“What was that?” Angel asked softly when the light from the Elfstones died away, and they were standing in the gray haze of dawn once more.
Kirisin shook his head. “I’m not sure. It looked like some sort of statue. A statue carved of ice.” He looked at Simralin. “Have you ever seen it before?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been in those caves. Didn’t even know they were there.”
They looked at one another a moment longer, then Sim said, “The explanation’s not here. Let’s get going.”
THEY BEGAN THE TREK shortly after, taking time out first to eat and then to wait for Simralin to gather together climbing gear that was stowed in one of the line shack’s wooden bins. She brought out everything she thought they would need, laid it all out on the ground, and explained the reasons for her choices.
“The ropes are in case climbing proves necessary. The ice screws and clamps are to secure the ropes. The ice ax allows digging and hammering on the ice. The wicked-looking metal objects with the teeth are crampons. You attach them to your boots to gain traction on ice and frozen snow. The fastenings are spring-locked; the releases are down here by the heels.” She pointed to the last item. “Be careful of these. These are needle gloves. Something new. See the palms.” She pointed again. “Their surfaces are like the back of a hedgehog. Rub it the wrong way, downward like this,” she made a downward-rubbing motion with her hand, “and dozens of tiny needles embed themselves in whatever surface they’ve rubbed up against. Their grip will keep you from slipping or falling. Very strong. They only release if you rub upward again. The gloves tighten with straps at the wrists so that they won’t come off by accident.”
“Where did you get all this?” Angel asked.
“Borrowed it from here and there.” Simralin grinned. “I told you we knew when to take advantage of something good, no matter who invented it.” She pointed to a bundle of smooth sticks. “Flares. Break them in the middle, you have light for an hour.” She pointed to three lamps. “Solar torches, good for at least twenty-four hours of continual use. Also, the boots and gloves have reflectors that glow in the dark, just in case.”
She pointed to their packs. “Food and water for three days—maybe a little more, if it comes to it. Blow-up mattresses and blankets, all made of Elyon, an Elven fabric, extremely light and warm. That’s our sleeping gear. Ice visors to cut the glare. All-weather cloaks. Weapons. Knives for all of us. My bow and arrows, short sword, and adzl.” For the last, she indicated the peculiar javelin with barbs at both ends and a cord-wound grip at the center. “Angel’s staff. And, of course, if all else fails, Kirisin’s quick wit.”
She grinned at him. “Knife-edge-sharp, I’m told.”
Kirisin nodded. “Very funny. You think that the Elfstones could be used as a weapon?”
They pondered it a moment. “Hard to say,” Simralin answered finally.
“Be good if we didn’t need any weapons,” Angel said. “But Kirisin isn’t the one who should be doing the fighting in any case.”
Simralin nodded in agreement. “You stay out of any fighting if it comes to that, Little K.”
They took a moment to study everything one final time, a few additional questions were asked and answered, and they were ready. They repacked their gear, shouldered their loads, and set out.
They climbed through the morning hours, traversing the meadows and passing through the forests until they reached the upper edge of the tree line shortly after midday. They stopped then to eat, winded and hungry. Kirisin was sore all through his thigh and back muscles. He guessed from the look on Angel’s face that she was suffering, too. Only Simralin seemed completely at home, smiling as if this climb were nothing more than a morning stroll. She talked and laughed as they ate, describing adventures and experiences from other times and places involving the mountains and Syrring Rise, in particular.
Once, she told them, she had come on a small expedition that included Tragen. The big Elf, still learning about mountains, climbed the paths to the glacier too fast, overexerted himself, lost body heat, dehydrated, and passed out. She said the other Trackers had never let him forget about it; every time a climb was involved, they suggested maybe he might want to give it a pass.
She grinned, tossing back her blond hair. “Tragen doesn’t think it so funny, but he lacks a good sense of humor. If he didn’t make up for it in other ways, I expect I would have to rethink our relationship.”
Kirisin gave his sister a pointed look. “Tragen’s all right,” he said, repeating her words back to her. “For now.”
They resumed their climb shortly after, leaving behind the last of the trees and proceeding onto bare rock and gravel. The trail disappeared altogether, and the slope steepened. Kirisin was finding it increasingly hard to breathe, but he knew the air was thin and that after a time his lungs would get used to it. At least, that was what Sim had told him. In any case, he soldiered on, working his way behind her as they wound through the mountain’s rocky debris, advancing toward the snowpack.
When they reached the edge, Simralin walked them forward farther still until they were atop the glacier, high on the mountain now, the wind blowing harder, dry and biting cold. Amid a shelter of massive boulders, she had them lock on the crampons, pull on the gloves, slip the visors over their eyes, and unsling the ice axes. Moving more slowly now, but still climbing, they passed out of the boulders and onto the ice. All around them, the glacier glimmered dully in the pale sunlight. The gray of earlier had dissipated at these heights, the clouds below them now, a roiling dark mass encircling the rock. But the day was passing, the light failing as the sun gave way to an advancing darkness. The western horizon, refracting the change in the light’s intensity, was already starting to color.
“Not much farther!” Simralin called by way of encouragement. She had stopped a dozen yards ahead and was looking back at them.
Kirisin slowed, Angel coming up beside him. He hoped she was right. He was getting cold, even through his all-weather gear, and a tiredness he could barely fight off was settling in. He shifted his pack to a new position and began moving ahead again, then realized that Angel wasn’t following. He glanced around. The Knight of the Word was standing where he had left her, staring back down the mountain.
He stopped again. “Angel?”
She looked at him, her gaze vague and distant, focused on something beyond what he was seeing. It was almost as if she were in another place entirely. “Go on ahead, Kirisin,” she said. “I’ll be along in a moment. I want to check on something. Don’t worry. I can find my way.”
“I’ll wait with you,” he offered quickly. “We both will.”
She held up her hand at once as he started toward her. “No, Kirisin. I have to do this alone. Do as I say. You and your sister go on without me. Do what you came to do.”
He started to object, but saw something in her eyes that stopped him. There was a hard determination reflected that told him she was decided on this. Whatever she intended, she didn’t want anyone to interfere. He hesitated, still uncertain, his fears deepening. “Don’t be too long. It’s starting to get dark.”
She nodded and turned back down the mountainside toward the clump of boulders they had left earlier. “Adios, mi amigo,” she called to him. “Lo siento.”
He had no idea what she was saying. By the way she said it—almost to herself, rather than to him—he wasn’t even sure she was aware of what language she was using. It was as if by speaking the words, she had dismissed him from her mind. He watched her walk away and wondered if he ought to go after her. He didn’t like the idea of them splitting up like this, not staying together when they were so close to finding what they had come all this way to discover.
But mostly he didn’t like what he had heard in her voice.
It sounded as if she was leaving.
It felt as if she was saying good-bye.
THIRTY
A NGEL PEREZ WAS AT PEACE. A deep, pervasive calm had settled inside, an
infusion of a sort that she hadn’t experienced in years. She couldn’t explain it. Nothing justified it. If anything, she should have been riddled with fear, terrified of what waited in the rocks below. Her nerves should have been all sharp-edged and raw.
After all, she was probably going to die.
She walked toward the cluster of huge boulders, the mass of dark stone like the jaws of the earth amid the whiteness of the snow, waiting to devour her. The runes carved in the gleaming surface of her black staff glowed brightly. She knew what was hiding in the rocks. The demons. The spiky-haired female that had transformed into a four-legged horror and tracked her north from her home, and the companion it had found in the Cintra. Somehow the pair had discovered their destination and caught up to them. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, and in truth it didn’t. She had suspected all along that the demons were one step ahead of them, ever since Ailie and Erisha had been killed in Ashenell. She had known it for sure when they had reached the hiding place for the hot-air balloons and found one of them missing. She had known right away who had taken it. There was no way of determining the truth of it, yet she had known.
She had been waiting ever since for them to surface, knowing that they would in the same way she had known that the struggle between them would end here. Standing on the hillside as Simralin assured them they were almost to their goal, she had felt the demon presence and known it was time. She had been anticipating it ever since she had escaped the last attack, deep in the ruined forests of California, where only Ailie’s warning had saved her. She had said nothing to her companions, but she had been waiting for it. Now it was here. The confrontation she had always believed to be inevitable had arrived.
Still, she was at peace.
She did not want Kirisin or Simralin to know what was happening. If they found out, they would want to stand with her. They could not help. She would worry for them, seek to protect them, and thereby lessen her own chances of surviving. Those chances were small enough as it was. If she faced only one of the two, she might be able to kill or disable it. If both were waiting for her, the best she could hope for was a quick death. She had no illusions. In all likelihood, she was not coming out of this.
She thought it very odd that she wasn’t frightened. She had been terrified after her last encounter with the female demon, so afraid that she could barely think clearly when she and Ailie fled its attack on the Mercury 5 for the Oregon border. She had known then—had known—that the next time she was forced into a confrontation with this particular demon, she was going to die. Twice she had escaped it, but only barely. The third time would be the end of her. She was tough and skilled, but this creature was more than she could handle. She had been extremely lucky before. She could not expect to be so lucky again.
It almost made her smile. Perhaps the inevitability of what waited had leached all the fear out of her. Perhaps by knowing that she must stand and fight, she had become resigned to what that meant. She was not afraid of dying or even of what dying meant. She was not afraid to face this monster, even though she might suffer in ways she had never imagined possible. If this was the death that had stalked her since birth—as some form of death stalked everyone—if this was where it was meant to end for her, she could accept it. She could not explain this willingness to embrace her fate, but she found comfort in it. She had found grace.
She reached the cluster of rocks and stopped. At least one of them waited within, just out of sight. The wolfish one, the one that served the old man. It had made no effort to disguise its coming. It had revealed itself openly, knowing she would respond as she had. Or perhaps it had hoped she would try to flee so that it could give pursuit and take her down from behind, a rabbit caught by a predator. Whatever the case, it wanted her to know before she died that it had found her and she could not escape. It took pleasure in forcing her to anticipate her own death, to know there was no escape.
She wished suddenly that Johnny were there to stand beside her. It would make this so much easier, knowing he was there. But then, she thought, perhaps he was, in spirit if not in flesh. Perhaps he was there still, her guardian angel.
She remembered a time not long after he had first found her—she might have been nine or ten—when he had told her he was going out for longer than usual and that she must wait alone until his return. She was instantly terrified, certain that he would not be coming back, that he was leaving her. She threw herself against him, sobbing wildly, begging him not to go, not to abandon her. Carefully, gently he soothed her, stroking her long black hair, telling her it was all right, that he would be back, that no matter what happened he would never leave her.
When she had quieted enough that she was coherent again, he had said, “Yo no abandono a mi niña. I would never leave my girl, little one. Wherever you are, I will always be close by. You might not see me, but I will be there. You will feel me in your heart.”
She supposed that it was true: that he had never really left her and had always been there in her heart. She could feel his presence when she was lonely or frightened if she searched hard enough. She could reassure herself by remembering that his word had always been good. Even when he was gone from her life and from the world of the living, some essential part of him was still there.
It would be so this time, too. He would be there for her.
She walked to the edge of the boulders and stopped, searching the air for the demon’s smell. She found it almost immediately, rank and poisonous, the stench of something that had cast aside any semblance of humanity. The air was thick with it, the sweet clean scent of the mountainside smothered under its heavy layers. It crouched within the rocks, still hidden, waiting on her. She could feel its rage and hatred and its need to sate both with her blood.
How should she handle this?
She stared into the black shadows of the boulders, searching the twisting passages that wound between. She did not believe it would be smart to go in there. Better to wait out here, to make it come to her.
Then she saw the first of the feeders as they slid like oil from out of the rocks, their shadows splotches of liquid darkness. They seemed in no hurry, their appearance almost casual. But where only a handful surfaced at the outset, there were soon a dozen and then a dozen more.
She glanced back up the mountainside to where she had left Kirisin and his sister. They were no longer in view. With luck, they were no longer in hearing, either.
It was time to get this over with.
“Demon!” she shouted into the rocks.
Then she waited.
KIRISIN CAUGHT UP to his sister, who glanced around as he reached her and said, “Where’s Angel?”
He shook his head. “She said she had something she needed to do.”
“Did she tell you what it was?”
“She just said we should go on without her. I told her we could wait until she was done with whatever she had to do. But she wouldn’t allow it. She was pretty insistent.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, Sim. It doesn’t feel right.”
“No, it doesn’t.” His sister looked back down the mountain slope to where they could just make out the Knight of the Word as she stood before the cluster of massive boulders they had come past earlier.
“What do you think she is doing?” he asked her.
She hesitated a moment, and then said, “I think she’s protecting us. I think that’s the way she wants it. We’d better do what she says. Come on. The caves are just ahead.”
They climbed the gradually steepening slope, relying on the crampons and ice axes for purchase. It was a slow and arduous trek, but they pushed ahead steadily, working their way across the ice field. Kirisin watched how his sister used the ax, driving it into the ice and then pulling herself forward, and he did the same. Once or twice, he glanced back to look for Angel, and each time he found her right where he had seen her last, poised and waiting at the edge of the boulders. Once, he thought he heard her shout something, but the wind blowing down from the higher
elevations masked her words.
Again, he almost turned back, the need to do so suddenly compelling. But he kept moving anyway, putting one foot in front of the other, hammering his ax into the ice and pulling himself ahead.
Then he topped a rise that led onto a rocky flat, and he couldn’t see her anymore.
“Kirisin!” his sister called back to him, shouting to be heard above the wind. She pointed ahead.
The entrance to the caves was a black hole almost buried within a cluster of snow-shrouded boulders, shards of ice hanging off the opening like a frozen curtain. From where they stood, it looked small and almost insignificant against the broad sweep of the mountain, as if it might be no more than the burrow of some animal. As they drew closer, it became steadily larger, taking on more definition. When they reached it, they stopped for a more careful look. It was hard to determine much from the outside. The entrance sloped downward into the mountain, narrow and low enough that they could tell they would have to stoop to get through. Farther back, it seemed to widen, but the shadows made it hard to be sure. Beyond that, it was too dark to see anything.
Simralin looked at him. “Ready, Little K?”
He nodded, not at all sure that he was, but determined to finish this no matter what.
His sister took out her solar torch from her pack and switched it on. With a final glance at Kirisin, she started ahead, stooping to clear the entrance, shining the broad beam of the torch into the blackness ahead. Kirisin followed wordlessly, his own torch in hand. In moments they were inside, swallowed by the shadows and the rock, the snowy slopes of the mountainside left behind.
To Kirisin’s surprise, the way forward was bright enough that their torches were unnecessary. Light seeped through cracks in the tunnel rock, diffused by ice windows that had frozen permanently beneath the outer layers of snow. Ice coated the walls and ceiling of the cave, sculpted as in the visions shown him twice now by the Elfstones, symmetrically formed scallops running back along the walls and ceiling for as far as the eye could see. The light reflected off the scallops in strange patterns that lay all across the surface of the cave. Here and there, rainbow colors flashed, formed of unexpected and random refractions, small wonders amid the gloom.