Believe me,” he said, “under the circumstances I wish it were otherwise.”
No help there, then. Damien looked desperately about the landscape as if seeking inspiration for some new line of attack ... and he found it. It was streaming along the ground not ten yards from his feet.
“We might as well move forward, then.” His heart was pounding with terror as he made his way toward the lava stream, but he knew that he didn’t dare hesitate. “Because without your wife’s shadow I think we’re as good as dead here, don’t you?” He had ten feet left to go, and he could smell the gases that were sizzling on the lava’s surface. “Calesta’s as good as killed us this time by hiding her, so why not take a chance?" Walk into it, he ordered his muscles. Don’t worry about whether it’s real. Just do it.
He was less than a step from the lava stream when something reached out and stopped him. Thank God. He let it push him back from the molten rock, then reached up to wipe the sweat from his face. All he accomplished was to make the silk veil stick to his skin.
“You play a dangerous game,” Karril growled.
He managed a dry smile. “Just holding you to your promise.”
The Iezu took him by the shoulder and forced him back down to where Tarrant stood waiting. “There,” he said. He didn’t sound at all happy. “As I promised.”
The real Almea-shadow was behind them, as clear as if no illusion had ever hidden her. The false one was gone, or maybe just invisible, which was almost as good.
“Would you have really walked into it?” Karril asked him. Damien said nothing. At last the demon sighed. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.” He glanced at Tarrant, and,with a thin smile said, “Just remind me not to play poker with him.”
“You and me both,” the Hunter whispered, and it seemed to Damien that for a fleeting instant there was a smile on his face, too.
Up the slope they went, Almea gliding easily, the two men struggling behind. Much to Damien’s surprise
Karril stayed with them, and when he caught his breath long enough to question him about that choice the demon would only say gruffly, “Someone has to keep the two of you out of trouble.”
We’ve won, he thought. But it was only the journey that was finished. Ahead of them lay Shaitan, and a Working so deadly that no man might attempt it and survive.
They climbed. In places the trembling of the ground was so subtle that they didn’t hear it, only felt it beneath their feet and hands; in others it was like a genuine earthquake, and Damien’s teeth chattered as he pulled himself higher and higher up the broken slope. Sometimes it felt like the very planet beneath them was about to crumble, and he had to shut his eyes and draw in a deep breath and summon all his self-control in order to ignore it. The shadow waited. And Karril climbed behind them. And inch by inch, foot by foot, they made their way toward their destination.
At last they came to a place where Karril signaled for them to stop. The Almea-shadow seemed content to obey, so Damien and Tarrant did likewise. The ground was so steep they could barely stand upright, but supported themselves by leaning against cracked boulders of congealed lava.
“It’s over!” Karril cried out to the mist surrounding them. “You couldn’t stop them from getting here, and now you can’t stop them from doing what they came to do. Let them see it for themselves!”
For a moment it seemed to Damien that the whole world hesitated. The rumbling of the earth, the crackling and hissing of nearby lava, the pounding of his own heart ... all quieted for a moment, as if waiting. Then, slowly, the mist surrounding them began to thin. White smoke gave way to thinner tendrils, and that in turn gave way to air clear enough that the side of the mountain could be seen.
With a gasp Damien leaned back hard against Shaitan’s flank, and he saw Tarrant do the same. A hundred feet beneath them he could see clouds-real clouds—gathering about the mountain’s peak like a flock of broad-winged birds. Between them the air seemed to stretch downward forever, until the flank of the mountain crumbled and flattened and merged into the valley floor so very, very far below. Had they really climbed that far up? he wondered. His eyes found it hard to believe, but his muscles were wholly convinced.
He turned his gaze upward, toward the peak of the great volcano. A short climb farther would bring them to its lip, a jagged rock line silhouetted by the orange glow of Shaitan’s magmal furnace. The black clouds overhead seemed almost close enough that he could touch them, and their undersides flickered with all the colors of fire, reflected from the crater and its attendant vents. The entire sky seemed filled with fire, a universe of burning ash, and thank God that Almea had brought them up on the windward flank, because the stuff spewing forth from that crater looked hot enough and thick enough to choke even a sorcerer.
He looked back down at Tarrant and was startled to find yet another figure beside him. Black and sharp-edged and oh so very familiar. Instinct made him reach for his sword, even though he knew in his heart that steel would do no good against that kind. It was a gut response.
“Give it up,” Calesta commanded.
Tarrant turned away from him and began to climb. From the crater above them a spray of fire seemed to spew forth, and a hail of molten pebbles clattered down around them. He kept going.
“You can’t kill me!” the black demon cried defiantly. “All you can do is waste your own life, and throw away eternity. I can give you what you want!” Tarrant climbed on. A lump of rock directly ahead of him split open and lava began to pour forth—and then Karril cursed and muttered something and it was gone.
“I think he has what he wants,” the god of pleasure told his brother. “Despite your help.”
There were other figures appearing on the slope now, some human, most not. Shapes wrought of gold and smoke and writhing colors, that gathered on the smoking ground to watch Tarrant’s ascent. Some were as fine as glass, and almost invisible to Damien’s eyes. Others seemed to be made of flesh, as Karril was, and only a sorcerous feature or two hinted at nonhuman origins. One was made entirely of silver, neither male nor female but more beautiful than both combined.
“Family,” Karril told him. And in answer to Damien’s unspoken question, he added, “They won’t interfere.”
Up out of the crater itself something was rising now, that was neither lava nor smoke nor any volcano-bom thing. A swirling of color, that lit the ash from beneath. A cloud of images, that blended one into another so quickly Damien had no time to make out details. Faces-planets—the softness of flowers—the faceted light of jewels ... those images and a thousand more swirled in the center of a cloud of light, no more solid than a Iezu’s illusion, no more lasting than a dream. Damien felt as if he were staring into a great mirror, that reflected back at him all the fragments of his life in no special order, with no special meaning: a chaos of consciousness. With a sudden burst of fear he realized what it was, what it must be ... and he prayed that Tarrant wouldn’t look up and see it, lest it drain him of the last of his failing courage.
“Is it-?” he breathed.
“As I said,” Kami’s voice sounded strained. “Family.”
Tarrant had climbed as high as he could now, without trusting his weight to the last crumbling bit that might betray him. With effort he rose up to his feet, and the light of the Iezu’s creator combined with the hot orange glow of Shaitan’s furnace backlit him with a corona hardly less bright than the sun’s.
“Hear me, Calesta!” His voice was strong despite his obvious physical exhaustion; reaching his goal had clearly renewed him. “I Bind you with sacrifice. With the Pattern that has served man since his first days on this planet. I bind you to me as a part of my flesh, a part of my soul, indivisible—”