by Marie Brown
rather flattened when she'd fallen. But they still filled her up. She scooped out some biscuit crumbs to go with her jerky, and added a handful of dried fruit as well. A veritable feast, as far as trail food went.
Lorrine looked at the blackness beyond her lightstick's glow as she gnawed her way through her dinner. It looked thick, and velvety, and downright menacing. She wasn't particularly afraid of the dark, of course, but this darkness didn't look like the warm, friendly blackness of night in Karr'at, and certainly not at all like the gently glowing darkness where she'd met her grandmother. Poor, tormented woman.
No, this darkness looked like it pressed actively up against the light, trying to overwhelm the little glowing stick. Nothing about it seemed welcoming, or friendly, or like it held good dreams.
What would happen if Kama were here? Would she feel safer?
More likely, she'd feel paranoid, and stay up all night keeping watch to make certain Kama slept undisturbed. What was wrong with her, anyway? Why did she have to get herself born with such a wayward heart, that couldn't tell a good idea from a bad? Maybe being with a woman wasn't such an evil as she'd been led to believe, but by damn, it wasn't a very comfortable kind of love. Particularly when the woman in question was far away, had been very badly damaged by stupid prejudices, and probably had moved on and found somebody else by now.
Kama sighed, sought out her waterskin. A little bit of water wouldn't hurt. A carefully controlled, non-drenching little bit of water, to wash down all that blastedly dry food.
Immediate needs taken care of, Lorrine rolled herself into the damp blanket, reached for the lightstick to cap it, then hesitated. Did she really, really want all that unfriendly darkness wrapping around her while she slept? No. Not a bit.
So she left the lightstick active. What the hell, no one would ever know, and it wasn't like the thing would burn out overnight.
Wet.
Her hair? Wet. Her blanket? Wet. All her clothing? Wet!
"Damn water," Lorrine muttered. "You should just all go away."
It did, eventually. Lorrine fell asleep despite her discomfort, and the water slowly evaporated from her hair, robe, bedding, surroundings. . .
Geas
Sometime during the night, the light went out.
Lorrine woke from her uneasy sleep, filled with discomfort and slowly drying dampness, heart pounding. It took her about half a dozen panicked heartbeats to realize why she'd awakened: no light.
None.
Darkness surrounded her, even less friendly now than when she'd initially laid down with the light on. Lorrine clutched her blanket tight and willed her heart to slow. It didn't listen. She couldn't hear anything, smell anything, see anything that would account for the lightstick going dark. Such things never happened. Lightsticks were good for the life of the stick itself. And even if the lightstick were shattered and scattered all through all the realms, the bits from the end would still glow, because that was what lightsticks did. Nothing put a lightstick out.
Then she heard a whispery rustle, a hint of sound and movement where only stillness had been before.
"Who's there?" Lorrine called out, but her voice sounded hoarse and frightened. She shifted position, rising to a crouch, resting her hand on her dagger. Not that she really knew what to do with it in a fight, but she felt better having something in hand with which to defend herself.
The shadows rustled again, a furtive flickering burst of sound.
"Hello?"
Still no answer. What could put out a lightstick?
Lorrine shifted again, dagger in hand, trying to find some sort of balance. Barefoot, in a billowy robe, blind, untrained. . . could this situation get any more perilous?
The rustling shadows swept around her, fluttering at her with invisible wings. Lorrine shrieked and covered her head with her arms, feeling fragile little fluttery touches all along her arms and neck and face. They stung, like getting flicked lightly with a bunch of nettles. Then the cloud of shadows retreated, flapping back into the darkness, waiting.
Lorrine uncurled from her defensive position, trembling. Whatever that had been, she had no idea. She wished fiercely that Derfek were here with her. Despite his faults, the man had at least some mage talent, and he'd fought off a bandit attack once. That was far more than she could do for herself.
But Derfek was most definitely not here. He wasn't much more than a smear of soot on the desert floor. She squashed the twinge of conscience she still felt over the incident and made herself focus on the situation at hand.
Strange, fluttering shadows had snuffed out her lightstick and flown through her hair. Was she dreaming? Lorrine wondered for a moment, then realized she couldn't possibly be dreaming. No, she never dreamed things like rocks digging into her backside. This must be real.
So. Fluttering shadows. Well, they hadn't hurt her, just scared her pretty thoroughly. Now what?
Then the shadows swooped around her again. This time, Lorrine didn't scream, but she still trembled. Then, when the shadows swirled and flickered around her in a way that made them almost visible, a voice spoke.
You are not welcome here, Black Rose.
The voice sounded like a chorus of dozens of thready whispers, all speaking the same words in unison, but with an infinite amount of tiny variations in pitch and tone.
"Who are you?" Lorrine asked. Her voice wavered. "And why did you call me that? My name's-"
She stopped herself, barely, before naming herself to the supernatural entity. Everyone knew it was just plain dumb to give spirits and such your name, because that gave them power over you.
Are you not the Black Rose, who did such harm to our lovely Golden Lyrebird?
"What?"
An image formed in her mind then. Kama, blue eyes swimming with tears.
"What-you can't mean-how could you know anything about. . .? And besides, she can't sing."
Our Lyrebird is wounded, and it is because of your thorns, Black Rose. We should damage you in return, but our Lyrebird is the last of her kind, and we know how she values you. But our restraint comes at a price.
"What are you talking about? What price?"
If we let you leave this place intact, you will serve as our messenger, no? You will go to our Lyrebird and tell her of our presence. For surely ignorance is all that has kept her from releasing us. You will go, now. Go, and bring back our Lyrebird, to bring song and life back into these dank, empty halls. Go. Go!
Lorrine scrambled to her feet. The urgency of the shadows battered at her. She barely managed to gather up her belongings in her arms before she had to run, run, out of the blackness, away from the shadows, into the pale light of dawn.
When her bare feet hit the wet grass, Lorrine stopped her headlong flight. She panted, out of breath from the short but fast run, and looked around for a dry place to put her things down. She didn't find one.
So she dropped her awkward load anyway and dealt with it as swiftly as she could, while the sun rose, and birds sang, and a brisk breeze blew past her carrying the scents of early morning flowers. At least the rain had stopped.
She worked quickly. She put on her regular clothes, folded away the nightrobe and her bedroll, and sighed with relief as she shouldered her pack. The urgency within her didn't want to wait even one moment, let alone as long as it took to organize her pack again. But traveling cross country with bare feet and an armful of stuff was just ridiculous.
Finally ready, she looked around, wondering which way Eirian lay. Was Kama even still in Eirian? Probably. She didn't seem like the wandering type.
A faint, glimmering trace of gold lay along the ground when Lorrine looked south. She looked east, and the gold disappeared.
"Huh," she said, then settled her pack a bit better and started walking along the golden trace. It vanished before she stepped on it, always elusive, always leading her southward. The shadows might not have liked her much, but they certainly seemed helpful.
Lorrine walked all day, barely pausing to pee, e
ating as she strode along the golden path. Her feet found a rhythm and held to it, carrying her on into the night tirelessly. She walked, and walked, and walked, until she desperately wanted to stop. All day, all night, on into the next day, Lorrine walked. She felt her feet grow and burst blisters. She ran out of food. She tried her damnedest to lay down and take a break, but still she got up and walked.
Finally, the glowing path led her past a structure. A temple, she judged, based on the sheer amazing size and beauty of the place. She hadn't seen any human influence over the land around her in days. But this thing. . . well, maybe it wasn't man-made. Maybe it was Ancient-made. Nobody knew for absolute certain if the Ancients were human, or one of the elder races. Whatever, a human lived there now, that much was certain, because warm light shone through the open, inviting doorway, that offered some form of hope. Because surely, if there was a temple like this one, with a door and a priest, something could be done to stop her thrice-damned feet from walking. She'd even accept being tied up if it would let her rest.
The path led close enough to the open door that Lorrine managed to break away from it, like she did when she really had to pee and didn't want to do it out in the open. She staggered with the effort of fighting her own feet, which wanted to continue along the golden path. She made them behave and forced herself up the stairs to the open doorway.
Inside, a human figure knelt in front of a brightly lit altar.
"Hello? Can you help me?"
Lorrine