Down a Lost Road (38 page)

I buried my face in my hands.

“
Take heart, daughter,”
Arwaya told me gently. “Nothing is done to no purpose.”

“
But Damian and Tyhlaur,
and the others…what will become of them?”

“
Take heart…”

His words drowned in the churning sea.

My hands shook. I felt so ill. If Yatol
hadn’t been holding me, I would have fallen when Akhmar stirred
again. The pace picked up, too dizzyingly fast. I closed my eyes,
praying for an end. Maybe I slept. I don’t know how long. But
slowly, through numbed senses, I felt Yatol shaking my shoulder,
and I forced my eyes open.

Land.

It appeared fuzzy at first in the darkness,
but soon I realized there was nothing to focus on. The whole place
was grey and wretched, rocky slopes that had never seen the birth
of a blade of grass. It was little better than a moonscape. Maybe
worse. More terrifying and ominous – less empty but somehow more.
Even from our distance I could feel the air seething with
despair.

The slopes loomed larger, then Akhmar
stopped so abruptly that it nearly threw me from his back.

“
Here I must leave
you.”

Somehow I had known he would say that. I
flung my arms around his neck.

“
Don’t go, Akhmar! How can
we go on?”

“
Take the straight road.
You will find your way.”

His words didn’t console me. I wanted to
cling to him and prevent him from going, but I knew there was
nothing I could do that could hold him there. Even now I could feel
him withdrawing. I bowed my head in resignation and shifted one leg
over his neck to sit sideways. The cold of the sea seeped over me
even from where I sat. I knew I couldn’t risk touching the water.
I’d barely survived before. So I pushed myself away from Akhmar,
leaping to the jut of land. As soon as my feet touched the stone,
panic seized me.

“
Akhmar!”

His eyes met mine, silent, needing no words.
I shifted my gaze to Yatol still on his back, watching the sickly
sea slip against the rocks, lost in thought. Tears stung my
eyes.

Damian
, I called in my mind,
you
have the gift. Call it open.

I turned my gaze back to Yatol, throat
thick.

“
Goodbye, Yatol,” I
whispered. “Please, understand…”

To Akhmar, “Go.”

Yatol turned to me, stricken. His face was
the last thing I saw before a blinding light fractured the murk,
and then I was alone.

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.