As he scanned the chamber, a gesture caught his eye: one of the old men waving to him. At his puzzled frown, the fellow pointed toward the tunnel they'd come through to get here, then flashed him a grin.
Cob blinked, then bowed his head respectfully, feeling a redness creep up his face. All the old men were watching him now; he could only imagine what gossip they'd made of him and Kina and their burden. And that tunnel meant…the darkened chamber? The entrance? Or had she intruded on that council meeting for some reason?
To turn them against me. To warn them I'm about to desecrate the mountain, that I'm not a real Kerrindrixi. Kirin Diuxi? Pikes, I can't even think it right.
But she isn't one of them either.
Maybe she wasn't lying. Maybe she really does want to be Kina, like Darilan wanted to be Darilan. Maybe they keep the woodpile really far away.
Pikes…
One of the old men called something out, and Cob glanced up, startled, to see the whole group of them waving him on toward the tunnel. Not a grim face among them.
He raised his good hand in thanks and started moving, thinking, Pikes, I hope I'm just paranoid. The short hallway was dark, with only the glow of the meeting-room two chambers ahead to define the path, and he wondered where that other lamp had gone. A pervasive murmur came from the gathering, too low to make out, and as he approached the hall's end, he felt his heartbeat quicken. Was there another voice, closer? Or just his imagination?
Slow and quiet in his slippers, he eased his way to the hall's end and peeked around the corner into the bench-filled room. For a moment his mind sketched Kina there, a dark shape against the pale wall, but then he blinked and it was just one of those big slate-boards.
Right. So I am paranoid. Though she could still be at the meeting, or—
A voice. Muffled, but definitely closer than the meeting-room. Slowly, as if in a nightmare, he turned to stare at the curtained archways that faced the dark chamber. No light showed in any of them, but even as he registered that, he caught another faint comment.
Something about portals.
Nerves screaming, he forced himself to move that way, to listen. It wasn't her, it was some other Kerrindrixi, saying things that only sounded like portals...
“—not the best time to catch them.”
That was her voice, unmistakable, and back to using the Imperial accent. Pressing himself to the wall between two archways, Cob listened through the curtain as she sighed in exasperation at some unheard partner. “It's not like I could scry you back,” she murmured, “or talk to you in front of him. I told you the first time, we needed to get somewhere flat and stable. Away from potential avalanches. If you'd just wait… Yes, I know that, but I haven't seen any Muriae so we're not that close— No, of course I can't. ...Um, they might assist. Spiritists, you know? But the knives are largely for show these days. Still, if you'd wait until he's asleep… No, I don't know when that will be, I'm not a seer.”
An assault. She's planning an assault. On me.
Here.
With all these people around.
A surge of anger wiped out the nervous tension. For a moment all he could see was red, and he reached for the curtain, thinking to burst in and punch her out. Then sanity reasserted itself: if she was talking to someone who wasn't here, that meant a mage, a scryer. Which meant a portal—if not now, then soon. Having someone on this side of the scry with stakes wasn't necessary, just helpful; if he knocked her out, the mage would do it alone, and Cob would be up to his neck in soldiers before he could get far. If he wanted to escape, he needed to go now, while she was still reporting.
Shoulda known she'd be in contact somehow. Shit, Enkhaelen probably figured on it and was planning to mess with the scry. Shit shit shit.
He forced himself to go slow in the retreat, to keep his steps silent. Only once he was in the hall did he pick up speed to a stride; any more and he'd alarm the old men. They waved to him again when he came into view, and he returned it strainedly, then ducked back into his room.
Enkhaelen lay where he'd left him, still unconscious. The flame guttered low in the lamp.
Douse him with the remaining oil. Light him. Fight our way out.
No. Pikes no. He'll destroy this whole place.
Pack it all back up and go?
Kina will be on our heels the moment I drag the sled past her.
Forget the sled then. Just throw him over my shoulder.
And then freeze to death on the mountain. Great plan.
Well—
Footsteps outside the curtain. Fingers parting it. Kina's face peeking in, innocence plastered over a hint of tension. “Cob?”
He couldn't wipe the grimace off his face no matter how he tried. “Yeah?” he forced through his teeth.
Her brows went up, dark eyes taking in his tight expression and the still-clothed necromancer. She started to say something, hesitated, then amended with clear deliberateness, “The wood will be here soon. A lot of it. Won't take long to gather. Just thought you should know to be ready.”
For a moment, he just stared as the warning percolated through his brain. Then he nodded slightly. “Thanks.”
“Sure. You jus'...do your thing.” Her gaze flicked once more to Enkhaelen, then she retreated, letting the curtain fall back into place.
Cob watched it for a long moment, not sure what to think. Was this some trick, trying to spook him into leaving Enkhaelen behind? Was she just lying, and not passing him a coded warning at all? Did it matter? There would be a portal opening in that room now, and soldiers slipping through. He couldn't step out without alerting them, couldn't leave without a fight.
His gaze slid to the hide-covered window.
A few strides and he was there, tearing the hide away as quietly as possible. It wasn't large, less than a forearm's-length wide and maybe twice as high, and as he shoved one-handed at the shutters, he had a sudden horrible image of himself stuck halfway through. Then they busted open, cold air pouring in, and he lurched away to grab up his stuff.
The sled would never fit. His pack might not either. Everything else would: the sword, the stakes, the bed-furs, Enkhaelen. He went in that order, pushing the gear through into the night, heaving Enkhaelen onto the bed and rolling him up in a blanket and a hide, then wedging him through the window feet-first. Then went the pack—miraculously, its contents squishing down just enough to let him pop them through.
Then, one-armed, he hoisted himself to the sill and turned as best he could to squeeze through the narrow gap. Skull scraping the wooden frame, he wiggled and struggled and kicked at nothing, grinding his teeth as first one part of his harness and then another hitched up against the edge. Some tool pulled free to clatter on the ground inside, but he couldn't worry about it; he had his elbows out now, and enough leverage for success.
Just as he was pulling his legs through, he realized he'd forgotten his boots.
Pikes, he thought, but it was too late to go back. Clutching the frame, he managed to swing down feet-first, then immediately bent to retrieve his gear. Immediately the cold began seeping through his slippers; without the matching boots, the wards on his parka only extended so far.
Sword, stakes, bed-furs, pack…
Pikes, forgot my staff too!
Finally, Enkhaelen. No time to dally; all he could do, as Kina's voice called from the curtain again, was hoist the necromancer over his shoulder and scan for the mountain. He'd come out from one of the lumpen protrusions on the Tenko Enren's south-east side, so it took him a gut-wrenchingly long moment to spot its white bulk to the north.
Then he was running, ignoring the chill radiating up from his feet, as a stranger's cry of alarm rang out from the window.
*****
What followed was a blur of streets, stone buildings, twinkling lanterns—then snow. Miles and miles and miles of snow, and rock, and ice, starlit and treacherous, with nothing behind him yet but the fear.
At some point, he'd gone off the path. He wasn't sure why. In
this situation, racing to the Great Door of Muria seemed the only sane action, yet his feet had taken him away from it as if preferring death by frostbite. He'd shucked his soaked slippers and socks soon after leaving the city and now his soles were fully numb, with an advance line of pain and tingling trekking up his shins. He couldn't care about that yet; all his will was bent toward keeping himself moving.
The mountain loomed above, titanic, indifferent, its wreath of clouds casting its face in shadow. His mad divergence had taken him along a side-trail, around a spur, and into an angled cleft, all ice and boulders and hard-frozen scree. At its end rose sheer cliffs, but they didn't quite meet, leaving a steep gulley running up their center: a couloir, bright white like a frozen waterfall against the exposed stone. Above that, a ridge-line; above that, another; and on and on until the clouds swallowed it all.
He'd lost his ice axe while fighting through the window, and dropped a piton down a slope while trying to chip out a handhold. He still had three tucked in his belt, but feared to pull them out lest he fumble another. Right now, they weren't necessary; the cleft was angled so that he could scramble up it slowly and awkwardly, his body pressed close to the rocks to keep Enkhaelen's weight from unbalancing him. In the couloir, though, he would need them.
And he would need two hands.
He'd managed to pull his left glove back on with his teeth, but the cursethorn was still asleep. No matter how much he called or prodded, it stayed coiled within his skin, unresponsive. He couldn't tell if it was angry with him, or frightened, or just too cold and tired to help, but without it, he was at the mercy of his spirit-hand.
At least the moon was back up, if barely gibbous. By its half-light, he could see his path and its challenges in brutal clarity, enough to daunt even a well-prepared climber.
No choice, he thought.
But there was. Even as he scrabbled over frozen stone and through undisturbed snow, a soft voice whispered to him: Return to me. Sleep in my arms. His thoughts spiraled wretchedly back through the years until it wasn't a legendary mountain in front of him but the Risholnis cliffs, the waterfall above and his warm little cave-home behind. If he turned, he would see the door-hide parted around his mother's waiting form, the fire casting her shadow ahead. Her eyes were on him. He could feel them.
And her hands… The black drift of her hair...
Something wavered in the air far above, dragging his attention away from the past. Without realizing it, he'd mounted to the base of the couloir, the cliff walls pinching in to make a wedge of the sky and slice the moonlight in half. Now, as he stood beneath that mass of silvered ice, he realized it was the waterfall from back home. He was knee-deep in the river, the roar of it in his ears, the cold spray stinging his face and filling his lungs, and at the top the white trees swayed in some unfelt breeze...
No, not white. Those things weren't white, weren't trees, they were—
Gone.
He blinked rapidly and felt nausea roil his gut, a band of iron tightening across his brow. Mountain-sickness, hallucination—it had to be. He wasn't home. He was far, far away and he had many miles yet to go.
Looking down, he saw he was buried to mid-shin in snow. He couldn't feel anything below the knee.
Sleep on the mountain, among your ancestors, said his mother. Let the sky take your soul and the snow your bones. Be at peace. The world will go on without you.
He tried to answer and felt a pain in his lower lip as it cracked. He ran his tongue over the spot, tasted hot copper blood—and the voice went silent, the pressure of her gaze lifting.
Disoriented but determined, he forced himself to halt and fix things.
His upper body was still fine, the parka keeping his heat contained. When he managed to shrug his burdens off and sit, though, he found his feet stiff, the skin hard and patchy-white. Thinking of how he'd made his staff, he squeezed one foot with his spirit-hand, urging the blood to stir—but when it did, it triggered a horrid backwash of cold, making his heart thud painfully and his head swim. For a moment his vision swarmed with dots and spangles.
Refusing to panic, he closed his eyes and just breathed through it, then continued the spirit-massage of his frostbitten flesh. Slowly life returned to that foot, and he fumbled at the bed-furs and the cover-hide with a knife until he'd managed to cut a square and tie it like a bag at his ankle. He did the same with the other foot, then cut more strips from the hide, knotting them carefully into a second harness so he could wear Enkhaelen like a rucksack. Not a new idea—he'd carried injured comrades before—but still difficult to manage with one hand and one stump.
By the end, his teeth ached from biting the straps and his whole body felt heavier than it should. He chucked all inessential gear from their pack and strapped it to Enkhaelen, then shrugged himself into the new harness. Lifting it felt like trying to shoulder the world.
“All right,” he murmured, staring up at the steepening ice, then fumbled at his belt. Felt a blade's hilt. “Lerien.”
“Here,” said the figment beside him, setting a hand over his. He glanced at his fake childhood friend and saw that they were of an age now, Lerien's fair hair slicked back to show the darker roots, murkwater gaze calm. As they drew the akarriden blade together, he felt a ravenous red rage burst from the weapon, and for a brief moment he was encased in chains, bloody hands palpating his heart—
Then it transferred to Lerien, who suffered then mastered it with professional ease. In moments, Serindas ceased its struggles and let him slide it into the ice, blade horizontal.
It was the only way he could think to do this. With no axe and a missing arm, the climb would normally be beyond him, but Serindas went in smooth and deep. He tested his weight on it, and when it didn't budge, he withdrew it and cut a divot from the ice like he'd learned from Dasira's tale of the Erestoia spire. Concentrating, he wedged his bagged foot into it, stabbed higher on the icefall, then heaved himself up.
Stable. Steady—for now. And to complement that…
He raised his phantom hand. It was riddled with pins-and-needles from chasing away the frostbite, and when he pressed it to the ice, it lit up in pain, but he focused on the element beneath it: the living water frozen in this fierce cascade, dreaming of the rushing thaw. If he used that, and pulled at it gently, slowly, until a nodule deformed outward just enough for a foothold…
There. He planted his other foot on it, heaved again, and reached to pull a new knob out from above.
His world narrowed to those four actions. Cut, step, heave, pull—over and over, inch by inch. Snow and ice-fragments sifted down on him from the wind-torn crags above, but here in the couloir he was sheltered from its raking fingers. He could hear little but his own breathing and the soft creak of settling ice, the chime of fragments tumbling down in his wake, the red-hot hiss of the blade sliding in.
He was at the top of the climb before he realized it, phantom hand grasping thin air instead of ice or stone. He looked up and caught a dash of snow in the face, ducked his head to shake it off, then heaved himself those last few treacherous feet to the lip and over. The knife-edged wind tore at him immediately, and for a moment he just hunched there at the edge, too tired to straighten or think.
Then he raised his head and saw the ridge-line before him, tilting up toward the next sharp step. Legs screaming, he forced himself upright, fumbled Serindas back into its sheath with Lerien's help, then pushed himself onward.
His staff would have been welcome here. The snowpack was thick, firm, but he couldn't trust it; in his mind's eye he saw himself riding it down to Thul Rei Tenko as a mass of splintered limbs. With the cursethorn still unresponsive, he tried to push his will down through his feet, but he couldn't get a good sense of the ground or the snow through his makeshift shoes, and his toes were already chilling toward frostbite again. Even with the lingering wards, he felt weak, drained, the air too thin to sustain him.
Lay down, said his mother. Lay down and sleep.
He shook his head s
lowly. The cold had sapped him, but there was warm breath at his neck: Enkhaelen. The mission, the purpose. He would persevere because he had to.
“Go away, mother,” he murmured into his scarf. “You're not real.”
Of course I am. Lay down, Cob. Return to me.
“Dun wanna.”
It will happen anyway. Why not sooner instead of later? This was a foolish choice, assaulting the mountain. Not just sacrilege but suicide.
Cob gritted his teeth. “I don't wanna hear that from you, 'specially not when y'tell me in your next breath to lay down. 'S the same thing.”
It won't hurt—not like struggling will. Close your eyes, Cob. Let go.
“Not talkin' to you anymore.”
Instead, he focused on the treacherous path and the faint feel of the landscape around him. Ahead, the next ridge rose precipitously to intersect with a ledge before disappearing into the clouds; some way along the ledge, he thought he saw the smooth spill of another couloir. Its top was invisible, its base nonexistent, fanning away as icicles into empty air.
It looked like the best option.
So he assaulted the ridge with blade and soul, climbing against the wind until the moon abandoned him to starlight. All around, stone and ice slept entwined in a vast ancient network, and the more his phantom fingers tweaked at it, the more it wearied him. His eyes kept sagging shut behind their guards, dream-fragments ghosting through his mind: sun, seaweed, snowfall, burning towers, white wings…
He snapped awake and for a moment saw his mother floating above him, hands outstretched.
Then he blinked, and she was gone, and his good arm hurt like fire. It was stretched above him, his hand clenched on Serindas' hilt by virtue of Lerien's tenacious grip; his other arm hung loose at his side. With a shock, Cob realized his feet were out of their notches too, and yanked frantically at the ridge with his phantom hand, nearly driving himself back under with the effort of pulling out a foothold. Only the adrenaline kept him conscious long enough to stabilize.
“Gotta rest. Up there,” he mumbled, squinting past the last ridge-knob to where the rocks made a small horizontal shelf. The bulk of the ledge canted away at a sharp angle, snow-thick and as treacherous as the ridge itself, but that small area had been scraped clear by some recent avalanche, the stone exposed in all its pocks and gaps. He could cram himself in there and catch his breath, check his feet, try to eat. Maybe even wake Enkhaelen.
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 65
