As the clashing steel blades rang out across the mountain side, Taziri wrapped her fingers around the woven strap on the mouth of the bag and gently pulled it back toward her. The heavy stone inside the bag rolled and lodged deeper under the rocks. She whipped her hand back to avoid it being crushed. “Damn it!”
She looked up again and saw Fabris staring straight back at her from the trail.
“No, no, no!” Lorenzo lunged just as the Italian took two running steps and leapt out over the snowy slope.
Fabris landed gracefully on an exposed stone, then dashed down and stutter-stepped his way through the snow, bounding over mounds and crashing through the drifts. It only took him a few seconds to reach the rock where the canvas bag was wedged. Taziri was still hauling on the strap to pull it free when the Italian’s boot slammed into the rock just above her head and his sword sliced toward her face.
And then the world raced away and she saw the rapier spark against the rock as she fell backward. Alonso’s hands were digging into her underarms, the left one pinching her breast, as he hauled her away from Fabris’s blade and she fell back onto the young man.
“Thanks,” she wheezed.
Alonso fumbled across her chest and yanked down on her left sleeve. “Shoot him!”
Salvator had both hands on the woven strap and was straining to pull the bag free of the rocks. Taziri shoved her sleeve back to her elbow and released her cannon. It sprang up and clicked into position as the mountain air stung her exposed skin. “Fabris! Drop the bag!”
If he heard her over the gusting wind, he made no sign of it as he continued to yank the bag back and forth. A moment later, the bag scraped free of the rocks and the Italian wobbled upright, swinging the bag over his shoulder.
“Shoot!” Alonso cried.
I’m killing a man in cold blood. I’m shooting a human being. I’m committing murder. What if…
Taziri held up her shaking arm against the arctic blasts of snow and sleet and she pulled the trigger. The shotgun’s recoil shoved her back and the side of her head clipped Alonso’s chin. For a moment all she could do was clutch the blazing spot on her skull and clench her eyes shut, grinding her teeth and trying not to scream. Alonso groaned through his pressed lips.
With a blazing, throbbing ache in her arm, Taziri sat up and saw Fabris staring back at her with a hateful glare.
I meant to wing him, not to miss him!
She fumbled through her pockets for another shell as she stood up. Alonso dragged himself up by grabbing her belt and almost pulled her back to the ground. By the time she found another shell and opened the chamber to reload, Taziri’s fingers were blue and numb.
The Italian was already halfway back to the trail with the bag slung over his shoulder by the time Taziri raised her gun again, but she dropped her arm a second later.
Not in the back.
“Come on!” She grabbed Alonso’s arm and together they began trudging and stumbling and clawing their way up through the snow and over the rocks.
Chapter 24. Lorenzo
The hidalgo almost leaped after Salvator, but Mirari’s shrieking turned Lorenzo back to the tower of shaggy white hair behind him. The basajaun didn’t seem to notice the knife still stuck in its back or the dark red streams of blood running down its arms and legs to stain the snow. It leaned down to roar in the masked girl’s face, and the masked girl raised her hatchet to scream back into the creature’s fanged maw.
The beast swung its sharp rock at Mirari’s head and she swung her hatchet two-handed into the basajaun’s wrist. A thin spatter of blood sprayed across the virgin snow as the creature fell back a single step, wailing and clutching the stump where its hand had been.
It lunged forward again, throwing its full body weight down on the girl as through to crush her into the freezing snow. Lorenzo caught the tails of her coat and pulled her out of the way. The basajaun collapsed face down on the ground, two of its outstretched fingers clawing at Mirari’s boot.
Lorenzo scrambled forward and slid his espada into the beast’s neck and then again through the back where he guessed the heart to be. Standing back and surveying his work, a sudden coldness and emptiness hollowed him out, leaving him disgusted and saddened. The creature didn’t move, didn’t twitch, didn’t gasp.
Rest in peace, whatever you are.
He turned away and made a half-hearted effort to look for Shahera and Dante on the trail ahead.
Mirari stood up and retrieved her knife from the carcass. “You fight well, Don Lorenzo. You should try using a real sword some day.”
He glanced down at the thin whip of a blade in his hand where a few drops of blood had already frozen and crystallized on the steel. “This one seems real enough.”
He frowned at the snow obscuring the trail and then peered down the slope where he could see a cluster of bodies around a large rocky outcropping. “Mirari, go find Shahera and Dante. Make sure they’re all right.”
“But Alonso!” she pointed at the figures below them.
“I’ll get Alonso, you just take care of the others!”
She nodded and dashed off into the whiteness, leaving a thin trail of blood dripping from her knife.
With his sword in hand, Lorenzo leaned down to find a handhold and begin his descent when he heard the gunshot. The boom echoed up the mountain side and he froze, staring through the driving snow at the blurred figures.
Did she kill him? Or did he overpower her and kill her with her own gun?
“Alonso! Taziri!” Seconds passed and no one seemed to be moving so Lorenzo slid down a few yards to the first boulder. Then he saw Salvator climbing back up toward the trail, angling away from him, and below the Italian he saw two more figures struggling to ascend.
They’re alive. They’re all right. So I need to stop him.
Lorenzo scanned the terrain for a safe path, but saw only shining and shadowy whites, and so he dashed out from his boulder with a breathless prayer on his lips. He crashed and slipped and jumped and ran across the face of the mountain, careening downward twice as fast as he moved forward but still plunging straight for Salvator. Lorenzo kept his uphill hand on the ground and with the other he held his sword high and ready to strike.
Five more paces.
Two more.
Lorenzo sliced at the Italian’s hand holding the canvas bag but his feet betrayed him, shooting across a sheet of ice and dropping him to the ground. His espada slashed down Salvator’s leg and the Italian shouted, “Merda!”
Lorenzo fell on his side and grabbed at the snow and the rocks but his momentum carried him on below Salvator, sliding and falling sideways, faster and faster. He skidded to a stop just a few yards above Taziri and Alonso. He blinked down at them. “Are you all right?”
They squinted up through the freezing wind. “Yes!”
He looked up to see Salvator still trudging up the slope, though slower than before. Lorenzo sheathed his sword and grabbed the Mazigh woman’s hand. Together, they hauled Alonso up the slope one painful step after another. Several times the hidalgo looked up to see how far Salvator had gotten, and finally he looked up to see that Salvator was gone.
He took the skyfire stone. He took my stone. What am I going to tell Ariel? How will I track him down? Where will he go? Back to Rome? And what will he do with the stone when he gets there?
At the top of the slope, they staggered onto the trail and stood in the knee-deep snow beside the body of the basajaun already covered in a thin blanket of white powder. After a moment of exhausted gasping and shivering, Lorenzo helped the other two to properly close up their coats against the bitter storm and then he led them slowly along the trail in search of Mirari and the others.
It took longer than he expected to find the three people huddled in the lee of a large overhang. They were kneeling and sitting close together in the snow.
“Where is he? Where is Fabris?” Lorenzo shouted over the wind.
Mirari pointed down the trail. “He ran past a moment
ago.”
The wind screamed higher and louder and everyone stumbled half a step toward the mountain side, all clutching their coats and hats.
“Get up! Everyone needs to get up. We need to keep moving,” Lorenzo said. “I know we’re all tired and hurt, but if we don’t get off the mountain before dark, then we’ll freeze. Come on, everyone up.”
He held out his hand to Dante. The Italian didn’t move. Shahera lay curled up beside him, one bare hand on his chest.
“Both stabbed through the heart,” Mirari said calmly. “He must have killed them as he came up the path to find you.”
Lorenzo swallowed as he knelt down to check them each for a pulse. There was none. Dante slumped against the rock, his legs dusted with fresh snow, one of his eyes still open and white with frost. Shahera’s mouth hung open, her lips blue. Lorenzo closed their eyes and mouths and smoothed their hair away from their faces.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of this was supposed to happen. And now we have to leave them here like this.
He stood up. “We have to leave them here. We can’t carry them with us.”
“Oh God, no.” Taziri knelt down beside the bodies. She took Shahera’s hand.
“I’m sorry, but we have to go now.” Lorenzo helped her up and started her moving on down the trail.
“But they were my responsibility!” Taziri shook him off. “We can’t just leave them.”
“We have to!” Lorenzo grimaced as he pulled her away from the bodies.
They were unarmed. Why kill them? Why would anyone kill a stranger for no reason?
Mirari led the way with the others close behind her. Lorenzo lagged a few paces with Alonso. The younger man breathed in shallow wheezes and his hand remained tightly pressed against his ribs. Lorenzo kept a firm grip on his student’s shoulder, ever ready to grab him should he stumble or falter, but Alonso shuffled all the way back across the western face of the mountain and down the goat path without a single misstep.
When they finally reached the deep rocky gullies, the sky was a deep purple and a few colorless stars were glistening overhead. The snow let up but the wind grew fiercer, whistling and howling and shrieking through the cracks in the rocks and showering them with the snow dust lying on the ground. Mirari led them all the way back down the road to Yesero, to the doors of the wayhouse. Taziri stumbled inside without pausing, but Mirari stood by the door and when Lorenzo and Alonso passed her she touched the young man’s arm. Alonso stopped, looked at her, and then nodded at the hidalgo.
Lorenzo went inside alone and passed the table where Taziri sat near the fire, already clutching the edge of her steaming plate of roasted goat and potatoes, her face pale, her eyes vacant. He went back to the little room with the three beds, closed the door behind him, and sat down on his bed. The room was dim and cool, but compared to the hours of walking through the mountain storm, Lorenzo felt swaddled in heat and silence, his eyes useless after staring into the snow glare all day long. He looked down at his gloved hands, barely able to see them in the dark.
“I’m sorry, sister.”
“It’s not your fault.” The dead nun sat down on the bed across from him, her silvery hands folded in her silvery lap. “You did what you could. That’s all anyone can do.”
“I should have left the others here,” he said. “Dante and Shahera would still be alive, and Alonso wouldn’t have been hurt, and those things on the mountain would…” He swallowed.
“If you’d left the others here, then Salvator might have simply killed them all here before he came after you. You can’t know what might have happened. Be grateful that you’re alive, and your student is alive, and the Mazigh is alive.”
Lorenzo raised his head. “Are you saying that it’s not so bad since the people who died weren’t important to me? Because they were strangers?”
“Not exactly. But losing two strangers is easier than losing two friends or loved ones. I’m not saying it’s noble or holy, but it is human. Don’t hate yourself for that,” Ariel said. “You’re allowed to be human.”
“I hate being human,” he said. “I should be better than this. Wiser. Stronger.”
“Oh, Lorenzo. You already took them in, fed them and clothed them, and did everything you could to defend them from their own enemies. God knows where your heart lies.”
“This isn’t about scoring points with the man upstairs.” Lorenzo looked up at the black ceiling. “Dante and Shahera died because of me. Because I took them up there. Because I got them excited about finding the stone. But why…why did he kill them? Why bother? How can he just go through life killing innocent people? He could have left them alive and nothing else would have changed. He still would have stolen the stone, only maybe a moment or two later.”
“A moment or two can make all the difference in the world.”
They sat in silence. Lorenzo looked back down at his hands and slowly pulled off his gloves. He peered up through his brows, expecting to see a vacant bed but the ghost was still sitting there, watching him.
“Lorenzo?”
“Hm?”
“I saw him leave. The Italian. I saw him leave through the village about an hour before you arrived. He mounted a horse and rode away with a large sack over his shoulder,” Ariel said. “And I knew the skyfire stone was in the sack. I could feel it.”
He nodded. “I wish you could have seen it. A lump of gold as big as my head on a rock table glowing red from the heat. A whole mountain side bare of snow and hot to the touch, but the stone was cool as we wrapped the harness around it.”
“No, Lorenzo. I mean that I actually felt the stone. I could feel it pulling me toward it just as I can feel the pull of your medallion and those other faraway cities.”
Lorenzo touched the triquetra under his shirt. “You mean you have the same connection to the stone as to this? But I thought the reason you could sense the medallion was because you wore it in life. You never touched the stone in life, did you?”
“Of course not. I never dreamed it was a mere half day’s walk from a little town like this, either. How were you so certain this was the right mountain?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t completely sure. I had a list of six mountains, but this was by far the best fit for all the evidence we collected. We got lucky.” He winced at his choice of words.
There wasn’t anything lucky about today.
The nun refolded her insubstantial hands. “Lorenzo, I can still feel the stone now. I can feel it drawing me south. It almost feels as though I could release this aether form right now and be whisked across the countryside to the stone this very minute.”
Lorenzo pulled out his medallion and stared at the metal disc. “And it’s the same feeling you get from this thing?”
“Oh yes, only stronger. Much stronger.” Ariel reached out her pale hand to the dim golden disc in his hand. As her finger passed through the metal, the drifting aether of her form suddenly swirled down violently into the triquetra. The woman cried out and snatched her hand away.
Lorenzo stared as the white vapors slowly resolved back into the nun’s hand, and then he stared down at the medallion. “It feels…warmer. What just happened?”
“It felt like I was being drawn into it.” Ariel shifted away down the bed. “It felt like a riptide of aether, and my very soul was draining down with it.”
He held it out to her. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
She frowned but reached out again with a single finger. As it came closer to the dark gold, the aether slid forward off her in a silvery cascade. “It feels warm. I don’t understand, I haven’t felt warm since I died, Lorenzo. I’m afraid.”
“All right, that’s enough.” He pulled the medallion back and Ariel fell off the bed toward him, her entire hand embedded in the gold. “What’s happening? Back away, sister.”
“I’m trying!”
They both stood up and Lorenzo retreated to the far wall, but the nun glided after him, her arm sunken int
o the medallion up to the shoulder.
“Lorenzo, please, make it stop. I can’t focus, I can’t think.”
The hidalgo stared around the room, but there was nothing at hand except the bedding. “What can I do? Tell me what to do!” He pulled back again but the nun was swept along with him. The medallion felt warm in the palm of his hand. He threw the triquetra across the room.
The medallion clanged against the wall and thumped on the floor.
Lorenzo blinked. Ariel was gone.
“Sister?”
He slowly crossed the room, staring at the shadows, listening.
“Sister?”
Oh God, what have I done?
He found the medallion in the corner and picked it up. The gold warmed his skin and he wrapped his hand around it, pressing the triquetra into his palm. “Ariel?”
“Lorenzo?”
“Sister?” Lorenzo looked around the empty room. “Where are you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see anything. It’s dark. And it’s warm.”
Lorenzo opened his hand to look at the medallion.
“It’s lighter now. I think I can see your face, Lorenzo, but I can’t seem to move. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t even turn my eyes. Can you see me?”
He nodded at the golden disc in his hand. “I think I do. I think you’re inside the medallion.”
“Inside…?”
Lorenzo sat on the bed again. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”
“Neither have I.” She paused. “It feels like nothing I’ve ever known. It’s so still and warm. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t feel like anything. I feel adrift and anchored at the same time.”
“I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”
What have I done? Nothing can harm a ghost, nothing!
“I don’t know, Lorenzo.” Ariel fell silent for a long moment. “Well, whatever this is, I suppose it’s not the end of the world. I spent the first twenty years of my death resting in my grave, contemplating my life. It can’t hurt to spend a little time resting here. Wherever here is. I’m sure we’ll figure it out in time. Just try not to lose the medallion, Lorenzo.”
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