“What sorts of predators are we watching for?” Kauth asked, careful to keep the trepidation he felt from his voice.
“The hungry kind,” Zandar said with a grim laugh.
Sevren ignored the warlock, as usual. “I haven’t seen any sign of Depravation, so I don’t expect to see anything really strange. Bears, panthers, maybe girallons.”
Kauth had heard of girallons-carnivorous, four-armed apes-but never seen one, and he had to admit to some curiosity.
“Be especially on your guard for flying hunters,” Sevren added, pointing at Zandar to make sure the warlock was listening. Griffons, wyverns. Sovereigns protect us if a dragon has made its home in the pass. Ready?”
“Ready,” Vor said, and Zandar nodded.
“Ready,” Kauth echoed, though he didn’t feel it. The mention of dragons and wyverns made him think of Haldren, which reminded him of Kelas and the whole damned mission he was on. He trailed behind Vor as they walked up the valley toward the pass.
They passed through the valley with its wildflowers and herd of elk in a pleasant haze and camped for the night on a level patch of ground beside a bluff that made keeping watch easy. Twice during his time on guard, Kauth thought he saw eyes glowing pale green in the moonlight, but both times whatever creature was watching them kept a safe distance and then withdrew.
By the time they neared the valley’s head, snow dusted the slopes just above them. Kauth could see his breath steaming in the cold, and the thin air made his lungs ache. He tried, subtly, to make his chest larger, to expand his lungs and help himself breathe, but his control over his internal organs was imprecise at best. The fact that Sevren and Vor still showed no sign of exertion embarrassed him. Zandar, at least, was gasping more than he was.
They kept climbing until the snow was underfoot, and onward until they slogged through drifts as high as their knees. The sides of the valley grew steeper and closer around them, looming over them, sometimes even leaning together, almost touching above their heads. Bitter winds howled between the canyon walls, freezing Kauth’s breath to his face and driving snow into his eyes. Only then, when it was far too late to turn back, did Sevren tell them what the pass was called. Frostburn Cut.
Figures moved in the blinding snow, Kauth was certain of it. A snow leopard perched on an overhang and watched them walk below it, as though hoping one of them would stray from the others and make itself easy prey. Dark and distant wings circled above them, shadows in the snow-filled sky-perhaps the griffons or wyverns Sevren had mentioned. But more unsettling were the figures that were not there. Kauth kept thinking he saw places where the snow did not blow, where it eddied around a form with no shape or substance. No attack materialized out of these strange emptinesses, and Sevren paid him no heed when he mentioned it. So he continued on, casting wary glances around as the day wore on.
When the sun reached the horizon, it flared for a moment beneath the solid cover of slate-gray clouds, a flash of crimson light staining the snow around them like blood. In that instant, a shadow fell across the ground, a shadow cast by emptiness. Kauth had a fleeting vision of a face within that emptiness, a face that gave form to his most primal fears. A great horned bear, snarling in bestial fury, its mouth foaming with blood, and tongues of fire in its eyes-its gaze was fixed on Kauth, he felt it burning into him. Terror seized him like the icy cold.
By the time his cry of alarm had leaped from his throat, the vision was gone. The pall of night draped over them as the red sun vanished, and the form in the snow was gone, not just invisible to his sight, but no longer present even as an absence amid the snow. Sevren’s knives were in his hands, but Vor did not seem surprised at all.
The orc lumbered over to where Kauth stood, searching the darkening snow for any sign of the creature that had inspired such fear, and put an arm around his shoulders to steady him.
“We are in the Demon Wastes now,” Vor said gravely. “Do not trust your senses.”
“Then what under the twelve moons can I trust?” Kauth said, knowing full well the answer.
“Nothing at all, my friend.”
Kauth saw something pass across Zandar’s face, something not too different from his customary smirk. It reminded him unpleasantly of the warlock’s behavior in the Eldeen ruins, when he had so calmly tried to kill his companions. Did Zandar suspect Kauth’s secret? His true nature, or the real purpose of their journey?
No, Kauth realized, the warlock’s eyes were not on him, but on Vor.
They made camp only when it was too dark to see their way through the pass, and none of them slept except to doze briefly, sitting up, huddling near the fire to ward off the cold. For all their vigilance, no danger materialized in the night, and by morning the snow had slowed and the wind calmed. Their path led them slowly downward, and soon a bare valley, as free of snow as it was desolate of vegetation, came into view.
“Bid farewell to Frostburn Cut,” Sevren announced.
“And abandon all hope for your body or your soul,” Vor added, “for we stand in the Demon Wastes.”
“How charming,” Zandar said. “Is that a proverb of your people? I rather like the sound of it.”
Vor snarled at the warlock, and Kauth laughed. Zandar had not spoken while they traversed the pass-either because of the thin air and driving snow or because something else weighed on his mind-and Kauth felt relieved to see him back to his normal, sardonic self.
The valley was a fitting introduction to the Demon Wastes. The sky churned with storm clouds, but an angry glow like magma suffused the clouds as though they might rain down fire instead of water. Boulders that might have been the remnants of some incredibly ancient watchtower littered its slopes, and shadows seemed to flit among them in the strange light of the ruddy sky. Not only trees but grass and even lichen had long since abandoned the dusty soil. The air grew warmer with every step they took away from the freezing peaks of the Shadowcrags and toward the wasteland below.
The valley channeled them quickly down the mountainside before spitting them out on a low bluff overlooking a wide, open plain. It was a commanding vantage point, and Kauth was reminded of the view they had enjoyed from the Eldeen side of the mountains, looking out over the vast expanse of the Towering Wood. He could not imagine a starker contrast to that placid scene than the vista spread before him.
If the corruption, the distilled acidic evil of the Demon Wastes, had corroded the earth, burning away what it touched and leaving a blackened, twisting residue, that residue might have resembled the Labyrinth. Mile upon mile of winding canyons, scorched plateaus, and jagged outcroppings stretched from the feet of the Shadowcrags as far as Kauth could see. On the horizon, only tall fires licking at the blood red sky marked the land beyond the Labyrinth.
Abandon all hope for your body or your soul, Kauth thought. I have consigned us all to damnation.
PART II
In the Time Between, ten eyes gaze brightly upon the City of the Damned, watching as the pilgrim arrives. The pilgrim comes to the damned dragon’s home, his dreams full of fire and blood. The touch of Siberys’s hand is upon him, the storm is in the blood of the Storm Dragon.
CHAPTER 15
The first alteration of the plan was the result of a simple oversight. Arcanist Wheldren was called away to the royal court before Haldren’s entire team could be assembled, and the less experienced wizard of Arcanix who was appointed as his proxy couldn’t transport the assembled party with a single ritual.
Haldren had assembled his troops in the sanctuary of the cathedral. Cart looked them over and was pleased to see that none of them showed signs of impatience. Disciplined troops would accept a delay, and this mission called for disciplined troops. Ashara smiled at him as his gaze fell on her face. Still uneasy with her presence, Cart had asked Haldren not to include her. But Baron Jorlanna had appointed her, and Haldren couldn’t gainsay the Baron. Four squads of veteran soldiers, hardly the best Aundair had to offer but the best Kelas could muster, stood at attention, their eyes fixed on some point at the back of the cathedral. Those four squads were the problem.