She sat back on her heels, regarding him. He must wake at some point, eat, drink; he must regain some strength. She could not carry him back to camp.
Her ears felt almost painfully sensitive to sound after the silence of the plugs. Even the sort of false noises one’s own ears manufacture in silence seemed absent. She heard every stir of moth wing, the rustle of her own clothing, even a tiny crack and creak that might be the sound of the stones themselves.
And, distantly, outside, the single massed voice of the demon colony.
Rowan chose a far low corner of the cave in which to relieve herself, and with nothing else to do, went back to sleep.
She awoke to the feeling that someone was watching her. It turned out to be true.
Janus was awake, sitting with his body hunched over. Only his head was tilted up, the whites of his eyes pale green in moth light, the rest of his dark face visible only from reflection across the forehead, the cheekbones. Rowan felt she was looking into a mask.
She rubbed her own eyes as if the action would bring more light, or light of a different color. She found the water sack again, rose to hand it to him.
He drank thirstily, wiped his mouth. “How far are we from the city?” His voice was cracked, hoarse, hardly recognizable as his own.
Rowan retrieved the sack and set it down behind her.
“Rowan?”
She turned back to him.
“I thought I was going mad, when I saw you.” He closed his eyes, dropped his head, becoming effectively invisible. “Where is this place?”
She turned away again, looked up into the moth-still dimness. “It must be night. There’s an opening somewhere above. I believe that if it were day, we’d see some light.”
He did not speak. She turned back to find his regard upon her again, now wider eyed. “I’m dreaming,” he whispered.
“If that’s true,” she said, “you’d do us both a favor to wake up.”
He shuddered, huddled forward. He shifted his arms, elbows on knees, trying, she assumed, to find some position that did not cause him pain. He could not. He threw back his head, breathing in slow gasps. “Why are you here?” It should have been a shout; his voice was not up to it. It came out half cry, half hoarse whisper.
The remnants of her lunch were still in the kerchief at her belt. She pulled out a bit of dried meat, brought it over to him. She sat on her heels, holding it out. “Can you manage this? You must eat, if you can.” He stared at her as if she were some object, unidentifiable, terrifying.
He did not know what was happening, he could not integrate these events, and she was providing no help.
She sighed. She said, “I can’t answer your questions.”
His expression slowly became recognizable: disbelief. He made a small sound in the back of his throat and another; perhaps it was laughter. “Do you think I care about your stupid little rules now?”
She was a moment mastering the sudden flare of anger, and another finding a reply that did not answer the question. “Janus, it is only by thinking like a steerswoman that I managed to find you at all,” she said tightly. “And as we are not out of this yet, I plan to continue functioning as a steerswoman. Now, eat.” She took his left hand, placed the dried meat in it, closed the fingers; and noted that her own movements were harsh, abrupt. She forced her temper down. “And rest,” she added more gently. “We may need to move soon, and we may need to move quickly. And there’s still a long way to go.”
He sat looking at his own closed hand. Words came, as if against his will. “How much do you know?”
“How much do you know?” A flick of white as he glanced up, then down again. “It doesn’t matter,” Rowan continued. “I don’t need you to answer anything. Whatever you discovered in the demon lands, I assure you, I can discover just as well. Better.”
There was a long silence. Then: “But you haven’t yet, have you? No.” He closed his eyes. Whispering, his voice seemed his own again, remembered, familiar. “Did you ever wish,” he said, “did you ever wish that you could see ahead, to future days? Did you ever wish to be magically transported forward in time or placed in a magical sleep to wake twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, to see how we will be then, what we’ll know, what the world will become? I used to.” He opened his eyes, staring past her up into the dark. “I don’t anymore. Now I wish, oh, I wish”— and his cracked voice became like the grinding of stones— “I wish all time would freeze and hold us still forever; I wish the sun would rise on the same day, over and over, forever; I wish we could repeat and repeat, and the human race remain stupid, and never again learn a single new thing; and nothing, nothing ever change— ” He tossed his head back, threw his arms up, as if to guard his face against some sudden, intolerable brightness; but only the steerswoman was there, watching from her place in the shadows.
Then he twisted away and threw himself down on the ground, his face against his arms.
Presently, Rowan rose and placed the rest of the food by his head. He did not stir; asleep or unconscious, she could not tell which.
“I do know one thing,” she said, expecting no reply. “We were allowed to escape.”
40
That was why she had not killed the demons in the den.
The second demon had stopped the first. It had prevented the blinded one from harming Rowan and Janus. It had secured their escape.
The animal had acted with intelligent purpose. Someone, somewhere, had directed the demon’s actions; and the demon itself was Rowan’s only link to that person.
She waited.
Eventually, in the flickering dark: demon-voice.
First one hum, then two more, frighteningly clear to her unmuffled hearing. Rowan listened closely to the sound, how it filled the space, extending, rebounding on itself, until it became itself a shape almost tangible, until she felt she herself could sense the exact size and formation of the cave and all objects in it by sound alone.
Only three. She placed herself between Janus and the voices, sword across her lap, talisman standing on the ground before her.
Rowan ought not kill them if she could avoid it, not here. The animals came to this place regularly, that much was clear; they would certainly be alarmed by corpses.
A long pause at the entrance, as the demons evidently indulged in one of their inexplicable pauses; then the sounds split. Two departed; one moved deeper into the cave.
Taking up sword and talisman, the steerswoman quietly rose. She wished she could stir up the moths, acquire more light; but if the moths took to flight, the disturbance might be noticed. But light did increase, following the location of the approaching voice. Apparently the sound itself disturbed the moths slightly.
And now she could see it, overlit and shadowy. Not the female from the den but a male, moving among the piles of case-objects, carrying something in one hand.
She waited, very still, silent. The demon came nearer. It arrived at a nearby group of case-objects and placed something on the pile. Then it paused.
Rowan shallowed her breathing. Hesitantly, the male took one step in her direction. Rowan felt as if her veins were filled with a sharp and sour fluid, and she recognized the sensation as fear only by an effort of intellect.
The demon took another step.
Was she blocking something that the demon wanted to reach? Was there something it expected to see, that was now behind her, protected, as good as invisible? But there was nothing there other than the up-slanting moth-lined shaft, and Janus.
Another step. The demon’s voice blossomed feverish overtones.
She could not move further back; she must not move to the side. She must not expose Janus.
She moved forward, one crouching step.
The male stepped back. It stepped back.
It ran.
She scrambled after it, half stooping under the uneven ceiling. The male, shorter, moved faster and freer, its wild rocking motion making its hands thrash among the sleeping moths; and then th
e air was filled with spinning motes of green light, and soft bodies battered against Rowan’s face. She shut her eyes, pursuing sound only, stumbling and scattering piles of case-objects; then her ears told her that the creature had found the exit and was gone.
The demon knew that something was in this cave; but she had seen a male’s primitive warning ignored once before.
No. She could not risk it. She could catch it outside, she was sure of it.
It was half stumbling down the rough slope, rattling the tanglebrush, clutching at blue-leaves as it descended to the floor of the ravine.
Humans were nimbler than demons; a far better body design for a land-dwelling creature, Rowan thought with a fierce glee. She clambered along the wall, outflanked the demon, arrived at the entrance to the ravine, showed the talisman.
The male slowed, stopped. It moved left, right, as if seeking an exit now rendered invisible.
The great hum of the demon colony poured into the ravine like water; but no other single demon seemed near.
She had this creature entirely in her power. She could kill it anytime she chose. She was invincible, invisible.
Invisible?
In the den, the second demon had not restrained the blinded one until Rowan’s talisman had been covered. Only then, she realized, had it clearly seen her.
Whatever power had been controlling that demon, it had seen her through demon senses only.
Might it also be working through other demons?
If this demon could not see her, it could still hear.
After careful thought, and with no other demons near, she decided to risk it. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, and she felt foolish for addressing an animal, “but if you can hear what I’m saying,” and the form of her statement made her feel as though she was praying; she despised the sensation, “please … give me a sign.”
At the first sound of her voice, the creature had stopped pacing, but had resumed immediately, even more urgently seeking escape. “Anything,” Rowan went on, “anything at all. Something this animal wouldn’t normally do.” But the animal merely ceased trying to find the exit, and moved away from her.
Perhaps the unseen intelligence could not discern her words over the hum of the demon’s own voice.
Rowan realized there was one act that would provide the proof she needed immediately. She slowly drew in her left hand, and hid the talisman against her shirt.
The demon’s arms jerked in startlement, jerked again and again. It stopped. Then it stood, knees trembling, its arms slowly rising and falling, one after the other.
It did not spray.
Rowan let out the breath she was holding, slowly. “I believe,” she said, barely audible even to herself, “that I can take that as a sign.”
It began to rain. The demon seemed indifferent to the fact, as fat drops struck its waving arms, its speckle-skinned body—
Rowan said, amazed, “I know you.” It was the male she had seen in the maze, collecting case-objects, snatching them up from the streets, distributing them to other males.
Perhaps she had been right from the first; she ought to have been following this creature all along.
Whatever power controlled the demon now knew where the steerswoman was hiding. Someone who helped once might help again.
It began to rain in earnest, and now the demon clearly did not like it; it quickly folded its arms in a peculiar arrangement, hands to its maw, elbows out all around, resulting in a ludicrous skeleton umbrella. Rowan huffed a laugh.
But the rattle of water would cover the approach of other demons, ones possibly less benign. The steerswoman moved aside; the speckled male swayed, hesitated, then jogged to the end of the ravine and left her.
Back in the cave, Rowan removed her shirt, which seemed less wet on the inside, used it to dry her face and hands as best she could, shook it out, and with no better way to dry it, put it back on.
Janus had not moved; Rowan became disturbed at the length of his sleep. With effort, she shook him to groggy half-awareness and convinced him more by action than words to drink. Immediately after, he weakly struggled away from her supporting arms and lay curled in upon himself, breathing deeply through teeth clenched even in sleep.
Shivering, the steerswoman sat beside him, rubbing her arms, the moths around her stilling toward darkness. Eventually she raised her head to gaze up the shaft, finally discerning far above a tiny crack of white sky. She watched it fade to gray, then black.
Demon-voice woke her; but by the time she had collected sword and talisman, it was gone. She tried to convince herself to sleep again, but found that restlessness and curiosity would not permit it. She stirred the moths for light, went toward the entrance.
The groups of case-objects she had disturbed before seemed to have been reordered. Ducking low, she entered the vestibule and, holding her talisman before her, peered outside.
Stars above; the outlines of demon dens visible at the edge across from her. She thought she discerned movement toward the entrance to the ravine, but could not be certain.
Possibly the animals’ instinctive search for an intruder had ceased; but Rowan could not negotiate the streets in darkness.
As she made her way back inside, her foot struck something that rolled away. Case-object, she thought, and was back in the main cave before recalling that she had not yet seen one round enough to roll.
She returned to it. It was a raw potato.
There were two others, and a small block of mold-encrusted cheese, in a neat pile by the entrance. Rowan carried them to the alcove at the back of the cave, carefully trimmed the mold from the cheese, halved it, placed one of the halves beside Janus’s inert form.
She said to him, “By the hospitality of a friend.”
He slept on.
She thought she would not have long to wait. She was correct.
Demon-voices outside the cave, many; then one, inside.
Rowan nodded. She drew a breath, rose.
Another voice, inside the cave. Rowan stopped. Another, and more. She grew disturbed.
After counting six, she could no longer separate individual voices.
She had planned to leave her sword and talisman behind; she changed that. Carrying both, and with her ears blocked by the glove-finger plugs, she made her way toward fluttering, shifting green light.
Seven individual demons stood in the clear area by the entrance.
This could not be good. The person controlling the demons would surely not need so many creatures at once. The steerswoman waited; the demons remained, arms waving slightly.
Then the tallest reached down and emitted a case-object. The others, all males, Rowan now realized, froze, then shifted, returned to stillness.
The green light was confusing; but Rowan studied the males and— yes, there: the speckled male she had encountered before. And the female; possibly the one from the den. It had been gray, shaded with tan in daylight; it was green shadowed with green here.
So many, and in such an awkward space: if logic had led Rowan wrong, she and Janus would die, very soon.
The steerswoman slowly moved forward, half-bent until the ceiling rose as she neared the group. At twelve feet away, she did exactly what the tiny, needle-sharp, agonizing voice of instinct told her not to do: She covered the talisman.
Lifts of startlement. One male raised its arms to spray; but another immediately interposed itself between that one and Rowan. The nervous male subsided. The demons stood, arms gently raising, lowering.
Rowan said, “I suppose you can’t actually hear me through these creatures. I’m not surprised. I couldn’t hear a person through this noise myself.” But her own voice, in her blocked ears, was loud, thick, seeming to come from the base of her skull.
Perhaps she should write; but she had nothing to write with or on. And if her mysterious friend saw only through demon senses, writing would be useless. Words on paper did not echo sound.
She ought to gesture— but both her han
ds were full. And she could not, yet, bring herself to set down either her weapon or her only protection, still clutched tight against her chest.
The female demon stepped forward, away from the males, and Rowan forced herself not to back off and managed by sheer will to allow the point of her sword to drop. Five feet away, the demon stopped.
The last time Rowan had stood so close to a living demon was in Alemeth. Two separate creatures; and both times she had approached so near only to drive her sword into them.
The males had shifted, spreading themselves in a line to left and right. Rowan began to dislike the configuration.
The female reached down; this close, the movement was startling, the structure of the arm so freakishly wrong that Rowan took two steps back, teeth clenched, sword again raised. The demon paused; then continued the motion and withdrew a case-object from one lower orifice. This it placed on the ground. Beyond, the males shifted again, spreading further, and two of them moved a few flat-footed steps closer.
The object was vaguely conical, tilted, covered in small bosses. Rowan regarded it blankly; then she looked up at the female, wishing deeply that she could read the face of the mind behind this creature.
The demon stood, headless, branch-armed, strange-legged; but Rowan had studied demons closely the previous day, enough to learn the patterns of body posture and some hint of emotions behind them.
The demon was waiting.
The demon itself was waiting, and watching her.
Not some distant controlling power; not some outside guiding force.
Rowan felt abruptly empty, as if something had left her; a noise, perhaps, a constant internal noise of which she had not been aware. Or perhaps it was her strength; for she felt, at the moment, incapable of any motion whatsoever.
The steerswoman said, weakly, “There’s no one here but us.” It was no more than a whisper. Even through the bones of her skull, she could not hear her own words.
The only human mind present was Rowan’s. She was alone, underground, with seven monsters— who were watching her and waiting.
Eventually, they stopped waiting. The female reached down— and Rowan found she was unable to retreat or even raise her weapon.
The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) Page 43