by Troy Denning
Atreus felt another rush of anger well up inside him but managed to bite his tongue and say nothing until it passed.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, "that's true, but you did tell me that Langdarma was only a myth."
Seema's golden cheeks darkened to a tarnished bronze.
"Yes, I lied to you. I had hoped by now you would understand why."
"I understand." Despite his promise to the Sannyasi, Atreus could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. He touched a finger to his hideous cheek and said, "I have understood my whole life. My mistake was in thinking you were different than people elsewhere."
Seema looked at her hands. "I do not know how people are elsewhere," she said, "but I did not lie to you because of how you look."
" Don't insult me," Atreus told her, then waved his hand at the lush forest below. "Everything is beautiful in Langdarma, and I am ugly. I know why you didn't want me here."
Now Seema's voice took on an angry edge. "That is not so. You saw the Sannyasi's anger for yourself."
Atreus shrugged and said, "What's the difference? Whether you found me too ugly or simply knew the Sannyasi would, the result was the same."
"You are not ugly. It is only that you do not belong here. The Sannyasi's concern is for your welfare and Langdarma's."
Atreus rolled his eyes and looked toward a swarm of scarlet butterflies dancing among the white blossoms of a plum tree.
Seema stood and came to his chair. "If you were ugly," she asked, "would I do this?"
Taking Atreus's cheeks in her hands, she leaned down and pressed her lips to his, and this time she was not trying to breathe for him. There was nothing friendly or modest in the kiss. Her mouth was warm and liquid and charged with ardor, and Atreus began to feel stirrings he had only dreamed of. His hands rose of their own accord and grasped her shoulders, drawing her down onto his lap. She did not resist. He pulled her close, mashing her body close to his, feeling her wonderful softness against his lumpy brawn, so lost in passion that when he heard a sudden peculiar hissing sound, he did not even recognize it as his own voice. Seema cried out and jumped out of the chair.
"Your burns!" she cried, staring down at his bandaged thighs.
Atreus blushed, realizing there was more to notice in his lap than burns. Seema paid no attention to his embarrassment. She pulled the bandages back, then winced at his torn and oozing scabs.
"We should continue this later," she said, kissing Atreus on the cheek. "The Sannyasi would be most displeased if I interfered with your recovery."
"You won't," Atreus said. His sour mood of a few minutes earlier had vanished, vanquished by the giddy astonishment Seema's kiss had stirred within his breast. "And even if you do, I don't particularly care what the Sannyasi thinks."
Seema's jaw started to drop in shock, then she smiled. "I do." She wagged a finger at Atreus and drew her chair closer, adding, "There will be plenty of time later for Devotions."
"Devotions?"
Now it was Seema who blushed. "You know…"
But Atreus did not know, having learned as a young man that any sort of amorous advance would send a woman scurrying for the safety of her father's counting room.
Seema took his hand, drawing Atreus's thoughts back to the balcony. "Perhaps it is better to wait anyway. It seems a lifetime since Tarch pulled you onto the slave barge, but it has been less than a ten-day. In truth, I hardly know you."
"What do you want to know?"
Seema thought for a moment, then said, "Why you are so angry with yourself."
"Angry? I don't believe I am."
Seema nodded and said, "You are. I see it in this 'ugliness' you talk about. Why would you call yourself such names if you were not angry with yourself?"
Atreus scowled. "Perhaps because that is what I learned from others."
"Ah… so you are angry because you do not look the way they think you should, and so you cross the world, hoping that this penance will put you at peace with yourself."
"Not exactly," Atreus said, unsure as to whether or not she was mocking him. "I came to find Langdarma."
"Because someone told you it would make you handsome." Seema smiled, faced him, and tapped his chest. "And it will, if you let it."
"I know, I know… beauty comes from within," Atreus said. "But to tell you the truth, I'm hoping for something more external."
He gazed directly into Seema's brown eyes, quietly praying that she would say something about the Fountain of Infinite Grace. Instead, she only touched her fingers to his cheek.
"I am afraid you will have to look inside first. Until you change the way you look at yourself, nothing in Langdarma will change how others see you."
"Really?" Atreus started to ask her about the Fountain, then recalled how she had deceived him about Langdarma's existence and felt his eyes grow hard. Not wanting her to see that he knew she was lying, he withdrew his hand from hers and looked away. "Then I have just crossed half the world for nothing."
"No, not for nothing," said Seema. "Inside every ugliness lies a greater beauty. Before you leave, I will make you understand this. I promise."
Not trusting himself to make a civil answer, Atreus merely grunted.
"Perhaps I should prepare you something to eat," Seema said, standing. "Your hunger is making you cross."
As she turned to go, the door downstairs banged open. "Atreus!" Yago's deep voice reverberated up through the house.
"Out here," Atreus called, his heart jumping at the ogre's excitement "On the balcony… with Seema."
He emphasized these last two words as a warning. The last thing he wanted was for Yago to burst through the door and blurt out that they had finally found the Fountain of Infinite Grace. If Seema was not willing to tell him about it, he suspected the Sannyasi would take a dim view of them knowing its location.
Yago came pounding up the stairs so hard that he shook the entire hut, stomping across Atreus's room toward the balcony. Seema met him at the door, her eyes wide with alarm, her hand raised to stop him.
"Stay inside," she warned, "or you will tear my poor balcony off my house."
Yago dropped to his hands and knees, then thrust his head and shoulders out through the door.
Before the ogre could speak, Atreus said, "Yago, calm down. I'm sure your news can wait until you gather your thoughts."
"A moment, yes, but perhaps not longer," panted Rishi. The Mar squeezed past the ogre. "We have just come from Phari, where there is most disturbing news."
"Phari?" Atreus asked.
"A hamlet on the other side of the basin," explained Seema. "What is wrong in Phari?"
"Tarch!" boomed Yago.
Seema's face paled to sickly yellow. "That is not possible!" she said. "He could not follow us through the Passing."
"He did," insisted Yago. "A man's daughter is missing."
Seema frowned. "You saw Tarch take her?" she asked.
"No, thank the Forgotten Ones," answered Rishi. "She did not come home last night. They were searching for her when we arrived."
Seema took a moment to gather her wits, then asked, "What did you tell them?"
"Tell them?" echoed Rishi. That we had not seen the girl. Then we left. They kept looking at Yago and his big teeth and saying absurd things about the yeti, and I could see at once there was no use trying to reason with them."
"You said nothing about Tarch?" Seema asked.
Yago shook his head. They were edgy enough without us starting rumors about scaly devils," he explained.
Seema closed her eyes in relief. "You were right to hold your tongues," she said. "I am sure this has nothing to do with Tarch."
"How?" Atreus asked, perched on the edge of his chair. "How do you know that?"
Seema said, "Even if he could have tracked us into the mountain-which he could not do-he does not know the Passing magic. He would be trapped inside forever."
"All the same, Tarch has a nasty way of surprising us," said Atreus. He stood, biting back a his
s of pain as his mending leg objected. "We'd better go have a look."
"There is no need." Seema pushed Atreus into his chair and added, "Even if there was, you are in no condition to go anywhere."
"But Tarch-"
"Could not have followed us," Seema insisted. There was just enough doubt in her voice to make Atreus wonder whom she was trying to convince. "Even in Langdarma, we have the normal sorts of tragedy. Children drown or hit their heads or get lost just like anyplace else, and you will only add to the family's anguish with senseless talk of devils."
CHAPTER 14
Atreus sat alone at the rough-hewn table, sipping buttered tea from a wooden mug while Seema cleaned the iron breakfast pot He would have helped, but her cooking area was more an apothecary than a kitchen, and no one was permitted to invade that spicy-smelling realm of earthenware jars and stoppered vials. Yago and Rishi were clumping around upstairs, gathering bedrolls and extra cloaks in preparation for an overnight foray. Having found no sign of the Fountain of Infinite Grace in the basin, Atreus had prevailed upon them to begin exploring the main valley.
"There is no need to be envious," said Seema. "We will be joining your friends soon. Your leg is growing stronger every day."
Atreus nodded slowly. "That's just what I was thinking," he said, "and soon after that I'll be well enough to leave."
"Perhaps not so soon. The Sannyasi will not ask you to go until you are strong enough to cross the High Yehimals without help, and by then the weather may well have turned." Seema feigned a look of pity and added, "I am sorry to tell you this, but it is possible you will still be here next spring."
"I can think of worse fates," Atreus said, half grinning. This place has a way of growing on you."
Seema pouted and asked, "And what of the company?"
"I liked the company from the start. The company is what I'll miss most when I go." Atreus paused, then asked, "I will have to go, won't I?"
"I am afraid Yago has nothing to worry about," Seema said, referring to the ogre's obvious eagerness to be on his way home. Any place that frowned on head-bashing and banned hunting was hardly a Shield-breaker's idea of paradise. "The Sannyasi has never allowed an outsider to remain in Langdarma. When it is safe for you to leave, he will insist that you do."
Atreus could only nod. Having fallen under the spell of what little of Langdarma he had seen, he would gladly have traded all his wealth back in Erlkazar for a simple stone hut on the Sisters' verdant slopes.
Seema's brown eyes grew sad, and she began to coat her iron pot with flower oil.
"Today, shall we walk down to the play yard and see the children again? I think they would like that."
"So would I," he said. When Atreus had limped by the day before, several little girls had surprised him by bringing him a garland of wildflowers to help him heal. "Do you know, that's the first time a child ever ran toward me?"
Seema laughed. "Yes, I could see that. You were so surprised, I thought you would run."
"I would have, if my leg had been stronger."
Atreus smiled and took a drink from his wooden mug. The brew tasted more like a salty bouillon than tea. It was thick and greasy and probably the one thing he did not really love about Langdarma.
From the street outside came the thump-thump of running feet. A dark streak raced past the open window, and the door banged open. An adolescent boy rushed inside, panting for breath and filling the hut with the smell of sweat.
"There has been a rockslide!" He gulped down a breath, then continued, "My father needs help."
Seema grabbed a woolen satchel off the wall and began to stuff it with herbs and vials. "I will do what I can Timin, but you know the Sannyasi has taken away my-"
"Oh no, not your help!" interrupted Timin. "Kumara is already there, but the rocks are very large and we need the orange man to move them."
Seema let her satchel drop, her face falling as though she had been slapped. "Of course," she said.
Atreus limped to the stairs and hollered, "Yago!"
"Yeah?"
"Come quick!"
The ceiling shook as the ogre pounded across the floor above.
Seema handed Timin the last of Atreus's buttered tea. "Drink," she told him. "You will need strength for the run back. Where is your father trapped?"
"Beneath the Caves of Blue."
The youth began to gulp down the greasy tea.
"The Caves of Blue?" Seema frowned. "What was he doing there?"
Timin lowered the mug and passed it back to Atreus. "Searching for my sister," he said.
Atreus and Seema exchanged alarmed glances. Before they could ask any more questions, Yago squeezed down the stairs, his orange fangs bared in alarm.
"What is it?"
"Come quickly!" Paying no attention to Yago's expression, Timin grasped the ogre by the wrist and tugged him toward the door, saying, "You are needed."
Yago scowled and glanced toward Atreus.
Atreus nodded and said, "Do as he asks."
The ogre shrugged, then ducked through the door behind Timin. Atreus glanced at Rishi, who was coming down the stairs to investigate the uproar.
"Go with them," Atreus said to the Mar, pointing out the door. "Hurry… and keep an eye out for Tarch."
Rishi paled. "Tarch? I thought there was no way-"
"There isn't," said Seema, and Atreus finished for her,
"But this is a strange coincidence."
"And if it is more than a coincidence?" Rishi demanded. "What do you expect me to do about it?"
"The same thing you did at the icefall," Atreus said as he shoved the little Mar out the door. "We'll be along as fast as I can run."
"Run?" Seema asked, shaking her head. "You are not even ready to walk, and the Caves of Blue are at the far end of the basin, very high up the slope."
Atreus started out the door after his friends. "I'll crawl if I have to," he promised.
In the end, Seema borrowed a yak and led the way toward the Caves of Blue. Had Atreus's thoughts not been consumed by visions of Tarch abducting the beautiful girls of the valley, the journey would have been an enchanting one. The trails were lined with soaring birch and fir, many so large that even Yago could not have closed his long arms around the trunks. The ground itself was blanketed with a bounteous undergrowth of blossoming rhododendron that arched out over the trail sprinkling pink petals on their heads as they passed. Every now and then, they would come to a golden stream snaking its way down to the big river in the center of the basin, or cross an open meadow of long green grass where a small herd of yaks grazed contentedly.
After a time, they reached the terraced slopes surrounding a small hamlet similar to the one where Seema lived. Here, they were besieged by distressed women who began to fill in the troubling details of the rockslide. Timin's father had awakened that morning to discover his eldest daughter, a young woman of seventeen, missing. Discovering two set of footprints leading away from his hut, he had set off at once to catch the pair. Not long afterward, the rumble of a nearby landslide had shaken the hamlet. Timin had followed the dust plume to a slope of talus-a jumbled scarp of loose rock-beneath the Caves of Blue. There he found his father trapped under a huge boulder. There was no sign of his sister or the mysterious man with whom she had left
Atreus was astonished by the utter innocence of the villagers. Had a similar event occurred in Erlkazar, the father would have assumed the worst and set off with a company of armed men to hunt down the abductor. Here, the girl's disappearance seemed more confusing than alarming, as though they could not imagine why she would leave without saying good-bye.
By the time they reached the other side of the hamlet Atreus was convinced that Tarch had found his way into the valley. He said nothing to Seema, thinking it wiser to let her decide this for herself. In many ways, they were growing closer every day, but there remained between them a certain uneasiness he did not want to aggravate by pushing her to a conclusion she would soon reach for herself. With-o
ut exception, the women of Langdarma were as beautiful as Seema was, and it could hardly be a coincidence that two of them had disappeared since she had escaped Tarch.
As they traveled along the terraced vegetable slopes, Atreus soon found himself looking out over the edge of the basin, to where it dropped away into greater Langdarma The valley was even more vast than he remembered, so wide that the other side was obscured in haze, and so deep that he could see no bottom, only the far wall plunging ever downward. The impossibility of finding the Fountain of infinite Grace in such an immense place struck him heavily. Yago and Rishi had spent nearly a ten-day searching just the upper basin, and it could not have been a thousandth the size of the main valley.
Clearly, he would need Seema's help to find the fountain, but he did not dare ask. The secret loomed over their relationship as heavy and foreboding as the ice-blue sky, an unspoken conflict they both feared to address. Atreus had asked many times whether there was not some way to change his external appearance, and Seema had always sidestepped the question, invariably changing the subject to his perception of himself. He could feel her holding back, trying desperately to avoid lying to him as she had lied about Langdarma, yet determined to keep from him some confidence she held even more dear than the valley's existence. As for Atreus, he felt burdened with guilt, like a thief who insinuates himself into a rich man's house in order to rob him blind. He did not see how Langdarma would be harmed by taking a single vial of water from the Fountain of Infinite Grace, yet he did not dare broach the subject for fear that the mere asking would somehow make his task impossible.
The trail entered the woods again and continued forward over the brink of the basin, but Seema turned up a side path and began to lead them uphill. The slope grew steadily steeper as they went. Soon, they were zigzagging up a series of switchbacks, creeping across craggy outcroppings and stealing glimpses down into the main valley. In many ways, it was a larger version of the upper basin, with a little less forest, a lot more barley field, and a broad blue river snaking down the center. At the far end, the valley gradually narrowed to a shadowy black gorge and disappeared into a wall of ice-capped mountains.
