Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01]

by Glenraven (v1. 5) (html)

Jay whispered. "One of the warrags."

  Sophie realized she was facing a creature she had been visualizing for the last eight or ten hours as a talking dog. The nightmare creature had little of the dog about it. It was lean and glossy and beautiful in a frighteningly predatory way, and when it looked at her, she felt it was assessing her for her suitability as a snack. She wondered why it was so bloody. She swallowed hard.

  The creature ducked his head in a slight bow. "I am indeed a warrag," he said. He evidently had acute hearing. "You may call me Grah."

  Jayjay nodded, frowning. "You're the one who found me. And you're Matthiall's coconspirator, aren't you?"

  Grah chuffed and tipped his head to one side, managing to look both quizzical and deadly. He said, "You seem ever so well informed. Did Matthiall mention me to you when he brought you down here?"

  "No." Jayjay said. "I simply have good access to information."

  "Fair access, anyway," Grah said. He looked from Jay to Sophie. "And who are you?"

  Jay inclined her head in imitation of his tiny bow. "Julie Bennington."

  "And I'm Sophie." Sophie's voice cracked; nerves made her sound like a teenage boy. She, too, ducked her head.

  "Sophie—Juliebennington. You grace us with your presence."

  Sophie wasn't sure what the warrag would consider polite and what it would consider insufferably rude, but she couldn't stand not knowing anymore. She asked, "Why are you so bloody? Did someone attack you? Did someone try to get past your guard to attack us?"

  "In a manner of speaking." The warrag's smile grew broader. "Someone attacked your guard, my dear friend Hanarl…and killed him, poor Hanarl. He died trying to protect you." Grah laughed, a hideous sound, and said, "It's a pity he failed."

  Jay paled visibly. "What do you mean by that? Aren't you here to guard us?"

  Grah cocked his head and grinned, a happy doggish smile. "I'm here to kill you. I don't hold with the ideals of the rebellion. You're trouble for the way things are. Aidris Akalan believes it, and so does that traitor Matthiall."

  "But Matthiall trusted you," Jay protested.

  "Everyone makes mistakes."

  "We aren't anyone important. We can't hurt you."

  The warrag sighed. "I am inclined to believe that; you look worthless to me. But when both my Mistress and the traitor agree that you are important, I would rather not take chances. I don't want change."

  Jay backed up a step and crouched. Sophie couldn't see what she was doing, but Grah could.

  "Poor silly Juliebennington. I'll eat you before you can hurt me with your little rock," he said.

  Sophie turned to look just as Jay snapped an underhand fastball pitch—one of her softball specialties. Jay didn't have the ninety-mile-per-hour pitch that could have made her a star, but she'd been clocked at seventy-five a couple of times, and she was accurate as hell.

  She pitched a strike that time, too, and caught Grah solidly on the left eye. The warrag staggered, but he didn't fall. Instead he stepped forward, growling.

  Jay pitched another rock into the strike zone, and Sophie turned and grabbed a rock of her own. The warrag looked from one to the other, and went straight for Jayjay, teeth bared and fingers flexed, claws outstretched.

  Sophie acted on reflex. She flung herself onto the warrag's back and started bashing his skull with her rock. He howled and thrashed, trying to buck Sophie from his back, but years of horseback riding came to her rescue. She locked her feet around the warrag's chest. She shifted with his movements the way she would have with a horse. And she kept hitting with the rock, landing her blows on the same spot.

  Jay got to her feet and struck with her own rock, though she couldn't throw it because Sophie was in the way. Grah howled again, and this time Sophie heard someone shout, "I'll be right there!" The warrag growled softly and spun; Sophie could almost make out what he said. Almost. It was threat, or maybe promise; whatever it was, it portended yet more trouble. With Sophie still on his back, Grah ran for the doorway.

  The man who'd shouted charged into the room from the corridor as Grah reached the doorway. Man and warrag collided, both crashed to the ground, and the warrag's fall threw Sophie into the rock wall. The rock didn't have time to conform to her presence as it had when she sat against it; when her head hit it, red and white light flashed across the backs of her eyeballs and pain so intense it had weight and sound and taste and smell screamed along the top and back of her head. She dropped onto the grassy floor, stunned. Her skull throbbed in time with her pulse and her nose felt like someone was running white-hot needles into it. She ran her tongue around her teeth; a few of them felt loose, but none had come out or broken off. That was good; she had a real phobia about having her teeth knocked out.

  The warrag was first to his feet. He disappeared into the darkness of the hall as Sophie rolled herself onto her hands and knees and scrabbled around for her rock. She braced for an attack from the newcomer.

  Jayjay wiped blood from her face with the corner of her shirt and stared at the man; Sophie wasn't sure whether all that blood had come from Jay or Grah. Jayjay cocked her head to one side and asked, "Matthiall?"

  Sophie had only an instant in which to study this newcomer. He had fangs. Claws. Pointed ears. Jayjay's description had been flawless. When he stood, he turned his back on them. "Yes," he said. "Matthiall." Evidently he didn't consider Jay and her a threat. Sophie didn't know if he was a threat, though, and wondered if she ought to brain him with the rock on principle, so the two of them could run. She decided not to. At the moment they needed an ally desperately—desperately enough that she was willing to consider chancing her life to an enemy in the hopes of finding one. Since Jay held on to her rock, too, and waited, Sophie suspected she'd reached the same conclusion.

  He stared down the dark corridor where Grah had disappeared. "Grah attacked you, didn't he?" he asked without turning around.

  Jayjay wiped more blood from her face. Sophie realized a lot of it was coming from a laceration right at her hairline. "He wanted to kill us," Jay told him.

  Sophie's glance moved from Jay back to the stranger. She watched his face in profile. The points of his ears unnerved her, and the fangs that flashed briefly when he spoke frightened her all out of proportion to what they were. Teeth, she told herself. They're only teeth. Cats and dogs have teeth just like them. But years of indoctrination from television, movies and books drew comparisons between those fangs and the similar-appearing teeth of the werewolves and vampires of fantasy, and her mind refused to be comforted.

  Matthiall said, "I knew one of my…associates…" He frowned. "One of my fellow conspirators…also worked for Aidris Akalan. I thought I knew who it was." Matthiall still peered into the gloom of the corridor. "I didn't think it was Grah. He and I were friends. We've been friends all our lives." Matthiall turned to face them and shook his head. "He's going to be back before too long. He'll come with Bewul and Aidris Akalan and a pack of Kin hungry for our blood. If they find us here, they'll get what they came for."

  "Are you on our side?" Jay asked him.

  He turned and smiled wryly; his eyebrows rose. "The important question is, are you on mine?" He shrugged. "We'll have to find that out as we go, though. You're important somehow, to someone; I haven't the time to figure out to whom…or why. And I don't dare leave you behind; Aidris will kill you if she finds you, and if you are potential allies, I won't stand for that."

  "And if we're enemies?" Sophie asked.

  Matthiall nodded to her, polite acknowledgment of either the question or the courage it had taken to ask it. "Then you'll kill me, or I'll kill you. For now, though, I suggest we flee…and live."

  "That was what we had in mind," Sophie said.

  Matthiall glanced at Sophie, then at Jay. The instant they looked into each other's eyes, Sophie saw both of them stiffen. The current that passed between them was electric, and so palpable she could almost see it. Both Jay and Matthiall seemed to stop breathing. Sophie saw Jay's pupils dilate
and when she looked at the Alfkindir, Matthiall, the centers of his pale blue-gold eyes had grown huge as well. Sophie felt she might as well have become invisible; the two of them obviously had forgotten her presence.

  Jay dreamed this, too, she thought. Dreamed that she would find herself drawn to Matthiall, dreamed that he wasn't human, dreamed that Matthiall had set a guard to protect us. So Jay hadn't really dreamed at all. What had she done?

  No time for that. No time to think, only to act. Both Matthiall and Jay had broken eye contact; Jay picked up her pack and slung it over her shoulders while Matthiall stared down the corridor again.

  "Where are we going?" Jay asked.

  "I have another ally—someone Aidris Akalan believes long dead. We'll take several weapons I've been saving for this day, and run for his hideaway." He shook his head. "If Fate favors us, we'll survive the journey. Of course, Fate hasn't shown me much favor lately."

  Sophie finished settling her pack onto her back. Matthiall said, "Lights down," and the room responded, plunging all three of them into darkness. "Tell me when you can see."

  Sophie's eyes took several minutes to adjust. "Now," she said. A few seconds later, Jay said, "Okay. Me, too."

  "Then stay with me. Let's go."

  Thirty-six

  Matthiall led Jayjay and Sophie at a run through back corridors and twisting passageways, toward the place where he had hidden the Blindstone, the tool by which he hoped to escape the careful searching magic and numerous hunting parties Aidris Akalan would certainly send out after him. He took the women by the fastest route, all the while praying to the oldest gods he could name that Grah would not get to help in time to find the three of them.

  In spite of his fear, he could only keep part of his mind focused on caution.

  The woman Jayjay fascinated him—drew him. The moment he looked into her eyes, he felt he'd known her forever, though of course that was impossible. He rarely associated with Machnan, and certainly he had never seen her. But something about her resonated inside of him, as if he were a bell and she the mallet that struck him. Her animated voice, the set of her shoulders and the thrust of her jaw when she stood there holding her rock, trying to decide whether he was friend or enemy, the flash of her eyes; he knew—knew—each of those characteristics as if it were a part of him.

  And even though he was not watching her at the moment, he could feel her presence as a pressure at his back, as steady and sure as the touch of a lover's hand.

  Who was she? How had she come to him?

  And what did her presence mean?

  Thirty-seven

  A magical surge of energy flowed into Yemus as he lay on the narrow cot, staring across the room at the single sunbeam that fell through the tiny slot of a window the stonemasons had left him. He sat up, and the surge intensified; it shivered through him and left his heart pounding and his mouth dry in its wake. Something had happened. Something had changed—something good. He could not remember the last time he had felt Glenraven's ambient power increase instead of decrease.

  "What's happening?" he whispered, and hurried to that single window he'd been left when they walled him in. He raised himself up on his toes and stared out, hoping he would see something that clarified the situation.

  The Aptogurria fronted on a quiet street well away from the busy center of town. Wizards since Zearn had been in the hands of the Kin had found the calm of the neighborhood conducive to their work. Now, though, Yemus loathed that quiet. It cut him off from participating in life even to the extent of experiencing it vicariously by watching the lives of others. And it eliminated any hope that he could discover news of the world that had closed him away.

  The street lay almost empty. A bony, gangling dog lay on the cobblestones in a location that would have invited disaster on a busier street. Well away from Yemus, a child sat on the stone stoop of his house, bouncing a jointed wooden dancer on the board he held on his lap; the silence of midday was so complete Yemus could hear the clack of the wood.

  Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. For all the evidence Yemus had, he and the child might have been the last two living Machnan in the world. Yemus refused to let himself despair, however. He could see nothing useful, but he could still feel. And he had felt Glenraven's long-dying heart stir slightly. He hadn't the evidence that his world would live, but suddenly he had hope.

  There were times, he thought, when hope was more sustaining than the best of food and drink or the most congenial of companions. This was one of those times.

  Thirty-eight

  Jayjay followed Sophie, who followed Matthiall; he led them by back ways and through forgotten tunnels where the grass had either died or never lived, where dust lay thick on the stone shelves, where the false stars had long ago died of neglect and Jayjay had to slow her pace long enough to fumble her flashlight out of her pack. Beautiful carved stone formed the corridors and the arches, but from the dust, from the cobwebs, she could feel the aching emptiness of the years that had passed since anyone had cared for the place. The desolation bore down on her, heavy with the smell of dust and neglect, while the bouncing light of her flashlight threw shadows that looked frighteningly alive.

  They ran; stopped and hid when the echoing voices of searchers reverberated through the long winding tunnels of stone; ran again. Matthiall stopped at last in a stone cul-de-sac. "Through here." He slid his hand along a branch of one of the stone trees. Jay heard a soft click, then saw a strip of blackness appear in the beam of her flashlight. The maw expanded and she realized the stone wall was sliding away to one side, but it moved in absolute silence. She tried to imagine the craftsmanship that could accomplish such a feat; that could build an invisible door and have it still soundless and perfect after uncounted years of disuse.

  When she considered this miracle more fully, she decided perhaps it wasn't so astonishing after all. Maybe Matthiall had done work on it in a better time, preparing for what he feared might lie ahead.

  The three of them stepped through into the darkness, and Matthiall stopped at another tree pillar. He tapped it with a claw, and Jay turned the light back the way they'd come to watch the door slide into place.

  False stars flickered to life in the center of the huge room. Jay turned off her flashlight. "We'll only be here a moment," Matthiall said while he reached up into the branches of a stone tree and pulled down a leather pack. "I feared this day would come, and I made preparations against its arrival." He strapped the pack on his back. It was bulkier than the packs she and Sophie carried, and made of leather; it looked to her like it had seen a lot of hard use. "I have dry rations for two weeks, along with the Blindstone. We'll find that more useful than anything else I have in here. I did not expect to have company in hiding, though, so the rations won't hold up well. I have extra weapons; I can give each of you a dagger and a sword. Here, at least for the moment, we're safe, so catch your breath."

  While Jay and Sophie stood panting and trying to rest, Matthiall gathered the rest of his supplies; then he brought each of them a sword and a dagger. He helped Jay belt her scabbard on and showed her how to fit the two buckles to speed her draw, and as he did so, he paused from time to time to look into her eyes.

  Again she felt his gaze as if it were a touch, a caress—just like in the grotto, just like in the dream. She pulled away, stiffening her back and averting her face so that he could not mistake her distaste for him. Still, her breath quickened and she felt the heat rise to burn her cheeks. Her body was a traitor to her mind, to her well-being. It always had been.

  Matthiall smiled a tiny smile with lips that trembled; he looked in that instant so uncertain. Disarming, somehow. Compelling. She glanced at him in spite of her determination not to, and felt the electric shock of his nearness. She could imagine him kissing her, touching her, their hands sliding along each others skin, their breath warm on each others flesh. She felt herself flowing against him, moving with him, his fingers circling her breasts, his thighs between her thighs, the ecstatic mo
ment when their two bodies joined and became one—

  "No," she whispered.

  "No?" he asked in a whisper softer than hers.

  She risked a glance at him, and was startled to find him wide-eyed and pale, breathing hard. She looked away again. His every gaze was a touch, and when he looked so vulnerable, she could not look and still resist.

  "No." She meant to sound confident and a little fierce, but the single syllable betrayed her by quavering at the end.

  Wonderingly, he asked her, "How did you do that?"

  "Do what?" She felt weak and helpless standing there, mere inches from him, surrounded by the heat of his body. She didn't want to admit feeling anything. She feared the power such an admission would give him over her.

  "You felt it, too. I can see it in your eyes. How did you do that to me, little Machnan?"

  "I'm not Machnan, and I didn't do anything."

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head. "No. I would have no reaction to you, and you would hold no attraction for me, unless you were something that you cannot be. Machnan." He invested that word with a bitterness almost as dark as that which filled Jays soul. "I cannot desire; I cannot have anyone. I am last and alone of my straba—the sole survivor of my line; I am and will be always alone."

  He pulled back from her, putting physical space between them to match the emotional wall he summoned. Jayjay watched him, furious about the wash of feelings she had for him—overwhelming feelings that came from nowhere, for no reason. Try as she would, she could not deny them and she could not make them go away.

  Jayjay stared at her hands; they shook. Something inside of her stirred, something she'd never felt before. She could not put a name to it, she could barely describe it to herself. She ached and a heavy burning emptiness spread through her, and a weight settled on her shoulders that pressed the air from her lungs.

  It's psychological, she told herself. Some perverse desire for self-destruction. I'm thirty-five years old and I've screwed up three times in the men I chose, and some twisted part of me wants to see me finish the job and break myself entirely.