Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [201]
It was just anightmare, she told herself. Some nightmareshappened while you dreamed andsome happenedwhile you were awake, but they all ended sometime, right? She licked at her lips with a dry tongue, wondering how long she would last. Was this all the white man had wanted her for, to waste away in this foul pit without even knowing where she was? Was he feeding on her despair, or on some other part of her emotional substance? She wouldn’t give him that pleasure,she decided. For as long as she had the strength to dream, she would relive memories of life, and of love. She would fantasize aboutAndrys Tarrant until his image was so set in her brain that even in her last moments,even while the rats andlizards gnawed at her dying flesh, her soul would still be joyful. Let that albino bastard feed on her love if he wanted to; it would probably give him heartburn.
Something stirred overhead, where there had been no motion during all her imprisonment. She sat up weakly, bracing herself against the slimy wall. There was a scraping noise andthen it seemed to her that something moved. There was a line of darkness forming that was less black than that which surrounded, dim andinsubstantial,but yes, it might even be calledlight. She blinked hard asshe stared atit, not quite believing.
“Time to come out. ” It was the white man’s voice, no longer wholly human but a strange gurgling sound; she had trouble making out the words. Something came down from the darkness and splashed to the floor by her side. She reached out a tentative hand to see what it was, and felt a smooth wooden shaft pointing upward.A ladder He had lowered aladder
“Up,” he growled. “Now!”
Narilka hesitated. Whatever was waiting for her up that ladder could be even worse than her current misery,which she had almost come to terms with. She rememberedthe foul breath of his pack, the pain of their teeth in her flesh. No. Better the darkness than that.
When he saw that she wasn’t moving, he howled in fury, a sound more animal than human. She heard scrabbling as his beasts ran toward him, and with a sick feeling in her heart she realized that the things she feared most might simply come down into the darkness and drag her out; her obstinacy would gain her nothing.Slowly, her hands shaking, she forced herself to climb. The creatures up ahead of her were growling, and the white man also. When her head cleared the opening, he reached out and grabbed her long hair, hauling her up by it. Stars of pain danced behind her eyes.
“I need you, ” he hissed. His hand tangled in her muddy hair, savagely pulling her head back. “Don’t fight me. I’ll let them eat you if you do, you understand me? I’ll hurt you!”
She didn’t have the strength to nod. She couldn’t summon the voice to answer.
Snarling, he dragged her away.
The flat Forest earth gave way to rocky ground, to the gentle slope of hills, to the steep incline of a mountainside. That was a good sign, the Patriarch told them. Vryce’s notes made it clear that the Hunter’s keep was in the mountains, therefore they were headed in the right direction.
Then there came a point at which the horses could no longer manage the steep climb, and had to be left behind. Given the choice between staying with them or making the climb with their company, the wounded chose to struggle onward. Andrys didn’t blame them. In a place this hostile, where the darkness might erupt with new dangers at any moment, a handful of wounded men and women wouldn’t stand a chance by themselves.
The dead were unloaded and buried in a makeshift cairn. It seemed a waste of time to Andrys. Didn’t the Church teach that dead flesh was only an empty shell? Wouldn’t their companions want them to hurry on their way, rather than risk a delay to attend to such a meaningless ritual? But once more, the Patriarch insisted. To leave the dead unhonored now would “poison too many futures,” he said. Whatever the hell