Chapter 27 – Alone

I stood at the edge of the sea, staring out into emptiness. It surrounded me – sea, rocks, sky, all empty. K’hama. It was a void that not only surrounded you, but cut to your very core. I wrapped Yatol’s cloak close around me and sat down under the empty sky, swallowed by the emptiness in my heart. Somewhere there, beyond the crags and rifts, was the Citadel. The thought of it froze my heart with fear. How could I go on alone, and find it and at last…enter it?

I gazed out over the Laoth, the glassy face of the waves reflecting starlight. Farther toward the horizon, a plume of cloud or smoke hovered over its surface, pitch against the starry dark. It made no more lasting impression on me than that. I reached into my pouch and pulled out Pyelthan, running my fingers over its roughhewn face. It felt warm, somehow, and as I gazed at it I saw it hanging on a chain, dangling from around my dad’s neck. Dad…

The memory forced me to my feet. I had to go on, for him. I didn’t know how I would get there, or how long it would take me, but I would go on. As I began scrambling over the rocky slopes I kept Pyelthan clutched in my hand for strength. I’d barely started over the juts and slopes when I felt the sandals’ leather straps wearing against my skin again. Obviously they weren’t designed for long-distance treks across hostile terrains. I wanted to take them off but I knew my feet would be shredded in moments if I did.

So I gritted my teeth and picked my way up one of the higher crags. The loose shale crumbled in places, clattering down to the rift below. I winced every time I heard the noise, afraid someone else would be near enough to hear it. But no one came. I was totally alone.

I came to the top of the crags and walked for what seemed like days. No wind stirred to fan my raw face. Every step I took fell with an empty thud that didn’t echo, but never faded either. A fine, clinging dust covered the earth. It shifted ever so slightly under my feet, and then settled heavily as soon as I had stirred it up. I turned back once, and saw my footsteps marching to the horizon, a straight shot back to the Laoth.

It was so cold, bitterest cold, but so dry and dead that it seemed strangely bearable. It parched my eyes and lips though, and my swollen tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I soon exhausted my food supplies, and decided I needed to ration my water, even though everything I’d ever learned about wilderness survival told me that water rationed was water wasted. It didn’t matter anyway. Sleep was the only escape, but as it got harder and harder to wake up each time, I resisted the urge as much as I could.

Eventually I reached the edge of some sort of plateau. The ground slipped away in rolling mounds like strange lava formations. Away toward my left I saw what looked like a furrow from a plow, and as my gaze followed it, I realized what it was. The track of an army, long and wide, cutting a straight swath from what at first appeared to be formless shadow. I sat down hard on the slope.

The Citadel.

I knew what it was, even from that distance. I knew it even though it was nothing like I had imagined. It belched up from the earth, a hideous, colossal monument the size of a small city. It was black, and it groped upward like so many claws scraping the sky. I saw what Yatol had called the cornerstone – the base of the Citadel, the side that faced me, was a single rock that spanned nearly half the tower’s height. Around the base the ground was hollowed out more than the rest of the crater floor, as though it had been dug away. The rock’s raised surfaces glinted coldly, but the pale starlight was swallowed in flat shadow in the crevices. It reminded me of something. Pyelthan.

I found the medallion in my pouch, brushing my fingers over the surface. The metal burned so cold now that I jerked my hand back as though it had been scorched.

So, I had come at last. Here was the Ungulion’s abomination of a fortress, their mockery of the beautiful city on the other side of the world. I stared at it, and suddenly had no desire to move. How could I? Where could I possibly go? There was nothing at all that resembled a doorway. No windows, no paths, no stairs. Just the same crude black stone.

I let out a wretched sigh. Hopeless. Here, at the very base of my destination, I would die. Maybe someday an Ungulion would patrol the area and find my bones, Pyelthan clenched in my bony fingers. I shuddered. A little voice in my mind swore that wouldn’t happen. But my body protested that I could do nothing else.

I lay down, curled up with my head in my arms. So tired. I had come in vain. Somehow I knew that Alcalon was already besieged. It had probably been under siege for days, maybe even weeks. I had no idea, no grasp of what time had already passed. I just knew that I had taken too long, only to be turned away at the very end. All I really wanted was to be with Yatol. Would he ever forgive me for sending him away?

I closed my eyes. The dream came again – the fleet and the waves and the people fleeing to the tower. I saw the tempest gathering strength, saw a blinding flash and felt the world convulse. The tremor did not wake me this time, but the dream blotted out.

After a moment, the greyness faded, and I found myself staring down a long, desolate corridor. The walls rose black and the light shone red, and everything was carved of hideous stone. I walked forward, drawn by an irresistible force, or maybe driven by some pursuer I couldn’t see or hear. The corridor gave way to a vast chamber, seething with hellish light. A shaft of the red glow pierced the gloom, falling on a table of shadow, like some altar to a heathen god. I moved toward it transfixed. A figure lay still upon it, caught under the crimson light. I mounted the steps and placed my hands on the edge of the slab, bending my gaze to the dead-still face.

A sob choked me. I reached out a shaking hand, touched my father’s ashen brow. His eyes opened, and he sat up and turned to me.

“Have you come so far, only to let me perish?” he rebuked, and his eyes went empty and grey.

And he fell back, and the flesh crumbled away and scattered in a sudden gust of wind. I stared at the skeleton red in the blood-red glow, and I screamed and wept and tore myself from the table.

I woke trembling and sweating, and sobbing with fear and grief.

For some time I lay still. My arms felt stiff and cold, like I’d been lying there for hours, or days. I stared at my hands, pale-bluish in the starlight. Pyelthan lay under my right palm, tamped into the dust, glinting with a dull metallic sheen. I picked it up, straight up, so that I could see its imprint in the earth. Without any wind, maybe the mark would stay unchanged forever, like an astronaut’s footprint. Then I pursed my lips and blew gently, watching the heavy soil erase the pattern.

I didn’t want to move. If only I would wake up, and find Mom maternal and angry standing over me, the grackles chortling in the magnolia outside. If only I would wake up and see Yatol sitting near me, talking to Akhmar or Mykyl. I saw his face in my mind, etched with shock and anguish as he sat disbelieving on Akhmar’s back. If only that had been a dream. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting with bated breath, then cracked them open with the faintest sliver of hope. I tried not to cry when only grey slopes met my gaze, but a single tear dripped over my nose.

A stone, clattering on stone.

I blinked and lifted my head, listening. There again. How strange. For so far behind me the land was the same soft soil, scattered with black metallic chunks. I had left the rocky slopes long ago, but the sound was unmistakable. It drifted heavy through the heavy air, with no wind to carry it away and no trees to block it. When I heard it again, it didn’t stop, but clattered louder and louder like an avalanche – or the passing of a score of men.

I leapt to my feet and ran. Clutching Pyelthan, I drove every thought, every sensation of pain, hunger and fatigue from my mind, and forced my cold-numbed legs to move. I sprinted to the edge of the plateau, and churning up billows of dust I half-slid, half-ran down…down…

I hadn’t realized how massive the crater was. Slipping and running down the slope, I dreaded discovering how deep it actually ran. At a steep spot I lost my footing in the chalky soil and went sliding down at breakneck speed, unstoppable. My stomach plunged, like falling in a dream, but no jolt of waking came. I cast the sleeve of my tunic over my face against the pluming dust. The straps of one of my sandals snapped from the strain. It was gone even before I realized it had come off. Suddenly my feet hit level ground, and the shock of the landing brought me to my knees with a jarring thud.

I lowered my arm and got cautiously to my feet. My legs wobbled weakly as I tottered to the brink of my little ledge and gazed down. I had only gone about halfway, but the slope was gentler from here to the bottom. Maybe I could actually climb down with some semblance of control. But it still looked so far. The gentle slope could be just an illusion.

I sat down to gather my wits, and took off my other sandal. The ground was soft enough and there were no more black rocks, just that smooth regolith that felt like compressed dust beneath my bare feet.

I lifted my waterskin, weighing it. It felt half full, so I pulled the cork from it and lifted it to my lips. It oozed out into my mouth, a sludge of water and dust. I spat and coughed, and my stomach turned. My fingers tightened so hard on the waterskin that a spurt of the grey liquid squirted out the top. I wanted to throw it as hard and far as I could. But I didn’t, and after a minute I just let it drop heavy and useless on the ground beside me. Now my mouth felt worse than it had before. At least then it had been dry and tasteless – now it was sticky and nauseating. And still the back of my throat stung, raw from dirt.

The suffocating silence broke under a low rumble, at first almost imperceptible. I frowned, trying to identify it. Laughter. It drifted down from the lip of the crater and shook between the slopes. Eerie echoes reverberated back to me, and my skin crawled. I got to my feet, slowly, and turned to gaze up at the crest. A line of figures appeared there, hazy and obscure, scarcely visible. I stared up at them, heart sinking, wondering how they had come so far so fast. It had taken me ages, and all my strength, to try to outrun them, and still they had caught up with me.

“Go on,” one of them called down to me. His voice sounded familiar, but also like the seething voice in the Perstaun, a chorus of hellish voices knotted into one. “Go on, Daughter of the Exiles. You go to the Halls of Death. What do you seek? Who do you think you will find? Nothing lives that walks the Halls. Nothing can walk the Halls and live. So go, and die, and join the ones who have gone before.”

And the laughter resumed, mocking me. I drew a deep breath, wanting to shout up to him, to defy him to his face. No words came. I just glared up at him, feeling defeated. If I headed on, it would look like I was fleeing, but I had no other choice.

“You don’t drive me,” I cried suddenly. The sound of my voice resounding in the crater startled me. “Where I go, I go by my own choice. No half-dead king of a failed race will take that from me.”

The laughter stopped abruptly. I saw a sword, bare and gleaming in his hand.

“Only the dead enter there. If you wish to go there, you choose your own death, and the death of those you love.”

I turned and went on down the slope.