‘The mountain range,’ I tell him. ‘It’s an illusion. That’s our way through! It’s all an illusion.’
Chapter 59
By the time we return to the cave, the wolves have finished their hunt and Ruben and Benny are already skinning the first of the hares. From the pile that sits on the cave floor, it doesn’t look like Elska and Fen left many in the vicinity.
When Benny meets my eyes, he offers a quick shake of his head followed by a glance at Elska, which I assume means the wolves returned before he got his confession out. Given how – as far as I’m aware – they can’t directly understand anyone except me, I consider it a weak excuse, and if what I had to say wasn’t so damned important, I’d make another excuse for us to disappear and take the wolves with us. But there’s no way it can wait, and from the way Ruben tilts his head as he looks at me, he can see that.
‘You okay?’ he asks. ‘You look … excited.’
‘The mountains are an illusion,’ I tell him, my voice still breathless with the enormity of what I’ve discovered.
‘What?’ Their jaws drop with amusing synchronicity. ‘You’re sure?’
I nod. ‘Yes. At first I thought it was the light, just moving shadows, but there was something off about the colours, so I kept looking. Kept doing what Stide taught me. And then Thessa, she saw it too.’
I look at the Sanning, who offers a nod of assurance. ‘She’s right. It’san illusion. At least one. Maybe more – like the vätte made, only bigger. Much, much bigger.’
Benny’s eyes widen and he stares at me for a moment, his look conveying everything he needs to say. ‘If there was something off about them, I should have been able to tell.’
‘But only if you were looking, right? It’s not like the weather’s even let us see this part of the range before.’
His jaw works slightly before he speaks again. ‘Which one?’ he says. ‘Which one do you think is an illusion?’
‘It’s one of the tall ones,’ I tell him unhelpfully. ‘With a large grey ridge. Steep edges.’
It’s hardly the most useful description, but a second later he is bounding out of the cave.
‘You really think that’s possible?’ Ruben says. ‘That the mountains are an illusion?’
The fact that he believes I saw his mother as a Rotting in a cave with an army of other half-dead but doubts what I saw in the mountains should probably make me doubt myself. But I don’t.
‘Not the entire range,’ I tell him. ‘Just small areas. Maybe it’s just that one I saw, but there could be more.’
He still doesn’t look convinced. ‘What exactly did you see that made you think this?’
My hands flex and impatience rises within me, but before I can repeat myself, Benny rushes back into the cave, shaking his head.
‘You’re right. I don’t know how I missed it. It’s here and there all across the mountain range. Maybe half a dozen peaks, maybe more. I don’t know how I missed them.’
‘I guess you’ve been a little distracted,’ Kyor says, shooting a look at Ruben while making a triangle sign with his fingers.
We all ignore him, not just because he’s missed the point of the hand gesture entirely, but because we’re all too focused on what to do next.
‘So what does it mean?’ Caz is the first to voice the question on all our minds. ‘And why would they make an illusion that big?’
‘Because no army in their right mind would try to cross it,’ Kyor answers, back in focused mode now that his joke has fallen flat. ‘Trust me, the number of times I’ve looked at those peaks, the number of meetings I’ve been in where generals suggested marching a full battalion over them … every time we come to the same conclusion: the loss of life would be too great.’
‘But some have crossed them, right?’ Benny asks. ‘Surely.’
Kyor shrugs. ‘We’ve sent small groups out. Small groups who’ve never come back. We just assumed the Issen killed them or they died on the climb over.’
For a second, I can’t respond. I’m too busy marvelling at the perfection of it. With so many genuine mountains, there’s a good chance the soldiers sent did die out on the range, but there’s also the slim possibility that they slipped through the illusions. And when that happened, well … I’m willing to bet there were hordes of Issen on the other side, waiting to pick them off, meaning the secret gaps of their fortress have remained safe, and they can cross into Morathka with ease whenever they want because they know exactly where their own illusions are.
‘But illusion isn’t a magic of the Issen, is it?’ Ruben questions. ‘It’s ice only.’
‘You mean, just like the Torailians don’t have magic, the Sannings don’t exist, and Myrkr and vätte are things of myths?’ I question.
‘Good point,’ he concedes.
