Faces of Deception

by Troy Denning

  An eternity later, the snowflake melted into a dark-hearted halo. Something pressed itself against Atreus’s frozen lips. His numb flesh sensed only the weight, not the touch. Warm air swirled down through his throat and flooded his lungs. His pulse boomed to life. Blood rushed in his ears. The halo grew dim, and he saw Seema’s smooth cheek pressed close, her brown eyes staring down at him, her dark hair making a tent around their faces. Her soft lips were pressed against his and her mouth was working, her hot breath mingling with his. A sense of joyous wonder welled up inside him, and something more primal stirred lower down. He reached up, twined his fingers into her silky hair, and returned the kiss.

  Seema pulled away, her brow arching in surprise.

  Atreus took his hand out of Seema’s hair, dimly aware that he had made a terrible mistake. “I, uh … I thought.…” he trailed off, fearing he would only make matters worse. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It certainly felt like you meant to!” Seema’s cheeks darkened, then she laughed lightly and called over her shoulder, “Have no fear for your friend. He only lured me down here to steal a kiss.”

  “Not at all!” said Atreus, mortified and struggling to identify where “here” was. “We were in Langdarma—”

  “You have seen Langdarma?” Seema gasped.

  “Yes,” Atreus said, thankful to talk about anything but the kiss. “It is … white … and beautiful … and we were inside a …”

  The image faded even as he tried to describe it. He recalled only the peace, the feeling of falling, and a handsome face in a shimmering mirror. He closed his eyes, trying to recreate the memory through sheer will, but it was lost, wiped away when he kissed Seema.

  Seema clasped his forearm. “You cannot describe Langdarma,” she told him, her voice warm and understanding. “Is bliss not different for everyone?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Atreus answered, still confused by his surroundings.

  He seemed to be lying in the bottom of a small white well, with Seema crammed in beside him. About six feet above her, Rishi and Yago were kneeling atop the wall, silhouetted against a brilliant blue sky, furiously dragging armfuls of snow away from the edge.

  As soon as Atreus remembered the snow, comprehension came crashing in like the avalanche itself. He tried to sit up and found he could not. He remained entombed in snow from the waist down, one arm still twisted around beneath him. The air in the bottom of the hole was shadowy and frigid, and the pressure on his legs made his muscles ache.

  Atreus was seized by the overwhelming fear that the pit’s walls were about to come crashing down. He began to claw madly at the snow, trying to dig out his waist so he could sit up and pull his arm free.

  “Yago! Get me out of here!”

  Atreus had hardly closed his mouth before the ogre’s long arms stretched down to pluck Seema out of the hole. She cried out in surprise, but Yago paid her no attention and set her aside without apology. He lowered his legs over the edge and planted one immense foot on each side of Atreus’s chest, then squeezed down into the hole and grabbed him under his arms.

  Yago began to pull, slowly and steadily, but the snow held fast. Atreus felt as though he would be torn in two. The ogre twisted him back and forth ever so slightly, and there was a loud slurping sound. The pressure on Atreus’s legs vanished, and he began to rise, until the chain tightened around his buried hand, bringing him to an abrupt halt.

  “Wait!” Atreus commanded.

  Yago stopped pulling, and Seema leaned over the pit, peering down over the ogre’s shoulder.

  “Did he hurt you?” she asked. “Dragging a person out of an avalanche is not a good way to rescue him.”

  “No, I’m fine,” said Atreus. “It’s Tarch.”

  “Tarch?” echoed Rishi. “That tailed devil is still alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Atreus said, “but if he is, he might be buried under me. I still have the chain, and it was wrapped around his neck when the avalanche started.”

  “And you are not thinking you should let go?” Rishi asked, incredulous.

  Atreus glanced up at Seema and said, “I’m willing, but the decision isn’t mine. We all promised not to kill Tarch.”

  “Tarch started the avalanche,” said Yago. “I don’t see why we have to dig him out.”

  “Because if we don’t, it will cost Seema her magic … right?” Atreus glanced at the healer, hoping she would correct him.

  Instead, she nodded and said, “We must do what we can for him, and not only because failing to do so will harm my magic. It would injure all our souls.”

  “That particular peril I am most happy to brave,” said Rishi. “Whereas no good at all can come of freeing an angry devil like Tarch.”

  “Had Tarch not pulled you from the river, you would be frozen or drowned. You would not be here to say such things,” countered Seema. “It is not for you to turn the wheel of life.”

  “But I am not turning it,” Rishi said, addressing his argument to Atreus. “Tarch did this to himself. We are only turning the wheel if we save him.”

  Seema’s counter was swift and confident. “To let someone die when you can save him is the same as killing him … and to kill is to turn the wheel.”

  “What’s so wrong with that?” Yago demanded. “Seems to me wheels is made for turning.”

  “We are not made to turn them. Not the wheel of life,” said Seema. “It is not for us to kill.”

  Yago scowled. “Been killing all my life. Can’t live without killing.” He held up his thick fingers and began to tick them off, saying, “Kill to eat, to earn my pay, and ’specially to keep stuff from killing me.”

  Seema listened to the ogre’s confession with an expression of horror, then turned to Atreus and said, “We have no time to argue. You promised not to kill, so the only question is whether you are a man of his word.”

  “If I weren’t, would I have said anything in the first place?”

  Atreus did not understand Seema’s reluctance to let Tarch die. To him, there was a big difference between taking the life of an innocent victim and killing in self-defense, but he held his word as sacred as Seema did life. He looked up at Yago and said, “A promise is a promise.”

  “I didn’t promise to save him!” the ogre grumbled. Nevertheless, he let Atreus back down. “If this ain’t the dumbest thing since Orna tried to milk a beehive!”

  Rishi exhaled in frustration, then took the cooking pot and began to scoop out the edges of the pit. “We are going to need a bigger hole.”

  “With plenty of room for a fight,” added Yago.

  While Atreus lay in the snow clinging to the chain, Yago and Rishi spent the next two hours grumbling as they excavated a huge hole around him. Once the pit grew large enough for the sun to shine into, he began to warm up. By the time they had dug down to the end of the chain, he was feeling strong enough to fight.

  As matters turned out, there was no need. They found nothing at the other end of the chain but more snow. Atreus took his turn with the cooking pot and dug down another two feet to a solid crust of ice. After he had cleared a circle as wide as he was tall, Seema shook her head.

  “It is hopeless to keep digging.” She sounded disappointed, though hardly sorrowful. “Tarch could be anywhere. Come out of there.”

  “Yes, it is time we gave up the search.” Rishi did not bother to disguise his eagerness. “After spending all this time buried beneath so many tons of snow, Tarch has certainly met his death by now.”

  “Nothing is ever certain, Rishi,” said Atreus, tossing the cooking pot up. “Tarch strikes me as a lot harder to kill than you think.”

  “All the more reason to leave him down there,” said Yago, extending an arm to Atreus.

  After being pulled from the hole, Atreus was astonished to find how far he had been swept. Just a few hundred paces away stood the jumbled icefall leading up to the Sisters of Serenity. The valley around him lay buried beneath untold acres of avalanche run out: mountainous pi
les of compacted snow, with slabs of wind crust jutting up at all angles. The little glacier behind them had been scraped clean down to its shimmering silver surface, and its crevasses were now filled with milky bands of sugar snow.

  Seema passed Atreus a bowl filled with one of her elixirs. She spoke a few words of magic, and the potion began to steam.

  “Drink it quickly. It will help renew your vigor.”

  Atreus quaffed the contents down and felt some of his strength return, but the effect was hardly as noticeable as before. He washed the bowl out with snow and tried not to show his disappointment, but Seema was too perceptive to be fooled.

  “Tarch’s loss has affected my magic?” she asked.

  “A little, perhaps. But I do feel better.”

  Seema’s face fell.

  “I’m sorry,” said Atreus. “I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

  “It is not your fault,” Seema reassured him. She touched his arm, and Atreus’s thoughts flashed to the warmth of her lips against his. “You were very brave to try to subdue such a dangerous foe and not resort to killing. It is my own anger that has caused my magic to grow weak. In truth, I am as happy as Rishi and Yago that we did not find the devil. This has stained my soul as darkly as a death.”

  Atreus glanced at the sun, then said, “We still have a few hours of light. Perhaps if we found him—”

  “That is most unlikely,” Seema interrupted, waving her hand at the surrounding acres of avalanche run out. “There is no telling where Tarch is buried. We found you only by following the cord tied around your waist.”

  Atreus could not help feeling relieved. Tarch did not strike him as the type to repay a kind act with gratitude, and the last thing he wanted was to try subduing the tailed devil again.

  “Next time, we’ll have to give a cord to Tarch,” mocked Yago. The ogre rolled the bowl and cooking pot into the supply bundle, then slung it over his shoulder and turned toward the icefall. “No use worrying about it now. We got places to go, sights to see.”

  Seema frowned. “Atreus has been through a terrible experience,” she said. “He needs food and rest.”

  “I’ll rest better up there.” Atreus looked up toward the shadowy cliffs beneath the Sisters of Serenity and said, “I couldn’t possibly eat.”

  Now that he was so close to his goal, he could not bear the thought of stopping. His stomach was full of butterflies, his head spinning in anticipation. Whatever they found beneath the Sisters, it would not be what he expected. He had seen enough already to realize that Langdarma was not the verdant paradise he had imagined. He felt more confident than ever that they would find the Fountain of Infinite Grace. Sune had not sent him across half the world for nothing. He remembered that much from his avalanche dream.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon working their way around the looming seracs and gaping crevasses of the long icefall. Seema picked their route with extra care, at times using her dagger to chip footholds on steep or particularly slick sections. Unlike any of the glaciers they had crossed so far, this one seemed to be moving perceptibly. There was an almost constant trembling beneath their feet, and at times the crevasses actually appeared to open and close before their eyes. Once, Yago was nearly crushed when a serac crashed down between him and Rishi, and another time they waited for one to topple over and fill a crevasse they were trying to cross.

  By the time they crested the fall, the sun was sinking behind the three Sisters, streaking the sky with golden veins. Seema hurried across the shadowy snow toward the edge of the glacier, leaving Atreus little opportunity to study the vale he had come so far to visit. From what he could see, the basin was filled with ice, as was every valley in the high Yehimals, and shaped like a ceramic bowl gone bad on the throwing wheel. On three sides, a dark semicircle of cliffs soared up to form the separate peaks of the Sisters of Serenity. On the fourth side, the icefall they had just ascended tumbled down into the great valley below. In that stark Yehimal way, the dale was as beautiful as any he had ever seen, but there was no sign of the Fountain of Infinite Grace or of any water not already frozen.

  They reached the gentle ridge of rocks that marked the edge of the glacier, and Atreus had no more time to ponder the vale. After several nights on the snow together, they no longer needed Seema’s direction to perform their chores. While Yago set to work digging a snow cave, Rishi scurried along the mountainside, scouring the rocky crags for dwarf pines and snapping off dried stems to supplement their meager supply of dried yak dung. Seema busied herself lighting the butter lamps and preparing the food. Atreus retraced their steps, filling in their tracks. After dark, the wind would cover everything with a light dusting of snow and render their trail utterly invisible. Given the avalanche, he was no longer sure that such precautions were necessary, but he took them anyway. Until he knew for certain what had happened to Tarch, it would be safer to assume that the devil was still out there.

  By the time Atreus returned to camp, the sun had vanished behind the Sisters and the sky had turned to purple velvet They ate a twilight dinner of lukewarm barley soup, then climbed into the snow cave and arranged themselves on the thin mattress of pine boughs. The little den was surprisingly warm. Despite Yago’s thunderous snoring, the others quickly drifted into a slumber.

  Atreus was too anxious to sleep. He spent the first part of the night wide awake, keeping the vent hole clear of blowing snow and worrying that Langdarma might be the myth everyone claimed. The second part he spent listening to the glaciers rumble, convincing himself he would find the valley in the morning, if he just looked carefully enough. Sune was every bit as fickle and flighty as Yago claimed, but she was not cruel, nor given to abusing her faithful worshipers. Sometime before dawn, Atreus’s racing mind finally yielded to his weariness, and he drifted off into an unsettled sleep.

  When morning finally came, he woke to find himself alone, the snow cave dimly illuminated by the pale blue rays spilling through the ventilation hole. He pulled on his cloak and crawled out through the entrance tunnel, emerging into a world of golden dawn. The sun was just peeking up from behind the glacier they had descended the previous day, painting the snow-blanketed heights of the Sisters of Serenity in brilliant hues of orange and yellow. Yago and the others stood a few paces away, peering over the icefall. Atreus joined them and found himself looking down at a puff of blue mist hanging over the avalanche run out.

  “That’s a funny-looking cloud,” he said.

  “We were just observing the same thing,” said Rishi. “Strange how it hangs over the debris of yesterday’s avalanche, is it not?”

  “It is too cold for a ground fog,” added Seema. “It can only have something to do with Tarch.”

  Atreus recalled the tongue of flame the slave master had used on the barge. “Could he be melting his way out of the avalanche?”

  No one answered, and Atreus knew they were all thinking the same thing. The basin beneath the Sisters of Serenity was both small and a dead end. If Tarch caught them there escape would be impossible.

  Finally, Yago turned to Seema. “At least you don’t have to feel guilty about him being dead,” he half joked.

  Seema shook her head. “We do not know that he is alive,” she said. “Who can say what happens to a devil’s body when he dies? Perhaps it burns up.”

  “Well?” Atreus asked Rishi. “You’ve traveled the slave road before.”

  Rishi shrugged. “In my experience, the devils from beyond never die,” he said heavily, “only those who cross them.”

  Atreus stared down at the avalanche run out, recalling how swiftly his utter helplessness had been transformed into unconsciousness. He faced Seema and said, “Even if Tarch survived, he hasn’t melted his way out yet. There may still be time for you and Rishi to reach the other side of the valley.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  Atreus looked back toward the barren cliffs beneath the Sisters, then shook his head. “I’ve come too far,” he said. “If Tarch kills me, he kills
me, but I’m not leaving.”

  “Then I will stay, too.” Seema smiled, then added, “Do you think I am the kind of girl you can kiss and send away?”

  Atreus felt the heat rise to his cheeks. He turned away before the blush could further mottle his blotchy complexion, disguising the maneuver by drawing Sune’s map from within his cloak and pretending to study features he already knew by heart. According to the chart, the little basin before him was a hanging meadow at the upper end of Langdarma, surrounded on three sides by the sheer cliffs of the Sisters of Serenity. In the back of the basin, almost directly beneath the peak of the middle Sister, was the ladder symbol, leading to a narrow switchback trail that was the only route into the meadow from the surrounding mountains.

  As far as Atreus could see, the only semblance between the map and the area before him were the sheer cliffs and the general shape of the basin. The meadow, of course, was buried under the small glacier that spilled down the icefall, and the main valley of Langdarma was supposed to start about where the avalanche run out lay. It occurred to Atreus that perhaps Langdarma had been scoured away by glaciers hundreds of years before, but he quickly chased the thought from his mind. Surely, a goddess could not be guilty of such a terrible mistake.

  Atreus pointed across the valley toward the base of the middle Sister. There, the glacier sloped up to a dark line that marked the chasm where the ice pulled away from the mountain. “That is where we need to go.”

  Seema arched her delicate eyebrows. “The clefting?” She snatched the map from Atreus’s hands, studied it warily, and said, “What are we to do there?”

  Atreus shrugged. “I don’t know.” he said. “Look around … see what we find. None of this is what I expected.”

  Atreus’s confusion seemed to relieve Seema. She returned his map, and they gathered their things and set off. Although the glacier was relatively flat across most of the basin, they had to wind their way through a labyrinth of newly opened crevasses and listing boulders, all the while watching their back trail for Tarch. The short journey seemed to take forever, and by the time they reached the head of the glacier, Atreus could no longer bear Seema’s slow, deliberate pace. He slipped past Yago and Rishi and would have taken the lead himself had Seema not increased her own pace and left him panting for breath. When they finally reached the clefting, he collapsed gasping on the steep slope, his arms draped over the brink of the chasm and his eyes staring down into its frigid depths.