I wouldn’t take a devil’s explanations too seriously anyway.
I peered into one of the ponds for clues. It was simply the yellowish color of snowmelt, bits of surrounding foliage floating in the otherwise glass-smooth surface. My reflection looked back at me. What a sight.
I looked exactly as I was — a woman who had only barely won a battle against her own paladin superior and a demon, and then ridden for days on end without stopping anywhere that possessed a bath.
If there was one thing I knew about appearances from my travels, it was that first impressions were important. Arrive at the meeting point looking unkempt, and the other paladin aspects would immediately disregard me, or worse, pity me. I was too young to afford that.
I chewed my lip in thought.
There was no way to clean up properly. But what if I chose to purposefully mark myself?
They’d think I was crazy. Unpredictable.
That could work. It’s hard to bully people who make you nervous.
At the next puddle, I grabbed a handful of grey clay from the edge of the pool and spread it thick through my hair where it sprang at my forehead, and then carefully swiped it into wings at either side. Without washing my hands, I plaited my hair to one side, letting the clay form around the strands of the braid. I rubbed my fingers in the clay again and then spread them like a fan across my chin and swiped downward.
There.
Saints and Angels, but I looked hideous now. Exactly as I intended. I looked fearsome and worthy of respect rather than lost and forlorn.
Are you forlorn? Sir Branson asked me.
Are you lost? The demon sounded eager.
I refused to admit to either.
I clenched my jaw and rode on until eventually, the graveyard ended. The road curved between tall rock cliffs and shot out between them to the edge of a furious grey sea. Not so much as a gull rode the cold winds, and I felt almost as if I were the last living person in all the world.
Amazing, isn’t it? Remember this. You are nothing and you never will be. Submit now to your betters. Submit or find yourself ground down to the nothing you are.
I clenched my teeth firmly and refused to listen or to let the loneliness of this place seep into me.
I could hardly hear Brindle’s alert barks over the sound of the waves crashing hard on the stone. Without any other choice, I followed the winding road after him. It cut first one way and then another around foreboding rock cuts and over crumbling arch bridges. Statues still lined the road in unpredictable places. Some, sheltered by the stone, remained standing, though their faces and details were worn away to pocked obscurity. Others were nothing but feet or legs affixed to stone pedestals.
I think I knew that one there.
The one with no face? How unlikely.
Yes, that one. Most of my victims end up without faces.
In the back of my mind, Sir Branson growled and Brindle growled with him.
I swallowed nervously, when finally — late in the afternoon — the rock curved sharply and I saw the hulking shape of a ruin up on a steep stone rise.
The Aching Monastery.
We had arrived.
A map would have done me little good. Though a few arches and buttresses remained jutting into the sky, the rest was a mass of tumbled stone architecture. There was even what might have been a large tower lying in five distinct chunks at the bottom of the cliff face, half covered by the pewter water of the sea and grown all over with barnacles.
It was with stomach-twisting trepidation that I kept riding.
I had orders to follow. I had a quest to complete.
And besides, the sun was low on the horizon and there was nowhere to camp on this harsh, narrow road or the jagged rocks between it and the sea. When tide was high, I would guess it nearly licked over the road. It would be a very watery sleep.
I’m going to love this place.
