“No! Eric. I can’t.”
Again he grabbed my hand, his eyes raking into mine, crimson streaked and eerie as he searched my face.
“Kill me, Ruenn. For I’ll surely try to kill you when she takes me again.”
This time I did not pull away. I reached with my free hand and locked hold of his wrist; I leaned forward.
“I will not. We’ll bind you. Keep you bound until we find some way of freeing you from Vohanna.”
Eric snarled. His eyes flushed with blood. The tattoos on his face seemed to writhe as he tore free of my grip and lunged for my throat, his fingers hooked into talons. I went back and down under his weight, feeling his nails ripping at my flesh. I smashed at him with a fist, felt the jolt of the blow. It didn’t stop him.
His grip tightened. I bucked wildly beneath him, trying to throw him off. My lungs spasmed for air. Firefly sparkles swept and darkened over my vision. I heard shouting.
Then I could breathe again as Diken Graye and Valyan reached us and dragged Eric up and away from my throat. I pushed to my knees, gagging, saw Eric struggling madly against the hands that tried to imprison him. He snapped his head back into Valyan’s face, tore free as the Llurn’s grasp weakened. Diken grabbed for his shoulder, missed his grip as Eric lunged for me a second time.
I threw myself to one side, lashed out with a booted foot at the same instant. That boot stripped Eric’s feet from under him and he smashed hard to the ground. But he came back instantly to all fours, hurled himself at me with his mouth open and snarling. I saw blood flecking his lips where he’d bitten his tongue.
Graye clubbed him at the base of the neck with both fists, and Valyan tackled him from the side and rolled him, locking Eric up with legs around legs, arms around arms. Graye drew his sword and planted the tip at Eric’s throat, dimpling the skin over the artery that pulsed there.
“No!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. “Don’t kill him.”
Eric twisted his head toward me. Only, it wasn’t Eric. His face had changed. Pallid skin had turned dark as olives. The cheeks had hollowed and the lips were swollen and ripe. The eyes had altered from crimson-stained to obsidian black.
The thing that was not Eric smiled at me. Then it gave a low mirthful chuckle that was sweet as rancid honey.
“Ruenn Maclang,” it said caressingly. “Brother to my darling Bryce. Come find me if you can. Bryce will be so happy to see you again. And to introduce you to his lover.”
“Beast!” I snarled at it.
The curved lips twisted into a pout. “How cruel. And I had so hoped we would be friends.” Then the thing giggled. “I think you should be punished.”
It winked at me, and I saw how it would punish me. I saw awareness return in a flood to Eric’s eyes. And at the same moment I saw him turn back toward Diken Graye and look up at the mercenary. Graye’s sword still rested against Eric’s throat, and with a quick thrust of his head my cousin impaled himself on that blade.
Graye jerked his weapon back with an oath, but it was too late. I was too late as I leaped forward. Blood spurted and I reached Eric only as he slumped to one side, his gaze finding mine and shocking into me.
“Ruenn,” he gasped, as his fingers scrabbled at my shoulder. I caught his hand, his blood on me, pooling in my lap, matting the hair of my arms. His eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed his way into death.
I held him. I wept.
After a long moment, Valyan and Graye walked away to leave me alone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IN THE MEMORY OF RUINS
I watched as Valyan and his sabrun disappeared toward the morning, leading behind them a second bird which bore the unconscious form of Kreeg strapped over its back. The breath came heavy in my chest of a sudden. My hands shook. After one long glance toward me, Diken Graye turned away to recheck the remaining two saddle birds, leaving me alone in stillness.
In a few minutes we, too, would be mounted and on our way. We would take a different route, a wind-road that would lead us to the ruined city of Vohan, where Eric Ryall had told us we would find the goddess Vohanna. And Bryce. But for this moment my thoughts were only of Nyshphal. And Rannon.
The sky overhead was green in the dawn, a delicately jeweled shade of olive. In Nyshphal, this day would be the culmination of the spring festival, the celebration of regrowth and vigor. I knew that Rannon would have many duties at court and among her people. I wondered if her whole heart would lie in those duties, and I was selfish enough to hope that some part of her was troubled.
I had sent Valyan back to Rannon, and he had gone willingly even though he knew he’d be arrested. But Kreeg needed the treatment he could get only in Nyshphal, and, too, on one issue my feelings were still clear. I loved Rannon and would not see her people devastated. Valyan was to tell Rannon that the source of the attacks on her land lay below the stones of the fallen metropolis of Vohan—in Nyshphalian territory—and that the roots of this aggression traced back to the early days of her father’s battle for Nyshphal, when the Cult of Rampuur had first sought to revive the rule of the “goddess” Vohanna. If I knew Hurnan Jystral, he would launch his own attacks soon after hearing that word.
Graye coughed and I turned and strode toward him. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed an earthen mound that marked a freshly dug grave. I’d cut two sticks of wood and bound them to form a cross to mark the head of that grave. Even though Talerans would not understand it as a religious image, the cross had meant a great deal to Eric Ryall.
I did take with me one thing of Eric’s, the ornate-hilted sword that he’d used against me in Vohanna’s temple. My own blade had been lost, broken off in the body of the laith, but this new weapon more than made up for it. It was a rapier, though of a modified style with a heavy, double-edged blade for use in both cutting and thrusting.
The steel was unlike any I’d seen before. It shimmered like water under sunlight, like moiré silk. But it was flexible and strong and incredibly sharp. The hilt fitted my hand perfectly and the guard was an elaborate swirl of linked chains and metal loops intertwined with runic symbols. It rested now in a sheath hooked at my left hip, and I was glad of something to remind me of my cousin as we mounted our sabruns and left that place. I doubted I’d ever see Eric’s grave again.
The sun was upon us all the way to the coast of Nyshphal, with not a single cloud to mar the green. Though we flew high to avoid patrols, it was not cold as one might imagine. While the temperature plummets as you go higher in Earth’s atmosphere, the reverse is true on Talera. The temperature climbs as you climb because, in fact, on this artificial and encapsulated world you are getting measurably closer to the sun.
The sabruns were tiring by the time we crossed the northern straits of the Temeri Sea and landed in the port town of Elul to eat and rest for the night. Elul bustled and moiled with life—farmers, cattlemen from the interior whose herds were mostly of the short horned terval, a few fishermen and traders. All were here for the spring festival, and to purchase or sell seed and supplies for winter’s end.
Elul also marked the northern end of the Road of Wagons, which runs all the way to Timmuzz. Though I was not particularly worried about being recognized, having never been here before, we stayed away from the crowds as much as possible.
Graye had a local healer look at the sword cuts he’d received in the Kellet’s Bay battle. I had cleaned and bound the gashes before we’d left the Rosjavik Peninsula, but the healer cleaned them again and packed them with curing herbs. With his wounds freshly tended, Graye rejoined me at the sabrun stables and we found an inn that still had a few sleeping spaces to rent on the floor of the common room. I scarcely noticed the hardness of the floorboards; exhaustion softened them.
Only one further incident of importance occurred in Elul. I had noted that Graye was silent and distant to me during our ride and during the night in the inn. I thought I understood
why. It had been his blade that had taken my cousin Eric’s life, and I was sure that he expected me to blame him.
“Diken,” I said to him the next morning, as he moved to mount his sabrun for the continuation of our journey.
He glanced back at me, his eyes haunted and raw. Then he proved my guess correct as he suddenly blurted, “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head at him. “The fault is Vohanna’s,” I said. “And in no way yours. You have been a good companion. I have ridden with a few as good. Not any that were better.”
His eyes remained locked with mine for long moments. He smiled then, slightly, though still with a touch of sadness, and we bestrode our saddle birds and took to the air, leaving our doubts of each other behind in the dust of Elul.
* * * * * * *
Amid the thick shadows of late evening, we reached the outskirts of lost Vohan and landed along what must have been, at one time, a major thoroughfare leading into the city. It was a roadway of glimmering black, of some kind of cement, cracked and broken in many places, elsewhere buried beneath layers of fertile soil through which grass and bushes stabbed.
When I had heard of the “ruins” of Vohan I’d assumed we would see gigantic blocks of stone piled on top of each other, and shattered buildings half standing, with spider-webbed statues and dry fountains decaying around them. What we found was more the memory of ruins, devoured in what could only be described as a jungle.
Across the north-central plains of Nyshphal the land was mostly tall grass prairies broken by copses of trees, with here and there a stream running near full from spring rains. But where Vohan had stood there now grew a tropical forest. Only patches of the oily black stone peeked through among the verdure, and there were vague outlines within the green that were more regular than nature liked.
Lush blooms of scarlet, lavender, and saffron dripped sweetly putrid odors along narrow beast-trails in the undergrowth. Trees soared above, most of which were completely unfamiliar to me, and all the forest—from gnarled giants to fallen, half rotted logs—was woven together by vines. The only animals were tiny silver and black birds that darted about like dragonflies. There were no bigger creatures to be seen, which left me wondering what had made the trails.
It intrigued me to find such tropical growth in what should have been a temperate climate, but for the moment I pushed that curiosity aside. Eric had indicated that Vohanna’s stronghold was located below the surface here. The question was how to find an entrance, and the jungle made that task more daunting than I had hoped it would be.
“Well...we can’t take the sabruns with us in there,” Diken Graye said, gesturing at the forest.
I nodded. “Agreed. But leaving them tied up out here would only provide food for the prairie ghyres.”
“Then what?” Graye asked.
“We release them and walk,” I said. “If Eric is right and the attacks on Nyshphal have been supplied from here, then somewhere below this jungle is a place big enough to hide a near army of birds and riders. We’ll steal what we need when we get ready to leave again.”
Graye chuckled. “I rather like that idea,” he said, as he began to strip the two birds of their saddles and gear.
I glanced up at the quickly darkening sky and a new thought occurred to me.
“I believe,” I said to Graye, “that the sabruns may yet serve us in another way.”
“And that would be?” the mercenary asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“They’re domesticated,” I said. “When it comes time to go to roost they’ll seek a warm mew among their own kind.”
“So?”
I let him think on it for a moment. Then a smile curled his lips and the scar on his chin tightened, shining whitely through his dark stubble of beard.
“Perhaps they’ll lead us to the entrance we need,” he said.
“Aye. If they can sense their cousins in or below this jungle.”
“Tis worth a try, at least.”
“My thoughts as well,” I said, turning to stride toward the nearest big trees. I called over my shoulder: “It’s near the time they’d seek their roosts if they were free. Release them when I say. Shoo them off.”
I did not wait to hear his answer.
The forest giant that I chose to climb was thinly barked and smooth of branches for the first twenty feet up its redwood-sized trunk. So many vines wrapped it, though, that the climbing was easy enough until I reached the lower limbs. Those limbs were massive, three feet wide or more at the base, tapering only gradually after that. But they made the work go even faster and I soon forged my way into the very top of the tree, relishing the physical action after so long in the saddle.
All above me the olive-green dome of the sky was deepening toward emerald as the night closed in. But light would linger for a while yet over the treetops.
I called a signal to Graye and heard him shout, “Haieee!” at the sabruns. With chattering cries, they whirled up. I saw them rise above me and then try to settle to ground once more. Rocks flew from Graye’s position and the birds lifted again, circling wildly. I shouted at them too, from my hidden perch, and they shied and headed further away over the forest.
I watched them wheel and dip. Then one of them steadied and beat its wings off toward the northwest, toward the center of this odd jungle. The other followed. Trees grew at the center that overtopped their neighbors, and it seemed to me that they stood like a battalion of guards around some sort of building that was no more than an outline under the setting green sun. Our sabruns circled there, swinging lower and lower until I could see them no more. Though I could not be sure, I thought they had alighted.
Noting eagerly the direction and distance, I began clambering down from my eyrie. It was already full night beneath the canopy of leaves. I heard Graye moving around below, dumping equipment and supplies at the base of the tree I had climbed. We’d camp here tonight, in the forest to avoid the ghyres. Tomorrow we’d head inward toward the jungle’s heart, leaving the saddles behind but carrying our food, water, and weapons.
A low, trilling whistle sounded, lingered...died.
I paused at the lowest limb on the trunk, my heart rhythm jumping from slow and steady to thud-thud-thud. The forest floor was swathed in darkness twenty feet below. I could see nothing.
“Graye?”
There was no response, though I heard movement clearly. A lot of movement.
“Graye?” I called again.
A flat, savage growl answered me.
Hair curled at my neck. I wanted to shout, to scream for Graye. But the words had fossilized in my throat and I sat very still.
More low growls rippled through the dark. There came the padding of light feet on leaf-covered ground. Then sparks of wine-red flared up all around the base of my tree, dozens of pairs of sparks.
Eyes, I realized, eyes glittering with internal heat, with no light in this dark forest to reflect from them. The bodies of the beasts could not be seen.
In the background came a gagging sound, a choking groan of physical and mental agony. In the next instant it broke off. There in the trees, the skin went tight over my knuckles and fear knotted in my chest. My mouth had been reborn a desert.
Then there was light. It flared up suddenly, a sallow, yellowish gleam from a thin pile of twigs that had been set to burning. Diken Graye bent over that fire, blowing gently on it. He looked up at me and smiled, though he should not have been able to see me among the tree limbs. His lips were a thin, hard line, and the scar at his chin seemed to pulse. Behind the sullen, bloody glow of the red eyes I could see nothing left that I could call my friend.
“Vohanna!” I cursed in a whisper, and rage began to pluck my strings.
How could this “goddess” have possessed Diken Graye? I had seen her take Eric Ryall, but she’d had a link to Eric, had been able to project her power through the milkstones embed
ded in his flesh. Graye bore no such stones.
Or did he? Had he been implanted somehow? If so, I could only believe that it had been done without his knowledge. I did not think he would have kept such a detail from me. Or, was Vohanna growing stronger as we neared her lair? Could she take someone without a milkstone if they were physically close? Why hadn’t she tried to take me, then? Was I not more dangerous to her plans?
The questions had no answers. Not yet. Then even the questions fled my mind as the being who was not Diken Graye straightened and stepped forward to the foot of my tree. Around him, the red-eyed beasts opened a way, leaving of themselves only an impression of barrel-squat bodies to accompany their railroad flare eyes.
The man/being looked up at me.
“I take it that you are Vohanna,” I said, not intending a question.
The man chuckled, like grating ice floes.
“What’s the matter, Ruenn? Don’t you recognize me? How could you forget your brother Bryce?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BROTHER’S KEEPER
I heard the words that spilled from Diken Graye’s lips.
And they were Bryce’s words. In Bryce’s voice. The shock of it was like a sluice of cold water. The tree in which I sat seemed to rock beneath me. Fear clawed in my chest. Not for myself, but for Bryce.
“No,” I whispered.
“Oh, yesss,” he said. “Your one and only brother. Even if I don’t look much like him at the moment.”
If hearing Bryce’s voice issuing from Diken Graye’s mouth was meant to panic me, that plan came close to success. I felt the panic rising, but underneath the horror I felt also a bitter, burning anger. And the anger was winning.
This was Bryce. Somehow, his spirit—his khi as the Talerans call it—had entered and possessed another being. Yet, this was also not my brother. Not truly. Something had been done to him, something terrible enough to warp the basic fineness of him.
“No!” I said again, more forcefully. I cleared my throat. “You are not my brother. My brother would never take delight in cruelty. He would never even steal a coin, much less another man’s body.”
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