by Leo Hunt
The fog thickens as we ascend the black waterfall, the grayness gathering so close around our boat that I can’t see the Shepherd, can’t see Ham, can’t even see myself. And just as I think things can’t get any grayer, as I start to believe time itself has stopped, that I’m only a mind floating disembodied in a void, we break through the fog into a vast open space, and I see that we’ve come to the end of our journey.
We’re under a clear night sky, a sky full of stars, more than I’ve ever seen before, stars glittering like tiny gems laid out against black velvet. The constellations are vivid and numerous, moving like a film set to fast-forward, stars rising from one horizon and making their way across the entire sky in a matter of minutes.
There’s fog here, thick and white, but it only sits around an inch or so above the surface of the Shrouded Lake. The fog is flat and sluggish, dry ice spread over a dance floor, and it parts smoothly around our prow as the gondola moves through it. The lake itself is hidden from view by this fog, but the rest of the landscape is remarkably clear, lit with the same kind of crisp, cold light that shines from a full moon, although no moon is in view overhead. The Shrouded Lake is enormous, spreading in all directions around us, but I can pick out distant shorelines, and even what seem like islands, sitting low in the fog.
Ham is staring around at this strange new place. The Shepherd and the Riverkeeper seem unmoved.
“Is this it?” I ask, although I already know the answer.
“Indeed. We are sailing upon the Shrouded Lake,” the Shepherd says, “source of the underworld’s eight rivers.”
The Riverkeeper continues to punt, as though pushing against a riverbed. I wonder how shallow the Lake must be, or, alternatively, how long the Riverkeeper’s pole is. Our passage is totally silent, with no indication that we’re sailing on water at all.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“There is a shrine,” the Shepherd says, “where offerings to the sleepers beneath the Lake are made. We will await Ashana and her sister there.”
We sail on. The Shrouded Lake is eerie but beautiful, a surprising contrast to the life-leached terrain of Asphodel. The landscape here seems fixed; the trees and hills at the shore stay in place as we approach. It’s the sky that changes, a gleaming river of stars flowing ceaselessly overhead.
“What’s happening to the sky?” I ask after a while.
The Shepherd chuckles, a hoarse sound.
“You don’t recognize it?” he asks.
“Why should I?”
“Because it is part of you, and you are part of it,” the Shepherd says. I don’t answer. Eventually he sighs and says, “I would have expected you to know the Book of Eight when you saw it.”
“That’s the Book of Eight?” I ask, but even as I say the words, I know he’s right. The constellations are sigils, magic marks, flowing across the blackness in an infinite procession.
The Shepherd holds up the green-bound Book itself. “It is. And this is the Book of Eight as well. They are one and the same.”
Ham whines. I stroke his neck and ears until he calms.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Neither do I,” the Shepherd replies, looking up at the swirling stars, and for once he doesn’t sound smug or annoyed. He sounds almost wistful.
We make ground on the lakeshore with a dull grinding of stones against the boat’s bronze hull. I step carefully from the boat’s prow onto the shore. The blanket of mist makes it difficult to tell where the lake ends and the shore begins, and the fog laps at the pale shoreline like a silent tide. The lakeshore is steel-colored sand mottled with small stones. Pine trees stand in solemn groups, everything highlighted in silver, bathed in a strange moonlight glow.
The Riverkeeper is standing on the shore beside the boat, looking at us with an air of satisfaction. The monster bellows jovially.
“It wishes to extend its hope that we vanquish our adversaries,” the Shepherd explains, “and inform you that if you ever wish for passage along the Cocytus again, it will be glad to answer your sigil. The price will remain the same, of course.”
“Please thank the Riverkeeper sincerely,” I say. The Shepherd delivers a short speech in the giant’s strange language, and the monster nods, giving me a bronze smile, apparently satisfied with whatever he said. Without another word, the Riverkeeper steps back into its boat and begins to punt away from us, out across the milky surface of the Shrouded Lake. I watch it leave, thinking about my teeth in the leather bag, my little finger locked away in a golden box. Wondering what exactly the creature wanted them for.
The Shepherd is already examining a page of the Book.
“Follow on,” he says, striding off. “The shrine is not far. We are nearly at our journey’s end, Luke.”
I don’t know what’s going to happen when we see Ash and the Widow. I haven’t really thought this far ahead. Whatever happens here, on this silent shore, is going to affect the rest of my life. I can’t get this wrong.
“Come on, boy,” I say to Ham, who barks and trots ahead, following the Shepherd. I set out behind them. The Riverkeeper and its boat have already vanished, leaving by whatever route we took to arrive here. Stars race overhead. The shoreline is like a black-and-white photograph you’re somehow walking through.
We come to the shrine without me even noticing it. I was expecting some kind of white marble temple, a ring of standing stones, perhaps an altar surrounded by flickering torches. If it weren’t for the Shepherd, I’d have walked right past it.
It’s a flat jetty of black stone, barely higher than the mist that covers the lake’s surface. It extends maybe ten feet out from the shoreline. I walk the length of it, stop, look out over the lake. Nothing but a flat, unchanging blanket of fog, and the dim suggestion of silvery hills far away on the opposite shore. The way the stars move gives you the impression that you’re falling forward, toward the lake’s surface. There’s a single mark, a sigil or rune of some kind, cut into the jetty, right at the end of it. It means nothing to me.
I turn away from the lake, and see that Ham and the Shepherd are sitting on the shallow steps that lead from the lakeshore to the shrine itself.
I sit beside them. There’s no wind here, no animals foraging in the undergrowth. None of us is even breathing. Again I feel as though I’ve fallen out of time. Even the silver light falling on the shore and the trees and hills beyond them is changeless, the shadows unmoving.
“How long do we have to wait?” I ask.
“Who knows?” the Shepherd says. “There is no time here. Days and years are for the living.”
The stars flow from the horizon like white embers rising from a hidden fire.
“I do not believe we will wait for them long,” he says after a while. “We seek them, and they will be drawn to us, just as they draw the lake toward themselves. They will come.”
“What will we do when they get here?” I ask. I hadn’t even thought about how we’d stop them. The Widow . . . I don’t know if we can fight her.
“You told me the Ahlgren girl bears a sigil minor,” the Shepherd says. “In which hand?”
“Left.”
“As soon as she is within range, I will strike directly at her sigil. I will be able to destroy it, and thus break the Ahlgren Host. She will have no dominion over her servant.”
“That’ll work?”
“A single sigil minor, the last remnants of a broken Host? We can overwhelm it. Her sigil will shatter before our combined power like glass beneath a hammer blow. And once her sigil is useless . . .”
“The Widow will turn on her,” I say.
“I believe Kasmut will. At the very least, she cannot be compelled to attack us. And I do not see any gain in such a conflict for her.”
“And without their Host, Ash and Ilana —”
“Are easy prey.” He gives me a cold grin. “We will take the nonpareil from the girls without effort, I assure you.”
“If you’re sure,” I say. I don’t li
ke the thought of letting him loose on Ash and Ilana, especially not Ilana, who’s never intentionally hurt anyone. We’re going to have to fight, though. Ash didn’t give me any choice in this.
“Do you really love this girl?” the Shepherd asks. It’s such an unexpected question that I almost think I’ve misheard him.
“What?”
“The witch girl. Elza Moss. Do you love her?”
“I mean . . .” I begin, feeling like I’m talking to a distant, awkward relative. The Shepherd is one of the last people, living or dead, I ever imagined having this conversation with. “Yeah. I do. We haven’t been together that long . . . but I think so.”
“You are not sure?” He sounds amused. “We have come a long way for a woman you are not sure about.”
“OK, yeah. I love her. I know that I do. Going through life without her . . . it would be like losing my eyes. I couldn’t do it.”
“Or a finger,” he says.
I raise my maimed hand up for him to see it.
“This is nothing,” I say. “I’d have given the Riverkeeper a hand, if it got Elza back.”
“Why do you love her?” the Shepherd asks.
“Because . . . she’s a good person. She’s honest. She cares about other people. She’s funny. She’s beautiful.”
“Surely you have met others who have those qualities as well.” The Shepherd doesn’t seem like he’s taunting me. He sounds genuinely interested.
“You know what? It’s partly because of you that we fell in love. You and the rest of the Host. Going through what you made us go through . . . that was what brought us together. So in a way, I should thank you. I’d never have loved her without you.”
“It was unintentional, I assure you,” he says.
“She just . . . she really cared about me. She put herself in loads of danger for me, and there was nothing making her do that. That’s why I love her. That’s why I’m going to get her back.”
Ham scratches at his spirit ear with a spirit paw. He’s quite relaxed, seemingly content to sit and wait on the shores of this strange place. The constellations flow and morph above us, and I wonder whether they’re pages of the Book that I’ve already seen, or pages that nobody alive has read. If you can even call what’s above us a “page” at all.
“What does it feel like?” the Shepherd asks me.
“Love?” I ask. I take a hard look at his waxy white face, the drooping nose, the gray beard, his mirrored round glasses. I try to detect any hint of mockery there.
“I have never felt it,” he says. “I am aware that the emotion exists, but I have never felt affection for another soul. I do not understand it.”
“It’s like . . .” I stop. How do I begin to explain? How do you explain love to a being like this, someone who has never felt anything other than contempt or hate for another person? How can I explain what goes through my mind when I see Mum or Elza or Ham? How can you explain the mysteries of the heart to a creature that doesn’t seem to have one?
“It’s, like, someone you can’t be without. You want to be near them. You want them to be happy. Because you need that for them. You’re tied together, and you can’t be happy if you know they’re not.”
“So it is selfishness,” the Shepherd says.
“No —”
“You have shown me this emotion only through the prism of your own self. If you act according to your own desires or happiness, how can you say you do not act from self-interest? Love, as you speak of it, is a mask for self-interest. Elza gives something to you that you cannot find within yourself, therefore you jealously covet and protect the source of this feeling, and now that she is elsewhere, you have gone to insane lengths in order to bring her back to you. It is greed and self-obsession. A weakness that weak men call strength.”
“It’s not just about me,” I say. “If you love someone, you do things for them, even if it’s against your own interests. I got my finger bitten off.”
“You weighed up what achieving your own goals was worth, and paid that price. It was not for Elza’s sake you paid the Riverkeeper. It was for your own.”
“You don’t understand, and you can’t ever understand. You’re a monster. It’s like trying to describe red to someone who’s color-blind.”
The Shepherd smiles. “I have often been called a monster. It is strange, the way we speak of those who dare to be honest about their own desires.”
“So everyone’s selfish? Love is just an excuse so we can tell ourselves we’re not?”
“All men are driven by the desire to remake the world into one which better suits them. I believe there are varying degrees of self-deception which the weak practice, excuses they give themselves for not doing so. Strong men, sorcerers, act. I do not trouble myself to find excuses for doing as I please. Love is only a man’s way of hiding his selfishness from himself.”
I’m trying to think of something to say to this, because I know he’s wrong, but then the Shepherd rises to his feet. I look where he points, squinting to see into the silvered distance.
Three figures have crested the farthest hill.
The Ahlgrens stop when they see us, clearly surprised to see figures already standing before the shrine. They turn around and vanish below the summit of the hill. I’m tense, hopping from foot to foot, wanting to run after them, but the Shepherd stays put, and me and Ham stay beside him. They have to bring the nonpareil here. We can let Ash come to us.
Eventually she reaches the same conclusion, and two white figures appear once again over the lip of the hill. Ilana isn’t with them. Ash and the Widow make their way down the slope, and then thread their way between the trees toward us. They make no attempt to hide — the lake’s shoreline is so wide and open that there’s no possible way of approaching the shrine unseen. Ash and her bodyguard pass the last of the pine trees and advance on us, feet crunching in the gray sand and stones. Ash is wearing white jeans, Converse sneakers, her white denim jacket. She has a backpack slung over one shoulder. The Widow looks the same as ever: wrapped in a white robe, broken spear stuck through her chest. She walks in front of Ash, approaching with a weary determination.
They halt a short distance from us. Ash looks drained and ill, her mouth set into a hard line.
“Luke,” she says, “don’t make us —”
The Shepherd raises his hands and speaks a ringing, terrible word, and my sigil burns with cold. He’s drawing power from it somehow, and before I can move, a bolt of white lightning jumps from my ring into his hands. The power crackles around his long fingers, and the Shepherd casts the lightning in a blinding stream at Ash. The energy is drawn into her left hand, the power from my sigil coursing into hers. She screams, and the white light flashes so bright that everything — the lakeshore, the Shepherd, Ham — is obscured.
I take my hands away from my face. Nobody has moved. Ash’s left hand is gone, blown out of shape, like smoke in a strong wind. Her left arm now ends in formless mist, with white fire dripping from the stump. She stares at the remains of her sigil in disbelief.
“Priestess! Kasmut!” the Shepherd says. “The Ahlgren Host is broken. You are free.”
The Widow looks at Ash, still gaping at her shattered hand, and turns back to us. She draws the spear from her chest with one smooth gesture, weighs it in her hand. Dark blood seeps into her white robe. A droplet falls from the tip of the spear and stains the gray sand.
I’m waiting for her to strike, to attack Ash, maybe to run, but she doesn’t move. The Widow shifts her weight, curls one bare foot in the sand. The Shepherd faces her, hands still raised in his spell-casting gesture. Ham seems to have vanished, in a typical display of cowardice.
“I did not serve from fear,” the Widow says, and before anyone can reply, she charges across the lakeshore toward us.
The Shepherd bellows in response, green fire erupting from his hands in a great wave. The flames warp and flow like molten glass, spreading over the lakeshore, but the Widow leaps higher than I thought po
ssible, far above the flames, and she falls onto the Shepherd and buries her spear in his chest.
He gasps. The Widow lifts him bodily from the ground, holding the Shepherd aloft like a hunting trophy. His hat has fallen from his head, and his glasses, too, baring his straggly gray hair and his tar-black eyes. Their gazes meet in a look of hatred so pure, I’m surprised it doesn’t scar the air between them, and then the Shepherd’s hands spout with more flame. This time it meets its target, enveloping the Widow, distorting her body like she’s trapped at the bottom of a green bottle. She doesn’t cry out, but moves with a terrible swiftness, taking two quick steps toward the lake itself, fire still coursing over her, and then tosses the Shepherd into the air like a terrier throws a dead rat. He flies from her spear, fire still trailing from his hands. He falls and disappears without a sound into the mist-shrouded waters of the lake. There’s no splash, and he doesn’t cry out. His black body parts the mist and vanishes in an instant.
I feel his power leave me in the same moment, my sigil dulling on my finger, becoming just a useless ring. The lake’s covering is unbroken, calm and white, with no sign of the Shepherd ever having existed. He’s gone.
He was carrying the Book as well.
How am I going to get back home?
No. One thing at a time.
It’s me and the Widow.
Her spear is balanced in one hand, pointed right at me. I retreat up the shallow staircase, out onto the long platform that makes up the shrine. The Widow’s spear tracks me as I move from side to side, aimed at my heart.
I don’t have a plan.
Her eyes are like dark holes in her face.
I have absolutely nothing.
She steps up onto the shrine, her bare feet making soft sounds on the stone.