mouths.
“Did I miss something?” Dante asked. “Is it spring or did we just wander into an undiscovered circle of hell?”
“It’s a miracle.” Shahera pulled her hat and scarves off her head and shook her hair free. “It’s like another world, a secret garden where magical spirits dwell.”
The snow continued to fall but it vanished before it could kiss the warm earth. A sultry haze hung above the dry ground. Mirari stopped and pointed down the slope. “There. If you keep going that way, you’ll find the fire gold.”
Taziri glanced back for Lorenzo, but the hidalgo had not yet arrived. “How will I know it? What does it look like?”
“It’s gold. About the size of your head, I would say.” The Italian mask muffled her voice slightly, but Mirari’s wide eyes flashed behind the porcelain face. “You don’t have an axe.”
“You think we’ll need one to get the stone?”
Mirari’s eyes narrowed but her painted smile did not change. “I think you’ll need one to survive.”
“Why?” Taziri looked hastily around but there was no sign of anyone or anything dangerous. No trees or grass, no birds or mice. Just earth and stone. What was that word she used? “What is a basajaun?”
“Something that will not let you take the stone.”
Taziri pulled up her left sleeve and released the gun barrel in her brace. The weapon snapped up with a click and a hiss of compressed air. She set about loading a shell. “Well, if it’s human, this should scare him away.”
“And what if it’s not human?” Dante asked.
“As long as it’s not a snow bear, a gunshot or two will send it running.”
The Italian frowned. “I’ve heard stories about snow bears.” He knelt down and picked up a jagged rock. Shahera picked up one as well. Alonso picked up a handful of stones about half the size of his fist.
Mirari leaned back against a dark gray boulder. “I’ll wait here for your friend, the Don.” She produced a small hatchet and a long knife from inside her coat, which she held tightly as she crossed her arms. “Go on, if you still want to.”
Taziri stared up the dry path to where it ended in a wall of swirling white. “We can’t stand around waiting for him. We’ll start losing daylight eventually and I don’t want to be caught on this mountain in the dark. Come on. Let’s find his rock.”
She led the way down the slope, gravel crunching under her boots. Dante and Shahera followed close behind her. The Mazigh pilot scanned the mountain side.
A lump of gold as big as my head. That’s going to be heavy.
Ten minutes later a cascade of pebbles drew her attention to the trail behind them and Taziri saw Lorenzo shuffling sideways down the steep path. The hidalgo shrugged at her. “I waited at the last narrow pass, but our shadowy friend never came. Maybe he turned back.”
“Or maybe he fell.” Dante grinned.
“Or maybe he’s still out there, stalking us,” Shahera said.
“Or maybe he was never there to begin with.” Taziri pointed at the chaos of rock and earth below them. “We need to find your stone and get off this mountain as quickly as possible. We won’t survive a night on that trail.”
The five of them spread out and picked their way down the slope from ledge to ledge, peering into cracks in the earth and under fallen stones.
“This is pointless!” Dante yelled. “Your precious stone is probably buried a hundred feet underground, if it even exists!”
“Mirari said she saw it here,” Alonso said. “So it has to be on the surface.”
“Oh, right. The crazy girl saw it, I forgot.”
“She’s not crazy!”
“Alonso!” Lorenzo sighed. “Let’s just focus on the search right now.”
Taziri continued down, trying to angle across the mountain in the direction that the masked girl had pointed. The ground underfoot grew hotter. And then she saw it. A great bowl had been cut or beaten out of the face of the mountain and in that depression, on a wide flat rock that glowed a dull red, was a golden lump shining with a bright golden light. “There! There it is!”
She started toward it, hopping lightly to avoid scorching her boots any more than necessary. The others called back to her and to each other. “Which way? She found it? Who did? Down there! Oh, I see her!” Their voices echoed across the huge stone bowl, reverberating up into the bright noon sky.
And a bloodcurdling roar answered back. Taziri stumbled against a boulder and grabbed it for support. It was warm to the touch. The sound of the roar grew and grew, like the screams of a thousand madmen and hungry lions and enraged elephants. When it stopped, its echo screamed on all across the mountain, and when the echo faded the following silence was horrible. Taziri looked wildly all about her.
What could scream like that? A beast? Just one or many? And where is it? Where? Where?
With her right hand on the trigger of her brace-gun, she jogged out into the open, descending the almost smooth slope of the bowl. The golden stone sat on its glowing red table only a few dozen yards away.
Just a little farther. Almost there now.
To her left she saw Lorenzo and Alonso rushing down toward her with a strange harness dangling between them. As they approached, she saw that the heavy leather straps were reinforced with steel bands on the outside, but on the inside was an arrangement of ceramic tiles and studs to hold the stone. When she asked about them, Lorenzo claimed they wouldn’t shatter from the heat. Taziri hoped he was right.
The three of them dashed to the edge of the red rock and spread the harness between them. Working without speaking, they shuffled right and left, stretching the leather straps over and around the golden stone and when the hidalgo nodded, they wrapped their ends down and around and lifted the stone from the ground in its new cradle of steel, leather, and clay. Taziri peered at the lumpy golden mass in all its jagged imperfection. Despite the heat, the stone showed no sign of melting, and when she reached her hand toward it, the sensation of the heat did not grow any stronger. The only heat she could feel radiated up from the rock on which the skyfire stone had rested.
Alonso and Taziri held the laden web for a moment while Lorenzo carefully inspected the straps to be certain that only the ceramic plates were touching the stone, and then he closed the clasps and tied the handles shut. The entire packaged was lowered into a heavy canvas sack, which Lorenzo rolled over his shoulder. He smiled and nodded, and took the first step back up the slope.
A second roar boomed across the bowl, and here at the bottom of it Taziri felt the pure bestial rage behind the sound piercing her bones. She turned to look just as Lorenzo stumbled and dropped his precious cargo. The hidalgo straightened up and reached for the sack, but the canvas was already blackening and tiny flames licked its seams.
“It’s burning the bag!” Alonso pointed at it.
“No, it’s not the stone. It’s the heat from the ground, the gravel, the pebbles.” Lorenzo lifted the bag a second time and resumed his climb.
Taziri looked back over her shoulder and what she saw made her fall to one knee on the burning stones. She struggled up and pointed across the bowl to the figure on the far edge. “Look!”
It was shaped like an enormous man with massive shoulders and no neck. Long shaggy white hair hung over every inch of its body, and above its bearded face two huge dark eyes peered out beneath its heavy brow. From its giant fist hung a long wooden club, but when the creature shook its club over its head, Taziri saw the long row of metal teeth shining on the edge of the weapon.
“Dear God,” Lorenzo said. “It is a basajaun. They exist.”
“A what?”
“Run. RUN! ”
They all turned and scrambled up the steep, rocky slope as fast as they could. The ground grew steadily cooler the higher they climbed, and step by step Taziri noted the falling snow as it began to reach her eyes, and then her hands, and finally her feet. She wanted to turn, she wanted to look back, but the gravel was so loose and the patches of ice and snow so slick that she didn’t dare take her eyes off the path in front of her. She heard Lorenzo yelling to the others to run, to make for the trail, to go on without them.
