Chapter Twenty-Two

They rode down into the city, keeping to a path along the blood-red river that ran from the mountains and twined past the city. They stopped soon after they arrived at it. Dryden looked at the water uncertainly.

“You cannot drink it,” Ugruz said, anticipating their question, “Those that drink forget themselves.”

“We too have stories of rivers that steal memories, though I had never thought to see one for myself,” Dryden replied, “What of horses?”

“The same. Those horses who drank from the water forgot their masters and behaved as wild horses.”

None of the horses made moves to drink from it. Dryden thought that they sensed the wrongness of the waters.

When they first arrived at the walls of the black city, Dryden saw that the buildings there were truly twisted around, as if the stones themselves had melted. Once it had been a great city of the east. He saw the ruins of domes and towers and the great teardrop entry gates that adorned all the cities east of Styrania. These gates were not colourful like those of Ghinai or even Unkabi had been, these were darkened by grime and age and blackened and twisted by whatever had ruined this place. As they rode through the city, Dryden saw black shapes move in the corners of his vision. When he looked he never saw any form he could clearly define, but ever did the shadows move with the column of soldiers as they rode.

“Did you see that, sir?” Captain Khathan asked, “We are being followed.”

“Yes, but I know not what they are,” Dryden answered.

Even during the day, the light seemed to bend away from them, though there was no cloud in the sky they rode through shadow. “Should we not send riders?” Khathan asked, “To find any sign of Aisa?”

“You must not,” Ugruz warned, “You will not see them again.”

After what seemed an hour of riding, though they could not be sure because the sun did not move in the sky as normal, they came to an intersection in the city with a wide square.

“Which way?” Dryden demanded of Ugruz.

“We ride through the city to the very centre, where the pit is. That is where the sacrifice is made. It is where Aisa will go if she seeks to escape. She has been here and lived, she knows its ways.”

It did not take long to finally reach the centre of Dau. They rode down a series of streets, Dryden and the 13th’s raven banner leading the way. Each avenue and alleyway was filled with shadowy shapes that moved from their vision when they looked. More and more were seen as they went further into the ruin. Finally, they came to the place in the city where a gaping wound of a pit dropped away before them, carving a scar through the city. Towers seemed to twist down towards it as if they had melted halfway in and then frozen in time. A river of red streamed down from the Shan to the chasm and fell, a huge waterfall dropping into the great void beneath them like a gushing torrent of blood. Mar stood at the edge of the pit, staring into it, his face stone. Relief flooded Dryden as he saw his friend there.

“Make a perimeter,” Dryden ordered, “Light fires, perhaps that will keep back the darkness.” Then he went to check on his wizard who had still not moved.

“I think it will not,” Mar replied, “This darkness is not of the world of men.”

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That much was obvious to all. Dryden went to the edge of the pit and looked down into it. Below them was a vast and inky blackness. Mar stood next to him and looked, “It is the pit from my nightmares, John. Something inhabits this place, something that should not.”

“Ugruz, what know you of this?” Dryden demanded, “Does something live there?”

“I do not know. I know only this is where a man must come and give a thing that is valuable to him.”

“What did you give before, when you escaped?”

“Many have come here and left. All have left something here. I gave the pit a bracelet that was my mother’s. She died when I was a child. When I think of her, I can no longer see her face.”

Dryden growled in frustration, he felt he had been swept along on this journey without having been given a choice, “How can this help Mar? How can this help us capture the witch? Why have you brought us here, Ugruz? This seems a fool’s errand. All I see, Ugruz, is that you have brought us to a great chasm in the Kizil with wild stories! Have you brought us here so that your friends can set upon us?”

“No!” Ugruz cried out, “It was fate that brought you. This place is everything I have said and more!”

“It was not fate, it was that damned emissary and his stories of power and it was you, Ugruz!” Dryden’s voice began to rise in anger.

Mar interjected, “John, this place has a strangeness to it. I have seen it in my nightmares and I feel something in the air that is familiar to me. It fills me with dread, and I sense the same power that I felt on our ride down from the Settru Pass when the mountain came down upon us. Tread lightly here, sir, for I think Ugruz is right. Do not be like General Blackwater, denying what your eyes can see because you cannot fathom how it could be true. Can you comprehend what causes a storm brewing on the horizon? Can you understand the power that makes the moon go ‘round the very earth itself? Less so can you seek to understand gods and demons and sorcery. Do you doubt that I am here, that something returned me? Do you know its cause? No, yet you accept it because you see and hear and feel me. Some things are beyond the ken of man.”

Dryden remembered Blackwater, who had misliked sorcery, had denied that the enemy had attacked them in force, and had died a senile defeated old man. He knew that Mar was correct, that he could not be anything like Blackwater. Before he could respond, he heard shouting and a voice snapped him from his growing anger, “Dryden, look!” Captain Khathan pointed back to the city where a small group of riders burst forth from between two huge twisted structures.

“Fate brings them as well!” Ugruz said, his voice full of righteous vindication.

Then a shriek of something horrible and unworldly echoed strangely off the twisted buildings, and a woosh of huge beating wings could be heard somewhere in the darkness above. Dryden looked around for it and a shadowy shape swooped down towards the riders. He only caught a glimpse. It was enormous to be moving so quickly. The giant black shape slammed down into the riders tossing horses and bodies like they were nothing. Then, it was off flying again. The thing writhed with inky blackness. Then it was gone into the dark again. Men were silent, staring and petrified in fear upwards into the dark and stormy sky.

“Albans, take men, bring the survivors,” Then Dryden turned and asked, “What in the name of all the dead gods was that?” Dryden demanded, and when none answered, he asked “Mar? Ugruz? Anyone?”

It was Khathan who replied, “It is a demon of the south.”

“What the blazes is it doing here in Dau?”

“I do not know.”

“How do we kill it?” Dryden demanded.

“You do not understand, these are creatures of myth. They and the gods wage eternal war upon one another. It is written in our holiest books. There is no killing them, just as there is no killing the gods.”

“Do you not know, Captain, that the gods of Vastrum are dead? Do not speak to me of their immortality.”

Albans returned to the small area that the 13th had secured, bearing several survivors. Aisa was among them. She was wounded, a claw had marked her back and she was carried in the arms of Alban himself. She made no sound or cry when he set her down, but she grimaced and said nothing. Several other men of her clan were with her. Some hurt, some not. They had been disarmed and were brought before Dryden. He saw their faces, the terror in their eyes. He knew one of the men. The face filled him with utter surprise. The young man had the dark and handsome face of a Vuruni, but the bright blue eyes and straw blonde hair common to Vastrum.

Dryden’s jaw dropped. He could not say the name.

Mar stepped forward and said the name for him, “Chatham.”