by S T Branton
I still had trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of humans and Forgotten coexisting. “Do you know where to find a guide?” I asked. “I’d like to go into the mountains.”
“Ah,” he said. “So that is your business.” He leaned out of the stall and pointed down to the end of the row of buildings, immediately beyond the far perimeter of the market. “There, you will find your guide.”
“Thanks.” I moved quickly toward the house. Now that I was hyperaware of the Forgotten that roamed the street, it was a little unsettling to be outside. I ducked into the side alley and knocked on the door.
What an extraordinary place, said Marcus. I was certain that he said that with a frown. I am not sure how I feel.
“You and me both, my friend.” On the surface, this town looked like a utopia, and maybe it really was. But it sure felt as weird as hell.
The person who answered the door was a kid, shorter than me with a mop of dark hair that hung in his big brown eyes. He could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen. “What’s wrong?” he asked me in English. “Do you need help?”
“Uh.” I hesitated. “Someone told me I’d be able to find a guide at this house. I’m sorry if I have the wrong address.” I took out the tablet to show him.
“No, you are correct,” the boy said. “I would be happy to guide you.”
“You’re the guide?” The question popped out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop it.
He nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Do not be worried. I am young but the mountains favor me. We will have no trouble.”
This child is either very brave or very stupid.
I tried to look past him into the house in case there were any adults around. “Are you absolutely sure about that?” I asked.
“Yes, yes.” He stepped aside to let me in. “I have guided many feet to the peaks and down. I promise you, this is the truth.” He smiled. “Take a room in the house for your rest tonight. Tomorrow, we leave at daybreak.” He closed the door.
I stood there in the dim, narrow hall for a minute or two and mulled over this new situation. The kid didn’t move and he didn’t stop smiling either. “All right,” I said. There was nothing to do but press forward. “We leave at daybreak.”
Chapter Nineteen
A brisk tap on my bedroom door woke me from a dead sleep the next morning. The kid was there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and all geared up for our expedition. His pack was at least as big as the one I’d brought with me, and he still grabbed mine and slung it on his back.
“Hey, I can carry that,” I said as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“Nope,” was his only reply. He ran to the other room and returned with some breakfast in the form of bread, water, and dried meat, which he pressed into my hand. “Eat. We have to go. The climb is half a day’s journey and we do not want to come down in the dark.”
I decided not to mention the fact that I had no idea what was in store up there or if I’d even come down at all. Instead, I stuffed some jerky in my face and trailed down the hall after him, out of the house, and into the still-dark street.
The first misty fingers of morning had barely pushed up from the horizon, and the air was bitterly cold. The kid’s trajectory was set and sure. He trotted to the town center, where the empty skeleton of the bazaar waited to fill up for the day. A few young men stood around with rickshaws and rubbed their hands together. The boy picked one and hopped on. I joined him.
The two of them talked for a while on the way out of town. I sat in the back with my hands in my lap and felt strangely unencumbered without my pack. My young guide, on the other hand, looked like he shouldn’t have been able to move under all that weight, but he was as hardy as a goat. The rickshaw operator dropped us off at a trailhead in the steeper foothills, and the kid walked unbowed ahead of me, his hair blowing in the wind. My leg protested but I picked up my pace to draw even with him.
“You are limping,” he observed. “Would you like to return to the town?”
I waved away his concern. “It’s nothing,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve looked forward to this hike for weeks.” It was something of an exaggeration but not wholly untrue. I did want to know what waited at the summit of this mountain. Also, I wanted this trip over with so I could head back to Indiana as soon as possible. Delano wouldn’t wait around and look for me forever.
“Let me know if you change your mind.” Those eight words were the most the boy spoke aloud for a long time.
He traversed the trail effortlessly and his expression never deviated from one of simple calm. I realized that he was at home up there, even loaded down with two packs and thick, insulated clothing. I wondered if he liked it better at higher altitudes because of all the Forgotten in his town.
It was tough to simply dive into that kind of heavy discourse so I decided to start small. “Hey, I never got your name,” I said. “I’m Vic.”
He gave me a slight smile. “My name is Shiva,” he said.
I grinned back. “Oh yeah? How does it feel to be named after a god these days?”
Shiva knitted his brows. “I am named for a real god,” he replied. “Not like these imposters.”
Ha! The unadulterated wisdom of youth.
“My guess is you’re not the biggest fan of all those ‘imposters’ living around your home then,” I said.
To that, he shook his head and his shaggy hair swung back and forth over his eyes. “Those creatures are not the same,” he answered. “My people are much more open-minded to certain things than your cultures in the West. We know those beings are not evil, and we have learned to reside together in harmony. This has happened for months.” He adjusted the double pack on his shoulder without slowing down. “They have given us nothing to fear.”
Marcus grumbled. I rescind some of my previous statement. The Forgotten have never been anything but trouble. It is folly for this boy and his people to allow them space in their town.
I wanted to respond but it became more difficult. The wound in my leg carried a persistent, painful beat that strengthened the more time I spent walking. Tiny beads of sweat formed on my skin, aftereffects of powering through the pain. Still, I pushed onward.
Shiva pulled a little ahead again and I clenched my jaw in determination. I told myself that a half day’s climb was nothing and that I’d rest at the summit in no time.
For a while, that tactic worked. I was able to put my injury out of my thoughts and focus on the austere beauty of the mountains. When the grades became steeper, though, my leg complained louder as I scrambled up nearly vertical faces and squeezed through tall, narrow crevices. The discomfort gradually worked its way up to my hip and engulfed most of the right side of my body. A few times, I paused instinctively for tiny respites when Shiva wasn’t looking but stopping wasn’t an option, no matter how hard this damn mountain kicked my ass. I had already screwed up once. I wouldn’t do it again.
Mother Nature, however, had other plans. The clear sky we had enjoyed since dawn was rapidly smothered by the same heavy grey clouds my plane had flown through on the way into this region of South Asia. The change in weather gave Shiva pause. He studied the patterns in the cloud cover and finally said, “It would be wise to turn back now. This is not good climbing weather. It is no longer safe.”
I stopped beside him and turned my gaze to the unfriendly sky. “I don’t doubt you,” I said. “You’re the guide here. But I need to keep going.” I glanced at his clean-shaven teenage face. “If you’re afraid, it’s okay. I won’t judge you. I’ve been scared too. But if your concern is for me, it’s not necessary.”
Shiva chewed his lip. “I am not fearful,” he admitted. “There was a time once, when I was a child, that I was stranded by a storm in the mountains for four days. My survival made me believe that my time is appointed by higher beings. It will come when it comes, whether that is on this peak or on the rickshaw going home.” Despite this brave talk, the uneasiness refused to le
ave his face. He stood with his feet planted firmly and stared at the rest of the mountain path.
I laughed. “Don’t sweat it, kid. I’ve spent the better part of a year constantly on the edge and waiting to be dropped into the great abyss. If I can hang on for this long, so can you. Let’s keep going, okay? You and me. I’ll be with you all the way.”
“You had better be,” Shiva said. “For your own sake.” He moved forward again and guided me along increasingly narrow switchbacks into a hovering blanket of fog. The freezing water droplets clung to my face and eyelashes and blurred my vision. My whole leg ached fiercely. Shiva was little more than two vague backpack humps ahead of me. I pushed to keep up because to lose sight of him meant sheer catastrophe.
This high up, the rocks were frigid and slick. I climbed with my heart in my throat and fought to ignore the incredible altitude. My hands and feet slid on the icy surfaces, and more than once, I felt myself lose all purchase for half a terrifying second. And man, did my leg hurt.
I hadn’t had more than a passing chance to rest it since I’d left San Francisco, and that now caught up with me. It was almost all I could do to stay on Shiva’s tail. He might as well have been an apparition for all I could of see him through the mist.
Then, I saw his partial silhouette falter. One foot slipped free of the ledge he walked on and I stared in horror as he slid toward the edge of a deep, dark crevasse. The opening was narrow but not narrow enough to keep him from falling to his death. Shiva shouted something that was whipped away by the wind.
All thoughts of my personal safety left my mind. I shoved myself off the rock with all my might and hurtled toward his falling form. His right hand grasped desperately for any hold but found nothing. He had only yards before he was lost forever.
I ran on my sore, unsteady leg as far as I could along that rickety ledge. My footing slipped too, but I used that to my advantage and dived down toward Shiva.
“Grab my hand!” I yelled.
He looked up as I seized his fingers. The jerk as his momentum halted almost tore me loose from the precarious hold I had on the cliff face. Thankfully, I managed to hold on, even if only barely, and I used my good leg to drag us both back to relative safety. We slumped side by side against the rock, our mirrored pants testimony to shared relief. My heart thrummed wildly in my chest.
“How can you be so strong?” he asked somewhat reverently. “Never mind. I do not question. I am only grateful.”
“I go to the gym,” I told him. “Like, a lot.”
You were also trained by a brilliant, dashing centurion of the Roman army, Marcus piped up. His words instilled you with the courage you now selflessly exhibit on a regular basis. You can only hope to one day be molded in his noble image.
I sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “Yep,” I said. “Definitely the gym.”
Chapter Twenty
We slowed our pace after that little mishap and picked our way cautiously through the thin, wet air. The rocks grew a covering of ice and then snow. By the time we reached the path to the summit, we trudged through it, paranoid at the thought of hidden ravines. Shiva pulled himself up over a ledge and stopped to catch his breath. He pointed straight ahead.
“The peak,” he said. “It’s there. A hundred feet.”
I perched beside him and surreptitiously massaged my leg. “Thank you, Shiva. You can turn back now. I’ll take it from here.”
“What do you mean?” He gazed at me with a trace of suspicion. “You must not believe you can make the descent without a guide. Climbing down is harder, not easier. You cannot see where you are going.” He sounded a little irritated as if I wasn’t the first dumb foreigner to try to dismiss him early. Unlike the others before me, I wouldn’t be dissuaded.
“You talked about your appointed time before,” I said and scowled at the swirl of fog and snow above. “This is mine. I have to meet it alone.” Talking to him that way gave me flashbacks of when I’d said more or less the same thing to my crew at the base of Delano’s temple. I hoped dearly that this venture, whatever it turned out to be, would have a happier ending.
Shiva surprised me by moving to block the path. His eyes were somber. “You tricked me,” he said. “Had I known you meant to end your life here, I would not have agreed to be your guide.”
I gasped. “No! No, no, kiddo. I’m not here for that. That’s insane.”
“Is it?” he demanded. “I have seen it happen many times. Lost souls find their way to the peaks so that their last moments may pass as close to paradise as they can be. They believe it will make the transition easier. Less painful? More peaceful? I do not know.” He shook his head to clear it. “I cannot allow you to die this way, whether or not it is your wish.”
“Shiva, listen to me.” I grabbed the kid’s gloved hand in my own. “I didn’t climb all this way to die on the summit. I don’t want to meet the gods. I want to know how to kill them.”
The poor boy understood that even less, judging by the way he stared at me like I’d grown another head. He looked like he debated whether to drag my crazy ass back down to the town anyway, but at the last moment, he thought better of it.
“You are not suffering from oxygen deprivation,” he said as though he needed to convince himself.
“No,” I insisted. “I know what I’m here to do, and I want you to know you can’t stop me. Go home, Shiva. I’ll see you when I see you. Don’t forget that you’re not responsible for the choices I’ve made.”
He wanted very badly to argue and to talk me out of it. I could see it in his face, and I really felt for him. To someone who lacked the context for everything I had said, I was sure I sounded insane—and yes, like a person with a weird death wish.
Here lies Vic, the woman who wanted to kill the gods.
But he saw through to my grim conviction and backed away reluctantly before he turned in the direction from which we’d come a few minutes earlier. I watched until I was absolutely certain that he hadn’t doubled back and I set out for the peak.
The last hundred feet were brutal in a way I never expected. I clawed my way up the practically sheer face, one slip away from certain doom. My feet scrabbled against slippery rock and snow fell away on either side to plummet thousands of feet to a bottom beyond my imagination. The sound of my heart pounded in my head. With every shallow breath, I inched a little higher.
Near the very top, the whine of the sharp wind rose to a screech. The currents of air ripped at my body and threatened to tear me off the mountain and throw me into a hidden grave. A couple of times, I stopped moving entirely and clung to the rocks until I stopped shaking. “Fucking hell,” I whispered hoarsely. “If I ever see that smoking jackass again, I’m gonna punch him in the face. I don’t care what’s up here.”
Focus, Victoria. You are very close.
“Yeah, yeah.” I scrabbled above me with my right hand and hooked my fingers over a reasonably flat edge that felt deeper than a few inches. My heart skipped a beat. I grabbed hold with my other hand, and for a second, I swung freely from the shoulders down. The excitement drowned out the fear as I hauled myself up over the ledge and onto the peak of my mountain. Nothing but a slate-grey sky loomed over my head.
I almost cried with relief and joy but my rest only lasted a minute. Soon, I pushed to my feet and walked forward while I searched for clues. The fog was thicker than ever up there, but there was no hiding the massive, ornately carved wooden door fitted into the mountain’s highest point. It was ancient and smooth and there was something strangely familiar about its design.
“Ready?” I asked Marcus. My hand touched the wood.
As ever, Victoria. Let us away.
I exhaled a billowing plume of white and I pushed firmly against it.
The door rumbled open, and I walked through.
Chapter Twenty-One
On the other side of the door, the howling wind was immediately silenced. The bone-chilling cold melted into soothing heat. The mountain peak was replaced by
a vast banquet room with a golden throne. Lavish trappings notwithstanding, the room lay empty and still but my eyes were drawn to something other than the inexplicable finery. Standing off to my left was a person I hadn’t seen in a small eternity. My mouth dropped open. “Marcus?”
He grinned broadly and stepped forward with his arms out. “Hail, Victoria.”
“You son of a bitch!” I said and hugged him tightly. “What the hell?”
He laughed and returned the embrace. “It is wonderful to truly see you again, my friend. And to occupy the same physical space.”
We looked at each other for a long time and I soaked in the bizarre reality of the moment.
“Seriously, what the hell?” I asked. “Five seconds ago, I was climbing a mountain and you were right here.” I patted the medallion which still hung around my neck. Its metal was no longer warm to the touch and it had lost some of its ethereal luster. “Now, we’re in a fucking throne room and you’re in front of me. In the flesh.” The words were surreal to my ears.
“Calm yourself, Victoria.” Marcus chuckled and rested a hand on my shoulder. “What else would you expect from the realm of the gods?”
“The realm of the—” I jerked backward to study the rich chamber one more time. “You have got to be shitting me.”
He made a face. “I am not, in fact, doing that.” He turned and spread his arms wide in a gesture he had probably practiced since the dawn of time. “Welcome to Carcerum.”
“Damn.” I couldn’t keep the goofy smile off my face. “I gotta be honest. I never thought I’d be so happy to see your ugly mug.”
Marcus didn’t answer right away and I was about to rib him again when I noticed his attention had become fixed on something across the room. I pivoted, and my exuberant grin instantly faded. The smoking man sat upon the golden throne, his legs crossed casually and a cigarette clamped between his lips. Immediately, I looked toward Marcus to gauge his reaction. The old centurion was so guarded, he revealed nothing.
