Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01]

by Glenraven (v1. 5) (html)

  Matthiall went to assist Sophie, watching as she strapped on her sword and dagger. Sophie asked him whether or not she should fight since she didn't actually know how to use a sword.

  "If someone comes at you and I can't reach you—and you don't want to die—I suggest you fight."

  Jay laughed in spite of herself. Matthiall seemed to be a smartass; she'd always liked that in a man. Not one of her three husbands had had a decent sense of humor.

  Matthiall glanced her way, frowning, then turned back to Sophie. "Don't be afraid to hurt someone; don't hesitate to kill if you get an opening. It isn't likely you'll do well if it comes to that, but who knows? Desperation breeds strange champions."

  Doesn't it, though? Jayjay shook her head, bemused.

  And suddenly thought she caught a sound from the right side of the room.

  The false stars gave too little light at the periphery for her to see if anything was there. She pulled her flashlight out of her pack and pointed the light toward the sound. The beam threw dancing shadows on the walls from the eerily twisted shapes of the carved stone trees. She thought she saw movement, but when she flashed the light toward it, she saw nothing. She shivered. The unrelieved darkness and the pregnant silence wore at her nerves. She hated imagining things. She needed to get out into the sunlight, or at least into the honest darkness of night under an open sky.

  "Would it be too much to ask if we might leave now?"

  Both Matthiall and Sophie glanced at her.

  "This room is well hidden. We'll probably be safe here for a short while." Matthiall shifted his pack and began to slide his sword into its sheath.

  Jay felt like a fool, but she said, "Probably, but I thought I heard something move along the wall, and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw it. I know I'm being ridiculous, but—"

  Something chittered. A fingernails-on-blackboard sound, a metal knife blade dragged across a mirror, a wrong and terrible noise.

  Matthiall's head came up and his lips stretched back in a terrifying snarl. "To me, quickly!" he snapped, and drew his sword.

  "Oh, shit," Sophie said, and drew hers.

  "You have to be kidding," Jay muttered. She tried to pull her blade out of the scabbard while running and nearly tripped herself. She stopped long enough to yank it free, then bolted toward Matthiall; the unfamiliar weight in one hand threw off her stride.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw movement again, this time coming straight at her. She started to turn to face it, and Matthiall shouted, "Don't stop! To me! To me!" She kept running.

  "That way," he shouted, pointing. "Kill anything that crosses your path. Don't let them touch you!" He dropped behind as they ran. "I'll guard the sides and back!" Sophie took the left, Jay the right. Black shapes boiled out at them from both sides, coming fast.

  "Shit!" Jayjay yelled. "I want my pepper gas!"

  One of the creatures materialized in front of Sophie, leapt at her throat with dagger teeth flashing. Swinging the sword like a baseball bat, Sophie drove straight through its neck. The head separated and the mouth opened in an agonized silent pantomime of a scream. Sophie growled, "I want a machine gun!"

  In the dark, Jay couldn't see the creatures clearly—they were no bigger than terriers, they were fast, they launched themselves out of the darkness straight at her throat. She tried Sophie's baseball bat grip, concentrating on following through with the tip the way she had when she'd played on a softball team. The blade felt awkward; it didn't balance like a bat. It was heavier and springier, and when she connected, she didn't get the clean, solid shock she got hitting a softball. Instead, the hilt relayed to her hands the wet, sickening give of flesh, followed by a quick jar as the metal cut into bone. And her blade caught. It didn't go through cleanly. Blood spattered on her, on Sophie; the thing flopped to the ground. She swung the blade back to free it, then lifted it to strike again. And she kept running, kept running.

  Another one, teeth coming at her like the mouth of a shark in her nightmares after she watched Jaws. In the dark, all she saw was the teeth. She swung, hit meat and bone. Felt the warm spatter of blood. Another one, jumping at her, hissing. Jay backhanded it with the dull edge, felt its weight connect as a jarring shock through her arms and elbows and the muscles of her back. And the thing came at her again. This time, two attacked. She kept moving forward, managed to dispatch one, but the other leapt from her right side, and she couldn't free the blade fast enough. The sharp white-hot flash of pain. Her sleeve ripped, its teeth dragged through her flesh, and suddenly her sword arm bled heavily from deep, ugly gashes. Left-handed, she drew her dagger. Pain—burning, searing pain—and then a warm sensation. Numbness. She swiped feebly with her sword; her fingers lost their hold and she hit her attacker with the flat of the blade. The sword dropped from fingers she could no longer feel. The thing jumped again, this time latching onto her arm and hanging there—a weight that dragged at her, but painless. Painless. She came in up and under with the dagger, left-handed, and felt the warm slick weight of intestines slide down her left hand and wrist and she smelled the stink of offal.

  The thing fell away; her foot slipped in the wetness, in the tangle of guts, and she cried out. Went to one knee. Braced her arms to catch herself, landed on the right. The arm gave as if it wasn't even there; it buckled and she pitched face first into uneven stone floor and dead animals. Pain, nausea, and even worse pain as sudden weight landed on the back of her knee, and slammed down onto her. Matthiall, tripped by her fall; and more teeth coming at her face, at him trying to shake off the blow of the fall. Jaws from hell going for him. Another one, another one. And her left hand flashed out, shot straight into the thing's mouth, dagger piercing through mouth, spine. And the feel of those teeth around her left wrist, top and bottom. But Matthiall moved, rolled to his feet, pulled her to hers.

  She couldn't get her balance, staggered as she tried to run. The numbness, the numbness. Right arm and left arm and now her whole body, warm and tingling, begging rest.

  In her ear, Matthiall's urgent voice: "Don't give up now. Not now. We're almost there."

  She found strength in her legs to run again, to stagger, and Matthiall stayed beside her, and Sophie on the other side kept swinging, kept swinging—batting a thousand, Jay thought, but Jay's batting average had been better in the league, why was Sophie doing better?

  Dizzy, drowsy, let me sleep, let me sleep, and her legs lead weights that dragged forward against her will because of Matthiall's arm around her.

  He stopped for an instant, hit something on the wall. She sagged, falling, and had the curious feeling that the cave caught fire, that the underground lit up in one incandescent ball, and that the fire burned the monsters; they were all screaming, screaming, and she wanted to laugh, wanted to cheer.

  And then the fire went out.

  Thirty-nine

  I didn't care whether I lived or died, Sophie thought, and I lived. Jay wanted to live, and look at her now.

  Sophie wished she could look away from her friend for a moment; Jayjay lay in the tall grass where Sophie and Matthiall had carried her—dead white, unconscious, soaked in blood, panting like a dying animal. Sophie didn't look away, though; she kept her fingers pressed against the tear in Jay's right wrist that spurted blood, and prayed that Jay wouldn't bleed to death before her would-be rescuers could treat her wounds.

  Matthiall, the creature who had been both their captor and their rescuer, squinted against the glare of the late-afternoon sun and finished mopping the blood off Jay's left wrist, revealing more small, chewed lacerations.

  "They don't look as bad as this one."

  "The little ones are worse. The heavy bleeding would at least clean the wound. Voragels are poisonous," Matthiall said. "A tiny bite can do a lot of damage. She's taken several; she'll be full of poison."

  Sophie felt momentarily light-headed. "Will she live?"

  Matthiall finally looked up at Sophie. His face bore no expression. "Probably not," he said, and turned
his attention back to Jayjay.

  Sophie increased the pressure on the torn artery. Live, dammit, she thought. You have to. You can't leave me here alone.

  Sophie could taste the bitter stink of sweat and the iron tang of blood at the back of her throat when she breathed; her fingers slid in Jay's blood, blood that formed golf-ball-sized clots, that soaked Jay's khaki shirt and pants almost black. Sophie tried not to think about the blood, tried not to think about Jay's husband Steven and Steven's friend Lee, tried not to let herself consider the possibility, however faint, of slow and wasting death by AIDS. Modern plague. Such diseases had no place in Glenraven.

  Matthiall rummaged through her emergency kit, and through his pack. He didn't find what he was looking for in her kit, and when he pulled a couple of dingy brown skin-wrapped packets out of his supplies, she shuddered.

  Sophie said, "The wraps in the emergency kit are sterile. We can make a pressure bandage."

  "Not good enough. A bandage will not stop the bleeding, only slow it. We have to close the wound." He unwrapped the tie around one of his little packets and removed a curved silver needle, and from the other one he drew out some brown, twisted thread; lumpish thread that looked like he'd rolled it through the dirt.

  "My God," Sophie said. "You can't intend to sew her arm with that. It'll rot off!"

  Matthiall glanced at her, and she winced at the coldness of his eyes. "This is fine, twisted-gut thread. Do you have something better?"

  Sophie didn't have any suture. She shook her head.

  "I've done this before. Not often, but enough to know what I'm doing. If she lives, it will be the grace of the gods, but if she dies, it won't be because of my gut thread."

  Sophie thought of the poison and bit her lip. "When will we know if she'll live?"

  His jaw set. "Shortly."

  Sophie cleaned the skin around the laceration with alcohol pads and poured peroxide into the wounds. Then she got out a roll of white cloth gauze.

  Matthiall nodded. "Very good. You know to clean a wound before treating it. That is not common knowledge among the Machnan."

  "It is among North Carolinians." She didn't like the Kin's condescending tone.

  He glanced up at her from under his long, pale lashes, and she saw his eyebrows flick upward. "My apologies," he said, then turned his attention back to Jay. Sophie mopped fresh blood out of the wound with a couple of gauze pads. She held pressure both above and below the torn artery, and managed to keep the wound from refilling before Matthiall found the spot he wanted. He located the torn ends of the artery, jabbed the curved needle through the ripped flesh, and pulled gently.

  Matthiall took his time, making small, neat stitches, mopping the blood away before each one. The bleeding slowed down. Then it stopped.

  He ran a line of suture through the skin above the torn artery, and lastly, he sewed the lips of the wound together.

  Sophie watched, impressed in spite of herself. She would never have imagined that those claw-tipped fingers could be so dexterous.

  While she bandaged over the cross-shaped line of stitches, he started on the other wounds, which, because they didn't involve bleeding from arteries, didn't require her assistance.

  He broke the silence with a question. "You have known her long?" He kept his head down, his eyes on his work. The hands moved slowly, steadily, carefully. Sophie heard an edge to his voice that belied the steadiness of his hands, though.

  "Most of my life."

  "What sort of person is she?"

  "Why do you care?"

  "I'm not certain. This matters to me, though."

  Sophie looked up at his face, at the sweat on his forehead and the shimmering beads of it on his upper lip; at his fierce attention to the work he did. He cared what happened to Jay; she couldn't imagine why he cared, but she believed that he did.

  "She's a good friend. Loyal. Brave. She does what she thinks is right, no matter what it costs her. She isn't very good at taking advice, but she doesn't offer a lot of it, either. To the best of my knowledge, she has never told a secret that someone else told her." Sophie held Jay's limp, hot, dry hand and wished she could feel some life in it—some movement.

  Matthiall nodded. "She has a lover…a mate? Children?"

  Sophie studied Matthiall's face, but his expression gave away nothing. She thought of Steven, and sighed. "No. No one. Not anymore."

  "She did once?"

  Sophie wondered how much Jay would want her to tell this creature who was working so hard to save her life. She decided that, since Jay hadn't been particularly secretive about the men in her past, she needn't be, either. "She had three different husbands. None of them was worth the powder to blow him up."

  Matthiall's forehead crinkled in puzzlement. "Powder? To blow?"

  "All three of them were bad men. Users. Trouble."

  "Ahh."

  The second wound was ready for her bandaging. She waited, though, because it was close to the third bite, and she didn't want to get in his way. She didn't want to get next to him, either. Not really.

  His stitching slowed down, and for an instant he stopped altogether. His shoulders tensed, and his claws flexed and retracted. "Three men and all three bad men." For an instant his upper lip curled back in a snarl that showed his fangs clearly. He looked at Sophie, and sighed, and the snarl vanished. "I see something in her that I do not understand. Something I believe is impossible…and yet I see it."

  "What?"

  He sighed again and resumed stitching. "It's only a dream. Nothing more than a dream. And impossible dreams are better left unspoken." He finished sewing the third wound.

  Sophie watched him. He took Jay's hand in his own, and held his other hand beside hers. He sat staring at them, a slight frown marking his face. He's comparing, Sophie thought. Why, though? And what impossible dreams did he dream when he looked at their hands?

  Matthiall lay Jayjay's hand across her chest, then packed the needle back in its wrapper and sprinkled a little powder on it. While he put his supplies away, Sophie bandaged the other two wounds.

  When she was finished, Matthiall, his pack already on his back, crouched by Jay's side and scooped her into his arms. He stood easily and looked down at Sophie. "We need to put distance between us and this place before sunset. While day is on our side, my people will not follow us, but they can easily outstrip you and me if we aren't hidden once night falls. We need to create a safe camp while we have daylight."

  Sophie stood and picked up her pack and Jay's. He led off across the field, heading for a nearby copse of trees. She asked, "Why will your people only follow us after dark?"

  "The Kin and their associates are burned by sunlight to varying degrees. None of us enjoy it, but it kills most of us."

  "Why not you?" Sophie realized how rude that sounded, and cleared her throat. "Not that I would want it to, you understand. I just wondered."

  "First, I'm a Kintari—a wizard. That confers some protection. Second, I'm old. With age comes strength."

  Sophie laughed. "Yeah. You're ancient. You have to be…what? Twenty-five. Twenty-eight, tops?"

  "Two hundred and ten."

  "Is that in dog years?" Sophie blurted.

  "Dog years?"

  She sighed. "Never mind. I was wondering how you measured a year."

  He glanced sidelong at her and smiled wryly. "The same way you do, I imagine. One rotation of the earth around the sun. Or are North Carolinians like Machnan? Do they still believe the sun circles the earth as the moon does?"

  Sophie laughed.

  "No? You're very forward thinking." He smiled a tiny smile that vanished when he looked down at Jay, lying limp in his arms.

  He glanced at the sun, already low in the sky, and picked up his pace. His sense of urgency conveyed itself clearly to Sophie; though no danger showed itself at that moment, something terrible—something deadly, fearful even to him—pursued them.

  Forty

  Aidris Akalan sat alone in her audience chamber
, facing her chief of guards, Terth. He stood in front of her, pale and sweating, his fists clenching and unclenching, but he held his head high and his eyes met hers.

  "Why is Hultif not with you?"

  The guard said, "His burrow has been abandoned. His clothing, the paraphernalia with which he did his magic, his books and notes—all are gone. He isn't here anymore."

  Aidris tapped a finger on the armrest of her chair. "That isn't what I asked you, Terth. What did I ask you?"

  Terth swallowed; she could see his Adam's apple bob in his throat. He glanced up and to his right, frowning, then looked back to her. "You asked me why he wasn't with me?"

  "Yes."

  "He's gone, Watchmistress. Completely gone."

  She smiled, and watched the remaining color drain from his face. "My question was not where Hultif was. My question was why he wasn't with you. This is your last chance to give me an acceptable answer. If you don't, you will not like what happens next."

  Terth nodded and stared down at his feet. His breathing grew rapid, and the sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped off of his chin and his eyelashes and the end of his nose. His skin was a bloodless gray. He was as near dead from fright as one of the Alfkindir could be. Finally, he faced her again. He said, "He is not with me because I could not find him."

  "You looked for him?"

  Terth nodded.

  "But you could not find him."

  Terth nodded again.

  "I see." She smiled, and her chief of guards returned a tentative smile. She continued, still smiling. "That's the wrong answer, Terth. Do you know what the right answer would have been?" Terth made no response, but she didn't expect one. She continued as if he had answered in the affirmative. "The right answer would have been, 'He is not with me because I killed him…but I can bring you his head if you would like to have it.' Do you see that that would have been a good answer?"

  He nodded slowly and licked his lips. His eyes, white-rimmed, looked like they would pop out of his skull at any moment and flee of their own accord.