To entertain them as they walked (and, Leah suspected, to distract them a little bit too), Mikulov told them stories of his homeland in the foothills on the edge of the Sharval Wilds, and his extensive training to become an Ivgorod monk—the hours of sitting motionless, learning to read the voices of the gods in all things, dissolving the sense of self and need and serving the Patriarchs. He told them of his intense physical exercises and mountain excursions, wrestling giant beasts that lurked there far away from the world of men. Even at her young age, Leah suspected that some of these stories were exaggerated, but Mikulov told them with surprising intensity and enthusiasm, and she found herself losing track of time as she listened to his voice.
Cain questioned him further about his beliefs, and Leah sensed a great sadness within him about leaving his masters and the order of monks that he had known for so long. It was a decision, he said, that might mean his own death, although she didn’t quite know why. Then they began talking about the Horadrim, and at that, Leah began to drift off, losing interest. She didn’t understand all of that stuff, only that Uncle was a member of some kind of mage clan and that they were supposed to do something Cain thought was important. But most of what they discussed had to do with ancient writings and prophecies. It was more than enough to bore a young girl to tears.
Leah noticed that the sky had grown darker, and in the distance black clouds obscured the horizon. The clouds seemed to be clustered in the direction they were headed. A chill settled over her bones. She tried to remember what had happened back home, during the fire. Much of that night was a black hole to her; she dimly remembered waking up to the smell of smoke, then nothing until she woke up outdoors on the ground, James’s cloak over her shivering body. She knew Cain must have gotten them out somehow, but it was a mystery to her.
The same thing had happened at the evil man’s house, after she had eaten all that food and fallen asleep. She had awakened to a dim sense of panic and something strange growing over her bed like black ropes, and then suddenly they were outside, running through the darkness with people chasing them. When they reached the graveyard . . . Leah sighed. She just didn’t know. It was as if someone had stepped neatly into her head and taken over for a while, then had given it back again sometime later.
Leah didn’t like losing control, and she liked it even less when she couldn’t remember anything. What did it all mean? Could she really be crazy?
A terrible thought occurred to her: what if whatever had been wrong with Gillian was wrong with her too?
They stopped for the night some distance off the road where a huge shelf of rock formed a natural shelter against the wind and any prying eyes. Cain explained to her that they did not want to light a fire, because it might draw attention to them, and they could do without other people looking to steal what little food they had. Leah had left James’s cloak behind in the strange little village when they had run away. She missed it, both for its warmth and for its safe, strong, fatherly smell.
Mikulov had brought three loaves of bread from Cyrus’s kitchen and a canteen of water, and they shared some of the bread and passed the canteen around, huddling together for warmth. It wasn’t much to eat, and Leah’s stomach growled late into the night.
The next morning dawned cold and wet, the ground covered with dew that smelled like bad eggs. The traveling party resumed walking, with little conversation this time. They shared more bread around lunchtime, one of them occasionally saying something or pointing out a feature of the landscape, but Mikulov’s stories had ended, and the last of any forced cheeriness between them had been bled away.
Eventually Leah stole a glance at Cain, who was watching the horizon, where the same black clouds seemed to boil and twist, never shifting away from the spot they had been the day before. Leah began to get the feeling that they were not clouds at all, but oily smoke or even some kind of living, breathing presence waiting for them to arrive, when it would strike.
It had been a while since she had thought of the bird pecking at the string of meat, back when the pack of boys had terrorized the old beggar. But the image came back to her now: the crow’s beady eyes fixed on her own as it bent to pull, tear, and swallow the gray flesh, a clawed foot resting on the carcass for purchase, sharp, black beak going to work. In her memory the bird had grown to nearly human size, and its feathers were no longer black and shiny, but dull and thin and falling out, so that she could see right through them to the crow’s skin beneath.
They watched that blackness churn as they climbed a long, slow rise in the road, finally reaching the top.
Gea Kul spread out below them in the distance, huddled on the edge of the sea, a miserable-looking town that had grown up and overrun its borders some time ago. Shanties and muddy refuse pits lined the road, which ran straight down the hill, and there were more carts and dead horses here, and even, Leah realized with fresh horror, dead people. She saw skeletal hands reaching from beneath an overturned wagon just a few hundred yards away, as if people had been trapped and had tried to claw their way out. The smell of rotting flesh wafted up to them, mingling with the scent of the ocean.
This seemed like the last place in the world they should be; if everyone from Gea Kul were trying to flee the town, why should they be trying to get in? Could these Horadrim that Cain and Mikulov were so anxious to find really do anything to stop the evil that had taken this city? If they had so much power, why hadn’t they helped these people who had died on the road?
A far more terrifying thought occurred to her: what if they were the ones responsible?
Things were moving on the horizon, tiny black specks that seemed to swarm over the town like gnats: crows, hundreds of them, their black wings flapping as they soared and dove toward the ground.
Leah tried to calm her trembling. She could not get the image of the crow in Caldeum out of her head. A bird’s beady eye, staring at her like a black moon . . .
She followed Cain and Mikulov down the hill. At the bottom of the long slope, they had to pass through the opening between two tall carriages, one of them overturned, the other sideways in the road. Sticking out from underneath the overturned carriage was a dead woman’s arm, the skin peeling, the ends of the fingers raw, the nails torn completely off.
As she stepped quickly past, the woman’s hand reached out and grabbed her foot.
Leah screamed. The woman’s grip was strong and ice-cold, and her fingers dug painfully into Leah’s flesh. She yanked hard enough to pull the woman out from under the carriage.
The woman opened her eyes. She stared up at Leah, her mouth working, gray tongue poking out from between cracked and peeling lips. Her face was skeletal, her hair matted, her flesh a blue-white.
“You are damned . . .” she whispered. “They will return . . . soon . . .”
Leah stared in horror at the huge, purple bruises covering the woman’s neck. Something alien seemed to rise up within her, and she screamed again, and this time Cain was at her side, beating the woman’s wrist with his staff until the bone snapped, and pulling Leah backward and beyond the narrow space, into the open air.
Still, the woman reached out for them, her ruined hand dangling limply, her legs caught under the carriage. She started making a strange sound, deep in her throat, as though she had swallowed a bone; after a moment Leah realized she was laughing, and the three travelers ran down the road away from the terrible sight, the woman’s laughter following them on the wind until they could no longer hear her and the sound of the crows cawing overhead drowned out everything else.