Troy Denning - Faces of Deception

A languid fog rose up to engulf him, and he prayed he would fall into insensible sleep. Instead, he slipped into a terrible waking dream, aware of his anguish but apart from it conscious of what was happening but unable to do anything about it.

"What's wrong with him?" demanded Yago. "He's going to live, ain't he?"

"I have taken away his pain," answered Seema. "The rest is not for me to control."

"Don't you say that! You're a healer. Heal!"

"I have done what I can, but my magic is weak," Seema said. "What happened to Tarch? Was there killing?"

"There will be if you don't do something… and fast!"

Don't threaten her! Atreus wanted to shout the command, but he could not even whisper it, could not even shake his head. He was a spectator in his own body.

"I am sure Seema is certainly doing her best," said Rishi. "She is as fond of Atreus in her way as you are in yours."

"She has a bad way of showing it," snapped Yago. "If she would have let us kill Tarch in the first place…"

"I could not have done even this much for Atreus," said Seema. "Now tell me what happened. If you did not kill Tarch-"

"He is most certainly alive!" said Rishi. "I saw him moving in the bottom of the crevasse."

This was not what the Mar had told Yago, but Atreus was hardly in a position to correct him.

"I will try another time."

Again, Seema uttered one of her spells, then pressed her lips to Atreus's and dribbled more of her potion into his mouth. He slipped further into his dream-world, so that events alternately rushed by in a blur or crept past in excruciating slowness. He did not feel any stronger.

"Wellllll?" Yago's voice was deep and torpid.

"I don't know," Seema replied.

"You mean it isn't working!" Yago was silent for a moment, then asked, "What happens to your precious magic if Atreus dies? You might as well have flamed him yourself, for all your high talk about not killing."

Seema recoiled from the anger in the ogre's voice.

"That is hardly fair."

"Is too!" growled Yago. "He should've never made you that promise. But how could the boy think straight, with you batting them pretty eyes and flashing them white teeth? If he dies, it's on your head, not mine."

The conversation came to Atreus as though he were listening to a trio of ghosts. Seema fell silent. Some dim part of him realized he should be speaking in her defense, that he should be telling Yago he knew exactly what he was doing, but Atreus could barely gather his thoughts, much less make them known.

After a moment, Rishi said, "Nobody is to blame for what happened to Atreus except Tarch. Perhaps my friend Yago, feeling that he may have in some way failed his master, is putting the blame he feels — "

"What blame?" Yago snarled.

"Then again, perhaps not," said Rishi.

But Yago was not done yet

"If not for Seema and her promise, we'd have been rid of Tarch a long time ago. He wouldn't never have touched me!" the ogre bellowed, shaking his head angrily. "The blame here don't belong to me. You can't go fighting devils unless you mean to kill them."

"You are right, of course," interrupted Seema. "This is all my fault."

"You bet it is!" said Yago. "What are you going to do about it?"

Seema was silent for several moments, then said, "I have caused many deaths and much pain, and that is why my magic has grown weak." She laid a cloak over Atreus, and be could not help groaning at even its light touch. "We have no choice but to take him to my valley."

"I doubt he can survive such a long journey," said Rishi. "Surely, it would be better to let him rest and take our chances that he will recover."

"What about Tarch? If he is alive, as you told me, he will come after us."

Seema stood and started up the icefall. "Besides," she said, "my home is closer than you think, and we will be safe there."

Yago scooped Atreus up, but made no move to follow the healer.

"Where you going? I didn't see nothing but snow up there."

"Of course not," Seema answered, pausing to look over her shoulder. "It is not so easy to see Langdarma."

In the purple afternoon shadows, the band of dark granite looked hollow and empty, like a giant fissure splitting the cliff down the center. Atreus could imagine following the crevice through to the other side of the mountain, or down into the stony roots of the Sisters of Serenity themselves. As delirious as he was, Atreus could imagine a lot of things, such as the husky form behind them, appearing and disappearing as it twined its way across the boulder-strewn glacier below. The figure was holding its ribs and limping, and it kept pitching forward onto its hands and knees. Every now and then it glanced around behind itself, searching for a tail it no longer had, and sometimes it looked up to check the progress of Atreus and his companions.

Atreus tried to point and found his arm pinned against Yago's chest. He groaned as the effort brought him back into his pain-racked body. Until now, he had passed the trip across the glacier a pleasant distance above himself, somewhere outside the seared and hideous form in Yago's arms, a spirit connected to his body by only a thin strand of memory. Time itself had ebbed and flowed, swirling past in slow eddies as his companions scrambled up the icefall, then rushing ahead madly as they crossed the snowy flats. Atreus had floated along, vaguely aware that Seema had promised to take them to Langdarma and wondering how she could offer such a thing. She herself had called it a myth, and he could not believe she would deceive him. Not about something so important

Seema reached the clef ting and stopped directly across from the dark band of granite. With the sun hidden behind the middle Sister, this part of the glacier was a sheet of hard ice, so she had to stand in the tracks they had made that morning. Rishi stopped a pace below her, both feet planted comfortably in one of Yago's frozen footprints, and Yago stopped behind the Mar. Atreus found himself looking back down into the basin. Their pursuer had vanished again, leaving Atreus to wonder whether he had been imagining the dark figure all along.

"This isn't Langdarma," said Yago. The ogre leaned past Rishi and peered down into the frigid blue murk of the clef ting. "We been here before."

"You searched, but you did not examine," said Seema. "This is the way to Langdarma. Rishi and I will go first. Then you can pass Atreus down to us."

The healer lowered herself into the clef ting, dropping onto the first of the boulders wedged between the cliff and the glacier wall. Rishi followed, and Yago stepped to the brink of the chasm. As the ogre turned to straddle the edge, Atreus glimpsed a dark figure below, angling up the slope along the course of their frozen tracks. The form was hazy and indistinct, no more than a darker blue in the indigo shadow of the mountain, but it looked solid enough to set Atreus's heart pounding.

Look!

The word echoed around inside Atreus's mind, but could not quite find his lips. He had a little more luck trying to point. As Yago bent down to lower him into the clef ting, his arm came free of the ogre's grasp and swung toward the dark figure. A surge of anguish rushed through his body, but he kept his hand raised.

"Don't worry," Yago said. "They know what'll happen if they drop you."

Atreus forced himself to keep pointing as he heard an agonized groan escape his lips.

"I do not think it is us he fears," said Rishi. "Is he not pointing down the slope?"

Atreus sighed in relief and let his arm drop. Yago scowled and passed him into the waiting arms of Seema and Rishi, then turned to look down toward the glacier.

"He must've seen our friend back there," said Yago. Tarch is coming up fast now."