And these horses aren’t going to get any faster, Peri thought grimly. Not as long as we’re driving them at their best pace over land where there’s little grazing and no water. If we don’t get back across the Barrier and into Bregond soon, we’re going to be on foot again.
Her knee touched a sticky spot on the saddle skirt. It was blood, the Bone Hunter’s blood, blood of a man who’d nearly killed her, and that knowledge made her rather nauseous.
Shock, she told herself. I’ve never killed a human being before, not even those thugs last night as far as I know. Danber told me to expect it.
“Have you ever killed?” Peri asked softly.
Danber nodded gravely.
“Twice,” he said. “Once bandits tried to raid the herds and I killed one of them. The other was my uncle Berestan. He fell from his horse in a stampede and was badly trampled, his spine crushed beyond healing. He asked me for grace and I gave it to him.”
Danber shook his head.
“Both times I did as I had to,” he said. “But I will never forget their faces, that moment when the light of life faded from their eyes. When you kill, Perian, you drink in a little of your victims’ death. You must accept the responsibility for what you have done and grieve for it or that death you have swallowed will poison you. Every true warrior learns that.”
“Grieve?” Peri asked confusedly. “Why should you grieve when you know you had to do it?”
“There is always an honest cause for grief,” Danber told her gravely. “If not for the life you have ended or the act you committed, then at least for the necessity of committing that act. Or for what you’ve done to yourself by committing it.”
Never mind that I was only defending myself, Peri thought. Never mind that he was a vicious assassin, that I had no choice at all. A human being is dead by my hand. All the years he would have lived, all the things he might’ve done for good or ill—none of that will happen now because I swung my sword and spilled his blood. I’ve become a warrior who has killed. I’ve become just a little more like him. I’ll never again be the same person I was yesterday. She felt a pang on her heart and a coldness on her face; she raised her hand, surprised to feel the moisture on her cheeks.
Danber’s right, she thought, surprised. There was something to grieve for.
She wiped her eyes impatiently but the tears didn’t stop; to her disgust she felt even sicker, weak, as though all her strength was flowing out with her tears. She clung to the saddle, feeling the wind-chilled tears dropping from her face.
Mahdha preserve me, Peri thought dizzily. How much of his death could I have swallowed? He kept enough of it to die himself, didn’t he?
To her amazement, Atheris was riding beside her now—how was he keeping up? He shouted something at her, but the storm was growing worse and she couldn’t hear him over the wind, the thunder, the beat of the dragon’s wings overhead, Mahdha’s voice whispering all around her. And Atheris reached for her, but she pulled impatiently away—
“Let me alone,” she muttered. “Let me grieve it all out.”
And suddenly the ground was there, right in front of her, flying toward her—earthquake?—and she clung to it tightly as it spun and shook beneath her.
And then the feeders and the Bone Hunters and the rotting dead were upon her, dozens of them, cold rubbery hands tearing at her, horrible disfigured faces riddled with disease leering down at her, and maggots dropped out of their rotting mouths and empty eye sockets and fell on her face and she drew her dagger, slashing desperately, blindly all around her—And then a terrible bright pain in her head, and the light became darkness.
Peri woke slowly, painfully. Every inch of her body ached and throbbed and she felt horribly weak and hot. She tried to raise her hands to her pounding head and couldn’t move them; for a moment panic seized her. Then realization; her hands and feet were securely bound. Momentary relief, then new panic—
Light in her eyes, too bright, blinding. She winced away and the light dimmed. Faces, voices, one familiar, the other not.
“Demons in his blood,” a strange voice said. “You must open a vein, bleed them out of him.”
“He is too weak,” the familiar voice protested. “He will die if—”
“Huh?” Peri muttered hoarsely. “Wha—”
A hand promptly fastened itself securely over her mouth, separated from her skin by cloth—oh, yes, rags over her face—
“Thank you for your help,” the familiar voice said hurriedly. “I will attend to him.”
One less presence near her. The hand over her mouth was withdrawn, then a face appeared in her field of vision. Sarkond—enemy—familiar—
“A-Atheris?” Peri mumbled.
“Here. Drink.” A cup at her lips. Peri swallowed hot metallic-tasting water. More. More. At last the cup was withdrawn.
“Peri, listen to me,” Atheris said urgently, his face close to hers. “The wound in your leg—the blade must have been poisoned. You are badly fevered. There is no healer in the camp, and I do not know any healing magic. Tell me what to do for you.”
“Let—let me see,” Peri said. “Help me see.” Her tongue felt thick and clumsy, like the time when she and Danber had slipped out of camp and drunk two whole skins of lingberry wine, gotten silly and confiding—
“Perian, you are my dearest friend, and I have a secret I want to share with you, only you—”
Atheris pulled her up to a half-sitting position, bracing her against his shoulder. Peri looked down at her leg. Atheris had cut her trousers away from her thigh. The long cut wasn’t deep, but the skin around the wound had a greenish-gray hue that looked decidedly unhealthy and her thigh had swelled alarmingly.
Not a true poison, said that indefinable healer’s sense with a surprising detachment. More like an infection. Not a natural infection but—
“Healer’s bag,” Peri muttered. “Have to—”
Then the bag was untied and lay in her lap and her hands were untied as well; Peri dimly noted that the beaded cord was back around her wrist. She fumbled through the vials and pouches, wishing she’d taken the time to acquaint herself more thoroughly with their contents. She found what she wanted by scent.
“Four drops of this in a cup of water for me to drink,” she rasped, handing Atheris the vial, then a small pouch. “Open the cut and wash out the pus, then sprinkle it with this powder and burn it. Then pack the wound with clean mud. Clean mud. Then wrap it, but not tight.”
Then she was lying flat, her hands tied again, and Atheris’s face loomed over her.
“Forgive me,” he said gently, just before he stuffed a wad of rags into her mouth and tied it securely in place despite Peri’s struggles. Then she was glad of the rags to bite on as throbbing agony shot out from her thigh. Brief wonderful respite from pain—then something glowed orange in Atheris’s hand, and she heard a sizzling sound and smelled the sickening odor of burning flesh. Then the pain came again to carry her back into darkness.
Peri opened her eyes. There was canvas above her—a tent roof, perhaps—lit by the flickering glow of a lantern. She shifted experimentally; her hands and feet were free. Her leg throbbed miserably and every muscle in her body ached worse than the time Tajin had stumbled and fallen and rolled over her. She tried to sit up, only to find herself too weak and dizzy for more than a token attempt.
She did, however, succeed in attracting attention; almost immediately Atheris appeared by her side, cup in hand. The relief was so plain on his face that Peri wondered uneasily just how serious her illness had been. And at the same time—
He didn’t leave me. Bone Hunters on our heels, me a Bregond, and he didn’t leave me. He could’ve let them find me, gotten away cleanly with horses, supplies, gold. But he stayed. Even after I tried to abandon him, he stayed.
“I am overjoyed to see you awake,” Atheris said with a relieved sigh. “Here, let me help you.”
He raised Peri a little higher and pushed a pack under her shoulders to brace her,
then held the cup to her lips. The water was almost too hot to drink, and it tasted harsh, metallic, but to Peri it might as well have been the finest wine. She drank every drop, and when Atheris refilled the cup, she drank that, too.
“Do you need more medicine?” Atheris asked, reaching for the healer’s bag.
“Not—” Peri’s voice came out hoarse; she paused to clear her throat and sip a little more. “Not till I have a look at the wound first. Help me up, would you?”
With Atheris supporting her shoulders, Peri was able to sit up, although he had to cut the bandages on her leg and peel off the dressing for her. She winced as the hardened mud pulled away burned skin, but the flesh under it was pink and healing cleanly.
“You did not say whether to repeat the drink and the powder,” Atheris said apologetically, “so I did, once a day. As you suggested, I boiled all the water.”
Almost exhausted, Peri let Atheris ease her back to the pallet.
“Once a day?” she muttered. “How long—”
“Two days,” Atheris said grimly. “And for the first I was certain you were going to die—on the second, only half-certain. You are made of hard steel, Perian. The poisons of the Bone Hunters have never spared another, to my knowledge.”
“If they were treated for poison, probably not,” Peri said wryly. “It wasn’t a poison; it was some kind of magic-bred infection, probably easily cured if you know the right counterspell. I guess you were half-right. They may want us alive, at least enough not to kill us outright, but they’ll gladly settle for dead rather than let us escape.”
She looked up at the tent roof again, then abruptly realized that a tent had not numbered among the purchases she and Atheris had made.
“Two days,” she said again. “Where are we?”
Atheris grimaced.
“In a small pilgrim caravan bound for—”
“Don’t say it,” Peri begged.
“—Rocarran,” Atheris said with a sigh. “Peri, there was nothing else I could do.”
Two days! Peri shook her head weakly, trying to remember. The fight with the Bone Hunter. The ride out of the city. The body, the crossroads—then things got fuzzy and strange, unreal.
“What happened?” she asked confusedly.
“I knew the Bone Hunters would quickly arrive, even as we planned,” Atheris told her. “But it was clear you could not ride. I hardly dared move you at all.” He sighed again. “I carried you on my saddle for a short time, but you were delirious and struggling, and I had to stop. I found some rocks to hide us for the day. Two Bone Hunters rode past not long after. I thought they would surely find us.”
Atheris shook his head.
“By nightfall I realized you were growing worse, too weak even to be carried,” he said. “So I stayed where I was and waited. You were lost in dreams, talking strangely.” He glanced at Peri oddly. “You spoke of grieving for your dead. At last I had to gag you for fear you might be heard.
“The two Bone Hunters rode back past near sundown; only a little later this caravan arrived and stopped for the night. I hoped they might have a healer. They did not, but they offered food and water and a place by their fire.”
Peri started to protest, but Atheris cut her off.
“You needed shelter and care,” he said flatly. “You were in no condition for a hard ride across country, not even with me carrying you.” He looked at her strangely. “It is nothing less than a miracle that you survived at all.”
“But the tent,” Peri murmured.
“I traded the horses for it, and for a place in one of the wagons,” Atheris said without preamble. He held up a hand, once more cutting off her protest. “They had no use for gold on the road, and we had no feed or water for the horses. By the time you recovered they would be useless. You could try to buy them back, I suppose.”
Peri groaned softly to herself. Horseless, weakened, disguised, and being drawn ever deeper into Sarkond—why did this situation seem so depressingly familiar? Was there no escaping Rocarran?
I know only that obstacles in your path guide you only more surely to your goal. That was what the old woman had said, wasn’t it, something about the inevitability of—
Peri grimaced. That was one danger of prophecies; they were usually couched in terms so vague and general that it seemed impossible to distinguish a lunatic’s or common charlatan’s ravings from the far rarer true foresight.
The other hazard, of course, was that those who allowed such prophecies to rule their lives were fools. Dangerous fools.
“So we’ve been traveling toward Rocarran ever since?” Peri asked softly at last.
Atheris nodded.
“The others have been very kind,” he said. “They gave me blankets and furs to keep you warm, broth to feed you, a lantern, even a small brazier for our tent.”
“Comparing the cost of a sound horse to a tent, they can afford to be kind,” Peri said wryly. “How much farther is it to Rocarran, do you know?”
“Three more days, or so I am told,” Atheris said softly. “The road is very poor for wagons and our progress has been slow. Peri, even if we had horses, I do not see how you would be able to make such a ride as we had planned, not within that time.”
“Half-dead or sound asleep, I can ride if I have to,” Peri said grimly. “We’ll steal the horses back if we must.” Mahdha forgive me, look what I’m becoming—a thief robbing half-starved pilgrims who helped save my life.
Atheris must have had some similar thought, for he gave her an odd look.
“First you must regain your strength,” he said slowly. “If I bring you food, can you eat?”
Peri chuckled dryly.
“To tell you the truth, if our horses had gone into the stew-pot, I’d hold out my bowl and ask for seconds,” she said. “Bring it on.”
To Peri’s surprise there was meat in the thick soup Atheris brought her and carefully fed her, but she knew old, stringy chicken when she tasted it and didn’t bother to inquire after the horses’ health. The soup, the tent, the wagons, though—those added up to give her pause. Obviously these pilgrims were of a much wealthier class than those she’d seen previously.
“Yes, these are not ordinary pilgrims,” Atheris said rather shortly when Peri asked. “These are lesser priests and acolytes from Tarabin.”
“It seems like everyone and their fifth cousin is on the road to Rocarran,” Peri said, scowling. “What’s happening there?”
This time Atheris hesitated a long time before answering; he gave Peri another odd look.
“It is an important time in the temple,” he said. “They come to make sacrifice and hear the words of the Whore.”
“The what?” Peri murmured disbelievingly.
“A priestess and prophet,” Atheris said slowly. “In the temple we show her respect and call her the Golden One, but she is better known among the people as Eregis’s Whore. Eregis speaks through her, and she attends over the sacrifices.”
“Sacrifices?” Peri said, remembering what he had said once. “Blood sacrifice?” Then she saw the expression in Atheris’s averted eyes and something inside her went cold.
“Human?” she whispered.
Atheris’s lips thinned.
“I cannot discuss the mysteries of the temple with a non-believer,” he said rather stiffly. “Perhaps I have said too much already.” Then his expression softened slightly. “Besides, you should rest. You must regain your strength if—if we are to attempt to leave for Bregond before reaching Rocarran.”
His words made sense, and Peri did not object as Atheris covered her warmly, extinguishing the lantern, but she was troubled nonetheless. Something in his attitude had changed since Darnalek in a way she did not entirely like. Obviously the encounter at the fortune-teller’s and later with the Bone Hunter had affected him strongly. Well, no surprise in that; it had affected her strongly, too, and she’d trained and prepared for such attacks all her life. Atheris had led a far more sheltered life than she; the Bone
Hunter was probably his first kill, too. And it had been an agent of his own temple—and not even to save his own life, but in defense of Peri, a Bregond, an enemy. She had certainly felt guilt chewing at her stomach often enough since she’d rescued Atheris; not too surprising if he was starting to feel the sharpness of those teeth himself.
Despite her weakness Peri slept poorly, feeling unaccountably more threatened and vulnerable than she had in days; when she half roused during the night she saw Atheris sitting at the tent flap gazing out, and she wondered dimly whether he felt uneasy, too.
In the morning Atheris helped Peri don her bandage disguise and, despite her protests, picked her up and lifted her carefully into the wagon, where a comfortable pallet had already been prepared for her. Apparently the priests and acolytes were in a hurry, for the caravan set out as soon as there was light enough to see the road. An acolyte riding on a mule passed from wagon to wagon, distributing bowls; to Peri’s surprise there was a share for her and Atheris as well. The bowls contained reasonably fresh bread, sharp cheese, and an unappetizing-looking but fragrant mishmash which Atheris explained absently was dried fruit fermented in honey and wine. Peri had never heard of eating such a thing for breakfast, but the stuff was a perfect vehicle for the restorative mix of herbs she needed to take with food, and it turned out to be the tastiest meal she’d had since she left Tarkesh. She reflected with some amusement that in this respect at least Sarkond was closer to Agrond than to Bregond—rather than practicing any form of self-denial, priests here appeared to live more comfortably than the worshipers who supported them.
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