Faces of Deception

by Troy Denning

  Rishi allowed her to help him down, and to Atreus they appeared to be floating in the fog. She turned and started to angle up the glacier. It looked as though she were climbing the cloud into the heavens themselves.

  “Be careful to step only where I step,” Seema said, looking back over her shoulder. “Glaciers are full of hidden perils. It is easy to fall into a crevasse or drop into the melt water underneath.”

  Yago peered over the edge of the cliff into the gray haze, then looked back to Atreus and said, “I don’t see no snow. Let’s go another way.”

  Atreus gave Yago a gentle push. “One foot at a time,” he whispered, mindful of the ogre’s pride. “We’re going in the right direction. These are the High Yehimals, and Langdarma is somewhere up there.”

  “According to those bird scratches on your map?” sneered Yago dubiously.

  Despite his doubts, the ogre gingerly lowered himself over the edge. When his foot finally touched the snow, he smiled and stepped away from the crag. In the flat light, Atreus still could not tell the snow from the fog. It looked as though even an ogre could walk on air.

  Atreus lowered himself over the edge and started up the glacier after his companions. The climbing quickly grew steep and fatiguing, with Seema zigzagging back and forth so sharply that they seemed to take four steps to advance one pace uphill. Sometimes, Atreus could see her reason for swerving. From time to time they would encounter a looming tower of ice—what Seema called a serac—that seemed ready to topple over, or an abyssal crevasse so narrow and snow-choked it was almost invisible. Other times, it was more difficult to tell what she was avoiding. Here and there a small furrow marked a buried crevasse, or a faint gurgling showed only her where a snow-covered pit opened into the river of melt water beneath the glacier. She gave any rock a wide berth, for stones collected heat when the sun was out and melted treacherous holes around themselves, and she always avoided exposed ice. On such a sheer slope, even a tiny slip could mean plunging into a deep crevasse or slamming into a serac.

  The steep climb aggravated Rishi’s leg wound. He fell back to the end of the line, and soon Yago was hauling the Mar on his back. Atreus followed close behind Seema, carrying the supply bundle over his shoulder so her hands would be free in case she ran into trouble route-finding. After a time they came to a high ice cliff and began to traverse along the base, looking for a way around. Atreus finally caught his breath enough to start a conversation.

  “There hasn’t been time to thank you for staying with Rishi and me.”

  “You and your servant were in poor health when Tarch pulled you from the river.” As she spoke, Seema continued along the ice cliff, peering into the white fog ahead. “I wanted to be certain you would recover.”

  “Still, it was kind of you not to leave with your people,” said Atreus. “At the moment, my resources are limited, but if there is anything I can do to repay you …”

  Seema stopped and turned, looking up into Atreus’s pouchy eyes. “If you keep your promise,” she said, “that will be enough. Besides, the others were not ‘my people.’ They are from Gyatse and Yamdruk. I come from much higher.”

  The names caused Atreus’s heart to leap into his throat Both places were on his map, and Yamdruk was no more than six valleys from Langdarma.

  Seema started forward again, casting a wary eye on the cliff above their heads. Atreus followed along, trying to quell his growing excitement and avoid alarming his beautiful guide. Given her anger over the dead slavers, he was far from certain she would be eager to help him find Langdarma, especially if that happened to be the high place from which she came.

  Atreus took a deep breath, then tried to sound casual as he asked, “If you aren’t from Yamdruk or Gyatse, how did you come to be captured with their people?”

  “I needed yellow man’s beard,” she explained. “They do not grow in my home, so I came down to search for it.”

  Atreus frowned and, confused, asked, “Do you mean you have no men in your home?” Perhaps she came from some sort of devotional order that allowed only women. “Or that your men have no beards?”

  “We have men! What kind of place has no men?” she laughed. It was a light, happy sound that chimed off the ice cliff and sang away into the fog. “We do not have hemlock trees, and they are where yellow man’s beard grows. It is a moss good for curing black-belly fever.”

  “So Tarch captured you in Yamdruk?”

  It was a hopeful guess. On his map, Yamdruk was closer to Langdarma than Gyatse.

  Seema grew quiet, then said, “He caught me near Yamdruk, yes. But my people do not make a habit of visiting others.”

  “Perhaps you will allow me to repay your kindness by going to Yamdruk and collecting some yellow man’s beard for you?”

  Seema glanced over her shoulder warily, then shook her head saying, “The child is long dead. Black-belly fever kills quickly, and I have been gone for weeks.”

  Atreus could not tell whether her tone was suspicious or sad. “I am sorry to hear that,” he said.

  Seema was careful not to turn around.

  “Yes, so am I.”

  They reached the edge of the ice cliff and began to pick their way up a jumble of toppled seracs, pausing every now and then to offer Yago a steadying hand. As they climbed, the fog began to thin. The wind came up, the temperature dropped, and the glacier came alive with silver light and blue shadows. They cut holes in their extra blankets and wore them over their shoulders like tunics, but this did nothing to protect their fingers and noses from the biting cold.

  At last they crested the slope and found themselves looking across a vast crinkled plain of ice, bulging with pressure ridges and furrowed with concentric rings of crevasses. Here and there, pyramids of granite jutted up through the ice in the interior, while long curving glaciers swept like spider arms down into the canyons along the edges. Scattered along the rim, scratching at a cobalt sky with pinnacles as sharp and gleaming as sword tips, were the impossibly high peaks Atreus had seen from the far side of the swamp. And there, almost directly across the ice field, were three bell-shaped spires. The Sisters of Serenity.

  The crash of a tumbling serac rumbled up the glacier behind them. Atreus cast a wary look down the slope but saw only the billowing white clouds through which they had just ascended.

  “Probably just an avalanche,” he said.

  “Just an avalanche,” agreed Yago.

  Rishi rolled his eyes and shook his head, and neither Atreus nor Yago looked away until Seema pointed toward a small glacier on the left.

  “That leads to Gyatse. I will see you safely down to the valley, then return to my own home.”

  Atreus shook his head and told her, “We’re not going to Gyatse.”

  He could feel that it was a bad time to broach the subject, but he did not want to waste any steps going in the wrong direction, especially not with the Sisters of Serenity in plain sight and Tarch on their trail.

  He pointed across the ice field toward the three mountains and said, “That is where we’re going.”

  Seema did not look as surprised as Atreus expected. “The Sisters?” she asked. “There is nothing but ice and rock there. Why would you want to go there?”

  Atreus’s reply was frank. “To find Langdarma.”

  Seema regarded him with a combination of wariness and pity, then pursed her lips and took his forearm. “What is it you are looking for in Langdarma?” she asked quietly.

  A sense of profound relief filled Atreus. “Beauty,” he answered. “I have been told I will become handsome there.”

  Seema’s eyes grew glassy. “You have journeyed all this way for nothing,” she said simply. “You cannot find beauty in Langdarma. It is a myth, just as is Ysdar.”

  She touched his heart, “It exists here,” then reached up to touch his face, “not here.”

  Atreus caught her hand. “Don’t. I know what you’re doing. I’ve seen it all my life. You think an ugly man has no business in Langdarma.” He wi
thdrew Sune’s map, unfolded it, and pointed at the valley beneath the Sisters of Serenity and said, “I know about Langdarma. There’s no use lying to me, so please don’t.”

  A clatter echoed up from the clouds below.

  Rishi shifted uncomfortably on Yago’s back and glanced down the glacier. “That was no avalanche!” he called.

  Seema ignored him and examined Atreus’s map. “Someone is lying to you, but it is not me,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “You cannot go to Langdarma. It is a state of being, not a place, and no man with a murderous heart may find it. I am sorry. More sorry than you can know.”

  “This was given to me by Sune herself!” Atreus insisted and shook the map in her face. “Who do you expect me to believe … my goddess, or you?”

  Seema’s gaze grew stony.

  “I do not know this Sune of yours, but I do know the Yehimals. There is no Langdarma. I will take you to the Sisters of Serenity, and you will see for yourself that there is no valley there.”

  10

  A two-day crust of ice clung to Atreus’s bushy eyebrows, numbing cold and so heavy it pushed his lids down over his eyes. He was half blind with snow glare anyway, so it hardly mattered. Even with wide open eyes, the Sisters of Serenity would have looked much the same. They were three craggy white bells silhouetted against an azure sky, so high they loomed over Atreus and his companions, even miles away, standing at the precipitous brink of the vast plain of ice they had just crossed.

  A hundred feet below, a snow-blanketed glacier swept away almost vertically, spilling into the broad valley that separated them from their destination. There it joined a jumbled blue cascade of ice blocks curving down from a second glacier beneath the Sisters of Serenity. The two flows became one and continued down the valley, creating yet another glacier, this one more than a mile wide and as long as a river.

  Seema pointed at the huge glacier and said, “There is your Langdarma.”

  Atreus stared down at the ice without responding. Unlike the smaller glaciers feeding it, this one looked almost smooth, with a long stripe of rock and gravel running down its center. The line marked the seam between the smaller glaciers where the two edges came together full of rock and gravel torn from mountainsides. The dark stripe looked almost painted on, as if some god had thought a dirty streak just the thing to bring out the pearly crispness of the ice and snow.

  After a time, Yago said, “It’s not what I expected.” The ogre rubbed his stubbled chin and added, “But there’s beauty in it. I can see that.”

  “Maybe, but not the kind of beauty we’re looking for,” said Atreus. “Sune is no fan of starkness.”

  He opened his map and studied the area around the Sisters of Serenity. According to the chart, Langdarma lay in the broad valley directly below, but a ladder symbol beneath the three Sisters suggested the entrance might lie at the base of the middle one.

  “You see?” said Seema. “There is nothing but ice here.”

  “I am so sorry for the good sir. To come all this way, and for nothing,” said Rishi. He packed a snowball and hurled it off the icy cliff. The orb fell far short of the valley and disappeared onto the glacier below. “Langdarma is only a fable after all.”

  “Fables are as real as mountains,” Seema said, “but you must look for them in your heart.”

  “That is certainly a small consolation to a man who has journeyed so far in such desperate hope,” Rishi replied, squinting back across the ice field, scanning the white glare for the dark, distant figure that had been hounding their trail across the ice field. “At least we are fortunate in our timing. Tarch is nowhere in sight. If we hurry, we can certainly circle around him and be on our way before that tailed devil realizes we have turned around.”

  “Yamdruk is only a day’s walk from here,” said Seema. “I will take you there before continuing home.”

  When Atreus said nothing, Rishi laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I will help you sneak back down the river and perhaps recover the gold, so that this journey will not ruin your fortune as well.”

  Atreus shook the Mar’s hand off. “And perhaps Yago and I will meet an unfortunate accident,” he said harshly, “leaving you with enough gold to drown a yak?”

  Rishi put on a hurt face and stepped back. “I am only thinking of the good sir,” he said. “I would certainly be content with any reward he might generously grant for my humble services.”

  “Your reward will have to wait.” Atreus raised his map, shook it gently in the air, and said, “This came from Sune herself. She would not have given it to me if there is nothing here.”

  “This Sune is your goddess?” asked Seema.

  “The goddess of love and beauty,” Atreus said, nodding.

  Seema’s eyes lit with sudden comprehension. “Then you are a blessed man who has already found Langdarma,” She told him, stepping back to look Atreus up and down, seeming to regard him in a new light. “Is it not said that the gods appear only to those who already see them? Surely, she gave you the map to show you that you have been looking in the wrong place.”

  “Sune?” Yago scoffed. “That fickle bitch?”

  “Yago!”

  “I say what I see,” the ogre grumbled. “That’s my duty. Likely as not she gave you the map just to get you out of the temple. You know how them celebrants were always complaining about that ugly face of yours.”

  “Yes.” Atreus could not keep the pain out of his voice. “I do.”

  “Oh, by the Blood Queen! You don’t have to be so touchy.” Despite his words, Yago’s orange face darkened to crimson. “It’s not like how you look is your fault … and I’d fight with you on my left any day.”

  This was the highest compliment a Shieldbreaker could pay. Atreus grasped his friend’s huge arm.

  “I know you would, Yago, and I’d be honored.” Atreus glanced across the valley toward the jumbled glacier beneath the Sisters of Serenity and said, “That’s why I must ask you to cross one last valley with me.”

  The ogre nodded. “I’d smash your head if we didn’t. We’ve come this far, so we’d better see it through to the end.”

  “What?” Seema’s objection came too quickly. “I mean to say, what about Tarch? He will follow us.…”

  Atreus turned to her with a raised brow. “Why should that matter? There’s nothing but ice and snow down there.” He paused a moment, then added, “Or is…?”

  “No, no … only ice and snow.” Again, Seema’s response came too quickly. “What else could there be? We are in the Wild Lands now. I am only afraid that the devil will force us to flee down the valley. We will be lost”

  “Really?” Atreus smirked, more convinced than ever that the key to finding Langdarma lay in the glaciers below. “You are trying to protect something, but I don’t think it is us.”

  “Perhaps the good sir should consider the evidence before his eyes!” Rishi sounded almost panicked. “Even Yago thinks your friends were only playing a trick, and it will be much safer for everyone to turn back now.”

  “You and Seema are free to go. You can take the gold with my blessings, if you can find it, but Yago and I will see our journey through to the end.”

  Atreus and Yago began to work their way along the brink of the ice field, searching for a route down onto the glacier. Rishi looked hopefully in Seema’s direction, but she only shook her head and started after the two westerners. The group moved quickly. Over the past few days, Seema had used her healing magic on her companions many times, and their wounds seldom troubled them now. They soon came to a blocky ravine where a wedge of ice had been squeezed out of the rim, creating a narrow corridor that wind and day-melt had eroded into a steep but passable gully.

  Seema circled around to the sunny side and led the way down a drift of wind-packed snow. The bottom of the shadowed gully was as icy as it was steep, and they had to descend half walking and half sliding. By the time they emerged from the mouth of the ravine, they were all nervous, shivering, and glad for the
relative safety of the glacier’s sun-softened surface.

  Seema descended a few yards, kicking her heels into the wind-crusted snow to make flat, safe steps. Abruptly she stopped and warily glanced across the glacier. Motioning for the others to stay where they were, she drew her knife and dropped to her knees, then began hacking blocks out of the snow pack. A foot down, the snow suddenly grew soft and sugary. She put her knife away and continued to dig, eventually climbing into the hole and disappearing to her waist.

  “This is very bad.” Seema peered out of the hole. “It is not safe.”

  Atreus rolled his eyes and started down the slope. “You’re only convincing me that you’re trying to hide something.”

  “No, come and look.” Seema waved him over and pointed at the icy layer in the bottom of the hole. “Do you see how it is slick below and hard on top, with a layer of soft sugar in between?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is very dangerous on a steep slope like this,” Seema said. “It is like a carpet over marbles. The whole mountainside can break loose and slide down in a big avalanche.”

  The thought occurred to Atreus that Seema was just finding another excuse to keep him away from the Sisters of Serenity, but he could see for himself that what she said was true. He pulled a handful of the sugary snow from the hole and let it run between his fingers, glancing over at Yago.

  The ogre merely shrugged. “I told you it was dangerous when we started.”

  Atreus stood, facing Seema. “What can we do to protect ourselves?” he asked her.

  “We can turn around.”

  “Aside from that,” Atreus replied.

  Seema sighed, then led them back into the mouth of the gully. She instructed Yago to start yelling across the valley, hoping to set off any impending avalanches with his booming voice. While the ogre bellowed, she took the supply bundle and began to unravel the long threads of a yak-hair blanket, knotting them together to create four dark strands, each twenty or thirty paces long. By the time she finished, Yago had managed to start a small slide on the opposite wall of the valley, but the snow on the glacier below remained ominously inert.