Troy Denning - Faces of Deception

Atreus looked up and wished he had not. The couloir continued to climb at the same steep angle for at least a thousand paces, then vanished into the clouds.

Rishi groaned. "My lungs will burst," he complained. "I cannot keep running!"

Seema did not look back, only said, "Just a little farther."

A boulder wobbled beneath her feet, and she sprang up the gully all the more quickly.

Atreus stopped beside the rock and looked back. When he saw Tarch and his men clambering into the bottom of the narrow gully, he stepped around to the upper side of the boulder.

"Rishi! Out of… the way."

When he began to push, Seema finally stopped climbing.

"Wait!" She looked down toward Tarch, then yelled, "You must take shelter! We are going to start pushing boulders down."

The slavers looked up, confused, then suddenly seemed to realize what Seema was saying. They rushed back down the couloir and disappeared around the corner. Tarch merely scowled and started up the gully at his best sprint.

Atreus shoved the boulder.

The rock toppled free and rumbled down the couloir, gathering speed and cracking into other boulders. Each time it struck, another huge stone came loose and tumbled down the chute, until the whole lower gully seemed to be crashing down on the slavers. Tarch flung himself at the gulch wall and scrambled up the rocky face like a huge lizard, then clung there watching stones pass beneath him.

Rishi whirled on Seema, panting, "Why did you warn them? We could have had them all!"

"Not Tarch, and he is the only one that matters," said Seema. "Now you have had your rest We must go again."

With the rock-slide still rumbling, she turned and bounded up the gully.

Atreus and the others followed as best they could, but none of them could match Seema's pace. She would bound ahead, then stop to urge them on, never seeming more than a little winded. Atreus grew so exhausted that he became dizzy and had to steady himself with every step, and he noticed Rishi and Yago doing the same. Their trembling knees started to give out at unpredictable moments, and Rishi's wounded leg knotted itself into such a tight ball that he cried out in agony with every step. Not once did Seema lose her balance, and soon she started to hang back and pull the Mar along by his arm.

Behind them, Tarch scrambled up the couloir alone, his men having decided they were more likely to survive his wrath than the sporadic volleys of boulders Atreus kept launching. Although the rock-slides caused the slave master to keep falling farther behind, they were never a danger to him. Every time Atreus laid his shoulder to a loose rock, Seema would shout a warning.

They had almost reached the clouds when Rishi dropped to a knee, then collapsed again as he tried to get up. Tarch started to sprint up the couloir, sensing he had finally run his quarry to ground.

"Come along." Seema tugged at the Mar's arm, "We are almost in the clouds."

Rishi tried to stand, but fell as soon as he put weight on his wounded leg. "It is no good," he admitted. "I can go no farther."

Tarch continued to sprint up the gully. Atreus pressed against a boulder, but the stone would not budge.

"You must get up!" Seema said, then clasped her hand around Rishi's wrist and started to drag him up the couloir. "I do not want it on my soul if Tarch kills you."

"You should have… thought of that before you warned him about the rocks," Rishi said as he tried to jerk his hand free and failed. He was too tired. "You are a disloyal and ungrateful woman."

"Ungrateful!" Seema exclaimed, but she continued up the slope, dragging Rishi along. Atreus grabbed the Mar by the other arm and did his best to help. Yago brought up the rear, breathing harder than any of them, using one hand to steady himself and the other to hold the supply bundle.

"Why should I be grateful for what you have done?" Seema demanded. "I did not ask you to free me. I did not ask you to kill those men."

"You were… running," Atreus panted. He glanced back, then kicked a loose rock down the gully. The stone, too small to start a slide, bounced past Tarch harmlessly. "You must not want to be a slave."

"No one wants to be slave," Seema said, her gaze remaining fixed on the clouds above them. "That does not mean you can kill the slavers."

"They was going to sell you," Yago wheezed. His chest was heaving from the exertion, and his orange skin had paled to a sickly ivory. "They deserved to get killed."

The man who passes judgment on another also judges himself," Seema said. She tore her eyes away from the clouds and gave the ogre a hard stare. "I saw the slavers do many terrible things, but they did not kill anyone."

Atreus remained silent, stung by her disapproving tone. Until now, he had simply assumed that Seema wanted to be rescued, thinking her aversion to killing nothing more than a healers natural distaste for death. It had not occurred to him that she might regard the slaying of her captors as an evil greater than being enslaved in the first place.

When Atreus said nothing to defend him, Yago scowled and said, "A person fights for himself. A person does not let others make him a slave."

"A person does not kill," Seema hissed. "It is a terrible stain on the soul, and I will not have it done in my name."

The words struck Atreus like a blow to the chest He forgot to watch his footing and slipped on a tuft of grass, barely noticing as Yago caught him and stopped him from sliding down the slope. Though Sune did not prohibit her worshipers from fighting-especially in defense of beauty, love, or their own lives-she did regard both warmongering and unprovoked murder as terrible scars upon a worshiper's soul. To Seema, apparently, any kind of killing was an ugliness of spirit

Atreus scrambled to his feet and grasped Rishi's arm again. A few moments later they reached the clouds and entered a misty world of white air and damp rock. Seema dragged them another fifty paces up the couloir, then suddenly stopped on a large boulder. Though he was only an arm's length away, the fog made her look ghostly and ethereal

"You will not kill again," she told them all. It was neither a question nor a command, only a statement "No more deaths."

"Now is certainly not the best time… to debate this," gasped Rishi. "We must keep going, or there will undoubtedly be at least three more when we are caught…"

Seema made no move to continue up the couloir. "No," she insisted. "I must know before we carry on."

Yago growled softly, and Atreus glanced back to see his friend glaring down the gulch. It was impossible to see anything in the mist, but this was the ogre's way of making plain what he thought about taking orders from strangers, though, of course, he would do whatever Atreus wanted.

Atreus drew the sword from his belt and swung it flat against the boulder. The blade snapped with a sharp chime, and Yago groaned miserably.

"By the gods!" Rishi cried. "Have you lost your mind?"

Atreus ignored him, looked to Seema, and said, "No more deaths."

Seema looked to Yago. "And you?" she asked.

The ogre glanced at Atreus, then growled, "If Atreus wants."

"Good," she said. As she turned to Rishi, the sound of clattering stones began to echo up through the mist "Do you also promise?"

The Mar glanced toward the sound and said, "Surely it is better for Tarch to die than all of us."

Seema's eyes grew sad, and she stepped down off the boulder. "I must leave you," she said. "I am the one he is looking for, and there will be no more killing if I go to him."

"Wait" Atreus caught her by the arm, turned to Rishi, and said, "Make the promise. I can't let Seema go by herself, even if there is to be no more killing."

Rishi's eyes narrowed. "Good sir, you are a very bad liar," he said. "It is only Seema that Tarch wishes alive. He will be most happy to kill you… and Yago."