Well, all those lessons are coming flooding back to me, nearly twenty years later, and maybe even saving my life. Sarvi’s jet-black mane is wrapped around my hands several times over, because taking a tumble here means falling two hundred feet to my death.
Because we’re flying.
We’re fucking flying.
I’m too damn scared to even appreciate what an incredible and surreal event this is, because I’ve got Death’s armored chest and crotch pressed against me, the front of his thighs bracketing mine, and Sarvi’s shoulders jammed between my legs. The air is chilled and thinner up here and Sarvi’s rhythmic wingbeats make it even colder.
If you could find something to be happy about, Sarvi says, even for a moment, sir, it would make our journey much quicker. The clouds are holding us back.
Death grumbles. “I would have been happy had you found that redheaded bastard.”
I told you, he was long gone, Sarvi says. From what I can tell, the unicorn’s voice isn’t coming from its mouth or vocal chords, but somehow slipping from its brain to ours. Kalma and Surma will double-check, but I doubt they’ll find anything. They never do.
“How can a mortal get through the Hiisi Forest that fast?” Death muses bitterly. “He’s hiding.”
That may be. He wouldn’t have made it through the Star Swamp, I know that much, Sarvi says.
Death makes another low growling noise. With him right behind me, the guttural sound raises the hair on the back of my neck, even with the iron collar there.
“We know who his mother is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she helped him,” Death says.
I have questions. I have so many questions. But right now, I can’t say a word. I’m too terrified to speak, like the moment I do I’ll let go of Sarvi’s mane and tumble through the sky forever. I’ve never had a big fear of heights but that will change after this.
If there is an after this.
She’s a silent one, Sarvi says, meaning me. I must say I’m relieved. You’ll have to understand, Hanna, that so far only you and Death can understand me. The other unicorns do too, but they’re not as civilized as Gods and mortals can be.
Sarvi says this as if I should be flattered.
“I’m too scared to talk,” I admit.
Death makes another low, rumbling noise behind me, reverberating through my bones. “How freely she admits it now.”
We lapse into silence, though in my head I’m doing all I can not to freak out. We fly along, just under the cloud cover, the claw-like tips of Sarvi’s wings scraping the bottoms of the clouds, making foggy tendrils dance in our wake. Below us the scenery keeps changing. The dry and desolate plains end abruptly at cliffs that stretch up and up, the River of Shadows snaking below it. The cliffs keep getting higher, turning to mountains that are craggy and jagged, gleaming as if made of iron, a dusting of snow on the very peaks.
Then I see something that takes my breath away.
Right in front of us is an impossibly large tower that shoots straight up into the clouds, miles and miles wide, so wide that it almost curves over the horizon. The tower is made of shining stones that reflect the sky and rises up from a walled citadel of darkness, the structures barely visible.
“What is that?” I ask breathlessly.
“The City of Death,” Death says proudly as Sarvi curves around the gargantuan tower, flying at an angle that I’m sure I’ll fall from, with only the G-forces keeping me in place.
I quickly glance up at the tower as it disappears into the clouds. Then vertigo sets in and I shut my eyes, no longer wanting to see the rest. “Where does it go?”
“Into the heavens,” says Death. “Up there is Amaranthus. It’s where the best of the best go. Below it, at the middle, is the Golden Mean. Then where you see the citadel at ground level, that begins the Realm of Inmost, where the Inmost Dwellers are beholden. Inmost goes fathoms deep into the ground, almost as deep as Amaranthus goes into the sky. No surprise, considering how many…offenders there are.”
“You mean sinners.”
He clears his throat. “No. Not quite. We’re all sinners, little bird. Every one of us. To sin is to be human, to be human is to sin.”
“But you’re a God.”
“Gods are the biggest sinners of them all.”
“That sounds blasphemous to me.”
He chuckles warmly. “There is but one singular Creator, Hanna. The word God is too weak for them. Beneath the Creator are the Gods. We are victims to the same impulses, weaknesses, and emotions as anyone else is.” He pauses. “Does that disappoint you?”
“Considering I’ve grown up believing in only one God, whom I’m assuming is the Creator, then no. I’ve never given multiple Gods any thought.”
“But you’ve thought of Death,” he says with deliberation, an edge of excitement to his voice.