Ishbel spiraled down into darkness. She followed the route that the god priests had taken when first they’d torn the soul from the body of the living man and imprisoned it in the bronze statue.
She followed the trail of pain.
The pain Ishbel could steel herself against, even though it was frightful—gods, what had the god priests done to this man?—but it was the sense of despair that almost murdered her. This man, whoever he was, had somehow known from a very early age that this was his fate, and that he was destined to be abandoned.
The sense of abandonment; that was what was so frightful. This man had been abandoned in every sense. His parents had turned their backs on him. His brother, also. He’d been sent from his home—Serpent’s Nest! He had come from Serpent’s Nest!—to this fate, and no one had tried to save him, or had ever thought of him again.
No one had ever remembered him. He had been lost within the bronze, and no one, no one, had cared.
Ishbel moaned, and for the longest time it was as if she were trapped again in her parents’ house, the rotting bodies of her family about her, and the bleak crowd outside, shouting at her to die, die soon, so that they might burn the house.
And turn their backs, and forget her.
Maximilian glanced at StarDrifter, who had shifted uncomfortably, then looked back to Ishbel. She sat cross-legged, the Weeper resting in her lap, her hands resting gently atop it. Her eyes were closed, her head very slightly thrown back, a wisp of her fair hair caught across one cheek. Maximilian wanted to reach out and tuck it behind an ear—it irritated him, that wisp of hair—but he did not want to break Ishbel’s concentration.
She moaned, very softly, and Maximilian tensed. He looked at StarDrifter, who gave a slight shrug of his shoulders.
I don’t know. I cannot tell.
Maximilian looked quickly at the rest of the group—everyone had their eyes locked on Ishbel—then looked back to Ishbel.
There were colors and textures about her now. Initially, Ishbel’s journey had been through darkness, but after what had felt like endless pain and despair different emotions and sensations began to trickle in.
Fright.
The man had initially been overwhelmed by pain and despair, but he’d managed to conquer them, or at least set them partially to one side. But in doing that, he’d allowed other emotions to beset him.
Fright.
Not so much at what was happening to him, but at the thought that he’d not ever be able to endure. He’d believed that he wasn’t strong enough, and that he would fail. He’d wept. The god priests had been torturing him, slowly and with infinite pleasure, and the man had wept. Not from the pain or the hatred that surrounded him, but from the thought that he’d not be able to endure.
He’d been sent to suffer this fate for a reason…it was not happenchance that the god priests had seized him, but someone…someone…His father! His father had sent him.
“Go and be destroyed,” his father had said, “for it will serve my purpose well.”
Ishbel wept.
His father had been the Lord of Elcho Falling.
Venetia sat alone in her tent. Like Ishbel she was cross-legged, her head thrown back a little, her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell with shallow, rapid breaths and her pale skin gleamed with perspiration.
She was in a forest, following Ishbel down, deeper and deeper into the Weeper.
Into a forest of pain and despair and terror and such aching loneliness that Venetia could hardly bear it.
Ishbel did not know of it, but Venetia could feel another in that forest, trailing her to one side, all her attention fixed on Ishbel.
The colors were harsh and textured. They hid shapes, but Ishbel could not determine them. It was as if she were in a maze of sensation, and she could no longer decide which way she should go. The path had been clear, now it was muddled.
The god priests had left traps.
Ishbel was starting to sweat now, and was very, very pale. Her hands trembled slightly where they rested on the Weeper.
I don’t like this, Maximilian thought. He wished he could follow Ishbel, but he did not have the knowledge or power to penetrate the Weeper.
He wished also that he hadn’t asked Ishbel to do this. It was so dangerous, and Maximilian very suddenly and very painfully realized how deeply he cared for Ishbel.
“StarDrifter?” he said.
StarDrifter shook his head. “This is magic unknown to me, Maxel. I wish…oh stars, I wish I could help, but there is nothing I can do.”
Now Maximilian looked to Garth.
“I can’t touch her,” Garth said. “I can’t touch her with my hand or my Touch. Anything like that will disturb and distract and likely kill her.”
“Hello, Ishbel,” Ravenna said, and stepped through the colors to block Ishbel’s path.
Ishbel stopped dead, forcing herself not to panic and to keep her focus.
“All I need do,” said Ravenna, “is to break your concentration, and you’re trapped here. Your soul, that is. The rest of you will die when your heart stops.”
“Let me pass, Ravenna.”
“No. I’m sorry, Ishbel. Under different circumstances I think I may have liked you. But you are so bad for Maxel, and for the land.”
“Ravenna—”
“You can’t attack me,” said Ravenna. “I can see how intently you maintain your concentration just in conversation. You cannot accomplish anything more without losing the faint strands of connection back to your own body.”
“Ravenna, I won’t harm Maximilian! All I want is to help—”
“You mean well, Ishbel. I know you do. I am sorry, but the only way for you to help Maximilian is to die.”
Then Ravenna leapt forward, catching Ishbel about the throat.
Venetia cried out, “Ravenna!”
She tried to move faster, move to where she could see the forms of Ishbel and Ravenna struggling deeper within the forest of memory and pain, but, oh, it was so hard to move, so hard, and Venetia struggled to maintain both her determination to reach Ishbel and Ravenna, and her hold on the life force of her body that lay slumped in its tent.
Ishbel closed her eyes. Ravenna had her by the throat and was strangling her, but Ishbel did nothing to throw off the woman. She focussed her entire being on holding her concentration, on her desperately fragile hold over the links which led back to her body, and on ignoring Ravenna as best she could.
That was difficult, given that Ravenna was sinking her fingers deeper and deeper into her throat.
Ishbel? Ishbel jerked, her eyes opening.
Ishbel? Hold on just a moment, hang on to my voice. Help is coming.
It was the Weeper, or the soul which inhabited it, and Ishbel clung to the sound of his voice with all her strength. He kept talking, murmuring her name over and over, his voice forming a pathway of light deeper and deeper into the sorceries that bound him.
Ravenna tightened her grip, strengthening her efforts to either kill Ishbel or force the woman to lose her concentration and her hold on her physical body.
Then, unbelievably, Ravenna let go, staring over Ishbel’s shoulder in amazement.
Venetia was there, fighting with everything she had to maintain her own concentration.
“Stop,” she said to her daughter. “Are you mad, to so dishonor the marshlands and your mother?”
Ravenna was, for the moment, so shocked by her mother’s appearance that she did nothing.
“Run,” Venetia said to Ishbel. “Run now, and leave me with my daughter.”