The mountain sighed, a deep silent rumble that Atreus sensed down in the hollow of his stomach. Tarch felt it too and sat up, startled, taking his weight off Atreus's chest. The devil looked up the slope.
Atreus noticed the glacier wall sliding past, remembered the crevasse below, brought his chain up and slammed it into Tarch's head. The devil roared, lashed out, and gouged at Atreus's throat A snow slab the size of an elephant caught them from above and hurled them backward through the churning air, still battling. Atreus whipped his chain up again and felt it catch around the slave master's neck. White sugar snow poured down around him, falling from above, rising from below, pouring in from all sides, Tarch clawed at Atreus's face and caught the corner of an eye.
They tumbled again. Atreus's head exploded into pain as the claw slipped free. He could not tell whether or not he had been blinded. Everything was white. A deep, breathless cold rose up to swallow him. The chain tugged at his hand, snapped his arm out full length, and strained the socket. He clenched his fist until the nails bit into his palm, felt the crushing pain of the chain tightening around his hand.
The avalanche rolled Atreus, slower, twisting his arm around behind him until he thought the chain would rip it off. He began to sting with cold and sensed the world dropping away. The chain went slack. Whether Tarch was tumbling closer or slipping free, he could not tell. Everything was cold, churning whiteness, sugary and soft.
The tumbling stopped, and Atreus had the sensation of floating. The snow cradled him, closing in around him. He remained frozen in the same awkward position, one arm twisted around behind him, dimly aware by his queasy stomach that he was sliding. He tried to pull his arm forward but found it too packed in snow to move. He tried to twist around to dig, found his body as caught as his arm. Tried to pull his hand free, could not retract his elbow. Circle his wrist, clench his fist, wiggle a single fingertip… all stuck fast, stuck fast as a beetle in amber.
The sliding sensation vanished. The snow pressed in from all sides. He felt it in his ears, against his eyes, in his nostrils, growing heavier and colder with each heartbeat His pulse began to roar, and he knew he was panicking, but panic in these helpless circumstances was a mere cruel joke. Could he flail about madly? Run blindly to his death? He could do nothing but lie motionless and stare into the unimaginable whiteness of the snow.
Funny that it should still be so white, with him buried so deep. His bones ached from being crushed, his ears rang front the pressure, his lungs burned for air. He pushed his lips apart and tried to suck in a breath through the snow, but he could not expand his ribs, could not move all those tons with only his chest
The white never vanished. The pain faded, the pressure diminished, the roar of his pulse ebbed away, the yearning for breath became a distant memory, and the white remained.
Atreus found himself standing beneath a pearly sky in a valley of white marble, facing an alabaster palace surrounded by snowy ponds filled with white lotus. At his side stood a white-caped figure with a long, translucent tail and silvery-white scales.
The form turned, and Atreus saw that it was Tarch, now with a flowing white beard and blond eyes. All the brutality had left his jagged features, and his face radiated the same serenity and contentment as did Seema's. He saluted Atreus with a clawed hand, then climbed the palace steps and disappeared through a door. Atreus was alone.
He stood before the palace, studying its asymmetric majesty. It had an ancient, guileless beauty, with a large open rotunda on one end and a square balcony room on the other. Connecting the two was a long gallery of scalloped arches and slender columns, with a Y-shaped staircase that descended down to the lower porch. The bottom story was painted in bright horizontal stripes, while the upper was decorated with swirling, ornately carved relief's. The architecture could hardly be called balanced, and no part of the building seemed to belong with the rest, yet it was the most stunning palace he had ever seen, casual and warmly unpretentious and all the more magnificent
Atreus climbed the stairs to the gallery and found himself standing in an icy wind, staring into the rotunda where a brilliant silver flame flickered in a bronze brazier.
"All is not harmony and balance." The voice was Seema's. "If you see beauty in yourself, so everyone will see it"
Still staring into the silvery fire, Atreus walked into the rotunda Now that he was inside, he could see a cowled silhouette standing behind the brazier, its identity, even its gender, masked by the brilliant glow of the flame. The figure placed its hands over the brazier and slowly spread them. The flame broadened into a shimmering silver square.
"Look."
Atreus stooped down to obey, then cried out in shock.
There was a face in the silver square, as unbalanced and misshapen as his own, with the same beetling brow and sunken eyes, the same oversized nose and twisted mouth, but this face was handsome, rugged and happy and utterly at peace with itself.
"What would you do for this?" Now the voice was Tarch's, deep and raspy and rough. "What would you give to have this face?"
Atreus looked up at the cowled figure. "Anything," was his answer. "I would give anything…my fortune, my life…"
"Wrong answer."
The figure brought its hands together and the shimmering square shrank to a single tongue of guttering flame.
"Your fortune means nothing to me, and I do not want your life."
Atreus stared at the fading flame and asked, "What then? Tell me, and you shall have it!"
The cowled figure lowered its hands and the last wisp of flame winked out, revealing the face beneath the hood.
"You know what I want" The voice remained Tarch's, but the face was Seema's. "Give it to me, and you shall have what you want"
Now the voice as well became Seema's. "Give it to me," she said, "and you shall have Langdarma."
She reached out and leaned across the brazier as though to embrace him. A sense of serenity and contentment flooded ever Atreus and he understood at last what the figure wanted from him. He stretched out his arms and stepped forward to accept the embrace, then suddenly grew dizzy and pitched forward and found himself hovering over the brazier, staring down at a single white ember still shining in the dead charcoal.
"Too late," the voice, now distant and sexless, said. "He's for the dead book now."
Atreus craned his neck around to look up beneath the hood and found himself staring into the empty stone eyes of a statue. The statue reached down, grasped the edge of the brazier, and the brazier turned into a thousand-spoked wheel, the white ember its burning hub.
"The Seraph spins the wheel round and round." The statue twirled the wheel as it spoke and the white ember became a six-pointed snow-flake, feathery and beautiful and cold, Motionless in the heart of the spinning circle. "Round and round and nobody knows where falls the dead man's soul."
Atreus's stomach became light and empty and he began to fall, whirling down toward the white crystal brilliance.
CHAPTER 11
The fall took… how long? To Atreus, it seemed the mere flash of an instant and the endless drag of forever. Beneath him rose the thousand-spoked wheel, still spinning, as vast and as flat as a dead calm sea. The feathery snow-flake in the center hovered motionless, growing neither larger nor smaller, but growing more brilliant with each passing moment The long plummet made his stomach qualmish and hollow, and the brightening snow-flake filled his eyes with a cold, scratchy ache. The chill air whipped past his face, tickling his flesh, drawing the heat from his body. His joints stiffened and his bones grew as heavy as ice. He plunged toward the frigid oblivion of the dead, banded by the glare of that feathery, six-pointed star.