SEVEN      

AFTER LEAVING PRUE LISS AND PANTERRA, SIDER Ament set out to track down the second of the two creatures that had broken through his wards.

He was struggling with a number of issues. The weightiest of these was accepting that after all these years, the barrier that had kept his valley home safe was crumbling. It wasn’t that he found the idea impossible to believe; it was that it felt so personal. It had been five centuries, and there had been dozens of others who had patrolled the valley before him, all descendants of the old Knights of the Word. In all that time, the mists that barred passage in or out had held firm against intrusion. But now, in his time, while it was his turn to bear the black staff of power, they were breaking down.

He couldn’t know this for certain yet, even given what he believed to be clear evidence. But if the creature he tracked was attempting to get back to where it had come from, and if he failed to catch up to it before it succeeded, he would soon learn the truth. He supposed that he would find out in any case, because he had no choice now but to test the barrier no matter where he found the creature. The creature’s appearance might have been unexpected and hence unforeseeable, but that didn’t change the inevitable consequences. Depending on where it had come from, either the inhabitants of the valley were still safe from the outside world or they were not. Either life would go on as before or it would be changed forever.

It was his realization of what this meant that was so overwhelming. Like most, he knew something of what had happened five hundred years earlier to bring their ancestors here. The Great Wars—the wars of power, the wars of science—had destroyed civilization. They had leveled governments and institutions, obliterated cities and entire nations, poisoned air and water and earth, and left the larger world virtually uninhabitable. No one who had come into the valley had ever been able to go back out again to see what that meant. But the stories had persisted—the old world was lost and it wasn’t coming back; the new world was the world they would make here, within the confines of the mountain walls and the protective mists.

Yet the question persisted in the minds of everyone: What was it really like outside the valley?

He had tried to imagine it on more occasions than he could remember. He had tried to extrapolate, from the fragments of memories passed down through the years, what a world cast into chaos might be like five hundred years later. Would anything have survived? Was there any sort of population? There had been mutants at the end; some of them had come into the valley with Men and Elves. The Lizards and the Spiders were the largest part of these. But wouldn’t there have been others, too—others that were left behind or developed later, like the creature he tracked? Wouldn’t there be things he could not begin to imagine, born of life twisted into new shapes and forms?

It would all be so different from what any of them knew. There would be an entire world to discover, to interpret, and ultimately to embrace.

But few, he added quickly, would be eager to do so.

Certainly not the Children of the Hawk, who would regard as anathema any form of assimilation that did not hew to their teachings.

Not the larger population of Men. Whether they were members of the sect or not, they had always been inclined to stay put, to resist movement even beyond the boundaries of their own communities.

Not the Lizards or the Spiders, who were so reclusive and mistrustful of others to begin with.

Only the Elves would embrace this opportunity—which was ironic, if you knew their history. The Elves had once been the most reclusive of all, a Faerie people come from so far in the distant past that they witnessed the birth of the Race of Men. But their choice to isolate themselves from Men had come at a price. Men procreated much more quickly than did the Elves, and eventually the latter began to see their numbers diminish by comparison. A stubborn insistence on isolationism had only pushed them farther from the rest of the world. Had it not been for the Great Wars and the concerted efforts of the Void and its demons to annihilate their Race, they might have been lost completely.

It was a lesson that had not escaped the ones who survived. Having found their way into this valley, they had chosen to pursue a greater involvement with their new home, embracing the teachings of the members of the Belloruus family who had served as their Kings and Queens for nearly the whole of the first four centuries. Much more so than the other Races, they were committed to sharing with others the opportunity that had been given to them. Instead of returning to a life of isolation, they had chosen to dedicate themselves to the restoration and nurture of their world and its creatures. It was a commitment they had made repeatedly not only to the valley but also to whatever lay beyond. And so they talked openly about what would happen when they could go out into the larger world once more.

But still, nothing would be as they had imagined, and coming to grips with the truth of things—even for those who were willing to try—would not be easy.

The Gray Man walked on through the afternoon and early evening, passing out of the woods that concealed the swamp and its battleground to the open slopes of the foothills and the mountains beyond. He climbed steadily through scrub brush and tall grasses to the beginnings of the mountain’s open rock with its patches of lichen and scattering of tiny conifers. By sunset, he was nearing the snow line where it formed a threshold leading into the pass.

There he lost the creature’s trail.

He had been tracking it without difficulty all that time, simply by following the droplets of blood. Even after the blood began to diminish—the wounds closing over, he supposed—markings remained from the passage that read clear to him. Then all of a sudden there was nothing, even after he had scoured the ground thoroughly. Because it was growing dark and he could no longer be certain that he wasn’t missing something, he decided to stop and make camp for the night.

Although the path of the tracks clearly pointed toward the pass at the head of Declan Reach, he could not assume that this was where the creature had gone. His greatest fear was that it had somehow circled back and gotten behind him, perhaps even backtracked down into the villages. Wounded or not, it was still much too dangerous to be confronted by anyone but him. But for now there was nothing he could do. He would have to wait until morning.

He sat within the sparse shelter of a small grove of spruce and boulders, black staff cradled in his lap. He ate his meal cold, deciding against a fire, wrapped himself in his tattered cloak and the one blanket he allowed himself, and went to sleep.

He dreamed that night, something he seldom did these days, and the dreams were filled with dark images and fleeting shadows that lacked specific identity or purpose, but whispered of secrets. He tracked after them, using all his skills, but somehow they were always quicker than he was, always smarter. And at some point, he came to the terrifying realization that his efforts were failing because it was the images and shadows that were tracking him.

When he woke, the sun was cresting the horizon of jagged mountain peaks in a wash of crimson light and he was bathed in his own sweat.

He set out at once.

He swept the area in all four directions, but his search yielded nothing. He found himself wishing he had that boy with him—what was his name? Panterra? He might have found something with his young eyes that Sider, with his old, had not. A talented youth, with good instincts and skills and not afraid even when that beast came right at him. He liked the girl, too. The pair made a good match. He wished there were more like those two, but he knew there weren’t.

Too bad he had to send them back down into Glensk Wood without him. They would not have been received well by the Seraphic and his followers. Maybe not by anyone. But it had to be done. Even if their efforts failed. Even if almost everyone refused to believe, there would be one or two who would. Word of mouth would spread, and eventually someone in a position to do so would act. It was the most he could expect, and it would have to be enough.

He abandoned his sweeping search of the lower slopes, deciding that no creature could hide its passing on such soft ground and so the one he tracked must have gone up into the rocks. He struck out in a deliberately straight line, looking to cut the creature’s trail at some point between where he was and the head of the pass or, failing that, to find its tracks inside the pass itself. He went quickly, climbing steadily with the sun’s rising, pushing aside the lingering memories of last night’s dreams.

It took him about forty minutes to find the trail again. It came in from the west, which meant the creature had deviated for some reason. The tracks were scrapes from claw marks on the stone and small disturbances of the loose rock. There was no sign of blood. The creature might be wounded, but it was not bleeding. Nor did it appear to be disoriented or desperate. It was choosing its way with intent to hide its passage and escape any pursuit.

Sider Ament picked up the pace.

The morning stretched on, but he reached the head of the pass by midday. The creature was no longer bothering to conceal its trail by then, clearly believing that a quick escape back into its own world would be its best course of action. Sider was surprised to find traces of blood again on the rocks; the creature’s wounds had reopened. He followed blood drops and tracks to where his wards hung in tatters from the rocks, stopped to examine them, and quickly determined that the damage had been caused by his quarry exiting rather than something else entering.

It bothered him that the creature could reason as well as it did. This wasn’t some dumb brute. Its deliberate efforts at concealing its tracks, doing something to stanch its wounds, and making a conscious decision to get out of the valley, now that its companion was dead, demonstrated the depth of its intelligence. Sider knew that he would have to be careful. A creature like this would know how to set an ambush, how to hide and catch by surprise anything that threatened.

He left the wards down, took a deep, steadying breath, and started into the pass.

The mists closed about him almost instantly, but the dampness did not feel as heavy as it had when he had tested the barrier on other occasions. There was a difference of another sort, as well, but he could not immediately define it. He pressed ahead, hands gripping his black staff as they might a lifeline, aware that he could see little and hear nothing and that almost anything might be waiting for him in the haze. His instincts should warn him, but he could never be sure. In his line of work, in his life, it was often so.

He slowed, and his eyes swept the wall of mist ahead for signs of movement or a hidden presence and found nothing. The runes of his staff, which would glow in warning if there were danger threatening, remained dark. He pushed on, thinking suddenly that the reason the mist felt different was that it was warmer than he remembered. The air, in fact, was warmer. He was several thousand feet up from the valley floor and well above the snow line, and within the valley it was verging on bitter cold. Yet here, within the pass, the temperature was thirty degrees higher.

He shook his head and continued on.

The defile he followed twisted and turned through walls of rock, layered in shadows and the curtain of the mists. He could see nothing of the sky or the mountain peaks, nothing ahead or behind. It seemed to him that the ground climbed for a long time and then leveled out. If things progressed in the way that they had for the past five centuries, the mists would turn him around and send him back to where he had started. Or they would swallow him completely, as they had others who had come this way without the magic he possessed, and he would never be seen again.

But he did not turn back. He had penetrated much farther than ever before, and he was beginning to believe that this time he would make it all the way through.

He would be the first to do so in five centuries. The very thought was overwhelming.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the way ahead grew brighter. At first, he thought he was imagining it, that it was an illusion brought on by his own wish for something—anything—to change. But as the brightness heightened, he realized that he was coming out of the heavy brume into whatever lay beyond. He slowed automatically, still on watch against unexpected attacks.

Abruptly, the brume began to fade, and he passed through the last faint traces, walked out onto an uneven ledge—and caught his breath.

He was facing row after row of mountains, their sharp-edged peaks backlit by a sunset that refracted across the western sky in bands of crimson, scarlet, and azure, their colors so bright it almost hurt his eyes to look at them. Behind him and overhead, the night sky was engulfing the last of the light, ink black and thick with stars. All around, the air was chill and clear and sharp. He was not back where he had started, not back inside the valley.

He was through the pass and in another place entirely.

He looked more closely at the mountains that stretched westward ahead of him. Some were heavily forested, green and fresh with trees. Some were choked with ruined masses of trunks and brush and that exposed a bare and blasted earth that was as dead as yesterday. The two environments were juxtaposed in patchwork fashion, although he knew that each patch stretched for miles and miles. He peered more closely, trying to make out anything else. But from where he stood, he could not see any rivers or lakes and could not find even small glimpses of flatlands. There were only the mountains, the haven of both the living and the dead, and the fire of the sunset with its wild colors blazing bright against the black of night’s coming.

He looked at his immediate surroundings, studying them carefully. The ledge he stood upon was flat and wide and dipped downward on his left to become the threshold to a long rocky slide that in turn appeared to angle through a split in the towering peaks. Although in the fading light it was hard to be certain, he knew there had to be a passage out of this maze somewhere. If those creatures could find a way in, he could find a way out.

But not this night—not in this growing darkness in a land with which he was totally unfamiliar.

He moved into the shelter of the rocks, close to where he had emerged from the valley, and sat down with his back against the mountain and his staff cradled in his arms.

For a long time, he just stared out at this new country, this world that had belonged to his ancestors and now would belong to their descendants. If they wanted it badly enough. If they could make a place for themselves. A lot of ifs littered the path into the future. But there it was, anyway—the future they had always known would one day come around.

He looked out over the countryside, marveling at how widespread it was, how enormous. And that was only what he could see. He had never imagined how much larger the outside world would be than their valley home. No one had imagined it could be like this. When they saw it for themselves, they would be stunned—just as he was. He wondered if they were equal to what it would demand of them. He wondered if he was.

He was still wondering when he fell asleep.

HE WOKE AT DAYBREAK, the sunrise no more than a faint gray glow against the rugged outline of the peaks behind him. Ahead, the land was still dark and empty feeling. He rummaged in his pack for food and ate quickly, watching the light slowly begin to etch out the lines and angles of what waited ahead. By the time he was finished and packed up anew, it was light enough for him to set out.

He descended the rocky slide he had spied the previous night, working his way downward to where it became a trail that ran between those two peaks. He scanned the ground for signs of the creature, but saw nothing. He kept his eyes and ears trained on his surroundings, knowing that the emptiness of the land was only an illusion, that there would be life of some sort.

But nothing showed itself, and after a while he wondered if he was mistaken in his assumption. Maybe the life he presumed he would find was small and scattered, and its numbers were tiny. Maybe the destruction of the Great Wars had done more lasting damage than he wanted to believe, and only a handful of life-forms had survived. Maybe those that were left were like those creatures—mutants and freaks. He could not assume anything about what he was going to find, he told himself. He must keep an open mind.

He must also remember the way back.

He glanced around, searching the slide until he found the dark slit in the rocks that marked the opening back into the pass. Not so difficult from here, but it would become more so the farther he went.

Nevertheless, he did not consider turning back. He pushed on, making his way along the trail, covering ground steadily as the sun rose and the daylight brightened. He followed the trail all the way through to the other side of the mountain wall, and there he found his first fresh traces of the creature he tracked. It was bleeding again, and the pattern of its footprints suggested that its wounds were bothering it more than before. He looked ahead, finding changes in the terrain only a short distance off. The mountains he traversed ended in woods that were barren and dead, the trees stripped of life and toppled onto one another.

Beyond that, he could see nothing but the hazy roll of a landscape that stretched on for miles and miles until it reached another range of mountains.

He made a fresh determination of where he was, taking mental notes of landmarks he knew he must find again on his return, and started walking once more.

Ahead, the skies were beginning to darken with towering rain clouds that were streaked with lightning and filled the horizon. A storm was coming on, and it was coming on quickly. Sider picked up his pace. A heavy rain now would wash away all trace of his quarry’s tracks, and he would have virtually no chance of finding it after that. It wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen; it seemed unlikely that the creature would be eager to venture back into the valley after having suffered its injuries. But he couldn’t afford to chance it.

His thoughts drifted randomly, as thoughts will do, to memories of his early years, before he carried the black staff, before his predecessor sought him out and told him he was the one who was meant to carry it next, before he was anything but a boy not as old as Panterra Qu was now. It was a long time ago, both in years and experience, and much he could just barely remember. But there was one memory that he kept, one that he would never lose. It surfaced unexpectedly now and then, a long slow teasing of what might have been if he had taken another path than the one he was on. Life would have been so different. Everything would have been changed.

He gazed off into the distance, seeing not the landscape but the promise of something he had let pass by.

There was a girl …

He sensed the creature an instant before it attacked him, his instincts warning him as they always did, if only barely this time. The beast catapulted out of the rocks like a juggernaut set loose on a steep downhill run, all speed and bulk and power as it came at him. He brought up the black staff, runes blazing to life in response, a protection that reacted more quickly than thought. His magic surged about him in a shield that kept him from being trampled into the earth and instead resulted in a glancing blow that flung him twenty feet to one side. He struck the ground with stunning force, but scrambled up anyway, fighting to orient himself as the creature swung back around.

Sider Ament roared at it as he fought to bring his magic to bear, but the creature was on him too quickly, and he managed only to keep his defenses in place long enough to save his life for a second time. The creature, a thousand pounds if it weighed an ounce, caught him up with its lowered head and threw him again. This time he slammed into the hardwood trunk and branches of an oak and dropped like a stone. Pain lanced through his left side, and he could feel rib bones crack. He only barely managed to hang on to the staff. Nausea swept through him, followed by a hot searing agony that caused him to cry out.

He was a fool, he thought, struggling to rise, making it to one knee. The creature had done exactly what he had warned himself it might. Sensing that it was being followed—or perhaps catching sight of him at some point in his pursuit—it had circled back and waited in ambush. He had aided the beast in its efforts by allowing his attention to wander. He had allowed himself to think of her, when thinking of her was always dangerous, always and always …

The creature struck again, and his thoughts scattered. Whipping the black staff about so that one blunt end pointed directly at his attacker, he sent a sharp burst of magic exploding into its muzzle. The beast barely slowed. Shaking off the attack, grunting in a heavy rumble that generated deep in its belly, it lowered its head further and came on. Sider watched through the screen of his pain and desperation, knowing he lacked strength enough to stop it.

In the final seconds before the creature reached him, he shrugged off his backpack, struggled the rest of the way up, and staggered two steps to his right to find what protection he could behind the huge oak, then used the staff to generate clouds of black smoke and fire to try to confuse his attacker.

He knew even as he tried this final ruse that it wasn’t enough. The beast was too big and too enraged to be turned aside. Enveloped in smoke and the thunder of its charge, it brushed off Sider’s defenses, shattered the oak tree, caught him with its snout and tossed him.

The last thing he remembered after that was the strange sound of multiple explosions. One, two, three in quick succession. There was rage and pain in the huffing roar that the beast emitted, and it seemed to him that the sounds were all one and all right on top of him.

Then he lost consciousness and didn’t hear anything more.