Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [91]
Filled with misgivings, he nonetheless started forward toward it. If the path leads that way, we have no alternative. He disciplined his mind by recounting all the various ways he would make Tarrant pay for forcing him to come here, and thus managed to keep his fear under tight rein. But as he drew closer, as he saw the strange realm for what it was, that strategy failed him utterly.
It was bodies. Human bodies, stretching ahead to the horizon and beyond. Women’s bodies, strewn across the landscape like discarded refuse, gathered together in such numbers that in places they were stacked in mounds, like heaps of living garbage. As he watched, they twitched and shivered, and their combined motion gave the illusion of waves passing across the surface. He saw thin limbs, pale skin, fingers that clutched at air and then withdrew again, burrowing deep down into the flesh-blanket that seemed to cover the whole planet like crabs seeking shelter.
“What is it?” he whispered.
Karril breathed in sharply, for once without a pat rejoinder. “Damned if I know.”
With a wrenching sensation in his gut he realized that the living blanket was parting, ever so slowly. Limbs contracted to draw the nearer bodies out of their path; their motion was crablike and horrible, not at all human. What is this place? he thought desperately. A narrow path was forming, flanked by twitching limbs. It was just wide enough for them to walk single file, if they watched where they were going. Just narrow enough to make him feel sick at the thought of such a passage.
But ...
That was the path, without question; he didn’t need Karril to tell him that. Tarrant’s own fear had marked it for them. How many miles did this horror stretch onward, glazed eyes staring out of undead faces as spider-fingers struggled to clear the way? His stomach churned at the thought that one wrong step might put him in contact with those gruesomely contorted bodies, but a hissing behind him, like steam off approaching lava, warned him that to stay where he was might prove an even worse alternative.
There’s no other choice, he told himself grimly. Not unless we want to go back the way we came. And that was out of the question.
“All right,” he muttered. “Let’s do it.”
He went first, moving toward the narrow path the bodies had made for them. On both sides the mounds of flesh still twitched and writhed, and periodically a leg or a hand would be flung across their path, a gruesome reminder that their new-made road might disappear as quickly as it had begun. The thought made hot bile rise in his throat, but still he forced himself forward. There’s no other way, he told himself, repeating the words over and over again, a mantra of endurance. Behind him he could hear the hiss of lava as it flowed down the rocky slope and enveloped the nearest bodies, and the stink of burnt flesh filled the air like a choking perfume. He could see details of the bodies now, faces and breasts and buttocks made waxen and distorted by death, undead eyes gazing out of hollowed sockets as if facing some unseen horror. The movements of their limbs were not random, he could see now, but each body twitched as if running, or striving to run, while the weight of all its neighbors trapped it in place and turned the motion into a mockery of flight.
His foot landed close to the head of one, then by the clutching hand of another. It took almost balletic skill to avoid coming in contact with them, a trial his burned and aching body was no longer up to. It seemed to him that every step must surely be his last, and only the sheer horror of the bodies surrounding him gave him the strength to keep going. Karril followed silently behind him, wrapped in her own Iezu thoughts. Were these unalive creatures human enough to disturb her? Did they give off waves of pain of their own, or some other, more virulent suffering? He glanced back now and then to check on the demon, but though