Page 83 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
Eda swallowed another curse and stepped up to the wall. She looked at Tainir. At Morin. She could still feel his heartbeat, pulsing near hers, still feel his breath in her hair, the warmth of his arms when she’d woken up beside him, a crick in her neck from sleeping on his shoulder all night.
“Say something,” said Morin.
Tainir nodded. “A Word. A prayer.”
Eda didn’t know any of the ancient Words, and prayers made her too angry. But she splayed both palms flat against the ice and shut her eyes. “Tuer,” she whispered. “Tuer, let me in.”
Heat pulsed all at once from her forehead, blazing through her body, down her arms, into her hands. It seared into the ice wall and for one moment, two, nothing happened. And then the ice shattered with a horrificcrack,the force of it knocking Eda backwards. She ducked her head under her arms to protect herself from the shards of ice flying out in all directions like deadly rain.
“Should have tried that earlier,” Morin quipped.
Tainir gave her brother a dirty look.
Eda barely registered them. Because beyond the wall of ice stretched an expanse of snowy ground, and beyond that—
Beyond that stood a plain peak of dirt and rock, wreathed all in clouds, and she knew without a doubt that they’d found Tuer’s Mountain.
Eda grabbed her pack and stepped across the shattered ice. She was tight with fear and hope and triumph, and overwhelmed with a desperate need for haste. She broke into a run, feet pounding across the snow, not even glancing back once to make sure Morin and Tainir were following.
The sun rode high in the sky as she ran. The snow turned to slush and then mud and then bare dirt. Somehow, it was warmer now. She shrugged out of her pack and her poncho, dropping them heedlessly to the ground as she ran on and on.
The ground began to rise again. The clouds melted away.
Morin and Tainir kept pace at her heels.
She ran and ran, the mountain growing larger against the sky until she could no longer see the top of it. She felt smothered by the clouds, by something strange on the wind she didn’t have a name for.
A jagged crack split the air away to her left and the noxious scent of decay filled her nostrils. A host of spirits flew through on dark wings, jaws gaping, teeth flashing, bone swords raised high.
Eda tore the priestess’s knife from its sheath as behind her came a sudden snarl—Tainir, changed into her snow leopard form.
Morin’s hand wrapped around Eda’s wrist. “We have to run.”
They hurtled headlong up the mountain, hand in hand, Tainir bounding beside them on four paws. The spirits pursued them, shrieking and laughing, mere heartbeats behind.
Eda didn’t dare look back. She held tight to Morin. They came to a worn stone path, moss growing bright between the cracks, and kept running. The very ground seemed to hum.
The path ended abruptly at a stone doorway that looked into yawning darkness. Eda, Morin, and Tainir skidded to a stop.
Behind them, the winged spirits circled, preparing to attack. But something kept Eda standing there, staring through the gaping entranceway, frozen, unsure.
An ancient altar stood just past the doorframe, a simple plinth of carved stone, with an empty spot at its base where a petitioner could kneel. There had been a cushion there once, perhaps, but it had long since rotted away.
On top of the altar rested a basket of grain, a bowl of wine, and a loaf of bread, all as fresh-looking as if they’d been set there a moment ago, though Eda knew very well that was impossible. Had the gods preserved them, somehow? She felt suddenly foolish, small. She had brought no offering to the god of the mountain. Why did she think he would hear her?
“Do you think you need an offering? You, the god’s chosen one?”
She blinked and a shadow stood beside her, black feathers brushing against her arm. She looked up into Rudion’s face and he smiled.
Beyond him there was no one else: not Morin, not Tainir, not the host of spirits. Just Eda, and Tuer’s Shadow, the altar, and the door to the mountain.
Eda clenched her jaw, her hand wrapping around the priestess’s knife. “Why are you hunting me? I’m here. Where you wanted. At the doorway to Tuer’s Mountain.”
“I’m not hunting you,” said Rudion. “I’m driving you. And if my people devour your companions along the way, so be it. What is two less of the race of mankind on the earth? You should have come with me when I asked. Perhaps that would have saved them.”
Fear for Morin and Tainir seized her, but she refused to rise to his bait. “Yourpeople?”
“The gods cast my fellow spirits into exile. I am merely restoring them to their rightful place.”
