snow. The Ansyndra became deeper, narrower, more violent and swift. They had no other guide but Ildraquin’s whispers to Hercol, but he drove them on, nearly running, saying that their quarry lay ahead, always downriver and ahead.
So the day ended, and at dusk as promised Hercol let them rest. They chose a spot with many cedars near the river. The mountain’s shadow brought swift darkness, but they had good luck with the matches and soon a fire was burning. It cheered them some and dried their boots, but its heat made their burns ache. Alyash disassembled Ott’s pistol, drying the components on a stone. Pazel gazed blearily at the little wood-and-steel mechanism. Hard to believe that it could kill a man.
Famished, the twenty-one travelers and three dogs shared half their stock of mul, which came to about a teaspoon each. Pazel was battling sleep even as he chewed. He drifted off with Thasha once more examining his leg, and a dog licking his mul-sticky fingers with equal concentration.
At dawn they were chilled and soaked with dew. Hercol had them up and marching before they were properly awake, and certainly before they could commiserate about their injuries, their fallen comrades, the lack of food, the impossibility of return. The plain widened as the river (unreachable now, sunk deep in its rocky gorge) cut longer serpentines. Hercol maintained his savage pace, cutting off any protests with a lancing stare. When they crossed a stream he ordered them to bend and drink deep, and while they did so he wrenched off his own boots and handed them without a word to Cayer Vispek. In the heat of the afternoon the scalded dog began to limp and drop behind, calling after them with a mournful yelp. Hercol turned back and lifted it over his shoulders, and carried it that way like a sack of grain. “If its foot does not improve by morning we will eat it,” he declared.
They ate the last of the mul that night, and Bolutu extracted a long thorn from the dog’s paw. Hercol would not permit a fire. “We have closed the gap,” he said. “I think the sorcerer is within five miles, and I would not lose him now.”
Just beyond their camp the land rose in a stony bluff, leaning out over the river gorge. While the others prepared to sleep, Hercol climbed the bluff with Ensyl on his shoulder. They crouched among rocks at the summit, hidden from the sight of anyone beyond, staring through small gaps. They remained there a long time, motionless.
“What are they looking at?” said Neeps finally.
Thasha got to her feet. “Let’s go find out,” she said. She and Neeps climbed the bluff and stood beside Hercol. At once they grew still, gazing beyond the rocks, transfixed.
When Neda too noticed their fascination, Pazel held out his hand. “Help me up,” he said. “We’ll go and see for ourselves.”
At that Jalantri leaped to his feet and caught Neda by the arm. “You’re not thinking, sister! You’re badly bruised and there is fighting ahead. Let him waste his strength if he will. We know better, Phoenix-Flame.”
Neda seemed at a loss for words. She looked at Jalantri’s hand on her arm until he dropped it, chastened. Then she glanced quickly at Pazel and started up the hill.
They walked in silence (so weirdly normal, climbing a hill beside his sister; they might have been back in Ormael) until Neda said, “The way of the sfvantskor is perfection.”
“Okay,” said Pazel.
“If you are distracted by the personal,” she said, “you will fail when your people most need their champion. That is certain, proven. That is why we are chaste. We turn our passions to the needs of the people, to the Grand Family. That is the Mzithrin way, and the sfvantskor must be the example.”
Pazel looked back: Jalantri was still watching them. “You don’t have to explain, Neda,” he said.
She smiled, as though amused that Pazel thought he understood. Then she said, “The dogs keep sniffing at Neeps. They look at him strangely, too.”
Pazel glanced at her, aghast. He could have kicked himself for not noticing. They’re hunting dogs, he thought. Were they trained to hunt tol-chenni? Is that what Neeps smells like to them? Fear for Neeps surged through him once more. But when they reached the hilltop, where the others were still crouched and staring, what he saw drove everything else from his mind.
A gargantuan lake spread before them, far greater than Ilvaspar, almost as large as the Gulf of Masal itself. Or was it a lake? It was almost perfectly round, and its shores were sheer, rocky cliffs. But there was no water that he could see. Instead, across the whole expanse, some twenty or thirty feet below the rim, spread a layer of dark, murky green. A flat surface, but not entirely smooth. It appeared to be composed of one round patch atop another, like overlapping lily pads choking a pond, except that these pads were all fused at the edges into one solid mass. Pazel could see no gaps at all, except very close to them, where the Ansyndra tumbled into the crater.
“Hercol says Fulbreech is down there,” said Thasha. “Inside it. Moving around.”
“But what is it?” said Neda. “A lake, covered in water-weed?”
“I think,” said Hercol, “that we are looking at the Infernal Forest.”
“That’s no forest,” said Pazel. “I mean… could it be?”
“We have seen many strange things on this side of the Nelluroq,” said Ensyl, “but that is the strangest. I do not like it. I fear it will not go well for us there.”
“Then let us rest,” said Hercol, “for Fulbreech is there below, somewhere. And Arunis must surely be with him, for who would enter such a place if not compelled?”
That night for the first time since Masalym the air stayed warm. Pazel lay down next to Thasha and held her near. The others lay all around them; a dog curled up and leaned into his back. He tried to nudge the creature but it only groaned.
Thasha’s eyes were still open. He leaned close and whispered, “What are you thinking about?”
“Marila,” she said.
He felt a tightness in his throat. He wanted to tell Thasha about Neeps, but the words would not form.
“We’re going to know their child,” said Thasha. “If we live, I mean. If we live and we win.”
A shudder flashed through his body. He pulled her tight. Then Thasha turned and pressed her lips to his ear.
“Half Bali Adron,” she said, tapping his chest.
He nodded.
“What did you find there, Pazel? In the temple, in Vasparhaven? Are you allowed to tell me?”
Pazel said nothing. He could hear the bursting of the globe, see the empty space where the woman had been, feel the stab of what he’d known was love. Such a distant memory. Such a terrifying force.
“Crystal,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Everything there was made of crystal, Thasha. The spiders and the people and the music and the stones. And everything outside the temple’s the same, isn’t it? You want to hold it because it’s so beautiful. And you can’t, really. Not for long. It will break if you’re bad and selfish and it will break if you’re good. It snaps or it shatters, or it melts in your hand. And the more beautiful it is the less time you get to have it. And you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
Thasha didn’t answer. She turned her back, thoughtful, and then lay still beneath his arm. In minutes they were both asleep.
Well past midnight, he felt her guide his hand under her tattered clothing and hold it tight against her breast. So quiet when it finally happened. So unlike the way he’d dreamed. He raised his head, kissed her silently from shoulder to ear, tasting ashes, feeling her tremble. Then he lowered his head beside her, nuzzling, and tumbled back into sleep.
But later still he woke more fully beneath her kisses, and without a word they rose, and tiptoed barefoot into the grass. They neared the river gorge, felt the breeze over the water, stepped cautiously along the rim. Beneath one of the cedars, they turned to face each other, and Pazel lowered himself onto a stone, mindful of his leg. Thasha undressed before him, and she was no more than a blue-white silhouette by the light of the little Polar Candle (the old moon had set; it was almost dawn) but at the same time she was everything that mattered, Thasha Isiq, his lover, naked and frightened and magnificent and strong. And when he carefully removed his own clothes and embraced her there was no more fear in his heart, no room for it, she was the place in the world where fear ended, and she backed into the tree and said she loved him, and her hands reached up for a sturdy branch, and for a few seconds he was inside her, just barely; she had raised herself almost out of his reach, and knowing he shouldn’t he tried to stand higher, to scramble up onto a root, rock, anything, it was like trying to mate with the
