Faces of Deception

CHAPTER 9

Atreus woke to the murmur of voices and to the roar of a nearby waterfall. When he opened his eyes he found himself lying on the bow deck, buried beneath an avalanche of yak-hair blankets, staring at a stony mountainside looming up behind the barge's stern cabin. The slope was grassy, steep, and strewn with massive crags of folded rock. Over the largest of these outcroppings hung the terminus of a glacier, a dirty curtain of ice with a silver ribbon of melt-water arcing out from beneath it. Above the glacier, a low pall of snow clouds cloaked the mountain heights in a veil of gray vapor.

The voices continued to murmur, rippling out of the willow swamp alongside the barge. Atreus stayed beneath his blankets, thinking it wiser not to draw attention to himself until he gathered his groggy wits. He did not recall falling asleep, only wrapping himself in a blanket and sitting down to sip another of Seema's potions. If the concoction had knocked him out, it had also rejuvenated him. He felt strong and rested, with no sign of fever. His wounds itched more than they ached, and when he ran his fingers over the lance puncture in his breast he was surprised to find it already closed. Seema's healing magic was more powerful than he had thought.

As Atreus's head cleared, he saw that he had been abandoned. Save for vacant slave chains snaking across the decks and two sets of oars still resting in their locks, the barge was empty, beached stern-first so everyone could sneak ashore without disturbing him on the bow. A familiar cold hollowness arose inside Atreus. This was hardly the first time someone had taken pains to avoid him, but it was certainly the most callous. Having saved the Mar from a life of bondage he had thought they might return his kindness by helping him find his way to Langdarma, but he should have known better than to think any act of kindness would blind people to his humped back and disfigured face.

The willows beside the barge shook briefly, and the nose of a dugout emerged to gently bump the hull. A pair of slavers jumped aboard and rushed aft, not bothering to glance forward or even to tie their boat to an eye hook. Atreus frowned, but made no move to attack. The two men carried swords instead of whips and padded clubs, and he heard more voices murmuring out in the swamp. Fighting seemed less wise than simply trying to slip away once the slavers entered the barge's ramshackle cabin.

But the pair did not go to the cabin. Instead, they divided and circled around it from both sides.

"Tarch!" yelled one. "Over here!"

"We've got her!"

A slender figure emerged from behind the cabin and began to flee up the mountainside, her black braids and dark tabard leaving no doubt that it was Seema. Atreus threw off his blankets and pulled on his frozen boots, then grabbed Sune's map from his belongings and ran aft. As the slavers disappeared around behind the cabin, Rishi emerged from the front door, blurry-eyed and wrapped in blankets.

"What is all this noise?" Rishi asked. "What has become of everyone?"

"They left us," Atreus told him as he crossed the rear deck in two strides and pushed his way into the cabin. "Are there any weapons in here?"

The interior was murky and rank, with no bed except a pallet of filthy straw. A cask of foul-smelling grog sat in one corner, and a tangled mound of shackles and chains lay heaped against the back wall There were no true weapons in sight, but several sets of smithy's tools sat by the door,

"The barge is ours?" Rishi gasped, still trying to comprehend what Atreus had told him. Then we can recover the gold!"

"I'm afraid not" Atreus went to the back wall and rummaged through the chain heap. Tarch is after Seema. There are a pair of slavers chasing her now."

"All the better. While they are pursuing her, we can slip away."

Atreus whirled on the Mar, pulling a six-foot length of chain from the heap. "How can you say such a thing? She saved our lives."

Rishi eyed the chain nervously, backing toward the door. "I am only thinking of the good sir," he lied.

"I thought you were done with me," Atreus replied. He stepped over to the pile of smithy tools. "I recall something about what happens when a pretty slave girl smiles at me."

Rishi's face darkened. "Many harsh words are spoken when people are tired and cold, but there is no reason for us to be angry with each other. After we recover the gold, everything will be as before. We can resume our journey and find Langdarma, certainly in a very short time."

"Certainly?" Atreus scoffed. He picked up a heavy forge hammer and stepped toward the door. "You know where to find the gold if you want it I'm going after Seema."

Outside, the swamp was filled with calling voices, but the two slavers were not answering. The pair needed all their breath to keep pace with Seema. She was racing up the mountainside toward the waterfall beneath the glacier, holding her long skirt with both hands, bounding from rocks to grass tufts as lightly as a gazelle.

Atreus leaped off the barge and rushed across a grassy flat to the base of the mountain. After so much time in the swamp, the ground felt solid and good beneath his feet, but he found himself gasping for breath as soon as he started to climb. His legs grew weighty and slow, and they burned with fatigue. The chain and hammer became as heavy as boulders, and his wounds began to throb miserably. No matter how quickly he pumped his knees, he fell farther behind, and it took an effort of will to launch himself from each grass tuft up to the next one.

Seema continued to dance effortlessly up the slope, the two slavers clambering at her heels. Excited cries began to rise from below, and Atreus knew she had climbed high enough to be seen from the swamp. Tarch and his men would be swarming toward the barge now, but Atreus did not look back to see them. With his lungs burning and a ferocious headache pounding at his temples, it was all he could do to keep running. Seema did not stray from her course until the mist of the waterfall began to spray her, and even then she turned only toward a drier section of cliff.

As shallow as the angle was, the two slavers made good use of it, closing to within half a dozen steps of her. Atreus's knees began to tremble with exhaustion, and his aching chest filled with phlegm, but he forced himself to go on. What was a monster good for, if not to save beautiful damsels cornered by bestial slavers?

But Seema had other ideas. She hit the cliff at a run, leaping up to thrust her hands into a crevice so narrow it seemed a mere line. Pulling herself up with her arms, she swung her feet onto a pair of nubby toeholds and began to clamber up the rocks like a spider.

So astonished was Atreus that he almost stopped running, but the slavers were not surprised at all. Reaching the cliff only a few seconds behind Seema, they dropped their swords and began to jump, grabbing for her feet When this did not work, the heavier one cupped his hands and boosted the lighter one up. The man caught Seema by the ankle and began to tug.

"Come along… girl," he puffed. "Don't bruise yourself. You don't want to do that, or Tarch'll start getting ideas about… keeping you."

Seema began to kick, trying to free her ankle. "Just pull her down!" urged the bottom man.

"N-no!" Atreus gasped, now only five paces below.

Both slavers glanced down and their eyes grew wide. Leaving his partner to hang from Seema's ankle, the bottom man snatched his sword and stepped down to attack. With the blow arcing down from above, Atreus had no choice but to twist out of the way and fling his chain up in a wild, backhand block. The steel links struck with a metallic clatter and wrapped themselves around the blade. Atreus jerked the sword from his attacker's grasp.

In the next instant, a booted heel crashed into Atreus's jaw. He saw stars, then his knees went limp, and he found himself rolling down the mountainside with no memory of having fallen. He rotated onto his back, swinging his feet around to kick his heels into a tuft of soft grass. He lurched to a stop and heard his foe clattering down the slope above. Atreus rolled over to find the slaver almost upon him, now holding the smithy's hammer he did not remember dropping.

Atreus staggered to his feet, head spinning and spent muscles trembling. Somewhere along the way the sword came untangled from the chain and scattered itself down the slope in three broken pieces. Atreus whirled the chain above his head. The slaver slowed, circling around to approach from the side.

Head still spinning, Atreus lurched across the hill. The astonished slaver stumbled back, eyes darting toward the chain still whistling above his foe's head. Finally, he seemed to collect himself and stopped. He cocked his arm and planted his forward foot, then hurled the heavy hammer.

There was no time to duck or dodge. Atreus sprang into a charge, snapping his arm up to protect his head. The hammer glanced off his wrist and tumbled away. Then Atreus was on the slaver, swinging the heavy chain into the man's head.

The fellow's eyes went dull and gray, but somehow he kept his feet and came up with a belt dagger. He attacked low, shooting the knife in toward Atreus's groin.

Atreus skipped backward and slapped the weapon down, bringing his blocking hand up in a vicious back-fisted strike. The slaver's jaw clacked shut He spit out the tip of his tongue and stumbled back, blind with pain and slashing his dagger about madly. Atreus whirled the chain down across his attacker's wrist, entangling the fellow's arm and knocking his knife loose. The slaver howled and tried to jerk free but succeeded only in drawing Atreus closer.

Atreus grabbed him behind the neck and pulled, at the same time slamming a knee to his foe's chest. There were two muffled cracks, and the man groaned and dropped to the ground, wheezing and clutching at his side.

Atreus kicked the slaver down the slope and saw Rishi scrambling up the mountainside, moving quickly despite his limp and the large bundle slung over his shoulder. Farther below, Tarch and a dozen men were just starting across the narrow flat that separated the mountains from the swamp. Staggering along in front of them, covering six feet a step despite a numb-footed limp, was Yago.

The ogre's face and cloak were caked with ice and mud, and a veritable copse of broken willow stalks jutted up from inside his belt and collar. He looked as if he had passed the night wallowing in the swamp, but Atreus knew better. Yago understood the value of concealment as well as any good hunter, and his camouflage suggested he had spent the night trailing Tarch and his slavers. They had probably not even realized he was there until he broke from the willows and started across the flat.

Too breathless to call out to his friend, Atreus merely waved, then scrambled up the mountainside, his lungs burning so badly he feared he had bruised them tumbling down the hill. On the cliff above, the slaver finally released Seema's ankle and dropped to the ground. She started to climb higher, looked down at Atreus, and stopped where she was.

The slaver retrieved his sword and met Atreus five paces below the cliff, using his uphill advantage to attack with a vicious overhand strike. Too exhausted to dodge or feint, Atreus simply dropped to the ground and swung his chain around in an overhand strike.

The surprised slaver stumbled forward off-balance, and the chain caught him across the wrist, twining itself around his forearm. Atreus spun downhill, whipping his foe overhead like a stone in a sling. The chain reached the end of its length and untwined, hurtling the fellow down the slope like a catapult The slaver hit a dozen paces below, crashing headlong into a boulder and tumbling down the mountainside in a limp heap: Atreus retrieved his dropped sword and rushed up the slope to Seema.

"are you…" he started to say, but was too out of breath to finish.

1 am fine," Seema replied, sounding rather aloof. "Have you injured yourself again?"

"I don't think so. Unless you count… being out of breath."

Atreus turned to see Rishi taking the dagger from the second slaver's weapon belt Instead of slitting the man's throat, he surprised Atreus by simply adding the knife to his bundle of goods. Fifty paces below, Yago was climbing up the slope, steadily opening the distance between himself and the rest of the slavers.

"I'm sorry for the trouble waiting with us caused you," Atreus said, motioning to the barge.

"Yes, so am I," Seema said, glancing toward the two slavers lying motionless below. "Be quiet now and rest. When your friend gets here we will have to move quickly, or there will be more bloodshed."

Atreus braced his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath between fits of coughing. His wounds were throbbing, but the pain was nothing compared to the agony in his pounding head and burning chest. He silently thanked Vaprak, god of the ogres, for looking after his bodyguard. Without Yago, he could not imagine where he would find the strength to defeat Tarch and his men.

Rishi arrived gasping and trembling, hardly able to hold the blanket bundled over his shoulder.

"So you decided to forget about the gold after all," Atreus observed.

"It was… decided for me," Rishi wheezed. "But perhaps… the gods will see fit to… leave it there until we return."

"Which will not be until your next life, if we do not leave before Tarch's giant catches us," said Seema.

"Tarch's giant?" Atreus turned toward Yago, who was only twenty paces below. "That's no giant, that's Yago… my bodyguard."

Seema raised her brow at this, but seemed to take no comfort in the fact that they had an ogre on their side. She simply turned away, eyed the cliff above their heads, and said, "I suppose you two and your ogre friend cannot climb."

"Not that!" Atreus exclaimed, astonished she would even suggest such a thing. "It must be five hundred feet high."

"I suppose we must go around," Seema said, taking the bundle from Rishi. "What is in here?"

"Blankets and food," the Mar replied. "Other things we might need."

Seema fished through the bundle, then withdrew the dagger he had taken from the second slaver and pitched it down the mountainside.

"We will not need that," she said, motioning to the sword and chain in Atreus's hands. "Or those."

Atreus glanced down the slope at Tarch and his warriors. He shoved the sword into his belt and draped the chain over his shoulders. "It will do me no harm to carry it," he told her.

"If you must."

Yago arrived stinking of swamp mud and sweat. Too exhausted to offer greetings, the ogre simply braced his hands on his knees and filled the cold air with clouds of white breath.

"It's good to see you again," Atreus said, and clasped his friend's big shoulder. "It's about time."

The ogre's head snapped up, then he saw Atreus's grin, gave him the evil eye, and said, "You could of left a boat for me!"

"Oh, you have no business blaming us for that." Rishi grinned, then added, "We had to get our own. Certainly, a big fellow like you should have had no trouble doing the same thing."

Yago snarled and looked as though he would bite the Mar. Seema grabbed Rishi's supply bundle and shoved it into the ogre's waist.

"Now that you are here, make yourself useful," she said. "It is going to be difficult enough to save all of you without wasting any more time."

With that, she whirled away and started along the base of the cliff, moving so swiftly and gracefully that Atreus felt as if he was stumbling along after her. Rishi was almost skipping, and even Yago had to scurry to keep pace.

When Tarch and his slavers saw where the four were going, they began to angle toward the edge of the cliff and close the distance. Seema gathered her skirt and broke into a trot, and Atreus, Rishi, and Yago were soon puffing as hard as before.

They rounded the cliff with their pursuers less than fifty paces behind, then started to pick their way up a boulder-strewn couloir-a narrow rock chute so steep that Atreus and Rishi began to grab for handholds. Seema simply leaned a little forward and sprang up the gully as though hopping stones across a stream. Atreus tried to imitate her gait and only found himself tiring more rapidly. Behind him, Yago's heavy breath sounded like a forge bellows, and Rishi's wheezing left no doubt that he found the climb just as difficult as his companions.

Atreus looked up and wished he had not. The couloir continued to climb at the same steep angle for at least a thousand paces, then vanished into the clouds.

Rishi groaned. "My lungs will burst," he complained. "I cannot keep running!"

Seema did not look back, only said, "Just a little farther."

A boulder wobbled beneath her feet, and she sprang up the gully all the more quickly.

Atreus stopped beside the rock and looked back. When he saw Tarch and his men clambering into the bottom of the narrow gully, he stepped around to the upper side of the boulder.

"Rishi! Out of… the way."

When he began to push, Seema finally stopped climbing.

"Wait!" She looked down toward Tarch, then yelled, "You must take shelter! We are going to start pushing boulders down."

The slavers looked up, confused, then suddenly seemed to realize what Seema was saying. They rushed back down the couloir and disappeared around the corner. Tarch merely scowled and started up the gully at his best sprint.

Atreus shoved the boulder.

The rock toppled free and rumbled down the couloir, gathering speed and cracking into other boulders. Each time it struck, another huge stone came loose and tumbled down the chute, until the whole lower gully seemed to be crashing down on the slavers. Tarch flung himself at the gulch wall and scrambled up the rocky face like a huge lizard, then clung there watching stones pass beneath him.

Rishi whirled on Seema, panting, "Why did you warn them? We could have had them all!"

"Not Tarch, and he is the only one that matters," said Seema. "Now you have had your rest We must go again."

With the rock-slide still rumbling, she turned and bounded up the gully.

Atreus and the others followed as best they could, but none of them could match Seema's pace. She would bound ahead, then stop to urge them on, never seeming more than a little winded. Atreus grew so exhausted that he became dizzy and had to steady himself with every step, and he noticed Rishi and Yago doing the same. Their trembling knees started to give out at unpredictable moments, and Rishi's wounded leg knotted itself into such a tight ball that he cried out in agony with every step. Not once did Seema lose her balance, and soon she started to hang back and pull the Mar along by his arm.

Behind them, Tarch scrambled up the couloir alone, his men having decided they were more likely to survive his wrath than the sporadic volleys of boulders Atreus kept launching. Although the rock-slides caused the slave master to keep falling farther behind, they were never a danger to him. Every time Atreus laid his shoulder to a loose rock, Seema would shout a warning.

They had almost reached the clouds when Rishi dropped to a knee, then collapsed again as he tried to get up. Tarch started to sprint up the couloir, sensing he had finally run his quarry to ground.

"Come along." Seema tugged at the Mar's arm, "We are almost in the clouds."

Rishi tried to stand, but fell as soon as he put weight on his wounded leg. "It is no good," he admitted. "I can go no farther."

Tarch continued to sprint up the gully. Atreus pressed against a boulder, but the stone would not budge.

"You must get up!" Seema said, then clasped her hand around Rishi's wrist and started to drag him up the couloir. "I do not want it on my soul if Tarch kills you."

"You should have… thought of that before you warned him about the rocks," Rishi said as he tried to jerk his hand free and failed. He was too tired. "You are a disloyal and ungrateful woman."

"Ungrateful!" Seema exclaimed, but she continued up the slope, dragging Rishi along. Atreus grabbed the Mar by the other arm and did his best to help. Yago brought up the rear, breathing harder than any of them, using one hand to steady himself and the other to hold the supply bundle.

"Why should I be grateful for what you have done?" Seema demanded. "I did not ask you to free me. I did not ask you to kill those men."

"You were… running," Atreus panted. He glanced back, then kicked a loose rock down the gully. The stone, too small to start a slide, bounced past Tarch harmlessly. "You must not want to be a slave."

"No one wants to be slave," Seema said, her gaze remaining fixed on the clouds above them. "That does not mean you can kill the slavers."

"They was going to sell you," Yago wheezed. His chest was heaving from the exertion, and his orange skin had paled to a sickly ivory. "They deserved to get killed."

The man who passes judgment on another also judges himself," Seema said. She tore her eyes away from the clouds and gave the ogre a hard stare. "I saw the slavers do many terrible things, but they did not kill anyone."

Atreus remained silent, stung by her disapproving tone. Until now, he had simply assumed that Seema wanted to be rescued, thinking her aversion to killing nothing more than a healers natural distaste for death. It had not occurred to him that she might regard the slaying of her captors as an evil greater than being enslaved in the first place.

When Atreus said nothing to defend him, Yago scowled and said, "A person fights for himself. A person does not let others make him a slave."

"A person does not kill," Seema hissed. "It is a terrible stain on the soul, and I will not have it done in my name."

The words struck Atreus like a blow to the chest He forgot to watch his footing and slipped on a tuft of grass, barely noticing as Yago caught him and stopped him from sliding down the slope. Though Sune did not prohibit her worshipers from fighting-especially in defense of beauty, love, or their own lives-she did regard both warmongering and unprovoked murder as terrible scars upon a worshiper's soul. To Seema, apparently, any kind of killing was an ugliness of spirit

Atreus scrambled to his feet and grasped Rishi's arm again. A few moments later they reached the clouds and entered a misty world of white air and damp rock. Seema dragged them another fifty paces up the couloir, then suddenly stopped on a large boulder. Though he was only an arm's length away, the fog made her look ghostly and ethereal

"You will not kill again," she told them all. It was neither a question nor a command, only a statement "No more deaths."

"Now is certainly not the best time… to debate this," gasped Rishi. "We must keep going, or there will undoubtedly be at least three more when we are caught…"

Seema made no move to continue up the couloir. "No," she insisted. "I must know before we carry on."

Yago growled softly, and Atreus glanced back to see his friend glaring down the gulch. It was impossible to see anything in the mist, but this was the ogre's way of making plain what he thought about taking orders from strangers, though, of course, he would do whatever Atreus wanted.

Atreus drew the sword from his belt and swung it flat against the boulder. The blade snapped with a sharp chime, and Yago groaned miserably.

"By the gods!" Rishi cried. "Have you lost your mind?"

Atreus ignored him, looked to Seema, and said, "No more deaths."

Seema looked to Yago. "And you?" she asked.

The ogre glanced at Atreus, then growled, "If Atreus wants."

"Good," she said. As she turned to Rishi, the sound of clattering stones began to echo up through the mist "Do you also promise?"

The Mar glanced toward the sound and said, "Surely it is better for Tarch to die than all of us."

Seema's eyes grew sad, and she stepped down off the boulder. "I must leave you," she said. "I am the one he is looking for, and there will be no more killing if I go to him."

"Wait" Atreus caught her by the arm, turned to Rishi, and said, "Make the promise. I can't let Seema go by herself, even if there is to be no more killing."

Rishi's eyes narrowed. "Good sir, you are a very bad liar," he said. "It is only Seema that Tarch wishes alive. He will be most happy to kill you… and Yago."

"He will try," said Atreus, "but now that Yago's here, perhaps we can subdue him without killing him. Are you sure you want to be the only one trying to kill him-or the only one left, if we fail?"

Rishi considered this a moment, grew pale, and licked his lips. He turned to Seema. "I promise."

She studied the Mar for several moments. The clattering below continued to grow louder, but it was impossible to tell how close Tarch was. Atreus had learned during his sea crossing that everything sounded different in fog, and the only thing he could see below was Yago's heavy breath swirling the vapor.

After a time, Seema nodded to Rishi and said, "I will take you at your word, but if you are lying to me…"

"I'll be responsible for him," Atreus assured her, casting a warning glance at the Mar. I'm sure he won't give me reason to regret it"

"Never! I am being most honest arid truthful," Rishi said, turning up the couloir. "Now may we please hurry?"

Seema caught the Mar by the arm and said, "Not that way."

She motioned toward the couloir's rocky wall, then looked down the slope. "Tarch," she called, "you must take shelter again. We have found a loose boulder!"

She caught Yago's eye and pointed to the boulder upon which she had been standing. The ogre grinned and passed the supply bundle to Atreus. Wrapping his gangling arms around the stone, he heaved it into the fog. The rock landed with a resounding crash and began to bound down the slope. Soon the rumble of a massive rockslide was reverberating up the couloir.

"Follow me."

Seema's voice was barely audible over the clamor of the falling rocks. She turned to the couloir wall and slipped her hands into a crevice, then scrambled up the twenty-foot cliff in a few quick moves. Atreus could not help feeling sheepish. Seema was the rescuer now. She probably knew a thousand ways to evade Tarch, and none of them involved fighting.

With the clatter of the rockslide still masking their escape, Yago boosted Rishi up, then scrambled up the wall himself. Atreus tossed the supply bundle to the ogre and brought up the rear. Soon they were crossing the face of a rocky crag. Although the outcropping was not much steeper than the couloir, it felt immeasurably more dangerous, with the mist-slickened rock dropping away into bottomless fog and nothing but white cloud at their backs.

Seema sauntered along the crag as though it were a balcony walkway, barely touching its stony face with her uphill hand. Rishi and Atreus faced the rock and inched along sideways, keeping both hands on the stone at all times. Yago turned away from the outcropping and leaned back against it, crawling along like a back-jointed spider and holding the supply bundle in one hand. It was not long before a nervous rumble began to reverberate from his chest

"Yago, do you think it would be easier if you turned around?" Atreus asked softly. "That way you can see the rock."

"I can feel the rock." Yago's deep whisper cut through the fog like a hissing wind. Fortunately, the rockslide was still clattering to a halt back in the couloir, so it seemed unlikely Tarch would hear. "If I fall, I want to see where I'm going."

Atreus sighed and reached out Knowing it would do no good to argue, he said, "Let me carry the supplies. We don't want to lose them if you fall."

Yago refused to yield the bundle. "Keep your hands on the rock!" the ogre said too loudly. "You'll fall."

"Our lives depend on our silence," Seema hissed. She stretched a hand past Rishi, then added, "I will not fall. Pass me the supplies."

Yago scowled but quietly passed the bundle forward. They continued across the outcropping and the sound of the rockslide died away behind them. A short time later, they heard Tarch in the couloir, his feet kicking stones and gravel down the gully as he climbed past They all breathed a little easier, and it was not long before they began to hear a steady roar echoing up through the fog. Guessing that this would be the waterfall he had seen that morning, Atreus began to keep a watch for the hanging glacier.

He almost didn't recognize it when they reached it The rocky crag simply ended, as though they had come to the edge of the mountain itself. Seeing nothing but gray haze beyond, Atreus expected Seema to climb around the corner and continue on. Instead, she stepped down off the-outcropping and seemed to simply hover in the fog.

Rishi stopped and peered over the edge, his mouth gaping in astonishment. "What are you standing on?"

"Snow, of course. Come along." Seema reached out with her freehand and warned, "Be very careful of your footing. This glacier is more dangerous than the hillside we have been crossing. It is very steep, and you do not want to slide off the bottom. It-is a long plunge down to the swamp."

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 ft."

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 took 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 withdrew 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 me 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."