17. Chapter 17
In the center of a great lake, upon the bed of still water, a man sat watching us, his chin in his palm.
His other hand traced nonsense patterns into the surface with a fingertip and he wore robes of what looked impossibly like liquid, gushing and refracting all around his body.
The twist of his small, knowing smile sent a thrill of dread up my spine, but it was his eyes that frightened me most, for they were but gouged-out sockets filled with livid flame.
Like everything else in this godforsaken place, he was silent as a tomb. I doubted Serich even knew the demon sat there watching, not if the wulfsnare was busy mapping out his course.
He’s blind, It said. Keep silent and out of the water. You’ll be fine.
Maybe he can’t see but I’m sure he speaks. Will Serich need to plug his ears?
Serich should keep his eyes on his path. If he doesn’t look at him, doesn’t touch the water, he’ll be fine. You will both be fine. Just move.
I wished I could speak to Serich the way I spoke to It, through a private channel in my mind. I could whisper as faintly as a breeze, and the demon might still hear. And from his terrible little smile I had the horrible suspicion he already knew exactly where we were.
I shot another glance at Serich. I have to warn him, at least.
What you have to do is keep going. If his wulfsnare is doing its job he won’t even notice you’re not alone.
But I was so afraid it froze me where I stood. Those flames looked like they were alive, undulating in those gaping sockets; that smile he wore looked meant for me.
You are not afraid, It said, and I was but I wasn’t as his compulsion collided with my fear.
He can’t take you. You’re mine, remember.
Nothing he says can sway you. His gaze won’t capture you.
Your priest, on the other hand…it might not take more than a glance.
The more you stare off in his direction, the more attention you call to him, the more likely it is for your priest to take a look.
Stop staring. Start moving. You are not afraid of some blind pathetic prick who can’t even leave the water.
But he’ll be able to hear us. We can’t move silently—
So a better option is to keep still and wait for him to cotton on? Move.
Serich landed lightly beside me on the little island between puddles. I twisted my slick fingers around his and pulled him toward me so he bent double, his ear against my lips. “We’re not alone,” I breathed. “Don’t look and you’ll be fine. Don’t look and don’t touch the water.”
A chuckle rolled across the still lake, and I couldn’t help dashing a glance toward it. Sinuously, the demon stood in a waterfall of swirling robes, a head of dark hair ticked to one side, the guttering flames of his eyes trained on us.
“Such quiet little mice,” he said, sounding at once melodious and malevolent, young and old, sweet yet vile, his voice tap-tap-tapping up the back of my neck. “Two, I think. One male, one female.”
I grabbed Serich’s chin when it moved a fraction of an inch and shook my head: No looking. I found fear in his eyes, fear and resolve and something near reverence, and I swallowed hard and turned my back on him.
The wulfsnare traced out an iridescent path, lifting me to my toes; if it had a voice, I felt it would be laughing, as if this were nothing more than a finicky dance with complicated rules it was dying to unravel.
“You’ll find no water for a while,” the demon called from the lake, and in the time it took to blink he was there, standing on the pond right beside us, so pale he glowed like the moon, the tallest man I had ever seen.
The details of his form were blurred through his robes of rippling water but I caught every hollow and carved plane of his face, white as a statue and just as sculpted.
A pretty dimple in his chin, lips of palest, dusty pink, flaming sockets licking up the shelf of his upswept eyebrows.
“It tastes like moonlight,” he said, his voice dipping into a strangely restrained, sensual whisper. “It tastes like magic and midnight. You’ve had nothing like it. I can feel your thirst.”
My heart was seizing. There was fire in my throat but It snarled that there wasn’t and the wulfsnare lit my path and the alcerin begged for haste and would all those clashing voices drive me mad until the only sane thing would be to drown myself in this shallow water?
I wanted to float away like a kite with cut strings, drift until I disappeared.
Whatever it took to quell the discord in my mind.
Sudden death, my bloodrose said. I saw those petals scattered on the earth, that naked quivering stem, but something cleared away the image.
You’re right here, It said, his voice ringing above the rest. You’re right here, with me. Just follow the path, ignore everything else.
So I put what little hope remained to me in It and obeyed the wulfsnare’s path.
I wove and spun, twisting around those tiny strips of land that marked my only safety, and as I stalked my careful route, the demon followed, flashing from pond to puddle, his breath on the back of my neck, beseeching me to drink, to taste the magic he was kind enough to offer.
You’re almost there, It said, and he was right; I could make out a land of matte just beyond this glossy graveyard. One dash, two leaps, a careful step, and I’d be there.
I dashed and leaped, my heartbeat thrumming in my ears. Leaped again and took an excruciatingly slow and cautious step, then sank to my knees upon mercifully dry land. I closed my eyes and thought I might weep with relief, even as the alcerin twitched in my blood.
You’re not going to cry, It said, as Serich thumped down beside me a moment later. You’re not going to give that thing the satisfaction.
I flung myself onto my back, propped my weight up on my hands. My chest heaved as I looked up at the demon a few feet away on the nearest pond, flames sputtering and focused upon my face as though he weren’t blind in the slightest.
“Next time, perhaps,” he said in a silky undertone, before he stepped through a rip in the atmosphere and disappeared.
I scrambled to my feet and ran as if trying to outdistance death itself, the alcerin rejoicing as it pounded through the network of my veins, Serich right beside me. We didn’t stop or speak, not until we were in the thick of a grid of ancient trees and It suggested I ought to take a rest.
“How did you make it?” I panted to Serich, my hands on my knees, my skin so hot it felt like it raged with a terrible sunburn. “I barely held it together.” I probably would have flown to pieces had it not been for It.
“I just prayed for strength.” He gasped around every word. “I knew you needed me.”
“But the alcerin and wulfsnare and the demon’s words,” I said, crumpling into a heap at the base of the tree trunk. “They didn’t tug at you? Even with It, the words got to me.”
“They tugged.” He collapsed beside me. “But other things tugged harder.”
A few hours later, the river we came upon glimmered with our reflections beneath the brooding mists.
The water coursed, but barely, mutely, the ripples faint and spectral, a vast gray serpent snaking through the wood.
The quiet hung thicker here than anywhere else we’d found since leaving Monde’s End, pressing upon my ears like hands.
The riverbank was icy, white with frost that seeped into my knees when I knelt to dip my hands beneath the silent surface.
The water was so cold it felt like I cupped flames.
I was born here, It said, like it was but a throwaway comment as I drank from my hands.
What, here? I looked around at the hushed desolation, the water going down like frozen blades in my throat. On this horrible freezing riverbank?
My mother’s Frost, remember. She doesn’t mind the cold. She did mind the long labor and the hovering midwives, so here she staggered.
Alone?
I suppose she wanted some peace and quiet.
I shivered, both from the cold biting through my layers and the thought of anyone, even a demon, coming here to bring forth a baby.
Had the wood swallowed up her screams? I knew she must have screamed, they always did, in that full-throated, red-raw way; a pain that couldn’t be contained with words.
I remembered feeling so helpless, listening to Livvy’s mother labor through the twins.
I feared she’d tear something in her throat, that I’d find a well of blood in her mouth when I went to give her a sip of water.
It had seemed amazing she could smile at those babies in her arms after what it cost to birth them.
Ice coated everything here, lying upon the surroundings like sugar on a cake.
What moss still clung to life was crusty with rime.
The trees looked still and lifeless, ghostly naked branches bowing beneath a thick, luminous layer of frost. I couldn’t stop myself from conjuring a mental image of Its mother right where I now knelt, though it was blurry without knowing her details.
Surely she must be pale, given where she came from—
It filled in the rest for me; hair like silver sleet streaming down her back; glassy nails biting into the icy earth as she clenched her fingers.
Moon-pale hands peeking out from beneath the puddled sleeves of a winter-white robe that slid off one shoulder.
Head tipped back toward the somber sky as a cyclone of dazzling ice swarmed around her.
How human she looked, at least from my vantage point behind her.
How much pain she must have felt in this indifferent arctic wood, all alone.
Don’t go feeling too sorry for her, It said, with a short and singularly mirthless snort, the picture snapping into shards and floating away. She never let me hear the end of it.
Do you miss her?
He laughed in a way that sounded a lot like a no. Very occasionally, I do. He’s trying to get your attention.
I started as Serich’s hand found my shoulder. “Pardon?”