Barker, Clive – Imajica 01 – The Fifth Dominion. Part 7

He reached to take hold of Pie’s shoulder, but misjudged the distance and slid from the doeki’s back. Relieved of its burden the beast slumped, its front legs buckling. Had Pie not been swift and pulled Gentle out of harm’s way, he might have been crushed beneath the creature’s bulk. Hauling back his hood and swiping the snow from the back of his neck, he got to his feet and found Pie’s exhausted gaze there to meet him.

“I thought I was leading us right,” the mystif said.

“Of course you did.”

“But we’ve missed the pass somehow. The slope’s getting steeper. I don’t know where the fuck we are, Gentle.”

“In trouble is where we are, and too tired to think our way out of it. We have to rest.”

“Where?”

“Here,” Gentle said. “This blizzard can’t go on forever. There’s only so much snow in the sky, and most of it’s already fallen, right? Right? So if we can just hold on till the storm’s over, and we can see where we are—”

“Suppose by that time it’s night again? We’ll freeze, my friend.”

“Do we have any other choice?” Gentle said. “If we go on we’ll kill the beast and probably ourselves. We could march right over a gorge and never know it. But if we stay here. . . together. . . maybe we’re in with a chance.’*

“I thought I knew our direction.”

“Maybe you did. Maybe the storm’ll blow over, and we’ll find ourselves on the other side of the mountain.” Gentle put his hands on Pie’s shoulders, sliding them around the back of the mystif’s neck. “We have no choice,” he said slowly.

Pie nodded, and together they settled as best they could in the dubious shelter of the doeki’s body. The beast was still breathing, but not, Gentle thought, for long. He tried to put from his mind what would happen if it died and the storm failed to abate, but what was the use of leaving such plans to the last? If death seemed inevitable, would it not be better for him and Pie to meet it together—to slit their wrists and bleed to death side by side—rather than slowly freeze, pretending to the end that survival was plausible? He was ready to voice that suggestion now, while he still had the energy and focus to do so, but as he turned to the mystif some tremor reached him that was not the wind’s tirade but a voice beneath its harangue, calling him to stand up. He did so.

The gusts would have blown him over had Pie not stood up with him, and his eyes would have missed the figures in the drifts but that the mystif caught his arm and, putting its head close to Gentle’s, said, “How the hell did they get out?”

The women stood a hundred yards from them. Their feet were touching the snow but not impressing themselves upon it. Their bodies were wound with cloth brought from the ice, which billowed around them as the wind filled it. Some held treasures, claimed from the glacier: pieces of I their temple, and ark, and altar. One, the young girl whose corpse had moved Gentle so much, held in her arms the head of a Goddess carved in blue stone. It had been badly vandalized. There were cracks in its cheeks, and parts of its nose, and an eye, were missing. But it found light from somewhere and gave off a serene radiance.

“What do they want?” Gentle said,

“You, maybe?” Pie ventured.

The woman standing closest to them, her hair rising half her height again above her head, courtesy of the wind, beckoned.“I think they want us both to go,” Gentle said.

“That’s the way it looks,” Pie said, not moving a muscle.

“What are we waiting for?”

“I thought they were dead,” the mystif said.

“Maybe they were.”

“So we take the lead from phantoms? I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“They came to find us, Pie,” Gentle said.

Having beckoned, the woman was turning slowly on her toe tips, like a mechanical Madonna that Clem had once given Gentle, which had played “Ave Maria” as it turned.

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