As for plague, well, he was probably right. Neither he nor Apsalar had much to fear. Too bad for everyone else, though.
The broken remnants of the road made for an agonized traverse up the limestone hillside, rocks tumbling and skittering down in clouds of dust. A flash flood had cut through the passage unknown years or decades past, revealing countless layers of sediments on the channel's steep-cut walls. Leading her horse and the pack-mules by the reins, Samar Dev studied those multi-hued layers. 'Wind and water, Karsa Orlong, without end. Time's endless dialogue with itself.'
Three paces ahead, the Toblakai warrior did not reply. He was nearing the summit, taking the down-flow path of the past flood, ragged, gnawed rock rising to either side of him. The last hamlet was days behind them now; these lands were truly wild. Reclaimed, since surely this road must have led somewhere, once, but there were no other signs of past civilization. In any case, she was less interested in what had gone before. What was to come was her fascination, the wellspring of all her inventions, her inspirations.
'Sorcery, Karsa Orlong, that is the heart of the problem.'
'What problem now, woman?'
'Magic obviates the need for invention, beyond certain basic requirements, of course. And so we remain eternally stifled-'
'To the Faces with stifled, witch. There is nothing wrong with where we are, how we are. You spit on satisfaction, leaving you always unsettled and miserable. I am a Teblor – we live simply enough, and we see the cruelty of your so-called progress. Slaves, children in chains, a thousand lies to make one person better than the next, a thousand lies telling you this is how things should be, and there's no stopping it. Madness called sanity, slavery called freedom. I am done talking now.'
'Well, I'm not. You're no different, calling ignorance wisdom, savagery noble. Without striving to make things better, we're doomed to repeat our litany of injustices-'
Karsa reached the summit and turned to face her, his expression twisting. 'Better is never what you think it is, Samar Dev.'
'What does that mean?'
He raised a hand, suddenly still. 'Quiet. Something's not right.' He slowly looked round, eyes narrowing. 'There's a… smell.'
She joined him, dragging the horse and mules onto level ground. High rocks to either side, the edge of a gorge just beyond – the hill they were on was a ridge, blade-edged, with more jagged rock beyond. A twisted ancient tree squatting on the summit. 'I don't smell anything…'
The Toblakai drew his stone sword. 'A beast has laired here, nearby, I think. A hunter, a killer. And I think it is close…'
Eyes widening, Samar Dev scanned the area, her heart pounding hard in her chest. 'You may be right. There are no spirits here…'
He grunted. 'Fled.'
Fled. Oh.
Like a mass of iron filings, the sky was slowly lowering on all sides, a heavy mist that was dry as sand. Not that that made any sense, Kalam Mekhar allowed, but this was what came of sustained terror, the wild pathetic conjurations of a beleaguered imagination. He was clinging with every part of his body that was capable of clinging to the sheer, battered underside of a sky keep, the wind or whatever it was moaning in his ears, a trembling stealing the strength from his limbs as he felt the last of Quick Ben's magic seep away.
Unanticipated, this sudden repudiation of sorcery – he could see no otataral, nothing veined through this brutal, black basalt. No obvious explanation. Leather gloves cut through, blood slicking his hands, and above, a mountain to climb, with this dry silver mist closing in around him. Somewhere far below crouched Quick Ben and Stormy, the former wondering what had gone wrong and, hopefully, trying to come up with an idea for dealing with it. The latter likely scratching his armpits and popping lice with his fingernails.
Well, there was no point in waiting for what might not come, when what was going to come was inevitable. Groaning with the effort, Kalam began pulling himself along the rock.
The last sky keep he had seen had been Moon's Spawn, and its pocked sides had been home to tens of thousands of Great Ravens. Fortunately, this did not seem to be the case here. A few more man-heights' worth of climbing and he would find himself on a side, rather than virtually upside-down as he was now. Reach there, he knew, and he would be able to rest.
Sort of.
That damned wizard. That damned Adjunct. Damned everybody, in fact, since not one of them was here, and of course they weren't, since this was madness and nobody else was this stupid. Gods, his shoulders were on fire, the insides of his thighs a solid ache edging towards numbness. And that wouldn't be good, would it?