Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar

by Louise Cooper - Indigo 06

  Indigo knew from long experience that for all her simplicity, Grimya was an acute observer and could often see what lay at the heart of a question or conundrum with far greater clarity than she herself. All the same, there seemed to be a flaw in the wolf’s reasoning.

  “Why should this demon want to make the first move?” she asked. “What can it hope to gain by exposing its presence so blatantly? It’s as though it’s throwing down the gauntlet to us. Surely it would prefer to stay hidden for as long as possible.”

  “I don’t think that is true,” Grimya replied. “In the volcano mountains, when we were with Jasker, and then through all our years in Ss … Simhara, we conquered the demons only with the help of the Earth Mother. But when we went to Bruhome, it was different. In Bruhome you found the power within yourself to defeat the thing we met there. And it was the same in the Redoubt. You defeated it. You didn’t need to ask the Earth Mother to aid you.” She paused. “I don’t know what powers you have now. But I sense—I feel, like feeling sun and rain on my fur—that you are much strr-onger than you were in those days.” She licked her lips, then glanced a little furtively over her shoulder toward the cave’s entrance. “The demon knows this, and it thinks it would be wiser to become the hunter instead of the prey. So it uses your trrrances to work upon you, trying to weaken you before you can gather your strength to attack it, and it makes you forget afterward what it has done.” She paused. “I may be wrong, though.”

  “No,” Indigo said softly. “I suspect you’re right, Grimya.” She looked with sudden intensity at the wolf. “You said I’ve changed, that I’m stronger now. What did you mean?”

  “I d…on’t know if I can explain it properly. It isn’t in the ordinary ways; you’re still the same Indigo, you still think and feel as you have always done. That hasn’t changed at all. But underneath, something is different.” Grimya hesitated, then: “Can you remember how long it has been since you last changed yourself into a wolf?”

  The question came as a shock, for Indigo had entirely forgotten the extraordinary shape-shifting ability that she had once possessed. She’d discovered the latent power during her early days with Grimya in the forests of the Horse-lands, and three times it had proved a vital weapon in her battle against the horrors she had faced. Yet she couldn’t now count the years since she had last used it. Even amid the snows of the Redoubt, where it would surely have been invaluable to her, it hadn’t once occurred to her to summon up the power within her. Since then, in all the journeying that had finally brought her here to the Dark Isle, she hadn’t so much as remembered the power’s existence.

  Grimya asked, very diffidently, “If you tried now, do you think you could become wolf again?”

  Could she? Even the means she had used to bring the power surging up from her subconscious was little more than a hazy memory. Doubtless it would come back to her with an effort of concentration; but would it still work?

  She believed she knew the answer to that question, and Grimya saw it in her eyes as they looked at each other.

  “I th-ink,” the she-wolf said wisely, “that maybe you have outgrown it, just as a cub outgrows its noisy games when it no longer needs them for learning. Becoming wolf helped you at first; and especially it helped you when you needed to run away, to flee from danger. Now, though, you have different weapons, greater and better weapons, and there’s no need for you to run. So what use is it to you to become wolf?”

  Indigo didn’t reply immediately but rose again and walked to the entrance, feeling stifled and in need of fresh air. The night outside was quiet, the lake wreathed in mist. There was no breeze now. She swallowed as her throat seemed to constrict. Grimya was right, she felt it instinctively. Those old days were gone, and the old power with them. But what, she asked herself, had taken its place? “Greater and better weapons” Grimya had said. Yet what value had they to her if she didn’t know how to use them?

  Reading her thoughts, Grimya said gently, “Maybe they are already proving their worth, Indigo. For instance, have you thought to wonder why, since we came here, we haven’t encountered any sign of Nemesis?”

  Indigo turned quickly, feeling a familiar chill stab deep inside her, as though an icicle had pierced her heart when Grimya spoke the name she loathed more than any other in the world. Nemesis. She might well call that silver-eyed, silver-tongued creature her personal demon, for it had been created from her own psyche, the embodiment of the dark side of her soul.

  Nemesis had walked in her footsteps since the day she had first left her homeland half a century ago, and its one aim—indeed, the sole reason for its existence—was to thwart her in her quest. Wherever Indigo went, in every place and at every turn, Nemesis had waited to trick her, mislead her, lure her into failure and disaster; and as she drew close to each demon in its turn, Nemesis had mockingly flaunted its presence through the one sure sign by which she could always recognize it: the color silver.

  Until now….

  Again Grimya was right, Indigo realized. She had found the hiding place of her next demon, and for the first time since her quest had begun, Nemesis had not made itself known to her.

  “I th-ink,” Grimya said, “that Nemesis might be afraid of you now.”

  Indigo hesitated, then turned once more to look out into the still, clammy night. For a bare moment Grimya’s words had kindled an eager spark, but it had died stillborn. She knew Nemesis too well.

  She smiled sadly, not letting the wolf see her expression. “If that were only true, Grimya,” she said gently, “I would sleep more easily in my bed tonight.”

  Later, with the lamps doused and only diffused moonlight filtering through the curtain to lighten the dark’s totality, Indigo listened to Grimya’s even breathing on the floor at her feet and was thankful that their talk had ended where it had. She had almost voiced the other thing, the small, nagging thing that plagued her like a worm lurking deep in her consciousness, but at the last had decided it was better left unsaid. Yet her silence hadn’t banished the thought of it, and now as she drifted toward the borders of sleep, it crept back, quietly, gently, insinuatingly.

  The Ancestral Lady. Queen of the Dead. Did she truly exist? Uluye and her priestesses believed in her; even down-to-earth Shalune believed in her. Queen of the Dead. Tonight she had seen the hushu, the soulless ones, come to claim a new convert to their numbers. The hushu, so Shalune had told her, were cast out from the Ancestral Lady’s realm—but what of the others, those whose souls the Ancestral Lady was said to take as her own? She had seen them, too, on Ancestors Night, emerging from the lake to be reunited for a brief hour with their loved ones. And just before she fell into the oracle’s trance, she had seen Fenran among their number….

  Indigo turned over, hiding her face in the crook of one arm. She tried to fight the thought away, but it was too strong now for her to resist: Fenran, among the dead who dwelled in the Ancestral Lady’s realm. But he wasn’t dead. He was in limbo. She believed that; she had always believed it, for without that belief, there could be no hope of finding him again, and without hope, there could be no purpose, no goal, nothing. Yet she had seen him. Walking with the dead, moving among them … it couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true.

  She bit her knuckles as tears started to trickle uncontrollably from her eyes. Deep down, she knew, her faith was unshaken, and she still believed that what she had seen by the lake was a cruel illusion, perhaps a gauntlet thrown down to challenge her and to lure her, a demon’s evil joke. But the tiny seeds of doubt had been sown, and there was only one way in which they could be stopped from taking root. She must find the portal between the worlds of life and death; she must open the gateway and face its guardian, whether goddess or demon, and learn the truth for herself.

  And she was afraid, so very, very afraid, of what she might find.

  •CHAPTER•X•

  Grimya woke early the following morning, when the first predawn light was just beginning to touch the easterly sky. Indigo was still slee
ping, and rather than wait for her to wake, the wolf decided to go out for a while before the sun rose and the simmering heat became intolerable.

  She wriggled under the curtain and padded down the zigzagging stairs toward the foot of the bluff. Nearing the sandy arena, she paused as she remembered the hushu who had come to the lakeshore last night, but she reasoned that such horrors were unlikely to approach the citadel at this hour. Besides, what threat could they possibly pose to her? She had nothing to fear from them.

  All the same, she gave a wide berth to the wooden frame that now lay abandoned and empty on the sand and set off around the lake in the opposite direction to that which the departing hushu and their new disciple had taken. Settling into a loping jog—a pace that she could keep up for hours at a time, if necessary—she opened her physical and mental senses to the sounds and scents of the awakening forest, her nose wrinkling and her tongue lapping at the damp, cool atmosphere. Shadows and silhouettes were beginning to take shape out of the darkness, and the lakeside track was a discernible pale ribbon ahead of her; she felt her muscles relaxing with the pleasure of exercise, and her tail wagged with enjoyment as she continued on around the lake.

  She had completed half a circuit, and the ziggurat was a dim outline looming on the far side of the water, when something moved in the trees alongside the path. Grimya stopped instantly, her ears pricking forward as she swung to face the source of the disturbance. A forest animal, she thought, and a large one…. Then suddenly the faint breeze veered and her nostrils caught the unmistakable tang of human scent.

  Instantly, memories of the hushu flooded into Grimya’s mind, and the fur along her spine bristled fiercely. Then it occurred to her that though she’d never, thankfully, been close enough to a hushu to pick up its scent, surely it wouldn’t smell like a living human. Besides, her keen nose had caught a hint of something familiar in this, a suggestion that it was the scent of someone she knew.

  A voice impinged on the quiet, a quick, urgent whisper, and the undergrowth rustled again, closer to the track this time. Prudently Grimya backed off a few paces and crouched down where the curled fronds of a clump of ferns would conceal her. She heard more whispering. Then light flickered faintly between the branches, and moments later two figures emerged from the trees onto the path.

  The first carried a lantern, and though the wick was turned low, it cast enough illumination for Grimya to see his face. He was a young man, a stranger, dressed in loose knee-length trousers of multicolored fabric and a broad leather belt from which hung a machete and a long knife sheath. Another strip of leather was bound around his forehead, and the number of wood and bone carvings that decorated it marked him as well-to-do—the son, perhaps, of some comfortably off trader or logger.

  Reaching the path, the young man held out a hand as though to assist someone, and the second figure emerged from the forest. From her hiding place, Grimya stared in astonishment as she recognized Uluye’s daughter, Yima. In the lamplight, as the young man drew her close to him, Yima’s face was flushed with excitement, and her eyes glowed like a cat’s in the gloom.

  The young man set the lantern down and they embraced tightly. When at last Yima reluctantly drew away, Grimya heard her companion whisper something; she couldn’t make out the words, but Yima’s reply was clear and emphatic.

  “No—it’s too great a risk. Go now. Please.” She raised a hand to touch his face gently, almost tentatively, then leaned forward to kiss him lingeringly one last time. Feeling that she was intruding on a very private moment, the wolf tried to shrink farther into the undergrowth, turning her head away. She heard more whispering, heard Yima say again, “No, my dear, no,” then the rustling of leaves as the young man moved off.

  The faint light of the lantern faded, and when Grimya raised her head again, she saw Yima alone on the track. For perhaps a minute the girl stood motionless, staring after him into the forest; then, with a small shiver, she turned and began to run on light feet toward the citadel.

  Grimya waited until she was some twenty yards ahead, then followed. At the edge of the sand arena, Yima halted, peered up at the bluff for any telltale sign of movement, then veered toward the lake. She reached the water’s edge; creeping closer, the wolf saw her crouch down and splash her face and hands before quickly and furtively unbinding her long braids and soaking her hair in the water. Grimya moved closer still, curious, and was only a few paces from the girl when a pebble slid and clicked undergone of her paws.

  Yima shot to her feet as though a firebrand had been thrust at her. For an instant her face registered horror. Then she relaxed with a gasp as relief took the place of shock.

  “Grimya! Oh, but you frightened me!”

  Grimya blinked and licked her muzzle, then wagged her tail by way of apology. Yima dropped back to a crouch, holding out a hand toward her. “What are you doing out at such an early hour?” Her face clouded uneasily. “You didn’t follow me, did you?” Grimya licked her hand and she laughed, though nervously. “No, I don’t think so; and anyway, you wouldn’t betray me, would you? You wouldn’t tell them, even if you could.” Reaching up now, she began to wring out her wet hair. “I have to do this, you see. Now if anyone questions my being out, I can say I went early to the lake to wash myself, and my mother won’t suspect anything amiss.”

  She was talking, Grimya realized, out of sheer desperation, out of a need to release the emotions within her. Grimya was a safe confidante, for Yima believed the wolf didn’t understand the words that craved an outlet. Now the girl sat back on her heels, hugging herself as though trying to recapture the memory of her lover’s embrace.

  “Oh, Grimya, I do love him,” she whispered, looking up at the lightening sky. “I do.” There was such sadness in her voice that Grimya whined in sympathy, and quickly Yima looked at her again. “I could almost believe that you know what I’m saying. But you don’t, do you?” Gently now she stretched out one hand and stroked the wolf’s head. “No one knows about us … well, only one person, and I don’t think even she really understands.” She rose. “The sun’s coming up. They’ll all be waking soon. I must go back and become the dutiful priestess and daughter again.” She smiled at Grimya, though it was a sorrowful little smile. “Keep my secret, eh?”

  Grimya watched the girl run toward the stairs. She was astonished by what she had witnessed. Dutiful Yima, the obedient and unquestioning child. For how long had she been meeting her lover in such secrecy, the wolf wondered; and how had she contrived to hide the liaison from her mother’s sharp eyes and ears? Grimya knew what Uluye planned for her daughter and could well imagine the ferocity of her wrath if she should discover what was afoot.

  Yima must have great courage beneath her meek exterior, Grimya thought. And someone in the citadel was helping her. Grimya suspected she knew who that someone might be, and she resolved to tell Indigo as soon as she could. Perhaps they too could help her somehow? She hoped so, for she liked Yima, and now that she knew the truth, she felt sorry for her. Why should the girl not be free to choose the pattern of her own life? Why should Uluye control her, as she seemed to control everyone and everything in this place? Though Grimya knew the thought was unworthy, it gave her pleasure to think of the High Priestess being bested, in however small a way, for the wolf strongly resented her enforced influence on Indigo. It would be, she thought, a redressing of the balance.

  Yima had disappeared now. Looking down, Grimya saw her own elongated shadow stretching out before her on the sand as the sun rose, and the buzz and drone of waking insects impinged on the quiet. Already it was growing hot, and the ziggurat wall wavered in haze. She was hungry, and Indigo should be waking soon.

  Sparing one last glance for the still, brazen mirror of the lake, she trotted toward the stairs.

  Indigo! Grimya projected the telepathic call as she approached the curtained entrance to their cave. She had felt Indigo’s mind stirring and was eager to reach her and tell her the story before anyone came to disturb them. Indigo, are you a
wake?

  There was no answer, and suddenly the wolf slowed her pace as she sensed something untoward. Indigo was awake, but the link with her consciousness was distorted. What could be wrong?

  Cautious now, laying her ears back, she called again. Something flickered on the edge of her mental perception but vanished too quickly for her to interpret it, and abruptly Grimya felt alarm. She broke into a run, covering the last few yards to the cave, and dove under the curtain.

  Indigo was in her bed. She was lying flat, the thin covering flung aside, but her eyes stared blindly at the ceiling and her mouth was working soundlessly.

  “Indigo!” Forgetting caution, Grimya barked her name aloud and ran to her, jumping up. “Indigo, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  A spasm shot through Indigo’s frame; then her body went rigid as though in a death rictus. Horrified, Grimya thrust hard against her torso in an effort to stir her, but she was as immovable as rock. Her throat swelled and contracted in a rapid, jerky rhythm; she seemed to be trying to speak, but her voice collapsed into choking chaos before she could form words. It was as though some powerful, but invisible, hand had cut off her supply of air and was slowly strangling her.

  Grimya spun around on her haunches and raced back to the entrance. All thoughts of Yima had fled; she had to get help for Indigo. Writhing through the curtain again, she looked down frantically at the citadel’s lower levels; then, seeing no one, she raised her head and gave vent to a full-throated howl. The chilling sound echoed from the bluff and was flung out over the lake. Almost immediately there was a response from below: voices raised in consternation, the slap of running feet. Shocked faces appeared from other cave quarters, and several women, seeing the wolf poised on the high ledge, began to run toward the stairs. One of the running figures, Grimya saw to her intense relief, was Shalune, with Yima only a pace behind her.