The door to the royal apartments was nearly torn from its hinges as Prince Malagon burst into the hallway. Kaylo felt his heart pound. He was sure the prince could see it.
Malagon’s voice reverberated in the sentries’ heads, nearly knocking them senseless. ‘Lieutenant Wentra! Do you smell that?’
Devar could not remember the dark prince ever looking at one of his Home Guard, never mind addressing any of them face-to-face. Terrified, he fell to one knee and asked meekly, ‘Smell what, sire?’
Malagon’s shriek was a mixture of ecstasy and frustration. The lieutenant slumped face-first to the floor. Private Partifan stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a crooked seam between two stones. He was quite certain he could stare at that small patch of grey mortar for the rest of his life if necessary.
‘Kaylo Partifan,’ Prince Malagon called, gesturing towards him with a robed arm from which protruded a cadaverous white hand.
Kaylo dropped to his knees as if he had been struck in the back of the legs with a broadsword. ‘Yes, sire.’
‘Do you smell that?’
‘I am sorry, sire. I do not, sire.’ He hoped that was the right answer.
‘It is woodsmoke,’ Malagon roared, making Kaylo jump. ‘Woodsmoke, a Twinmoon’s journey away. Woodsmoke, Private Partifan.’
‘Yes, sire.’
‘They’re burning his body, his dead, broken, frail, dead little body.’
‘Yes, sire,’ Kaylo said. That response seemed to be keeping him alive.
‘Fantus, you old, dead, peace-loving milksop,’ Malagon chuckled. It was the sound of an insane executioner after a lifetime at the block.
‘Yes, sire.’
‘Now, my soulless hunters, bring me the key,’ the dark prince cried towards the ceiling, and coupled his order with a little jump of excitement. It was so inappropriate and unusual that Kaylo shuddered.
‘And while you’re at it, feel free to finish off the rest of his little band of patriots,’ Malagon continued. ‘Do you not agree, Private Partifan?’
‘I do, sire.’ He had no idea what the prince was talking about, but he certainly wasn’t going to disagree with anything his master said.
Suddenly reserved once again, Malagon turned and made his way, almost floating, back to his chambers.
‘Private Partifan,’ he turned back, almost as an afterthought.
‘Sire?’
‘Order the Prince Marek readied. We leave on the dawn tide two days hence.’
Kaylo was terrified. If he asked where the prince planned to travel, he would be struck dead there in the corridor, his body sprawled alongside Devar’s. But the prince’s advisors and generals would surely hang him themselves if he arrived at the docks with an order and no destination.
Malagon was feeling generous. ‘Orindale, Private Partifan. Tell them we sail for Orindale.’
‘Yes, sire.’ The soldier did not wait for Prince Malagon’s chamber door to slam closed once again before he was up and hurrying along the corridor.
Mark Jenkins was freezing to death. The pace he had maintained had taken its toll. As his vision tunnelled and bright pinpricks of yellow light danced before his eyes, he knew he was about to fail. He had eaten a great quantity of snow trying to stay hydrated and his body temperature was falling. He had finished the last of his rations the previous day and hunger pangs were roiling through his stomach. Dehydration made his joints ache and he began falling to his knees more frequently. The first few tumbles he had rationalised by telling himself he was weary from running through deep snow, but he knew his legs were failing beneath him. If he did not get warm and dry he would most likely pass out… and if that happened, he would never wake again.
How had he managed to get himself into this state? He was alone, and lost in a foreign mountain range, in a foreign world – not just a foreign world, but an impossible world, a fantasy world: a land that by rights shouldn’t even exist. And who was this person who was dragging Steven so effortlessly over such massive mountain passes?
Mark struggled to lift one leg, and then repeated the motion with the other. Again and again. Lift and step; lift and step. Completely exhausted, his thoughts came in short bursts, brief snapshots like old black and white photographs, followed by long, silent periods of nothing: no images, no ideas, or no reflections. Those were the better times. Those were times when he covered a great deal of ground, when all he could think was lift and step and all he could see was white and green. He continued his battle not because he believed he could summon the strength to defeat Steven’s captors or even because he believed he could carry his friend off through the forest. He resigned himself to the fact that neither of those outcomes was realistic. Rather, he continued trudging across the Blackstone Mountain range, because he could generate no other options, no creative ways to save his own life. Keep moving or die. It was a simple but motivating mantra and Mark mumbled it to himself during times when his thoughts came too rapidly to sort. Keep moving or die.
So he kept moving.
Mark spent the night dug into a snowdrift with his back pressed against a fallen pine tree, but the night was long. Some time before dawn the torch burned out, snuffed suddenly, as if the force keeping it lit had somehow lost track of Mark’s position. He was so thirsty he had eaten nearly twenty handfuls of snow, even though he knew his body would cool quickly and expend much-needed energy. But he was so thirsty. He decided he would risk death to begin the next day well hydrated.
Mark lay there beneath the unfamiliar constellations he had mapped so carefully one warm night back in Rona. He and Brynne had named them as they huddled together under the blankets. There was the one Brynne called the fisherman, because it resembled a man casting a net across half the galaxy. Another lit up the sky to the north; Mark had affectionately dubbed it Tarzan, because it looked like a man swinging towards heaven on a celestial vine. As he looked at the stars, he thought of Brynne, the feeling of her body pressed tightly against his, the smell of her hair, the touch of her lips, her gentle, clever fingers… lost in the sweet memories, for a moment the omnipresent cold and fear faded.
Mark’s half-dream was rudely interrupted as, from the north, a squall-line of grim-looking storms approached fast. An alarm rang in the back of his mind, but he could do nothing about it. He did not have the strength to build a fire, nor dry the wood even if he could summon the energy. He would be buried alive if he tunnelled beneath the snow for shelter. The coming storm would cover the trail he had been following; if they deviated from their northward course, Mark would never find Steven in the Blackstone wilderness.
He looked at the hillside below, then at his boots, buried beneath him in the snow. How many miles had he travelled? How many places had he seen? It would end here. The whole of the world, his world – Eldarn – it didn’t matter, because the whole of the world ended here, with his feet buried in the snow, here in this place.
‘That’s it, then,’ Mark murmured and began searching around for a suitable place to await the end. He was alone. That thought was stronger than the fear, or the cold, or the worry about Steven and Brynne. Mark recalled a preacher at his mother’s church, who regularly entreated congregation members to foster healthy relationships in the Lord’s name, so when death came, no one would feel alone. Now, dragging himself through knee-deep snow, Mark wondered whether, if he had been better about going to church, he would still feel so alone at this moment.
He feared it was true, but it was too late. He was about to die by himself on the side of an Eldarni mountain.
Finding something that looked like a stalwart old ponderosa growing near a rock outcropping, Mark removed his pack, sat heavily on the cold stone and leaned against the tree to watch as the storm blew in overhead. It was then he smelled woodsmoke, faint at first, then growing stronger. Mark craned his neck to look back towards the mountain pass, now a long way behind him. A curious cloud of dark smoke blew across the peak where a downdraught captured it and brought it racing to where he sat awaiting the coming blizzard. ‘Sonofabitch! Garec? Brynne,’ he mumbled with the last of his strength, ‘did you set the whole goddamn mountain on fire?’ Clenching his frozen fingers into stiff, painful fists, he added in a barely audible whisper, ‘You’re going to have to find Steven, guys. I’m done here.’