Altar of Bones (68 page)

S
HE LED THEM
into a small, blessedly warm restaurant with two surly waiters and a dozen low, ugly Formica tables. They all ordered cups of teeth-rottingly sweet black Russian tea.

“My name is Svetlana,” the girl said, “but do not tell me yours if it is different from what is on your official documents. I will simply call you cousin, for if you are Lena Orlova’s great-granddaughter, then that would make us cousins of a sort, many times removed. Great-uncle Fodor says I am sticking myself out on a clothesline by even speaking to you, but I had to see you with my own eyes. And to help you if I can, because as I told Great-uncle Fodor, it is the duty of the
toapotror
to help the Keeper when we can.”

“I am very grateful to you,” Zoe said. “In your phone call last night you said you can take us to the lake we’re looking for?”

Svetlana nodded solemnly. “I will take you, but only as far as the waterfall. After that, you are on your own. You are the Keeper, and only the Keeper is allowed to approach the altar of bones. I would rather have all my teeth pulled than go into that cave anyway. None of our people wanted me to come to you, they’re afraid you will destroy the altar or betray its secrets to the world since you are not really one of us. Even if you were born of
toapotror
blood.”

“They’re wrong. I am one of you. I have come a very long way to prove that I am one of you.”

“Yes, you are tough, otherwise you would not have made it this far, and that is what I told Great-uncle Fodor. There aren’t many of us magic people left, you understand, and of those who are, most are old and tired and set in their ways. They do not know the Grammies from Google.” Svetlana paused, drew a deep breath, and lowered her voice. “I said for you not to tell me your name, Cousin, but it and your face are all over the Internet. They say you are terrorists, but I know that is a lie. You are being hunted, as the Keepers often are, and I will do what I can to help you. But I think we should also pray to the Lady to protect you.”

“I really am grateful for your help, Svetlana, but if it means putting you in danger—”

She waved a hand. “Never mind that, I am bored with being safe. Besides, I live in Norilsk, where there is acid in the snow and we kill ourselves with every polluted breath we take.”

She shrugged and drank the rest of her tea as if it were fine ambrosia rather than syrupy sludge. “Now, the fastest way to get to the lake this time of year is by snowmobile. My cousin Mikhail, who is smart enough not to ask questions, has a couple of Arctic Cats we may borrow.”

She paused and looked hard at Ry, and Zoe didn’t think she was happy about him at all. And Ry, probably sensing as much, had been keeping quiet.

“If I don’t trust him,” Zoe said, “then I may as well not trust myself.”

“Because you sleep with him? Other Keepers gave up the altar’s secrets along with their hearts. It never ended well, if the stories are to be believed.”

“Maybe because the only stories that got told were the ones with the bad endings. The ones where the Keepers fell in love with rotten assholes, who should never have been trusted past first base to begin with. But who’s to say there haven’t been Keepers who trusted good guys, guys who were never going to betray them, not for love nor money? You’d never hear about them because there’d be nothing to tell, and … And I know I’ve got a point in there somewhere, and it’s a real zinger, too.”

The girl surprised Zoe by joining in her laughter. “How can I argue with such logic? Except to say you are the Keeper, so you will do what you will do, anyway.” Svetlana gave Ry another once-over. “He’s a big and strong one—I’ll say that for him.”

A pale-faced waiter had appeared to pour more tea into Svetlana’s empty cup. She raised it and toasted them. “It is poison, I know, but drink up. You will need the warmth.” She looked at Ry yet again, and this time she gave him a fleeting smile. “One of Mikhail’s Cats is a two-seater, so you can bring him along if you want. They heat up, by the way, the seats on the Cats. And there are hand warmers, too. Can you imagine such a luxury? Drink up now, drink up.”

The tea was awful, and they drank every drop.

Z
OE STARED
up at the waterfall that shot out of the bluff above their heads in waves of ice and jagged spiky icicles. “It almost doesn’t look real,” she said. “It’s like some god came along and zapped it, freezing it solid in midair, in a single instant of time.”

“This is Siberia,” Svetlana said, “where everything is always frozen solid. Except maybe for five minutes during the first week in August…. All right, I am joking. But only a little.”

Svetlana looked up at the tall, wide pillar of ice, and Zoe thought a shudder crossed her face. “There’s barely an hour of daylight left and a snowstorm is coming, so I must leave you now, my cousin of sorts. The cave with the altar of bones is behind the waterfall, and you should stay inside there overnight. Your Cat’s got a GPS system, but it doesn’t work here in the canyon, and even back out on the tundra it’s easy to get lost in the snow and the dark. And this is the starving season. The wolves will be out.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “For everything.”

Svetlana smiled at Zoe, then looked at Ry and gave him a flicker of a smile as well. “In the compartment behind the seats on your Arctic Cat, I put a couple of space blankets, some sausage and cabbage rolls, and a bottle of Kalashnikov. The blankets are good at keeping a body warm, but the vodka is better.”

Svetlana cast another, fleeting glance up at the waterfall. “I should go now.”

“We’ll bring the Cat back to Mikhail’s no later than tomorrow morning,” Zoe said. “Will you be there? I’d like to talk with you some
more, about the magic people and my great-grandmother, and your great-uncle Fodor, all those stories you’ve heard.”

Svetlana nodded. “Yes. If you wish, I will be there.”

For a moment Zoe thought the girl would embrace her, but then she only nodded again and turned away.

T
HEY WATCHED THE
Arctic Cat cut away from them across the frozen lake, kicking up a rooster tail of snow.

“I think she was warming to you a little, O’Malley. There at the end.”

He didn’t smile, and he was quiet for so long, she said, “What? What are you thinking?”

“That this shouldn’t be a test of your feelings for me. I don’t see it that way and I don’t want you to see it that way either. Tell me to wait out here by the Cat, and I will. No questions asked, and no resentments either.”

She took him by the arms and turned him around to face her. “There is no halfway here, Ry. Not with me.”

He stared down at her, his eyes dark with some emotion she couldn’t read, except it seemed to be shaking him to the core. But all he said was “All right, then. Let’s get it done.”

He took her by the hand, but now Zoe held back.

She stared up at the huge, rippling pillar of ice. “All of this … it’s just so hard to believe we’re actually here. When I first heard the story about Lena Orlova escaping from the gulag, trekking across Siberia all the way to Shanghai, and all the while pregnant with her lover’s child, I thought it sounded so beautifully sad and romantic, like something out of
Doctor Zhivago
. But the truth turned out to be nothing like that at all, did it? What really happened here was brutal and ugly and cruel.”

“Not all of it,” Ry said. “She survived, and that was a brave and wonderful thing. She survived so that this day, this moment, could happen. When you, her great-granddaughter, could come back to the place where it all began and see it through. Full circle.”

Zoe swallowed hard and nodded. “Because I am the Keeper now.”

But she wondered how she would find the altar of bones in a place Nikolai Popov had searched so many times. And if she did, then what? What would come afterward, because once she found the altar, she would become its Keeper in fact as well as in name. The altar’s secrets would be her secrets then, to keep or to betray.

Ry touched his forehead to hers. “You had an incredible burden laid on you, Zoe, from out of nowhere. And you know what? You haven’t faltered. You’ve got grit and a brain.” He lightly touched his palm to her chest. “And a huge heart. I am very proud of you. Now, let’s find the entrance to this damn cave so we can do what we came to do.”

“Did she say wolves?”

He laughed. “I’d kiss you, but I’m afraid our lips would freeze together.”

Z
OE STARED
at the impossibly small gap between the two sheets of rock that made up the face of the bluff. “Sweet Mother of Jesus, Ry, this can’t be it. I mean, there’s no way we’re fitting through that. It’s impossible. There’s got to be another entrance somewhere else, and we’re just not seeing it.”

But it had taken them forever to find even this slit in the rock face. When they’d first walked out onto the ledge behind the waterfall and looked head-on at the front of the bluff, their eyes had seen only a solid wall of rock. It wasn’t until they walked all the way out to the end of the ledge and looked back did they realize that two sheets of rock were actually overlapping each other.

Zoe leaned forward just far enough to peer into the narrow crevasse. It was too dark to tell how deep it went, or whether the entrance to the cave really was at the other end of it. It could lead to nowhere, or just drop off into space. “Nope. Uh-uh. No way. It’s too narrow. An anorexic goat would get stuck in there.”

“I’ll go first,” Ry said. “If it’s wide enough for me, then you’ll get through. I know you hate tight places, and believe me, this doesn’t look like loads of fun to me either, but it’s what we got to do.”

“I know, I know. But what if you get stuck?”

“Then go get some dynamite and blow me out.”

“This isn’t funny, Ry. I’m really, really scared. My mind knows it’s irrational, but my body isn’t getting the message.” Her heart was already racing so fast, she thought she could feel it whapping against her ribs like the wings of a trapped bird.

“I know, babe. Look …” Ry turned sideways and sidled into the
overlapping gap in the rock face. “It’s wider than it looks. A lot of what you’re seeing is an optical illusion.”

“Maybe …”

Ry held out his hand to her, palm up. “We’ll do it together. It’s the end of the journey, Zoe. This is the last step.”

“Yeah, but does this last step have to be such a bloody narrow one?” she said with a shaky laugh. She grabbed his hand, though. Then she turned sideways to match him and put one foot and half her body into hell.

“That’s good,” Ry said. “I won’t let you go. Now, shut your eyes and concentrate on breathing. In, out. In, out.”

Zoe closed her eyes and breathed. In, out.

Ry took a step, bringing her with him, then another step. In, out. In, out.

“Imagine you’re in the middle of a football field,” Ry was saying, “and the field’s in the middle of a huge, empty stadium, and there’s nothing around you but space, wide-open space, everywhere you look.”

Zoe couldn’t picture the field, her mind felt too full of white noise. Her ears were ringing with it. Red dots danced in the darkness behind her closed eyes, and she fought down a sudden, desperate urge to open them.