Trinian

by Elizabeth Russell

  “What’s wrong?” cried Adlena, for Lavendier and Garrity had never told the others about her near death episode.

  “Bring her to the fire,” he commanded, “and wrap anything you can around her.” They hurried to comply, and Garrity began boiling water and building up the fire, though he knew this attack would probably be over before it got hot enough. He fetched cold water from the stream as well, planning for the next.

  “Hold her close and keep her warm, and hold her head up so she can breathe.” Viol, Adlena, and Cila hurried to do as he commanded, and Jacian stood looking on with wide, staring eyes. Lavendier was already wheezing for breath, and her teeth were chattering hard, her whole body shaking. He looked at the three ladies rubbing her vigorously through the cloaks and blankets, and noticed that the shaking was so intense that they shook whenever they touched her. He wondered if this attack was worse than the first or if he was only imagining it, but after a second, he was positive. It had come on faster, and her whole face was already blue. He looked at the tips of her fingers, and she had frostbite.

  “Garrity, she’s going to die from this!” yelled Adlena in terror. “What do we do? Why is it happening?”

  He shook his head. There was nothing more to do except prepare for the next attack, if she lived through this one. Numb and methodic, he stood quickly, grabbed his own cloak off his shoulders, which he had forgotten about, and dunked it in the icy water from the stream. He pulled some cooking fat out of Cila’s pack, and then stood still. He was as prepared as possible.

  Finally, her shaking stilled and she collapsed into Viol’s arms. Cila and Adlena sat back on their heels, astonished and exhausted. But Garrity did not let them rest.

  “Get ready,” he told them, “she’s about to start jerking wildly. Pull off all her layers.”

  “But she’s freezing,” they protested all at once.

  “She won’t be in a moment. Hurry!”

  Confused, they started to gently remove her wrappings, but they were going too slowly, and Garrity leaned down and started stripping them off. “We have to hurry! Cila, you’ll hold down her right arm, Adlena her left. I’ll take her feet. Viol, you have to hold her head still. Jacian, you’re going to pour the water canteens over her.”

  They looked at him as if he had gone mad, but Lavendier gasped out for them to listen, so they did as he said. He was just about to remove her outer dress, and Adlena was about to stop him, when Lavendier’s face flushed and her chest heaved. She sat up, and with that same superhuman strength from before, ripped off her gown so violently that it tore down the side. She threw it away like a snake.

  “Grab her and hold her down!” commanded Garrity as he threw the wet cloak over her, but they could not because Lavendier was still sitting. She wobbled and rocked from side to side, forward and back, her head rolling about on her neck. Garrity kept a firm hold on her ankles, and it was a good thing, for after a moment she grew so uncomfortable from the rising heat that she tried to stand.

  “Grab her!” he shouted, and they did as she fell back onto Viol, her head whipping about as she tried to escape. Her mouth was wide open and her breath came in strangled gasps.

  Cila and Adlena strove with each of her arms, practically sitting on them to keep them from lashing out, and sometimes one of the arms would lift them into the air, as if they were merely rag dolls. Viol did what she could to keep her head in place. Garrity grunted to Jacian, while he battled with her legs, for the little boy to put some fat on her lips and hands, which were quickly cracking and bleeding.

  Jacian was clearly terrified, but he did as he was told. As soon as he finished, he ran away crying.

  They were all crying, and where they touched her body, their own skin began to burn from the heat. Garrity yelled for Jacian to come back and pour water on Lavendier, and he had to yell twice for Jacian to obey him. When the cold water met her body, it steamed away in a cloud.

  At last, as before, it ended.

  They shook from the exertion of holding her down, but she did not. She lay like a corpse, only the occasional rise and fall of easy breathing. She was not asleep, but she was spent.

  They stood, and realized that the frostbite was gone and her skin was burned all over, as if from the sun. But the sun had been on the inside.

  Adlena whirled on Garrity. “What was that?”

  He dug his palms into his eyes. “It happened once before, after the gorgan attack. But this was worse. This was so much worse.”

  “She can’t survive that again.”

  “I don’t know how she survived it this time. I don’t know what’s happening to her.”

  No one except Lavendier slept well that night, their fear of Karaka replaced by something far more terrible and near. It was only a matter of time, they knew, before Lavendier died a horrible, painful death.

  75

  Across Karaka

  With a satisfied roar, Power hurled himself into his throne and called through the mighty iron doors into the outer chamber.

  “Where is Ferran?” he asked the Secretary, who seemed perpetually melting ever deeper into the chair where he sat behind his black desk, like white chocolate into dark.

  “In the tunnels,” his voice was dry and crisp, “feasting on the small gorgans.”

  “He should feed some to Farsooth!” At the thought of what eating gorgan flesh might do to a mortal, he laughed gleefully. Then he noticed a figure that radiated a pale red glow standing beneath the curving horns at the wide entrance of the entry tunnel. It took a step toward him and materialized into Passion, draped in her revealing folds of red fabric.

  “Temper, temper, my dear brother. Why so gloriously happy?”

  “Because, my darling, mankind is but a passing shadow compared to us! They try to resist, and we mow them down!”

  She covered her ears with a pretty scowl. “Not so loud, really.” She went up to him and trailed her perfectly manicured fingernails along his strong biceps. “But I am quite pleased with what we did to the little princess, who thought to oppose us with her new, pure heart.”

  She left the throne room and Power followed her to the fire that blazed orange and blinding on the far side of the main cavern, and scooped some flames into a champagne glass. “On that note,” she smiled, beckoning him to her with a finger, “I came to bring you some good news.”

  He strode to her and she handed him his own glass. Dreamily, she reclined on a low black bench jutting out of the bubbling black wall.

  “Wait!” He stiffened, and stood as if listening to something far away. Slowly, a wide smile spread across his square jaw. His black eyes sparkled.

  Passion laughed. “That is what I was going to tell you!”

  “Their arrogance! They tramp across my land as if they think I wouldn’t know!”

  “They are ignorant mortals, falling to your might.” She laughed. “They really have no idea who you are!”

  He roared triumphantly with unrestained laughter. “I can feel her pain! The gorgan blood rages through her.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  He looked at her and licked his lips, relishing the misery of the princess he had sought to possess. “I want to watch her final moments.”

  “Then let us go.”

  * * *

  It was not like wading across a stream, when you get wet all at once, and then emerge on the opposite side to dry land; neither was it like rain, which soaks through quickly and comes to an end eventually. No. It was unlike any weather they had known before.

  The ground was mud, but not deep and squishy – it was firm and solid, with a thin layer of water over all: water just deep enough to seep into one’s shoes above the soles. That was trying because there was no relief, no break from the unending wetness everywhere.

  But what added to the misery was the viscous air. A continuing, unending fog hung over everything, not thickening and shifting and thinning again like normal fog, but even and still and stagnant. It slowly, so slowly,
seeped into everything they wore, through their skin, and deep into their bones. It seeped into their minds and made every thought insipid and stale. Soon, they shivered from a cold that pervaded them within and without, and no amount of bundling could fight it.

  After the first day, whose interminable length felt like an eternity, Jacian whimpered and cried continuously, no matter what they said or how they tried to distract him. After another day, Viol and Adlena found tears falling down their cheeks, beyond their control. To be sure, there were plenty of reasons why they should cry, but a different, extreme, disconnected sadness overwhelmed their hearts, overflowing in tears.

  For Cila, whose wells of pain and despair could dig no deeper, there were no tears. The effect of the land upon her was to solidify her supreme, unending, numbing agony of soul.

  Lavendier simply shivered like a leaf in autumn, about to be blown, finally dead, from the tree of life. Garrity had to lead her each step, one after the other, or she would veer off from the group and wander somewhere else away from them. She was senseless, numb, and silent.

  Garrity pushed forward, one leg at a time past the next one, planting itself in the soggy soil, shifting his weight to it, and beginning all over again. This process filled his mind, and he talked himself through it step by step, holding mechanically to Lavendier’s elbow.

  They lost count of the number of days. When they tallied the time later, it was only three. Yet it was at least a month’s worth of toil.

  On the final day, when they could see ahead a vast, yellow plain stretching to meet the pale clear sky, Viol paused in her march at the head of the group. She turned to look at Garrity. He also stopped and looked at her a long, long moment.

  “We are almost through,” said Adlena, and tears coursed down her face, unhindered.

  Garrity looked at Lavendier, who clung weak and weary to his arm. Her eyes were hollow and their brilliant greenness clouded in a dull gray. She was so completely unresponsive. They were already low on water, even though they had filled their canteens to the brim before leaving the flatlands. Their canteens were now half-full but Garrity feared it was still too low and they would not traverse the desert before dying of thirst.

  He looked back at Viol. “Push on,” he said.

  * * *

  The sudden change in the atmosphere was extreme and complete. To go from heavy humidity to arid, dry heat in the matter of a single step was overwhelming. Viol gasped as she stepped over the boundary and fell to her hands and knees. She looked back. The fog hung in the air but did not reach her. She stretched forth her hand and saw the thick air wrap around it. She laughed giddily and then returned to crying. Although the environmental change was complete, it would take more than a step to overcome the effects of the land on their minds.

  Now they were free from Karaka, but a barren, vast plain still stretched indefinitely before them. After only a short pause, they pushed on.

  In the distance, the Yellow Mountains rose high, their black peaks beckoning, urging them on, but the sun was hot, the desert dry, and within one day, they had drunk all their water. They were traveling at night and, under the cover of their cloaks during the day, they tried not to suffocate. It was the beginning of the second day, and though the sun had yet to filter her early pale rays over the peaks, Garrity dreaded its coming.

  The girls lay down to sleep, Adlena holding Jacian to her, and Lavendier’s head resting in Cila’s lap, but Garrity sat down a little ways from them. Though he kept guard, it was not necessary. “We are as good as dead anyway,” he thought.

  After a time, Viol came to him. She laid her head in his lap and was silent. A long while later, when Garrity was convinced she was asleep, she spoke, raspily.

  “Garrity, there is a man over there.”

  Garrity shook his head. “No, Viol, it is an illusion. A trick of the sun.”

  She shook her head listlessly, worn out from the dryness of her mouth. “No, there really is a man; he is coming to us.” But she was tired, so she said nothing else.

  Garrity looked tenderly at her sleeping head. They would not be able to find any water; it was too late for that. Some, like Jacian and Lavendier, would not last through the next day, and few others the day after that. He had failed them, and if he had not been so near death himself, he would have been very angry.

  Suddenly, he heard Cila cry out. “It has come back!”

  The attack progressed the same as before, only they were less helpful; and fortunately, they could not see the gods above who gloried in watching the misery of the princess’s final moments. They wrapped Lavendier tight, though it did no good. Not only her fingers and toes were frostbitten, but all the way up to her elbows and knees, and her nose too. Before it ended, her face had begun to blacken. And when the heat started, Garrity tried feebly to hold her down, but even he did not have the strength for it, and she flailed wildly, her arms hitting the ground so hard that at times she began to dig through the sand, and at one point, they heard a loud crack. Her arm flapped after that, her bone broken clean through. But she did not seem to notice. The worst was that she stopped breathing during both the cold and hot attacks. Her mouth panted for a little while, but it was clear that nothing was getting through. Garrity sat above, holding her when he could, and staring at her, and Viol buried her head in his back. Cila carried Jacian a distance away so he would not have to see. Adlena sat, crumpled and defeated, upon the sand as the sun rose to the center of the sky.

  When the attack finally ended, she did not breathe again. Her body was covered over in large blisters, and her eyes were wide, staring, and glassy.

  Garrity shuddered and looked away. And what he saw surprised him, and he gaped in confusion: a figure of an old man stood about two paces away, watching them. Watching Lavendier. Then it slowly approached her.

  Garrity was too tired to resist. He wondered if this was a servant of Power, come to collect Lavendier’s remains. But when he opened his mouth to threaten him, nothing came out, his throat pure sandpaper.

  Reverently, the old man, his back hunched and his long white beard trailing through the sand, knelt next to the dead princess. He closed his eyes, put out his hand, and touched her body.

  Viol looked up from Garrity’s shoulder. Cila and Jacian returned. They all watched him in fascination as his lips moved silently; as he touched her, they saw the boils recede and disappear. Her skin became fresh and natural again, her face cleared to her old color, and her lips were not cracked. Miraculously, calmly, she began to breathe.

  The man straightened and keenly sized up Garrity. “Pick her up,” he commanded. “And all of you follow me.”

  76

  Power Unhinged

  Across the vast, empty tract of Karaka had flown Passion and Power like two black-winged angels. When they reached the very edge, a peninsula of black stretching thin between the Great Desert and Mestraff, the Desert that had always been unconquerable for him, the woods that were rapidly falling to his might, they saw them, like a troop of tiny, displaced ants who are lost and trying to find their mound that has been destroyed – the six humans. The gods watched them cross the divide into the dry desert and march for a day, then sink weary into the sand. He and Passion settled in to savor Lavendier’s final moments, to feel her heat and chill as if it were their own, and savor the physical sensations… but just as she was about to die, as Power watched Garrity hold her down with super-human strength, he suddenly grabbed his sister and knocked her violently to the muddy ground a hundred yards away.

  “How dare you?” she screamed, rising up like a mighty avenging demon, but he was not afraid of her. He landed on the ground and advanced upon her.

  “Did you know?” he demanded.

  “Know what?”

  “You dare lie to me?”

  “Don’t threaten me. I have been on your side, fighting your battles. Why would I betray you?”

  “Then why do you lead me to a man who could be my doom?”

  “What are you talking
about?”

  “That man, that creature…he is the heir of Strana!”

  Her hot reaction to being thrown on the ground turned cold, and she stood regally in the midst of the brown fog, daring Power to touch her again. “You never told me about him,” she said icily.

  “He is supposed to be dead. I thought she killed him years ago.”

  She flushed white, only the tips of her nose and eyelids a pale splash of pink. “Is that your son down there?”

  “Of course not! You think I would ever have a son and share my might?” His anger was only mounting with each moment, and he paced furiously across great acres of land, raging.

  “So why do you care?”

  “Because he is a demi-god!” She laughed scornfully at him, and it pierced him to the core. He scowled. “Do not laugh at me.”

  “And why not? You’re even afraid of a demi-god.” His eyes flashed dangerously at her, but she paid no heed. “First, you fear a mere mortal. Then you fear Rordan, and now your fear a demi-god? You’re not Power! You’re a shadow of him!”

  “Say that again, woman!” he roared at her, “and I will drive you from the earth!”

  “Calm yourself,” she whispered. “What have you become? Can you not control yourself?”

  He was gasping from the overwhelming urge to destroy something. “I can’t control it,” he said quietly. “My cravings control me.”

  “How can that be? You are a high god! We do not crave. We make our choices without the influence of carnal desire!”

  “It’s intoxicating, Passion,” he whispered, coming closer and sweeping her into his mortal aura. “The urge to go beyond my divine aloofness. The desire to dominate, to enjoy myself, to gloat over my victims – how happy it makes me. I don’t want to control it.”

  “It’s controlling you,” she warned.