Hunting in Hell (26 page)

She looked up towards the sky once, as if observing the weather.
 
"Maybe."

#

De la Roca was eyeing a smudge on the horizon that Alsvior had pointed out.
 
Squinting, she tried to get a concept of scale or make out fine details, but it refused to solidify past a blurry vagueness.

By the time the sun was directly overhead, the smudge had grown into a hill with a clump of green spots where it met the ground.
 
"What is that?" she asked, pointing.
 
"Some kind of bush?"

He squinted slowly, his hand shading his eyes, and then a sudden grin broke out over his face.
 
"
That,
" he said, dropping his hand down to point, "is a
Lios
tree.
 
If memory serves me, it's a rather young one, too -
 
perhaps as old as your career as a mercenary."

Her confusion was evident.
 
"So … how tall is it?"

"Gigantic.
 
At least as tall as twenty men."

Her eyes flicked to the tree and then to the hill again, popping back and forth at she calculated the height in her head.
 
She did it twice, but the conclusion was the same.
 
"The Oracle lives on a
mountain
?"
 

To her eyes, it appeared as if he shivered slightly at the word "Oracle".
 

"Just keep walking - unless … unless you want to turn back?"

For a moment, she thought he was joking, but his face betrayed no humor.
 

Turn back?
 
And let him go?

Her cheeks flushed, and when she spoke again, her voice crackled with an anger that was matched by the flash of her eyes.

"Turn back?
 
You want to turn back?
 
We were sent here
by the Angel.
 
And what about Laufeyson's betrayal?"

"De la Roca," he said, gently.
 
Reservations about his chosen path were twisting through his gut like snakes, and for a brief moment, he again saw the possibility to change their fate, to pull them off and away from the sequence of events he had started, but now regretted.
 

Her face tilted as her eyes rose to meet his.
 
It was her only response.
 

"Do you remember what we were talking about before? Are you so sure that the Angel in your dreams was truly an Angel?"

She didn't answer.

He sighed.
 
"Angels are not the only creatures that can walk through dreams.
 
Almost any being of the spirit with sufficient power could accomplish such a thing."
 
His voice grew hollow, as if coming from far away.
 
"Even
I
have done this thing once."

Her eyes popped wider.
  
"You've entered another's dream - and in a different form?"

"Yes.
 
I was a messenger in my last life, but some messages cannot be delivered in person."
 
He sighed.
 
"Are you so sure that your Angel is really an angel?"

She stifled the shiver that stole over her spine, but could not erase it completely.
 
He did not seem to notice.
 
"Not … exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know."
 
She stemmed off the tide of his questions with a sharp retort.
 
"It doesn't matter, Alsvior.
 
I will not abandon my quest.
 
I am going to find Laufeyson.
 
The man knows something, something important, something about
me.
 
And he tried to get me killed.
 
I'll not forget that so hastily."

She passed him, her destination clear.
 
He watched her stalk away, her boots sliding silently over the ground.
  
He entertained the thought of running away, but she never looked back, and so he followed.

#

"We should make camp.
 
The night will be cloudy."
 

In the rapidly arriving dark, De la Roca could barely make out the way Alsvior's eyes darted nervously to each side.
 
She had cut her pace over the last mile, relying on her ears and a hyper-developed sense of feel to navigate the uneven terrain.

"No," she said, her voice firm.
 
"We press on."
 
By her estimation, they were less than an hour from the base of the mountain - although the low light made it hard to tell for sure.
 
Already, she had noticed that the amount of ground they covered seemed to vary wildly.
 
At times, it almost felt that they were
teleporting
, racing to the Oracle's mountain in fast forward.
 
When she brought it up to Alsvior, though, he merely shook his head with his eyes closed, as if he didn't even want to consider the idea.
 

For most of the day, a strange feeling had gnawed in her belly, one that overrode the ever-present thrum of the Thyrsus stone.
 
It was not until seeing Alsvior's eyes shift back and forth that she realized what troubled her.

As a gunslinger, she had long ago learned to give up her bullets to fate.
 
But she could feel, for the first time, the impossible wall that had come between her and Alsvior.
 
Until now, she had not realized how much she relied on her only companion.

She had blurry memories of last night, of wrapping her arms around him, but she couldn't figure out if they reflected reality.
 
Those images had segued flawlessly into the nightmare that had haunted her since her rebirth.
 
That
was followed by stranger things still - hazy impressions of Laufeyson's face accompanied by an odd rush of warmth that she would rather not consider.

She wished Alsvior was a horse again.
  
Things were much simpler before she realized that he was as human (or demon) as she.

He stopped, unwilling to go on.
 
She recognized the stance - the stiff shoulders and tilted head, as if his center of gravity had shifted and forced him to lean backwards to stay upright.
  
Perhaps he was not so different from the horse she remembered.

"Alsvior, don't be an idiot," she snarled.
 
The words spilled from her, cold and logical.
 
"If we stop here to make camp, we are out in the open.
 
There is no protection from the elements or from whoever else might decide to join us.
 
At the very least, we should shoot for that grove of trees."

He paused, as if mulling the situation over.
 
"Fine, but we stay off the mountain."
 
His voice was cold, but she sensed that it masked an urgency, almost a
squeamishness
of sorts.
 
"Agreed."

"Although after we get there, I doubt you'll find joy in your decision."
 

TWELVE

A
s a former executioner for the Pentarch, Laufeyson had been present when the angel Yesshaud first enchanted the cell, bestowing it with the ability to cancel any magic within.

They soon found that the vagueness of the incantation made it too hard to control.
 
Within days, the cell's enchantment dissipated completely.
 
Laufeyson had returned from patrol to find the door swung open wide.
 
He tracked the two prisoners through the Valley of the Winged, finally catching them in the neighboring Valley of Ascension.

They claimed, despite formidable torture, that the door had opened spontaneously.
 
Unbelieving, he continued to interrogate them, until they died upon his table.

Careful examination of the cell revealed it to be no different than an ordinary room.
 
It had taken its directive to cancel magic seriously and nullified its original spell.

Yesshaud, after much thought, returned with a new incantation, one that searched out the nature of the being within and blocked the corresponding magical signature.
 
They had known from the beginning that the system was not without flaws; magic that originated from outside of the prisoner's
akras
and
kevras
would not be recognized as a threat.

Laufeyson was surprised by how lax Consortium security had become.
 
When he was executioner, each being was searched thoroughly for any sort of artifact that might aid in escape.
 
He had even cut off a demon's arm on the
suspicion
that an icon was buried under the skin.

With a sigh, he realized his discomfort was a reflection of both his age and his estrangement from Hell.
 
Now that the Consortium had culled so many from the Movement's flock, its members had nothing to fear.
 

Enough,
he thought.
 
Is there a way out of here?

He tongued the stone in his mouth.
 
He doubted the cell would recognize the Eye's magic as his own, but Muninn's
kevra
had been one of memories.
 

Useless.
 

He groaned, an itch starting in his chest.
 
I wish I had a cigarette.
 
He tried to forget about it, but the thought fixed itself in his mind.
 
He could almost taste the tobacco, feel the smoke burning into his lungs.

And then, for just the briefest moment, he felt the cigarette in his hand and against his lips.
 
Surprised, he opened his eyes, and the sensation vanished.
  

Okay,
he thought.
 
Maybe there is a way out.

#

His skin prickled.

This was an inherently dangerous business, the risks of which he doubted he fully understood.
 
Even if he managed to somehow cast his
kevra
via a memory, he wasn't De la Roca.
 
He wouldn't be able to fully experience or control Muninn's
kevra
.
 
The consequences could be disastrous.

Was it possible to go too far into himself?
 
He imagined being a vegetable, slowly wasting away, unable to return to the world of the conscious, and shuddered violently.
 

He wanted a cigarette - it might be his last - but in his nervousness, he somehow managed to restrain himself.
 

#

An hour had passed, and he still had not decided upon a course of action.
 

He wished he had found a way to manage De la Roca's false quest without talking to her in person.
 
Even in his dream appearances as the Angel, he had no trouble separating his emotions from his business.

But I had to see her.

She was the cornerstone of his plan.
 
Golden was as mortal as any of them, but his
kevra
of influence allowed him to rule the Consortium with an iron fist.
 
More importantly, the angels all knew instinctively that the moment he died, his power upon them broken, they would descend back into chaos.
 

Unless, of course, De la Roca could take the stone from his body.
 

He sighed, his mind weaving dreamy images of De la Roca as the Queen of Hell, he at her side as king.
 
We were always meant for that.

Her face bloomed in his mind, and he pictured the first time he had seen her in her new body, outside of the home of the Mademoiselle.
 
From the moment he laid eyes on her stony, wolf-like stare - a look that so mirrored his own - his resolve had somehow melted.
 
His great need to confess, to be absolved - to be
understood
- was mitigated only by the fear that she would be caught by the Consortium.
 
They most certainly would have tortured her, prying into her mind, shattering walls and distorting her thoughts and perceptions until she was truly insane - all to figure out what she knew.

Not for the first time, Laufeyson contemplated the fact that to be an angel meant to be truly inhuman.

Even here, his legs falling asleep on the stone floor, his mind on the verge of undertaking a possible suicide mission - he knew it was better this way.
 
The Movement would carry on, and those at "his table" (for he liked to imagine them sitting all equally, as untrue as it might be), would find a way to enact the death of Golden and the usage of his
kevra.

But if they had taken her?
 
If the Pentarch had captured De la Roca - no -
Kalima -
(and even as he thought the name, his spirit sprang up, singing, and he felt the rush of his mind to quench it, to erase the evidence of its passage) - then really, all was lost.
 
She was the
key.