Stalking Darkness (60 page)

Their first night on the road the column camped in the shelter of an ancient pine grove. The sound of surf was loud. Looking west past the huge, straight trunks, Alec could see the white spume of the waves as they thundered against the ledges. It reminded him of the sea sounds of his dreams, but it was not quite the same.

As darkness fell, another cheer went up and he guessed that the comet must be visible again, although he couldn’t see up through the branches. Much later, he heard agonized screams in the darkness and knew that the sacrificial ritual was being carried out again somewhere nearby. Even the guards around the cart shifted uneasily and several made warding signs.

The cries went on longer this time. Feeling cold and sick, Alec moved closer to Thero’s sleeping form and covered his head with his cloak.

Less than a year before, a younger, more innocent Alec had lain awake all night in Asengai’s dungeon, trembling and weeping at every fresh cry that echoed from the torturer’s room.

Weeks of death and torture in Mardus’ company had almost emptied him of such emotion. Pressing his hands over his ears, he drifted into a restless doze with the survivor’s uneasy prayer of relief: This time, at least, it wasn’t me.

In his nightmare there was no invisible pursuer this time, only the hoarse screams leading him on, faster and faster. With tears of frustration coursing down his cheeks, he gripped the useless arrow shaft and ran until his chest ached. Rounding a corner, he staggered to a halt, his way blocked by a section of collapsed wall.

A thrill of hope shot through him at the sight of the ray of sunlight streaming in through a jagged break high in the stonework. From outside came the familiar rush and rumble of surf.

Clambering up the pile of broken stone, he squeezed out through the hole—and found himself standing alone on a granite ledge surrounded by thick fog that shrouded the view on all sides. Overhead, the faint disk of the noonday sun burned through the mist.

The crash of the surf was loud now, so loud that he couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. If he moved too far, went the wrong direction in the mist, he’d surely fall off the ledge. Crouching low, he moved slowly along on all fours until his hands touched water. The waves surged around him suddenly, flipping him on his back and tumbling him across the rocks. When the foaming waters receded again, the ledges were covered for as far as he could see with corpses of drowned men and women, their blue-white skin gleaming in the shadowless light.

The sea sound was fainter now, and over it Alec could hear harsh grunts and heavy, wet tearing sounds coming toward him in the fog. Terrified, naked, unarmed, he crouched among the corpses. Even the headless arrow was gone, carried off by the sea.

Soon he caught sight of weird, humped forms moving among the dead. The grunting and snuffling grew louder, closer.

Suddenly something grabbed him from behind in an icy grip, pulling him to his feet. Alec couldn’t turn his head far enough to see what it was, but the putrid stench that rolled off it made him gag.

“Join the feast, boy, ” a gloating, clotted voice whispered close to his ear. Struggling out of that loathsome grasp, Alec whirled to see what the creature was, but there was nothing there.

“Join the feast!” the same voice said again, still behind him no matter how fast he turned.

Stumbling backward, he fell into a heap of bloated corpses. No matter how he struggled he couldn’t get up; every move enmeshed him more in a tangle of flaccid limbs.

“Aura Elustri malrei!” he screamed, flailing wildly. “Join the feast!” the voice howled triumphantly.

Then the sun went black. Alec jerked awake, still smelling the terrible death stench of the dream. A plump slice of moon visible through the branches told him it was still far from morning.

Hugging his knees miserably, Alec took a deep breath, but the air smelled fouler every moment. “Oh, Alec, I’m so frightened!”

Looking up in amazement, Alec saw Cilia crouched a few feet away. Illuminated by some ghostly inner light, she looked imploringly at him. Ghost or not, he was too relieved to see her whole again to be frightened.

“What are you doing here?” he asked softly, praying she wouldn’t disappear as suddenly as she’d come.

“I don’t know.” A tear slid slowly down her cheek. “I’ve been lost for so long! I can’t find Father or Grandmother anywhere. What’s happened, Alec? Where are we?”

She looked so real that he took off his cloak and placed it around her shoulders. She pulled it around herself gratefully and leaned against him, feeling very solid and real. For a moment he simply knelt next to her, trying hard not to question her presence. At last, however, he pulled back a little and looked down at the top of her head resting against his chest.

“Why did you come?” he asked again.

“I had to,” she whispered sadly. “I had to tell you—“

“Tell me what?”

“How much I hate you.”

Her voice was so soft, so gentle, that it took a moment for the import of her words to sink in.

As his heart turned to lead in his chest, she said, “I hate you, Alec. It was your fault, even more than Seregil’s. They saw you, followed you. You led them to us. I’m glad you’re going to die.”

“No! Oh, no, no, no, no.” Scrambling away, Alec flung himself into the farthest corner. “That’s not true!” he cried. “It can’t be true.”

Cilia raised her head slowly, her eyes black hollows in the dim light of the moon. She smiled, and the fetid stench rolled through the cage again. Her smile widened to a grimace, a snarl, a silent scream, then a black arm shot from her mouth, lengthening impossibly as it reached for Alec.

Locking black talons around his arm, it dragged him over Thero’s limp body and back to her. For a moment his face was inches from hers, her wild eyes boring into his, mouth stretched obscenely around the arm protruding from it. Then her whole body swelled into a black, man-shaped form.

“Are you so certain?” the thing asked in the voice from Alec’s nightmare. “Are you so very certain?” Releasing him, it wavered, then flowed out through the bars like smoke.

“Damn you!” Alec screamed, knowing Vargul Ashnazai was close by, watching. “Damn you, you blood-swilling son of a whore! You lie! You lie!”

A single harsh, mocking laugh answered him from the darkness beneath the trees.

T
he wind whipped Seregil’s cloak around his knees and pulled at the bow case and quiver strapped to his old pack as he stopped to wait for Micum and Nysander. Looking back along the ledges to the north, he could just make them out, Nysander leaning on Micum and a stout staff as they picked their way over an expanse of tumbled stone. Over them loomed Mount Kythes, its jagged peak thrusting above the tree line like an elbow from a worn green sleeve.

Seregil shook his head in wonder. Despite Nysander’s fragile appearance, the wizard had managed to keep up a steady pace over the past two days. Seregil and Micum took turns supporting him while the other scouted ahead. They were at the foot of the great mountain now, toiling south along the edge of the forest that flanked the coastline for as far as they could see. The area was rough and uninhabited, but there was the faint line of an overgrown road through the woods that followed the ledges.

Looking ahead, he shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun and scanned the forest and ledges.

How in the name of Illior were they supposed to find one stone, white or otherwise, in this wilderness? For all they knew they’d passed it somewhere yesterday. Yet Nysander insisted on pressing forward, the light of hope growing brighter daily in his eyes as they moved southward. Micum said little, but Seregil suspected he was as daunted by the unlikely nature of their quest as he was.

What if Nysander is wrong?

Seregil fought a daily battle against that question, and others. What if by losing the battle at the Oreska, Nysander had failed in his Guardianship? What if the wounds he’d received in that fight had addled his brain and he was leading them a fool’s errand while Alec was carried off to some other part of Plenimar?

Yet each night the comet blazed ever closer in the night sky and the mark on Seregil’s breast grew clearer as the skin healed, so he could not voice his doubts. Rational or not, in his heart he believed that Nysander was right. Clinging to this, he pressed on each day, scanning the coastline along the forest’s edge until his eyes burned and his head ached, feeling his heart leap into his throat every time a patch of sunlight or the reflection of a tide pool tricked his eye.

Nysander and Micum had almost caught up. Sitting down on a slab of red granite, Seregil watched a flock of sea ducks bobbing on the waves beyond the breakers. Gradually his gaze wandered to the greenish-brown beards of bladder wrack clinging to the damp rocks below. Scattered patches of it marked the high tide line. Farther down, where the tide was nearly out, it blanketed the wet rocks in thick, slippery beds. He’d noted the difference the day before and the fact had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since, though he wasn’t quite certain why.

Micum and Nysander climbed slowly up to where he stood. The wizard sank down on an outcropping, wiping his brow on his sleeve.

“My goodness,” he panted, “I believe I must sit for a moment.” Seregil uncorked his water skin and handed it to him.

“We only have a few hours of daylight left,” he said, suddenly restless. “I’ll go on ahead. If I’m not back by dusk, light a fire and I’ll backtrack to it.”

Micum frowned and held up a hand. “Hold on, now. I don’t like the idea of us getting split up again.”

“Not to worry,” Nysander assured him. “I shall only need a short rest, and then we can follow. I agree with Seregil; there is no time to lose.”

“It’s settled,” Seregil said, setting off again before Micum could protest.

A quarter of a mile farther on a broad cove cut into the shoreline like a bite from a slice of bread. An expanse of smooth ledge several hundred feet wide sloped gently up to the base of steeper layers of sea-weathered granite that embraced the cove like ruined battlements. Gulls picked their way through the rock pools and seaweed near the water’s edge, spying out a meal left behind by the tide. It was a rather pretty place, Seregil thought, climbing up the rocks to stay near the edge of the forest.

Looking through the trees, he saw that the disused road curved to follow the upper ledges. He was just wondering if he should follow it for a while when something white caught his eye in the edge of the undergrowth across the cove.

Clambering over rocks and fallen trees, he braced for another disappointment; an equally promising flash earlier that morning had turned out to be the shoulder blade of an elk. Another had been nothing more than sunlight striking a spring-fed pool. As he came closer, however, he saw that it was a boulder of milky white stone nearly four feet high.

Dropping his pack, he pushed his way through the thicket of leafless bushes and dead fern that partially obscured it.

It was real—a great chunk of white quartz that had no business being in this type of country. He circled it, looking for carvings or marks, then reached down through the dry bracken until his fingers found a small, smooth stone. Pulling it out, he saw that it was a piece of polished black basalt the size and shape of a goose egg. Digging in farther, he found more of the black stones, as well as a tiny clay figure of a woman and an ornament of carved shell.

Clutching his finds, Seregil bounded back the way he’d come until he saw Micum and Nysander heading his way.

“I found it!” he shouted. “I found your white rock, Nysander. It’s real!” Micum let out a happy whoop and Seregil answered with one of his own.

“What do you say for Illioran mysticism now, Micum?” Seregil demanded breathlessly as he reached them.

Micum shook his head, grinning. “I’ll never understand it, but it’s surely led us well so far.”

“There were black stones around the base of it, and I found these, too,” Seregil told Nysander excitedly, showing him the clay figure and the carved bit of shell.

“Illior’s Light!” the wizard murmured, examining them. “Come along,” he urged, grasping them both by the arm. “Carry me if you have to, but get me to that stone before the sun goes down.”

But they didn’t have to carry him. Swinging his staff ahead of him, Nysander strode over the ledges with much of his old energy. It was as if his news had revitalized the wizard, Seregil thought. Perhaps Nysander had needed this solid affirmation of his visions as much as the rest of them.

“Oh, yes, this is the one,” Nysander said as they reached the stone. Placing both hands on it, he closed his eyes. “It is old, so old,” he said almost reverently. “It was placed here long before the first Hierophant landed on Plenimaran soil, but the echo of ancient worship is still so strong in it.”

“You mean this is some ancient shrine?” asked Micum, examining it more closely.

“Something of the sort. Those objects Seregil found have been here for over a thousand years. They should be put back.”

Seregil replaced the figure and shell ornament as he’d found them. “I looked the big stone over, but I didn’t see any markings. Still, if this was a shrine, maybe it’s the temple the prophecy meant.”