Here were the pikes, the gloves, the meshwork vests, the helmets that every guard wore. The helmets were constructed of a variety of metal plates that were fastened together. In order to accommodate the motley topography of the tesque skull, these plates were made of different sizes and curvatures. No two helmets were exactly the same, just as no two tesques were. The final product resembled the cranium of a newborn, with its floating continents of bone not yet fully joined or fused. Needless to say, the helmets were not nearly so soft or penetrable.
Meera divided up the food, leaving a portion behind. From a guard she found out where Wyn had last been sighted, then, shouldering the pole she used for feeding him, she left Payne inside to get what final rest he could and headed out to bait the trap.
He was standing in a pool of dust about a hundred yards up-canyon, arms at his sides, jaw set, staring down the sun. He had taken to doing this often, further proof to her of his deterioration. In the desert—even to a blind man—the sun was not a friend.
The pole was long and had a wire basket on one end, which she filled with the food she'd brought. Stepping back, she levered the shaft atop the fence, then twisted it, dumping the offering on the ground. Wyn turned his head, sniffing the air. Enjoy, she told him silently, hurrying back to pick up Payne. Next time at the table.
Bolt was talking to the two gate guards when she returned, and they were looking none too pleased with what they were hearing. They had their own plan for Wyn, and it wasn't the one that Bolt, on her behalf, was laying out. One of them offered to drive a pike through his midsection. The other suggested a lethal blow to the head.
They quieted down when she arrived, scuffing their boots in the dirt and looking merely surly. A few minutes later, Payne joined them. The sun had reached the canyon rim, and the day's Concretions were dispersing.
Meera pulled Bolt aside. “What did you tell them?”
“What you told me to.”
“What else?”
“To not let things get out of hand.”
“Meaning what?”
He ran his thumb down his scar, considering. “I told them that if your harebrained idea doesn't work, they were on their own.”
She nodded, satisfied at least to know where things stood. “That's what I thought you said.”
There was a bucket beside the gate containing a grayish, viscous substance, and the guards dipped their pike tips into it before setting out. Meera did the same with hers, and Payne, bringing up the rear, did likewise. The guard in front stopped and told him to grab the bucket.
“What is it?” he asked.
The guard shook his head and turned away, as though offended by his ignorance.
“Conk juice. Wha'dya think?” the other guard said brusquely.
Rather than take the shortest path, which would have led them through the heart of the Pen, they took a more circuitous but safer route around the periphery. All of them wore earplugs to muffle sound. They passed a low mound of dug-up sand similar to the one Payne and Meera had seen before. Beside it was a shallow hole. A grave? he wondered. A hiding place? The beginnings of a tunnel? In the hole lay a glistening substance that looked like hardened sap. From nowhere came a curdling screech, bone-chilling even through the plugs. Payne froze and blindly groped behind him for the fence.
The lead guard halted and with a curse came back. “Don't stop. Keep moving. If you act scared, they'll come after you.”
Payne tried but couldn't get his legs to work. “Go on. I'll catch up.”
“Not likely.” Wedging his shoulder under Payne's arm, the smaller but stronger man got him off the fence and moving. “We should be going the other direction.”
Payne twisted out of his grip. “You want to go back, feel free.”
The guard snorted.
“I mean it.” He was tired of their contempt.
“You can't even walk.”
“I'm walking now.”
The guard grumbled something under his breath, but in the end wouldn't leave. “She's a witch. She'd have my head.”
They reached Wyn without further incident, stopping downwind of him, a safe distance away. He was stuffing food by the handful into his mouth and took no note of their arrival. There were several Concretions in various stages of dissolution in his vicinity, and, pikes drawn, the guards cleared the area of them. Then they sprinkled Conk juice in a wide semicircle around Wyn, beginning and ending at the fence.
The sun by now had set; the first star was not yet out. In the twilight the four of them positioned themselves at equal distances along the circumference of the semicircle. Wyn glanced up, then seemingly unconcerned, went back to eating. A moment later, Meera gave the signal, and stealthily, like bandits, they moved in.
It was over almost before it started. Wyn put up a fight, but he was no match for the four of them. Each attacker took a single limb, pulling it out straight and locking the joint, then sitting on it to guarantee it wouldn't move. Slapping leather thongs around his wrists and ankles, then driving spikes through loops in the thongs, they staked him out spread-eagled on the ground.
“Now there's a pretty picture,” remarked the lead guard, standing back to admire their work.
“Not so tough,” said the other one.
Tough enough, thought Payne, who until now had never been a match for his brother. He would have liked to see how any one of them, any two for that matter, would have stood up to him in a fair fight. Even now he half expected Wyn to break loose and overpower them.
Removing his gloves, he unbuckled his chin strap, then worked his helmet over his forehead until he got it off.
The lead guard eyed him. “Wouldn't do that, if I was you. There's plenty here'd have your head without sending an invitation.”
“But here's the prime suspect,” said the other, prodding Wyn with the blunt end of his pike. “And here we are, standing around nattering.”
“Get away from him,” Meera warned him, and when he hesitated, she took a swift step forward and kicked his pike away.
He responded by turning on her, prepared to fight. “C'mon. You want me, too?”
“I don't want anybody.”
“Tell Gird that.”
Gird, the lost driver, was this man's son. Upon hearing of his disappearance, Meera had immediately offered a reward for any relevant information. She reminded him of that and repeated the offer now.
The lead guard tried to get his mate to drop the matter. The light was bleeding from the sky, and he wanted to get back. But Gird's father was not appeased.
“She talks all nice, but she don't care. She's more interested in this.” He kicked dirt at Wyn. “But me, I'm more interested in her.”
He took a step toward her. “It's you that's fed him. You that's kept him alive. Why, I wonder? What's your plan?”
“You know the plan,” she said.
“Humans lie.”
“Then stay. Make sure we don't.”
“Let's go,” said his companion.
But he had a better idea. “We got a golden opportunity here. I say we kill him.”
At the mention of “kill,” Meera raised her lance, leveling it at his chest. In response he strained forward, as though daring her to be the first to draw blood.
At which point Payne intervened. Pushing Meera's spear aside, he placed himself between the two of them.
“You're not enemies. Stop acting like you are. Look.”
They followed his finger to where it pointed, at his brother, whose head was thrashing side to side. His arms and legs were straining at the thongs, every muscle taut and ridged with tension. At first it seemed that he was trying to free himself of his bonds, but this was not the case. Rather, it was the thing inside that was trying to free itself of him.
The blue appendage was mushrooming out of his meli and at the same time spreading over his skin. He, in turn, was struggling to contain it. He'd pull it back and for a moment seem to have the upper hand, only for it to spill out of him a second later e
ven more.
Both guards backed away in fear and horror. Meera sucked in her breath and looked to Payne. He was tearing off his clothes, first his vest and then his shirt. Bare-chested, he threw himself on the ground, head to toe beside his brother as planned.
“Stake me, too,” he told them. “But first free his arm and wrap us tight. Quick. No time to lose.”
Meera jumped at his command but couldn't get Wyn's arm free, and in trying, accidentally touched the blue excrescence. A lancinating pain shot up her arm, and with a cry she fell back. Gasping, she crawled forward to try again.
One of the guards rushed in to help, and together they got the stake out. With a knee he pinned Wyn's hand against the ground while she wrapped his and Payne's arms together. Payne ordered her to make it tighter. When she had done this, he had her anchor the two arms down with a double pair of spikes.
“Now stake the rest of me.”
She did, working fast, then knelt beside him. His chest was pale in the twilight, his meli dark red.
“What else?” she asked.
Already he could feel the impulses prickling up his arm, the rising heat, as though he were edging closer to an open flame. He could see that she was worried and tried to cheer her up.
“It's going to be fine. This is how we planned it.” He paused, then grinned. “Wyn and I haven't been this close for years.”
She managed a smile, then touched his hand and whispered luck. It seemed a small thing to offer him, insufficient for the magnitude of the moment, but it was all she could bring herself to say.
Payne closed his eyes, hiding his disappointment. He needed luck; luck was welcome. But he wanted love, and that, it seemed, he'd have to earn.
For those of a certain disposition, a certain morbid curiosity, the Pen by day had its rewards. By night, though, it was an altogether different proposition.
Meera set her watch at the midpoint of the semicircle they had lain out, just inside the dribbled line of juice, whose dark viscosity remained visible against the milky brown of the canyon floor. She had her lance, and she had her satchel of food and water. She had some extra clothing and a knife, as well. The guards had gone.
Unlike the flesh and blood from which they sprang, Concretions made no distinction between day and night. They existed and ceased to exist equally by sun and moon, whether the sky was blazing bright or dotted with stars, pink with dawn or black and blue with night. Likewise, they produced their raft of sounds regardless of the hour.
Meera had prepared herself for this, but there was really no preparing. The nighttime noises were simply too spooky and unnerving, especially the more human ones. Some of the cries and laughs and rambling colloquies came so close to human speech that with half an effort she could almost hear words. It came as something of a shock to realize early in her watch that she was trying to.
It was an attempt, she guessed, to tame her fear of the unknown, by making the strange less threatening, by taking something beastly and turning it into something familiar. The trick worked too, after a fashion, which is to say her fear of imminent assault and injury diminished (although, as a body was not designed to sustain such a heightened state of fear for very long, it might have been that she simply exhausted her stores). It was less successful when the sounds were particularly loud or close, for then her heart would race and she would jump to her feet in a panic, or if she was on her feet already, pacing back and forth as she did throughout the night, she would freeze and turn, widening her eyes and brandishing her pike.
Which is how the first hour passed.
Meera hypervigilant and jumpy. Conks whooping like demented peacocks, echoing hysterically off the canyon walls. Payne and Wyn staked out head to toe like pieces of a puzzle. The stars above like pinholes. Twilight giving way to night.
Gradually, the temperature fell. There was heat in the ground, but that, too, slowly dissipated. She would have liked a fire but didn't want to call attention to herself. She spread a blanket, put on a jacket and had a bite of food.
A nearby sound, a crunch of rock, brought her to her feet. Heart thumping, she peered into the darkness, spear in hand. The noise recurred; it seemed behind her. Whirling around, she rushed to Payne and Wyn.
They had not moved or been disturbed that she could see, though because of their peculiar orientation she had to circle them to get a proper look. Payne had insisted on the head-to-toe position so that their left arms, their healing arms, could be in contact, hoping that this would optimize at least the first two stages of the healing. As a result, no matter where she stood, one of their bodies was upside down.
Payne looked the same as he had from the beginning, and at first glance so did Wyn. His face was taut, his jaw clenched, his eyelids half-closed and fluttering. But he wasn't thrashing around quite so much, nor straining at the stakes, and his breathing was less harsh. The blue excrescence, pallid as a ghost, still pulsed in and out of him. It seemed to have neither shrunk nor grown.
She heard the noise again, this time sounding something like a footfall, but heavier and more menacing, and closer, much closer than before. She had the urge to scream at it, but couldn't find her voice. Which angered her.
The sound drew nearer.
Leveling her lance, she cried out. “Go away. Whatever you are. Leave us alone.”
More crunching, near the fence. Something shadowy skulking toward her.
“I said go away. You're not wanted here.”
An indistinct and gravelly voice answered her, sort of human, sort of not.
She barked at it, “I said be gone!”
The dark shape halted, looking squat and not quite so menacing. “If that's the way you want it. But if it was me, I'd be grateful for a little company.”
“Bolt!” she cried.
“Come or go?” he asked soldierly.
“Oh, come,” she said. “Please. Come.”
He was carrying a small pack, as well as a pike, which he purposefully drove into the ground with each step. Crunch, it went, crunch, crunch.
“You scared me.” She was trembling.
“That's good. Worse thing for both of us is sneaking up unannounced.” He eyed the prostrate men, keeping a safe distance. “Now that's a pretty sight.”
To Meera it was he who was pretty. She was amazed he had come. It was so far beyond the call of duty, an act of almost unparalleled bravery and courage to be inside the Pen at night, especially with a creature on the loose that had him terrorized, him and all the others, drivers and guards alike. But here he was, saying how it only seemed fair that she had company. With a gruff humility he confessed his fear was much abated by the sight of Wyn, its principal source, staked out like the animal he was and immobilized on the ground. The other creatures in the Pen did not worry him near so much, and as for the darkness, he turned out to be no stranger to it, having frequently spent nights alone under the desert sky outside Gode.
He knew the stars, and after he had settled down and they had shared some food, he told her stories to pass the time. One, about the coming of the People, was similar to one she knew. These were pretesque, pre-human people, the ancestors of them all. In her story they originated from a string of pearls that fell from the heavens and burst open upon hitting the ground. In his they sprang from the eggs of a serpent. He pointed it out to her, the serpent, a zigzag chain of stars, some faint, some bright, that stretched across the northern horizon. Mobestis, he called it, although it also went by other names. It had lived in the Great Sea in the Great Beginning, before swallowing all the water, which is how the deserts were born. After that, deprived of its home, it was miserable, but being a serpent could not weep, and the Creator, taking pity, had raised it to the sky, where it could live again in the sea, the Sea of Night. And it could drink all the water it wanted (and here Bolt pointed to the dark material, the infinite blackness, between the stars); and it did, it drank to its heart's content. And in gratitude it gave a gift to the Creator. It laid a clutch of eggs, which fell to t
he earth, then hatched and brought the People to the land. The white of the eggs was the source of the People's mind and spirit; the shell, of their physical strength and endurance; the yolk, when mixed with the mud of earth, of their breath and blood. And the People grew strong and multiplied. And they were One People, for this was long before the rift, the Great Split, occurred.
Here the story ended, and before long the moon appeared, which evoked a new round of stories, until, at last, neither of them had any more to tell. They fell silent, and for an instant the Conks did, too. The sudden stillness was startling, almost deafening, as only the stillness of the desert could be. The night seemed to swell around them.
Meera stood and wandered over to the brothers, who by the wan moonlight looked ghostly and pale. In their splayed-out, topsy-turvy symmetry they could have been the imprint of a new species, a new People, come to haunt the old ones. Or replace them, or maybe just remind them how it was before they had become sundered, when the two races were still one.
Up-canyon a Conk broke the silence with a plaintive cry.
Bolt joined her. “How long you expect it'll be?”
“This? I have no idea.”
“What's usual?”
“For a meli healing? There's no such thing. Two, six, twelve hours. More.” Her own healing, if she could call it that, had seemed to go on forever. This, she suspected, would take longer.
Bolt gestured at the one who had given them such grief. “You think he's hurting?”
“Wyn?” She almost laughed. “Oh yes. I can pretty much guarantee it. And I think the more he comes back from wherever he is, the more he regains himself, if he does, the more it's going to hurt. That thing is so much a part of him. Getting rid of it might feel like getting rid of a part of himself. It's a ploy they use, making you think it'd be worse without them, worse without the pain.”
The blue thing, the spillage, seemed to have grown more opaque. And slightly smaller and more compact, although possibly it was merely less blurry and more distinct. Taking no chances, Bolt kept his lance poised.
“What do you think it is?”
The Healer Page 29