Tallah

“What are you staring at?”

Vergil looked away immediately, whipped, and Sil regretted her tone.

Of course, the boy would stare. He’d never seen her without the glamour and there was quite a bit to notice. She resisted touching her face to feel the acid scar, trace its outline and think about how she’d earned that one.

It’d only give her a headache.

“Sorry,” he said as they ate a small meal.

“No, Vergil. I am. Shouldn’t snap at you. It’s not you I’m angry with.”

That was for Tallah’s ears. The sorceress made a concerted effort to hide her wince and not meet her glare. Good. Her ears were red though and Sil felt partially vindicated. A few more prods like that and her anger may abate.

She dipped inside Tallah’s rend and took stock of their provisions. Jars upon jars of preserves, pickles, and odd assortments of vegetable spreads. A barrel of fresh water. Some wine? She spied a couple bottles of rose petal wine. Ruby Red, good vintage. As good of an apology as she’d ever get out of the mule.

There was smoked and dried meat, of course. Some sausage that smelled awful even in the rend’s peculiarly thin air. And, for some reason, salted pork rinds.

“What did you raid? The entire Agora?” she asked when back out in the frigid cold of the cave. It was actually colder than the rend if such a thing were possible.

“That drackir place next to the Sizzling Boar,” Tallah said. She was chewing on a rind.

The sight of it turned Sil’s stomach. Vergil worrying on another piece made it worse.

“The one with the… that weird sign up-front? That weird bugger that likes to scare off children that come for the candied fruits?”

“That one.”

To her raised eyebrow, Tallah continued, “I paid for all of it. My conscience insisted.”

At least the food would be good quality and slow to spoil. If anything, they wouldn’t starve to death out in that wasteland.

Ludwig had been quiet by the cave’s mouth, his beard crusted with ice as he waited for them to be ready. Wind whipped his cloak but the old man seemed too excited to eat or drink, or pay attention that snow went up to his knees.

“I’ll put you under,” she told Vergil as they packed up. “I don’t doubt you’d make the effort but I need the dwarf’s strength for this part.”

“By all means. Just please don’t let him get me punched again.” He grinned gap-toothed and pushed down the helmet. “I don’t know how many more times you can set my face right again. I’m rather fond of it.”

Sil felt herself smiling as she siphoned illum to him. Vergil’s boyish grin melted away into an ear-piercing howl as he sprang forward, hands to his axe, eyes wild behind the visor slit.

“Enough of that,” she said. “There’s only snow to fight. Be my guest to try.”

They’d seen the ghost often enough by now that its theatrics had run their course. Horvath understood what was being said to him, but never replied in anything more than grunts or screams. Sil felt mocked more than anything. He disregarded her and stared past, to Tallah. His fists clenched over the hafts of the axes but a glare from the sorceress had him wincing back and growling a stream of what were definitely curses.

He remembered their first meeting well enough to back off before she got him under heel again.

That Sil had been wearing the helmet at the time did not make for a pleasant memory. She sympathised somewhat with the dead dwarf.

“Get out of the cave and wait. I need you to plough our way through the snow. Stop grinning. That’s not remotely what I mean. Do you understand what I’m asking of you?”

No answer, unintelligible or otherwise. He walked by her and shouldered Ludwig aside as he stepped into the grey light of the storm.

“Shall we?” she asked as Tallah joined her.

“No better moment.”

Ludwig already waded out into the snow, a hand covering his face against the ice shards the wind whipped up. For as decrepit as he was, the old man moved with a sureness of foot that should have been beyond his age.

Wind slammed into Sil with enough force that it stole the breath from her lips. She pulled up the thick scarf until only her eyes remained exposed. Tears froze in their corners.

She focused on Horvath and pictured walls around him. Two of then, angled together, harnessed to him. A complex bit of weaving that she rarely had a chance to practice.

Horvath stumbled back as the force of the storm slammed into the invisible snow plough she conjured. Sil groaned at the illum draw. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

The dwarf spirit pushed Vergil upright after some time, adjusted his stance, and walked forward as if to spite the tempest. She rethought the proportions of the plough until he walked nearly unhindered.

They had arrived into the blizzard in a mad, panicked rush that had nearly seen them scattered had it not been for Tallah leashing them together. Sil hadn’t seen anything of their circumstances until Ludwig lit up the entrance to the cave.

Now she dared a look upward into the milky-white light filtering through the high cloud cover.

Cliffs rose high into the snowy mist, jagged and unwelcoming, their crests impossible to discern. Lower down, scattered, were the bones of some ancient creature, rising to claw against the walls of the fissure, their size dwarfing some of the highest spires of Valen.

Gorges intersected there and the wind assailed them from every side, sometimes aiding, most other hindering their progress. Ludwig walked behind Vergil, a hand on his shoulder to guide the way forward. It was all Sil could do to keep her eyes open. Tallah walked by her side, one arm around her waist, keeping them close behind the two men.

No words could be shared without screaming over the echoing howls of the many tunnels and fissures where the wind voiced its complaints at their intrusion. In some odd way, it was nearly musical.

Valen’s gentle settling into Winter’s long embrace had dulled some of the season’s claws. The Crags reminded her that Winter also had fangs.

Sil had a miserable time of it.

In a bell’s time the strain of the barrier and of Horvath together began wearing on her. After another, she needed illum dust. She lost a packet to the storm before Tallah offered her cloak as a windbreak while she forced herself to inhale the fine powder. Frigid air stung her nose and lungs.

Horvath’s ditch offered next to no protection against the elements, and she was already too weary to make any more barriers. This was not a place to invite or accept discovery. With each passing bell she became convinced of the folly of their attempt, and irrationally resented the old bastard his obsession.

Tallah walked bareheaded, her ponytail flapping in the wind, defiant against the chill. Sil wanted to strangle her.

“We’re almost through,” Ludwig screamed over his shoulder at them as they restarted their slow advance.

Through to where, Sil couldn’t imagine. Shadows pooled through the deep crevices they doggedly tried to pass. Cold seeped through her boots and up her legs. Each step forward, a small agony.

In places Tallah took point ahead and blasted the ice blockage rather than allow Ludwig to turn them around to explore a different way forward. She seemed as annoyed and unnerved of the place as Sil was.

Gradually, the storm quieted. Cliffs slowly met above and the gorge tightened and shrank, strangling the breath out of the blizzard first to a whistle, then to an eerie huff.

Ludwig halted them next to a narrow fissure. How he had spied it in the gloom only spoke of how intimately he knew their route. He stopped Tallah from blasting a larger hole for their ingress. Instead, they were made to slither in through a gap that squeezed the breath out of Sil. She also had to dismiss the construct off Vergil for him to attempt the crawl.

It opened into a room that had them all stooping, packed tightly together, breath misting white as Ludwig created a sprite. Further on, a crack through stone, wide enough only to be traversed sideways in single file, and barely even so, marked the only exit aside from the entrance. Black ice covered the walls. Maybe it would be wider come Thaw, but Sil very much doubted it.

“Do not use your fire here,” Ludwig warned as Tallah studied the frozen slit. “Vapours leak out of the stone in warm seasons and get trapped in the ice of Winter. I doubt even you would survive the kind of explosion a careless spark would cause.”

Sil groaned. She was coming to dislike the place with ferocious intensity and it, in turn, made no efforts of gaining her sympathy.

“It opens up in some spans. It will be a tight crawl for a time.”

If not stiff from the cold and keeping the weave going, she would have laughed. Nothing could assure her that the narrow crawl had anything worth waiting for on the other side. Who would come this way if sane?

“Please follow close. There are some diverging paths. Some open into sumps. Some of those won’t be frozen over and the drop can be fatal. Best not lose the way.”

“What’s happening?” Vergil asked from the back of the group, head shaking away the cobwebs of possession. “Are we there yet?”

“We’re squeezing through that,” Sil said, breathing easier without the siphon. She felt a nose bleed dripping into her scarf, quickly freezing over and sticking the fabric to her skin. “If you’re not up for it, I’ll get the ghost back.”

Vergil looked past her to where Ludwig was wedging himself through, and shrugged.

“Looks cold.”

“Probably is.”

“I’ll be fine. Can I be last?”

“Suit yourself.”

Cold did not begin to describe it. Ice at her back. Ice at her fingertips. Every breath more frigid than the last. All of it wrapped in tight misery as they made their excruciatingly slow way forward, one shuffling step at a time.

“A tremor would see us into paste,” Tallah mused ahead of her. She’d been strangely quiet through it all.

“Thank you for that.” Sil gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, trying not to mistake her own shivering for the rock’s.

Ludwig’s sprite was ahead of them, its light coming and fading as the crack turned and twisted. It was beginning to slope downward. Gently at first, then more pronounced until it was only the tightness of the squeeze that kept them from sliding.

She did slip. More than once. She gained a different bruise and knock each time.

Vergil struggled and muttered incessantly. Cage came up often. And slow, quiet sobs that were impossible to hide in that narrow crevice. He struggled but kept up, and Sil found it kinder not to say anything.

She walked straight into Tallah’s elbow. In the pitch, the flash of fire in the sorceress’s hands came blindingly.

“Go. Away.”

Ice misted to vapour where Tallah touched the walls and the air threatened to suffocate. Sil couldn’t see her face but saw the rest of her recoil from something ahead.

“I can’t go anywhere.” Sil choked on the overheated air after so long in the cold. “Put that out. You’ll kill us all.”

“Go away,” Tallah repeated, louder now, a manic edge creeping into her voice. She tried pulling back and pushed against Sil. Her hands burned on the ice wall, the flame turning blue.

Sil tried to retreat from the heat but Vergil was there, crowding her, as confused and stuck as she was. Vapours from the flash-melted ice stung her eyes and she smelled rotten eggs. Desperately, she kicked out low and caught the sorceress on the shin with enough force that it staggered her.

Fire fizzed out and the cold rushed back in mercilessly. It took long moments for Tallah to move again.

She said nothing.

Vergil made a sound like the beginning of a question. Sil shushed him.

“Not the time. Not the place. Nothing happened,” she said resolutely. They followed two paces behind Tallah to the sounds of ice cracking where the sludge froze back over.

Their path angled downward dangerously now. Each step was an effort of maintaining balance and grip against the ever tightening embrace of ice. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to keep going. Cold seeped into Sil’s bones, past layers of cloth and padding, to torment and slowly murder her.

How was Ludwig still going? She could see his sprite light sometimes, still ahead. Still moving forward. She envied whatever fire kept him going while she struggled not to succumb to weariness and the biting chill.

Tallah brooded in silence, moving mechanically forward as if indeed nothing had happened. That worried her worse than the near absence of any feeling in her toes.

It was suddenly over. She took another step forward and nearly toppled forward into a gaping maw of darkness. Tallah caught her neatly by the arm and pulled her from the fissure. The sprite was there, but she couldn’t see anything ahead of them.

The wall was at their back, a lone, material thing in the dark. And the narrow ledge on which they stood.

Tallah released her once sure she had her feet, then reached into the fissure and guided Vergil just the same.

“Have we arrived?” he asked.

“Closer to there, yes,” Ludwig replied. He sat on the edge of the narrow shelf with feet dangling over the black abyss. “You could say the journey’s just now beginning.” He gestured dramatically to the side, to where the ledge disappeared into the underground night. “We can rest here for a time.”

Sil looked around. If there was a far wall, and there had to be one, the light of a sprite could not reach it. She summoned her own and sent it out. It reached beyond her range without finding the far side of the chasm.

The ledge snaked away into the distance. It hugged the wall tight and was wide enough for a single person to walk normally.

And it was all so dreadfully quiet. Not a whisper of wind or an echo of the mad storm above. Nothing but the quiet sounds of their rest, the shuffling of boots on stone, the rustle of Vergil’s armour and the clang of his helmet when he set it down besides him.

Nobody had anything to say.

She grabbed Tallah’s arm and marched her forward down the path, aware of the two men looking after them. She walked until out of the light around a narrow bend of the path. Any further could be suicide and she resisted the urge for light.

“What was that?” Sil bit the words off in a whispered snarl. “What were you seeing?”

“Rhine. She was there,” Tallah replied, her voice quiet and distant. She answered quick and sharp, almost eager to have the words out. “Should have known better than to react. Sorry.”

“Are you hallucinating? Fever? Did you breathe something in?”

She had her hand on Tallah’s arm but felt nothing but the gentle heat of her infusion. A slight tremble told of a head shake.

“No,” came the spoken reply. “She’s gone now. Just a careless moment.”

“You’re a piss-poor liar, and we both know it. Why…”

Tallah normally saw her dead sister in one particular situation.

“Is it waxing? Is the draw strong this late in Winter?” she asked, trying not to sound too panicked by the implications. Again a shake of the head.

“Falor nearly burned Christina out of me. I was exposed for a time. May have lost some… parts.”

Sil let out a slow, shuddering breath and closed her eyes. Her grip tightened on Tallah’s arm.

“What did it take?” she asked. Anger and worry mingled in her voice.

Long heartbeats passed before Tallah replied.

“Rhine. The…” She swallowed and her voice frayed around the edge. “I can’t picture her face. From before the mountain. I can’t recall it for even a moment. It’s all gone from me. I can only remember what became of her.”

A shudder and a slow exhalation in the dark. A sniff of annoyance. Tallah pulled her arm away and took a step farther, mindless of the danger. “I’m fine,” she said, but Sil knew better.

“You’ve got a portrait hung in Solstice. That may help you.”

She knew better than to push further. Tallah would deal with this in her own way and she’d speak her worries when ready. Unlike other times this had happened in the past, moments where the power of the soul trap had flared, she seemed to be taking the new development much better than expected.

Another reason to worry then.

“You’ll tell me before you blow your top off, right? Not like in Garet?”

It was a light enough jab but Tallah refused the bait. Another sniff of annoyance. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

“Good. Now come and make a fireball for me.” She tried to force herself to a kind of calm she didn’t feel so far beneath the world. “I think this time I may have lost some of my toes.”

She turned and headed back towards the light.

Sometime later, Tallah followed.