Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [171]
Until sunrise, Damien thought. That would be long enough, where Tarrant was concerned. “You said you’ve been to Shaitan before.”
“Not by this route. From the tunnel that exits under my keep, which leads to much simpler ground. Not through this.” He shook his head tightly, his frustration obvious. “I had hoped the canyons would be visible from above, so that I could sketch out a path for us before we descended. But the view—as you saw—was hardly that useful.”
“So what now?”
He gazed out into the distance, narrowing his eyes as one might gazing into a bright light. “I can make out some of its pattern from here. Enough to guide us, perhaps.”
Perhaps. How long was the day this time of year, ten hours, eleven? Not long enough to pick their way through a maze of this complexity. Damien looked up toward Shaitan’s light in the distance—not so very far from them, but a world away for all that they could get to it—and then down into the depths again. “What about crossing it?” he asked. “I know it’s a climb, but we’ve got the supplies for it, and even that seems preferable to trying to walk around it.”
In answer the Hunter pointed down into the darkness. It took Damien a minute to figure out what he was pointing at, and then several minutes longer to make out what it was. When he did, he cursed softly.
Bones lay scattered across the floor of the narrow canyon, the skeletons of three men clearly visible. Shreds of fabric and flesh still clung to their upper portions, but their legs had been stripped and polished until nothing remained but lengths of bone as white as snow. Serpents of mist writhed in and out of the joints as Damien watched, like maggots on fresh meat.
He tried to think, at last ventured, “Acid?”
Tarrant nodded. “Shaitan’s breath is venomous, and so is her blood. Or so the legend says. They should have listened to it.”
“Is all the water here like that?”
He nodded. “It’s leached out of the ash-clouds by rain, so that the very earth is soaked with it. That’s why so few things live here ... so few natural things, that is.”
“Shit.”
A faint smile flickered across the Hunter’s face. “Aptly put, Vryce. As usual.” He looked both ways along the length of the canyon, then nodded toward the left. “Shall we?”
“If you tell me we’ve got something better to go on than guesswork,” Damien challenged. “Otherwise we’d be better off looking for that tunnel of yours, and heading to Shaitan from there.”
“My Vision will afford us some guidance, at least for the nearer obstacles.” In illustration of which he reached out a gloved hand towards Damien, and the channel that bound them flared to life; Damien could see with his own eyes how the currents of the earth-fae followed the lips of the canyon, their patterns reflected in the mist-clouds overhead. “As you see.” In the distance it was just possible to see a place where the canyon turned, perhaps giving access to the plain beyond. “And the path is no easier to my tunnel from here, I regret. Either way, the real risk ...”
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to. Either way, Calesta’s what we have to worry about. He can make us see canyons that aren’t there, or run from shadows that don’t exist, or even make us walk over the edge of a chasm, thinking it solid ground.... But no, Karril had said he would protect them from a move like that. If only their ally would expand his beneficence to encompass lesser strategies!
They set as good a pace they could along the rocky earth, moving sometimes by the light of the lantern and sometimes, when the mist cleared from overhead and the clouds were obliging, by the blood-colored fire of Shaitan. Ghostlike shapes wisped in and out of life on all sides of them, and occasionally Tarrant would lead Damien out of the range of one that was becoming too solid for comfort. Shadows, he called them. Reflections of the dead. Damien saw one whose head had been severed, and another whose ghostly blood flowed where its