Adnet hesitated, or so Erik thought. What made for hesitation in a moving skeleton was far from clear. He was silent for a while. Erik and Toinette ate the last of their food without speaking, until another thought crossed Erik’s mind. “If you don’t believe we can destroy It,” he asked, “why did you guide us here? Only to tell us of our fate?”
“To offer you the chance to change it,” said the spirit, “if only for yourselves.” With a grating noise, he plucked the dagger from his ribs and held it up. “In this, one of our enchantments yet holds. If it gives a man his fatal wound, that man’s death won’t feed the un-ark, nor will It be able to make any use of his body. I came back to offer that mercy to any who made it this far, and to fight the un-ark back with what power I yet have. Now that you speak…” He sighed. “If the hope you offer is true, then I rejoice in it, but Ihadthought my duty clear.”
“I am,” said Erik, “a bit familiar with that sentiment.”
Toinette reached across the gulf of crumbs and stone to squeeze his knee.
“You are, in truth, the first to travel so far.” Adnet turned the dagger over in his fleshless hand. “And you’re unchanged, which speaks to your claims. It’s still a great risk.”
“Aye,” said Erik.
“It’s one I’d take,” said Toinette. “And I know it’s not only me, but in time it won’t be only us. Men are traveling more, to Araby and the Indies and to trade with the Mongols. It won’t be very long before they try to cross the ocean this way as well, and the spirit reaches forth to take prey. We can chance striking at It now, before It gains in strength life by life. I’d roll those dice.”
Adnet stepped forward, his dragging footsteps across the stone unsteady and quiet. In front of Erik, he stopped and held out the dagger, hilt first. “Then I bid you take this. Should you fail, you may yet have a moment to grant mercy to yourselves and to the world.”
The dagger’s gold hilt felt sun-warmed when Erik took it, far as the cavern was from any sunlight. Holding it, he could neither smell nor hear the signs of the un-ark, and he bowed his head before Adnet, knowing the value of the gift. “You’re most generous, sir. I vow, one way or another, that presence will have neither of us.”
If it came to that most desperate of circumstances, he vowed silently to see Toinette’s soul safe before his, and to do it when she didn’t know, that she might have the better chance of heaven. Even the idea made him want to snarl and smash the cave walls, but he forced himself to practicality.
“Outside this door and through the one opposite,” said Adnet, “there will be another passage. Take the rightmost turns, and you’ll come to the center. The place of the chest. I cannot tell you what It’ll put in your way, nor may my power approach the nexus of Its strength, but I’ll give you what aid I can.”
“Thank you,” said Toinette, getting to her feet. “We owe you our lives already, and we may owe you our souls in the end. I wish there was a chance of paying you back, but it doesn’t seem likely.”
“Might there beanyservice we can do you,” Erik asked, “before we go from here?”
“The ground here is too hard for burial, and you’ve no cloth for a shroud,” Adnet replied. “Yet if you would lay the sign of our Lord over me, as it is on my brothers, I would count it a kindness.”
“Gladly,” said Erik, and then had to ask the question every man would have wondered about. “Whatisit, on the other side?”
Despite his permanent, lipless grin, Adnet managed to convey a smile. “I haven’t gone the whole way, nor will I unless you win your battle, but I’ve seen what I cannot speak of, nor you hear save at great cost to your mind and perhaps your body. I will say only this: it is not what the un-ark would have you believe.”
Remembering his dreams, Erik found the relief of that answer quite satisfactory. “Then I’ll go with more hope,” he said, “even if the worst happens.”
“Hope is always a strength, applied well,” said Adnet. He lay down by the side of his shrouded companions, straightened his legs, and folded his arms across his chest. “Farewell,” he said, “in the truest sense of the term.”
Slowly, the red light faded from around his bones. By the time it vanished, Toinette was already picking up chips of stone from the cave floor.
“Hold,” said Erik. “We’ll needsomecloth to put them on. Use my other sleeve.”
If they did walk out victorious, he thought, there was a decent chance that they’d both be naked as Adam at the rate they were going. Toinette’s nudity always made for a pleasant sight, but that particular situation sounded uncomfortable. All the same, he held still as she cut off the other sleeve of his tunic and helped to spread it carefully across Adnet’s chest.
The cross they made on top of it was less even than the others, owing to the proximity of ribs beneath the cloth, but it was clear.
When it was done, and both of them stood over the bodies, Toinette took Erik’s free hand. “You know,” she said, “if I must be here at all, there’s nobody I’d rather have with me.”
* * *
Out of the cave, behind the opposite door, they walked through the passage Adnet had mentioned. It was no worse than the rest of the temple at first. The smell and the sound picked up, but Toinette had thought they would and braced herself. In truth, when Erik walked beside her holding the dagger, it wasn’t so bad.
They turned right when the tunnel forked, walking through a small maze of twists and turns that all seemed much alike. Time drew out in a thin unending thread. Toinette tried to get her mind around the presence they were going to face, the thing for which she now had a description and a name:un-ark.
To name a thing, Artair had told her in her youth, gave you power over it. But a true name counted more than others. She doubted thatun-arkwould count for much. “It didn’t sound,” she said to Erik, both of them knowing to what she referred, “like anything you’ve heard of, did It?”
“Not particularly. The greater demons, or the specifics of them, are vanishingly rare. I’d not thought to ever meet with any. There’s a great deal in the worlds that even those with magic never hear about.”
Toinette could understand that. Even dragons didn’t casually cross the Alps, and the elemental messengers Artair and his kin used took a great deal of effort and the right sort of ground, or so she recalled Agnes saying. Even most of the MacAlasdairs hadn’t crossed the Channel. A magician in France or Muscovy was likely to be a surprise to them, and him to them.
“You could all stand to journey more,” she said.
