Crown of Shadows

by C. S. Friedman

  He turned back to where Tarrant stood and tried to force a smile to his face. “Well? You coming?” The Hunter hesitated, then approached the edge himself. Damien watched as the man made the same wary foray that he had, and saw how his face went white with shock as he felt the ground fall out from beneath him. But he, like Damien, persisted, and soon they both stood free on the ground that had been so effectively hidden from them, Calesta’s illusion spread out beneath their feet.

  “Apparently he hasn’t forgotten us,” the Hunter whispered.

  The Almea-shadow led them onward, deeper and deeper into the maze of mist and acid. They skirted one canyon, turned away from another, and came to yet another which the shadow led them across. This time they followed her without hesitation. How many hours were passing while they fixed their attention on the next stretch of poisoned earth, sour odors rising from the mutated plants at their feet as if to welcome them? It seemed to Damien that the ground had begun to incline; how far from Shaitan’s peak did the volcano’s slope begin? His legs ached and his throat felt raw from breathing the sulfurous air, even through Tarrant’s silken filter. Even as he prayed that it wasn’t much farther to Shaitan’s peak, he remembered the sight of that looming cone, and knew that his legs would hurt much worse before this was over.

  And then there was a wall of rock before them, and Almea stepped into it and was gone. The two travelers looked at one another, and then Damien, holding his breath, followed her. For a moment it seemed as if he had indeed walked into a stone wall—and then that feeling was gone, and the illusion also, and the open plain stretched out before them, with Almea waiting just ahead.

  “I do believe we found the right guide,” he whispered. And he could have sworn that Tarrant smiled, albeit weakly.

  The ground became rougher after that and walking slowed accordingly; the shadow set as fast a pace as she could, but she wouldn’t leave them behind. It seemed to Damien that he could sense a growing tension in the air; Calesta‘s, perhaps? If the Iezu were truly worried about Tarrant reaching Shaitan, then he must be near panic now. What had the Hunter told him, that they had no power other than illusion? And he had clearly lost that hand. Good God, they might make it after all.

  The gradual slope became a steep incline, and walking turned to climbing. Through the thin silk veil he could taste the biting sulfur of Shaitan’s winds, the reek of foul gases vented up through the volcano’s crust. Gouts of fire blocked their path, some whistling, some roaring, some burning in eerie silence. They skirted most, but some they simply walked through. All felt equally hot. Once Damien saw his pants catch fire, and the heat about his legs almost drove him to run for cool earth to roll it out. But she wasn’t running and so he didn’t either, and within minutes—as soon as Calesta realized that his newest gambit had failed—that vision faded as all the others had, into the stuff of memory.

  Damien found that he was gasping for breath, and his heart had begun to pound so loudly in his chest that it drowned out the other sounds around him. The ground itself was trembling as if from an earthquake, but unlike an earthquake the motion was continual. It made for an oddly vertiginous sensation, in which nothing about or beneath him felt solid. As he climbed, he could smell the dry heat of lava nearby, hopefully not too close to where they were. How high up did Tarrant need to go, to do whatever it was he had come here to do?

  And then they came around a chest-high boulder, and saw that right ahead of them a thin stream of lava blocked the way. It had vented through the mountainside not thirty feet away, and though it was narrow enough to jump over, Damien wasn’t sure that was the kind of exercise he wanted. “Is there another way?” he asked the ghost. She turned back to him slightly, just long enough to meet his eyes, then faced the stream and started toward it. But he didn’t move.

  “Vryce?”

  Her eyes. It was only for a moment that he had looked at them, but that moment made him tremble. “Not the same,” he whispered. He looked at the lava stream, so dangerously close, and began to back off. “We’ve lost her....”

  The shadow turned back to them. She was the same as before in all superficial aspects, but something indeed had changed within her. That hint of softness Damien had sensed, behind all the pain. That one emotion in her that didn’t reek of hate. That thing which Damien had interpreted as love....

  “Damn!” he whispered. When had they lost the real one? He whipped about as if hoping that she was waiting there behind them, but all that was behind them was a pitted slope strewn with boulders. When and where had Calesta made the substitution? All that it would have taken was a moment of inattention, easy enough in this land where every shadow seemed threatening.

  “If he means to hide her, then we won’t be able to find her.” Damien could hear the exhaustion in Tarrant’s voice, of a soul wrung dry by fear. “We’ll have to go on alone.”

  “No. We can’t.” He was remembering all the obstacles they had walked through, or walked over, or simply ignored. “We don’t stand a chance without her guidance.” Think, man, think! “What are the limits of his power?” he demanded. Think!

  The dead thing that wasn’t Almea watched as Tarrant considered. “He can create images that appear real. He can cause us not to see things that truly exist. He has some ability to affect the internal senses—hence our sensations of heat and of falling as we defied his illusions—but that ability must be limited, or else he could simply incapacitate us with pain.”

  Internal. That was the key. Was there some kind of internal link between Tarrant and his wife’s shadow, that might help them find her? Evidently the Hunter had thought of the same thing, for he shook his head. “If it were really my wife, perhaps. But this isn’t the woman I lived with, remember that. It’s a construct of the fae, which contains no more of Almea Tarrant’s true substance than would her reflection in a mirror. Believe me,” he said, “under the circumstances I wish it were otherwise.”

  No help there, then. Damien looked desperately about the landscape as if seeking inspiration for some new line of attack ... and he found it. It was streaming along the ground not ten yards from his feet.

  “We might as well move forward, then.” His heart was pounding with terror as he made his way toward the lava stream, but he knew that he didn’t dare hesitate. “Because without your wife’s shadow I think we’re as good as dead here, don’t you?” He had ten feet left to go, and he could smell the gases that were sizzling on the lava’s surface. “Calesta’s as good as killed us this time by hiding her, so why not take a chance?” Walk into it, he ordered his muscles. Don’t worry about whether it’s real. Just do it.

  He was less than a step from the lava stream when something reached out and stopped him. Thank God. He let it push him back from the molten rock, then reached up to wipe the sweat from his face. All he accomplished was to make the silk veil stick to his skin.

  “You play a dangerous game,” Karril growled.

  He managed a dry smile. “Just holding you to your promise.”

  The Iezu took him by the shoulder and forced him back down to where Tarrant stood waiting. “There,” he said. He didn’t sound at all happy. “As I promised.”

  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—

  Oh, Gerald.

  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.

  May God be merciful to you, he prayed. May he weigh this day against the others of your life, so that in the balance He finds cause for forgiveness. May He acknowledge in His Heart that every generation born to His people from now on will have a chance to prosper because of your sacrifice—

  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.

  Thirty-seven

  Andrys despaired, I’m not going to make it.

  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?