The Legend Of Eli Monpress (103 page)

The burn tingled again, painfully this time, and Eli gave his chest a pat. “We’ll leave at the first sign of trouble,” he promised. “Fast as we can, trust me.”

“First sign, don’t forget.”

“I swear,” Eli said.

The burning sensation faded, and Eli rubbed his chest with a long, painful breath. Now, to business. He looked down at his suit. It was a simple cat burglar suit, all muted grays and blacks tied close to keep his limbs limber. This particular suit was a little worn. It had been given to him by the original Monpress, back when the old man still thought his adopted son would make a respectable cat burglar one day. He’d learned better, of course, but Eli had kept the suit. Not for sentimental reasons, but because he’d remade it with some improvements.

Eli moved his long fingers over his padded shoes, drying them out with Karon’s heat and talking constantly about what he needed them to do in the low, excited voice that smaller spirits found irresistible. They woke easily, the woven fibers turning like snakes under his fingers. Once his feet were awake, he moved up his legs to his chest, then his arms, talking constantly in that same low voice. He did his mask last, unwrapping and holding it up between his hands as he gave an extremely energized pep talk about what they were all about to do together.

Altogether the process took about fifteen minutes. Of course, if his suit had been made from Shaper cloth it would always be awake and he wouldn’t have to go through this every time, but Shapers were nosy, and Eli preferred to keep the true nature of his thieving clothes a secret. If the old Monpress had taught Eli anything, it was that you never showed all your cards. Besides, Shaper cloth was horridly expensive.

Now that it was properly awake, Eli’s cat burglar suit began to show its true value. Every thread had seven
colors, a spectacular bit of dye work that had taken Eli five tries and one very angry cloth merchant to get right. Once awakened, these threads had one job: turn in unison so that the color on the suit’s surface best matched the color of whatever Eli was hiding against. Now that every piece was awake, the effect was instant. The moment Eli tied his mask back around his face, his suit went dapple gray-white, a perfect match for the snow he crouched in.

Eli grinned behind his mask. It wasn’t perfect, of course. Even when he could blend them together by alternating threads, seven colors was hardly enough to camouflage him from someone who was really looking. Someday, when he had favors to burn, he’d have Slorn make him a suit with a hundred different colors. Assuming, he thought bleakly, they found the bear in time. For now, though, he was satisfied to creep through the snow, keeping Karon’s heat just at his body as he made his way across the valley until, at last, he stood at the foot of the mountain where piled snow met bare stone in a razorsharp line.

Eli stopped, staring at the division between the normal world and the forbidden. Finally, he took a deep breath and, bracing himself one last time, lifted his foot out of the snow and placed it carefully on the mountain’s dry slope.

Nothing happened. Eli blinked, confused. He’d always imagined that setting foot on the Dead Mountain would feel different, forbidden, or at least dangerous. But standing there, with one foot on the stone and one in the snow, he didn’t feel anything special. In fact, he felt absolutely nothing. It was like stepping into a void. He could hear the wind screaming behind him, the wet of the snow pressing
against his back, but ahead there was nothing but cold, empty silence. Even so, it took him a solid minute to put his other foot on the slope. It was the emptiness. Stepping into something that silent, that bare, made him feel tiny and weak, like a rabbit stepping into an open field when there were hawks overhead. Eli swallowed. He wasn’t used to feeling like prey.

His suit dutifully switched from dapple white to dull black as he began his creep up the mountain. It was rough going. Other than being coal black and completely bare of snow, it was much like any of the other mountains in the range, only taller and sharper, unshaped by wind for who knew how long. The air on the slope was still and heavy, yet even as he took great gasps of it, there wasn’t enough. He felt light-headed and weak, and it only got worse the farther up he went. He clung to the slope, a tiny black spot moving up the great black spike of the mountain’s peak, until, at last, he reached a ledge.

Eli threw himself onto the flat surface with a relieved gasp and lay there on his back for several minutes, catching what breath he could from the strange, heavy air. When he felt somewhat himself again he lifted his head and looked around. He was lying on the lip of a long, level rise tucked between the sharp cliffs of the mountain’s face, cutting between the impossible slopes almost like a path. But that wasn’t all. Eli tilted his head, staring at the ground beside him. The ledge was covered in fine black dust, proof that, even separated from the elements, the Dead Mountain was decaying. Well, Eli thought, no surprise there. No physical body, not even a mountain, could keep itself together without its spirit. But it was what he saw in the dust that caught his eye. There, not an inch from his head, was a small scuff
in the blanket of powdered stone, a long depression in the unmistakable shape of a human foot.

Eli sat up, careful not to touch the footprint. There was another one not far from it, and another by the cliff’s edge, following the slope of the ledge behind the cliffs and up the mountain.

“Well, well,” Eli said, standing. “Not so lifeless after all.”

Karon’s only answer was a deep, terrified shudder as Eli dusted himself off, turned his suit a duller black with a wave of his hand, and began to follow the footprints up the mountain. The path, for it was unmistakably a path now, wound up the mountainside, cutting back and forth to avoid the steep drops between the cliffs. Eli climbed it slowly, partly because he was being careful and partly because he couldn’t go any faster. The air was nearly unbreathable now, thin and dank and icy cold. Every breath burned his lungs, yet he couldn’t stop gasping. He sucked in the air as best he could, moving at a slow shamble until the path he was following suddenly and unceremoniously ended at the lip of a little hidden valley. Eli cursed and dropped, pressing himself against the ground as he stared wide-eyed over the valley’s edge.

“I don’t believe it,” he whispered.

Just below him, nestled in a hidden valley on the Dead Mountain, was a town. It was a small town, two dozen stone shacks arranged in a semicircle around a stone cistern half filled with greasy water. Still, that was two dozen more shacks than Eli had expected to find on the forbidden mountain. All around the shacks, people in threadbare black robes moved with their heads down, carrying boxes from a horseless wagon into a small cave at the other end
of the valley under the supervision of two large men in matching black leather armor.

“Who sets up shop on the Dead Mountain?” Eli whispered. When Karon didn’t reply, Eli answered his own question. “They must be cult members. I remember hearing the League saying something about the cult of the Dead Mountain, misguided idiots who actually want a demonseed inside them.”

“How can they live here?” Karon said, trembling. “Can’t they see it?”

“Of course not,” Eli said, waving his hand in front of his face. “Blind, remember?” He paused. “Out of curiosity, what does it look like?”

“Like something that should never be seen,” Karon whispered. “We should leave.”

“Not before we get what we came for,” Eli said, scooting forward. “Nico described a map room, but I bet we won’t find one in those shacks. My money is on that.” He pointed at the low cave entrance across the little village where the people in the robes were carrying the boxes down into the mountain itself.

Karon grumbled, but Eli ignored it. He pushed himself up into a crouch and began to inch his way down into the valley. The mountain was silent around him, the dead silence of a land without spirits, and every movement he made sounded like a crash in his ears. But the people down in the valley didn’t seem to notice him at all. They just kept hurrying back and forth, their faces as blank as corpses’ as they ferried the boxes from the cart to the cave. Eli reached the outermost shack without incident, and he stayed there, back pressed against the loose stone, until the cart was empty.

Once the last box had been unloaded, one of the armored guards reached down behind the wagon seat and pulled out a small bundle. The bundle struggled as the guard set it on the ground, and Eli realized with a horrified shock that it was a child. A little boy, no older than four, wrapped in a dirty cloth and tied with ragged ropes, his smudged face downcast and streaked with dried tears. The boy’s thin neck was angry and red, as though something had rubbed it raw, and Eli clenched his jaw. He’d seen those injuries on children before, down in the southern islands where Council law was thin. He couldn’t see from where he was, but he would bet the boy had similar marks on his wrists, ankles, and waist. Slavers liked to keep their merchandise secure.

One of the pale, robed figures came forward to take the boy, grabbing him by the shoulders. The child tried to struggle, but it was clear he had no more strength to fight. The robed figure led him away, pulling him to a stone hut that was set off from the others. The cultist opened the gray door with one hand, and Eli shrank back at what he saw inside. There, tied in the dirt like animals, were five more children, boys and girls. They were all tiny, skeletal things. None of them looked up when the newcomer was shoved inside. The boy fell with a sad, light thud as the cultist slammed the door behind him, plunging the children back into the dark.

“They’re all wizards,” Karon whispered.

“I’d guessed that already,” Eli whispered back.

“Don’t you see? Those are the beds of future demonseeds.” Karon’s voice shook with rage. “Aren’t we going to do something?”

“What can we do?” Eli said, taking a deep breath. “We’re here for information, not to play hero. Even if I
wanted to, we’ve got no backup. First rule of thievery, if you must fight, only fight the fights you can win.”

Back at the center of town, the cultists were bowing before the cart guards, bending to scrape their heads against the stone. The two large men sneered in unison at the display and turned away, each grabbing one pole of the cart’s empty harness. Then, with a sickening and familiar twisting of shadows, they vanished, taking the cart with them.

Eli rolled his eyes. “Of course this place would be crawling with demonseeds.”

“We should move while they’re gone,” Karon said. “Before anything worse shows up.”

Eli nodded and crept between the shacks toward the cave, keeping an eye on the local inhabitants. He might as well not have bothered. Now that the demonseeds were gone, the people slumped to the ground, exhausted. They didn’t speak, didn’t touch one another. They just sat there, staring at the ground, their frail hands clutching the dusty stone. Just looking at them gave Eli the creeps, and he shuffled faster than he should have toward the cave.

The moment he stepped inside, the sunlight winked out. It was as though the cave’s mouth was a line the sunlight could not cross. Eli blinked in the dark, letting his eyes adjust. Slowly, he saw that the cave was piled with boxes, all made of the same gray, flimsy wood, and all of them unmarked. There was one right by Eli’s feet, and he nudged it experimentally. Whatever was in the box, it was horribly heavy, for the crate didn’t even budge, but the wood on the outside fell away in flakes, completely dead. Eli would have investigated further, but Karon was burning in his chest, reminding him to keep moving.

Careful not to touch the fragile boxes, Eli edged his way past the stacks and started deeper into the cave. He walked for some time, stumbling in the thick, heavy dark. The cave floor was uneven and tilted upward, climbing toward the mountain’s peak. Eli crept low in the dark, keeping as silent as he could, but they didn’t see anyone, or anything, until suddenly, after nearly an hour of climbing, the cave opened up again. Eli blinked in the sudden brightness. The cave let out onto a cliff high above where they’d entered. He’d crossed the mountain as well, and as best as Eli could tell he was now on the opposite face from where he had entered, looking north. The view was spectacular. He could look down for miles on the peaks of the lesser mountains, snowcapped and silent in the afternoon sunshine. It was actually quite pretty, and Eli stood a moment, enjoying the scenery, until Karon made a little, terrified noise. Eli whirled around, arms up, ready to take on whatever demonseed or cult thrall was surely about to jump them. But there was no one. Just another view.

Eli stood and stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He was looking down on a valley, a long, straight stretch between mountains just like the approach he’d taken to the Dead Mountain, only this valley obviously should not have been there. No natural formation of stone could have made a valley that straight. It ran like a road from the foot of the Dead Mountain due northwest, and wherever a mountain got in its way, that mountain was sundered, ripped apart in long, terrible gouges until only sheer cliffs remained.

“What happened here?” Eli’s voice was barely a whisper.

“I don’t want to know,” Karon whispered back. “But one thing is certain. Something ate those mountains.”

“Ate?” Eli said. “What do you mean, ‘ate’?”

“Look at the valley floor.”

Eli looked, squinting to make sense of the tumbled impressions beneath the drifts of snow. Slowly, the random shapes came together to form enormous craters. He could see the great ripped-up places where mountains had been, but now nothing was left except piles of boulders, their faces as black and dead as the slope Eli stood on.