'Leave me now, fickle creature.'
'But master, the thought of an airless jar-'
'Think on it elsewhere. Leave me, I said, until I call again!'
Keening, the sylph merged with the wind of the Wastes and was gone.
For a long while, Rakon eyed his maps, the tomes that had led him to the Wastes, to the sole hope for his family. He looked out the window of the carriage, up through the cut and into the sky. Minnear floated against the black vault, nearly full. The thin, waning crescent of Kulven floated above it, a silver scythe. The Thin Veil was almost upon the world.
Hell, too, blinked in the velvet of the night sky, a crimson dot of fire and stone. He glanced at it for only a moment. Hell was no longer his salvation. His salvation lay somewhere in the Wastes.
He studied his maps a final time, folded and rolled them up, and tried not to think of the Vwynn.
CHAPTER TEN
Nix awoke before the dawn, as was his wont when he wasn't otherwise knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. The eunuch still stood his station, and Nix assumed he had not moved through the night.
'Does the man piss in place?' Nix muttered through a dry mouth that tasted peppery. He sat up, prodded the embers to life, and put two logs on the fire to get it going.
The camp stirred as dawn turned the sky gray. Men coughed, spit, pissed, pulled on mail and weapons, yoked horses.
At Rakon's call, the eunuch carried Rusilla and Merelda back to the carriage in turn. Nix did not dare interfere, despite his impulse to do so.
Egil soon emerged from his tent, yawning, the ruff of his hair sticking out in all directions. He offered a brief prayer to his dead god and came to Nix's side.
'You feel all right?' the priest asked. 'You look like shite.'
Nix made a helpless gesture. 'Bad dreams.'
Egil turned and looked at the carriage. 'The sisters, you think? Or this place?'
'Maybe both,' Nix said.
Egil rubbed his palm over his head briskly, as if shaking the eye of Ebenor to wakefulness. 'I slept poorly as well. But hopefully we'll not have too much of this. I make us only three days from Afirion.'
'Aye.'
Egil leaned in close and whispered, 'I don't have the stomach to fight the worm today. I still ache from yesterday. I think we just surrender to the compulsion and get the damned horn. Then we get clear.'
Egil's choice of the word 'surrender' caused Nix to recall his disquieting dream, the screams, the blood, the sense of hopelessness he'd felt, a hopelessness so profound that surrender seemed the only option.
'I dislike surrender,' Nix said.
'Aye,' Egil agreed with a nod. 'But what else can we do?'
To that, Nix said nothing, and he, Egil, and the guards ate on the move as they worked breaking camp, the guards tearing things down as efficiently as they had set them up. Within the hour, they were moving again, following the enspelled road through the cut. The clouds returned and dull, filtered light leaked down from a gray sky. They traveled for leagues through the cut, walled by the blood-colored cliffs, the skeletal trees atop the cliff walls rattling in the wind.
Around midday the driver of the supply wagon spotted something ahead and pulled the horses to a halt.
'What is it?' Baras asked, and Rakon's head emerged from the carriage and repeated the question.
'Something on the side of the road,' the driver said, pointing. He was the oldest of the men, his hair going to gray and his body paunchy. 'There.'
Half the guards readied crossbows, and the others, including Baras and Jyme, drew blades. Nix and Egil came to the front of the wagon train, their own weapons drawn, and saw the thing to which the driver was pointing, a broken form lying just off the side of the road about thirty paces ahead.
'Probably an animal,' Baras said, and pointed at his men. 'The five of you stay with the wagons. Jyme, you're with me.' To Rakon, he said, 'My lord, we'll just have a look.'
'Be quick,' Rakon said.
Egil and Nix fell in beside Baras and Jyme. Nix kept his eyes on the cliffs as they approached, sniffing for an ambush, but none was forthcoming.
'What is that?' Jyme asked as they neared the form.
A body lay on the side of the road, the limbs twisted as if from a fall. Scales the color of sand covered the creature's wiry form, or what remained of its form. Its thin limbs were all sinew and muscle. Each of its five long fingers ended in black claws. The hairless head was a thin oval, vaguely humanlike, and thrown back as if in pain. Fangs filled the overlarge, open mouth. Two vertical slits in the center of its face must have been its nostrils. Many small cuts and bite marks covered the flesh, scores of them. Scavengers had been at the remains. Tatters of dried, leathery skin flapped in the breeze, a drawn curtain revealing ribs and spine.
'It's a demon,' Jyme whispered.
Nix could not disagree. He'd never seen anything like it.
'Fell from the top, I'd wager,' Egil said, looking up at the valley walls.
Baras looked back at the caravan, at the creature. 'Whatever it is, it's dead. We need to keep moving.' He waved the wagon and carriage forward.
Eyes lingered on the dead creature's form as they passed. The guards made the protective sign of Orella. Rakon stared at the remains with hooded eyes as his carriage rolled past.
As they traveled, they passed seven more carcasses. All of them were dead many days, perhaps weeks, and appeared broken from a fall. Bites and scratches covered the scaled flesh, and all had been torn open.
The men gave the bodies a wide berth. Twice after passing bodies Baras consulted with Rakon, but he never shared the subject of the conversations with Nix.
The valley seemed neverending and they continued on for hours, walled in by the cliffs, walking an inexplicable thoroughfare littered with the corpses of demons.
The men remained tense and alert, keeping weapons to hand. Nix watched the sky, the tree-fringed top of the cut, the walls, but nothing occurred, and by nightfall the men seemed to have shed much of their nervousness.
'Three more days,' Nix said to Egil, as they assisted the guards in setting up camp.
'Hmmph,' Egil grunted, hammering tent stakes into the red earth.
'What?' Nix asked.
'Notice the sun?' Egil said.
'That blazing orange circle in the sky? It's called the sun? I hadn't noticed it before.'
Egil didn't smile. 'I mean did you notice its position.'
'We're surrounded by rock walls and it's cloudy. How would I notice its position?'
Egil nodded. 'You didn't pay attention. In any event, we're not headed due east anymore.'
'What? Shite. What direction are we headed? Are we lost?'
Egil looked Nix in the face. 'We're headed northeast. Rakon seem lost to you?'
He didn't. 'Maybe he just wants to stick on the road. Keep the wagons and carriage as long as possible before de-yoking the horses.'
'Maybe,' Egil said.
'You doubt it?'
'I trust nothing about him,' the priest said. 'I think he aims for something other than a direct route to Afirion's deserts. But why, I can't say. And I think he knows more about those bodies we saw than he's telling. Did you see his face when we passed them?'
Nix considered, and made up his mind. 'Then let's see what we can see.' He hustled over to Baras's side.
'What is it, Nix?' The guardsman wiped his brow of sweat.
