Indigo - Inferno Part 6

Jasker shook his head, not in denial but to clear his thoughts. The fury and the emotion were suppressed again, at least for the moment.

"This child's husband was punished for a supposed crime," he continued. "But the crime was an excuse, an invention. In truth, he was punished for refusing to give fealty to the Charchad, There are stillsome who resist the cult, though their numbers must be very few now."

Indigo remembered the "festival" in the town square, the frightened faces, the closed minds.

"Yes," she said soberly. "Very few."

"Then this woman and her husband have been more courageous than most. They should have known better. The man was chosen as a scapegoat, an example to strike fear into the hearts of any who might have considered following his example; but his suffering wasn't enough for those serpents. They deemed that his wife should be made to share his state of grace. And so they forced her...." His voice wavered, almost broke; then he got a grip on himself again. "They forced her to eat a piece of that cursed stone, to infect her with the sickness that is, to them, a sign of the Charchad's blessing."

"Sacred Earth..." Indigo looked quickly over her shoulder at Chrysiva. "Then-she will die?"

"Yes. The fever, the disfigurements; they're just the beginning, but once they have a hold, there's no hope. Chrysiva will die, Indigo. They have murdered her." He paused. "Just as they murdered my own wife."

Her head snapped around and she stared at him. "That is how they killed her?"

Jasker nodded. "It can be done in the s.p.a.ce of a few hours," he said, and the terrible, detached chill was back in his voice. "If they have enough of the stone, and the victim is forced to-" He shook his head violently, unable to say more.

Indigo stared at the floor with unfocused eyes as she felt the hot, bitter vibrations of anger stir within her again. The thought that any living creature could be capable of such atrocities, could revel in their execution, made her sick to the core of her soul. And all for what? Power. Power, and insanity of an order that made Jasker's mad l.u.s.t for revenge pale to a dim candle by comparison.

She felt a gentle touch in her mind, and heard Grimya's silent thought. It is not truly men who do these things, Indigo. It is the demon. Men are only its... instruments.

That was true. But... They are willing instruments, Grimya. That's what is so hard to comprehend or accept.

I know. But I believe the demon has warped them. Without its influence, such things as have happened here could never exist. Grimya paused, then: You and I know how strong such corruption can be. Do you not remember the child with the silver eyes?

"Nemesis-" A cold, inner stab made Indigo forget caution, and she spoke the name aloud without realizing it. Jasker's head came up.

"What?"

"I-nothing." Indigo's face had paled. "A word only; I-I merely thought aloud for a moment."

"You said-"

"Please." She held up her hands, palms outward. "It was of no consequence."

"As you wish." But his look was keenly speculative.

Indigo and Grimya exchanged a private glance, and each knew without the need for words what the other was thinking. Nemesis. It was the ever-present threat, the worm in the bud of Indigo's own soul. She had faced it twice, and on the second occasion only Grimya's intervention had saved her from a folly that would have turned all hope to dust. But on the first occasion there had been no Grimya. And Indigo had fallen to the pride, the arrogance, and the hunger within her that had brought the world to the brink of d.a.m.nation.

But for the warping influence of the Charchad, the atrocities rife in this land would not exist. Yet had it not been for her, the Charchad itself would not exist; for the seven demons that were humanity's creation would still lie bound, as they had lain for so many centuries, in the ruined Tower of Regrets.

Seven demons, of which this warped horror was but the first. And hers was the hand that had released them....

"Indigo?"

She looked up and saw that Jasker was still watching her. His eyes were quieter now and he said, "You're distressed."

"As are you." She looked away, not wanting him to see her expression.

"I have guilt to add extra spice to my own burden. You at least have no need for that.""Haven't I?" Indigo said bitterly.

He frowned. "I don't understand you."

"No. And I can't explain." There was a stifling sensation in her throat, a mingling of inchoate rage with the tearing ache of grief; not only for Chrysiva, but for Jasker, who had lost his beloved wife; for herself and the loss of her own love; for the warm, safe world she couldn't hope to regain until her task was done, and which hung in a poised and deadly balance symbolized now by the evil of Charchad....

She knew the agonies of guilt as well as Jasker; perhaps better. But she couldn't explain.

A hand touched her wrist lightly and she looked back to see the sorcerer watching her.

Something moved deep within her emotions: a surge of fellow feeling that seemed uncannily like a far closer kins.h.i.+p. Mad though he might be, she thought, he was a good man. And although she couldn't tell him all her story, they shared the same pain, the same yearning, the same goal-and it formed a common and powerful bond.

She said, very softly, "I can't confide in you, Jasker; not in the way that you mean. But believe me, I, too, have the deepest reasons for sharing your need for retribution. And I know the meaning of guilt, and of loss."

The ringers touching her arm curled, holding her in a firm, warm grip. "Indigo, please. If it would help you to speak of it, you must try. Perhaps we-"

"No. It isn't possible." Unconsciously her fists clenched: tension had tautened her muscles like wires and again she couldn't meet his gaze. Mentally floundering, she tried to force back the misery and the grief they shared; such emotions were too dangerous, too unpredictable. She must focus on the anger, and nothing else.

"Tell me of the Charchad." Her voice shook on the first syllables; then suddenly the hiatus broke and the fury was back, like a hot wave was.h.i.+ng over her and sweeping her to the safety of the known and familiar. She looked up at the sorcerer. "Please, Jasker. Tell me all you know of them, all you know of the power that they wield. I want to destroy them. I want to see them wiped from the face of the world!"

For a moment Jasker hesitated. Then a slow, sad smile touched the edges of his mouth, and he nodded. "I believe I understand you, saia. And you're right. Perhaps inasmuch as Ranaya sent you to aid my cause, she has also charged me to aid yours." He released her, withdrawing his hand. "And if the sorrows that have brought us together must remain unspoken, so be it." He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them again, and the familiar harshness was back in his look. "You ask me to tell you all I know of the Charchad. I'll do better than that; I will show you. From here, there are a number of ways into the heart of the mountains where the mines are sited. And there's something else, something you should see with your own eyes." His face became grim. "It will tell you more of the Charchad than words could ever do."

She started to rise. "Then let's waste no time. I want-"

"Not yet." He held up a hand. "We dare not risk being seen; we must wait until the sun westers and the light begins to fade." He smiled with a faint trace of ironic humor. "Besides, it's an arduous climb for one who isn't accustomed to it, and not advisable in the heat of the day. I don't intend to lose ray only ally to the perils of sunstroke! No; we'd be best advised to sleep for a few hours, and renew our energies."

Grimya's voice in Indigo's head joined the argument. He is right, the she-wolf said emphatically.

We have hardly slept since leaving Vesinum. I am tired. You are tired. What the man wants to show us will not run away while we rest.

Indigo wanted to argue, but realized that both Jasker and Grimya counseled good sense. And so, after checking on the pony which was tethered in the relative cool of an outer pa.s.sage, she settled down on her folded blanket with Grimya at her side. Jasker, with a propriety that touched her, insisted that he would fare well enough in another cave, and left with a promise to wake Indigo as soon as the time was right for them to leave.

When he had gone, Indigo snuffed out all but one of the candles, and the cave sank into deep gloom. She lay back, not sure that she would be able to sleep but determined to try, and Grimya settledwith her muzzle resting on her front paws. For a few minutes there was silence; then Grimya projected a thought.

I still don't trust him.

Indigo raised her head. "Who? Jasker?"

Yes. There's something wrong. I can smell it, but I can't yet see it.

"You're still angry with him because you think he meant us harm, that's all. He was only defending his territory, Grimya, as any wolf might do."

It isn't just that. It's something else. Grimya's tail twitched. He is mad. I saw colors in his mind that should not have been there; bad colors. She looked up unhappily. Be careful, Indigo.

There is great danger here, and it does not lie where we might expect to find it.

"Oh, Grimya..." Indigo leaned across and stroked the wolf's coat, trying to rea.s.sure her. "Yes, Jasker is mad, in a way; but he has suffered a great deal, and I understand all too well what such suffering can do." In her mind's eye she saw Jasker's haggard face again: for an instant only it seemed to merge with a memory of Fenran. She banished the image with a s.h.i.+ver. "What matters is that he can help us to find and destroy the demon." She buried her fingers deeper in Grimya's fur. "Alone, I don't think we could hope to be strong enough. We need him. Just as he needs us."

I know. But still... you must be careful.

"I will."

Promise me.

"I promise. Go to sleep, now,"

Grimya wriggled, then laid her head back on her paws. Indigo's breathing soon grew shallower and slower as she drifted into sleep, but for some time the she-wolf lay wakeful, thinking her own thoughts and watching her friend with unquiet eyes.

Grimya's was not the only restless mind in the mountain network. A short distance away in a small, bare cave lit by a single candle Jasker leaned against the rock wall, idly cleaning the curved blade of an old scimitar. It was the only weapon he possessed, although during his exile it had seen service only as a hewing and honing tool. Jasker wasn't a skilled swordsman, preferring to fight with spells rather than steel; nonetheless he found a certain satisfaction in keeping the scimitar oiled and polished, and the mechanical nature of the task helped him when he needed, as now, to think.

The images that had come storming from Indigo's subconscious mind during the truth ordeal by the fumarole had both shocked and horrified him. And Jasker was honest enough to admit to himself that mingled with his respect and fellow feeling for her was a good measure of fear: for he had seen clearly the hand of the Earth Mother upon her, and yet sensed that the Great G.o.ddess's visitation was a punishment rather than a boon. What Indigo had done to earn the burden she carried was not Jasker's concern, and to probe further than he'd already done would be little short of sacrilegious. But there were, nevertheless, questions in his mind to which he would have given much to know the answers.

A word that Indigo had uttered was preying on his mind. Nemesis. Whether it had any parallels in his own language Jasker didn't know, but clearly its significance went far deeper than the girl had been willing to admit. He had glimpsed that same word as a fragmented image in the darkness that surrounded her innermost being, and with it had come a fleeting impression of an evil face that was and yet was not Indigo herself. That, and a sense of silver.

Silver. It made no sense. Yet in some indefinable way it was Indigo's eternal and dreadful link with the ghosts of friends loved and lost-and with one love in particular. Jasker had heard his name as an agonized scream in the girl's mind, and it had sent an answering knife of pain through his own soul. He, too, had known the torture of watching his lover die; but in the soul of this girl of the southlands with her prematurely grayed hair and her old, old eyes, there lurked something that went far beyond grief and guilt and bitterness, a suffering that he could never comprehend and yet which echoed eerily in his own tormented past and drew them together by an invisible but ineffably powerful cord. Indigo and her lover; himself and his wife- Jasker realized suddenly that he was in danger of breaking the taboo that forbade him to speakthe names of the dead, and with a gesture so swift and familiar that he was hardly aware of it, he brushed the palm of one hand across the newly polished scimitar blade. Blood welled from a long, shallow cut and the pain brought him sharply back to earth. He clenched his fist, and his hand stung as a few drops of blood dripped onto the rock floor. Better, To look more deeply into Indigo's life than he had already done was a breach of his own discipline, and he must permit no more such lapses lest he give offense to the G.o.ddess.

He laid the scimitar down and leaned back against the wall. A traveling outlander, and a wolf that obviously understood human speech and-he couldn't be certain, but he strongly suspected it-which was capable of telepathic communication. Strange allies in his cause; but it was not for him to question the ways of Ranaya. Jasker looked again at his cut hand and smiled thinly.

"Mysterious art Thou, O Ranaya, Lady of Fire," he said, his voice soft with love and reverence.

From somewhere deeper in the volcanic network he heard a faint rumble, as though the old, molten rocks that slept far down in the earth had heard and answered him. The sound faded back into silence, and Jasker let his head fall back against the warm cave wall as he closed his eyes to sleep.

*CHAPTER*VII*.

The sun was a vicious red eye staring through a haze that dulled perspective and made distances unreal as Indigo and Jasker, with Grimya a short way behind them, emerged from a narrow defile and onto the open slopes near the summit of Old Maia. Old Maia, Jasker had explained, was the southernmost of the three giant craters known as Ranaya's Daughters that dominated the volcanic region, and from its ma.s.sive shoulder it was possible to see the entire spread of the mining valley in the center of the mountains.

At this height the air was relatively clear, and a hot, arid wind blew from the south. Jasker sat down in the lee of an outcropping of petrified magma that the wind had scoured into a fantastic sculpture, and indicated that Indigo and Grimya should do the same.

"A few minutes' rest will stand us in good stead now," he said. "And I'd prefer to let the sun fall a little lower before we go on to the north face."

Grimya flopped down immediately, but Indigo stood for a few moments surveying her surroundings. Not for the first time since they had set out on this expedition, she thought of Chrysiva, whom they had left on her pallet bed in the cave. In a mere few hours her condition had worsened: from the contents of Indigo's medicinal pouch Jasker had made up a draft which he hoped would ease the sick girl's pain and fever, but though the decoction had seemed to soothe her, the sorcerer made no pretense that it would be of any real use. Chrysiva was beyond healing: and the knowledge gnawed at Indigo's soul as she stared at the grim vista now spread out before her.

The sheer barrenness of this place seemed, to her, a hideously appropriate setting for the corruption that Charchad had brought to all who fell under its shadow. The sky to all horizons was sulfur-tinted and disturbingly featureless, and the haze had contracted the setting sun to a blurred, distorted fireball. Closer up, there was nothing to be seen but the naked mountains, an unearthly landscape of harsh edges and hot colors and sharp-edged shadows. Not a blade of gra.s.s, not a leaf, not a sign of movement. Just the bare bones of a dead land.

She hunched her shoulders against a s.h.i.+ver and said: "There aren't even any birds...."

Jasker looked up. "Birds?" He laughed, a short, bitter bark. "No, there aren't any birds now. The few that did once scratch an existence here-birds of prey mostly, or scavengers-died out because being hatched with no eyes or no feathers or no wings doesn't make for good flying. And those that might have come in from outside soon learned better."

Indigo glanced at Grimya, who was listening intently to Jaskers words. "And animals?" she asked.

He shrugged. "There are still a few, though I doubt if you'd recognize many of them. And some vegetation, though not on the higher slopes. Most of the things that grow or run here can still be eaten, if you take certain precautions and aren't overly fussy."Grimya said silently to Indigo: I saw something, as we climbed through the defile. I thought at first it was a goat, but it was very small and it had only one horn and no hair on its head. She paused. It was not a pleasant thing to see, and I would not have wanted to eat it.

Indigo didn't reply, but the she-wolf's comment struck home. Mutation, poisoning, death... she looked at the sky again and saw that the sun was now barely visible above the far side of the mountains.

Perspectives were changing as the light began to fade; and now, rivaling the setting sun, the first traces of a colder luminescence in the north was visible, an unnatural glow reflecting from the sky and slowly gathering strength.

Jasker saw her eyes narrow as she stared at the eerie, faraway reflection. "Ah, yes," he said softly. "Our nightly visitation. The power and the glory of Charchad." He rose, staring out across the darkening slopes. "Time, I think, for us to complete our journey, Indigo. And when we reach our final vantage point, you will see for yourself what the Charchad truly is."

Indigo got to her feet. Overhead now the cold glow was spreading, and even as she glanced westward the last fiery edge of the sun vanished below the ragged peaks. Shadows around them merged and flowed into a uniform soft, gray gloom, and as her eyes adjusted to the new darkness she saw that the air was tinged with a faint phosph.o.r.escence that hovered on the border of the visible spectrum. And suddenly, despite the dusty heat, she felt cold.

The slopes that brought them to the summit of Old Maia were gentle enough to present no real danger even with only the tricky glow from the northern sky to light their way. And when at last she emerged in Jasker's wake to stand on the narrow spine of the volcano's highest ridge, Indigo could only stare in stunned silence at the scene that was revealed.

Immediately below them. Old Maia's north face tell away in a sweep of bare rock pitted with the crazed patterns burned centuries ago by molten rivers of magma. The crater, some way to the right, formed a huge and grotesque scar a third of the way down the mountainside, a vertiginous throat that culminated in a ma.s.sive, sagging, and threatening black mouth overhanging the valley.

But it was the valley itself that transfixed Indigo's attention and utterly eclipsed the crater's drama: for as she stared down into the vast vale, she could easily have believed that she was witnessing a scene from a demonically inspired h.e.l.l.

There was light below: the yellow, sulfurous light of torches set high on iron poles, a hundred or more burning beacons. And they illuminated a smoking, boiling chaos of smog and steam and toiling activity. Huge, unnatural shapes loomed out of the miasma; ma.s.sive networks of struts and girders, great iron booms that reared skyward like unearthly monsters, moving platforms, supported on t.i.tanic wheels, that called up images of nightmare prehistoric creations. And, dimly visible through the pall, gangs of human figures labored in the filthy, eerily glowing smog like the mindless denizens of some vast anthill.

The rock beneath Indigo was vibrating. She hadn't been consciously aware of it before but now she could feel it, a huge, subterranean pulse below the threshold of hearing that beat through the mountains like a ghostly and irregular heart. They were upwind of the valley and the noise of the mines was being carried away from them; but that muted underground thunder told her that from close quarters the chaos of sound would be earthshaking.

She felt Jasker's hand on her shoulder and realized that she had started to s.h.i.+ver uncontrollably.

She got a grip on herself, then stared beyond the smoke and the machines and the tiny, toiling figures toward the valley's further reaches. Here there were more engines, alien silhouettes that belched and snorted clouds of boiling steam shot through with nauseating colors. Beyond them, the roaring white heat of three gigantic furnaces stained the night, reflecting fierily in the glowing waters of the river as it flowed through the vale on its southward journey.

And beyond the furnaces and the engines and the river, behind the towering far wall of the great volcanic valley, shone the grim and ghastly radiance of the eerie northern light.

Indigo gripped Jasker's fingers tightly. "The source..."

"Yes. It lies immediately beyond that far ridge-in the Charchad Vale."

She turned away from the turbulent scene below. Grimya was still staring down at the mines andher ears were flat to her head, her eyes red with reflected light. No coherent thoughts came from the she-wolf's mind, only a mute sense of distress, and Indigo felt a wave of bitter remorse as again her own accusation ran through her head: If it hadn't been for me...

"Tell me about it, Jasker." Her voice was hoa.r.s.e with suppressed anger. "Tell me what that thing is, and how it came into existence."

Jasker was gazing down into the valley once more.

Then he nodded and lowered himself onto a lava ledge that jutted out from the slope. Indigo followed his example, and he began his story.

"Five years ago, there was a landslip in one of the further valleys, beyond that distant wall. The valley was known as Charchad; several promising copper lodes had recently been found there, and there were a lot of men-tribute miners, mostly, although some of the bigger consortiums were starting to take an interest-prospecting to see how far the lodes went. Anyway, the valley caved in, and a vast pit opened up at the bottom." He glanced obliquely at her. "The pit glowed. Not like a fire or even a furnace, but with a blinding green radiance. I talked to some of those who went to look at the pit during the first days after its appearance, and they told me it was as if the sun itself had fallen to Earth; they couldn't look at it directly." He paused, touched his tongue to dry lips. "Some of them tried, and went blind as a result."

"And the men who were working in the valley?" Indigo asked.

"At first it was believed that no one had survived the catastrophe. They called on us-the priests-to pray for the souls of the dead, speed them on their way to Ranaya's breast." Jasker shuddered.

"So much grief, so much bereavement: I thought at that time that I could never see such misery again. If I had only known what was to follow..." Jasker sighed, then his expression hardened. "But there was one survivor: a man named Aszareel. He emerged from the valley on the day after the disaster, and he was carrying a wand made of a substance that no one had ever seen before. A s.h.i.+ning mineral, a cold, green, glowing thing. He was unscathed. And whatever had happened to him, whatever he might have experienced in that place, I for one believe that he was no longer human.

"Aszareel proclaimed that he had had a revelation. The pit, he said, was the source of a great new power in the land-the power of Charchad-and he was its chosen avatar. His miraculous survival was proof of Charchad's intent, and Charchad had bidden him to return and demand that all should give fealty. Those who did not, Aszareel said, would be d.a.m.ned forever."

Indigo stared at him. "And people believed him?"