The nervous animal’s hooves slipped more than once. Voushanti cajoled the beast to stay afoot and me to balance my weight back to help keep it so. But every jogging movement set off my cramps, and before we’d descended halfway to the bottom of the vale, I had stopped worrying about Osriel’s scarce-contained furies and was begging Voushanti to throw me from a cliff.
“Tell me which way to the boy, Valen,” said the prince, laying his hand on my knee as he walked beside me. Fifty times he had said it, between his hacking coughs. Even through my layered chausses I felt the heat of his fever.
“Water,” I said, my chin bouncing on my chest, lips numb, drool freezing to my chin. “Find the water. Down.”
The beast beneath me jolted forward. I muzzled my screams in the crook of my arm. Gildas must not hear us.
The night’s black seemed washed with silver. Details of the land crept out of the dark—scrubby trees, snow, crooked slabs of ice-slicked rock. Could it be morning already? Please, holy Iero, no. After a night in freezing water, the boy would be dead.
No, this light was something else. Not moon. Moon and stars were lost in cloud. Yet I could see…there, the guide thread itself laid out on the landscape, a gray pattern that sparked and shimmered of its own light, scribed atop the landscape, like the sigils of the Danae that shone from within and yet apart from their bare flesh. I dared not ask if my companions could see it, too.
“Bear left,” I croaked. Red sand hardened into stone and twisted by wind and water had formed a narrow rift. Thistles and scrub sprouted between its thin layers. “It’s narrow. Choked with boulders.” Beyond the boulder field a wall rose like the facade of a temple, an oddly flat face in this rugged wilderness.
We halted, and before I comprehended he had gone, Voushanti returned from a scout. “It’s as he says, my lord. Great slabs fallen everywhere. Dead trees. No sign of anyone, boy or man. But the place has an odd feel. We’d best leave the horses and the pureblood out here. Neither will manage the boulders.”
They untied my hands and feet and helped me to the ground. Propped my back against a rock. Bundled blankets around me and gave me a sip of ale.
“Are we in Evanore, lord?” I mumbled, my speech vibrating through my skull.
“No, Valen. Why would you think that?” Gram’s endless patience at my shoulder. Profound weariness. Perhaps the netherworld I had witnessed in his eyes had been but my own madness.
“Brains boiling.”
Soft laughter fell about my head and shoulders like autumn leaves. “Should we ever travel to my wondrous land, I’ll shield your poor brains, Valen. Now tell me: Is the boy close? We can’t take the horses any farther.”
I clutched my belly and rolled to the side, onto my knees, pressing forehead and hands to the churned snow and dirt. All I could sense was the blistering heat of my skin. “I can’t feel, lord.”
“Do we need to warm your hands? We daren’t make a fire.”
“Can’t raise my magic.” I could not even remember why I searched.
“Heed me, pureblood.” The presence swelled and darkened just behind me, close to my ear, sending thrills of terror up my spine. “Your father and grandfather used you to fuel their war with each other. Do you think I do not understand why a child’s pain touches your soul so deeply? Stop playing at this and find the boy, or I will break you.”
The boy… The ember yet burned. I grasped it and dived into earth. And from the deep crevices between the rocks came the faint trickle of water and a rhythmic tapping.
“Holy Mother, he’s trapped in the boulders,” I mumbled, hands clawed into the frozen mud, pebbles digging into my forehead. “In the crevices between. Look down. Seek the water.”
“Hold on just a little longer, Valen. Not a sound as we fetch him.”
“Careful on the ice.” Voushanti’s parting whisper carried through the night air as clearly as Gillarine’s bell.
My every sense stretched to fevered refinement. The crunch of their boots sounded like the tread of a retreating army. The horses snorted and tore at the dead grasses that poked through the snow, their mundane noises the cacophony of the world’s end. The hot stink of their droppings choked me.
I shivered and a spasm raked me from belly to lungs like a lightning bolt, near rending the bones from my flesh. “Archangel,” I mumbled into my knees. “Jullian! Where are you, boy?”
My agitated mind would not stay still, and I reached farther into the boulder-filled rift…into the earthen banks beyond the boulders, past the stone wall…where something breathed…men, unmoving, waiting, ready in a great hollow. Gildas was there, gone through the rocks, not over them. And a woman beside him…pale-haired, cold, deadly…roused with unholy lust to serve her fearsome Gehoum. Great gods…a whole citadel buried behind these steep banks. Sentries…watchers…ahead and to either side of us. Trap.
I clawed at the boulder behind me, willing my useless body upward. Stumbling into the rift, I dodged fallen slabs until the piled ice, stone, and rubble wholly filled the narrow gorge. I scrabbled up the boulder pile, at every touch reaching for their footsteps…Voushanti the devil, Gram my friend…Navronne’s king…Must be silent. Though I could hear my skin ripping on the sharp rocks. Though I could feel the blood leaking out of me.
There…ahead of me…Voushanti’s dark bulk, and ahead of him a muffled cough that sounded like a wild dog’s bark. “Who’s there?”
They heard me. Saw me. Caught me as my foot slipped on an icy slab.
“Trap,” I sobbed, pain lancing every sinew like hot pokers. “Ambush. At least twenty of them ahead. Sentries on the cliff tops to either side. And beyond them—gods have mercy—a fortress. Hundreds of them. We can’t—”
“Do they know we’ve come? Answer me, Valen. Do they know someone’s here?”
They held me tight, and I reached out with my tormented senses and felt the night…the watchers…listening…a shifting alertness…stiffening…ready. “Aye. They know.”
Gram held my jaw in his hot hands. His face was distorted…swollen to ugliness with the scaly red signature of saccheria…a gatzi’s face with dark, burning pits for eyes. “We’re going to control this. Voushanti is going to get you out of these rocks and then you’re going to scream a warning to Gram and his companion Hoyl that this is a trap. You must be silent until Voushanti tells you. When you shout, you will think of me only as Gram, and Voushanti only as Hoyl. Do you understand? You must do this, no matter how it pains you.”
“Aye,” I said, though whips of fire curled about my limbs. Though I had no idea why he wished me to do it.
Big hands grabbed me and hefted me across a broad shoulder. Jostling, bumping, slipping, every jolt an agony. I bit my arm to muffle my cries, until at last he threw me across a saddle and bound me tight. I took shallow breaths. Somewhere in the braided silence a hunting bird screeched, and the man with red eyes whispered a count from one to two hundred. Then he snapped, “Now, pureblood. Warn Gram and Hoyl of the trap.”
Somehow I understood how important it was to do this right. The listeners mustn’t know I’d learned about the fortress. They mustn’t know I’d brought Osriel and Voushanti here. So I lifted my head and bellowed like a bull elk until I was sure my skull must shatter. “Gram! Hoyl! It’s a trap! Come back! Four…five of them waiting! Run!”
My shouts set off a riot of noise—shouts from right and left, clanking weapons, drawn bows. But before one arrow could loose, a thunder of moving earth raised screams beyond my own. Voushanti cursed and mumbled until pelting footsteps joined us. “Ride!”
We rode as if Magrog’s hellhounds licked our beasts’ flesh with their acid-laced tongues. I wept and babbled of Sila Diaglou and the fortress I’d discovered hidden behind the stone, and I swore I had not caused the earth to move and kill the sentries, though I feared I had done so. I cried out the anguish of my flesh until we stopped and Gram tied rags across my mouth. “We’ll find the boy again, Valen. On my father’s soul and honor, I promise you, we’ll save him.”