He sighed. That wasn’t the real problem, was it?
Hespero’s touch was the shadow under his own. The touch of a man who knew how to please a woman.
He cycled through ever smaller orbits of remorse and anger until the stone floor parted like tissue and something pulled him through.
Suddenly he was sticky and wet, and his flesh and bone ached as from a high fever. Panic sent him grasping for something, anything, but he was in a void—not falling but floating, surrounded on all sides by terrors he could not see.
He tried to scream, but something clotted in his mouth.
He was on the verge of madness when a soothing voice murmured to him in words he didn’t understand but which reassured him nevertheless. Then, gently, a band of color drew across his eyes, and his heart calmed.
His vision cleared, and he saw the Witchhorn, much as it had looked in the light of sunset, albeit with more snow. He floated down toward it like a bird, over a valley, over a village, and then, with a touch of vertigo, up its slopes, along a winding trail, to a house in a tree. A face appeared, pale, copper-eyed, a Hadivar face, and he knew now that Zemlé was right, it just meant Sefry.
More words came, and still he couldn’t understand them, but then he landed. He walked to the north side of the mountain, where moss ruled, to a stone face and through a clever door, and then he was in the rewn.
Beginning to understand. Joy filling his heart.
He woke to a gentle pat on his face and found Zemlé there, her eyebrows drawn in concern, her face—her lips—only a motion away.
But when she saw that he was awake, she straightened, and the look of apprehension vanished.
“Bad dreams?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” he replied, and related his vision.
Zemlé didn’t seem surprised.
“We’ll eat,” she said. “Then we’ll go and hope we find this mythical town of yours.”
He smiled and rubbed the sleep grit from his eyes, feeling much more rested than he ought to.
Choron, he wondered to the heavens, have you become a saint? Is it you guiding me?
The descent was considerably more trouble than it had been in his dream, and his confidence in the vision faded as they made their way down the broken slopes into a deep, resin-scented evergreen forest.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Zemlé asked doubtfully.
For an instant he didn’t understand her question, but then he understood that their roles had changed. Since entering the valley, she had been looking to him as the guide.
“I think so,” he replied.
“Because there is a quicker way to the mountain.”
He nodded. “Perhaps, but I want to see something.”
A bell later, the signs began to appear. They were subtle at first: odd mounds in the forest floor, depressions that resembled dry streambeds but were too regular. Eventually he made out bits of wall, though rarely higher than the knee. He continued on foot, leading his mount, and between footfalls he had flashes of narrow, fanciful buildings and figures in bright clothing.
“Hadivaisel,” he said, motioning all around him. “Or what’s left of it.”
“That’s good, then?” she asked.
“Well, at least it means I do know where I’m going.”
And so they pressed on, east toward the mountain, to the traces of the trail there. The tree house of his vision was gone, but he recognized the tree, though it was older and thicker. From there he began to lead them north and steadily higher, to Bezlaw, where the mountain’s shadow never lifted and the moss grew thick and deep white forest pipes stood from rotting logs.
It was already nearing dusk when they reached the ancient shade line, and Zemlé suggested a halt. Stephen agreed, and they set about situating the animals.
The hounds wouldn’t be situated, though; the hair bristled on the backs of their necks, and they growled constantly at the congealing darkness. Stephen’s own hackles were up. His hearing had improved over the last few days, and he heard at least some of what the beasts heard.
And he didn’t like it.
There were things coming on two feet, certain in the darkness.
And some were singing.
6
The Spoor of Death
Death told Aspar where to go. Dead trees in the forest, dead grass and gorse and heather on the heath, dead fish in the rivers and streams it preferred.
Following death, he followed the woorm, and with each day its trail grew plainer, as if its poisonous nature was waxing as it went.
The Welph River was clogged with carcasses, its backwaters become abattoirs. Spring buds drooled noisome pus, and the only things growing with a semblance of health were the fresh heads of all-too-familiar black thorns.
Strangely, Aspar felt stronger every day. If the poison of the woorm was multiplying in power, so was the efficacy of the witch’s cure. Ogre, too, seemed more filled with energy than he had been in years, as if he were a colt again. And each setting sun brought them closer to the beast—and Fend.
Beyond the Welph, Aspar no longer knew the names of places, and the mountains rose about him. The woorm preferred valleys, but on occasion it crossed low passes. Once it followed a stream beneath a mountain, and Aspar spent a day in the dark tracking it by torchlight. The second time it did that, he didn’t follow it far, because the tunnel filled with water. Instead, cursing, he reentered the light and worked his way up the mountainside until he found a ridge that gave him a good view of the next valley. He promised the Raver a sacrifice if the thing didn’t escape.
Straining his eyes in the dusk, he finally saw its head cutting waves in a river two leagues away and began finding his way down.
After that it was simple, and he was riding so close on its trail that he found animals and birds that were still dying.
Of course, another big mountain loomed at the end of the dale, and that could present problems if the monster found a way under it, too. He planned to catch it before the mountain, though.
He hadn’t by the next morning, but he knew he was close. He knew it by the smell. He checked the arrow then as he did every morning, doused the remaining embers of his fire, and returned to the chase.
The valley gained altitude, filling with spruce, hemlock, and burr-wood. He rode on the southern side of it, at the base of a cliff of tired yellow rock that rose some twenty yards, above which he could make out what looked to be a trail winding through rocky, shrubby ground. He was watching the long line of the rock face, considering that if he could find a way up there, he might gain a higher vantage. He didn’t see much hope of that, though. He had a feel for the way land lay, and it didn’t look as if the cliff was going to offer a slope any time soon.
Above the cliff more mountains rose, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden by the angle.
He thought he heard something and stopped to listen. It came again, clearer: a human voice shouting.
A moment later he located its source. There was a line of perhaps sixty horsemen on the upper path; maybe they had just joined it from a trail he couldn’t see. The cliff was about thirty kingsyards high here, and they were a bit upslope from the precipice. The shouting man was pointing down toward him.
“Good eyes,” Aspar murmured sourly.
The sun was behind them, so he couldn’t make out their faces, but the leader looked to be in some sort of Churchish garb, which put Aspar on guard immediately. He noted that three of them had bows drawn and ready.
“Hail, down there,” the leader shouted. Aspar was startled at how familiar his voice was, though he couldn’t place it right away.
“Hail, up on the ridge,” he responded loudly.
“I’d heard you were dead, Aspar White,” the man returned. “I really believe it’s no longer possible to trust anyone.”