Mount Ether.
Dead animals litter the shore—horses, krah, a number of dune cats. Having sipped the water that holds a malignant truth, they didn’t make it far before their bodies changed from the inside out.
Turned to stone.
The volcano excretes toxic minerals that spike the lake—a natural form of taxidermy that most creatures don’t see coming; too desperate for a drink to heed the eerie warning signs.
Breathing thick, putrid air that smells of sulfur, I pace back and forth while I wait for the stepping stones to appear.
The only safe way across to Mount Ether.
The still water reflects the world like a mirror despite the slow, silent drop of the water level. There are no ripples. No gentle laps at the shore.
Nobody knows where the water goes when it lowers. There’s no outlet. Like the ground breathes it all the way in, then flushes it out again once every sun cycle. Sometimes it happens fast, other times slow—a risky journey for only the truly desperate and devoted.
I’m far from devoted.
The stones begin to surface—seven hundred and twenty-two of them poking above the glossy, noxious water. I don’t bother waiting for them to peak before knotting the stirrups high on Eyzar’s saddle, lifting the struggling hoof-strung goat off the back of him, and smacking him on the ass.
“Go home!”
With a toss of his head, he turns and gallops across the slate planes, perhaps sensing my agitation. I hate sending him off on his own, but from here, the road is too dangerous.
I heft the goat upon my shoulders to the tune of Eyzar’s retreat and the bleating drone of the goat as I leap from the powdery gray shore onto the first rock.
The crystal-clear water allows a perfect view of fallen men, women, and creatures of all casts scattered across the lake’s floor like stone statues, reaching for daylight with stretched fingers and vacant, stony stares. Those who came seeking Maars but didn’t make it all the way across the path in time.
Victims of the tidal rise.
I shiver despite the warm, fat goat around my shoulders, every fitted struggle threatening to throw me off balance as I leap from stone to stone, its bleating cries grating me.
I jump onto the far shore and charge up stairs shrouded in mist. My thighs burn by the time I step onto the volcano’s crown, battered by the sound of my deep breaths and the distanttap, tap, tap. A sound that pitches into my spine.
Makes my guts cramp.
I follow it, finding Maars hunched at the base of one of the stone monoliths protruding from the mountain’s crown, a dark, twisted shadow tucked within a gray hooded cloak that’s frayed at the hem. A wiggling thread of black scripture is bound around his arm, squealing every time he bangs more of its length into the slate with a smack of his iron hammer.
Pausing mid-swing, Maars tips his face to the sky and draws a long breath through flared nostrils.
His head whips in my direction, exposing the face hidden within the cavern of his hood: smooth, unlike the skin on his hands. His eye sockets are empty bar a scoop of skin, though it doesn’t stop you from feelingseen.As though he’s hunting the beat in your heart like the animal he’s become.
“Maars.”
“Rhordyn, Rhordyn, far from home. Nice of the beast to finally roam.”
I grunt, then flip the goat off my shoulders and release the binds around its hooves. It tips onto its side and scrambles up, then runs—wild eyed—straight toward the awaiting predator.
Maars releases a skin-scuttling snarl, leaving his squirming ribbon of scripture half hanging from the wall as he drops his hammer and leaps upon the goat.
He bares his serrated maw, then rips into the soft flesh of the animal’s throat. A plume of blood spills across its snowy fur. Maars holds—pinning the creature down until it gives a final, sputtering jerk, its mouth dropping open, tongue flopped out the side.
Maars pulls back, panting, producing a ravaged smile that’s all bloody, pin-teethed horror, using his iron-tipped fingernails to cleave open the animal’s chest cavity. He plows his hand into the hole until he’s elbow deep, fishing around.
Fucking hell.
“I see your table manners have improved.”
His responding laugh is manic and curdled as he rips the heart free, holding the steaming organ in his clawed hand. He bites into the round flesh, ripping off a chunk he gnaws in greedy, ravenous chews, blood dribbling down his chin and arm. “Yum like a plum,” he says around a mouthful of masticated gore.
