, as though hewere twirling around. The snow-flake seemed to dissolve, to become nothing butpulsing arrows, each pointing down a different spoke of the wheel.

The wheel became as the basin beneath the Sisters of Serenity. The scarlet spokes grew as long and wide as roads, each pointing off toward a different cornerof the compa.s.s, and the pulsing triangles became the size of s.h.i.+p decks.

At last Seema stopped walking, and the triangles rejoined, becoming a snow-flake as large as the glacier basin. The wheel's golden rim disappeared somewhere over the horizon, and the scarlet spokes vanished. The dizziness andthe falling sensation faded. The air grew tepid and moist, and Atreus stoppeds.h.i.+vering. Seema turned toward one of the snow-flake's distant points and spoke afew words in the archaic tongue of her people.

A blue light appeared above the point. Yago and Ris.h.i.+ cried out as their knees buckled. A warm wind began to whip past, and though there was no sensation ofmovement, the light slowly began to expand, becoming a tiny blue square. Whatlittle sense of time Atreus still had vanished completely. They seemed to standthere forever watching the square grow larger, the breeze whipping through theirhair, and the musty smell of a cave growing ever stronger in their nostrils. When the square had expanded to the size of a man and they found themselves standingbefore a s.h.i.+ning blue portal, it seemed that only an instant had pa.s.sed.

Again Seema took the hands of Yago and Ris.h.i.+. "You will see many strange things," she told them. "Do not release my hand, or you will be lost."

Seema stepped through the portal. The blue light began to swirl and eddy around her, and her movements grew smooth and slow. Ris.h.i.+ gulped down a deep breathand followed, but Yago stopped at the door and stared wide into the whirling radiance.

Seema said something that did not pa.s.s the portal, then opened her mouth wide and drew in a deep breath. A moment later, she exhaled, sending little eddies of current swirling away from her face. She smiled and pulled the ogre's hand. Yago took a deep breath and allowed himself to be drawn forward. As they pa.s.sed through the door, Atreus felt liquid pressure all around him. The watery warmth made his burns itch, and he watched from somewhere outside himself as his mouth opened to groan. His heart began to pound in fear, but the strange fluid that rushed down into his lungs could not have been water. Instead of coughing or choking, he merely moaned. It was a strange, gurgling sound that reminded him of the chortling call of flying cranes.

They seemed to be in some sort of strange underwater labyrinth made of undulating weeds and rocky ledges, with no surface that Atreus could see. Seema started forward, leading the way across the sandy bottom as though she had walkedthe maze a thousand times. Atreus did not even try to keep track of their route. Theagony caused by the warm water more than bridged the gap between his body andspirit. He could think of nothing but his anguish, so it was enough for him that theyseemed to be heading uphill.

After a time, they climbed high enough that they began to see the crests of the mazewalls looming above their heads. There were fish up there, swimming back and forthand gobbling each other up as only fish can do, but none of them ever seemed to driftdown into the corridors of the watery labyrinth. Atreus thought this strange, untilYago finally broke the surface and emerged into the scorching hot air.

Atreus's body erupted into such anguish that he could no longer tell whether he was above it or in it. He simply opened his mouth and let out a bellow that sentthe air-swimming fish wiggling off into the distant corners of the atmosphere. Afterthat, he lost all track of his surroundings. He barely noticed the pools of burning waterin which Seema cooled his wounds, or the billowing thunderclouds that rolled along the floor and stabbed up into the darkness with bolts of lightning, or the constant tollingof the wind chimes in the still hot air. All these, Atreus dismissed as fever delirium, so when they stepped through a dark portal and found themselves standing on a rockyledge two miles above the floor of a broad, verdant basin, his first thought was that hewas still hallucinating.

A gentle drizzle was wafting down from a mottled blue sky that might have been ice as easily as clouds. The first shadows of purple twilight were stealing down the sheer facesof the basin's granite walls. Here and there, a tongue of blue ice hung high on a cliff,creeping out from beneath the edges of the blotchy sky to send a long horsetailwaterfall cascading toward the valley floor. The silvery ribbons turned to mist after athousand feet or so, vanis.h.i.+ng into the empty air long before they reached the slopes at the base of the cliffs.

The slopes themselves were mottled in deep woods and emerald meadows, fleckedwith thatch-roofed hamlets and crude stock sheds. A glistening web of narrow streams spilled down into the center of the valley, where a broad clear river meandered through several miles of neat green barley fields, disappearing over the edge of the basin into a deep, vast valley beyond.

"Welcome to my home," Seema said, at last releasing the hands of her companions."Welcome to Langdarma."

This was too much for Atreus. Too weary and pained to rejoice, he simply allowedhimself to believe what he saw, to accept the truth of Seema's words and not consider their implications, to embrace the lushness and the warmth of the place and not question whether it was real or hallucination.

He experienced a strange calm then, a peace that flowed up and through him,connecting him to the beauty below in some enigmatic way he could never understand. He felt himself return to his anguished body. His pain washed over him like running water, sank into his flesh like the bright warmth of the sun and filled hischest like salty sea air. This time he did not fight it. He embraced his agony as a part ofhimself, welcomed it as the scream of life still raging strong inside him, and then he feltthe fear leave. His body released its hold on his spirit, now confident that he would notallow the pain to chase him away, and he saw the clouds of oblivion rise up to carryhim into the world of numbness and rest.

Later, Atreus's slumber was invaded by a male voice much too dulcet to belongto his companions. For a time, he dreamed that he was back in the Church of Beauty,listening to a perfectly pitched tenor sing the G.o.ddess's praises. Never had heheard such a pure sound, untainted by the slightest tinge of coa.r.s.eness or thefaintest hint of hollowness. It was as lyrical as silk and smooth as a poem, and Atreus felt blessed just to hear it in a dream.

As Atreus grew aware of the bitter reek of a b.u.t.ter lamp, he began to realize he wasnot dreaming. The voice was real, coming from someplace down beyond his feet. Seema was answering, apprehensive and apologetic, her own sweet voice sounding twittery and flutey by comparison. As Atreus struggled to wakefulness, hispain began to return, though not as terrible as before. He could feel a piece of chiffoncovering the burns on his upper body, and Seema's warm hand was smearing a watery ointment over his raw and naked legs.

An embarra.s.sing thought flashed through Atreus's mind, snapping him instantly to full consciousness. His eyes popped open, and he found himself staringat the ceiling planks of a small stone hut. He was lying on a straw-covered pallet, witha flickering b.u.t.ter lamp resting on a rough-hewn table beside him. The room was remarkably warm, at least compared to the snow caves in which they had beensleeping the last few nights, and he could hear a fire crackling in a hearth somewherenearby.

Atreus raised his head and glanced down the length of his body, discovering that hisworst fears were true. He lay hideously naked from the waist down, with his scorched flesh and broken leg, crooked hips and ugly ogre-like loins fully exposed. Nor did he have any illusions about who had removed the remnants of his trousers, a.s.seema was rubbing her ointment onto a burn higher on his thigh than any femalehand had ever touched before. He found himself suddenly thankful for his pain. Itwas probably the only thing that saved him from an even greater embarra.s.sment.

Seema turned to look at him and said softly, "You are awake." If his grotesquenakedness caused her any discomfort, she did not show it. "I hope it is not because Iam hurting you."

Atreus shook his head and started to say, "I heard a..." He did not want to call whathe had heard a mere voice. He shook his head, then finally said, "I guess it was asong. I must have been dreaming."

"It was not a song, or a dream," said a male voice, the same dulcet voice thatAtreus had heard earlier. "Though I thank you for thinking so."

A milky-skinned man with a slender build and the appearance of youthful vigorstepped into view. Wearing nothing but a white cotton sarong draped around his hips,he was dressed almost as immodestly as Atreus, though he was immeasurably more handsome, with cascading silver hair and piercing silver eyes that riveted the observer in place. Nor were his stunning good looks the most striking thing abouthim, for a huge pair of feathery white wings arched up behind his shoulders, creatinga sort of pearly halo that followed him wherever he went Atreus let his head drop back to the pallet, convinced that he was looking at one of Sune's divine seraphs.

"I must be dead."

"Do not say such things!" said Seema. She stood and stared at Atreus as thoughhe had uttered a blasphemy. "Not in front of the sannyasi!"

"Atreus is not to blame. He is only speaking what he believes to be so," said the sannyasi, who motioned Seema not to be angry, then came to the sleeping pallet andlowered his hand as though to touch Atreus's sloping forehead. "May I?"

Atreus nodded, and the sannyasi placed a milky palm on his brow. At first, it felt cooland soothing. Then Atreus's scorched flesh began to sting again. His broken legstarted to throb, and the throbbing worked its way up his leg into his hip. The tingling in his burns seeped deep down through his muscles into his blood andturned his veins into channels of boiling fire, and the searing heat began to rush upthrough his body toward the sannyasi's hand.

All of Atreus's pain reached his neck at once, filling him with such a fiery agony thathe thought his throat would open like a boiled sausage. He screamed and thrashed at the sides of his pallet and reached up to tear the hand from his brow.

The sannyasi's palm remained in place, holding Atreus down as firmly as it didgently, and even all of Atreus's anguish-borne strength could not tear the milky handfrom his brow. For a moment, his head hurt as it had never hurt before. His ears ached with the roar of a thousand thunderclaps, his nostrils burned with lava, and hiseyes felt like they were melting. His brains boiled inside his skull, and his ears roared with the hiss of escaping steam, then the pain vanished, evaporating through thethick bone of his brow.

Without being aware that he had closed them, Atreus opened his eyes and foundhimself looking up at the sannyasi. Now, the milky face looked as old as the mountains themselves. His lips were drawn tight and his brow was furrowed, and Atreus saw in his expression all the pain that had been drawn from his own body.

Before Atreus could thank the sannyasi, Yago and Ris.h.i.+ rushed through the door,the ogre's broad shoulders tearing out the door jambs and a fair section of stone wall. a.s.soon as they saw the white-winged figure standing over Atreus, their mouths fell open inastonishment Ris.h.i.+ stopped to stare in gape-mouthed wonder. Yago crossed the floorin a single thundering step and grabbed a feathery wing.

"What you doing?" he said. The ogre drew himself up to his full height, knocking twoceiling planks out of the roof, and tried to pull the sannyasi off the floor.

He might as well have tried to lift a mountain. The sannyasi remained firmly plantedon the rough-hewn planks, and nothing, not so much as a wing feather, yielded to the ogre's strength.

Yago scowled, then responded as ogres do to unexplained things, by trying tosmash it with his fist.