Gillan stared at him. “My bone?”
“The process has begun. You have wild magic in you, now. The substance Darmuth gave you will feed off that magic. It will grow, Gillan. Grow. It will overtake your human flesh.”
He turned cold. So cold that he shivered with it. Sudden weakness took hold of his legs, tried to drop him to his knees. Gillan managed a single off-balance hop toward the bench, caught himself with braced arms before he could fall, and sat down hastily. He felt as if he could not breathe.
“You will remain yourself, Gillan,” Omri said quietly. “You will not lose that which makes you human in your mind and self. You will be Gillan on the inside.”
He stared down at his lower leg. Torn cloth had fallen aside, baring scales. “And on the outside—this?” He swallowed the painful tightness of his throat. “All over?”
As he looked up, Omri’s eyes gave him his answer.
In panic, the words burst from him. “I don’t want this! I don’t want to be this! I want to be normal again. Even if it costs me my leg, I want to be normal again!”
“Do you think,” Omri asked, “that I wished to be castrated?”
In shock, Gillan’s mouth dropped open.
“Were you to go home, Gillan . . . were you to return to the human world wearing the skin of a demon, what would they do to you? The humans. Your people. What would they do to you?”
Gillan remembered the half-changed man, the man with scaled hands and claws, who had come to the settlement. His voice shook. “Hate me. Be afraid of me. Shun me.”
“Or worse,” Omri said. “They will neither understand, nor accept, that you are human inside the hide.”
“Oh Mother. Oh Mother, Mother of Moons . . .” Tears started. He bent over, crossed arms hugging himself tightly. All of his bravado, his challenge to Omri’s words, bled away. “I don’t want to be that.”
“Only on the outside.”
Gillan dashed tears away and stared at Omri in a desperate appeal. “Is there nothing you can do? You say there’s wild magic—can’t you undo this?”
“Could I do that, I would have done it for myself two decades ago, when they cut me.” His mouth was a flat, pale line.
Gillan drew a shaky breath. For the first time, he thought of Omri before himself. “Why? Why would anyone do such a terrible thing against your will?”
“Oh, it wasn’t against my will. It was the price of failure. We are very well aware of that price.”
Gillan could not grasp it. “You knew they would cut you?”
“If I failed, yes. And so I did. And therefore I was castrated.”
“Oh Mother,” Gillan murmured, appalled. “How can you live like that?”
Omri’s mouth twisted a moment. “Living like this is part of the punishment for failure.”
“But what did you fail?”
“To kill my sire.”
Gillan stared at him. From the moil of thoughts, he said blankly, “You were to kill your father?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“If we wish to ascend, we must.” Omri put a hand up to forestall additional questions. “It is our way. Not the human way, I know well—I lived among you for five years—but our way. We are not like you.” And then he repeated it. “We are not like you.”
Gillan said the only thing he could think of. “Thank the Mother for that!”
Omri’s tone was dry. “As well you might.”
“Is that why you’ve been—given to us?”
“Of course. You could not be expected to remain here without me or someone like me.”
“But, why?”
Omri sighed. “Language can be muddled. Let me say it this way, then. In your tongue, it’s simple enough. We’re slaves.”
Gillan blinked. “What?”
“We’re slaves. All of us who fail, but live. Neuters. Why, did you believe the primaries tend crops? Weave fabric? Build walkways, living chambers, make clothing? What, did you think the road would be built by magic?”
Gillan, quelled, murmured, “Yes.”
“With our backs,” Omri said. “With our hands.”
Gillan stared at him, but no longer saw him. His vision was unfocused as he tried to stitch together everything, all the ideas, the visions, the questions, assumptions. And answers.
“This is one of the reasons why we challenge our sires,” Omri told him. “Oh, there are other reasons as well, such as an unflagging physical drive, but don’t you believe this is a powerful inducement? We challenge for our lives. For our manhood. For the right to breed. And for the get who are dioscuri, who will one day challenge us.”
Gillan said, “Cruel. That’s what it is. Horribly, terribly cruel.”
Omri smiled sadly. “What else is there to be, when reared in Alisanos?”
Chapter 28
SHE STOOD JUST at the edge. Behind her lay the depths of Alisanos, before her a road. She judged it just wide enough for a wagon’s passage. Tree canopies on either side overgrew the road so that a tunnel was formed. The brilliance of double suns were visible in patches, in narrow streaks stretching toward the ground, but the road remained deeply shadowed. It did not welcome her, but was nonetheless a form of deliverance.
She heard axes. Heard the crack and scrape and whoosh of trees falling down, the massive thumps. She could not see the road being cleared; occasionally she heard the sound of beasts and outcries of men. In each instance, the noise of clearing stopped, then began again, when a man’s cries died.
She lingered there on the verge, contemplating what might happen if she stepped out onto the road. Would she feel differently? Would it speak to her? Or would it be inert and empty, nothing more than a way through the deepwood?
And Davyn would come to her.
Someone said her name. And again. Once more, and she managed to open her eyes. They felt gritty and hot, as if scraped. Weariness yet plagued her, though she felt somewhat better.
Davyn would come to her, to their children, upon the road.
“Audrun, I have brought a cushion. Let us sit you up so you can lean against it. You have been flat too long.”
It was the faded man. Omri. She saw kindness in his eyes. At no time since arrival at the Kiba had she seen any such emotion or appearance. For that kindness, she nodded and moved to sit up. She trembled, but his hands were on her, guiding her against the cushion. She managed to shift position enough to be more comfortable.
“Your fever is down,” he told her. “You are recovering. I will bring a meat broth for you. But first, there is a service you might render me, if you will. . . . It won’t require strength,” he said hastily, as she opened her mouth to ask how in the world she could do anything for anyone at this particular time. He bent down beside the cot, lifted something, then peeled back wrappings so she might see.
A baby.
Oh Mother, a baby.
Audrun made a sound. It was not comprehensible, but Omri appeared to understand what she meant to say. Smiling, he offered the infant to her. “Will you care for this girl? Not for so very long. Only until she is a little stronger.”
This time Audrun knitted actual words together. “Is she not being fed?”
“Her mother is dead. This one is a child of the creche, as we all are. But I think right now you are in need of a child more than the creche is.”
She stared into his warm brown eyes. He was not, in this moment, deferential. Nor did he appear faded. There was compassion in his eyes, and hope.
A part of her wished to refuse. This was not her child. Her child was elsewhere. But her body in all matters cried out for the baby Omri offered.
Audrun nodded. Omri carefully placed the wrapped infant in her arms. She was, Audrun believed, only a matter of weeks in age. Red fuzz capped her he
ad instead of the pale, pale blond of all her other children.
Her child, Sarith, was missing. This child was not. This child needed tending.
She is not mine. She is not mine.
Nor would she ever be. But until Sarith was found, Audrun would tend this child.
She reached up and tugged the neckline of her shift down. Omri murmured something and excused himself. She lifted the child to her breast. Tears formed and fell.
“I haven’t forgotten,” she murmured hoarsely. “Sarith, I haven’t forgotten you. We will come for you. I promise it.”
DEMON LIFTED THE naked child in the air and smiled, exposing fangs. It was pleasure she felt, not menace, not hostility. The child was no longer truly an infant, but still a baby, yes. She still needed care, she still needed guidence, and Demon would provide it.
The small cabin was built against a sheer cliff of stone amid a tumble of huge boulders. Outside, the river ran by. It had been a river for some time now. Demon didn’t know the reason; she was not privy to the desires and decisions of Alisanos. Roaring river, flowing creek, barest trickle—it did not matter.
The baby was entirely the opposite of Demon. She had hair so pale as to be white, just a fuzz that stood up from cowlicks. Her eyes were a clear, wondrous blue. Nothing like Demon, who was all over a gray so dark as to be black, of black wings and black claws, of hair the same.
So carefully did Demon lift and hold the child. Always, most carefully. The child’s flesh was fragile. Demon had scratched her once, all unintended, careless with claws. Now she took very good care, did Demon. She hoped the scratch across the child’s collar bone would fade to insignificance. For the moment it was purple. Healing, but definitely purple. Easily visible.
Still smiling, Demon brought the child down from the air and held her close, tucking her into an arm, tucking her against the gray-black chest. Still, Demon had breasts. Still, she fed the baby. And remembered a time, now and then, when she had neither claws nor fangs, merely a woman’s fair face, a woman’s lissome form; remembered, too, that her hands and toes had borne thin, pink-and-pearl nails. They broke so easily, those nails. Not good for much of anything, Demon decided. But in those days, in the memory of human womanhood, all served. The body had served, then. It had been remade in the shadows of Alisanos, giving her that which a survivor of the deepwood required: the means to kill. Slashing claws, teeth that tore throats easily, wings that lifted her high into the air. She was a superior being now, so different from the days of weakness.
The child was human. All human. But one day, she, too, would be changed by Alisanos. She would become of Alisanos, just as Demon had.
“You will be strong,” Demon told the child. “Most strong. And your body, your self, greater than any weak human body.” Demon kissed the child’s head. “Alisanos will be proud of you.”
A WIND CAME up as Ilona grabbed handfuls of damp skirts and held folds of fabric out of the way. She heard it blow through the elder grove, from out of quietude and silence to a rushing, rising hiss. The heavens opened. By the time she reached Mikal’s, mud and running water weighted her clothing.
She found him in front of his bar, leaning against it casually as he spoke with a handful of male customers. He looked up as she tore the door flap aside and stepped in.
One brow rose sharply; the other was contained by the leather thong holding his eye patch in place. “Blessed Mother, Ilona, you’re soaked.”
Out of breath, she nodded. “Yes. Wet. It’s raining. Mikal, Rhuan says to sound the alarm. This storm isn’t natural.”
He shrugged. “It’s just monsoon rain.”
“The wind . . . can’t you hear it?”
“Yes. But monsoon does bring wind with it, often enough.”
It was most frustrating that he could not grasp the threat. She made her words more precise. “No, Mikal. A storm out of Alisanos.”
His single eye narrowed. He rounded the bar, took from beneath it the two rods of Jorda’s Summoner, then strode through the tent to the doorflap and stepped outside, banging the rods together. In the midst of pouring rain blown sideways, Mikal struck the rods again and again in a specific pattern of sound. The customers departed hastily, jogging off in several different directions.
Mikal stopped banging the rods as the lightning began. The Summoner’s clangor was lost in the first crack of thunder. He ducked back through the door flap, wiping water from his face.
Ilona conjured the inflections of his own voice. “Blessed Mother, Mikal, you’re soaked.” But it was a poor joke, and his smile was merely a tightening of his lips.
The tent sidewalls flapped. Support poles creaked. Mikal set the Summoner atop the plank bar with a dull, metallic chime. “The wind is still rising.” As Ilona nodded, he continued. “We need to cut more tent poles. Many. We’ll have wood in plenty, with the grove down. But these tents can’t stand up to repeated storms this powerful. We’ll have to double or triple the poles, rig additional guy-lines. And we’ll have to make sure everyone has canvas to lay down as flooring against the mud.” He winced as another huge crack of thunder followed a slash of lightning. The air was acrid with it. “Did Rhuan predict how often we might expect storms out of the deepwood? The monsoon is bad enough. I assume these storms will be considerably worse.”
Ilona shook her head. “He said nothing of it. I’ll ask.”
Mikal’s own tent poles shuddered and creaked. Clearly concerned, he looked up at the underside of fabric stretched over a ridge pole.
Ilona picked wet strands of hair off her face. “I’m going back to my wagon.”
He was surprised. “Now? Here, you’re under cover.” He cast another glance at the ridge pole as it shuddered beneath the storm’s assault. “Well, temporarily. Mother, I hope this tent doesn’t go down.”
Ilona understood his consternation. The ale-tent was the largest in the settlement and had long been a place for meeting, not just drinking. “Do you have spare poles and rope?”
“A few poles, but not much rope. Rope is one of the supplies Jorda is bringing back.” Wind blew the door flap open, making way for the hard, slanted rain to find entry. Mikal swore. “Are you certain you wish to go back to your wagon?”
She nodded. “I’ll only worry about it if I stay here. Nothing there is tied down against the wind. And I can’t get any wetter than I already am.”
He nodded understanding. She shot him a quick smile of thanks, then ducked back out into the storm.
Immediately the wind yanked the wet wrap away from her, tumbling it across earth already running with water. Gone, too, was the lone rod she’d stuck through the thick coil of her hair. Freed ringlets weighted with rain straggled and slapped around her face and neck. With one hand she tried to hold skirts up, with the other she grabbed whipping hair so she could see.
Not far. The elder grove was not so far. Or her wagon in it.
The gloom of the storm was momentarily banished as the skies lighted up. Thunder assaulted her ears. “I hate it,” she muttered, staggering against the strength of the wind. “I hate, hate, hate lightning!” She nearly tripped. “Especially when it comes down to earth instead of across the sky!”
She was nearly blind in such heavy rain and wind. Squinting while working hard to remain upright, she didn’t see the broken plank flying through the air until the flat of it struck her head. The shock and force knocked her onto her back.
For a moment, disoriented, she lay sprawled as the rain beat into her. Then she pushed herself up into a sitting position, bracing herself on one arm while pressing a hand against her brow. Already the flesh rose against her palm, forming a large bump.
Sweet Mother, that hurts.
Now lightning chained itself across the sky. Thunder was ceaseless. Ilona rolled to her hands and knees, pushed herself to her feet, and shielded her eyes with one hand as the othe
r again gathered up mud-weighted skirts. She could tend the knot on her forehead later.
There. Grove. Though limbs and branches whipped in the wind, though leaves were torn off and shredded, the grove nonetheless provided shelter. She made her way through other parked wagons, noting all were closed up tightly, and finally reached her own. The awning was gone and the grass mat with it. Ilona muttered an unkind word regarding the insolence of storms, especially when she discovered that the wind had also blown the wagon door open. She ran up the steps, ducked in, slammed the door closed and latched it. The rain, falling hard and fast, carried on the slashing wind, had wetted half of her floorboards as well as the mattress, blankets, and cushions she and Rhuan had placed upon the floor because her bed platform wasn’t large enough for both of them.
Swearing yet again, Ilona dug into a trunk and pulled forth clothing, wrinkled from packing. She stripped down and dried off as best she could, wrung out her hair, pulled on dry clothing, grabbed up a long woolen wrap and wound it tightly around her chilled body. The wagon rocked and creaked, battered by wind and rain. Ilona climbed onto the bed platform, tucked up her legs, and prepared to wait out the storm.
“Come on, Rhuan,” she murmured. There were questions to ask, and memories of a heartbroken mother who so desperately wanted her daughter’s remains.
RHUAN MADE HASTE to find the wagons where the children belonged. Apparently all were where they should be. The wagons were buttoned down against the storm, and Rhuan was not about to go from one to the other in the midst of so much rain and wind. Now it was his turn to find shelter.
As he would with Ilona.
After a stop at Mikal’s elicited the information that Ilona had returned to her wagon, Rhuan broke into a jog, rounding trees and shrubbery. Wet, unbraided hair slapped against his spine. Already torrents of water ran beneath his boots so that he splashed and slipped his way through the grove. Lightning was so near, thunder so loud, that he could not help wincing against both. And when he reached Ilona’s tall, high-wheeled wagon, he noted at once that the awning was gone, torn from the canopy ribs. Something for him to repair once wind and rain subsided. For now, he just wanted to get in out of the rain and enfold Ilona in his arms.
The Wild Road Page 27