“You were going to kill me!”
She flung her hands out at him, flooded with outrage so strong she could not express it in words alone. “Are you crippled? You had a knife, and hands, more weapons than I. You could have fought back.”
“Against a maenad? How many people have survived trying that? Woman, think, you’re not caught in the madness now, what real weapons did I have against you, other than my gift?”
“But you didn’t use it when we fought. You managed to escape me without using it—”
He gave an impatient gesture. “That was nothing but luck. If the current hadn’t taken us I’d be dead a thousand times over—I know it and you know it. I was fighting for my life back there. I used what I had, and I’m not sorry, I’m not going to pretend I wish I’d let you kill me just so you needn’t feel…invaded. You and your vicious maenad bitches weren’t going to have qualms about invading me, tearing me to pieces.”
She felt the shriek building inside her skull, a physical pressure like rising lava, a building wave, liquid expanding as it heated. When it broke she heard her voice as if it came from somewhere outside her body, echoing and bouncing against the anger that made her deaf. “But I’d have left your mind alone!”
He might have carried on speaking, but she couldn’t hear him, hardly even noticed if his lips moved, and she spoke over him, over anything he might want to say, any feeble excuses he might present to justify what he’d done.
“I was going to kill you, I had to kill you, but I wasn’t going to touch your mind—that still belongs to you, it’s still yours, you know the thoughts in it are yours, just yours, not thoughts from outside, that you hadn’t asked for, all this stuff so you don’t know what’s true and what’s not, what you can hold on to and what’s a lie—” As if the shriek had cracked her voice, the words broke up suddenly. She stopped, dumb, shaking, waiting for them to come back.
He said nothing, but watched her, and she couldn’t bear it, the idea that he might reach inside again, compel her to actions or thoughts that came from him, not her. She put out both hands, an ineffectual, stupid-looking barrier. “Stop. Stop. Don’t come near me, don’t try—”
“I’m not going to.” His voice was deep, very calm, a rock standing against the tide. “It was in the ravine only, to save my life. I’ve not done it to you any other time. All your thoughts—they’re yours. I swear.”
“They’re not. They’re not. I—”
Oh God. That was it. Yesterday, when she’d saved him and she should have let him die. Today, making soup for him, agreeing to a truce—suggesting a truce. It hadn’t been her at all, all along it had been him. In her head, controlling her, making her not herself.
Her breathing went out of rhythm so the words came out between gasps, jerky and disconnected. “They’re not mine. Saving you from the spider, letting you talk to me, letting you explain your filthy, sinful, demon-gotten powers. You did it to me! You got into my mind and made me do what you wanted.”
“Maya—”
Her name on his lips was another invasion, another violation.
“No. Don’t talk to me, don’t touch me. Stay out of my mind!” She tried to gasp in a deeper breath but her lungs were working to their own panicked rhythm and she couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t work. She backed away, wanting to flatten herself against the rock wall, gasping for breath, trying to find the place that was farthest from him.
“Maya, stop. Maya.”
He sprang forward and suddenly his hands were on her, clamping her still in a way he’d never have been able to do when she had her powers, bringing her too close, holding her like chains and manacles.
“Maya, I don’t want to hurt you, but if you keep backing away you’re going to go over the cliff—”
But she couldn’t hear him. She felt his hands as she would have felt the touch of a whip, she thought she felt his mind slide into hers, and madness came down like a sandstorm, thick and dark and choking, blotting out thought.
She bit—she knew that much because even through the darkness she knew the taste of blood—and kicked, clawed at his eyes and brought her knee up to aim at his groin. She shrieked too, screaming into his face, using the noise as if it were as much of a weapon as her hands and teeth and feet.
He let her go. She staggered backwards, ankle turning on a loose bit of rock, still choking on the sandstorm, her throat rough and her eyes stinging so she could not see. She had to get farther away, had to—
Her foot came down on nothing. Too late, she heard what he’d said. The cliff. The cliff.
Terror stabbed through her. She lurched. She was falling.
His hands came from nowhere, closed hard enough to bruise around her forearms, jerked her away from the emptiness, from the endless drop, into a hard chest that smelled of old blood and sweat and the sour scent of illness. But beneath, it was warm, and his heart was pounding as hard as hers.
“Maya. I am not using my gift on you. Listen to me. I keep trying to tell you. It changed as I got older. The gifts work together. Now, I can only use that one with the other. I can only do it when I shift. I did it once, that’s all, when you weren’t human, when you were nothing but a maenad. I swear, on my father’s life, I have done it no other time.”
The words sank through her. That oath… Even an outlaw and a criminal would not make that oath unless he meant it. Her mind was her own, untouched, uncontrolled.
“Everything I did…?” It hurt to speak. She’d torn her throat with shrieking, just as she had when she was a maenad, and the words came out as a croak.
He gave her a brief quirk of a smile. “Saving me? I’m sorry if you’re looking for someone to blame. That was all you.” The amusement in his voice reassured her further, and she felt herself go limp, for the first time not fighting in his grasp.
“Come away from the cliff edge.”
“What?”
“The cliff edge. You’re still far too close to it.” He backed away, drawing her with him, his hands warm and solid on her arms. She went, her limbs suddenly weak, his hands for the first time feeling not like chains but like the close clasp of her anklets. A comfort, not a prison.
Unlike his hands, steady on her arms, his voice, when they’d got away from the cliff and when he spoke again, was shaking. “Gods, you could have fallen.”
There was fear in it, fear because she’d been in danger. No one had ever felt afraid for her. Not just since she became a maenad, but before, no one had ever sounded like that because of her, because they were afraid for her.
Standing in his grasp, feeling the warmth of his skin on hers, she thought, I’m glad I did not kill you.
Then you blaspheme against your god and betray your people. It was like a voice in her head, a voice not hers, harsh, with tones like the sound when iron is struck. And it went through her like iron, cold and hard, stiffening her where she stood in his arms. All I am, all I can be, is a maenad or a girl who was once a maenad. I carry out the god’s tasks without regard for how I feel about them. What I want or don’t want has nothing to do with what I must do.
And what she must do, now she had her freedom, was the same as always. She must return to the temple, let the madness fill her, run out with the pack…and, if she met him, kill him.
She made to step out of his hold, and realised his hands had already fallen from her arms. She was free. But the freedom felt like iron too, cold and hard and heavy on her shoulders.
Chapter Eight
She was packing to leave. Philos had watched her as she’d folded one of the blankets to make a pack, as she stowed food in it, filled a water bottle at the spring. She was wearing one of the clean desert robes, tied in a knot at her waist to leave most of the length of her legs unencumbered.
She had not looked at him since that moment when she’d stiffened in his hands and he’d known he must let her go.
Now he watched her, and inside him clawed anxiety and something that felt like grief.
For those few m
oments, after he’d made that oath to her, after he’d drawn her farther from the cliff, she’d been soft in his arms. For the first time, soft, almost boneless, not the wire-taut tangle of fear and fury. It had made him realise that, washed clean of sand and salt, her skin was smooth, and her body, although slight, curved under the thin fabric of the robe.
His heart had been pounding, his skin stone-cold with the knowledge that if he’d moved any slower she’d be lying broken at the cliff foot. That knowledge, and the awful moment when he’d seen her start to topple and he’d moved, sure it was too late, sure he couldn’t get there fast enough. He’d been gripping her so tight he was afraid he’d hurt her, but he couldn’t make himself loosen his hold.
It must have been that, the strange aftereffect of danger, that had made him want to gather her closer still, crush her tight enough to feel all the curves and hollows of her body, cup his hands behind her head where he’d be able to bury his fingers in the warm satin of her hair, against the smooth skin at the back of her neck…
He stopped the thoughts dead. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Exhaustion, pain, anger, the aftermath of the poison and the long trek across the desert, had combined to muddy his head enough that he couldn’t tell if his barriers were up, or if he was in danger of letting his damned, dangerous empathy drift like mist through his mind, blurring the divide between his emotions and hers.
At least, he thought with a touch of grim amusement, he was safe from making one of the mistakes he’d made before, that mistake that still gnawed at him with guilt and regret, the mistake that had broken Venli’s heart. Whatever Maya was feeling, that desire to touch had not come from her. She, thank the gods, could not be in love with him.
But the other feelings… All the way across the gully from her, he felt a cold that seemed to weigh on him, a clawing like fear in his chest, and couldn’t be sure if it was his or hers. And if it was hers, if she was following what she thought was her duty back to a life that filled her with grief and fear, what could he do?
I could stop her. He was disgusted at himself even as he thought it. For years, ever since he’d realised the power of his second gift, he’d known it could be horrifically misused, and he’d sworn to himself he would never use it that way, never force control over another’s mind for any reason other than to directly save life—his or someone else’s.
But this…it would almost be to save her life. What they’ve done to her, it’s like the rape she feared from me. They’ve taken her over, invaded her mind, given her nothing but madness and murder and the promise of an early grave—how long do maenads live, after all?
No. No. If I do that, if I ever did that I’d be as bad as the priests. I will not break my oath. Even with the terrified, hidden shifters in the city, he’d never made them run. All he’d done was open up the idea in their mind, let them know that they could, if they chose, escape. Those who hadn’t…hadn’t, and he’d watched them walk towards the certain fate of discovery, torture, death. Every time it had been horrible, but he’d forced himself to stand back and let it happen. Because no matter how good his cause, how noble his motives, to force control on someone else’s mind was one of the few sins he was still sure was a sin.
But this…somehow this was worse. The idea of this girl returning to her life as a maenad…
He knew her now. She was not the maenad, or even the maenad-girl. She was Maya, who was more afraid of someone entering her mind than of them forcing her reluctant body. Who’d not just saved him from the spider poison, but covered him with a blanket and cooked him food. Who could be shaken out of herself by laughter. Who—for just those few moments—had trusted him and stood still and soft in his arms.
And she was going back to become a monster.
Talking hadn’t worked, but he couldn’t help thinking that was only because he hadn’t yet found the right words. If he was right about what she was feeling, then she was only returning because she believed she had to. There must be something he could say to open her mind to the idea that the right thing to do might not be going back, but going on with him to freedom.
“They would not have come for you,” he said.
Her head came up, her eyes dark and hard. “Who?”
As if she didn’t know. “The priests. Your people.”
She shrugged, a stiff movement. “What difference does that make?”
He met her eyes and saw the same unthinking, unreasoning loyalty that every day sent people sacrificing themselves to the volcano-god and the priests. He’d seen it a thousand times, known it himself. But seeing it in her eyes now sent a shaft of cold like a spear through him.
“Shouldn’t it make a difference, Maya? If they don’t value you enough to try rescuing you, ransoming you, why are you returning to them? Shouldn’t loyalty be given as well as taken?”
“Loyalty?” Her voice was loud, pitched suddenly high. “You think that—that milk-and-water word—is all it is? You think it’s like allegiance to a person? I belong to the god, I’m owned by him. If I betray that, if I abandon it I’m nothing.”
Nothing. All that strength and courage, and she thought it was nothing.
Anger rose within him. “That’s what you think of yourself? Is that what they tell you?”
“Don’t be so stupid.” Her eyes were not just hard but furious. “That’s how it is. It’s what I tell me. Do you think I’m a fool, do you think I don’t remember who I was before I became a maenad? I was nothing, nothing, and the god took me and made me—”
“Listen to yourself! You were what, eleven, twelve? Your life didn’t begin only when you became a maenad. How were you nothing before that? ”
“I was weak.” Her lip curled. “I was human—all soft flesh and bones that break too easily. No use.”
Her eyes flashed contempt at him. So it wasn’t just loyalty that bound her to her old life, it was hatred—hatred for what she’d been, hatred for what he was.
“Is that how you see the rest of the world? No use? Worthless?”
“Well, aren’t they?” She turned away, bent to tie her pack. “If I had no gift, if I hadn’t been called for temple service or sacrifice, what use would I be? How would I have served the god? What would be the point of me being alive? What is the point of me being alive now?”
“Ask him, why don’t you.”
“Ask the god?” Her voice rose incredulously. “You cannot be serious.”
“Why not? Is he not the creator? Why would he create something he has no use for? And if he did, is that not his fault? If he creates people that are worthless—or who have to be destroyed?”
“That’s not up to you to question.” The pack had fallen from her hands. She was staring across at him, her face pale and tight, as if the skin were stretched too taut across her bones.
“Who better? Or have you forgotten why you were trying to kill me? Remember, maenad-girl, I wasn’t just created useless—I was created a monster. Your god made me to be destroyed. He made you to be a murderer. Do you want to be owned by a god like that?”
But he’d gone too far. He saw it the set of her shoulders, the way her face closed off from him. Coram’s words came back to him, wise words, that he should have remembered. You cannot take someone’s god from them and expect them to listen to you. You have to offer them something else, something else to live for.
And he hadn’t. All he’d done was try to destroy her belief that her god was good, that he was fair. She could not listen to him.
When she spoke her voice sounded like the scrape of metal against metal, sharp, wavering. “I should have known better than to talk to you. You lie. Like all criminals, you lie. You want to blame the god for what your own sin brought upon you, and now you want me to blame him too.”
“No. No, Maya—”
“I will not listen,” she shouted, then, “I should have let you die! I wish I had. I wish I’d killed you.”
It was like a slash across his skin, a slash from maenad talons, tearing the fragile—f
ar too fragile—web of trust, of talk, of the tentative beginnings of understanding. He looked at her and saw the hardness in her face, her tight-clenched fists, the scavenger-bird tension in her body. She’d been maenad a long time. The power of it might have gone from her, but the tracks in her brain had remained. She was half-maenad still, inside, where it mattered, where he could not reach.
She bent, her face as hard as the flat of a sword, then swung the pack to her shoulder. She took a moment to adjust its weight on her back before turning towards where he stood near the entrance of the gully.
“I’m going,” she said. “The truce is over. If you try to stop me you’ll wish I’d left you to the spider poison.”
Despite the knife she held, it wasn’t the threat that made him step out of her way. It was the look in her face. She looked at him with contempt and hatred, something he’d remember always.
She walked past him, the desert robe hushing almost inaudibly against her skin. A spark of errant sunlight glinted suddenly off one anklet. I run with the madness of the god.
She stepped out of the gully, around the corner leading to the desert, and was gone.
I run with the madness of the god. She had. And she would again. And he hadn’t been able to save her.
He was turning back into the gully, to the remains of the fire and the thrown-open chests, when the call came, a sound like the wind echoing through caves. He looked up and saw the silhouette, soaring down out of a blue blaze of sky. A bird of prey, not an unusual sight. But that can’t have been its call?
Like a shock in his chest, memory clutched him. Just a bird, or was it…
The shadows deepened as the silhouette, grown huge, swooped overhead. Stone rasped against stone with a grating, echoing sound. Stone wings. So it was Coram, although why he was here he had no idea—
Then came a soft thump on the rocks outside the gully, a scatter and whisper, first like sand pattering across the rock, then like bare footsteps, and a familiar figure bounded up into the gully and threw herself at him.
Blood of the Volcano: Sequal to Heart of the Volcano Page 8