He saw much of himself in Vasen. Both of them had the need to serve others. Both of them had a father whose deeds had written many of the pages in the book of the son’s life. Both of them were like two minds in one body. But they differed in at least one important way.
“You are a warrior,” the Oracle said, and stood his father’s shield against the chest at the foot of Vasen’s bed. “Fight well.”
Thinking of his father, he walked to the Saint’s Shrine in the eastern tower. He would await the servants of Mephistopheles there.
Chapter Ten
Sayeed and Zeeahd moved quickly over the plains, cutting through the shadowed air. Minser huffed and stumbled, sweating and wheezing, but the occasional cuff on the head from Sayeed kept him moving. The cats, too, herded him along.
“What will you do with me when we get there?” the peddler asked, gasping. Zeeahd looked over his shoulder. “I’ll decide when we arrive.” Minser’s fearful gaze went to Sayeed, to the cats. He muttered prayers under his breath as he staggered along.
“No god is going to save you now, peddler,” Sayeed said. “We’re past that.” “My grace is all you can hope for,” said Zeeahd, and a slight cough wracked his body.
The cats looked at Zeeahd curiously, hope in their evil expressions. Minser whined, perhaps fearing a similar fate to that of the woman in Fairelm. But Zeeahd’s coughing ended without a purge.
Minser continued to pray under his breath as they walked. Ahead, the dark, jagged spikes of the Thunder Peaks rose from the plains, the exposed spine of some enormous beast that seemed to reach all the way to the sky. Within an hour they walked the foothills. The terrain began to rise steeply. Valleys and gorges cut the face of the mountains. The pass they sought could have been anywhere. They’d have never found it but for Minser.
Minser led them on, his head bowed, his will broken. He stumbled and weaved as they walked, exhausted.
“You’re certain of the way?” Sayeed asked him, and swatted the side of his head.
Minser blanched, mumbled something inaudible, and plodded on. He looked around from time to time, as if taking stock of their location.
“Speak, peddler,” Zeeahd said, and another coughing fit afflicted him.
Sayeed was surprised to see his brother coughing again so soon after a purge. The disease within him must have been not only growing worse but doing so more quickly. Sayeed wondered if the changes wrought by the Spellplague in his own body were also worsening, but in a way he did not notice.
“You heard him,” Sayeed said, pushing Minser to the ground. “You spoke of a pass. Where is it?”
Minser looked up to speak, but before he did he turned green and puked. He tried to cover his mouth as he vomited but that served only to spray it in all directions. The rapid travel had taxed him. Spitting and gagging, he pointed ahead at one of the narrow openings in the mountains. It did not look like a pass so much as a slit.
“If you’re lying. . ” Sayeed said, and let Minser’s imagination make the most of the threat.
The peddler shook his head, his chins jiggling.
“Give him a drink and keep him moving,” Zeeahd said.
Sayeed tossed Minser a waterskin and the peddler gulped greedily.
“Get up,” Sayeed said, and lifted the fat man as easily as another might lift a child.
When they reached the mouth of the pass, Zeeahd turned to Minser. The peddler quailed.
“You’ll lead us through the pass.”
Minser shook his head. “I don’t know the way. There was a mist, and. . ”
“And what?” Zeeahd snapped.
“And nothing,” Minser said, and Sayeed knew he was lying.
“Sayeed,” Zeeahd said, and nodded at Minser.
Sayeed advanced on the peddler, who stumbled backward and fell, holding up his hands.
“Please, no.”
“Then speak truth to me, peddler,” Zeeahd said.
Minser’s twisted expression evidenced the battle within him, but eventually fear won out.
“There were. . spirits in the mist.”
Zeeahd’s voice was low and dangerous. “Guardian spirits?”
“I see no mist,” Sayeed said.
“And you thought these spirits would save you, perhaps?” Zeeahd asked Minser.
To that, the peddler said nothing. His entire body shook with terror. The cats crowded close around him, mewling.
“There is no mist,” Sayeed said again.
“How long ago did you travel the pass?” Zeeahd asked.
“Four years ago,” Minser answered.
“The mist is gone,” Zeeahd said, clearing his throat wetly. “There are no guardian spirits.”
“Gone?” Minser said, his tone that of a little boy.
“Gone,” Zeeahd said. “And with it, whatever hope you had of escape. Now move.”
With Sayeed dragging Minser by the collar, they entered the pass. Its narrow, sheer walls closed in on either side. Tunnels, cracks, and other natural openings led off in other directions almost immediately.
“Which way?” Sayeed asked, shaking Minser.
“I don’t know,” the peddler said. “I told you, there was a mist. We were guided.”
“By who?” Sayeed asked.
“By servants of Amaunator,” Zeeahd said, as he kneeled before a boulder. He pointed near the base of the boulder and there, carved deeply into the stone, was the symbol of the Dawnfather-a blazing sun over a closed rose.
“They marked the path,” Sayeed said.
Zeeahd stood, his hands on his hips. “So it seems. Do you remember other markers, Minser?”
“There was mist, but yes. They checked from time to time for markers.”
“Good,” Zeeahd said. “Very good. With them, we can find our way.”
“So you can let me go now,” Minser said. The quaver in his voice betrayed his fear.
“Yes,” Zeeahd said. “We no longer need you. Have your release.”
He waved at the cats and they swarmed the peddler, snarling. He screamed and tried to run as they bit and clawed. His exhausted legs would not bear him and he fell. The cats latched onto his body and tore at his flesh and skin. Blood and screams flew.
“Get them off! Get them off!”
Sayeed watched the murder, feeling nothing. Zeeahd laughed when Minser tried to pick up a nearby rock to strike one of the cats. The cat easily dodged the clumsy blow and sank its teeth into Minser’s wrists.
“The light preserve me! The light preserve me!”
Death came slowly and painfully to the peddler. His screams bounced off the walls of the mountains. The cats, their fur soaked with Minser’s blood, licked delicately at his savaged body. The peddler’s lower lip dangled from the mouth of one of the creatures.
Zeeahd kneeled once more before the mark of Amaunator, stared at it as if committing its form to memory. After a moment, he stood, removed a pearl from his cloak, shattered it with a rock, and gathered the dust in his hand. He found a forked stick, sprinkled the pearl dust on it, and incanted the words to a divination spell Sayeed had heard him use hundreds of times over the years.
“Other than the symbol of Amaunator carved into the rock immediately before me,” Zeeahd said. “Show me the nearest such symbol.”
The forked stick glowed opalescent and seemed to tug Zeeahd around, the magic pulling him to the next marker.
“Come,” Zeeahd said excitedly. “This way.”
They left Minser’s corpse behind them and, relying upon Zeeahd’s spellcraft, moved from marker to marker, picking their way through the labyrinthine pass, their excitement growing with each marker they passed.
They heard a soft rush, growing as they moved forward-falling water. In time they exited the pass and below and before them stretched a valley ringed by sheer mountain walls, a long smear of green bisected by a slow-flowing river, itself fed by several cascades that poured from the cliff face. Dark tarns dotted the valley here and there.
Stone structures nestled among the pines near the river. Sayeed could see cleared land for cultivation, barns and other outbuildings, several livestock pens, an orchard of apple trees. A large central structure-the Abbey of the Rose, home of the Oracle-sat in the center of it all.