There were no answers for my questions as I turned to ride on, letting Nekia pick a cautious path along the ancient trail, keeping my eyes narrowed to barest slits. “Is all well?” I called.
Murmurs of assent greeted my hail. We left the summit, began a downward path, only to find walls of rock rising up on either side, higher and higher, until we rode in a near tunnel, except where the moonlight washed down from the open roof. Without knowing how I knew, I became aware that we were nearing our goal.
Ahead of me the path curved, which turning I followed, only to emerge into a great space, mostly open, but containing some of the ruins near the mouth of the half tunnel. Again they swirled and dissolved, only to reappear in other, almost-identifiable shapes. Ahead stood a great walled area, not roofed, oval in shape. The road led up to an archway, then disappeared therein. Colorless mist coiled, snaking along the ground, though the night had been clear.
Halting Nekia with a tightening of my knees, I swung her to face the others. “Ahead lies our battleground. Guret, the horses stay here.”
I dismounted a trifle stiffly, feeling the ground sway beneath my hooves for a second. Joisan swung off Arren, and I moved quickly to steady her. In the glow of the moon and the faint phosphorescence of the fog, her face looked spectral, hollowed, her eyes bright sparks. “It is approaching, Kerovan. I can feel Sylvya.”
“Then we have no time to lose,” I said. “Is that place ahead its lair, do you think?”
“No,” she answered, her brows drawing together as though she struggled with an elusive memory. “Sylvya knew this place. It was not of the Shadow… it has been here for longer than any can tell…”
Leaving Guret at the mouth of the passageway, Jervon, Joisan, and I walked cautiously up to the archway to look within. The road ran straight down the middle of the oval enclosure, but on either side of it there were niches in the walls. These were spaced at regular intervals, and each was walled three-quarters of the way up—as though each of those niches had once enclosed an inhabitant, placed standing up so that he or she might look out upon whomever passed. On the front of each niche was a rune, the ones at the far end barely more than a tracing, so ancient were those symbols.
As I stood poised to look within, I realized with sudden shock that, empty as those hollowed-out spaces appeared—and there were some twoscore of them—they were not untenanted. I gasped, swayed, feeling the attention of those within that enclosure turn to me!
“Kerovan!” Joisan whispered, her nails digging into my arm above my wristband. “They are still alive in there! They want to know who I am, and why I have come here!”
I wet my lips. “Not alive, no.” I chose my words, for “memories” were stirring within me, odd sortings of that inconvenient and inconstant knowledge that erratically flickered and guttered within me, obedient in no way to my own will. “They are the Guardians, ensorcelled into a kind of life, mostly a repository of memories and wisdoms of their kind—which is not the humankind we know. It is their duty to question and challenge all comers, but I think we have little to fear.”
We looked out upon that silent expanse of openings, so awed we nearly forgot the dire reason for our coming. I was conscious still of that measuring appraisal and wondered whether these Guardians existed only to examine, or if they still had the Power to determine who was allowed to walk their road. If That Which Runs the Ridges came here each night, perhaps all they could do was watch, for, alien as they were, I sensed from them no taint of the Shadow.
I noticed that at this end, close to the archway where we crouched, there was one niche not walled—it stood open, unmarked. Had the last of the Guardians been lost? I wondered.
“Do we dare go within?” Jervon whispered. “We should search out the best place to make our stand—”
He stopped abruptly as I shushed him, then, hearing it, too, he tensed. I swung around, sword out, as a low throbbing resonated through the air. “Joisan? Is it—”
“No,” she said. “Don’t you hear? It is a drum!”
The sound rippled and rose, making a kind of strange, sick music. “Nidu! She’s here!” I looked to the others. We must find her—she’s drumming to guide it here, so it will be released!”
“Yes,” Joisan agreed.
I scanned the ruins behind us, seeing that the mist was thickening, gleaming in the moonlight as it curdled and sank, seeping along the rocky ground like blood from a death-wound. That throbbing thickened in my veins, and I realized to my horror that the mist was responding to the Shaman’s drum. “The mist! She’s out there, somewhere, in the mist! We have to find her!”
Sword out, I dodged into the ruins but was baffled by their rippling, now made even more unnerving by the strange vapor. Several times I thought I saw the crouching figure of a sable-clad woman, only to have the shape dissolve into a rock or chunk of broken pavement at the last second. Once I narrowly missed shattering my sword.
Finally, realizing that my eyes would avail me naught in such a search, I began prowling through the ruins with my wristband held out, reasoning that its runes would warn me of the Shaman’s presence. And still that thrum-thrum-thrumming rose and fell through the shadowed expanses, threatening to turn my mind from its purpose, ensnare it in the quavering rhythms of the Shaman’s song.
“Kerovan!” Joisan’s voice reached me faintly, for the encroaching mist seemed to swallow certain sounds as it amplified others. Had it not been for the glow from her cat’s-head ring, I might not have found her as she crouched beside the archway into the place of the Guardians, Jervon beside her.
“Did you find her?” I asked, glancing from one to the other.
“There is no more time to search, Kerovan.”
Even as she spoke, I heard the droning sound, felt the thudding vibration of That Which Runs the Ridges as it approached from downmountain.
To see it in a vision was one thing, I speedily discovered, to confront it in the flesh very much another. It swirled up the road into the oval court of the Guardians as a sickly yellow-toned cloud clotted with streaks of scarlet. Its whining drone was enough to drive one keening away in madness—I found myself unable to force my eyes to watch it for more than a second or two before I must needs look down or away—
And the stench! Foulness like all the Shadow poured into a distilling flask and bubbled over an alchemist’s flame, the noxious smell of the thing swept out to engulf me. I gagged, holding one hand over my mouth and nose, pinching viciously at my nostrils so the pain would help me keep control. Beside me Jervon retched uncontrollably.
Worst of all was the wrenching alienness of it. There was an overwhelming sense of a force totally outside nature, completely skewed, perverted from Things As They Must Be. I thought wildly that I must run, run away from such horror. I climbed to my feet, clinging to a boulder for support, then half turned back toward the horses—
It was then that I saw Nidu. The Shaman crouched on the other side of the oval, close to one of the niches, cowering, though her fingers continued to beat out the wild summoning rhythm. Then the tempo changed, from the thrumming to a sharper, more staccato tattoo. As if in answer, the thing within the Guardians’ space began to spin, widdershins, pulsing larger with each revolution.
My sword was again in my hand, though I had no memory of drawing it. I concentrated on my anger, trying so to drown the fear that was still urging me back toward Nekia. I will not run, I thought. I took oath that I was done with running, and I will not let myself be forsworn…