Page 80 of Katabasis
“Why?” He wrenched his arm away with such vehemence that she stumbled back. “You’re not coming with me.”
“We can’t split up, it’s not safe.”
He barked out a laugh. “Safe,she says.Safe, says the girl who would have damned me to the Weaver Girl.”
“I didn’t—”
“That was wrong, what we did. Elspeth was right to cast us out.” He turned away from her and kept trudging. “I’m finished.”
“Murdoch.” She followed behind him, pathetic—but she didn’t know where else to go. “Please don’t hate me.”
He laughed again. This time there was a desperate quality to it; the sort of laugh that was seconds from a sob. “I don’t, Law. But I’m quite sure that you hateme.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Then you must think very little of me,” he said. “Because ever since we got here, I’ve only felt—I don’t know, thiscoldness, like you don’t even care I’m here.”
“I never asked you to come,” she said. “I would have gone alone, you’re the one who wanted to come with—”
“Because I thought we’d be better off together.”
“Or because you wanted a sacrifice for exchange, isn’t that right?”
“Itoldyou, that’s not what I had planned—”
“Well, that’s rich,” she said. “Seeing as you had my name underlined thrice in your notes.”
Peter spun around. The fury in his eyes made her flinch; she had never before seen Peter so angry. “I don’t have to justify myself to you,” he said. “But if you think I’m that kind of person, Law, then you’re better off continuing through Hell on your own.”
He continued up the slope. Alice stared after him for a moment, then followed. She didn’t have a plan; she only knew she had nowhere else to go, and if she lost Murdoch, she was lost altogether.
Her foot stuck. She teetered, nearly lost her balance. She wrenched her foot free—then bent down to take a look, for the sand seemed wet, but that didn’t make any sense, for they were getting further from shore.
Up ahead, Peter was bent over his ankle.
“Murdoch!”
He didn’t respond. She started toward him—but suddenly, her legs would not move. She tried, but something rooted them in place, and when she glanced down, she saw a hand. Alice screamed.
Dead arms burst out of the water. Alice jumped away, but her feet splashed into a deep recess, and she lurched to the side. She saw then they were not on solid ground at all—what seemed like muddy ground was sand sticking to the surface of water, whole stretches of water, lurking in wait.
A force yanked against her knee. She collapsed sideways into the bog.
She felt a shock of icy water. She opened her eyes. She wished she hadn’t. For she saw then an entire lake full of Shades, biting and twisting and pulling against one another. Their faces were horrible, their eyes blazing red, their mouths stretched wide with fury. She could not see where it ended. They seemed to go on and on forever, a bottomless descent of stifled fury, stretching all the way down into the lightless dark.Sullen in black mire, Dante had reported.They gurgle in their gullets.
She kicked. Her foot connected against something solid, something that gave her leverage. The weight around her leg vanished. She swam up, broke the surface. She flailed about, seeking purchase. There—her hands scrabbled against hard stone. She pressed her fingers down, hauled herself up. She crouched against her perch, trembling—then saw, just beyond, what seemed like a stretch of rock sticking out from the water. She shrugged off her rucksack and threw it forward. It did not sink. Alice crawled on all fours toward the stretch.
The bog was silent behind her. All she could see was bubbles.
“Murdoch?” Her voice was a tinny choke. She spat water out into the bog and tried again. “Murdoch?”
A hoarse gasp. Peter broke the surface several feet away. A tangle of Shades rose with him—fingers clawing against his face, his eyes, his shoulders, trying to drag him back down. Alice crouched on her knees, panicked—he was too far to reach, and her hunting knives could do nothing from here.
She yanked out her Perpetual Flask. Bog water was not Lethe water, she reasoned. These Shades, furious as they were, might be afraid of oblivion yet. She could not aim—there was no aiming anyway, for Peter was enveloped now in a frothing mass of dead souls. She could only fling out black water in a shaking arc. Droplets sailed through the air and landed on the bog with a sharp sizzle, like water hitting a burning pan.
The Shades fell away. Peter splashed through the bog toward her. Three strides, two strides—he stopped, dragged under, then popped up again. A Shade hung off his rucksack, teeth sunk into the upper pocket.
“Take it off!” she shouted. Peter wriggled between the straps, freed one shoulder and then the other. The Shade sank back into the bog with aplop. Peter lurched forward, hands splayed at Alice. She grasped his arms and pulled him up.
