by Ian Irvine
“Beside me, I said.”
“I’ve been out hunting and I haven’t bathed or washed off the blood and muck.”
“Damn you, do as you’re told.”
He chuckled and sat beside her. “I want to hear all your adventures. Everything that happened since…”
“Since you were thrown off the tower,” said Tali.
“But not now. Tomorrow. Or the next day. No, one question can’t wait.”
“Rannilt?” Tali guessed.
“Yes, little Rannilt. She’s not…?” He trailed off, swallowing.
“She was very well the last time I saw her. In the dungeons of Fortress Rutherin.”
“As long as she’s healthy, and you’re here, that’s all I need.” He sniffed and rose hastily.
“Don’t go.”
“I stink. I have to bathe, then go to my basement bed. The black hole, I call it.” He smiled wryly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Early?”
“Yes, early as you like.”
He kissed her on the brow, and left. Tali picked up the broken plates and glasses, the scattered food and cutlery, piled everything on the tray and put it to one side.
She went back to bed, but there was no possibility of sleep now. She wanted to lie awake all night, just thinking about Tobry and the lines of his face and the warmth of his touch, wallowing in him and his miraculous return. She could tell by the look of him, and from the fresh scars on his hands and arms, that he had endured much since their parting.
But she wasn’t going to spoil this magical night by thinking about the bad things. There had been far too much of that. For one night she was going to concentrate on the good things. On Tobry. She wanted to spend the night in his arms and never let him go. She wanted to lie with him -
Tali had never been with a man. Nor, until now, had she ever wanted to. Her romantic soul rebelled at the thought of the casual liaisons that were not uncommon among the Pale.
In Cython the men and women were forced to live apart and the men only allowed home for a few nights a month, to breed more Pale slaves. From an early age she had seen how passionately her mother and father had clung together in those brief visits home, and Tali thought it the only kind of love worth having. And now she could have it for herself, why should she wait?
Life in Hightspall could be violent, brutal and all too short. Doubly so with the war reaching its climax and Garramide bound to be besieged again before long. All the more reason to take what life offered, now.
Assuming Tobry wanted the same thing, of course.
He wasn’t like any other man she’d met. Tali was never sure what Tobry was thinking, or what he wanted. At least, she had not been sure until she’d made that disastrous blunder in the palace. The moment she had told the lie, Tali had known what a disastrous folly it was, but it had been too late to take it back. She had saved Rix’s life at the expense of Tobry’s, or so she had believed.
She leapt out of bed, planning to run down to his room and offer herself to him. But what if he did not want her? How would she bear it? She crept back to bed and pulled the covers around her, teetering one way then the other for hour upon hour.
She had to take the chance. Tali rose, brushed her hair and her teeth, and put on a simple red gown Glynnie had left out for her in lieu of her own worn and filthy garments.
He had mentioned my basement and the black hole, so she followed the stairs all the way down, praying that she would encounter no servants on the way. In her own eyes she was doing the right thing, the only thing, but she did not want to be judged by anyone else’s standards.
Her bare feet were freezing by the time she reached what she assumed to be the basement level. The steps continued down to a low, damp passage, where she encountered a series of padlocked doors. Cellars and storerooms.
She went up the steps, along and back to the darkest corner of the basement. Tali swallowed, told herself to be brave, that Tobry loved her as much as she did him, and lifted the latch.
A candle burned on a small table next to his bed. Tobry was asleep, though he did not seem to be sleeping well. His fists were clenched, his jaw tight and one foot kept kicking against the covers.
She stood there for a long time, gazing at him, immersing herself in the sight of him, then lifted his covers. She was about to slip beneath them when he woke with a terrible cry.
Tali sprang backwards, her heart thundering, then put on a tentative smile. She’d startled him. It would be all right.
He jerked up in bed, saying harshly, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Pain sheared through her. Had she got it disastrously wrong? No, she could not have misread his feelings. She had to say it.
“You — you love me, don’t you?”
He choked. “With all my heart.”
“And I love you. I’ve come down to — to offer myself to you.”
He stared at her as though he did not understand what she was saying. “You — what?”
Her cheeks were burning. How could it be this hard? “To lie with you. In your bed.” She came forwards.
He recoiled away from her, his back crashing into the wall, his hands thrust out as if to push her off. “No, no!” He was trembling all over.
Sick shame washed through her. She had got it utterly wrong. But before she fled to bury her shame, she had to understand. “Why don’t you want me, Tobry?”
“I — want — you. You can’t know how much I — want — you.”
“Then why won’t you have me?”
Tobry’s teeth were chattering. He turned away, jerked open a drawer in the table and took out a series of potion jars. His hands were shaking so wildly that it was a struggle to unstopper the jars. He decanted varying amounts of the potions into a battered enamelled mug. After stirring it with a forefinger, he swallowed the contents in a gulp then set the mug back on the table with a crash that broke pearly flakes of enamel off the sides.
“Can’t you tell?” he said, quietly now. His voice was empty, dead.
“Tell what?”
“Your blood didn’t heal me.”
She looked at him dumbly. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“From being a shifter. There wasn’t enough of your healing blood. And it takes more than one dose, apparently.”
A black ball of horror swelled inside her. “What are you saying, Tobry?” But she knew, she knew.
“I’m a shifter. A cursed caitsthe, and far gone.”
“Give me your knife.” She wrenched up her sleeve. “You can take as much blood as you need…”
He pushed her away. “Healing blood only works if it’s given within days of being turned. Even then, it takes three or four doses. It’s over a month since I was turned and I’m way past the point where I can ever be cured. There’s no hope for me.”
Tali tried to block it out. She refused to accept it. “But… why didn’t Rix tell me?”
“He doesn’t know. No one does.” Tobry smiled grimly. “Though the servants and soldiers of Garramide know there’s something wrong with me. Something foul. You’d think I’d be high in their esteem, after all I did to help save the fortress, but evidently not. Why do you think I hide out here, in the black hole?”
He looked down, avoiding her gaze. “Please, go. I can’t bear to see it in your eyes as well.”
CHAPTER 53
Tali wrenched the covers back and climbed into Tobry’s bed. “You’ll never see it in my eyes.”
He held her at arm’s length. “Anyone who mates with a shifter, male or female, risks becoming one. And if there should be issue — ”
“You mean children?” she said coolly.
“The issue of a shifter is also a shifter. They’re condemned before they’re even born. This can never be, Tali.”
His rejection was like a physical blow, for Tali was strong and proud, and it was a kind of blow she had never had to take before. It hurt more, and deeper, than when Red-whiskers had punched
her in the mouth. It was an end to everything between them.
She lay down, her face tilted away so he would not see the tears leaking out from beneath her tightly closed eyelids. He lay still on the other side of the bed, rigid as a post. His heartbeat was a peculiar double thump. A shifter’s heartbeat?
All this time she had denied his existence, refused to allow the possibility that, through some miracle, he could have survived. The hope would have been too painful.
Tobry had survived, and there was no joy in it. It would have been better if he had died in the fall from the tower. Not to ease her own loss, but because she knew the terrible fate of a shifter — incurable, violent, foaming-at-the-mouth insanity — and would not wish it on anyone.
But here he was, and she had to deal with it as best she could. It did not make her love him any the less — all it meant was that their love must be narrower, constricted, and all too brief.
“It can never be,” she said, moving over and putting her arms around him. “But I’m not getting out of your bed until I hear the full story. From the beginning.”
He let out a great sigh. She laid her head against his chest and felt his frantic heartbeat slow.
“All right,” he said. “You deserve that much.”
She tightened her grip, closed her eyes and let her tears run down onto him.
“I should have died in the fall,” said Tobry, “but the ground had collapsed after the tidal wave and the pond of water and mud I landed in saved me — just.”
He told her all he had told Rix about that time, and how Salyk had rescued Tobry and helped to heal his injuries, then continued.
“Had I not been half caitsthe I would have died. Your healing blood had started to turn me back, but the physical need of a shifter is almost impossible to deny. Without more doses of healing blood I couldn’t fight it, and I soon began to realise that my doom had come upon me. And poor Salyk, hers too.”
“Why poor Salyk?”
Tali wasn’t sure what to think about a Cythonian soldier girl who had disobeyed her king and saved the portrait, then rescued Tobry. On the one hand, Salyk was a traitor to her king and her country, and Tali had to despise her for that.
On the other, without her compassion for a man who was her king’s enemy, and a shifter to boot, Tobry would have drowned in the corpse-filled sump into which he had fallen. He had been badly injured, had lacked the strength to drag himself out and the water had been rising.
“She was greatly troubled. Salyk longed to serve her country and do her duty, but she was soft-hearted, quite unfit for the brutality of war. And her disobedience to her king was tearing her apart.”
“Why did she save the portrait?” said Tali. She had never liked Rix’s portrait of his father. It had given her the shivers.
“Because it was a masterpiece. Ah, Salyk!” he sighed. “I’m afraid I used her — ”
“You used her!” cried Tali, her eyes springing open in shock.
He managed a smile. “Not in that way. I took advantage of her soft heart and cajoled her to help me escape. The enemy were hunting everywhere for me, you, Rix and a host of others on Lyf’s list. If they’d found me I would have been killed at once.”
“How did you get away?”
“The hunted joined the hunters.”
“What does that mean?”
“The enemy use hundreds of shifters, but they have a healthy fear of them too. There’s a flaw in their design — our design, I should say. Once the madness comes upon a shifter, he — or she — is as dangerous to the enemy as to our side.”
“How long does it take before the madness comes?”
“It can be years, as in the case of my maternal grandfather. Or only weeks.”
“Do you… do you know how long you’ve got?”
“There are signs,” said Tobry hoarsely. “Unmistakeable signs.”
Tali’s bad feeling was getting worse. She felt sure he knew how long he had left, and that it was not long at all, but she wasn’t game to ask. Not knowing was definitely better than knowing.
“Salyk took me out of Caulderon as a chained shifter,” said Tobry, “one among a group of the beasts being escorted from one part of the hunt to another. It — it wasn’t a good time for me. When I was among them I could feel the shifter side becoming stronger, fighting for the upper hand, and it was ever harder to control it. Most shifters are pack animals, you see, and the pack reinforces the individual.”
“It must have been horrible,” said Tali, taking his hand.
“So horrible that I can’t bear to think about it,” said Tobry. “Save for one moment I’ll tell you about, only so you know what it was like. I owe you that much.”
“You owe me nothing,” said Tali.
“As you’ll see, I owe you everything. There were times, when my shifter side was at its worst, that I was tempted to feed on the dead. And if I had — ” He was wracked by shudders. “No man could come back from such bestiality.”
Tali was silent. The image was too much to bear.
“I’m not sure how long I spent with the pack,” Tobry went on. “It might have been a fortnight. We were heading west. The enemy was using us to track down the chancellor. And you. I had to find you first.”
“But you didn’t.”
“We lost all trace of the chancellor’s party in the mountains. Apparently his chief magian lured us in the wrong direction. My quest had failed and I had to break away before the shifter madness took me. You know why I dread it.”
Tobry’s family had tried to save his shifter grandfather, instead of putting him down as they should have. They had thought they had saved him, and all the while he was stalking the family manors at night, killing the young and the helpless.
When Tobry was a boy of thirteen, his father had gone to put the shifter down, and failed. To save his father, Tobry had been forced to kill his grandfather, and it had destroyed House Lagger. Soon the rest of the family was dead and Tobry had never got over it.
“I was already suffering the first symptoms,” said Tobry. “I knew them well; I’d observed them at first hand. Yet again I imposed upon Salyk to help me. By this time she was growing ever more troubled by her own treason — fits of hysteria, nightmares, silences… and I was so deep in my own troubles I could not help her. Could not repay a tenth of the debt I owed her.”
“What happened?” said Tali. “You talk as though she’s dead.”
“She was so desperate for absolution that she confessed her treason, knowing what her people would do to her. I could not save her. I saw this gentle, troubled girl executed at Lyf’s direct order, torn to pieces by a pack of jackal shifters.” He let out a cry of agony. “It was the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t get the image out of my mind.”
“I fled east across Hightspall, blaming myself. And in truth, I was partly to blame, because I’d taken advantage of her gentle nature. I was so full of self-loathing that I joined a wild shifter pack. I tried to take command of them and turn them away from their vicious path, but I failed. Not cut out to lead the pack,” he said wryly.
“You can’t imagine the filth I endured, the unbearable bestiality, before they drove me off. I wasn’t foul enough for them. I was on the run again, hunted by my own shifter kind, and only my sword and my magery saved me. It’s stronger now — perhaps that’s the shifter in me.
“But the shifter side was growing ever stronger, and finally I had to prevail on a hedge witch to make me this cocktail of potions.” Tobry waved at the potion jars on the bedside table. “It delays the inevitable shift to madness, though it can’t prevent it. The side effects are… unpleasant, and I have to take ever higher doses.
“When I finally reached the east, I heard stories about Deadhand. I didn’t know he was Rix, but he sounded like a man who might take me in and make use of my talents. That’s it,” he concluded. “You’ve heard it all. Now tell me that you don’t recoil in horror from the beast I’ve become.”
T
ali could not speak for a minute or two. “I’m horrified by all you’ve been through,” she said at last. “But I still have my arms around you and I’m not letting go. Once again, I’m offering you my healing blood. If three doses aren’t enough, I’ll give you five. If not five, then ten. If not ten — ”
“You would let me suck you dry like a gigantic leech?”
“I’m not calling you that.”
“If there were any hope for me, I’d be tempted. But after the first few days, the shifter change cannot be reversed.”
“What about healing magery?”
“No, never!” he cried, pulling her arms from around him and retreating to the other side of the bed.
“Why not?”
“Just no.”
“Well,” she said, “if that’s what you are, I can accept it. I don’t care that you’re a shifter. I want you anyway.”
He shook his head, then urged her off the bed, so gently that it broke her heart.
“You can’t have me, Tali. I’d be a danger to you and everyone around you.”
“I don’t care! I’m not giving you up.”
“Then I’ll have to put it in terms you can’t possibly misunderstand.”
“What’s that?”
“Were I to look on your loveliness through a shifter’s eyes,” he said bitterly, “all I would see is meat.”
Outside the door, Blathy removed her ear from the keyhole, smiled venomously, then ran to spread Tobry’s secret through the fortress.
CHAPTER 54
In one of several co-existing shafts of the Abysm, a man hung spreadeagled, trapped in aeons-long crystal dreaming. He was dreaming about the burning of Tirnan Twil and the destruction of the Five Herovians’ priceless heritage.
In one of those dreams, he saw the blurred face of a young woman who — he believed — had possessed the magery to save Tirnan Twil, yet at the vital moment had held back. It felt like a personal attack on him and had to be avenged. But it could never be.
He gave way to helpless, choking rage.