The boar continued its headlong charge, heedless of the path ending in thin air.
“Gatekeeper! Show yourself!” Tris took a wide stance, digging in his heels as best he could, and he readied his sword like a pike, certain that the boar meant to drive him over the edge.
Just before the boar would have spitted itself on Tris’s sword, the large animal came to an abrupt stop. It stood staring at Tris, its small, close-set eyes watching his every move.
“Are you the Gatekeeper?”
The boar made no movement, and Tris removed the third gift, the circlet.
“I bring a gift to pass this gate. Allow me to enter and return and the gift is yours.”
He held out the circlet in his left hand, carefully approaching the large animal. When it made no move to gore him with its tusks, Tris set the circlet on its head.
The outline of the boar shimmered and rippled like sunlight on water. As Tris watched, the shoulders broadened and the thick body elongated, its pelvis flattening. The skull grew rounder and the features shifted until a naked man stood before him. The man gestured for Tris to follow him.
The gatekeeper walked to the edge of the cliff and stepped off. He disappeared from view, but Tris heard no scream, nor did he hear the thud of a body rolling its way
down the steep, rocky incline. He walked to the place where the gatekeeper had disappeared and looked down. The man stood below him, balanced on a path so narrow that, without a guide, Tris knew he never would have found it.
At the bottom of the chasm, the guide stopped, motioning to where the path continued across the flat ground.
Tris turned to the man. “Thank you,” he said. The man looked at him in silence. “Will you return to the shape of a boar, or stay a man?”
“I will stay a man.” The guide’s voice was rough, and the words came out slowly, as if he had not spoken in a long time. “If you return this way, the path will show itself to you.” With that, he bounded up the narrow trail, leaving Tris alone in the floor of the chasm.
Tris walked on, following the remnant of a trail that wound across the rocky ground. The trail led out into hilly ground that became a grassy plain. Across the plain, Tris could see a white marble building with steps leading up to it. The path led in that direction.
As he grew closer, Tris realized that the building looked like a crypt. Broad steps led up to a large, circular landing made of gleaming white stone. Tris followed the path up the steps, but as he was about to cross the landing, he heard a sharp noise overhead and felt a rush of air. A huge, scaled bird landed in front of him and gave a sharp cry. The bird had a wingspan easily twice Tris’s height, and a sharp, dangerous beak. Instead of feathers, the bird was covered with small reflective scales. It had long talons at the end of its powerful feet and a whiplike tail.
“I seek the gatekeeper. Is that you?” Tris asked the huge bird. “Allow me to pass and return and the gift is yours.”
Tris had no desire to get within the reach of either the bird’s beak or its talons. Reaching into his pouch, he withdrew the string of grave beads and tossed it toward the huge bird. With a raptor’s cry of victory, the bird grabbed the string of beads, tossed it into the air, and swallowed it down.
As Tris watched, the bird spread its wings, reaching from edge to edge of the landing. The bird’s form became thinner, until it slipped onto the landing like a picture painted onto parchment and became part of the elaborate mosaic tile of the landing. The way was clear for Tris to enter the crypt.
Inside the crypt, a set of stone steps led downward. Halfway down, the gloom became impenetrable, and Tris called hand fire to light his way. Only three passage tokens remained in his bag. He was relieved not to have needed to fight the gatekeepers, preferring to reserve his strength for the confrontation with Konost.
The bottom of the stairs opened into a torch-lit cavern. The path ended abruptly at the edge of a large, still pool. Far across the water, Tris could see where the path picked up again and headed deeper into the cave. There was no telling how deep the water ran, nor what lay beneath its placid surface. Tris watched the water and saw a ripple. In the torch light, shadows glided beneath the water.
“Gatekeeper, I have a gift for you. Allow me to pass and return and the gift is yours.”
Tris walked toward the water’s edge. His boot steps sounded deafening in the unnatural stillness. As he neared the path’s end, a dark shape exploded from the water, thrusting its large, powerful reptilian head toward him. Huge jaws, easily the length of a man’s arm, snapped
inches from where Tris stood. The creature’s mouth was filled with jagged, gleaming black teeth.
It reared back and thrust forward again, opening its maw wide. Two large, sharp fangs protruded from the left side of its mouth, but on the right, only one bottom fang jutted up. Tris stepped back and dug into the pouch. He withdrew the obsidian dagger and held it up. He had no idea whether or not the beast could see the dagger or make out what it was, but Tris gave an underhand toss and the beast caught it in its mouth.
The large beast rose out of the water, revealing four thick, muscular legs and a long, serpentine torso. It opened its maw to bellow, and Tris saw that the dagger had replaced its missing fang. Tentatively, hand on sword, he stepped forward to the edge of the water.
The reptile regarded him with cold, dead eyes, and then it began to sink low into the water. It stretched out both head and tail, leaving just enough of its body above the water to form a walkway across the pool. With a prayer for luck, Tris took the first step onto the reptile’s head, expecting the beast to swing around and attempt to snap at him with its fangs. To his relief, the creature remained still, allowing him to cross.
When he stepped onto the path on the far side of the water, the reptile gatekeeper sank silently beneath the surface.
Tris looked longingly at the clear water of the pool. The path had been long and arduous. He was as tired and sore as if he had made the trek in his mortal body, and now, staring at the water, he felt parched. With effort, he reminded himself of the warning to take no food or drink, and he forced himself to walk farther along the path.
The cave narrowed to a tunnel barely wide enough for Tris to walk through without turning sideways. More than once, he knocked his forehead against low rock outcroppings, and blood began to mingle with his sweat, trickling down his forehead into his eyes. When the tunnel finally widened, Tris found himself in a room with three openings. In the center of the room stood an old woman. Torches in sconces set the room in shifting light and shadow. The old woman raised her head, revealing a sightless eye and an empty socket.
“Who is it? Who’s there?”
“A traveler,” Tris replied cautiously.
“Living, dead, or undead?”
“Not quite any of the three.”
“Paths go to different ends, depending on which you be.”
“I have a passage token, a gift for the gatekeeper. Are you the gatekeeper?”
The old hag gave a mirthless laugh. “Oh, I’m the gatekeeper, all right. But I have no need of gifts. I go nowhere, eat nothing, and see no one.”
Tris dug the next-to-last token from his bag. Aside from the heart, all that was left was the onyx ring.
“Allow me to pass and return and the gift is yours.” Tris approached the hag carefully, with his right hand settled on the grip of his sword and the ring held in his outstretched left hand. He moved close enough to place the ring in her gnarled hand.
The hag took the ring and stroked it with her fingers. She grinned broadly, revealing a row of broken, mottled teeth. “A good gift you’ve brought me, a very good gift.” With that, the hag gave the onyx stone a sharp twist,
freeing it from its mounting, and slapped the stone against the empty eye socket. When she withdrew her hand, a black eye filled the socket. She regarded Tris carefully.
“Living, dead, or undead?” she asked again.
“All, and none. I seek Konost. Permit me to pass and return.”
The hag gave him a long look once again and then stepped aside, pointing to the middle tunnel. “I hope you have one more gift in that bag. There’s another gatekeeper—one who isn’t as pretty as I am,” she said with a harsh laugh. “Then again, after you’ve been down here a while, you won’t be pretty, either.” She gave a mocking laugh. “Go.”
The middle path descended steeply, growing colder with every step. Tris could sense the spirits of the dead nearby; their conversations formed a whispered hum just out of earshot. The path was narrow, requiring him to move sideways at some places, and the sharp rocks jabbed into his skin. Even though he was in spirit form, pain was real.
Gradually, the pathway widened. Tris entered a large cavernous chamber. Bones and skulls were stacked along the walls and embedded into the ceiling of the cave. Some of the bones were arranged in tableaus, with lines of dancing skeletons holding hands as if at a spring dance, or fixed in depictions of everyday life: sitting around a table, reclining on a picnic, or playing sports. In other places, the bones formed abstract patterns, runes, or a repeating motif of the three-bone symbol of the Shrouded Ones. Along the back wall of the cave was an elaborate mural made from bones. Three figures—Peyhta, Konost, and Shanthadura—were carved into the rock, the only figures in the entire cavern not sculpted from bone. These three
cowled figures accepted tribute from a long line of skeletal supplicants who came on foot, crawling on hands and knees, carried in the arms of others, or riding on bony horses and mules.
At the base of the mural was a large white building, also constructed from bone. Tens of thousands of human bones built its pillars and lintels, while its roof was tiled with flat shoulder bones. Skulls and pelvis bones adorned the walls in ghastly combinations, while smaller finger and toe bones edged the top of the wall-like ribbon. Between where Tris stood and the bone-covered temple was a wide river with only one bridge. Like the temple, the bridge was built of the bones of countless men, women, and children. It arched across the dark river supported by a latticework of long bones, suspended with the graceful curving strands of hundreds of human spines.
As Tris walked closer to the bridge, the smell of decay became stronger. A shambling figure with putrefying flesh peeling from its rotting frame blocked the bridge’s entrance. Tris approached cautiously. Though the figure walked unsteadily while patrolling its post, Tris had no desire to find out just how quickly it could move if it detected prey.
Tris stretched out his magic. While the corpse of the gatekeeper was very old, strong magic kept it from disintegrating into dust. Tris’s anger flared. Trapped within the eternally rotting flesh of the stinking corpse was a sentient spirit. To reanimate the dead by forcing an unwilling soul back into a rotting body was forbidden to any Light mage. Konost obviously played by her own rules.
Carefully, Tris reached into the bag for the last passage token: the human heart. It, too, was halted in a state of
waxy partial decomposition. Tris could feel the vile magic that preserved it. Holding the heart in his hand, he approached the bridge.
“Gatekeeper! I have a gift for you. Allow me to pass and return and the gift is yours.”
The shambling corpse stopped and turned toward the sound of Tris’s voice. Its yellow, gelatinous eyes fixed him in their gaze. “Not unless you can destroy me.”
“I have no cause to fight you,” Tris replied, keeping his hand on Nexus’s grip, ready to draw. “Take the heart and stand aside.”
The gatekeeper moved forward warily, snatching the heart from Tris’s hand. The gatekeeper pulled aside the filthy remnants of his shirt to reveal decayed flesh that barely covered the bare bones of his ribs. He pushed one hand through the rotting sinew to place the heart where it belonged inside his chest. As Tris watched, the putrefying flesh lost its green-and-black hue as it knit together. Oozing pustules of festering rot closed to become purple-and-brown lesions and then faded to the sickly gray of a fresh corpse.
The gatekeeper drew its sword from the ragged remains of an ancient leather scabbard. He began to advance, and where Tris had glimpsed sentience before, he now saw craft and intelligence. The gatekeeper swung his ancient sword, and Tris met the bone-jarring swing with Nexus. Nexus’s blade flared with the contact, warming in Tris’s hand as the gatekeeper swung again with lethal force. Here, on the Plains of Spirit, it was easy to let himself merge with the magic of the sword. He remembered his grandmother’s warning:
The sword draws a breath from your soul
.
The gatekeeper showed no sign of tiring, and Tris wondered what magic imbued the corpse with its power. Tris knew he could not sustain pitched battle forever. His foot slipped, and the gatekeeper scored a deep gash to Tris’s shoulder. The sight of blood oozing from the wound made Tris wonder if the damage sustained here in the Nether marked the body he had left behind.
The triumph of inflicting a serious wound distracted the gatekeeper. It was only for a second, but it was the opening Tris had been waiting for, and he lunged, driving Nexus between the corpse’s ribs, into the newly returned heart. Nexus’s blade flared once more, bright as the sun, and Tris felt the blade pull a surge of his magic down its steely length, even as the grip grew dangerously hot in Tris’s hand. The corpse guard screamed as magic fused with Nexus’s fiery glow, and Tris realized what the sword meant to do a second after it had begun to force life energy down the honed edge of the blade. His magic burst into the gray, dead heart, and then sent tendrils of white-hot power through every nerve and vein.