Ruby Shadows (Born to Darkness #3)(67)

Something strange happened then—I suppose it was a kind of magic. Suddenly as his warm, cinnamon scent filled my senses, I saw what was really out there in that huge desert.

The sand was suddenly gone. In its place were hundreds—no, thousands—of pits. Most were filled with tortured souls but a few glowed an ominous red. I concentrated on those and saw they were filled with lava, moving sluggishly as it flowed through the underground caverns to some unknown destination.

“It flows to the Lake of Fire, in the very center of Minauros,” Laish murmured, as though he’d heard what I was thinking. “That place where I was cast when I first—”

“When you what?” I asked, trying to look at him, but his cheek was still pressed to mine. “You actually went into the Lake of Fire? And lived to tell about it?”

“Never mind. It was many millennia ago.” He pulled away abruptly, taking the strange vision with him. Now when I looked at the desert, I saw only a vast sweep of sand. But knowing that it was honeycombed by so many pits made me shiver.

“Are we…do we have to go back out onto the sand? I mean, will it support our weight?” I asked as Laish lifted me easily onto Kurex’s back.

“There are paths between the pits,” he said. “I know you cannot see them but I can. Why do you think I have been leading Kurex as we journeyed through Minauros?”

“But—”

“Gwendolyn…” He looked up at me, one hand on my leg. “You’ll simply have to trust me. There are many horrors here in the Infernal Realm—more than your mortal mind can count or imagine. If you tried, it would drive you mad. So trust me to take you through them and I swear, I will not lead you astray.”

The look in his eyes made me bite my lip. I heard what he wasn’t saying—the longing to regain my trust after what I’d seen him become…what I’d seen him do. But I didn’t know how to answer that—or if I could ever give him what he wanted.


“All right,” I said at last, not knowing what else to say. “I…I’ll try.”

“Thank you, that is all I ask. Now come, we must be going.”

He led Kurex back out onto the shifting sands and we resumed our journey in silence.



Chapter Twenty

Laish





We made better time to the end of Minauros than I had hoped. Gwendolyn was silent during our trip but I felt that at least it was a thoughtful silence. One thing I liked about her was that she wasn’t blindly prejudiced against me as so many were against demons. Maybe in time she would find a way to trust me again, despite what she had seen in the Hotel Infernal. I could only hope and wait. In the meantime, I was being careful not to pressure her. I knew very well that by trying to draw her to me I would only push her away.

I did wish I could have found a way to get her to eat some. She’d had nothing substantial since the sandwich she’d eaten yesterday before we entered Baator. I didn’t count the little piece of fruit she’d eaten that morning—it was hardly one bite. Traveling through Minauros was a grueling journey. I watched her anxiously as we went—wanting to be certain she wasn’t swaying in the saddle. If she got too faint and weak I could always force her to eat but I didn’t want to do that. It would erase any last vestige of trust she might feel for me and I had an idea I would never gain it back.

Still, she couldn’t be allowed to starve herself to death. I watched her covertly from the corner of my eye as Kurex plodded across the constantly shifting sands.

Her face was impassive, making it impossible to guess what she thought. Sometimes I caught a little of her internal monologue—because we were in my own realm where my powers were strongest and because she thought so very loudly. But I needed to be close to her—it helped especially to be touching and I was being careful not to do that unless it was absolutely necessary.

The little white lily-moth that had somehow followed us through the barrier between Baator and Minauros still clung to her shoulder like a good-luck talisman. I wondered again how it had gotten here, how it had gotten so far from home. Just seeing the tiny creature made me ache with a pain so old I had almost forgotten it. What was it that humans called it? That feeling of missing the place you once belonged and can no longer go back to? The name escaped me but I felt it now and fought it—such emotions would do me no good in this quest. We needed to press onward to our goal.

I was watching the sands, leading Kurex carefully around yet another sand trap when I heard Gwendolyn say, “Oh!” in a soft, awed voice. Looking up, I saw that we had found our way to the edge of the Desert of Death.

We had come at last to the Jealous Heart. But whether we could get through it or not would be entirely up to Gwendolyn.





* * * * *

Gwendolyn





“Where did that come from all of a sudden?” I asked, looking at the huge mountain that rose suddenly before us. It was huge, so tall I couldn’t see its peak. Something so vast should have been visible a long way off—we should have seen it the whole time we were traveling towards it. Instead, it had simply appeared, just like the Iron Spike and the city of Baator had both suddenly appeared. I was beginning to think this was the norm for Hell—things just blinking into existence like they’d been there all along. But it was no less unsettling for all that.