Promise of Blood

He was tied to Gavril by a sturdy rope, though the wind had died enough that he could see the big mountaineer through the eddy, some ten paces up the slope. Their climb was steep, but bearable. After all, there was a road under there somewhere. This pass was well used in the summer—or so Gavril claimed. The wind swirling around them brought no fresh snow; it only kicked up the top layer from the recent storm. Taniel could have sworn he heard a child’s laughter every time more snow slapped him in the face. The mountain was a cruel place, he decided.

Another rope led off behind Taniel, where Ka-poel struggled slowly with her snowshoes, and behind her a small man named Darden trekked along in her wake. He was an old Deliv who had insisted on coming along. He said he had a cousin at the monastery who had been dying last fall, and he wanted to know if he had survived the winter. Taniel didn’t trust him. Was he one of Bo’s friends?

Gavril was a jovial drunk, and had been surprisingly interested in the trip up the mountain. They’d set off within hours, and though Gavril had wobbled on his snowshoes the first half day, Taniel was certain he’d gotten dead sober by the end of the second.

Taniel paused briefly to check the pistol at his hip. The flintlock was frozen, jammed with snow and ice. The powder still seemed to be dry, though, and the bullet was wedged firmly in place. That was all that mattered for a Marked. He could make his own spark to fire the bullet. Yet… Taniel examined Gavril. Would the man give him trouble when Taniel put a bullet through Bo’s eye? Or would any of the monks? Taniel checked his second pistol. Would he be able to make it back down the mountain without Gavril if it came to that?

By the time they finally rose above the worst of the wind, Taniel had long since ceased being able to feel his legs. The swirls of snow died down, and the sun came through the eddy, nearly blinding him. The trail leveled out, and suddenly he saw ground; not just hard-packed trails of snow but real earth notched with shovel marks. This had been cleared recently. He blinked in surprise and tried to smile. His face was too numb.

“How are you?” Gavril’s voice cut through Taniel’s thoughts. The words were a welcome change to the howling wind and the mountain’s mocking laughter after three and a half days of climbing. Taniel realized that they’d not said a word in that time, not even during their camps at night, when the four of them huddled together for warmth in Gavril’s small tent.

“Hine.” Taniel came to a stop beside the big mountaineer, and they waited for Ka-poel and Darden. Taniel closed his eyes and worked at his mouth, trying to form words.

“Fine,” he said. “How much harther? Farther?”

“There,” Gavril said. He pointed upward.

Taniel shaded his eyes and squinted into the sun. “It’s so bright up here. I can’t see. How can you?”

“Years on the mountain. You don’t need eyes after as long as I’ve been here. Novi’s Perch. We’re just beneath it.”

Darden grinned at Taniel through cracked lips, his dark-skinned face split with the size of the smile. He was a small man, and easily as old as Tamas. “Almost there,” he said. He was barely breathing hard, Taniel noticed with annoyance, though Taniel himself gasped for breath.

Taniel held his snuffbox of powder up to his nose and snorted straight out of the box. He carefully returned it to his pocket—he didn’t trust his numb fingers. The rush of the powder trance made him dizzy for a brief moment, then his breathing came easier and his muscles relaxed.

They removed their snowshoes and finished the climb to the monastery. It was only a few hundred more feet. The trail narrowed as they went. To the left, the mountain rose above them in a sheer rock face. To the right, only white sky was visible—the cliff seemed to have no bottom. They moved into the shade of the monastery, and Taniel was able to look up and really see it for the first time.

Novi’s Perch seemed to be part of the mountain. It had been built of the same dusty gray rock, and parts of it had even been hewn into the bones of Pike itself. It blocked the trail—that is, the trail ended at the doors to the monastery, and the building rose up above them for a hundred feet or more. It overhung the cliffside to their right by a dozen feet, and Taniel wondered how the monks could sleep, knowing they were suspended above thousands of feet of nothing.

The monastery was plain and unadorned. The stones were chiseled flat, the arches of the doors and windows rounded at the top. There were no spires or grand façades. Only the location of the place gave it grandeur, and the daring of its construction hanging out over the abyss.

Taniel stepped off the road and onto the stone doorstep. He gazed upward, unaware that he’d been wandering, until Gavril reached out and grabbed the front of his coat. He jumped. He’d been not two feet from the edge of the cliff and its perilous drop.