She stood and walked down the stone shelf. Halfway down, she turned and looked at Alexander. “Trust me?”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Yes.”
“Good.”
She smiled wickedly at him, then gave a little hop sideways over the edge of the cliff.
18
MAX DROPPED ABOUT TWENTY-FIVE FEET, LANDing on a jut that couldn’t be seen from above. “Max!” Alexander’s voice echoed down the valley. He was furious.
“Your turn,” she called up. “The ledge isn’t all that wide, so don’t jump out too far or you’ll splat into the valley floor. Stand where I did so you don’t miss.”
She moved to the far end of the shelf, and seconds later Alexander landed in a crouch near the edge. He thrust to his feet, storming across to her. He caught her arm, jerking close.
“What the hell was that?”
Max smiled, unabashed. “Girl’s gotta have fun.” She looked over his shoulder at his companion who’d just made the leap. “That’s Thor?”
Alexander nodded, stepping back. She nodded at the other man, who looked surprised that she knew his name.
“It gets tricky from here. Follow carefully.”
She started down. At one point a twenty-five-foot gap required another lunging jump. The landing shelf was the size of a postage stamp, fitting only one person at a time. Max talked Alexander and Thor through each step of the difficult descent to the bottom. Finally she reached the top of the moraine that skirted the bottom of the valley. She bounded down it at an angle, pebbles tumbling after her in a small avalanche. Moments later, Alexander and Thor stood breathlessly beside her, both looking tattered and bloody.
Max turned and jogged to the creek and jumped across it. She kept going, stopping beside a tumble of granite boulders ground smooth by time and weather. They lumped up forty feet or more.
“What now?” Alexander asked after a few moments.
“This is the part you’re really going to hate,” Max said. “From here I have to go alone.”
“Like hell you are.”
Thor made a snickering sound and Alexander gave him a blistering look that shut him up fast. Alexander looked back at Max. She didn’t wait for him to argue. When she spoke, her tone was hard and final.
“The passage was designed so that only I can get through it. You would be killed the moment you set foot inside. When I get to the other side, I can shut down the defenses. So you need to sit tight and wait.” She looked at Thor again. “I’m not your Prime, but my advice would be to head back up the cliff and show your friends the way down so they don’t break their necks. Hopefully I’ll have this open before the fire cooks all of you.”
Thor nodded and gave her a casual salute. “Safe journey.” He turned and loped away.
Max began pulling off her weapons and setting them aside. When she was through, she faced Alexander again. His expression was glacial. She lifted her chin, glaring back at him. Indecision made her hesitate. Did she tell him? She gave an exasperated sigh.
“Under the heading of full disclosure, you should probably know that I’ve never successfully made it through the passage. The last time I tried, I nearly didn’t get out alive.”
He gaped. “What?”
“Giselle didn’t want to make it too easy’a back door is a hole in Horngate’s defenses, after all. Theoretically I can get through. Supposedly it was designed just for me.”
He stomped over, standing close and staring down at her, his jaw flexing. “Theoretically?” He pushed the word through gritted teeth.
Max licked her lips, more nervous than she wanted to admit. But the locking spell had worked better for her in the last few days than it ever had before. And just at the moment, more than anything else, she wanted to get inside Horngate. She hoped it was enough. “I didn’t realize it then, but I think she expected the Guardians to come for her sooner or later, and I don’t think even they can get through this gauntlet. She didn’t create the spells for this; she called in a favor from someone.” What creature had magic great enough to stop the Guardians? She hesitated. “The trouble is, it doesn’t really want to let anyone in, even me.”
He snatched her arms as if he wanted to either shake her or pick her up and throw her to knock some sense into her. “What makes you think you can get through this time?”
“Need,” she said simply, then pulled herself away. “We don’t have any other choice. I’d better get on it.”
She didn’t wait for him to say anything else. She turned and walked headfirst into the stand of boulders. With a flickering flash, she was inside a cave. Silence surrounded her like a shroud. Extending before her was a long, straight passage. Milky-blue magic filled it like thick cobwebs. She felt its pulse in her bones. The smell of the Divine was so thick it was hard to breathe.
She reached into her pocket, fingers rubbing over the soft leather of her medicine pouch and the cold lump of the hailstone inside. The last time she’d attempted to get through here, she’d only made it about two hundred feet before crawling back. Her body had been wasted, almost skeletal. Her hand clenched. This time she couldn’t afford to turn back.
Slowly she took the pouch out of her pocket and hooked the hailstone out onto her palm. If she didn’t make it, she could still help Horngate. All she had to do was swallow it. Know what you want. You will have it. She snorted softly. If only it were that easy. But the question was, what to want?
But she’d been thinking about it the entire drive back to Montana. Max had one idea and no time to think of anything better. No time to waste either. Quickly she popped the hailstone in her mouth. Its cold burned her tongue. She concentrated and swallowed, holding on to her wish with all her might.
She felt the cold of the hailstone slide down her throat to her stomach. It sat a moment like a glacial seed. The she felt it open. It uncurled like the petals of a frigid rose. The cold shifted suddenly to heat. It flared and rushed out of her on a nuclear wave-front. Max gasped and dropped to her knees, her heart thundering. Then the heat was gone. She drew a breath, her arms and legs shaking. She pushed slowly to her feet and leaned against the wall. She gave herself only a moment’s rest.
Time to walk the gauntlet.
She gathered herself, thinking of Horngate and her need to be inside where she could help. “They need me’let me pass,” she said aloud, and started into the milky-blue cobwebs.
At first it was like walking through a sticky mist. The filaments of magic clung to her, tearing away from the walls and wrapping her in a layered cocoon. Behind her, more strands grew from the walls.
She made it twenty feet before it became harder. Now it was like leaning into a stiff wind. The web grew more dense, the strands thicker. Max’s mouth twisted grimly. This was only the beginning.
Another sixty feet and she was chopping at the magic with her hands. The web was made of thick cords now, and they coiled and knotted around Max like snakes. They sank through her clothing, through her skin and her flesh. She could feel them blindly sucking on her soul’her essence. She was being eaten alive, just like before.
“Let me through!” she yelled, but no one and nothing answered.
Every passing moment weakened her. She thrust forward desperately. She was not turning back this time; it was all or nothing.
At 120 feet, she could hardly raise her arms. Her legs were leaden. She had no sense of time. She forced herself to keep scuffing along. She could feel her flesh shrinking over her bones, her skin loosening like stretched-out rags.
Then finally, she came to the point of no return. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. One more step and she would not have the strength to get back. Brambles of fear wormed through her. How much farther? Could she last? Would she be worth anything if she did?
She swayed. The magic wrapped her head and she could only see shimmering blue-white shadows. She felt parched and brittle. Her tongue was like a stick in her mouth. She couldn’t even blink her eyes anymore, and inside, she felt he
r organs like hard lumps of clay.
Did she go back?
The decision was already made. Giselle had made this entrance just for Max. If she’d foreseen the need, then she also foresaw Max using it.
She shuffled forward. A moment of crystal silence, and in that drop of stillness, the sudden knowledge that something was there, waiting for her.
Max didn’t have time to think of what to do. She was ripped out of her body. Claws pierced, skewering deep inside her. She was shaken, whipped from side to side like a squirrel in a dog’s mouth. Then she was slammed against something. She felt cracks creeping across her mind, across her soul. Bits of herself flaked away. Now something squeezed her, then turned her inside out.
The violation was more than she’d ever suffered at Giselle’s hands. She could hide nothing. She screamed without sound. She struggled to fight, to hold herself together.
Then the magic tightened, coiling and crushing. She shattered. She drifted in pieces like petals on a lazy wind. She had no name, no purpose, no hungers, no dreams. She was nothing. The petals curled and faded from blue-white to gray and sifted away into nothingness.
Horngate.
The word stirred something. Where did it come from? What was it?
Need.
A thrust of urgent desperation.
Danger.
Suddenly the dried petals drifted back from the nowhere place beyond reason. They curled and fluttered, condensing around the immutable core that was all that remained of the one who’d sought passage.
Max.
The one had a name.
More bits of herself streamed back, attaching themselves, fitting together like puzzle pieces. Each one brought back a memory, a feeling, a flavor. Slowly she coalesced out of the destruction of herself until she found herself back in the cave. She lay on the ground. She sat up. She felt fine’no pain, no weakness. She rolled to her feet. Behind her was the passage. In front of her was a door.
All around her was that feeling of something or someone waiting, watching.
“Hello?”
You are the one I was told would come. The one whose heart I could not break.
The voice resonated all the way through Max. It was like standing in the middle of a drag-racing track with engines roaring all around her. She staggered and steadied herself against the wall.
“You’ll let me through to Horngate?”
Always.
The smugness and warm tenderness in the word made Max tense. “Who are you?”
“I have no name. I was born of Onniont, the horned serpent, and Nihansan, the spinner of webs. I guard. I wait for you. You are my gift.”
Max’s mouth went dry. “Your gift?” she repeated, hoping she’d heard wrong.
“You alone in all the world can withstand my powers. You alone can walk through my webs and live. You are the one I have waited for. It has been so long.”
The yearning in the creature’s voice made Max want to weep for its pain, even as fear thrust skeletal fingers around her heart.
“What do you want of me?” she asked carefully. She didn’t want to anger it. She didn’t know if she could survive another bout with its webs.
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You will come to me. You will walk the web roads with me. You will speak to me truth and you will share your fire with me.”
Max swallowed. She didn’t know what any of that meant. What had Giselle promised this creature? Not that it mattered. At the moment she needed to fetch the others and get into Horngate.
“Sure, Scooter. Whatever blows your dress up,” she said, not knowing if she’d just agreed to bear its children. “I have friends I need to bring through. Will you allow them passage?”
“Yes. For you.”
A web of magic spun into being before Max. As she watched, it formed a vaguely human shape. The weaving tightened and grew dense, and the shape became more pronounced. Then suddenly, between one blink and the next, the milky-blue light flared searingly bright. When the brilliance faded, a man stood before Max. He was neither young nor old. His skin was red mahogany, his hair long and blue-black. His features were sharply etched like wind-scoured stone. He was beautiful. And naked. Max let her eyes drift down his well-muscled body. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having his children.
“You might want to put on some clothes, Scooter,” she said, wondering if this was his natural form. She was pretty sure it wasn’t.
A moment later he wore a buckskin vest and pants. They were soft and worn. His feet remained bare.
Without another word, Max led the way back to where she’d entered. Her companion padded along softly next to her. His skin radiated heat.
“Do you know what’s happening in Horngate?”
He nodded. “There is war. The warriors of Giselle fight. They cannot win.”
“I’ve brought help,” Max said, her voice edged in steel.
“It will not matter. You cannot win.”
For him it was an observation. Arguing with him would be like arguing with a tree.
“I’m damn well going to try.”
“But it is not the solution.” Now his voice was admonishing. It sounded ancient. It probably was. She was going to have to look up his parents in her library when all of this was done. If she was still alive.
“Then you tell me, Scooter’just what is the solution?”
“You are.”
Max stopped and whirled on him. “Could you be a little less cryptic? I don’t have time for puzzles.”
He stared at her, his eyes the color of polished onyx. Flecks of milky-blue swirled in their depths. “You are the riddle. You are the answer that no one expects. You are the only answer.” He said it like the words weren’t actually complete gibberish.
Max growled and speared her hands through her hair, grabbing and pulling it hard. She shook her head. “Fuck this. I don’t have time.” She stormed away, aware that he stayed right at her side. She didn’t slow down when she reached the entrance, but marched through the illusion out into the smoky night.
Outside she was instantly surrounded. She looked for Alexander. He rushed to her side.
“Are you okay?”
His eyes went past her as her mystical new friend emerged. Instantly Alexander reached to push her out of the way. Max waved him off. He held himself still, quivering with restrained ferocity.
“This is’” She broke off. There was no explaining him. She took another tack. “This is Scooter. He’s going to walk with us through to Horngate. But first everyone lay down your weapons.”
Selange laughed shrilly. “I don’t think so. We are not going unarmed into another witch’s coven.”
“Then stay here and cook.” Max glanced pointedly up the ridge. The fire was spreading down into the valley. She started to turn back to the cave.
“Move an inch and my people will drop you in your tracks. Make your choice. We go in armed, or you don’t go in at all. I’ll take my chances with the hailstone and leave Horngate to deal with its own problems.”
“Try it, bitch, and I’ll rip your throat out,” Max said. It was an empty threat. She was unarmed and Selange’s Shadowblades had brought their weapons to bear.
“My gift,” Scooter whispered, his voice like grinding rocks. His milky-blue magic thrust up from the ground all around the Shadowblades. In seconds their weapons had been torn from their hands. A handful of gunshots rang out, but the bullets were caught in a tightly woven web.
Max bared her teeth at Selange. “Here’s the way the game is played. You can go running back to Aulne Rouge with your tail between your legs and wait for the Guardians to come knocking at your door, or you can come inside and make a stand here with us. Decide now. I’m not waiting.”
She motioned for Alexander to put down his weapons and follow. Once again Scooter walked at her shoulder. A moment later she heard footsteps and low, vicious swearing. Selange was enraged, but she was coming.
Alexander followed
so close on Max that he was nearly trampling her. He didn’t like her new buddy. She wondered what he’d think of the bargain she’d struck’not that she knew what the terms really were. She rolled her shoulders to loosen them, dismissing the problem. It only mattered if she survived. No sense worrying about it until then.
In a few minutes Max realized the passage had changed. It was wider and somehow more menacing. It dead-ended in a wide hollow in the rock. There was no sign of the door she’d seen before.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. Was this a trap?
Scooter turned to face the others as they filled the small space. His expression was cold. “There are those here who mean harm to Horngate.”
As if Max didn’t know that already. “Yes. But for now they are allies. They have come to help me fight.”
He looked at her. Nothing she or they could do would win the battle. But he did not say it. Instead he turned his attention back to the others. Slowly he paced forward to Alexander, who stood still as if he couldn’t move. His jaw flexed and the cords of his neck tented, and Max realized that he had in fact been frozen in place.
“You belong to Horngate,” Scooter said after a moment, and went to the next person. It was Selange’s Prime. “You are an enemy.” He lifted his hand and touched his forefinger lightly to the other man’s cheek. In blue magic, he drew a bar with two dots above and another below. Slowly he went to each of Selange’s Blades, then to the witch herself. Her eyes bugged with fury and fear, but she was as helpless as all the others. Max grinned at her.
Scooter judged each and made the mark on their cheeks. When he reached Thor, he was slower. Finally he made the mark. It was a squiggly line with four dots below and none above. He said nothing and returned to Max’s side.
“What belongs to Horngate belongs to me. Her enemies are my enemies. Know if you hunt here, if you harm those who belong to me, I will flay the skin from your bones and eat your hearts and livers before I cast you into the abyss between worlds.”
Bitter Night: A Horngate Witches Book Page 25
