Alaeron and Skiver stopped running, and Jaya walked slowly toward them, all shading their eyes to peer up at Ernst.

  Ernst prodded the body with his foot. "Dead!" he said cheerfully. "Armor is no match for fire, as many a knight has learned—you just cook inside like a chicken in a pot! Truly, Alaeron, you should have stood and faced this savage long ago. The barbarians are terrified of magic. I must say, I expected more." He kicked Kormak's body, and it tumbled ten feet to the ground, landing in a heap at the base of the wall. Ernst leaned out over the wall, looking down. "Ugly fellow, though, I'll give you that. More scars on his face than a privy has flies—"

  "Ernst!" Alaeron shouted, but he was too slow, or the Kellid was too fast. Kormak lifted something in the one hand he had left: like the hilt of a sword, but with a round tube sticking up instead of a blade. A beam of ruby red light shone out, striking Ernst straight in the face.

  The glowing walking stick fell behind the wall, light winking out, and Ernst's body tumbled down to the ground. In the darkness, it was impossible to be sure, but—

  "His head," Skiver said, voice between awe and terror. "Ernst, his head, it was just gone."

  "Burned," Kormak said, his voice no longer amplified, but carrying well enough. "Seared, as I had to sear the end of my wrist when my hand was taken. As I will burn off your hands, alchemist, and the limbs of your friends, before I take their heads, too—"

  "Stay close to me," Alaeron said, and Jaya and Skiver moved in without asking questions, perhaps too stunned by Ernst's sudden death to do anything but obey. Truly powerful alchemists could create a potion to cure death, an elixir of life, but the preparation was delicate, the ingredients unspeakably costly, and Alaeron's abilities far too meager ...and, anyway, such a potion would be little good for someone lacking a head. He could not save Ernst.

  But he might yet save his living friends.

  Alaeron took the porcelain-and-gold top from his pocket, set it on the hard-baked earth of the desert, and set it spinning.

  First there was dust, rising in a swirling curtain around them. Kormak approached, his hulking figure a dark shadow in the sandy mist. He hurled something toward them—a knife? a bomb? it was too dark to tell—but the object was caught in the unnatural wind. The force churned up the earth, gouging out rocks, scrub plants, and hunks of the desert floor and adding them to the expanding maelstrom. The noise became monstrous: Jaya was shouting, and Skiver was shouting back, but Alaeron just crouched over his relic in the small circle of safety, watching as Kormak's feet left the ground and he, too, began to spin.

  The ring of destructive force got wider and wider as the Kellid tumbled end over end around them. Kormak was not giving in to the wind: he was trying to swim in the vortex, doing his best to claw his way toward Alaeron and the others. But even his ferocious dedication couldn't overcome the power of the artifact. He rose up in the wall of dust, which was now at least twenty feet high.

  Skiver and Jaya were both shouting in Alaeron's ear now, but he was watching, trying to time his moment to stop the artifact and send Kormak flying—ideally back to the east, or at any rate not to the west, where they'd have to step over his broken body on their journey later. But the Kellid was now just one dark shape among many, spinning by faster than the eye could follow.

  Jaya grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, and Skiver screamed in his ear: "The obelisks! The elementals!"

  Alaeron froze, remembering the view through Ernst's spyglass: a thousand lights, each a bound elemental, held in place by the sigils inscribed on weathered obelisks. And he was sending an expanding circle of destructive force toward those artifacts.

  He slammed his hand down on the top, and it stopped spinning. Dust and rocks and unearthed plants flew out in all directions ...along with Kormak's body, somewhere.

  The earthen wall where Kormak had watched them, where Ernst had lost his head, was gone, reduced to dust and pebbles. Beyond, the forest of obelisks was damaged, half a dozen of the stone pillars shattered by the artifact's mighty wind, and things were stirring there in the darkness, huge shapes amid lights of red and blue and white.

  "Runaway!" Kormak screamed and, impossibly, rose up on one knee from among the broken pillars, his form lit by the flickering illuminations of the fire and wind and water elementals waking up. The maelstrom had lifted and flung him, but he hadn't sailed miles away, instead striking the pillars, probably breaking a few of them himself on impact.

  "Good try," Skiver said. "But now we run!"

  Alaeron didn't run. He didn't even rise from his crouch. There was no point. Kormak had weapons they couldn't outrun.

  But then something roared in the dark, and a hulking creature so large it dwarfed Kormak reached out with a stony arm and smashed the Kellid to the ground. The earth elemental turned its red gemstone eyes toward Alaeron and his companions, and that was spur enough to get the alchemist moving, snatching up his top and racing toward the remains of their camp, where the rest of their gear waited. He looked back and saw something like a bonfire in the shape of a snake swirl around Kormak, the Kellid's hair catching fire, and then a bearlike thing of dirty frothing water broke over him, extinguishing the flames and making the fire elemental rear back, stumbling across Kormak's legs. The Kellid didn't move, still stunned—or even dead?—from the earth elemental's initial blow.

  The creatures were suddenly free from untold centuries of confinement, and they were taking their rage out on Kormak, who'd come crashing into their midst. Alaeron wanted to get himself and his friends away before the beings turned their attention to them. Jaya and Skiver had already shouldered their packs, and Skiver—ever practical—had the dead wizard's things, too. Alaeron grabbed his pack and stumbled after Jaya, into the dark and away.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  They did not sleep again that night, but they couldn't run forever—at least, Skiver and Alaeron couldn't—so once it became apparent neither Kormak nor elementals were pursuing, they trudged. They soon left the earthworks of the Slave Trenches behind, and the ground became more stony as they entered the foothills of the mountain range known as the Barrier Wall, separating the Mwangi Expanse from the more or less civilized world.

  They didn't speak for a long time, all too stunned or exhausted by what they'd witnessed, but when the light of dawn began to rise behind them, Jaya said, "Ernst. He died for us. To protect us."

  "He was a good man," Alaeron said.

  "Piss on that," Skiver said. "I'm not a good man, and I don't need to think he was, neither. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, we didn't spend that much time together, did we? But it's true enough he fought for us, and he was good company, and I'll miss him."

  "He was bold," Alaeron said. "And so excited. I ...I'm sorry I led him to this. Kormak was coming for me—"

  "No," Jaya said. "It's my crime against Vadim that set us all on this journey. It's my fault." Her voice was steady, but Alaeron saw tears gleaming on her cheeks. She'd grown closer to the wizard than the others had in their days together, and while for Alaeron the feeling of loss was like a hollow place in his belly, he thought that for her the pain must be so much sharper.

  "I'm the one who gambled away our money to that hellspawn in Absalom," Skiver said. "If I hadn't done that, we wouldn't have met Ernst, and Chuma wouldn't have sent him to spy on us, and he'd still be alive, so by that measure it's my fault. How far back up the chain of blame do you want to go? Piss on that, too. Kormak's the one who killed him, and Kormak's the one to blame. I just hope he got crushed and drowned and burned."

  "Do you think he lived?" Jaya said. "The Kellid?"

  "The elementals are mighty, and he was weak, I think," Alaeron said. "I know better than to say he's definitely dead, but I don't think you have to worry—"

  "I'm not worried," she said fiercely. "I hope he's alive. I hope he comes after us. He murdered my friend, and I want the chance to kill him myself."

  "I knew I liked you," Skiver said, and even somehow managed to grin.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  That first night, after a long walk in the cruel sun, they stopped in late afternoon, exhausted from too little sleep and too much terror the night before, and slept in the lee of an enormous broken statue which might once have been a giant lion or sphinx: now only its legs remained, pocked and pitted by time. They took turns keeping watch, the others curling up in their blankets to sleep, but the night passed quietly.

  The next morning they had breakfast at dawn, finishing the last of the hard-boiled eggs from the felucca. After that it was going to be all tough jerkies, hard cheeses, and the sort of brick-hard bread sailors packed for long sea voyages. "It's all up to Jaya now," Skiver said. "Vadim's reach doesn't extend beyond here. We're on our own, here in this great bloody lot of nothing."

  "Another six days before we reach the pass, you think?" Alaeron asked. The mountains looked distressingly far away—and even once they reached the peaks, they still had to get over them.

  Jaya shrugged. "Or longer. Distance is hard to judge in the desert, and I have only my mother's account of the journey, recollected many years after the fact. But at least the mountains are hard to miss. Barring sandstorms, we shouldn't get lost. Though I think we should start walking at night after this."

  They stayed in the shadow of the statue, taking turns trying to sleep and keeping watch. When the sun began to sink they set off, and the following days fell into a deadening routine. They walked until they were exhausted, or until the sun tinted the horizon (the former usually came first), and camped in whatever shelter they could find. The sands were dotted with fragments of ancient structures, and they were usually able to find some kind of shelter from the sun. None of them adjusted well to the nocturnal schedule, and they were snappish and ill tempered as a whole, all of them brooding on their separate and communal troubles.

  Finally, one late night, Jaya said, "I believe we will reach the pass soon. I would not care to try the passage in the dark. Shall we try to sleep, and finish our trip in the daylight?"

  Alaeron agreed gratefully. He'd slept most of the day, or tried to, but there was ample exhaustion to go around in a grueling hike through the desert with only terribly uninteresting food to eat, and not much in the way of scintillating conversation. But he found it difficult to rest, energized by the prospect of reaching the pass and moving from Osirion into the great vastness of the Mwangi Expanse—and, if everything worked out and nothing ate them along the way, looking at last upon the ruins of Kho.

  They were all a bit more cheerful the next morning, sensing if not the end of their journey then at least the passing of a milestone. The ground had long since gone from flat desert to steep hillsides, making all new parts of Alaeron's muscles complain.

  When they were well into the mountains proper, Skiver squinted up at the jagged peaks. "There are supposed to be people—guides—near the pass, but unless they're disguised as rocks, I don't see anybody."

  "I can read the shape of the land," Jaya said. "Travelers over mountains tend to follow the easiest path for as long as they can. We'll do the same."

  If this was the easy path, Alaeron had no desire to experience the hard one. The slope became steeper, the path more rocky, everything barren and desolate, though there were occasional piles of stones that Jaya insisted were trail markers. Eventually, as evening approached, Jaya pointed. "Look. Smoke."

  A few houses, looking like little more than piles of stone, stood on a small plateau. The hooves of innumerable goats clattered among the stones, the scrawny beasts chewing on stunted trees and scrub grass. A few people dressed in clothes gone gray with age shuffled out to greet the newcomers. They were not clearly Osiriani or Mwangi, but some mixture, as to be expected of border folk. One man, fatter than the rest, strode forward, beaming, arms outstretched.

  "Travelers!" he called in Alaeron's native tongue. "I am Malako, the elder of this humble village. Do you seek guidance through the pass?" He squinted at Jaya. "Or are you a native of the villages beyond the mountains, returning home?"

  "My mother came from an Uomoto village, yes," Jaya said. "My friends and I are going for a visit. But we would welcome a native willing to show us the way."

  "Of course! My fourth son, Malaki, will take you, at least as far as the Vulture's Roost."

  "Vultures, wonderful," Skiver muttered.

  "It's an old Osirian fort," Jaya said. "Aboul-Nasar. My mother said it was abandoned, though."

  "Not at all," the fat villager said. "Now it is a lodge for Pathfinders bound for the Expanse, but they trade with anyone who passes by. If you have the coin."

  "Precious little," Jaya said. "But enough, I think, to pay your son—and I hope buy us a roof for the night? I love nothing more than sleeping under the stars, but my companions are accustomed to having something between themselves and the sky."

  "Of course!" he said, which made Alaeron's heart rise, though it sank a bit again when the man shouted to one of his sons to chase the goats out of the old storehouse. Still, it was better than camping in the desert, and Alaeron was so weary of walking he would have agreed even if the goats hadn't been chased out first. Who knew he would look back so fondly on the tedium of voyaging by sea and river?

  The villagers fed them stew—goat, of course—and then Jaya sat with them around a fire, practicing her mother's tongue with a few of the border folk who spoke it. Skiver and Alaeron quickly grew bored with a conversation they couldn't comprehend and sat off a little ways by themselves, sharing a skin of wine purchased at an extortionate price from one of Malako's innumerable sons.

  "I thought you'd want this," Skiver said, and handed Alaeron Ernst's spellbook.

  "Ah," Alaeron said, taking it, a lump in his throat. "I...thank you."

  Skiver shrugged. "No use to me, but maybe some to you. I took his spare knife, though it's not much good. There are other things. Gold, food, the wand he took off that hellspawn, a bunch of bags and jars of powders and other things he used for his spells, I reckon. Some jewelry I thought Jaya might like, as a memento."

  "She cared about him, didn't she?"

  Skiver took a long pull of wine before answering. "Not at first. She came to me on the barge, asked if I thought he'd be a useful member of the party, said she thought she could tempt him over to our side. I couldn't see any harm in having a wizard with us when we got to Kho, especially with your Kellid still on our trail, so I told her to do her best. I thought her, ah, friendliness with Ernst all along was just an act—she's a great actor, that one—but that night by the campfire, when they woke us with their nuzzling ...I don't believe she did that just to keep him loyal, especially since he'd thrown in with us pretty firmly by then. Sometimes you pretend to be a thing for long enough, and you become that thing. I know I acted the hardened killer for ages before I had the right. Maybe pretending to care about him made Jaya care about him. Or maybe it's simpler than that. Sometimes there's a spark."

  "She never sparked with me," Alaeron said.

  Skiver passed him the wineskin. "She's fond of you. Calls you ‘her hero,' sometimes, to me. She seems to feel terrible for getting you mixed up in her problems, too. Argued with me many times to just let you go if you wanted, but I told her we were doing things Vadim's way." He clapped Alaeron on the shoulder. "The problem is, there's this guilt in her when it comes to you, and I think that keeps more pleasant feelings from getting a grip on her. It's hard to get close to a man when you feel bad about something you did to him, I'd wager. Not that I'd know, never feeling bad about anything myself, but that's how it seems to me." He took back the wineskin and sloshed it, then sighed. "I'll have to buy another of these, won't I? Could be my last chance for a good drink, unless we find a nice wine cellar in the ruins of Kho. That would be quite a vintage, wouldn't it? Look at me, drinking wine. I've become all sophisticated. My mother would be so ashamed of me." He went off in search of more drink.

  Alaeron leafed idly through Ernst's spellbook, but with only half his attention on the contents. The rest was mulling over what Skiver had said. Perhaps he was right, and Jaya had only liked Ernst better because their relationship had no stumbling blocks in its path, apart from a certain amount of forgivable deceit and treachery. Alaeron could hardly attempt to woo Jaya now, with Ernst dead only two days, but perhaps in time, if they made it back from Kho and bought their way out of Vadim's bad graces, then there could be hope ...

  The alchemist slept better that night than he had in weeks. Kormak was almost certainly dead. Their destination was near. And he could hope that, someday, Jaya would go from calling him her hero to her love.

  Chapter Nineteen

  An Ancestral Home

  Malako's son Malaki was a sweet boy of perhaps ten years, who offered to shoulder Ernst's pack for them. They set off at first light, walking into the shadow of the mountain along a goat track that he said was the fastest way to join up with the pass.

  "Do you get many visitors?" Alaeron asked.

  The boy nodded. "You are the first in two months, but there will be others. There is no other way over the mountains for long leagues in either direction, so those who wish to enter the Expanse from Osirion enter here. More come this way than come back, though." His voice was entirely too cheerful.

  The slopes were punishing, making Alaeron's calves ache, and to make matters worse, Jaya and Malaki seemed entirely untroubled by the landscape, both walking as easily as Alaeron would have strolled down a street. "Just around the bend!" Malaki called as noon approached. "We will join up with a wider track, and the journey to the Vulture's Roost will be easier then."

  "Good," Skiver said, limping a little—he'd been complaining of a blister on his heel all morning. "Easier is—"

  They rounded the curve and came face to face with three hyenafolk.

  The creatures were dressed in boiled leather and bits of chainmail, armed with spears. They were no bigger than Malaki, their doglike heads ferocious, teeth bared, necklaces of bones and fangs around their throats. The beasts made no move to attack.