Mikulov slipped through the baking heat, back toward the road to Kurast and his ultimate destiny.
10
Out of Caldeum
The road was empty, abandoned, the rutted tracks overgrown with a nearly colorless grass that looked like the hair on a stray dog’s back. It had been a main thoroughfare at some point but had long since fallen into disrepair. The road led through the dusty, windswept plains that surrounded Caldeum, past huge slabs of rock like sleeping giants and the monstrous skeleton of some ancient creature, its bones bleached white from the sun, then rose with the land as Cain and Leah began to ascend the slope of a hill.
Leah stopped on the top of an outcropping and looked back at the city. The sun was now higher in the sky, and the light sparkled off the waterfalls and copper domes like a tumble of jewels in the desert. Tears glimmering in her eyes mirrored the prisms of light.
My home.
She mouthed the words silently to get a feel for them, although they meant little to her. A sense of hopelessness fell over her like a smothering blanket. The truth was, although she knew the web of streets and buildings and sewers by heart, she had never felt much at home anywhere, other than in the tunnels beneath the streets. She was an outcast, even among the people of Caldeum, where she had lived her entire life. The city might have looked pretty from up here, but she knew the dark and dirty underbelly, the cruelty of the people, the filth that gathered in forgotten corners and swelled and changed until it grew into a ravenous beast, waiting to swallow you whole.
At least, that was what Gillian used to say. When Leah thought of her mother, an even more complicated set of conflicting emotions washed over her, a terrible, gut-wrenching loneliness mixed with terror that was so strong it threatened to overwhelm her. Her mother was not welclass="underline" that much she understood. She remembered the paralyzing fear of two nights before, Gillian rambling about demons bathing in blood, and later dragging Leah from her bed, whatever terrible thing that might have happened avoided only by the arrival of the old man; and last night, the smoke and the flames and confusion, and the dim knowledge that somehow her mother had been responsible for the events that had led to the burning.
Leah had other memories that chronicled Gillian’s descent into madness. But she was the only family Leah had ever known. She had been there when nobody else had cared, and there had been good times too. Enough of them to matter.
She is my mother.
And that, the little girl realized, was everything. The simple fact that she was gone was enough to hurt like the deep slice of a knife. She felt shattered inside, completely lost and alone.
What would happen to her now? What would happen to Gillian? Where had they taken her?
Panic flooded to the surface, and Leah swallowed against the lump in her chest. Where was her mother? She turned to ask the old man—Uncle Deckard, she had been told to call him, although she had never received any explanation of how they might be related—but stopped before the words had left her throat. He was walking slowly up the track, leaning on his staff, his back to her. A good distance away now and growing smaller as he went.
She kept her mouth shut, cutting off the words and watching him go. He was strange, stiff and formal, and intimidating in the way a strict teacher might be in school. But Leah seemed to make him nervous. She could not understand why, but he acted as if he was afraid she might do something unpredictable at any moment, like burst into song or stand on her head or start running around screaming at the top of her lungs. Gillian had seemed to trust him, but what if he meant to sell her into slavery, or worse? She knew enough about wizardry to recognize a spell when she heard one, but she did not know what kind of spell he had uttered shortly after they had set off on their journey. And nothing had happened anyway. If he was a sorcerer of some kind, he must not be a very powerful one.
What if he practices dark magic? What if I am to be a sacrifice to the demons my mother always said were coming for me?
The thought sent chills down her spine. She had tried to forget what her mother had said, but the words kept forcing their way back into her mind.
“They want you, Leah, and if they find you, you’re never coming back from that. Never.”
Standing there on the rock, she felt as if the entire world was gone, and what remained around her was nothing but dust. She remembered the circle of boys who had teased the old beggar in the city before turning on her. I’m like that old beggar, she thought, with nobody to care about me and no place to go. She wiped at the tears that trickled down her dirty cheeks, smearing the soot that still clung to her skin, and fought against the sudden urge to go running after the old man and throw herself at his feet, even if he was almost as scary as anything else on this terrible, deserted road.
A flapping sound roused her from her trance. A huge crow had taken flight and was circling overhead, its wings as wide as her own outstretched arms. She shivered, the memory of the crow from the street coming back to her, the way its sharp beak had pulled at the dead flesh, how it had cocked its head and stared at her with beady eyes, strings of gray meat still dangling from its maw. That led to the idea of something else watching her, a being much more powerful and deadly.
Something terrible is coming . . .
It seemed as if the sky had darkened, a shadow falling over the land. Leah clutched James’s cloak and ran off the rock and along the deserted road, chasing the old man up the hill until she was close enough to feel a bit better. For better or worse, he was the only one who could protect her now. She did not know whether he cared enough for that to matter.
They camped for the night on the hard ground under the stars, Leah shivering under the cloak, and were up again at dawn. The old man gave her a few bites of bread and sips of water from a small canteen. Hours later, the sun was falling in the western sky, and still he walked on at a steady pace, speeding up slightly on downward slopes, and slowing down when the track climbed more steeply.
They had passed no one since the fork in the road, and had said little to each other for most of the day. The silence had grown into its own separate presence, like another person walking with them. Leah’s throat felt like dry stone. She had long since gone numb. Her stomach rumbled, and hunger pains bit deeply. She had had nothing but the bread and water, and her companion seemed to be oblivious to the very idea of food.
Eventually they came to a river carved into the dusty ground, its banks steep and covered with reeds. The road led to a wooden bridge that looked treacherous to cross. Underneath it the water ran black and silent. Beyond the bridge the ground rose more steeply through a rock-strewn hillside, and larger, more menacing mountains loomed in the distance.
“We’ll find a place to camp here,” the old man said. He turned to look at her, leaning on his staff, and she saw the exhaustion etched in his features, deep lines around his mouth and along his brow. He did not seem so scary now, his tall, skeletal frame more fragile than imposing.
Who was he, and where was he taking her? She wanted to ask these questions, but her fear of him kept her mouth shut. They left the road and walked a short distance along the riverbank, looking for a flat place. Dry grasses hissed across the bottom of James’s cloak as Leah followed Cain to a copse of trees that grew near the bank. They were thin and spidery, their limbs nearly bare, but the ground underneath them was dry and soft, and they provided some privacy from any prying eyes.
The heat on the dry, open path had been overwhelming, but under the trees it was shaded, and a bit cooler. The old man set his rucksack down near a flat rock. Leah approached him cautiously, ducking under a low-hanging branch. It was darker in here, and she allowed herself a brief moment to relax as her eyes adjusted to the shadows. He sat down on the rock with a heavy sigh, crossed one leg over the other, and rubbed gently at his foot. She noticed it was wrapped with cloth underneath the worn sandal. The cloth was spotted with blood.