A light fall of snow had dusted the valley, draining color and contrast from the landscape. Large flakes fluttered down. She hugged herself, blew fog from her lips and shook out her hair. At least the snow hid the ominous scattering of bones at the head of the long valley.
'Are we ready to move on yet?' Erimenes inquired from within the tent. 'This dismal valley was dull enough to begin with. Now it's cold and damp as well. Let's move.'
Teeth chattering, Moriana glanced at the tent. 'Why should the cold and damp bother you? You're snug in that nice, warm jug. Brrr.'
'Snug? I'd call this intolerably cramped.' The scholar's complaints had an unusually bitter tone this morning. 'You cannot conceive how dreary it is within this wretched pot. Would that I had a body again!'
Moriana stooped and reentered the tent to wrap her heavy cloak around her shoulders. 'Do you mean that? You're immortal, Erimenes. Would you truly trade that for corporeal existence - the discomfort, the transience?'
'What good is immortality if one cannot truly live? To feel, to love, to experience!'
'I thought you got all those through others.' She sat on her bedroll and brought out the magic gruel bowl and began to eat the bland porridge.
'You think so?' Erimenes asked scornfully. 'What would you rather do, make love to a lusty, well-endowed young buck - or watch another do it?'
Moriana laughed uneasily, her mind darting to what the scrying spell had shown her the night before. Her last spoonful of gruel seemed to curdle in her mouth. She forced it down and made herself think of other things.
The Valley of Crushed Bones was foremost in her mind. The day before, she'd spent fretting about Fost, summoning up scryings in the water and watching until she grew too upset to look any more, pacing like a beast in a pen and then dropping to her knees by the water to make the spell again. She hadn't ventured far up the narrow valley.
Her lack of exploration, she admitted to herself, grew as much from trepidation as concern for Fost - which, she now assured herself, had been misplaced. Those bones, those bleached, broken bones . . . what did they signify?
For all that he had spoken ominously of the Valley before, it seemed Erimenes knew little of it but the name. Perhaps a glacier had come this way and uprooted some ancient burial ground in passing, then retreated, leaving bones strewn about the Valley. Moriana doubted that explanation. She knew how glaciers had advanced across the once-temperate lands that men now called the Southern Waste to swallow ages-old Athalau. She'd never heard of glaciers retreating in the region though. Where the ice once took hold, it clung.
If nothing else, the bonefield was the last serious obstacle between Moriana and Athalau, except for the glacier itself in which the city lay entrapped. The Ramparts didn't soar as high here as they did around the Gate of the Mountains. The walls of the Valley of Crushed Bones rose abruptly to become sheer faces of rock, the flanks of two mighty peaks. At the top of the Valley the walls closed to within twenty yards of each other in a narrow pass. And beyond, the land lay downward, down to the City in the Glacier.
She ate her fill, for she wished to be well nourished in case the solution to the enigma of the Valley proved a continuing danger. Finishing, she stowed the bowl and took down the tent, packing it away as well. Erimenes grumbled all the while, but his comments didn't seem directed at her. She paid him no mind.
At last she was ready to proceed. She stood with the knapsack slung over her shoulder, gazing up the Valley. The snow had stopped. The day lay still and white beneath a low, grey sky. She sighed and started walking.
Guilt nibbled at the edges of her mind. I'm abandoning Fost again, she thought, but immediately He abandoned me! flashed through her mind. The way he rutted with that redheaded slut!
She shook her head. Better to contemplate the nearness of her goal. Reaching the city without Fost would be a boon, for it meant there would exist no question as to who should possess the amulet. Moriana felt something very much like love for the courier - or at least I did, she mentally amended - but it couldn't compare to her love for the City that was her home.
Synalon. The name burned like an ember in her mind. Moriana recalled the scenes of brutality and repression she had witnessed in her beloved City, both in person and by means of her spells. Nor would her sister rest content with imposing an iron yoke on the people of the City. She meant to restore the Sky City's dominion over the Sundered Realm.
Could she accomplish it? Moriana didn't doubt she could. Synalon's sorcerous powers were great, even though the aid of Istu was denied her, for that part of the Sleeper's mind she could tap into would react with venomous hatred to the being that had summoned it up only to cause it consummate agony. And the military might of the City, though not large in terms of manpower, was formidable. Without venturing far from their randomly-floating fortress, the Sky Citizens could control the Great Quincunx that covered the very heartland of the Realm. From Lake Wir to the Southern Steppe, from the Gulf of Veluz to the Thails, the City could dominate the vital trade arteries of the continent.
What her sister would do with all the Realm under her command was something Moriana shrank from considering. Synalon had already shown herself willing to dabble in the dark and grisly rites of the ancients. With all the wealth and populace of a continent, who knew what she could do? Send ten thousand highborn virgins to shrieking impalement upon the stony member of the Vicar of Istu to win the demon's aid and forgiveness? Assuredly Synalon was capable of it. Release black Istu from his millennia-long durance and subject the world once again to the foulness of the Demon of the Dark Ones? Moriana shuddered. Her sister wouldn't balk at such a thing.'And with the resources of the Realm at her disposal, perhaps she could succeed even in undoing the work of Felarod the Great.
Moriana raised her head to face the icy blast that blew down the Valley. She could go on alone now with no regrets. She had reminded herself of the gravity of her quest; to succeed, no sacrifice was too great.
The Valley rose at a gradually increasing angle. Before long, Moriana found the going difficult. Snow had made the dead grass slippery. Head down, she scrambled upwards, buffeted by the wind until her feet flew from beneath her and she went face first into the snow.
Grabbing wildly for support, her fingers closed around something smooth and hard. Turning over and sitting up, she brought the object up to examine.
'Gods!' 'There you have why this is known as the Valley of Crushed Bones,' Erimenes said.
The thing in Moriana's hand was a sunbleached human bone, probably a femur. One end had been splintered by some awful force. Normally anything but squeamish, Moriana was horrified by her prize and flung it far away from her. It rebounded off the looming wall of the canyon with a loud clatter.
Picking herself up, Moriana surveyed the ground ahead. The cliffs were vertical here, save for the huge protrusions of what looked like pink granite humped against the base of either face.
'At least you won't have to wade through the snow for a while,' Erimenes observed. Moriana sucked in her cheeks, staring pensively ahead.
The spirit was correct. For a hundred yards the ground was bare. Not bare merely of snow but of vegetation, large rocks and the bone fragments strewn all around where the princess stood. It was as if the stretch of ground were regularly graded and cleared.
'A puzzle,' said Erimenes. Dubiously Moriana started forward. A skull turned beneath her boot and threw her against a wall. She put her hand up only to snatch it back. Gingerly she reached out to touch the wall again.
'Erimenes, it's warm,' she said. 'The rock is warm.' 'There is much volcanic activity in these mountains,' the philosopher said. 'Doubtless what you feel is the very world's lifeblood running through the veins of the rock.'
Moriana glanced at the satchel. What he said was possible. It would certainly explain the lack of snow in the pass. Though why it gave the appearance of being swept clean was another matter.
'Hist!' called the spirit. 'Something comes!' From the shallower slopes
of the Valley behind broke the hunting cry of a mountain cat. Moriana spun, back to the wall, curved Sky City sword in her hand. Unlike the sightless birds, a big cat was unlikely to attack a human. Unless the onset of winter had made its food scarce ...
In an explosion of flying snow a creature raced out of the Valley and passed Moriana. A large rodent with huge, triangular ears pressed to its neck bounded on great hind legs. Hot on its trail and squalling its fury came a tufted-eared cat, its sleek white hide dappled with dark brown to match the incomplete snowy carpet of early winter. Fangs the length of a dirk glinted in its maw, but it paid Moriana no need as it lunged past.
Onto the bare earth of the pass it pursued the rodent. A rumble resounded in the narrow gap. A ripple passed over the rough, pink surface of the twin protrusions and they seemed to change color before Moriana's startled eyes. Then with a crushing, rending roar they surged together like giant jaws.
As the rocky juts hurtled inwards, the rodent stopped, frozen with fear. The cat sprayed dirt as it sat on its haunches and tried to reverse its course. For all the feline speed of its reflexes, it acted too late. The pink granite-like masses slammed into one another. The crash of their meeting overwhelmed the cat's last defiant cry.
'Saints of blood and darkness,' Moriana whispered. 'The rock lives!'
'So it would seem,' Erimenes said, unperturbed. 'I had heard hints of such things, side effects of the War of Powers, but had never encountered any at such close range. Fascinating.'
The rock, if rock it truly was, pulsated now, veins of darker colour emanating from the spot where the stone mandibles met. A sudden convulsion of the living stone ejected a scatter of white fragments. Moriana gasped in horror as the crushed bones of the rodent and predator were cast into the snow at her feet.
'Now we know the origin of the crushed bones,' said Erimenes with a certain satisfaction.
Moriana stumbled a few steps down the slope and sat in the snow. Her head whirled. A few steps more, she thought, that's all it would have taken. Then it would be my bones that lie there, crushed and sucked clean.
Snow began to fall. Moriana sat hugging her knees, paying it no mind. At last a peevish complaint from Erimenes roused her. She rose, dusted white powder from her thighs and regarded the stony jaws. They had slid back into place. They now looked like nothing more than rounded outcroppings of rock, save for the fact that snow melted as soon as it touched them.
Moriana's eyes rose up the rock walls that flanked the pass. The sheer, smooth faces offered no handholds. High up on the right-hand face she saw an irregularity that might have been a ledge, or no more than a trick of the swirling snow. She shook her head. Even if it was a ledge, she had no way of reaching it.
'We're stymied,' she said at last, gathering her cloak more closely around her to ward off the chill. 'This passage through the mountains is blocked; the only other I know of is the Gate, far to the East.' She clenched her fists in angry disappointment. 'I may as well surrender to Rann now as try to reach the Gate of the Mountains across the open steppe.'
'Surely you aren't so easily defeated!' Erimenes cried. 'You are a woman of great resource. Can't you conceive of some way to get past the monster?'
The passion in the spirit's voice took her aback. He seemed as feverish to reach Athalau as she. What motivated him? Was it merely homesickness, a longing to see his birthplace after almost a millennium and a half of separation? Or was it something else?
Whatever his reasons, they can't be as urgent as my own, she thought. Aloud she asked sarcastically, 'What would you have me do? Do you think I can run faster than the rock-leaper or the tufted cat? Do you think I can scale the walls like a spider or would you simply have me sprout wings and fly over this carnivorous canyon to Athalau? Would you . . .' Her voice dwindled into thoughtful silence.
'Well?' demanded Erimenes. 'Have you thought of a spell to turn yourself into a bird?'
'No, you garrulous puff of smog. If such magic was in my power, wouldn't I have used it long ago?' She settled the knapsack more firmly across her shoulders, cinching tightly the strap that held Erimenes's satchel. 'But perhaps I needn't fly to get over this obstacle.'
With that, she ran straight for one of the massive juts. Her momentum carried her several feet up the side of the thing. Her hands and feet scrabbled for purchase, but the monster's rocky hide was slippery. The top of the protrusion was a dozen feet or more above the ground. She had not gotten more than halfway before she began to slip irrevocably backward. A muscular twitch of the animated rock sent her sprawling.
'Are you sure you know no spells of avianthropy?' Erimenes asked. Ignoring him, Moriana picked herself up and strode purposefully for the outcropping, drawing her sword as she went.
'You don't plan to do battle with the thing?' Erimenes asked in horror.
'What's the matter?' Moriana asked. 'Have you lost your taste for gore? No, nebulous one, I don't intend to fight the beast. I do hope to carve us a pathway though.' The scimitar slashed twice, a blur of speed. The thick hide and stony flesh of the monster resisted, but the Sky City blade, its fine blue steel misted by condensation in the cold, cut through both to form a ragged step. The flesh within the wound was yellow and seeped thick red blood.
Moriana hacked another step a foot above the first, and another above that. The great hump of muscle shook convulsively. Syrupy red blood spattered Moriana's face and cloak.
She put her boot in the lowest step. A wild spasm rocked the monster. Her gloved fingers clutched a step, dug in, held.
Clinging with both feet and one hand, hacking with the other, Moriana inched up the flank of the rock monster. When she'd started cutting, the princess had "'eared the jut would swing back to crush her against the cliff. But apparently the creature was unable to move in any way but back and forth. It could still try to shake her off though, which it did with ever-increasing violence.
Grimly Moriana fought her way upward. She was smeared with the thick blood, and its reek clogged her nostrils. Erimenes shrilled with terror, fearing that at any second she'd be pitched into the monster's maw and be crushed along with his jug. What the destruction of his jar would do to him, Erimenes had no more knowledge than Moriana, and he felt no eagerness to find out.
Then Moriana's head passed the top of the hump and she saw the far slope receding into white oblivion. The creature shook like a dozen earthquakes until Moriana's joints threatened to give way. She held the sword high, plunged it down into the flesh again and then levered herself forward with a powerful shove of her legs. Like a tumbler she somersaulted over the top of the living hump.
Behind her the jaws rammed together again and again with a roar like thunder, as though the monster gnashed its teeth in frustration.
For a few breaths Moriana lay on her back, letting the fat white flakes land on her face and melt, spots of stinging coolness on her flushed cheeks. She finally rose and stumbled down the far side of the hill. At her back the jaws of the Valley opened and shut in an avalanche of noise.
Clawed feet scrabbling for traction, the bears made their way along the ledge. Fost's heart lurched each time the slip of a paw on icy rock threatened to send him and Grutz over the edge. The trail would have been perilously narrow going for the broad-beamed beasts under the best of conditions. With the rock sheathed in ice and clouds of snow blinding them, it seemed impossible that the mounts had come this far without slipping to their doom.
In front of him the dimly seen shape that was Jennas turned in her saddle. 'Look over the side,' she directed. 'You'll see why I don't think you'll ever see your woman again.'
At her command Fost's stomach turned over. But he made himself crane his neck so he could peer three hundred feet straight down to the valley below. A freak of wind parted the curtain of snow, and he saw clear to the bottom.
He blinked, wondering if the cold played tricks on his eyes. It seemed that the very rock of the cliffs was surging out of both sides of the narrow gorge to slam together in the middle
and send a deep rumble shivering up the mountains. It reminded him unpleasantly of giant jaws.
'That's a living creature down there,' Jennas said. 'It senses when something tries to pass between its jaws, and they slam shut, crushing its prey.' She bent dangerously far out of her high-cantled saddle to gaze down. 'I've never heard of the monster being so active. Perhaps the blizzard bothers it.'
Perhaps it's chewing Moriana's lovely body to a bloody pulp, Fost thought, and instantly regretted it. He cursed his too-vivid imagination.
Jennas twisted to face him again. 'Now you've seen what your friend would have had to pass. We know she tried it; I showed you the remnants of her camp back in the Valley of Crushed Bones, and no one else would knowingly enter the vale of the heat-hunters.' Her eyes burned like beacons through the snow. 'Shall we go on? I did promise to guide you wherever you wished.'
Fost's chest expanded within his bearskin cloak as he took a deep, pensive breath. No, he thought. I will not accept that she is dead. Not until I see her corpse.
War of Powers Page 28