TWO DAYS PRIOR…

A warrior is not a warrior until a warrior is called, Dorja thought. Someone had told her that long ago. She focused on those words as the huge compristeel doors hissed open and she stepped inside the great hall to face a roomful of judgmental gazes. Men in slashcoats hovered near a crackling fire, deep in whispery conversation. There were no women to be seen. Orblights, those floating, gaseous, bioluminescent, jellyfish-looking creatures that seemed to be all over the Outer Reach, were hovering all about the room.

The eyes of every man locked onto her, and she knew at once she could not share her candle with these people. Indeed, in front of men such as these, she must keep her candle hidden.

A warrior is not a warrior until a warrior is called.

Dorja was scared. She was always nervous in front of others. She couldn’t let them see it, though. If they saw it once, it would forever be a weapon wielded against her, as surely as if she had handed them the glaive in her hands.

She held her glaive tight, just in case this was a trap. She had been in such traps before. Men with promises and women with the sweetest smiles had invited her into their homes, even fed her and lodged her. Many of those people had ulterior motives, feasting with their eyes rather than their mouths. Such people were otz, false.

The great hall was made partially from compristeel imported from off-world, and partially from old stone. Marble columns rose from those stone floors into a glimmering, vaulted compristeel ceiling, from which hung a delicate crystal chandelier, its electric lights flickering on and off indecisively. The power grid on this part of the planet had been dodgy of late, the power plants were failing. Hence, the living orblights. But the air was also full of golden light shafting through the dusty glass windows.

The faces that turned to her contained the most critical eyes. Each face shifted in the shadows made by a few inadequate candles, which wavered in the ghost wind that entered the hall with her. Behind Dorja, the steward quietly shut the door and the wind ceased, though it was still cold. He went before her, leading her through the hall and towards a raised dais, upon which sat the castellan. In truth, Dorja had been waiting for the castellan’s call. High lords such as he often wanted to have a gander at the blue-skinned witch. But she had not expected it to be as a call for help.

“My lord, I have brought her,” the steward said obsequiously.

“Yes, I can see that,” the castellan said, his tone low and ruminative. The keeper of this castle was a short but stout man, wreathed in light supplied by the orblights that slowly orbited his chair, which Dorja surmised was meant to be viewed as a throne. Above him on the wall was the shield with the double-headed wyrm that was the sigil of the Suzerain, whom the castellan served. He had absurdly long white hair woven seamlessly into the slashcoat he wore, which bore many badges of state, some of them hololithic and glimmering.

The steward cleared his throat. “Lord Oric Lamplight, High Regius-Castellan of River Wails,” he introduced, and waved a hand to the castellan.

Dorja just looked around at all the faces. If they were expecting her to fall to her knees in supplication, they were in for a disappointment. But she felt judged. She always felt judged. Every moment she breathed, every time she stood in the presence of any human eye, her motives were being guessed at.

The castellan pursed his lips curiously. “Come closer, my blue beauty. Let us have a better look at you.”

Dorja did not move.

The castellan scratched irritably at his scraggly beard and looked at his steward. “What’s the matter with her? Is she deaf? Simple?”

The steward looked uncomfortably at Dorja. “She’s…eh…”

“Dorja is not simple, old man,” she said.

“Ah, it speaks.” The castellan grinned and the rest of his court chortled. “And you will address me as ‘my lord.’”

“You are not Dorja’s lord, you are a man seated in a chair.”

A murmur passed through the crowd. Someone might have gasped. Dorja paid no mind.

“Not deaf,” said the castellan. “And not simple. But a fool. And a savage, by the look of you.” He sighed. This time his smile did not reach his eyes. “So, here you are. You know, you’ve brought much consternation to River Wails.”

“What is River Wails?” Dorja asked.

“It’s the name of the town and realm you are standing in.” The castellan cocked his head to one side. “Do you not know where you are?”

“The Kingdom is fallen,” she said. “Dust is the same everywhere.”

“You call my realm dust?”

“All the Kingdom is dust. The Brood have made sure.”

The castellan leaned forward slightly with new interest, as if finding some new and exciting spore under his microscope. “I see now why so many hold you in contempt. The priestesses at the temple aver that you are not to be trusted. They say you bring evil spirits. They beseech me to have you killed or sent away.”

“Do these priestesses wish their castellan to die?”

Gasps flooded the room.

The castellan’s glare hardened. “You threaten one of the Suzerain’s castellans?”

“Dorja asked a question,” she shrugged. As soon as she said it, she wished she’d bitten her tongue.

Someone laughed. Dorja looked around, and saw a blond-haired man off to her right stifling a grin. His moppy hair half concealed his eyes, but both of them bore into hers. Others looked at him with curious faces, but still he chuckled to himself.

“I understand you mangled three men at one of my beer halls,” the castellan said grimly.

“They intended Dorja bodily harm,” she said.

The castellan looked her up and down appraisingly. “It stirs something dark inside me to see such monstrous glamour in a single being. I see you now, and behold a creature stepped from the nightmares of my childhood. A woman of blue flesh, and with four arms. See you this creature, Sedley.”

“I see her very well, sire,” said the steward.

“You have looked at her, but have you seen her? Those are two very different things. A wise man once told me so. I thought him foolish, but now I see the difference. So look at her.”

The steward, Sedley, was hesitant.

“I said look at her! I’ll not have cowards in my court!”

Sedley made himself do as commanded, and Dorja felt shame, for the man looked as though it caused him great physical pain to just look upon her. When their eyes met, Dorja’s own gaze became cold. The steward turned pale and fought to keep his manhood.

“Now you see, we should not be afraid of this creature. We are not common like the folk in the town. We are men of Skyreach, men of Herenov and the Kingdom, and we do not look away. Not even if the Doom comes for us shall we look away.” Even as he said it, though, the castellan appeared wary of meeting Dorja’s gaze. “But my father once told me it was best to look a horse in the mouth, even a gifted one, despite what conventional wisdom says. He said a leader should always be wary of new gifts and new allies. So, tell me first, creature, why did you come here? Was it the Coin I offered?”

“Dorja cares little for Coin,” she said.

“Yet you are a blade merchant.”

“Yes.”

“Then why come you to my domain, which the Suzerain has placed into my safekeeping? Why do you lurk at the edge of my town and not mingle among my people? Why do you keep to your tent and only venture out at night?”

Dorja felt the eyes of a dozen toads on her. She kept her composure. “Dorja knows she is grotesque. She knows ordinary people find her blue flesh and her weeping hands to be repulsive, so she keeps out of sight.”

“Weeping hands…?”

“These,” she said, lifting her two lower arms. This drew another gasp from the crowd when she did so, along with whispers of surprise that the two spare arms were actually able to move. The castellan himself winced in disgust, or perhaps in pity. She was used to both, and almost numb to their revulsion. Almost. “Dorja keeps to herself because she knows how others see her.”

“But you are not so principled when it comes to Coin, eh?” said the castellan. “You say you are above money, yet the rumor about my fiefdom is that you have been asking for honest work. Bodyguard work, security, that sort of thing?”

“That is true.”

“But you just told me you cared not for Coin.”

“Dorja said she cared little. She must have enough to survive.”

The castellan stroked his beard a moment. “That glaive of yours, is it just for show?”

“It is not. And Dorja did not come to this court to waste her time. Your own time is yours to waste. The steward mentioned a child. Dorja wants only the child.”

A dark cloud came over the castellan’s face. “I was told witches eat children. Is that you, blue beauty? Tell true, for I make no deals with witches, blue or otherwise,” the castellan said, his words like a storm’s quiet promise.

“Dorja is no witch,” she said. “Dorja is Dorja.”

“Dorja,” the castellan said, as if trying on the name. “Dorja. Is that a surname or given name?”

She shrugged. “Dorja is Dorja.”

A smile creased a corner of the castellan’s mouth. “You say you are no witch, yet I hear tell that there are many queer symbols scrawled in the dirt around your tent, symbols like those painted on your face, and animal bones lying about ritualistically, and a dreamcatcher that hangs from the door of your tent. Is that not so?”

“It is so.”

“Then if you are no witch, why do you act like one?”

“Dorja’s people observed their own rituals.”

“Your people. Who are your people? Where are they?”

“They are all gone.”

“All of them?”

“All except for Dorja.”

The castellan eyed her severely for a quiet moment. Toyed with his fingernails. Mulled her over. “What is it you want with a child?”

“Dorja merely wants the child out of danger. That is all.”

“Why?”

“Because as long as Dorja draws breath, help is always coming.”

The castellan lifted a curious eyebrow. Exchanged a look with his steward. “A most noble notion, to cast yourself as a servant to those in need. If your words are not false, then I commend you.” He reached for a crystal chalice, sipped some red liquid from it, and sat it back down with a belch. “But such courage will not help you in the Cave of Whispers, I’m afraid. There are dangers there quite beyond the ken of Man.”

“Tell Dorja,” she said, and stamped her glaive against the stone floor impatiently.

The castellan’s face now shifted into the most bemused look. He wasn’t yet sure what to make of this creature, but he would entertain it a moment longer. “High in the mountain Amon’tha, there is a peak. This peak is called Widower’s Summit. And there is a cave there, known to all as the Cave of Whispers. Within it lies a monster most foul, what comes out but once every seventy-three years. A sort of…predator. It was on this planet when our people first settled it ages ago, an abductor of children and small animals, usually the slow and sickly. It exists now in songs and poems and campfire stories, the tale of this thing passed from mouth to ear for uncountable generations. It is called Vash’tik, accursed one, and for a time it was thought to have died or gone someplace else. But it has reappeared, and in force.

“My lands are now riddled with stories of such gut-wrenching horror. The beast crawls through my fief, picking off goats and cows and dogs, and now even women and children. Back to its old habits, if the stories are true. That in itself was enough to cause a stir, but then came the tales of a man seen riding the Vash’tik, as though he commanded the thing, like a man sat atop his horse—”

“Words are wasted when action is required,” Dorja interrupted, stamping her glaive again. “Tell Dorja where this creature and its master are. If a child is truly in trouble, all these words are waste. We cannot waste any more time. Where is she?”

A storm of whispers rippled through the audience. Dorja felt ardent need to act, and was confused to see so many men standing about or sitting. She expected more expediency for such a matter. After all, a child had been taken. Was this not the time when the most earnest action was needed?

“Don’t you even want to know what is up there in the cave, Dorja?” said the castellan, reaching for his chalice again and sipping from it. “If you wish to go, wouldn’t it be better to know what it is you’re facing?”

Dorja weighed the wisdom of that. She nodded, and gave another declamatory thump of her glaive against the floor. “Tell Dorja. But be quick about it.”

The steward stepped forward. “Do not hasten the castellan, witch.”

Dorja looked at him. The steward had been afraid of her before, but seemed to have grown some backbone now that he was comfortably surrounded by more men.

The castellan raised a hand. “It’s fine, Sedley, it’s fine. We must indulge such uncouth savages, for they are people too, neh?”

He smiled at Dorja. She had had that same sort of smile aimed at her before. It was the indulgent smile of someone whose curiosity had been piqued. But she also knew there was a limit to how long men would indulge such slights, especially men of noble birth and power. The Master had told her such men have fuses of varying lengths, and you must always guess at how much of the fuse is left to burn.

“There is a farm on the outskirts of my fiefdom, blue beauty,” he said. “Just beyond the Low Hills. The woman who runs that farm is named Ora. She is known to me, known for her fealty and reliability. She keeps her farming drones working, and her plantation always produces its taxes in rice, and then some. Two weeks ago, she went out late at night with her three wee girls to see about the goats, who they heard making a great fuss in their pen. The story Ora tells is…” He trailed off, as if he needed to gather himself.

Dorja stared at him, pensive and alert, her senses keeping track of the men all around her in the hall. She still wasn’t sure this wasn’t a trap.

The castellan finally hove a sigh. To Dorja, he looked like a man grown weary from hauling too many burdens. For a moment, she felt sorry for him. “It has been almost a fortnight since I got any good sleep. That’s how long it has been since I first heard the tale. This woman, Ora, she went with her girls: Sheila, Adi, and Senjelica. They had orblights, just like these,” he said, pointing above him at the jellyfish-like creatures that hovered quietly above him. “Ora and her children crossed the field, which was tended by the reaping drones. The drones’ scythe-arms were quiet that time of night, and they rested on their big legs, their cells powered down till the sun returned on the following dawn. But one of them was destroyed, torn to pieces. Ora, fearful though she was, took these pictures.”

The castellan waved a hand and a holopane appeared in midair, showing images of reaping drones that had been torn asunder, their scythe-arms busted and broken, wires and hoses hanging out like wet, oily viscera. Dorja stepped closer to the holopane to study the gashes in the drone’s sides. Massive, she thought. As if done by a giant animal’s claw.

“The goats were still screaming. Ora stepped into the pen to appease them. Under heavens filled with stars and the two moons, she saw a ghastly sight. Many of her goats were dead. Well, not just dead, mutilated. Her girls screamed at the sight of all the red viscera. Ora said she didn’t know if all the screaming summoned the creature, but appear it did.”

The castellan waved a hand, and another holopane appeared in front of Dorja. The pane was projected from the wall to her right, and materialized as a glowing rectangular screen. What she saw was a distorted camera’s view of something with black fur. She heard the high-pitched screams of small girls. The screams came from the speakers built into the compristeel walls on either side of her. Every man in the room averted his gaze and covered his ears. Every man save one.

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The blond-bearded man stood in one corner of the hall, not dressed formally, but in a homespun belted tunic with rough leather-and-fur cloak. He stood away from Sedley and the castellan, eyes fixed on the holopane.

Dorja forced herself to watch. She saw slashing claws and gaping fangs move quickly past the camera in a blur. The sound of gnashing steel filled the air. A woman’s cry: “Run, Sheila! Run!” Dorja saw a splash of red, and then all the screams ceased, and the hall was suddenly filled with haunting silence. Most of the people present made the sign of abjuration in the air, warding off evil.

“That video was taken by the drones that went out with Ora and her daughters that night,” said the castellan. “Ora and her children were badly injured, but one of them went missing. Senjelica. One of her sisters claims she saw Senjelica picked up by a man who rode atop a monster matching the description of Vash’tik. A man in black robes, and with ruby-red eyes glittering from behind a fell mask.”

“Then the girl is dead,” Dorja whispered. She felt a twinge in her chest, a needle of ice threading her heart. Despair. “Eaten. Like the goats.”

“We do not think so. This creature has long puzzled our people. It certainly does feed, but it also mutilates livestock for seemingly no reason—as it did for some of Ora’s goats. But the songs passed down from our ancestors also talk of abductions. The beast walks on four legs, some say six, some say none. It has snake-like appendages, tentacles that extend from its bony spine and snatch up its prey. No one knows what it does with them. As the song says…” The castellan glanced at his steward.

Sedley cleared his throat and sang a morose song,

“In the twilight rain,

Its feet move swiftly through darkness, dripping,

Clutch your children, tend to your oldmothers,

Lest its long fingers catch you slipping”

The castellan waved sharply, and instantly Sedley stopped singing and the holopane dissipated like dust. “There is another song that tells the tale of a child who came back, though many years after she had been plucked by Vash’tik. Her mind was gone. The girl walked, but it was like she was an empty vessel. Half her fingers and toes were taken by frostbite. With trembling voice did she tell of the thing in the cave. Her story alone is how we know where it resides. Drones have been sent there to look, though none ever return.” He added, with a dead stare that almost made Dorja feel sad for him, “The song says the monster drank in her fear, that she was pale and drained, like a wet cloth forced through a strainer. Do you understand? This thing…it requires not only meat for sustenance, but the souls and minds of certain victims. Innocents. Children.”

The whole room waited to see what effect the story would have on Dorja. She felt their gazes. There was something they weren’t telling her, she was sure, the true reason no one wanted to climb the Amon’tha to find the girl. Surely a castellan ought to be able to send in a large contingent with blades drawn and drones lighting the way? She chewed on that. “Why send Dorja when you have so many able-bodied men here?”

“Some have already been sent,” the castellan said. “We are waiting to hear back from them. But it is only a two-day journey, and they have been gone two weeks.”

“Can you not fly a ship midway up the mountain and take a look inside the cave?”

“The winds around the Amon’tha are always cruel. The moon monks, who often climb the mountains around here two or three times a year to behold the aurora, tend to advise against anyone flying around the Amon’tha or even climbing it. For as much as we have dominated this world and brought its wildlife to heel, there are still pockets of wilderness that resist us at every turn,” he said with supreme regret. “The winds that travel the Amon’tha…they are as indomitable as the cold.”

“And you think Dorja can climb the Amon’tha by herself?” she asked.

The castellan scratched his beard again, eyes locked on hers. “Stories reached my ears of a blade merchant, a blue beauty with four strong arms and two perfectly good legs,” he replied. “As impossible as it sounded, I had to see for myself. And I had to wonder, could such a specimen be uncommonly suited for such an adventure?”

“Ah, Dorja sees the truth now. She wasn’t summoned here to go after the girl, you have already given up on her. The steward there, Sedley, he recommended Dorja as a last-ditch effort, and you only wanted to see the blue beauty. The freak.”

This elicited another smile. “Can’t it be both?” the castellan said. “Can I not have yearned to see this blue beauty, yet also hoped she was a savior sent by some god or gods whose names I know not? For I have prayed, Dorja. Be sure, many nights I have prayed to Ghettiz and Yaosh for some sign.”

Dorja looked at each of their faces, then back at the castellan. She felt their scrutiny, their curiosity. She also felt foolish, embarrassed. They thought her inadequate, just a bit of sport, a thing to make mockery of. They did not expect her to succeed. Her, or anyone, for that matter. The castellan might have prayed but he likely held little hope that Dorja was the answer to those prayers.

“Dorja will take her leave now,” she said. “Each minute the girl is exposed to the cold is another minute she slips into the final sleep.”

“If you want to throw yourself at the Amon’tha, you have my leave to try. Though, before you go, I recommend you visit either the priestesses or the moon monks,” the castellan said with a forlorn smirk. “For you will die up there, blue beauty. Do not doubt it. At least holy men and priestesses can help save the immortal soul of someone like you. You are a freak, but also a creature made by the Maker. And you are a fool if you face the Amon’tha without last rites. I’m told the gods have great pity for fools.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the hall. Dorja cast about, gazing balefully at the steward, who, despite having been the one to fetch her, was now snorting with laughter, as well. Only the blond-bearded man did not laugh at her.

Dorja’s expression changed a little, which later the people present would say made her look quizzical and innocent. In truth, she was trying to figure out these faces, these people. People in general had long been a puzzle to her. They built fortresses and communities and were encouraged to be polite, but all of it was just honeyed words and sophistry. When they saw something they did not understand, all hospitality drained from them.

“Then Dorja goes alone,” she said finally, slinging her glaive over her right shoulder, letting it hang by the strap. “The rest of you stay here inside your stone walls, safe and sound. Dorja goes now to die,” she said, and wiggled her nose with her thumb, a gesture she had picked up while traveling the spacelanes. Among spacers, it meant she didn’t care for these people.

“You won’t go alone, sweet Dorja,” said the castellan. “You’ll at least need directions to the mountain base, and to the best passage to start your climb. Kirek?”

A man stepped away from the wall where he had been standing. It was the blond-bearded man, the only one not to look away and draw abjuration signs in the air during the holovid playback, the only one to look upon her without fear or disgust.

“This is Kirek,” the castellan said. “A scout. I hired him and his team to try and find the safest route up the mountain. He lost his team in a storm and had to climb back down by himself, but he knows the best way up. He will show you.”

Dorja looked over at the scout. Back at the castellan. “This is it? One man? One man is all you can muster for a child in danger?”

“Careful, blue beauty. You are in my house, and at my invitation. And in case you haven’t noticed, the Suzerain’s resources are stretched thin across the galaxy, the Brood devour us all, and mankind has entered its last chapter.” The castellan’s gaze became lost. Everyone in the room seemed to mourn his words. “Be thankful we have even the resources to give you Kirek here.”

Dorja looked back at the blond man. “Fine,” she said. “At least one of you isn’t useless.”

* * *

Her feet splashed heavily through a corridor sluiced with melt water. It was one of many aboveground tunnels that serviced the town by letting runoff from the mountains go by without causing obstruction. There were many ice-cold rivers that etched through the area like varicose veins, cutting jagged lines through stony hills. Some of the deltas were manmade, splintering off into canals that wound labyrinthine through the town. Dorja knew the darkest tunnels, the shortest shortcuts, parts of the river deltas few ever saw. Kirek wasn’t too happy to be following Dorja beneath these bridges and through these culverts. She splashed through some of the shallower waters with total abandon, forcing him to do the same, his feet becoming numb to the freezing waters. He was a scout by profession, raised in the wilds, but there were limits to his abilities. He wondered if Dorja’s species had some special resistance to cold.

Besides cold water, there was also plenty of sewage that got dumped into these wide gutters. The smell was always pungent, sometimes bringing tears.

“Is it really necessary that we move through such filth?” he asked.

“Dorja thought you were a scout,” she said, using the haft of her glaive to test what lay beneath the knee-deep water that ran through the center of the tunnel. She kept to the shallow side, and her booted feet splashed through waters thick with discarded trash. “Surely you must be used to going where others don’t.”

“I go to such places as only needs require,” Kirek retorted.

“As does Dorja,” she said, ducking into another tunnel.

“And what needs are served by us taking such dank pathways?”

“Dorja tends to cause a scene wherever she goes. She…does not like the eyes of others.”

“The eyes of others…you mean you don’t like being looked at?”

“This is what she means.”

Kirek nodded and rubbed his hands together, then pulled his fur cloak more tightly to him. Dorja could not tell what sort of animal had made the coat—the fur was as black as night, with little spackles of white, like a starry night. What Kirek could have told her was that the fur came from a slazzesh’ik, a large, fanged, cat-like predator that itself would not go splashing through such cold waters with abandon.

“You often maneuver this way?” he asked. “Hiding in culverts and sewers and tunnels?”

“Depends on the town, and on the world. Space stations are usually easier for Dorja.”

Kirek nodded. “Ah, yes, since they are such melting pots of different peoples.”

“Yes.”

They walked in silence for a bit, crossing back into daylight and then over a bridge that traversed yet another river vein, then back into a tunnel that edged east towards the mountains.

“You’ll need warmer clothing,” Kirek eventually said. “Some furs or other insulation to stuff inside that armor.”

“Dorja will be fine.”

“You don’t know cold like what’s up on the Amon’tha. You cannot comprehend cold such as that, Dorja.”

Dorja looked at him sharply, then looked away.

“What? Did I say something wrong?”

“You called Dorja by her name, not freak or blue beauty.”

“Would you rather I call you blue—”

“No. It is not a compliment. Those men back there…when they speak of beauty and Dorja in the same sentence, they do not really mean beauty. You understand? I am a grotesque.”

Kirek winced. “You are not so hideous,” he ventured. “Just different. The people of this world aren’t used to anything that is different.”

“This world?” said Dorja, glancing at him sidelong as she took a turn down the tunnel, their way only lit by Kirek’s drone that floated next to them, panning its searchlight left and right. “You think it’s different on any other world?”

Kirek didn’t answer that. Instead he asked the question foremost on his mind, “You’ve traveled a lot?”

“Define a lot.”

“More than twenty?”

“Yes.”

“More than fifty?”

“Yes.”

Kirek was shocked. He was a scout and hadn’t even seen as many worlds. He wasn’t sure he believed her. “Where do you come from?”

“Are you not of this world?” she said, changing the subject.

“Not originally, no,” he shrugged. “I was raised on the float, in an asteroid belt. My family were all ice miners. But too many years spent on the float can cause medical problems, so I had to become planetbound. So, after some travels, I wound up staying here, to keep away from the Brood.” Dorja said nothing to that and Kirek merely watched her. He looked at her reaching hands, which, except for their color, looked perfectly normal. But Dorja was walking slightly ahead of him; that gave him a good look at her weeping hands, each of which only had three fingers.

She looks human enough, Kirek thought. But there are enough differences to make one wonder…was she originally human, and her deformities merely the result of some experiment? If so, what was the experiment? Dare I ask her where she hails from?

Kirek thought about it for a moment, but ultimately kept his questions to himself. Such questions are for friends to ask, and we are not yet well acquainted. “The path on the south side of the mountain is the best approach, I should think,” he said.

Dorja looked back at him as she walked. “Is that where your people went missing?”

“Yes. We scouted it out and nearly made it to Widower’s Summit, but a storm set upon us and we had to turn back. It was I who ordered the retreat, but not everyone heard me above the wind.” Kirek sighed wearily. Just thinking about it was painful. “They were good men. I did not know them all very well, but they did as they were told, and were brave when bravery was needed.”

“Good men are good men. Dorja will send a prayer to them tonight.”

Kirek nodded. “I thank you,” he said, and meant it. “But save your prayers for yourself. The castellan was right, you are a fool if you go. You heard him, he only summoned you to see the ‘blue beauty.’ Maybe he told you that story in the hope you would actually give it a try and succeed, and maybe he told you so you would go and die, and he’d at least be rid of a blue-faced witch.”

Dorja glanced back at him. “Do you think you lost your people to the storm,” she said, “or to the creature that lives in the mountain?”

It was as though she had not heard his warning.

“I cannot say, for true,” Kirek said. “I have prayed every night since I lost them that Vash’tik did not claim their souls, that they died peacefully in their sleep, as I’ve heard it said men who freeze to death will often do. Simply drift into a warm, dreamless slumber, and pass easily into the afterlife.” Kirek drew a circle in the air with his fingers, the sign of the goddess Ishk’Maega-Toth, Lady of the Night, who receives the souls of all lost travelers. “I have prayed each night for their return, also.”

“Has anyone actually seen what this Vash’tik looks like?” she asked. “The castellan only had songs, vague descriptions. That holovid showed very little.”

“If any have actually seen the monster clearly, they’ve not survived. Even Ora, the farmer, said she saw only flitting fur and a tangle of jaws and metal tongues in the darkness.” Kirek looked at her. “The beast itself should not be approached. There are stories of men stabbing it repeatedly, yet it leaves no blood. And the witnesses that lived to catch even a glimpse say the thing appears to feel no pain.” He sighed and his breath was a small roiling cloud. “The story of this thing…it has frightened the people here like nothing I’ve ever seen. See how they all stay indoors. See how little foot traffic is about today,” Kirek said, pointing back towards the town, to the empty cobblestone streets. “The marketplace is usually full to bursting. Vash’tik has us all in its grasp.”

“Dorja is not afraid of this thing,” she said.

“That ‘thing’ has a master, Dorja. And if killing is on the master’s conscience, the monster itself will not be swayed. You can be sure, Vash’tik is a creature beyond our ken, but so is the mind of the one who would seek to bend it to his will.”

Dorja made no comment to this. Internally, she was glad to have something to do. She had been anxious in the castellan’s court, and she was glad now to have a purpose outside of trying to fit in. She was comforted, though, by Kirek’s companionship and frankness. Rarely was she afforded the chance to speak to someone as though an equal. Part of her wished she had met him long ago, before she went to battle the Amon’tha.

The two of them walked in silence, each person thinking their own thoughts about the other, wondering about each other’s pasts and motives. They stepped out of the tunnel and headed for the series of rugged, denuded hills in the east. They hiked up one of the lower hills. The Amon’tha was dead ahead, its impossibly tall peak piercing the clouds above. The wind picked up, howling like a swarm of banshees.

“What sort of climbing gear do you have?” Dorja asked. She came to a halt and looked up at the Amon’tha, a tombstone to some dead god.

“Climbing gear?”

She looked at him, puzzled. “You are a scout, are you not? You have climbing gear.”

“Very sorry, Lady Dorja,” Kirek said, venturing to use the honorific. “But this planet is very poor, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Farmers, miners, and scant merchants. People live their whole lives digging in those hills for the metals the Kingdom uses to replace compristeel hulls for starships the people here will never see.” He shrugged. “They did not come here to climb mountains.”

“You have no climbing gear at all?”

“Do you understand now why the way is so treacherous?” He shrugged off the bag he had been carrying and handed it to her. “Here. It’s got blankets. Food. A quickstart camp, with a firemaker and all.”

“Dorja has her own,” she said, and gazed back up at the Amon’tha, a snow-capped monument to tectonic physics. “If the creature climbs down from there every night to feed, and climbs back up, we can assume it has feet made for climbing. Claws.” She looked at Kirek. “What do its tracks look like?”

“There are none. There never are.”

Dorja’s eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously. “Vash’tik leaves no tracks?”

“None,” he confirmed.

Dorja shook her head, as if telling herself that made no sense. Then she gazed determinedly up at the mountain. Kirek watched her eyes. He wondered what she was thinking. What did she think about those huge gusts of snow whipping around the mountain’s middle, fogging the view of its terrain, concealing its peak? I suppose it’s the same thing we all think when facing the Amon’tha, he thought. “You’re thinking about turning back now, aren’t you?”

The alien beauty flashed a look at him. Embers of stubborn flame danced in her eyes and Kirek was momentarily unmanned—for something swam within Dorja’s eyes, some fugitive light, there and gone.

“Dorja does not turn back,” she whispered, moving unerringly through the next tunnel. It sounded like a rebuke. “It has never happened. And it never will.”

“I don’t know you, Dorja,” he said sincerely, “but I must beseech you…do not do this. You throw yourself at an unbeatable enemy. Three of them. Vash’tik, its master, and the Amon’tha itself. It hardly bears repeating that the cold you’ll experience up the mountain…is a killing cold. And those people back there,” he pointed to the town of River Wails, “they despise you, and they will not celebrate you, not even for the attempt. Even if you succeed, you get only Coin from the castellan, but the people themselves…they will always hate you as a witch. Trust me, I’ve lived among them for years now.”

“The girl is all that matters.”

“Why?” Kirek said, still astonished by her.

“A warrior is not a warrior until a warrior is called,” she said, and started walking away.

Kirek wanted to ask her so many things. Who was she? Where did she hear that phrase? Was it hers, or did she belong to some Order that said such things? Had she been raised by monks? But he did not know her well enough. He had a feeling that the two of them would never meet again. This was their one moment together, just two people who were hired for an impossible task, bumping into one another and becoming fascinated with each other.

We meet at the middle of my story, and at the end of hers, Kirek thought. Pity. I would’ve liked to have known her.

He turned and walked away.

* * *

Dorja was almost glad when Kirek was gone. Almost. It had been nice to have a conversation with someone she felt at least respected her. There was no mockery or falseness in him. Long had it been since someone had shown no fear of her, given no mockery, shown no disgust. But even now she was wary of Kirek’s kindness, for Dorja had once let her guard down with an equally respectable man that ended up being the type to soften her up so that she would agree to join his circus, as part of his traveling freak show exhibition.

Can I share my candle with him?

She thought for a moment.

No. I must keep it safe. Mother said so.

Dorja shrugged off past pains the way the Amon’tha had undoubtedly shrugged off the climbers that had challenged it. She looked up at the hateful piece of rock, shooting up from the ground and plunging into the clouds. Cold winds were already pushing at her cheeks, her throat, her eyes.

There were a couple of inches of snow all around the hilltop. Dorja used the blade of her glaive to shovel some of it to one side, and prepared her camp. She made a fire with the firemaker and pulled her blankets over her and slept beneath what scant stars were visible through the white canopy that dominated the skies around the Amon’tha.

Darkness deepened, the two moons came out. Hulah and Urdenmekk were their names. Hulah gave off pale white light, but Urdenmekk’s amethyst surface gave off a deep violet light.

She slept. She dreamed.

In her dreams, she was never safe. They weren’t nightmares, but there was always the feeling that she mustn’t remain still for too long. Things were chasing her, agents of darkness that were waiting for her to let her guard down. And she was alone.

Always alone.

Dorja had no friends, only enemies, and tomorrow she would face one of them. She would face the hateful Amon’tha. She would throw herself at the mountain and there was a good chance she would die. But her dreams were also tormented by the thought of the young girl, Senjelica, cold and afraid, trapped inside the cave, a prisoner to the inimical Vash’tik and whatever man it called master.

Dorja would attack the mountain. And she would do it alone.

Always ikah, alone.

Just as she had faced the Nightmare Sisters of the Far Reach, and the mad monks of Illium-IV. Just as she had stood against the traffickers on Ordomon and the six moons of Judestis, and the raiders on Gotan-VII before that, and the fell slavers of the Endoman System before that. Always it was Dorja.

Always ikah. Always alone.

image [https://i.imgur.com/f6fHUfp.jpeg]