“No,” Eli said, stepping up to join them and bringing the welcome sphere of warmth with him. “No snow, no water, just dry, dusty stone, and the cold, of course.” He glanced at Nico. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Nico looked away. She didn’t know how to answer that. All the way here she’d been probing her mind, trying to dig up memories about her time on the mountain. The closer they came, the more familiar things had felt, but a black haze hung over her mind, drawing a curtain between the morning Josef found her from everything before it. Nico frowned. Perhaps the demon ate her memories as well as her soul. Perhaps she really was starting to lose her mind.
You can’t blame everything on me, the voice purred. You locked those memories away yourself. Pity, you were so much stronger then. It sickens me when I think of what you threw away.
Nico firmly turned her attention toward the valley floor. She did not want to hear it.
“All right,” Eli said, dropping his bag on the ice at his feet. “Since you can’t go to the mountain, Nico, Josef and I will sneak in ourselves and find that map you mentioned. We’ll have to take Karon with us. Will you be all right without heat?”
Nico considered. “I should be. I’m sheltered here, and I’ve got my coat. I’ll be good until nightfall.”
“Plenty of time,” Eli said, glancing at Josef. “Let’s go.”
Josef nodded, and the pair of them started down the steep slope toward the black mountain. Eli skidded a little on icy snow and half ran, half slid down the first slope. Josef, however, took one step and stopped cold.
Nico thought he was testing the ground, but the seconds ticked by and still he didn’t move. Eli recovered his footing and, realizing he was alone, glanced up at his swordsman.
“Are you all right?” he called.
Josef didn’t answer. He had a look on his face Nico had never seen on him before. On anyone else, she would have called it bewilderment. For a long minute he just stood there, the wind blowing snow into his short blond hair. Then, very slowly, as though he were pushing against enormous pressure, Josef lifted his arm, raised his hand to his shoulder, and, with a flip of the buckle, undid the strap that held the Heart of War to his back. The sword fell to the ground with a crash that echoed off the mountain walls, sending the snow sliding down the slopes. The second he was free, Josef staggered forward, panting and red-faced like he’d just run a mile in full armor.
Eli looked from sword to swordsman. “What just happened?”
“I don’t know,” Josef said, struggling to stand upright. He turned to face his fallen sword, which was lying on the ice just inside the ravine. Scowling, he leaned forward and grabbed the handle with both hands, pulling as hard as he could.
The sword did not move.
Josef braced his legs and pulled again, but the sword stuck to the icy stone as though it had grown there, and nothing Josef did could move it. After the third pull, he fell backward into the snow. Josef sat up again with a flurry of thrown snow, gasping and glaring at his sword. But the Heart just sat there, black and silent as ever.
Eli climbed back up the slope and leaned over the sword until his nose was almost level with the leather- wrapped hilt, staring intently. When he had examined it from every angle, he stood up with a shrug. “I guess it doesn’t want to go to the Dead Mountain either.”
“That’s too bad,” Josef said, breathing hard. “Because I’m not going in there without it, so it’ll just have to come along.”
He grabbed the hilt to pull again, but this time he stopped, his face going ghostly pale.
“What?” Eli said.
Josef shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “It can’t go,” he said.
Eli stared at him. “What?”
“The Heart just told me it can’t go to the Dead Mountain,” Josef said again.
“Since when do you talk to your sword?” Eli scoffed.
Josef gave him a murderous look. “It’s more like a feeling, but I know what it said. It told me it has to stay here.”
Eli sighed. “Well, did it give a reason?”
Josef crossed his arms. “Sure, it explained all its motivations to me in great detail. And then we sat down and had tea.”
“Okay, okay,” Eli said, putting his hands up. “The Heart stays. But if it’s not going, then you shouldn’t either.”
Josef arched an eyebrow, and Eli shook his head. “I’m not saying anything about your fighting prowess, but if you can’t bring your big weapon I’d probably have an easier time sneaking in alone.”
“How does that make sense?” Josef growled.
“It’s the first rule of thievery,” Eli said with a shrug. “One person makes less noise than two. And I’d much rather you be here with Nico and the Heart than stuck on some mountain with just me and your pot-metal normal blades.”
Josef’s hands flicked to the blades on his hip, as though he was about to show Eli just how dangerous those pot-metal blades could be, but Eli was already walking over to the cranny where he’d dropped his bag.
“If I go solo then I can do things I can’t do with you two,” he said, pulling a folded bundle of black clothing out of his sack. “Anyway”—he began to take off his jacket—“it’s not like I’m planning on fighting. I’ll have a much easier time giving trouble the slip if I don’t have to worry about you and your bash-happy ways.”
Josef frowned but didn’t argue the point. Satisfied, Eli leaned on the wall and began pulling off his boots. He placed them carefully beside his pack, followed by his jacket. Then, standing in the snow in his shirtsleeves and socks, Eli shook out the folded black cloth and started to pull it over his head. It was a tight fit. The fabric was obviously meant to go over the skin, not other clothes, but Nico didn’t blame Eli for layering. Even with Karon there to keep him warm, the cold was bitter. When the black cloth was wrapped all the way down to his feet, Eli slid on a pair of padded black boots, completing the ensemble. When he straightened up, he was dressed toe to chin in a black catsuit not unlike the one Giuseppe Monpress had worn back in Gaol.
“Don’t ever tell the old man I actually wore this,” Eli said, pulling the last bit, the black mask, over his head. “I’d never hear the end. Of course”—he grinned behind the thin cloth—“mine has improvements.”
“I hope they make you demonproof,” Josef said. “You’ve got four hours before dark; don’t dawdle.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Josef snorted indignantly. Eli gave them a final wave and started down the slope, half walking, half sliding over the ice-crusted snow. Despite being a black dot on a field of white, he vanished almost instantly. Still, Nico and Josef watched for several minutes more, just in case.
Finally, Josef turned around. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find something that will burn before I turn blue.”
Nico nodded and hurried after him. For the next half hour they scoured the ravine and the slope they’d come from, eventually gathering enough burnables to make a fire. It was a small, pathetic thing, but at least it was bright and warm, and they huddled together beside it.
Now that it was clear they weren’t going to the Dead Mountain, the Heart let Josef pick it up again. He sat with the black blade in his lap, idly running his fingers across its pitted surface. This close, Nico could smell the bite of cold iron and the fearsome, bloody scent of the sword itself. Even so, it was a comforting, familiar smell, and for the first time since they’d seen the bears, she began to think things might turn out all right.
That was when the sunlight began to fade.
“Powers,” Josef grumbled, looking up at the fast-moving clouds. “A storm. As if we didn’t have enough to deal with.”
He lowered his head and crouched tighter over his sword, but Nico could only stare wide-eyed as the swift, gray clouds were pushed aside by black, angry thunderheads moving against the wind. “Josef,” she whispered. “I don’t think that’s a normal storm.”
He looked at her, and then looked up again. By this point, the storm clouds blotted out every inch of sky. They tumbled overhead, enormous and midnight black, lit up from the inside by flashes of blue lightning. Thunder crashed, drowning out even the howling of the wind outside the pass. Josef muttered a curse and stood up, the Heart of War in his hand. It was as dark as night in the ravine now, their pathetic little fire the only sputter of light.
All at once the world flashed bright blue as lightning struck, and in the lightning, a tall man appeared before
