The shadow had stopped moving. Was watching him.
Damien dared, “I don’t think she’s here to hurt you.”
“How can she be here for anything else? Remember what I did to her, Vryce!”
She was waiting, Damien thought. She expected something. What?
“You called for help,” he offered.
He whispered: “I tortured her.”
She was watching. Waiting. Not Tarrant’s wife, but an isolated fraction of the woman. One instant of her living existence, frozen in time by the power of this place.
He drew in a deep breath, trying to sound calmer than he felt. “She’s the first shadow here that hasn’t gone after us. Maybe that means something.”
Tarrant said nothing.
The figure turned. Not wholly away from them, but slowly moving in that direction. There was no hate in her eyes, Damien noted, nor anger, but a vast tide of pain. And maybe something else ... something more.
“She loved you very much,” he observed.
Tarrant shuddered. “This thing wouldn’t remember love.”
She had stopped. She was waiting. For them.
“Gerald,” He said it gently, testing the words. “I think she wants us to follow her.”
“For what? To help us? More likely to lead me deeper into this trap—”
He looked into the shadow’s eyes, at the reflection of life that shimmered in their depths.
“I don’t think so,” he said quietly.
Tarrant looked at him in astonishment. “Why?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why would she help me, after what I did to her?”
“Maybe she wants to see you punished for what you did. You did say you expected to die on Shaitan, didn’t you? Maybe she wants to lead you to your death.” He drew in a deep breath. How could he word the next idea so that the Hunter would accept it? “Or maybe in that last moment what she wanted was to save you. Maybe she saw the man she had married being swallowed up by an evil so powerful that all her words, all her love, couldn’t save him ... and now he has one chance to redeem himself. The first real chance he’s had in centuries.” He waited a moment, then said softly, “You knew her, Gerald. You tell me.”
The shadow was waiting.
“If she’s an illusion-” Tarrant began.
“She isn’t.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because for all of Calesta’s subtlety, I don’t think he could have created this." He gestured toward the shadow; did it smile sadly in response? “A reflection of pain, yes, and maybe hatred, and certainly a hunger for vengeance. Those are things he understands. But the rest?” Reading what was in her eyes, he shivered. God, what a woman she must have been. “Calesta knows nothing about human love; how could he mimic its form so perfectly?”
The Hunter turned to him. His pale eyes were so haunted, so tormented, that Damien had to fight not to look away. “Is that what you see in her?” he demanded.
“Among other things,” he said quietly. “Enough that I think she might want to lead us where we’re going. And we haven’t got a whole lot of other options, have we? Unless you have something up your sleeve you haven’t told me about.”
“No.”
“So?”
For a long time he just stood there. Damien waited. So did she.
“All right,” he said at last. A whisper, barely audible. “All right.”
They turned to where the ghostly figure stood, and saw that it had moved a few steps away. Damien waited until Tarrant had begun to walk toward her, then did so himself. His heart was pounding, with hope and fear both. Almea Tarrant’s shadow would be immune to Calesta’s illusory persuasions; the Iezu had no power over faeborn creatures. Which meant that she could probably lead them around the true obstacles, and save them the trouble of avoiding things that weren’t really there.
If she wanted to. That was the catch. Watching her from behind, her ghostly substance trailing out into wisps of white smoke that were swallowed up by the omnipresent mist, he prayed that he had read her right. If not, they had so little hope——
She led them away from the canyon they had been following, onto a stretch of plain with little to distinguish one mile from another. Damien glanced nervously at Tarrant, but there was no way of telling from the adept’s expression if he could see anything useful, or if he was equally without a reference point. Soon the noxious mist closed in around them, sealing them in a shell of fog so thick that they could see no farther than the few steps ahead of them. Strange things moved within that mist, half-made creatures that pressed against its border like curious fish, but nothing came too close. Was that in response to Tarrant’s power, or hers? Did the shadows of the dead respect each other’s territory, so that no other creature would bother them while she was there? He stiffened as something with red eyes seemed to be coming straight at him, but it scattered like smoke before it could reach him. For now, for whatever reason, they seemed safe enough. God willing it would stay that way.
Step after step, mile after mile, they followed the shadow of Almea Tarrant across the poisoned earth. Skirting monuments of blackened rock, crushing malformed grasses beneath their feet, working their way around the shore of a tiny lake whose surface smoked like water about to boil. The smell that surrounded them was sometimes rotting, sometimes sickeningly sweet, but always backed by the sharp tang of sulfurous poisons. Thank God for the scarves Tarrant had Worked, which seemed to keep the worst of it out of their lungs. Damien reached up to his every now and then to make sure it was secure. He had traveled enough in volcanic regions to know how quickly your lungs could seize up once that stuff saturated them, and was doubly grateful to Tarrant for having prepared for it.
We’re going to make it, he thought, even as his legs began to ache from the hike. His mouth was growing dry from thirst, as well, and he knew that should be dealt with. He struggled to get out his canteen without slowing his pace and fumbled the cap open, but when he lifted his veil to access its contents a sudden gust of sulfurous fumes hit him full in the mouth. Before he could stop himself, he had breathed some of it in, and though he dropped the veil right away, it set off a coughing fit so powerful that for a moment he couldn’t walk at all. Over and over a deep hacking cough shook him, and he could only pray that the others would stop long enough for him to pull himself together. Did the Almea-shadow care if he reached Shaitan, or was she only concerned with her husband’s fate? The thought of being abandoned in this place was truly terrifying, and he was overcome with relief when his eyes cleared at last and he saw that both Tarrant and the ghost were still with him. “You can drink through the veil,” the Hunter told him. Great. Just great. He did so as they began to walk again, wincing as the bitter taste of some unknown chemical flowed into his mouth along with the water. Thanks for warning me in advance.
And then they came to a place where a canyon cut across their path, blocking their way. Deeply etched, steep-walled, it cut off the land to the right of them, forcing them to swing around to the left if they meant to continue their journey. But the shadow of Almea didn’t go that way. It didn’t move at all. It stood at the edge of the canyon as if judging the depth a man might fall, then looked back at them. Just for a second. And then, without a sound, it stepped forward, into the chasm itself.
Dear God ...
She hung suspended above empty space, her feet pressed against the air as if she stood on solid ground. The far wall of the canyon was perhaps twenty feet away, but she didn’t seem in any hurry to reach it. As casually as if it were real earth beneath her feet, she walked out to the middle of the empty space, then stopped and turned back to them. After a moment, when they didn’t follow, she reached out a slender arm toward them. Bidding them forward.