The Incorruptibles (25 page)

Her jaw tightened, and she turned away to look at the other riders, who had now stopped and were looking at us.

When she turned back, her face was hard, tight. Unforgiving.

‘It’s a fallen world we live in, Mr Ilys, full of evil men and people wanting to take what you have and kill the people you love.’ She shook her head as though fending off something terrible. ‘I’ve taken the path best suited to me. And there’s no Ia waiting to judge me at the end of it, so …’

It was all nonsense, I thought. Godless, amoral nonsense. The events at Hot Springs had driven all reason from her. I wouldn’t listen to any more of it.

‘Why in Ia’s name—’ I stopped. ‘Why the Hell are you telling me this?’

She tugged at her scarf, her breath white and whipping away on the air. ‘Emrys, beyond all imaginings, survived Ia’s crossing. He managed to close the pinhole between worlds, but imperfectly. Or so it is said, and I have to believe that it has been closed, otherwise this whole world would be ruin.’ She removed her glove, and then blew on her fingers. ‘But there were other worlds beyond the one that brought Ia through. And Emrys spent his remaining days learning – and teaching others – how to summon and bind the creatures of what we call Hell into our world.’

‘Why? You’d think he would have had enough with Ia if what you say is true.’

‘He hoped we could harness these
devils
and
daemons
so that, when Ia awoke, we would be able to do battle.’

I laughed. I wasn’t buying it, no sir. Lots of hearsay and nothing that could be proven.

Something occurred to me. ‘But this whole talk started when I asked who Fisk is toting around his neck.’

Samantha slipped her hand back into the glove and looked at me closely. Snow fell in large flakes, and my pony began to become restless.

‘Judging from his crown, sword, and sceptre, I think Beleth put the King of Hell in Isabelle’s hand.’

‘The King of Hell?’

‘The Fiend. Belial. Whatever you want to call him.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What in tarnation was Beleth thinking?’

‘I don’t know. I would guess he wanted the mission to reclaim Isabelle to fail.’

I shook my head. ‘How will you stop the Crimson Man?’

‘There’s no way, except one.’

She leaned to the side and withdrew a knife from her boot. It was tarnished and black but the blade was long and the edges gleamed.

Silver.

‘When we get close enough to Isabelle, and we know her exact location, I have to kill Fisk and send Belial back to Hell.’ She watched the expressions cross my face. ‘It’s the only way.’

TWENTY-SEVEN

We pushed out of the valley by midmorning, up and over a small ridge. The smoke on the peaks had diminished and faded away so completely, I almost questioned whether it had been there in the first place. The trail we followed became more rugged and rocky, and the horses struggled to keep their footing as we passed over the shimmering, frost-bound mountainside. The land was frozen as hard as iron, and the streams were gripped with bitter cold, making breaking through to the water for our mounts hard going and laborious. Whoever dismounted to do the job was sweating by the end, and then, afterward, shivering with cold.

Everyone was tired and chilled to the bone.

Each step forward, toward the peak, took us closer to the release of the
daemon
in the hand. What might happen gnawed at me like floodwaters at a loamy riverbank. It seemed less and less likely Fisk could be spared, and I could see, by the constant stormcloud over Livia’s fine features, that she was thinking the same. I felt like I was being drawn and quartered, each possible outcome a torture to itself.

And the Crimson Man made it no easier.

He was grinning now. Fisk covered his face with a heavy wool gorget but the smile was there, full of teeth and the promise of blood and fire.

Only late in the afternoon, after the sun had passed over the rim of the world and plunged the party into the half-lit blue-grey of twilight, did we call a halt. Fisk looked annoyed and agitated.

‘You need to simmer down, pard. Why don’t you take a fresh horse and see if you can rustle some meat. Saw a lot of deer tracks ’bout a mile back. Large game trail cutting through, even with the snow.’

His eyes blazed like embers but they didn’t start smoking. After a moment, the ornery cant to his shoulders reappeared and Fisk dismounted, untacked, and picked out the freshest pony to ride. His jaw worked furiously, his lean stubbled cheek popping. I could hear his teeth grind.

We made camp in the lee of a rocky overhang where the snow had not touched the earth. On the way up to the shelter I had seen some brushwood, either from an old avalanche or a rockslide, so I took the draft horse and led him downslope a fair piece and dragged the largest fallen tree back to where the rest were setting up camp. Titus and I started to work on the brushwood with axes. Soon we had a pile of wood and a fire burning bright and high.

We all huddled close to the fire, warming our chilled bones; even the horses pressed in tight around us, their nickers echoing eerily off the rock walls of our camp. After five nights on the trail, we all knew our duties. Soon, after each of us had eaten some hardtack and drunk from the meagre stores of coffee we had, the others went to bed, leaving me watching the dark and listening for Fisk’s return.

Livia sat with me.

‘Did you ever have children, Shoe?’ she asked.

‘Had a few, but haven’t seen them for fifty years or more.’

‘You ever think they might be more trouble than they’re worth?’

I thought about my eldest – the troublesome one. ‘Yes. But you love them anyway. Don’t matter if they’re a handful.’

She was quiet for a long while. ‘I’ve always wanted a family but never had someone I wanted to have it with. And now …’

She was crying, unreservedly. Livia was the strongest woman I’d ever met, but the world and the Crimson Man had beat her down pretty good. I wasn’t feeling too good about things myself.

The fire popped loudly, and she wiped away the tears.

‘Miss Livia, this will all work out, I know. It might look bleak now, but you have to have faith—’

‘In Ia?’ She smiled and patted my hand, not realizing what she said felt like a knife turning inside me.

Everything was falling apart.

Livia suddenly looked shocked, and she rose from her seat. I turned to see what had agitated her.

The Crimson Man walked into the firelight, drenched in blood. He had lost his hat somewhere, and his face, shoulders, arms, and hands were covered in gore. All was red except for the white of his smile and the black orbs of his eyes.

‘Hungry?’ he said in a voice thick with blood or phlegm.

He slung the carcass of a boar from his shoulders and tossed it at our feet.

Putting everything I had into it, I barked, ‘Fisk! Get a hold of yourself!’

He recoiled as though from a blow. The fiendish smile left, and he cursed loudly. Fisk, again.

‘Ia-damn me, Ia-damn me to Hell,’ he said. He walked over to the nearest snow drift, scooped up a handful, and began rubbing clean his face, his hands.

The next morning I had the boar cooked, some stew on the fire, and enough meat to fill everyone’s stomachs with hot food.

We rode out early and made good time up the mountainside, past gambels and aspens, firs and snarls of bramblewrack all covered in snow. Higher and higher we rode, horses chuffing and nickering and tossing their heads. The world was quiet and no one spoke, following the path up to the pass.

The ground became clear of snow, maybe due to mountain currents, maybe because, for some reason, snow couldn’t fall here. We were hemmed in on both sides by steep, rock walls, and our mounts’ hooves clattered and echoed loudly. There were no trees and bramble now, no scrub brush nor any sign of living things.

Even Fisk’s crimson grin had died on his face, and he looked back nervously at the riders following. Reeve and Livia kept close behind while Titus rode escort to Samantha, still a novice, unsteady in her saddle and in constant jeopardy of toppling over.

I brought up the rear. I hesitated before advancing into the shadow of the pass and looked back on our trail.

The whole world lay shimmering behind us in blues and whites, and I could see, far out and away, a patch of sunlight streaking across the face of the land as fast as a dream.

Then, I followed Fisk and the others into pass – into the dark.

‘We’re close!’ Fisk called back. His voice was rough, excited. That night he’d spent a long time rubbing his face clean of blood and even longer finding his hat, the grey weathered outrider’s brim that he’d worn for years.

We rode for what seemed like hours on that winding path, and with each step my heart grew heavier and wearier. I grew tired of watching Samantha. Don’t know whether she guessed my reason for keeping so close to her – to keep her safe from Fisk and the thing he carried – or if she put it down to the vagaries of the trail.

The obsidian walls of the pass had closed in tight until I thought we might be forced to turn back. But after a mile of riding single file in a narrow passage in which I could almost reach out with both hands and touch the black, wet rock walls, suddenly the trail opened up and made a slow dip away from the heavens.

The horses were skittish, and the air became more dense and warm. The fog, at first just a hazy occlusion of the light, intensified until I had trouble seeing Samantha or Titus riding only a few paces in front of me.

I called for a halt and dismounted so that I could link the horses with some hemp rope.

While I unbundled the rope from Bess, Reeve said, ‘Strange the ice and snow have disappeared so suddenly.’ His voice bounced around and came from a strange direction in the fog.

I looked around and, on impulse, pulled off my glove and put my hand to the ground.

‘It’s hot! The rock and the ground!’

‘Aye,’ said Reeve, who on dismounting had discovered the same.

I heard, faintly, Livia say, ‘Hot Springs was surrounded by pools of boiling water. We must be in some place where the crust of the earth has worn thin.’

‘Near Hell, you mean?’ said Titus.

‘No. There are mountains of fire in Latinum that spew molten rock and ash. Hellish, yes, but occurring naturally. We must be near such a place.’

Samantha, just visible in the fog, glanced at me.

‘We are close,’ said Fisk.

Not much to say after that. I linked up the horses and remounted.

Another hour, now riding blind in the fog, and we came into a long-dead caldera, the wide opening more discernible using my ears than my eyes. The echoes changed, lengthened.

‘If ye have Hellfire,’ Reeve said. ‘I suggest ye draw it now.’

We passed large, upright black stones in the mist, and the air became utterly still. Fisk reined in the black and dismounted, and the rest of us followed suit.

Titus and Reeve had pistols drawn, and Livia held her sawn-off comfortably, as though it was an extension of her arm. Samantha produced a carbine from somewhere.

I approached Titus asking quietly, ‘Manius’ guns. Where are they?’

He raised his eyebrows, then turning to his horse removed Manius’ pistols from a saddlebag.

‘You know how to use one?’

‘I think I can figure it out.’

As I turned and began cinching the belt around my waist, Livia stepped in front of me and said, ‘What are you doing, Shoe?’

‘Puttin’ on this gunbelt.’

‘Why? I thought you were against Hellfire.’

‘What does it matter now? We’re at the end of the trail and I don’t know what’s gonna happen.’ I stopped and looked at her closely, seeing the noble desperation there, her beauty. Her love. ‘I don’t want to die just yet. And I don’t want you or Fisk or any of these others to die, either. So if that means a little taint done to my soul, that’s just how it’s gotta be.’

From ahead, in the fog, Fisk shouted again, ‘We are close.’

His voice was tight, excited, and not entirely human.

‘We three should investigate. Titus! Reeve! Stay with Fisk,’ Livia said.

We moved between the towering black stones that stood like sentinels in the fog.

‘Think there’s stretchers about?’ Titus whispered.

‘Has to be. Otherwise, who’s guarding Isabelle?’ I said.

I was thinking about the girl, her beauty and grace. Her doomed love for Banty. To remind myself why we were there.

There’s a million reasons to do anything. Most folks – human,
dvergar
, or perhaps stretcher, even – don’t know the reason deep down inside. If you’d asked Livia, or me, why we were cold and hungry and terrified on some haunted mountaintop, we’d have said: to prevent a war between Rume and Mediera. But deep down, we were doing this for a girl, vulnerable, alone, surrounded by monsters and terrified. There’s reasons and then there’s reasons.

‘Look.’

Reeve pointed to a large empty fire pit surrounded by smaller black rocks. Titus walked over and nudged the coals with his foot, turning over ash and exposing a cherry hot ember, still smoking.

‘Ain’t been gone too long, if they’re gone at all.’

Samantha said, ‘Look here.’ She stood near one of the tall black rocks. It stood twenty feet high, easy.

The obsidian obelisk looked porous, riddled with wormworks, until you got close enough.

‘Flames,’ she said, and she ran a gloved hand down the face of the stone. ‘Intricately carved. Fire carved into the living stone.’

It was true. Layer upon layer traced the stone from the base to as far up as I could see. The craft was chillingly beautiful, stylized if a bit rough – it would never sell in a Harbor Town market except as a novelty. The sheer amount of it on the obelisk made me marvel.

I walked to another stone.

‘My god,’ I said, touching the stone. ‘Here too.’

Titus went to another obelisk. ‘And here.’

Over thirty stones stood in the rocky clearing. Each one inscribed over and over with flames.

I shuddered, thinking about the
vaettir
spending countless years scratching these images of fire into the almost impenetrable stone.

‘Maybe it’s their way of writing,’ Samantha said. ‘And it just resembles flames.’

‘No,’ Livia replied, ‘That is
fire
. Over and over. Fire.’

‘Dis’ ballsack! That’s a harrowing thought,’ Titus said.

‘We are close,’ Fisk stated again. His voice was from farther away now, echoing off the stones.

‘Fisk!’ Livia cried. ‘Fisk, wait!’

The etched stones were forgotten in an instant. We turned as a group and raced around the clearing. The space we were in was shaped like a bowl with the monuments and fire pit in the centre, the ground sloping upward toward higher, blank-faced walls.

‘He’s here!’ Reeve called, and we ran toward the sound of his voice.

Two more pillars of flame-etched stone framed the entrance to a cavern, low and dark. As quickly as I could, I raced back to Bess and found the silver-rimed lantern we’d moved from the wagon onto the mule and brought it to Samantha. It was only a moment’s work for Samantha to inscribe a ward onto the stone ground with chalk, prick a finger – dripping blood into the reservoir on the lantern’s lid – and say soft words under her breath. I knelt close beside her as she did. It was easy enough to slip the silver blade from her boot. Fisk may need it by the end, but it won’t be her that gives him that release. It will be me.

The bright light cast from the
imp –
silently screaming and batting at the silver tracery of its cage – reduced our sense of foreboding at entering the dark cave. But I already had a bad feeling, and the
daemon
summoning and binding didn’t help,

Samantha handed the lantern to Reeve, the tallest of us all, and we slowly walked forward.

There were bones. Countless bones in piles. The light from the
imp
lantern flickered, and shadows danced on the jet-black walls in strange recursive patterns. The cavern walls were close and tight. I felt sweat prickle under my heavy coat and gloves in the still, hot air.

Titus picked up a large bone and looked at it.

‘Leg bone from an auroch.’ He stopped, waved Reeve over with the lantern. After brief further observation, he said, ‘Teeth marks. The stretchers did a good job gnawing on it.’

Livia picked up another bone and held it up to the light.

‘Oh, no.’

It was a jawbone. The jawbone of a man.

‘Teeth marks here as well.’

‘Are ye saying those creatures eat men?’ Reeve’s voice, usually full of mirth, sounded dead and dull in the hollow, bone-filled expanse of the cave.

‘We need to find Fisk,’ said Livia.