Down a Lost Road (30 page)

“
Yatol,” I said after a
while. “Aren’t we walking straight toward the Ungulion
host?”

Yatol scanned the dusky sky – I wondered why
– and then the horizon. “If what Tyhlaur and I discovered is still
true, we should be able to skirt their edges. Of course, if they
reformed their lines, we may end up heading straight into
them.”

“
How comforting,” I
muttered. “And how – when – will we figure out which?”

“
When we see
them.”

I glowered at his back. We slogged on. Some
strange apprehension began gnawing at the back of my mind, but I
couldn’t quite identify it. Then all at once it hit me.

“
Yatol,” I said, sprinting
up beside him. “It was just morning. We haven’t been walking for
that long…even if it feels like it. So where did the rest of the
day go?”

He lifted his gaze to the gathering shadows.
“Oh Merelin, do you think it’s already night?”

“
What do you mean?” I
asked, nervously grabbing his arm, terrified at seeing him so
uneasy.

“
You’re right. It should
only be about midday.”

“
Why is it dark now,
then?”

“
It’s happened before.
There’s some kind of shroud of darkness that covers
Mekaema
when the Ungulion come, and then all the world is in darkness. The
last time it happened, the Ungulion didn’t attack us with weapons
but terror, poisoning our thoughts with despair and hate. They
mostly failed, though some listened. And we lost our King because
of it.”

“
But that doesn’t make
sense. I’ve seen it light out when Ungulion were around. Shouldn’t
it have been dark then too?”

“
I don’t know.” He
shrugged. “I’ve seen them under the light too.”

“
Maybe it’s only when a
certain one is around, or some group of them.”

He turned to me, surprise and realization in
his eyes. “Never thought about that. You may be right. It actually
makes a lot more sense than my guess. Not that it’s any
consolation.”

We ran on. The slow shadow stole over the
sky, until everything was blanketed in the starless dark. It felt
eerily like a dense black fog. I had never seen a night in Arah
Byen completely without light, but this was no night.

When I started lagging behind, I realized
with a chill of horror that Yatol’s footsteps didn’t just fade to
silence like they usually did. It was like someone threw a blanket
over them to mute the sound. And wearing his dark cloak he was
almost invisible too. After I nearly lost him twice, I kept my pace
matched to his.

The air hung oppressive over us, hot and
dead still. As we ran, it began to throb, like a huge heart beating
dull. Too low to be really heard, it registered more like a feeling
than a sound. A constant pulse. It never grew louder either, just
swelled until I felt nauseated. I put my hands over my ears.

“
Yatol!” I wailed into the
dark, and dropped to my knees.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly
screamed, but he called my name and I closed my mouth on the
terror. Peering through the dark I just barely glimpsed his
silhouette beside me. He stooped over, wincing against the
murk.

“
The Ungulion.”

“
How close?”

“
Still some distance. We
may have slipped past them, but they could have sent another
dispatch. Wait here. Don’t move.”

“
Where are you going?” I
cried, grabbing his hand. He didn’t answer, so I whispered, “How
will you find me again?”

“
I will.”

And suddenly he was gone. I knelt petrified.
The ground throbbed with the same sullen pulse as the air. I didn’t
want to be anywhere near it. I didn’t even want to stand on it. But
slowly, in terror of the suffocating gloom, I eased myself down
onto my stomach. I almost had to convince myself that the ground
would be there, and not an empty nothingness. My heart raced.

Focus. Breathe.

I couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t tell where
I was. Didn’t dare move even an inch alone. I had no sense of
direction, no sense of distance. Yatol was gone and I was in the
middle of the desert in pitch blackness, without even a wall to
give dimension to the void. Nothing. Darkness.

Agonizing, endless moments passed. I found
myself holding my breath. When I tried to breathe, it came in
shallow gasps, like I was being crushed between cement slabs. And
just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the most
heart-rending noise pierced through the shadows.

If despair were a sound, that was it.

I forced my eyes open. I heard the stumbling
steps shifting in the sand before I saw the feet, then all at once
the boots appeared about a foot from my face. Tattered black robes
mingled with the night, barely visible except for a strange,
surreal glow that tinged the edges. The sound rose to a shuddering
wail. Ungulion.

For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t
even reach for Yatol’s knife. I sat up and held out my hand, and at
the last moment the Ungulion saw me. He reeled to a halt, then
almost mechanically spread his hands toward me. But even in the
murk I could see them shaking. Abruptly he wrenched them back, and
the rotting fingers tore at the black shroud over his head. He
collapsed onto his knees in front of me.

“
Why don’t you kill me?” I
asked.

The blood-hue eyes fixed on me, and the
lipless mouth parted to let out another despairing sob. I gasped as
the rotting folds of the shroud faded, revealing a vision of some
earlier glory. The image wavered like a mirage, and I could see the
sands behind him, all tinged with an eerie grey-blue light.

A boy about my age gazed back at me. Sad
amber eyes in a flawless pale face.

“
Who are you?” I
murmured.

The suffering eyes closed. He reached a hand
to his forehead and touched the circlet that bound his dark curls.
His fingers felt over thin golden band, like he had forgotten what
it looked like. Then, as if he’d suddenly remembered, he wrapped
his arms around his head and bowed over his knees with an anguished
sob.

“
Damned,” he moaned, the
sound of his voice freezing my blood. The wail rose again. “All of
us damned!”

I couldn’t speak, just sat staring. The boy
dug his nails against his scalp, writhing as if he’d been poisoned,
then he cast his gaze to the starless sky.

“
We assaulted bliss, and,
for that, given what we merited.”

“
What did you merit?” I
choked.

The appalling black shroud stole back over
him. He didn’t need to explain. When the vision returned, tears
like liquid silver were streaming down his cheeks.

“
What happened?”

“
Elekeo was my name, son of
the king. My father devised a mighty plan, a devious plan, and took
every boy and man to lay siege to n’Talanthis.” He paused, his
plaintive voice threading off into the night. “We sought the
life-gift he thought ought to have been ours! Some few of us
refused to follow the king’s command. They said he would call down
the wrath of the gods for his pride. They were slain at once. Happy
they!”

He gasped a shuddering sob. I wanted to
reach out to him, but couldn’t force myself to move. Then he lifted
his voice again, but the wail rose against his words, as though he
had two voices crying out at once.

“
Some of us felt as much,
but were too cowardly to speak or to act. And so we are damned with
all the rest! And the folly of it all is that there is nothing,
there is no one, nothing to fear, nothing to regret, nothing to
seek, nothing to find, nothing…”

I flinched, startled. “But you aren’t dead,
are you? If you aren’t dead, then you can still choose! You can
still act!”

His hand brushed the hilt of an ornate
dagger hanging at his belt. “How long I’ve wished it,” he murmured.
“I would do it if I could. Rise up. Strike him when he least
expects, or finally to die in the attempt. Free from this prison.
Death…I never thought I would long for death. We live without life
and without hope of rest, wandering like unburied corpses bound to
the shores of the Stukhe. Damned and worse than damned – and there
is nothing to be done! Choice is no longer ours to make.”

“
But you
can
choose.
You did, just now. You chose not to kill me. If you never made the
choice before, then maybe…”

The sobs faded and he lifted his head, the
despair in his dark golden eyes beginning to fade. “Then perhaps I
have a chance? The choice I ought to have made then, I can make at
last, now? These centuries of anguish and at last a light?”

I wished desperately that Mykyl or any of
the Brethren were with me. Who was I to tell this tormented soul
what hope he could cling to? I reached into the pouch at my belt.
My hand curled around Pyelthan, feeling its warmth. The tip of my
finger traced the endless script. For a moment I sat motionless.
Then the doubt and uncertainty fled, and I stared straight into his
eyes.

“
That choice is still
yours. You must choose now, and then you shall be judged according
to your acts. But do not replace treachery with a more abhorrent
crime. Your father will meet his own judgment.”

My voice was firm, steady, but it sounded
surreal and distant. For a second I wondered if it was me who
actually said it. The darkness blurred like ink, and I bowed over
my legs with my fists pressed against my brow. The ground trembled
under me. I realized the pounding in my head was the same throbbing
pulse in the air, drawing around me from all sides.

Everything happened at once.

A score of Ungulion appeared, forming a slow
circle around me. The boy met my gaze, then with a shriek of rage
he leapt up and raced toward them. Yatol flew up beside me,
collapsing onto the ground breathless. The boy lifted one hand high
above his head. Some of the Ungulion rallied to him, but the rest
surrounded them. The darkness seethed and churned. Suddenly it was
like a veil fell over my eyes, and the weight of it bore me to the
ground. I could still see, faintly, and I watched the chaotic
battle transfixed. Watched until the boy and his comrades and a
number of the others fell and faded into the sand.

The rest of the Ungulion regrouped, rushing
on toward us as though nothing had happened. The low, trembling
drone swelled around us. The ground tremored. I cringed back in
panic, but then felt Yatol’s hand on my shoulder, firm and steady.
I buried my head in my hands.

The drone rose to a wail, then a piercing
shriek. My skull felt like it would split open, and I dug my
knuckles desperately against my forehead. I knew they were trying
to reach me – I remembered how it felt. The chanting, the drone,
the suffocating shadow… But I could hear nothing distinct. Even the
shadow seemed held at bay. The only thing that reached me was the
pain driving like a screwdriver into my head. I squeezed my eyes
shut. The frenzy rose to a chaos.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. The drowning
shadow subsided, but the ache in my head lingered – less severe
now, but constant, like when you dive too deep in a pool. The
Ungulion hadn’t seen us. They filtered around us where we lay, the
way bats stream around an obstacle they can’t see. Their steps
receded. Quiet.

The heavy veil drew back. I scrambled to my
feet and ran forward, scanning the sands for any sign of the boy or
his allies. After a moment I noticed that, after all the darkness,
I could actually see a little. Some faint luminance seeped over the
sand, tingeing it pearly gold. It didn’t really matter, though. I
found nothing but empty desert. Already a gentle breath of wind
sifted away the marks of the battle. I stared numbly out over the
drifts and dunes, and the wind or some strange sorrow drew tears
from my eyes.

Yatol. I spun around, panicked that I might
have lost him in the dark. But the sand behind me shone with a
subtle radiance. Yatol stood in the light, and close beside him was
a luminous being. I gaped. Everything about him was the soft sheen
of natural pearl – or desert sand. Hair, skin, and robe all
shimmered with the same hue. Only his eyes were a honey-gold that
seemed startlingly dark against the fairness of his skin. His face
bewildered me – it seemed both extremely young and, at the same
time, more ancient than any other being I had ever seen. The
sleeves of his robe hung wide and long, ending in feathery wisps
that fluttered against the sand even in the dead-still air, the
color always shifting but always the same.

I wrenched my gaze away to look
questioningly at Yatol. And suddenly I realized that I hadn’t
actually seen him since he’d come back. My heart plummeted, and I
ran to him.

“
You’re hurt!”

“
Not so much,” he said,
smiling gently at me. He glanced down at his arms, where the sweat
and blood trickled down in tiny rivulets. “It’s
nothing.”

“
But your face! What
happened? You fought them?”

“
I did, as much as I could
endure. Enough to force them back for a time.”

“
But Yatol!” I faltered,
staring at him. “You need that drink Enhyla gave us. And you need
your wounds treated.”

“
Enhyla gave me a flask of
it before we left, and I already drank some. As for my wounds…what
wounds?”

I frowned and walked a circle around him,
but beside the sweat-mingled blood dripping down his arms and
cheeks I couldn’t see anything that would have caused it. I stopped
in front of him.

“
I don’t
understand.”