by Jae Vogel
The thought caused her a moment’s despair, and her steps faltered. Perhaps this meant that she was never meant to be satisfied. Or that she was cursed to adventure herself into an early grave.
“Please, don’t let that be,” she murmured, placing both hands on the wall and shoving herself on. Forcing herself on. Struggling against the forces of the world around her and forces of doubt within her.
I have no say in that matter.
The voice answered, though Laova hadn’t expected it to. She felt along with her boots as the snowfall grew worse, worse, and the clouds seemed to close around her. Her breath ran fire through her chest, never enough, always seeming as though part of the air she drew in was missing. The skin around her eyes was the only part exposed, and it felt immobile with cold. Even under her face scarf, her jaw ached with it; her nose was long beyond the realm of feeling.
It was so much worse now than when she began. The wind seemed to be trying to lift her off the mountainside, it was so strong. She could see nothing. She was feeling along the rock, and if a ravine opened under her feet she was doomed.
Still, she took step after step, because there was nothing to do but continue forward. She’d come this far. Too late to turn back.
The wind blasted like a physical force with sudden life, sudden intensity. Laova did not stop.
And suddenly, she stepped out into open air. Her boots crunched through snow that rifled gently along in a calm breeze, and the black fog and driving snow vanished. There was light. Moonlight. Laova spun around, and saw the miasma of the storm just below, but above, the clear sky was almost close enough to touch. Stars glimmered, and she could not look away. She’d never been at such a height in her life, and even while she still struggled to breathe, it was calm, now, calm enough to afford a moment of wonder.
Her hood had been torn back off her head, and it was cold, but Laova hardly paid it attention. The ghost moon was wide and round. It was full, the full moon of her ritual hunt.
And then, as if they had been waiting for her, the spirit lights. They began as wispy hints of color against the sky. Laova watched in fascination as the colors stretched and undulated, waving at her, beckoning her nearer. In red and yellow-green and purple, they beckoned, and Laova answered the call.
***
Nemlach froze.
Taren, who’d been barreling stubbornly forward with his head burrowed into his chest, diving into the wind, ran right into his back and nearly bounced off into the nearest snowdrift. Indignant, he righted himself.
“What are you doing?”
Nemlach didn’t answer. He made a small gesture with his hand, not turning to look at Taren, but it was too small a movement for Taren to take note of in the dark.
Taren meanwhile, strode up to stand even with Nemlach. They hadn’t stopped in hours. Both were perilously exhausted and the storm was not lightening, but Taren still expected to see a ravine or a sheet of rock at Nemlach’s feet, for how suddenly he’d frozen.
“Why are you stopping?” Taren shouted.
Then he looked. Then he froze, too.
Sitting five paces—less than five paces—ahead crouched a shape in the snow. Details were impossible to make out; the veil of the cloudy storm assured that. It sat stock still on its haunches, great shoulders rippled gently with each breath. Two green-gold glimmers picked out of the darkness, watching the men approach.
Taren could almost feel the teeth in his shoulder again. He shivered.
“She came this way,” Nemlach murmured.
Taren nodded; he felt it, too. The creature was unnatural. He’d known the minute it sank its fangs into his body. Laova’s behavior, also, was surreal. That the two were connected seemed simple, expected.
“We’re on the right track.”
Taren looked up at Nemlach. He was staring at the wolf with something like excitement, with a thrill of fear. It all fell into place suddenly, and Taren looked back at the creature.
“Do you think it will let us… go to her?” Taren asked quietly.
“If it wanted, it could have killed us already,” Nemlach replied.
Nemlach moved forward, walking towards the glowering mountain wolf as if it were a happy dog with a wagging tail. Taren’s heart was thudding like drums in his ears, but he couldn’t let Nemlach be so brave while Taren cowered. He shadowed the old hunter’s steps carefully; watching as the vague shape in the snow grew clear.
A low growl welcomed them as they approached; Nemlach ignored it and kept walking, even though the sound send ripples of chills up and down Taren’s skin under the hide coats. Maybe it was just the memory of those teeth in his chest, those eyes so close to his own, but Taren was having a difficult time forcing his feet to move closer to the creature.
Their progress up Star-Reach had felt slow and pathetic, but it was far too soon that the two hunters stood close enough to see the hairs rising on the hackles of the wolf. It growled again, but did not moved. Taren was beginning to doubt Nemlach’s confidence, but they kept walking, calmly, past the wolf, up the mountain, through the storm.
“She came this way,” Nemlach said again. “We’re almost there. I know. We’re almost there.”
Taren had never heard Nemlach speak so much as he had tonight. They battled and clawed up the slope, through crags of black rock and winds so fast they had to hold onto each other to stay grounded. Onward, after Laova.
Onward, towards whatever had called her to chase this mad quest.
It never occurred to either of them that they might suddenly come upon Laova’s frozen corpse. It was not possible. Without having to say it, they both understood that something more than a mere storm was in motion, something pervasive, something that had brought them all here.
Something that wanted Laova, and it wanted her alive.
Sure enough, they stumbled across no corpses.
Chapter 11
“They’re probably all dead,” Khara mumbled miserably.
Ghal snorted his agreement, but it lacked his usual gruff spirit. His lined, gray face had never looked quite so sagging and lifeless. His dark eyes were hooded with a solemn melancholy, one they all felt sharply as the four left behind huddled close around the fire. Perhaps it hadn’t really grown colder in their sheltering tent. Then again, feeling the void left by those that were missing, maybe it had.
Bamet lay on his back with his head near the fire, staring up at the low canvas ceiling.
“Could you tell a story, Ghal?” he asked softly, feeling and sounding like a child. “Something to… pass the time.”
The time until the storm broke. The time until they departed, hopeless, never knowing… No one spoke it. Instead, three hesitant gazes rolled to fix on Rell. They darted away almost as quickly. No one wanted to draw her attention.
Since Nemlach had left, Rell hadn’t said a word. As if there was nothing to say—she had watched in shock, with the rest, as he tramped off to certain death. Then she’d turned without comment or sound and taken a seat by the fire.
The others had gone about arranging their campfire and a good store of wood, enough to last out another day or two. No one needed to be told that there was no chance of safely escaping Star-Reach’s foothills while this snowstorm raged, so they assumed that blocked themselves in, stopping up the gaps in the tent walls and doing everything possible to keep in heat, was the best way. The snow helped; as it buried them, it insulated their walls.
Ghal looked over at Bamet and Khara and nodded.
“It is said,” he began, slipping back into his familiar story-teller rhythm, “that the cities of the Elder Men still stand. Some are in ruins. Some fell, into deep crevices that opened up to swallow their houses, their great houses that reached into the sky. Some are filled with water, deeper than any lake, deeper than any man could swim. Only the tops of their tallest towers can be seen, still aglow.
“All are dangerous, but it is said that brave men and women have journeyed to pay homage to the old ones, the dead ones.”
Khara spoke up in a half-whisper. “Why must it be this one?”
She was understood perfectly; there was an eeriness, even apart from their sorrow for their lost friends. Something unnatural on this mountain. Unnatural, or perhaps merely unearthly. In any case, it made the familiar tale uncomfortable.
“Yes,” Rell answered.
They all looked at her, uneasy.
Rell was still staring into the smoking, guttering fire. “Yes, it must be this one.”
There was no more discussion after that. Ghal began, the old parable about the brave shaman, Henra, how he’d journeyed to the land of the lost Elder Men, those who had so resembled gods, following a voice in his dreams, in his head…
Henra had gone to them, those who had died thinking they were gods. It was said he’d met them, communed with spirits of the departed that still lingered on in the old places. He’d returned, bringing some pieces of their world back with him. The Scim was rumored to have been retrieved by Henra’s hand.
But what had killed the Elder Men also lingered on in their empty houses. Henra carried it back inside him, and it withered him slowly. Even those who tended him grew sick, if less. The ones who touched and carried the artifacts brought back grew weak and thin.
Soon Henra was gone, leaving his people with only a handful of haunted tokens as a reminder that when you travel to the realms of gods, or even just those who consider themselves gods, you do not return the same.
***
Nemlach and Taren moved as fast as possible through the clear air. Without warning, the storm had vanished like a nightmare, leaving a surreal world of depthless sky, bright stars, and fiery colors of the gods’ lights above. Star-Reach stood fast against the night, catching the light of the full moon and glowing like the shadow of a white flame.
It was perfectly clear, and against the pristine white of the peak’s face, Taren and Nemlach could clearly see a line of tracks that ascended toward the sky, toward the highest summit. Laova.
“Come on,” Taren panted. “Almost there! These tracks… aren’t old!” They were practically fresh, in fact.
Nemlach was feverish again; maybe it was just exhaustion and the altitude. He felt cool under his hides, and tried to ignore it. Until a short time ago, he’d been plenty warm from the exertion of hiking up this damned mountain. But a little before they’d broken into the open air…
“I’m going,” he growled.
“Gods,” Taren whispered. Without the storm to struggle through, he moved easily through the shallow snow. “The stars are so close! And the… the spirit lights!”
The lights were not an uncommon sight, but Nemlach had to agree, he’d never seen them like this. They seemed to surround the mountain. They were above the clouds, now, so nothing of the world existed except this mountain, those stars, the phantom moon and the lights of the gods, gods that could not have been far off.
And Laova. Laova was here, at the end of this trail. Was she all right? What had brought her here? Did Nemlach even want to know?
He decided he didn’t, but it was too late for that.
The summit was near. Thirty paces, up a steep, snowy grade, jutting with steps that almost seemed deliberate. Nemlach and Taren rushed to climb them, eager and terrified to meet what they would find at the top. It was close.
The air was so thin. Nemlach tried not to let Taren see how difficult it was, how dizzy he felt. He slugged behind, despite his best efforts to keep up.
“Nemlach! What’s… taking so long?” Taren asked, breathily.
Nemlach shook his head. He wasn’t going to admit it.
To his shock, Nemlach felt an arm around his waist.
“I don’t feel—like expla—explaining to—Laova—why I left you—staggering up—the hill.”
So together, they worked upward. Taren went slower, but Nemlach went faster, and they moved steadily toward what they both wanted.
Ten paces… Nemlach’s vision was blurry every few breaths. Maybe he was too old.
Five paces… The terrible possibility that they were about to find Laova dead, or worse, still missing, arose. Nemlach could hardly bear to contemplate it, but now that it was in his mind, it persisted as he and Taren hiked up the four, then three, then two paces left.
And then they were standing at the top of the world.
“Laova!”
Both of them said it at once, and she turned, shocked to find them here. She didn’t need to say in words what she thought; Nemlach could see clearly on her face the stages of surprise as first she realized they were here, then realized they were here together.
His breath caught; a tiny part of Nemlach had believed that he was never going to see Laova again, and here she was, no worse for wear. Her hood and scarf were down—her face was going to freeze and she’d lose both her ears if she didn’t cover up soon. But she was here, alive. They’d done it. They’d found her.
Nemlach took a step toward her. Laova backed away.
He realized how close she was to a precipice, a rocky cliff that cut out of the flat summit and looked over what was likely a steep fall onto the crags below.
“Careful, Laova!”
“Please stay back,” she pleaded urgently. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Come down,” he urged gently. Nemlach didn’t try to approach. “Come down, tell us what’s… going on.” He didn’t try to get closer, just stood as passively as could be, waiting for her to make her own move. Taren stood back, uncertain and willing to let Nemlach handle this unexpected situation.
“I’m going,” Laova told him. Did his vision blur at just the wrong time, or was there sadness, real sadness in her eyes?
“Going where?” he asked. And yet… something seemed wrong. Nemlach felt it clearly, gradually growing like the dawn. An energy seemed to blossom, and it tingled the hairs on his arms and neck unpleasantly. The space around them seemed thick, not with driving snow or wind or anything visible, anything tangible. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
“Laova, come back with us!” Taren exclaimed suddenly. His voice was a little shrill and panicky; he felt it too, then, whatever bizarre force that filled their ears and eyes and pressed against their skin. Nemlach held out an arm to stop Taren before the kid could dart forward. He knew what Taren felt, the urge to run up to Laova, grab her by the arm and physically carry her away. It wasn’t safe here. It wasn’t right here.
“I’m going,” she repeated.
This was not reassuring; she clearly did not mean ‘going with them’, going back to safety, back to their village.
“Going where?” Nemlach asked.
Laova hesitated. It was evident in every line of her body as she looked at Nemlach—regret. It hurt worse than if she had carelessly sauntered off, run into the night without a backward glance.
“I’m so sorry, Nemlach.”
“Then come back with us,” Nemlach murmured, trying to hold her eyes.
There was a second—just one—where Laova relaxed. Her shoulders came down, and her wide eyes blinked. She even took a half step in his direction. The tightness in Nemlach’s chest, that which had been there since the moment he reached for Laova in the dark and did not find her, loosened. It was the moment he believed he might actually convince her.
But then, everything turned bright. It was as if the spirit lights had closed in around them, wrapped around them like a cloth. There was a humming, then a roaring in Nemlach’s ears, like he was falling.
In the next moment, all the colors had blinked out, gone. And gone, too, was Laova.
Despair shook Nemlach to his core.
“Laova!”
He ran, or ran as best as he could, to the ledge. The last thing he ever wanted to see was Laova’s mangled body on the slopes, falling away, but he had to know. Not knowing was going to kill him. But there was nothing, not even a blemish to suggest anything had landed below.
“Laova!” he shouted. “LAOVA!”
***
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When the light touched down and took her, Laova had shut her eyes; she had no choice, really. It was far too bright to even try keep them open. It had been terrifically, breathtakingly cold on Star-Reach. It had been sinking into her bones, although in her excitement Laova had hardly noticed.
So when the cold vanished, it was the first thing she felt. The warmth was welcome, healing. She realized that her nose and ears were numb as prickling sensation seeped back into them.
And then, she realized that she wasn’t wearing her hides any longer. She felt naked without them; instead, a light garment flowed from her shoulders and was sashed around her waist. She was standing barefoot on a fur; she felt it between her half-frozen toes.
Laova swallowed past a sudden dryness in her throat. She shook, and tried to tell herself it was only an after-effect of the mountain cold.
“Welcome.”
The shaking got worse.
Laova didn’t open her eyes. This voice was familiar, but also different. It was solid, real. It filled her ears, and fluctuated with the imperfections of a physical body. It was deep and resonant.
The warmth was soothing her stiff muscles and sore skin. Through her eyelids, she could see the hint of gentle light. Firelight; she heard it crackling.
“Open your eyes, Laova. You’re safe here.”
She swallowed dryly again. Slowly, Laova cracked open her eyelids and looked around.
To her surprise, she was in a canvas tent. It was large; the commune tent back in her village wasn’t even quite this size. Dark alcoves and cozy corners reached out, away from the central hearth that merrily burned and gave off a wonderful, radiant heat. Fur lined the floor; heaps of cushions and hides were spaced about, more than she’d ever seen.
