Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [157]
Shaitan. Its summit glowed with hot orange fire, and streams of that color cascaded down its flank, into the unnatural mist that obscured its base. Its steep cone reared up high into the sky, and the clouds of ash that surrounded it seemed to glow with their own inner fire, so fiercely did they reflect its light. Above it the sky had been blanketed with ash, whose undersurface rippled with orange and red highlights as a sea might ripple with froth. It made Damien feel strangely light-headed to stare up at it, and he forced his eyes downward again, to a more comfortable terrain.
“Do the dead really live down there?” he asked Tarrant.
“Shadows of the dead,” he confirmed, “which are not quite the same thing.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The real dead, if they survived separation from their flesh, would feed as other faeborn creatures do: upon the species that gave birth to them. While the shadows of the dead ... do not feed. Do not hunger. Do not expire. They’re like reflections in a mirror: perfect, but without real consciousness. The only world they know is the moment in which they died, and they only exist here, where the currents are so powerful that thought is practically the same as being.”
“They don’t sound very dangerous.”
Tarrant looked at him sharply. “Don’t kid yourself.”
“But if they don’t need to feed—”
“They’re perfect reflections, formed at the instant of death. Violent deaths mostly; those are the kind with the greatest power.” He gazed out at the vista before him. “You think of what that would mean, to have a creature whose only memory of life is the one moment when it betrayed him ... and then ally that image to that power, down there.” A sweeping gesture encompassed it all: the mists, the volcano, the unseen currents that swept like tsunami across the earth. “I’d call that very dangerous indeed.”
He glanced at the sky again, toward a place where it was clear, and saw the constellation of Arago rising over the top of the ridge. Why did that seem wrong to him? He shook his head as if to clear it, but the thought wouldn’t come to him. It was still dark, at least. Starlight might serve as a warning of the coming dawn, but in and of itself it wouldn’t hurt Tarrant—
And then there was someone else there beside them, someone who gestured sharply down the slope and bade them, “Come quickly!”
He half drew his sword, then sheathed it again when he saw who it was. “Karril?” he asked. Not quite believing.
“Come,” the demon urged. Waving toward the slope behind him, taking a step in that direction as if to inspire them to follow. “There’s not much time.”
Damien looked back at Tarrant; the Hunter’s expression mirrored his own hesitation. “The Iezu can’t imitate one another,” he said at last.
“And they can’t kill humans either,” the demon reminded him, “But don’t bet your life on that.” Again he gestured down the hillside, and whispered fiercely, “Trust me, old friend! If nothing else, you know I respect Iezu law. Come with me!”
Something in his words or his manner must have decided Tarrant, for the Hunter nodded and began to follow him. Damien trotted alongside, praying that neither would lose his footing on the treacherous ground.
—And then they were sliding down the vast slope, so quickly and so recklessly that Damien couldn’t even pretend to control his descent. In what must have been no more than a handful of seconds, they dropped so far that Damien could no longer make out the pass above them, yet Tarrant continued to follow. Even when that meant descent through a grove of thorned brambles that tore at their clothing and skin as they forced their way through. Even when