In a dissipating cloud of ink, he withdrew from one world and into another. Elspeth’s gray eyes flicked open to regard the cold, flat sky above. Snow blew down, soft flakes that would never amount to much more than a slippery layer of challenge to the morning’s journey. She had no desire to leave the warmth of her sleeping roll, but watched as Beryl Ghostsign did, feeding the meager breakfast fire.
“Have you dreamed?” Ghostsign asked.
“I dreamed.” Elspeth withdrew the crumpled scroll from her leather bodice. She pushed herself up on her elbows, to spread the map before her. As had happened before, the route they were to take had been marked by her dreaming self, showing a path across the ice shelf.
“The River Tayl,” she said.
Ghostsign exhaled her complaint into the chill morning air; Elspeth silently shared the sentiment. The river might be in a warmer region, but was known for its swamps and insect-laden air. Ghostsign shoved the remains of their leaf-wrapped rabbit into the coals and rocked back on her heels.
“It must be done.”
Elspeth watched her gather her gear, their three other companions beginning to stir from their sleeping rolls. They had been a much larger party not long ago, but monster by monster, they had lost members. Elspeth could not help thinking they had been culled, winnowed from an awkward bunch of primarily fighters to a select group of women who were masters of their crafts. Had the dark man planned it this way?
The others knew of him — he had appeared to them all in the tavern a fortnight earlier, promising wealth and adventure if they took up his quest. The quest was death, plain and simple, and though the women had not known each other beforehand, they had grown to like each other well enough. Each was something to behold, possessing battle techniques Elspeth had not encountered prior to this adventure. She longed to know each woman better, but this was absurd. If they were all to die, what was the point? Perhaps, she decided, that was the point — to know their ways before they were lost to the world. To preserve and keep what they knew, to see some part of them carried into the inscrutable future.
Elspeth knew she could not be alone in having a secondary reason for making the arduous journey — people were rarely so single-faceted, and this kept her vigilant; any could turn for reasons none knew. They knew not of her sister, and Elspeth wondered whether they would think her judgment compromised if they knew she sought a treasure other than gold. But a person who wanted wealth or power? Such a person could never be trusted; Elspeth learned that the day her parents sold her.
Winseris, their keen-eyed archer, rose from her sleep, barely rumpled from the hours spent abed. She dragged her fingers through her long fall of black hair, her face porcelain-pale in the cold morning. The cold did not disagree with her, Elspeth thinking her some great winter queen of old.
“You dreamed?”
Her black eyes rested upon Elspeth and Elspeth nodded. Elspeth showed her the map, and Winseris sneered at the path, an expression strange and uncommon upon her queenly features.
“And what horror shall we find there?”
Of the monster they sought, Elspeth knew little. “I saw only fragments, a black figure in the swamp, hundreds and hundreds of bodies writhing in the mud.” As she spoke the words, sickness washed through her and she bent her head between her knees. Disturbing images assaulted her mind, as if once she had thought on the thousand figures — the thousand young — she could not put them aside. They were hideous, bent and struggling to rise, pushing themselves from the mud as if being born from it. Elspeth retched until Keelan Basher pushed a waterskin into her hands.
The dwarf was perhaps the kindest of those left, but there was something of her Elspeth could not quite fathom. For no reason Elspeth could discern, the dwarf held herself back in battle — dwarves were said to be fierce, and Basher was, but there was something she had not quite given herself over to, something yet beneath the surface.
Elspeth drank until her thoughts and stomach calmed. She pushed the horror out of her mind, focusing on chewing her paltry share of the rabbit Ghostsign had warmed for them. Nanrin, who could summon the strangest things from the earth, gathered the last of their campfire into a conjured jar of rippled glass. Elspeth thought it should have smothered out in the jar, but it burned bright and warm, guiding them as they crossed the ice shelf, heading for the tundra just beyond.
The ice shelf was a place Elspeth would not soon forget, and not only for the beasts they had encountered and the god they had slain. She loved to journey, and the barren land was breathtaking, no trees to spoil the even line of the white horizon, only deeply blue and plunging cracks to show any change in the ground ahead of them. The crossing was slow, and when they reached the shelf’s jagged edge it became slower still. Their descent took the better part of a day, twilight coating the sky and fresh snow spitting down from meager clouds, deepening the chill that clung to the ice shelf. It loomed behind them yet, strange and pale as the moon rose in the sky. The moon was as pale as ice itself, its light throwing all into harsh lines. Elspeth wanted to make camp, but saw in the near distance the first tangle of trees that gave away the River Tayl. It was said to be the longest river in all the world, and the foulest.
In the moonlight the trees resembled men hunched to the ground; they called to mind the misshapen form of the dark man, scrabbling for things he could never hold, even as riches spilled from his fingers. He had too many hands and so did the trees. Elspeth allowed herself a shudder as she looked at them, the other women striding past when she paused. She could not say yet where the shattered temple lay; only when an inky arm slithered past her and pointed — illuminating the part of the river cloaked in deepest shadow — did she know. She said nothing to her companions, only angled her steps where the dark man had indicated; one by one, the women altered their course to align with hers. The objections began.
“We are in no condition to face — ”
“ — should camp here and plan a way for — ”
“The fire begins to sputt — ”
“We face what comes,” Elspeth said. Only Basher had not complained, and Elspeth looked at the dwarf. The smaller woman’s face was split by a fierce grin.
“Tonight then, you shall give in? Whatever it may be, Keelan, I am here.” The dwarf’s smile deepened, and Elspeth nodded. “We shall not lose another tonight. We need all who remain.” She could not believe they might assault Lowenhold Prison with fewer than five; perhaps there would be a way, perhaps the prison would not be so daunting… she laughed softly at her own foolish hope.
“She begins to lose her nerve,” Ghostsign said.
“It is not that,” Elspeth said. “Only — ”
She stopped, eyes upon the wooded riverbank. She came to see they were not trees at all, but living, breathing creatures. They were black and rough, twisted as live oaks would be, and perhaps the mud did anchor them, but there the resemblance ended. Each struggled to free itself from the swamp’s mud, but their limbs were new and weak. As wolf pups might, they snapped ugly mouths when their fellows swayed too close.
The wreck of the temple became visible as the horde of newborns parted. The old stone was coated in mud, looking as though it had been pushed from its foundations by the creatures’ struggle. Within the temple they would find it — her? Elspeth did not know, did not care. If slaying this thing brought them one step closer to the prison —
The thing, such as it was, emerged unbidden, uncalled. A thousand-thousand shrieking tentacles pushed out from the temple’s ruin, stones cracking like shells as the beast clawed its way out. It would have made even the ice shelf seem small, more and more body unfolding itself from the temple and spreading into the sky.