Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0]

by The Companion

  So she and Rufford, who apparently had little interest in either intricately described sea battles or bastions of virtue, kept their end of the table. It was her task to keep her attention on her work when he sat so near, across from her, a curl escaping his ribbon and the light playing across his features. Her strategy was to translate selections taken from different places in each scroll, like a survey to locate potentially profitable sections. Many times she was misled as the scrolls talked about ghouls or jinn who inhabited specific oases or ruins. Many times, too, Rufford, who sat reading her transcriptions, would guide her to her cabin like a despot, his hands on her elbows sending shivers through her, ignoring all protests that she was not tired at all. Several times, she heard him in the cabin into the wee hours and, peeking out, saw him comparing her transcriptions with the originals, though what he hoped to gain she could not tell.

  This effort went on through their docking at Brest. It was she who had to tell him that he must go ashore, that there was nothing he could do for her.

  “You must maintain your strength, sir,” she whispered as the ship lay rocking in the harbor just before supper. “We don’t want a repetition of the effects of excessive hunger.”

  That made him close his countenance and look away. She put a hand on his arm.

  “It has been more than two weeks since Gibraltar. Are you not feeling the need?” She knew he had been easily distracted last night, and his nerves were on the jump all this evening.

  He rolled his upper lip between his teeth. “We are in England soon.”

  “If we don’t have to beat up against the wind in the Channel. That can take days or even weeks. I asked the Captain.” He looked at her as though she had no business asking the Captain anything he might want to know. “Besides,” she said, trying to mollify him, “you can’t want to land in Portsmouth needing immediate sustenance. . . .”

  He sucked in air and nodded. “But the Captain does not send the boats ashore until morning.” He glanced to the hefty bulk at the far end of the table, roaring with laughter.

  “I’m sure he will oblige you with a boat, if you would but ask.”

  Rufford looked mulish.

  “You do not like to ask for anything, do you?” She stood. “Captain?”

  The entire upper end of the table turned her way. She blushed and bowed her head. “Mr. Rufford has business in Brest. I know he wishes to be ashore but will not incommode you.”

  “What, at this time of night?” the Captain sputtered.

  “What other time is there, since the sun is difficult for him?” she asked sweetly.

  “Nonsense, Captain. There is no need . . .” Rufford stood, too, stooping under the beams and glaring daggers at her.

  “Well, well, I can spare the jolly boat and a man,” the Captain chortled, amused at Rufford’s discomfiture. “Get you up, Rait, and roust out a hand to pull Mr. Rufford in to shore. Make it Williams. He’s reliable. Will you want to come back before dawn?”

  “What time do you set sail tomorrow?” Rufford’s voice was low.

  “Four by the clock, with the ebb.”

  “Then yes, I would come back just before dawn.”

  “Make it so, Rait.” The Captain grinned. He thought he knew what business Rufford had.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Rufford said stiffly, bowing. “You have my gratitude.”

  “You don’t need to be grateful to me, Rufford,” the Captain chortled. “Miss Rochewell did your negotiating for you.”

  Rufford nodded curtly and strode out on deck. Beth followed him, wondering at herself, that she should make possible what he was to do tonight. She stood behind him, unacknowledged, as the boat was lifted over the side with a boom. It splashed in the water.

  “If you can minister to me for my own good, I can help you to yours,” she said.

  He made no response but stood looking out toward the lights of Brest. Williams scrambled over the rail and down the side. “Be careful,” she added.

  He sent her one reproachful look and went down the side into the boat.

  That night was long for Beth. She wondered whether he would take his blood from a fulsome woman like the one in Gibraltar, or a boy like Callow, and which she preferred. Then she was so ashamed of preferring either that she knelt directly and said her prayers.

  She was not a religious woman in the usual sense. She had a great sense of the force of the world, which she absolutely called God. But the Anglican church of her father seemed sadly small in its concept of the Almighty. It did not admit of things she had seen, and it would not admit of Mr. Rufford. Yet those things did exist. Mr. Rufford existed. If any of the many sects she had come across, Christian or otherwise, admitted of Mr. Rufford, they would call him the devil, pure and simple. But it was not so simple at all. Not for a man who strove with his internal demons. She had no idea what sins he had committed in his youth. And yet, what sin could justify what had happened to him? Was he not an innocent, comparatively, who had been struck down? Therefore, what religion could deny him pity? Alas, to that she knew the answer. Religion could well result in a smaller soul, not a larger one. And it would be large souls indeed who could know what Rufford was and yet open their hearts to him.

  Not that she had a large soul. But others would not be able to see him as intimately as she had. They would only see his stiffness, his reserve, his pride, his fierceness. He would not let them see the doubt, the shame, the simple longing for a normal life. It was only in extremity that he had revealed those aspects of himself to her.

  She realized with a start that she had opened her heart to him. Lord, she had also just helped him to sustenance others would find horrific. Would he keep to his resolve to take but a little?

  She heard the jolly boat come back just before dawn. She had been dozing, on the fret for his return. His step sounded, in the cabin. The close of his cabin door was soft. She could feel his distress from here. How taking what he needed seemed to weigh on him, in spite of all his talk of bankers and artists! She fell into a deeper sleep, her fears at least aboard, if not resolved.

  He did not appear until late afternoon. She had been the guest at a raucous dinner in the great cabin, with a fine spotted dog pudding, a favorite with the officers. She had labored all afternoon over a scroll whose translation was difficult, and now her eyes were tired. The grand cabin was empty. The sinking sun cast a red glow over the sea visible out the stern windows.

  She looked up and rubbed her eyes as he appeared. She could tell immediately that he had fed. He was filled to bursting with energy, his eyes snapping and his countenance glowing with some inner light. He was right. His countenance grew increasingly pale. But life shone from him. He had drained that life from someone else.

  “Well, you look revived,” she said.

  “And you look tired.” He sat opposite her, pushing some fragile scrolls to the side.

  “Did you find what you needed?” she asked, examining his face.

  His mouth drew down. “Yes. And everyone survived.” At least he had answered. Relief lurked in his eyes, beneath his disapproval of the question.

  She nodded and returned to her scroll.

  “Give me one of those.” He pulled one in front of him and began to unfurl it.

  “What can you do with it?” she asked, startled.

  He pulled a paper from his pocket. “I do not know the finer points, of course, but I have made out a key to the figures, by comparing your transcriptions to the originals.”

  “You have?” she asked, astonished.

  “Coding is a valuable skill in the diplomatic corps. I was considered rather good at it—one reason Rockhampton gave me a post.” He laid out his paper, perused the scroll, and began comparing and transcribing, rather more laboriously than she did, but transcribing just the same.

  “You speak the ancient language?” she asked, recovering enough of her wits to reply.

  “Oh no, it is just a code to me. I can read the decoded words, but one must apply som
e license of interpretation, since the literal would be ridiculous. That is better your province than mine.” He bent over the scroll, holding it out flat with his blunt hand and wielding the stub of a pencil on the paper beside it studiously. She could smell his cinnamon and ambergris scent. She had missed that smell when he was ashore.

  She bent to her own work. “I will interpret when you finish the passage.” They worked on. The Captain came in. He was not feeling well from his excesses at dinner and repaired to his own cabin on the starboard side, the width of two passengers’ cabins. The officers, without their host, supped in the gun room below. The silence was companionable between Rufford and Beth. She dared not marvel at his trick of translating, lest she be condescending.

  “Wait . . .” he said slowly about ten in the evening. Excitement fairly glowed in his eyes, a plain blue glow, yet powerful.

  “What?”

  He pushed the scroll over to her. Some fragments crumbled at the edges. “Will you work on this passage? You are far faster than I.” He pointed.

  Slowly she moved her finger over the text. “ ‘Before the first of us, before even our gods, they were here. Their blood holds the power.’ ” This much he had translated. She looked up at him, holding her breath. He pointed again, urging her on. She bowed her head to the text. “ ‘The strength of stone, of the earth, they have from their friend.’ No, not ‘friend,’ exactly. More like ‘companion.’ ‘Like bats . . . ’ Bats?” She nodded to herself. “ ‘Like bats they move through the night, not seen.’ I think it means invisible. ‘Blood-power glows red in their eyes. No man can withstand it.’ ” She glanced up at Ian. He was sitting there, ramrod-straight, eyes unseeing. “We know about that part. It must be hypnotism of some kind.” She returned to where her finger pointed. “ ‘They show us how to till. Some say they gave the fire. To thank them we have built their . . . monuments.’ Tombs? No, definitely monuments, because here it acts as though they are not dead. And they don’t seem all bad. The writer of this scroll is grateful.” She bent her head again. “ ‘They have gone away now. The world is smaller. We are smaller, because we can no longer serve them.’ It goes on about the monuments.” She looked up at Ian. He swallowed as though his throat was full. Pain had crept into his eyes, replacing the blue excitement. “Perhaps it does mean they died. Gone away could be a euphemism for death.”

  “No,” Rufford said, his throat full. “They went away. All except one. And he is in the Temple of Waiting at Kivala.”

  “Kivala?” she asked, breathless. “I thought you had been there.”

  For a long moment he said nothing. “I have been there. I have seen him.”

  Eleven

  Ian stepped over the body as the caravan moved out again. He had long ago come to recognize the sunken flesh that meant the capillaries beneath the skin had been drained of blood. The slave had been a stringy man in life and now his muscles stood out in sharp relief around his bones. The eyes of the corpse were wild in the last paroxysm of fear. Asharti had not opened Ian for three days, though that did not mean she had not used him in other ways. His wounds were closing. She was saving him for something. He did not like to think what.

  Fedeyah’s sighting at the noon zenith a week ago, coupled with the position of the moon between two mountains, had led the caravan to a maze of deep washes southeast of the primary range, cut by water from the snows in winter rushing through the red sandstone. The air was not so oppressively hot near the mountains, but now the wind seemed fraught with evil. He stumbled beside the four remaining litter bearers as the sirocco whipped out from the cliffs that loomed above the caravan. Their lanterns bobbed like fireflies against the immensity. What they were looking for he did not know. Ahead, a crevice gaped, a vertical slit in the stone like the mouth of some living creature ready to devour them.

  Fedeyah called a halt and came to consult with Asharti.

  “My Goddess,” he called softly just in front of Ian. The silk hangings drew back. Ian knelt automatically as the startling countenance almost beyond beauty leaned out into the night. From the corner of his eye he saw the gleam of excitement in her eyes. Had he ever seen her excited? Lustful, yes, but not excited. She looked up at the stone wall rising some hundred feet above them and surveyed the dark slit.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “It is as it was foretold in the ancient texts.”

  “Shall we camp, Exalted One?” Fedeyah asked. “We have tomorrow night to search.”

  “No,” she commanded. “Leave the camels. Bring the slaves. We can get close tonight.”

  “What of the bearers?”

  “Leave the bearers. We will have need of them on the return.” She stepped gracefully out of the litter, wrapped in a cloak of finest red wool, edged with writing worked in gold thread that Ian did not recognize. Her small sandaled feet with their golden nails stopped in front of Ian. She lifted his chin, so he was forced to look up at her. The excitement had grown into something terrible and wild. “Bring the favorite. He will be my most personal offering.”

  So Ian, with a rope about his raw neck held by Asharti, stumbled just behind Fedeyah into the black crevice, its edges smoothed by water. The camel drivers seemed relieved to be abandoned outside the maze with their animals, their lanterns almost proof against their fear. The remaining party included the score or so of ragged slaves bought in Grizim, joined together with ropes at the ankles, and two keepers to tend them. Asharti saw clearly in the dark, as Ian knew too well, and Fedeyah must be the same. Still they carried lanterns, unlit now, against some future need. Above Ian the stars disappeared except for a narrow strip directly overhead. Beneath their feet the sand was deep. Pebble scree occasionally fanned out beneath a crack in the walls made by dripping water on some softer layer of sandstone. At least they were out of the wind. The rock echoed back every exhortation of the slave keepers to their charges, every crack of the whip, along with the scrabble of small falling stones. It was not long until the keepers were oppressed into silence. Even Asharti and Fedeyah only whispered.

  Ian’s eyes grew used to the dimness. A strange feeling of distance had been growing in him. He was not meant to return from this journey, any more than the slaves behind him. His end might indeed be grisly. But at least it was an end. Pain-filled or horrific, he would welcome it. In the darkness a stairway cut into the stone loomed to his left. It wound upward into a hole made by rushing water in the stone above. The stairs were very steep, each step higher than a man could easily take. Were those stairs meant for humans?

  His mind began to skitter over the possibilities for his death. He might be a human sacrifice to some bloodthirsty God. He had heard of special tables in far-off South American jungles with gutters carved for draining blood. Rumor had it that the priest could keep his victim alive for a very long time. Or he might be torn limb from limb by some beast. Of course, it did not have to be a beast in the traditional sense. Asharti had torn that camel driver apart with no more than a casual use of her enormous strength. Perhaps she would kill Ian herself.

  But no, she had said he was to be part of her gift. That was even more ominous. Actually, she had not said he would die. What if some monster as great as or greater than she was kept him for its own use? Ian’s heart beat faster. He had thought he was beyond fear. He was wrong.

  After much twisting and turning, the ravine was marked by two huge pillars on either side, carved out of the stone itself, rising into the night like an entrance.

  “Kivala,” Asharti proclaimed. Ian staggered after her as she hurried forward on light feet in her eagerness to reach whatever horror lay ahead. What could drive her to search the deserts for . . . ? How long had it been? Two years, perhaps, or a lifetime?

  Signs of civilization increased. Ornately carved entrances to what looked like tombs were carved into the rock. Stairways branched off the wide sand trail. At last the ravine opened into an immense square. A hideous cry echoed across the night. The gaggle of slaves collapsed, gibbering. Even Asharti and Fedeyah stopped
. The howl slid into the hooting laugh of a hyena.

  Asharti and Fedeyah relaxed, though the slaves still sobbed and gasped. The moon, invisible in the ravine, now shone a cold light over the broad swath of stone ahead. Ian surveyed the pillars fallen in a circle, the empty, stepped seating of an amphitheater, and ruined statues, all made of striated red stone. The very air was dead. The hyena must be waiting for one of their party to turn into carrion, for there was no other life here.

  Asharti jerked his rope as she started off across the square. The hemp rasped against the raw skin at his neck and he tottered forward, his bare feet cut by shards of stone. Whatever they were looking for, Asharti and Fedeyah did not think it was to be found in this empty square. Eager whispering on Asharti’s part, wary pointing by Fedeyah, and they headed across the square for another opening in the rock that loomed on all sides. Ian was forced into a ragged trot. The repeated cracking of the whip signaled the other slaves to scramble ahead as well.

  Into the darkness they plunged, the sand a relief after the littered stone floor of the square. Ian’s breath scratched harshly in his throat. His small store of strength was fast coming to an end. Sweat dripped into his eyes. His vision narrowed to the cloak swirling in front of him, muddy red in the darkness, and the flash of her sandals. His awareness shrank to the heave of his lungs, the pain in his feet, the rasp of hemp at his neck.

  Around one last curve, he stumbled to his hands and knees even as she cried out in something like ecstasy, “There!”

  She stood, Fedeyah with her, apparently awestruck. Ian raised his head, gasping, and saw something close to a miracle cut into the wall of the ravine. A temple, hundreds of feet high, its multitude of balconies and pediments intricately carved with winged beasts and skulls, symbols, and gargoyles. Pillars stretched into the darkness. Shallow steps led into a dark maw. The sandstone swirled in red and gold and the whole seemed both anchored inexorably in the rock and alive with movement.