“Maybe they want to live a little longer,” Megan responded dryly.
“Well, I can’t believe he’d…” Susannah stopped, chewing hard on her lower lip. “I know, I know. He did. With his bare hands. Jesus.”
Her eyes flicked from Ghirra to Megan, then out over the broken fields. With an air of resolve, she unstrapped the canteen from her belt and shook it. “Not enough here. Meg, give me what’s left in yours.”
Megan put a hand on her canteen and left it there. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go down there and get that poor boy away from him.”
“Oh. Just like that, huh? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Why? Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Suzhannah, please…” Ghirra said worriedly.
“Never mind. I’ll make do with the water I have.” Susannah paced forward a step or two, then turned back and faced them squarely. “Look, I’m tired of being the silent observer in this cat-and-mouse game of yours! When innocents like Edan and Liphar get caught in the cross fire, it’s time,to put a stop to it!”
“Game?” Megan threw up her hands in angry disgust. “Right! Put on your white hat and ride in to save the day!”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, if it were possible. Damnit, Susannah, you don’t go facing off the enemy in his own lair!”
“Why the hell not, if that’s where he is?”
“Because then you get killed for nothing and he goes right on doing what he pleases!”
“That’s because you’re letting him get away with it!” Susannah returned. “Meg, listen to me. Don’t you see the game you’re playing is his game? You run and he chases you, like he had you programmed. Or like the Sawls taking it for granted they can do nothing but suffer through the Goddesses’ warring. This underdog self-image has you paralyzed. You won’t grab the upper hand even when it’s available to you!” She took a deep, indignant breath, expelled it loudly. “Megan, he’s one man!”
“One killer,” Megan amended. “Equipped with laser.”
Susannah paced back to the rear of the wagon and grabbed her medikit from the open tail gate. Ghirra moved to block her path.
“Suzhannah, this is…”
She glared at him, surprised that she could be so angry, even at him. “It’s what? Crazy? Maybe so, but then so is Emil, clearly.”
Megan shook her head knowingly. “Oh, no, not crazy. Cold-blooded, maybe, but not crazy. Don’t offer yourself the comfort of that diagnosis just because it’s easy.”
Susannah gripped the medikit and faced Ghirra stubbornly. Hurt mixed with the worry in his eyes and she guessed that he was taking her accusations of inaction more personally than she had intended.
“For instance…” Megan played her final card harshly. “Tell us, GuildMaster, how reasonable Emil has been with Stavros…”
Susannah felt herself pale under her tan. “Ghirra, what does she mean?”
He flicked Megan an ambivalent glance. “He lives,” he replied.
“But it was close?” Megan prodded.
“Yes.”
I will not weaken on this, Susannah resolved.
“Very close?” insisted Megan.
Ghirra frowned gently.
“What happened?” Susannah demanded.
“The lazher,” said Ghirra. “Very bad burning.”
Susannah winced. “Is he in a lot of pain? Did I give you…”
Ghirra nodded soothingly. “Yes. He does better now.”
Megan kept trying. “But he’s not out of danger? Suze, let Ghirra smuggle you up there now so you can be sure he’s okay.”
The thought of Stavros in pain made Susannah hesitate, but not for long. “Meg, he’s had one good doctor already and there’s another patient to look in on who he wouldn’t want me to desert.”
She gripped Ghirra’s hand briefly, then shouldered the medikit and stepped around him, heading briskly for the front of the caravan and the Lander beyond.
“We’ll have to go with her, of course,” Megan complained.
“Yes,” Ghirra agreed, already moving in Susannah’s wake.
Danforth slumped in his chair in front of a dead monitor screen. He imagined himself strangling Clausen with the connecting cable the prospector had removed and currently wore looped on his belt. He glanced up at the shimmering clearing, Clausen’s interrogation ring. The prospector bent over his prisoner in the dusty heat. The chanting continued from the wilting fields, adding to the atmosphere of heat-soaked gloom.
“Emil!”
Clausen started faintly at Susannah’s shout, but his eyes did not leave Liphar for a second. He crouched beside him intently, a brimming cup of water held just out of reach of the young Sawl’s blistering lips.
The hidden chanters fell expectantly silent. Danforth reached down to nudge Weng out of her heat doze on the ground beside him, then wheeled himself quickly to the edge of the shade.
“What are you doing?” Susannah marched across the clearing.
Clausen grinned into Liphar’s tear-streaked face, swaying slightly on his haunches. He raised the cup to his own mouth and drank with slow torturous relish. But his other arm floated up from his side as if automatically. He aimed the silver laser pistol at Susannah without even looking.
“For god’s sake, Emil!” she shouted.
Danforth held his breath.
Too late to warn her off. Might make things worse.
In her layered Sawlish clothing, her long hair flying loose around a tanned face sparked with righteous outrage, she descended like an avenging goddess upon Clausen as he hunched over his hapless victim.
For Danforth, helpless in his chair, it was like watching a sudden street corner collision happen in agonizing slow motion.
“He’s wearing down,” murmured Weng at his shoulder. “Reflexes gone.”
“How much reflex does it take to pull a trigger?”
But Clausen did not fire. He seemed too entranced by the suffering he could arouse in Liphar’s glazed eyes by tipping the cup and letting the precious water dribble in a thin, broken stream onto the dry ground.
Susannah strode up behind him. The laser pointed straight into her stomach. She swiped angrily at Clausen’s outstretched arm, sending the little pistol flying. It skittered across the hard-packed dirt.
Clausen ducked immediately and rolled aside, kicking up dust as he lunged after his weapon. Susannah ignored him. She knelt to cradle Liphar in her arms and unstrapped her canteen.
Clausen snatched up the gun and rolled himself upright into a surprised crouch. He glanced warily around the clearing. Then he settled back on his heels to watch Susannah with bemused disbelief as she fed Liphar short sips of water and struggled to untie his badly chafed wrists and ankles.
To Danforth’s amazement, Clausen started to laugh. He dropped his forehead to his knee. His shoulders shook silently. Then he threw his head back and rose abruptly, moving toward Susannah.
Danforth tensed in his chair, wondering how far across the clearing he could get on plastic-bound legs before the laser cut him down.
Clausen paused beside Susannah, but merely leaned over to murmur at her ear, then passed her by without a second glance. She stared after him as he stalked toward the shade of the Underbelly. His gun arm hung slack at his side, the pistol dangling from two crooked fingers. He stopped in front of Weng to grin at her mirthlessly as he shoved the laser into its holster and snapped the flap tight. He unlooped the computer cable from his belt and tossed it into Danforth’s lap.
“Not as young as we used to be, eh, Commander?” he said.
Weng stared straight through him. “You see, Dr. Danforth,” she remarked with icy satisfaction. “I told you he’d have to sleep sometime.”
Clausen’s grin twisted oddly. “Yeah,” he said, and turned away. He crossed to the Sawl-made ladder leading up into the main hatch. He climbed it stiffly, then pulled it up after him.
“I’ll be i
n my quarters if anyone needs me,” he called as some inner, upper door slammed shut behind him.
Danforth told himself that now he’d seen everything. He wheeled out into the sun as Megan and Ghirra loped up to huddle around Susannah and the suffering Liphar.
“What did he say to you?” Megan demanded.
“He said, ‘Thanks, I really needed a break. I wasn’t getting anything out of him anyway.’ ”
29
Ghirra whisked Susannah and Liphar out of the Lander clearing, leaving Megan to deal with her Terran colleagues. The chanters emerged from the fields one by one to follow them, singing a gladder melody.
Liphar could not walk on his own, though he tried, insisting that he could but clinging heavily to Susannah. He asked about Stavros, and then Kav Daven, his joy at the good news offset by the shock of the bad. He stopped often along the dusty path to rest and down another another gulp of water, glancing behind him as if still expecting pursuit.
The head of the caravan had pulled to a halt on the rock terraces at the foot of the cliff. A vanguard party from Engineers bounded up the stairs toward the cliff top to ready the winches for the off-loading of cargo. The rangers organized reinforcements for the fire brigade. Families left their carts or wagons in the charge of the younger children, unshipped their digging tools and hurried into the fields to help with the firebreaks. A billowing wall of black smoke obscured the plain to the north and west, close enough now for the bright lick of flames to be visible along its base.
Word of Liphar’s ordeal spread fast among the wagons, though no one was quite sure how it had ended so suddenly or how they were supposed to understand that this strange behavior was confined to a single Terran. Liphar accepted his sudden celebrity with dazed good humor, even enjoying it a little, in a haunted sort of way, now that the ordeal had ended. But he wept when Ashimmel and a stony-face Aguidran met them at the foot of the stairs. He muttered brokenly about Edan’s bravery, and would not allow himself to be taken to Physicians’ without first seeing for himself that Stavros was alive and well.
He calmed under Ashimmel’s stern eye, and two of his fellow apprentices were found to stretcher him up the long stairs. As they entered the cavernous dark of the stable level, the young Sawl breathed a visible sigh of relief and relaxed at last into the curl of the leather sling. Susannah absorbed the comparative coolness with a grateful sense of homecoming.
They waited at the entrance to Valla’s Story Hall while Ard unlocked the huge doors from the inside. Liphar demanded to be helped out of the stretcher, and walked into the chill, dim hall on his own unsteady legs.
Stavros lay on a pallet of blankets, his back propped against a wall, dozing fitfully. The apprentice girl knitted quietly in the light of an oil lamp. She scrambled up in surprise and Ghirra beckoned her aside to announce Kav Daven’s return with the caravan. Tom, she glanced back at Stavros, but Ghirra nodded reassuringly and she sped away to see to her Ritual Master’s welfare.
Susannah held back as Liphar tottered into the pool of lamplight at Stavros’ bedside.
“Ibi?” he whispered urgently, collapsing into a slow heap like a puppet with its strings cut. “Ibi!”
Stavros’ eyes lazed open. His head moved vaguely toward the source of the voice.
Still drugged, thought Susannah, content now that he was there in front of her and alive, content just to look at him. He was pale from his weeks in hiding, and fever-thinned. He looked older, she thought, the angles and hollows of his face now painfully sharp. His eyes seemed deeper set and very dark against his sallow skin. His left shoulder was thickly wrapped with herbal poultice. The long, dim hall smelled of herbs and lamp oil.
Stavros focused on Liphar and smiled. “Lifa, Rhe khem.”
Liphar beamed, tears starting again in his eyes. “Khem rhe, Ibi.”
Stavros seemed to gain strength as he struggled out of his drug haze. “Rho sukahakhe, Lifa. Han jela.”
Liphar wiped his tears bashfully. “No, Ibi, Te ket-shim Ghirra sukaharhe, cedirhe?”
Stavros laughed, a muted escape of breath. “You saved me the first time,” he insisted fondly.
He glanced up to share a weak grin with the Master Healer and saw Susannah waiting in the shadows. His gaunt face softened with doubting joy, “Susannah…?”
Ghirra’s paternal chuckle convinced him. He let his head loll back against his pillows and closed his eyes.
“At last,” he whispered fervently.
Ghirra bent to murmur in Liphar’s ear, then urged him to his feet. He let the young man walk to the waiting stretcher, making sure to collect Ard on the way out.
When the door clunked shut, Stavros opened his eyes again. He took in Susannah’s guarded expression without comment as she came to kneel at his side.
Susannah felt suddenly awkward, vulnerable. She was unable to look him in the eye. Before, it had been always he who was at a loss with her. Something had changed. It confused her that she hurt with his hurt.
“You ought to let me look at that shoulder,” she muttered lamely.
As she reached to check his bandages, he caught her hand and pressed her cupped palm to his lips with a tenderness that brought the warm threat of tears to her eyes.
“Are you really all right?”
He smiled happily, “You tell me… doctor.”
He trailed his fingers down her cheek, then crooked his good arm around her neck to draw her close and kiss her hungrily. “Ah god. Susannah, I missed you! Lie down with me, talk to me, hold me. God, please hold me.”
She eased him down on the pallet and snuggled against him gingerly, but he pulled her close with his good arm, with strength that surprised her, and held her very tight, his face buried in her hair. He said nothing for a long time. Finally he let out a long breath and relaxed his desperate grip.
“I died,” he said, as if by way of explanation.
Susannah murmured sympathetically, smoothing her fingers across his naked chest and belly, wanting him, wishing him whole.
“Really. I did,” he said seriously, gently stopping her hand’s wanderings. “I know it.”
She pulled away to look at him. “Ghirra didn’t mention this.”
“Ghirra’s sure it was the adrenaline or whatever he shot into me that saved me, but I tell you, Suze, it was too late for that. I was gone. I fought dying, fought until I had no strength left and had to give in. And then… I was gone. Or at least the body was. I was… somewhere else.” He wrapped the one arm around her again, and Susannah felt him shudder.
“Where?” She had to ask.
He now seemed a bit embarrassed. “Oh, I don’t know. Out there. Wherever it was, it scared the shit out of me. That’s what brought me back… I think. Either that, or…” He cupped her chin and kissed her gently. “You think I’m nuts, Suze, like everyone else does?”
She smiled, shook her head.
He kissed her again. “You ready to have that conviction sorely tried?”
Susannah shrugged. “Try away.”
He adjusted himself on the pallet, wincing faintly.
“Stav, you ought to rest.”
“No. Listen. You have to listen.” He gripped her hand. “I felt the Sisters when I was… out there.”
“That’s not uncommon…” Susannah cleared her throat softly. “To see god in near-death experiences.”
“It wasn’t near-death, it was death, and I tell you, I felt them out there, wherever I was, but not as goddesses, As… as beings. It was as if, by giving in to dying, I was pulled into some kind of natural connection, even though they didn’t notice me. They were so… self-absorbed. I tried to catch their attention, then I got scared and ran. The terror was so…!” He let out an explosive breath. “But I lived, because I ran.”
Susannah found herself monitoring the temperature of his skin for fever. “I don’t know, Stav. What’s all this supposed to mean?”
“It means that they’re there, that maybe we can contact them, try to reason with them,
show them the havoc they wreak with their games, maybe make them stop!”
“Contact them?” Frightened, she tried to make a joke of it. “By dying? Again?”
He smiled at her worry and hugged her close. “Christ, no! Once was enough. But there’s got to be a lesson there, about resistance, maybe, or… once before, at the Leave-taking, I… the Kav… hey.” He slipped his hand from her waist and stared with grateful satisfaction at his palm. “It’s back.”
“It?”
“My guar-fire,” he replied, then started, as if remembering. “Suze, the Kav, how is he? I have to talk to him, tell him about this!”
“He’s stable,” she began seriously, restraining him gently. “But I don’t think he’ll be able to talk.”
“He won’t need to. We have our ways, that old man and I. He can’t see either, and yet he does.” He pulled away to gaze at her intently. “There’s so much to tell you, so much I haven’t told you, haven’t been able to. We’ve had so little time, and I…” He toyed with the lacings of her tunic. “… I’ve had other things on my mind than talk.”
Susannah grinned. “You’re not actually considering making love to me, I hope, not in your condition.”
“Well…” With a needy sigh, he slipped his hand between the layers of gauzy fabric. “I was hoping,” he murmured, “to convince you to make love to me.”
“… raellil?” Stavros struggled up onto his good elbow. “Me?”
Ghirra traced absent circles on the floor tiles. “I think, yes. You know this word?”
“Yeah, I do.” He let Susannah help him to sit up. “I was working on a refined translation recently, after a conversation—if you can call it that—with the Kav himself.”
“Ashimmel says ‘apprentice.’ ”
“So does Liphar. Also ‘messenger’ or ‘voice.’ But it’s OldWords. Its roots are in the old technical vocabulary.” Stavros grinned crookedly. “Plumbing, in fact. Sometimes internal plumbing, like arteries, but mostly it referred to pipes, you know, how they move stuff from place to place.”
Reign of Fire Page 24