“We may have to split up when we get inside,” he said quietly.
Unease coiled through Viggo. He nodded nonetheless. “That crossed my mind.”
The monastery was vast and there would be a lot of ground to cover. They didn’t really have an option.
Even in the low light of the lanterns, he could see the strain etched into Evander’s features; the tight line of his mouth, theshadows beneath his eyes, and the white-knuckled grip on his reins told their own story.
“We’ll get them back,” Viggo reassured.
“I know.” But Evander’s voice lacked conviction.
“Ginny’s tougher than she looks. So is Shaw.” Viggo reached across the gap between their horses and squeezed Evander’s arm briefly. “They’ll hold on until we reach them.”
Evander’s eyes met his in the darkness.
“They’d better. Because if Winchester or his lackeys have harmed them, there won’t be enough left of those bastards to bury.”
The cold fury in his voice sent a shiver down Viggo’s spine. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. He’d seen Evander in battle, had witnessed the devastating power the mage could unleash when pushed.
The path grew steeper, forcing them to slow their pace. Loose stones skittered away beneath their horses’ hooves, tumbling into the darkness of the ravine below. To their left, the cliff face rose, sheer and forbidding. To their right, darkness yawned, a drop of hundreds of feet to the valley floor.
A light snow started falling. It grew in intensity until it fairly blanketed the sky and their surroundings.
Evander raised his hand, signalling a halt. “We go on foot from here. The path ahead is too treacherous for the horses.”
They dismounted and tethered the animals loosely to some gnarled pines that clung stubbornly to the mountainside. Viggo patted his horse’s neck, feeling the beast’s nervous energy beneath its sweat-dampened coat.
“Stay,” he murmured. “We’ll be back.”
The horse whinnied softly.
The climb that followed was brutal. Viggo’s thighs burned within minutes, his lungs straining in the thin mountain air as his boots sank into deepening snow. Behind him, he could hearSolomon’s harsh breathing and Rufus’s occasional muttered curse as he tripped on unseen obstacles in the worsening snowstorm.
Evander led the way, his earth magic creating handholds and footholds where the path grew too treacherous while his wind magic steadied them when they stumbled and protected them from the heaviest of the snowfall. Fairbridge brought up the rear, keeping watch for any sign of pursuit or ambush.
An hour passed.
They saw the lake first, a solid sheet of ice that covered the floor of the narrow valley to their right.
St. Aegidius emerged from the darkness ahead like a forbidden fortress.
The monastery clung to the cliff face as if grown from the living rock, its ancient walls rising in tiers toward a bell tower that pierced the sky like a skeletal finger. Windows that once glowed with candlelight now gaped black and empty. The whole structure leaned outward over the precipice and the ice-locked waters below, as if defying gravity.
“We do this quietly,” Evander said in a hard voice. “Go in, find Ginny and Shaw, get them to safety, then take on Winchester and his group and try to locate theDas Blutbuch.”
Viggo and the others nodded grimly. With only five of them against an unknown number of dark mages, stealth was their best chance of success.
They scrambled up the final stretch of path, keeping to the shadows. Viggo spotted guards patrolling the main gate; two robed figures whose movements projected the lazy confidence of men who didn’t expect any trouble.
Their route took them around the monastery’s western flank, to a section of wall that Schmidt’s map had marked as weakened by age and neglect and that backed onto an outhouse. Evander pressed his palm against the crumbling stone and focused. Itgroaned, cracked, and crumbled inward with a muffled crash that was drowned out by the howling wind.
They clambered through the gap and found themselves inside a dilapidated privy. The stink of piss and human waste rose thickly from a pit to their left.
Evander crept to the door ahead of everyone and peered through a gap between the wooden planks.
“Two guards, eighteen feet ahead and to the left,” he warned. “No dark mages nearby from what I can sense.”
“Then, let’s not waste this opportunity,” Viggo murmured.
