by Victor Poole
"You've already fallen down," Delmar told her. "It can't get worse than this."
"It can," Ajalia said hotly. "It can get very much worse than this." She did not say, I could have fainted. Delmar saw what she was afraid of; he cradled her numb hand against his naked chest.
"I won't hurt you," he said.
"You already hurt me, a lot," Ajalia shot at him. "If it wasn't for you, I would be fine right now. I would be right outside Talbos right now. Now, because of you, I am in the middle of nowhere, and I can't stand up."
"I'm going to move the pain out of your arm," Delmar said. His voice was relaxed and soothing.
"Don't you try to calm me down!" Ajalia shouted. "I do not have to calm down."
"No," Delmar agreed, "anger is better."
"Stop agreeing with me, you—" Ajalia could not think of anything insulting to say. Her face burning with shame, she tried again to stand; her knees buckled, and she crashed down against Delmar. Tears of fury pooled Ajalia's eyes.
"Don't you dare feel sorry for me," she gasped. She had knocked Delmar sideways when she fell; he wrapped her close in his arms, and lifted her head onto his shoulder. She had gone limp.
"Let me help," he said.
"Why do you think you know so much?" Ajalia wailed in despair. A harsh giggle wandered out of her throat. "I'm sorry," she gasped. "I don't know what's wrong with me."
Delmar righted himself. He lay Ajalia down on the road, and pillowed her head in his lap. Ajalia could feel the heavy muscles of his thigh beneath her head; a heavy throb of blood spun through her veins.
"Don't," she whispered.
"Hold still," he murmured, and lifted her arm.
The left arm was worse than the right, but Ajalia didn't know that. She thought that the pain would be worse when Delmar put the spinning twirl of golden light through the scars on her right wrist. Ajalia wanted to look away, but her eyes were drawn irresistibly to his hands, which were rough and large on her arm. Ajalia did not think of herself as a small woman, but her wrist looked tiny within Delmar's grasp.
She held her breath as Delmar rubbed the skin gently around the maze of scars that crisscrossed the inside of her arm. Some of the white scar tissue was still darkened by the original brand; scraps of blackened skin twirled in amongst the raised flesh.
Delmar's touch was warm and loving; he put his fingers on her as though she were a precious thing. His tenderness made her heart shiver with pain.
"Delmar," Ajalia said.
"Mm?" Delmar said. He was studying the shape of the muscle beneath the scarring; his fingers were probing around the old wound.
Ajalia wanted to hear Delmar's voice, but she could think of nothing to say to him. She wanted to ask him if he was angry with her for falling down; she wanted to know if he hated her. Ajalia sighed, and turned her head a little on Delmar's thigh. He lifted her arm towards his mouth; she whimpered.
Delmar glanced at her, and smiled. He closed his eyes, and a tendril of golden light spun out of him. The shock was worse than it had been before; Ajalia could feel the yellow light sinking through the layers of hardened scar tissue. The pain was less this time. She had tensed her body against the expected waves of trembling, but they did not come. Shooting stabs of aching hurt came up through her arm; she winced. Delmar stroked the scars with his fingertips, and kissed them.
"Kissing isn't going to make the scars better," Ajalia said.
"No," Delmar agreed, and kissed her on the mouth.
"I don't know what to say to you," Ajalia told him when he had finished. A fresh feeling of nausea tumbled through her body; she jerked to the side, narrowly avoiding Delmar, and clung to the road, holding back the urge to vomit.
"Get the horse," Ajalia rasped. Delmar looked around. The horse had started to wander into the mountains, looking for weeds to browse on. The gelding raised his head when Delmar picked up the trailing reins, and snorted, as if to say 'Hello, friend.'
"I don't want you to think," Ajalia croaked, dragging herself onto her hands and knees, "that kissing you makes me want to throw up."
Delmar laughed. He put one arm around Ajalia's waist, and helped her to stand.
"Can I have my clothes?" he asked. Ajalia closed her fingers reflexively around the fabric of the tunic; she did not want to give it up. She had put one hand on Delmar's side when he pulled her upright, and she tried now to memorize the feeling of his skin. She was sure she would never touch him like this again.
She met his eyes. A pinched look was between his brows; his eyes were cloudy.
"No," she said fiercely, pushing herself away from Delmar. "I'm keeping it."
"It's mine," Delmar said.
"Not anymore," Ajalia said. She put one foot ahead of the other; her knees were weak, and her hips felt disjointed. She found she could stay upright. She could breathe more easily now. A pounding swell of dull pain was shifting through her right elbow, and her shoulders; she felt as though some internal bubble of old pain had been burst, and tendrils of black poison were now reaching through every part of her body. She blinked away the pain, and limped slowly up the road.
"I'll put you on the horse," Delmar called after her. He pulled on the reins, and the horse reluctantly followed him.
"I can walk," Ajalia grunted through her teeth. Her bones felt as though they had been twisted out of her joints; splintering darts of hot pain shot up her ribs with every step she took. The threat of rain had passed; the clouds were blowing inland, towards Slavithe. The moon and stars were bright again, but Ajalia refused to look back at Delmar. She could hear the quiet clopping of the brown gelding's hooves on the road behind her.
For a moment, Ajalia felt as though she were alone; she felt as though she had dreamed the golden image of the bird, and Delmar's warm breath on her skin. A cold breeze spun up against her cheeks. Her hair blew away from her face. She took the pins from her shoulder, where she had stuck them, and wrapped her hair up on top of her head.
A renewed wave of nausea jolted her stomach; she stopped, and propped her hands on her knees. She put her head down, and waited for the dizziness to pass. The sound of hooves came up behind her; they drew up beside her and stopped. Ajalia glanced to the side. Delmar was standing and waiting, his bare skin shining, the reins stretched between his hands, making a narrow curve up to the horse's mouth.
"Good horse," Ajalia breathed. Delmar did not say anything. When the sparks passed away from her vision, she gradually straightened up. She raised her foot to step forward. A spinning hole of blackness dropped down around her. She did not hear Delmar call out her name as she fell.
THE LITTLE BIRD
When Ajalia woke up, it was still dark. She could see a rim of firelight reflected on a large stone in front of her, but the area around the shadowy light was black and still. The fire made a long crackling noise.
"Delmar?" Ajalia asked. A stream of tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She sniffed.
She was lying on the rocky mountainside. The road was nowhere to be seen; her head was pillowed on the rough saddle. She moved her arms, and gasped. The muscles in her ribs and shoulders felt as though they had been twisted round with a net of fire. Every movement she made sent shivers of scalding heat through her skin.
"Ow," Ajalia whispered. As gingerly as she could, she rolled onto her back, and turned her head towards the fire.
She was alone.
Some distance from her, a small fire blazed atop a heap of crumbled rocks. Ajalia could not see what was burning within the flames. The brown horse was gone.
Ajalia took a deep breath, and settled back against the misshapen leather saddle. She hoped that she was not far from Talbos. She thought that she would be able to walk there in a few minutes, once her body felt better.
She was surprised at how calm she felt. She thought of the times she had lived alone in the wilderness, when she had run away as a child. A surge of homesickness made her catch her breath. She had not been so aware of her soul, of the true state of her emotions, for many mon
ths, if not years. Her face seemed swollen with unshed tears; she felt enormously sorry for herself.
Telling herself that her feelings were ridiculous, Ajalia rolled onto her stomach. When she tried to stand, a mighty trembling came through her wrists and her legs; she had to clutch at the ground to hold herself up. Gradually, she raised up to a sitting position. Her head at once began to pound unbearably; she dropped her face into her knees, and pushed her eyes against the fabric of her leggings.
"This is not real," she whispered into the dark crevice her legs made. She wrapped her arms over her head, and shut out the images of her screaming mother. The stone-cold face of her father swam up, unbidden. She pushed her fingers into the hair at her temples, and kneaded her skull.
Her breath was making a harsh sliding noise as it came in and out of her throat; she bit down on her lips, and forced herself to breathe slowly through her nose. Panic was struggling to free itself from the muscles of her lower back; she wanted to run away.
A masculine voice called out through the darkness in the strange old Slavithe tongue. Ajalia froze. She bit down on her knee to stop herself from crying out.
Another voice called back; Ajalia cursed Delmar for building a fire. Stretching her arms out gingerly, she began to crawl away from the fire.
"Where are you going?" a deep voice asked. Ajalia blinked slowly; she was acutely aware now of the empty sheath where her knife should have been.
Without looking up, she said, "To Talbos."
"The road to Talbos is that way," the deep voice said. Ajalia glanced up long enough to see a tall shadow clothed in white gleaming lights. One long arm was stretched out, pointing behind Ajalia and to the right.
"Thank you," Ajalia rasped. She turned without another look and attempted to stand. The man, now behind her, began to laugh. Ajalia ignored him; she made it halfway to her feet before crumbling back to her knees. The rough surface of the ground made imprints in her palms. She could see tiny tendrils of yellow growth poking through the surface of the dark rock. The man behind her spoke again, but there was a roaring in her ears; she could not hear the words.
Ajalia tried to say, "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you," but she retched instead. The whole inside of her body seemed to want to make an acquaintance with the fresh air, and the force of her convulsions made her fall against the earth.
Flat on the ground, her cheek jammed into a pocket of dirt and graveled rock, Ajalia closed her eyes.
"I'm very sorry," she said to the man. "I seem to be ill."
The world was spinning around her with wild blank sparks; she felt the sky pressing down on her back. She thought she heard footsteps, but the roaring was back in her ears. She thought that she was under the surface of a great shattering river; she seemed to be floating. She opened her eyes. Dancing yellow rectangles filled up everything she could see. Breathing hurt terribly. Ajalia tried to speak, but no sound came out of her mouth. She watched the space before her face gradually clear into bouncing stars. She was being carried.
"Put me down," Ajalia mouthed.
"No," the man in shining light said.
"I'll kill you," she breathed.
"You can kill me when you feel better," the man said agreeably. He called something in old Slavithe over his shoulder, and Ajalia heard two different voices reply. She tried to move her arms; she had an idea that she could twist out of the man's grip. Her hands raised up a few inches, and fell back down into her lap.
"Where's Delmar?" Ajalia asked. She could make a little more sound, though her voice scratched.
"Not here," the man said. She watched the gleaming lights bob on the man's chest.
"What is this?" Ajalia asked. She touched a finger to the lights. They were light chips of shaped metal.
"Moonlight," the man said.
"This isn't moonlight," Ajalia said crabbily.
"Well, the metal reflects the moonlight, little bird. Is that better?" The man's voice was deep and resonant; he sounded like a growling tree.
"I am not a bird," Ajalia said with dignity.
"You follow the dead falcon," the man told her. "He protects you as a mate. This makes you a little bird."
Ajalia blacked out inside her mind. She could see the bobbing light of the man's armor, and she could hear the crunch of his footsteps. Time passed her in a crushing wave of inner silence. She had no words left within her. Her eyes were windows that let in pictures, but the pictures had no meaning.
With a click, Ajalia's mind snapped back into place. She could remember a white space, but she did not know what it was that had made the space happen.
"Where is Delmar?" she asked again. She hated that her voice sounded sad. She wanted to press all of the sadness out of her body, so that her voice would never sound sad again. A kind of wetness was obscuring her eyes. Ajalia realized that she was crying. She knew she was crying because of the water on her face; she had not realized tears were coming out until the spot of damp had soaked Delmar's tunic against her neck. The brown fabric was warm and soft, except for a tiny spot that felt cold and damp.
Ajalia pushed her chin into the fabric of Delmar's shirt to hide her tears. His smell was everywhere in the cloth. Her body ached for him. She had not realized before this what a change his touch made in her. She began to see that Delmar's skin was as a cloak that protected her from the darkness inside; he filled her with a warmth that did not threaten to spill the cup of bitter night that was her past. She would have said before this that Delmar was a silly boy, that she did not need him or want him, and that she was better alone. Now she wanted Delmar. She thought that if Delmar came back, she would take him and keep him, and never let him go. She needed him to be near so that she could breathe.
"I can walk," she told the man.
"No," the man said.
"Let me try," she said. The man kept walking. He did not reply. "If I fall down," she said, "I promise I will not ask again."
The man glanced down at her. She saw in the shadows that his face was covered with a thick black beard.
"One chance," the bearded man said. "If you fall behind, you lose."
"Yes," Ajalia agreed. The man let her feet drop down to the ground. He was much taller than she had expected; her head came up to his chest. The bearded man supported her for a moment as she found her balance, then he stepped away.
"Come," he said, and walked forward.
Ajalia wished again that she had her knife. She followed the bearded man. Her legs were numb, but her sense of danger had finally caught up to her weakness; she knew she would be able to walk for a little while.
The ground was uneven and dark. She kept her eyes on the rocks below to keep from stumbling. A strange dizziness was settling down in her stomach; both her arms were numb now, from the elbow down. The ends of her fingertips were tingling. She could hear two pairs of footsteps scraping over the rocky ground behind her. She did not dare look around, for fear she would lose her balance and fall, but she guessed the two others were young men, from the sound of their voices when they had spoken to the bearded man before.
Ahead of her she could see the bearded man's strange armor gleaming in the moonlight. At his side was a curious black shadow; Ajalia was sure that the shadow was a black sheath; she was convinced that a sharp weapon was inside that sheath.
To distract herself from the wavering feeling of hanging on a precipice that was rapidly pooling through her joints, Ajalia began to calculate the movements she would make on her way to obtaining that knife. She did not feel ready to strike the bearded man down, but she would be ready soon.
"If you try to take my knife," the bearded man called over his shoulder, "I will probably hurt you."
Ajalia did not reply to this. She concentrated on walking, on putting one foot after another down on the rough rocks.
They were moving up a gentle slope; Ajalia watched her faint moon-cast shadow move along with her on the ground. The black mountains spread around her in every direction, seemingly without end. Harsh s
lopes trawled up towards the sky, rimmed with edges of brilliant white stars. Ajalia's head was pounding with excruciating pain; the throbbing had begun gently at her temples when she had set her feet upon the ground, and then moved obstinately forward until it was beating behind her eyes and cheeks.
Every beat of her heart sent an echo of pain through her joints and into her face; she wanted to lie down in the night and never move again. She forgot to ask the bearded man where he was taking her. Ajalia had been kidnapped before, and taken by force. She recognized captivity; her attention was on the strength that was gradually coming back into her legs. She thought that she would be able to move more quickly in a few minutes. She ignored the piercing pains that were shooting down her neck, and over her chest.
One of the men behind her shouted forward to the bearded man in the old Slavithe; the bearded man answered briefly. Ajalia heard a pair of feet scrambling over the stones to her left. She looked to the side in time to see a slim young man clambering to the top of a ridge. He ducked over the edge, and vanished from sight.
"You are strong," the bearded man told Ajalia. She looked forward. He was turned a little towards her; his knife was farther away now, on his side turned away from her. He seemed to read her thoughts, and laughed. His laugh was too warm and friendly; Ajalia did not trust it.
"You are not taking my weapon," he told her. She said nothing. "Suit yourself," the man said. He called something back in the old language to the remaining man that walked behind her, and the man answered in kind.
"What is that?" Ajalia asked. Her throat felt raw when she spoke.
"What is what?" the bearded man asked.
"That language," Ajalia asked.
The bearded man said something in old Slavithe, and then translated what he had said. "It is the true tongue," he told her, "the mother tongue." He walked down into a narrow hollow. Ajalia launched herself at his legs. The bearded man stumbled to the side; Ajalia retreated to the top of the hollow, a wicked curved knife clasped in her hands. She had snatched it out of the sheath almost as soon as her hands had touched his sides.