Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [89]
“Come on.” Strong arms were gripping him, fighting to raise him up. “There’s a cool spot ahead, I think.”
Yeah, he thought dully, an oasis in Hell. I believe that. But even that weak fantasy was enough to give him focus, and he struggled to his feet again. The clouds of ash were so thick about them that he could hardly see, but the sound of rock splitting just behind them was warning enough to keep him moving. He followed Karril blindly, clasping her hand in a grip that was sticky with blood, and prayed that the demon’s sight was better than his own.
And then, incredibly, the heat did abate somewhat. The ground felt more solid beneath his feet. (That could have been because the nerves in his feet had been seared to numbness, he told himself, but then again, it could be real.) He took the opportunity to stop and bend over, gasping for breath in the sulfurous air. Since Karril didn’t urge him to keep moving, he assumed that they were safe. For the moment.
When at last burning tears had cleared his eyes of dust, and his shaking muscles had loosened enough to let him stand upright, he looked back at the way they had just come and shuddered. Bright streamers of lava had broken through the ground in so many places that he could hardly trace their path; red fountains of molten rock spewed up like geysers where they had only recently been running. He had been near volcanoes in his life—too near, on occasion—but he had never gone through any realm like this. No living man could, he realized. Only in a place where life and death were meaningless could man traverse such a hell.
“Please,” he gasped. “Tell me we don’t have to go back that way.”
“No need to worry,” the demon assured him. “Personally, I think the odds are very slim of us going back at all.”
He glared at the demon and opened his mouth to voice a nasty response to his wisecrack, but when he saw what the Rasya-body looked like the words died in his throat. Karril was paler than the real Rasya had ever been, and his (her?) skin was an ashen gray. There was fear in the demon’s eyes now, and exhaustion so human that for a moment Damien thought that it, too, was just part of the masquerade.
My pain is draining him, he realized. Sickened by the thought. Can I kill him, just by suffering?
There was a sudden crack beside them; instinctively he grabbed Karril by the arm and jerked her away from it, breaking into a run as soon as he was sure that the demon wouldn’t lose her balance. The seemingly solid rock they had been standing on collapsed into a swirling orange river beneath; a gust of heat slammed into them with hurricane force, flames licking at their backs.
Another island of cool rock beckoned, and they stopped there just long enough for Damien to catch his breath. His muscles ached as though he had been running for days, and his parched throat struggled to draw in enough air to support him. He raised a hand to his forehead to wipe away the sweat that was streaming into his eyes, and to his surprise found that it was whole, unbloodied. Uncooked. Was he healing even as he ran? For a moment it seemed impossible ... and then, with a chill, he recognize the pattern. Yes, his flesh would heal itself, just fast enough to allow it to suffer more. Like the Hunter’s own flesh had done when the enemy trapped him in fire, forcing him to regenerate just fast enough to burn anew. To burn eternally.
Had those eight days in the rakhlands been so traumatic that they had etched their way into Tarrant’s soul, carving out a niche in his private Hell in which the fire would