Dagger's Point (Shadow series) (26 page)

After the encounters with Durgan and Cesanne, Jael had thought herself prepared for the disgusting, unformed appearance of skinshifters, but in this she was mistaken. Compared to these nightmare beings, Durgan and Cesanne at their most horrible had been a delight to look upon. These creatures had wandered so far from their humanity that Jael wondered uneasily if they had retained any memory of their prior lives. Although they wore only tattered, filthy shreds of clothing, it was impossible to distinguish male from female, or to even speculate whether any of them had been human, elven, or perhaps even Kresh. There was now a sort of obscene uniformity about them in the melting and re-forming limbs or features, in the misshapen eyes or fanged mouths that might erupt anywhere on the ever-shifting surface of their bodies, in the grayish, claylike skin that rippled with fur or scales or feathers in turn.

But there was no opportunity to ponder these monstrosities, for they were attacking, still as horribly soundless as before; somehow the very silence was more terrible than any cry they might make out of those malformed mouths. Clawed hands formed, only to dissolve into hooked tentacles that nonetheless reached eagerly toward their prey.

There was no time for fear, either. Jael lunged to meet the attack, Tanis forgotten, a glorious strength welling up from some hidden place in her soul. She screamed, a glad, fierce battle cry, and her sword flashed eagerly forward, shearing through amorphous flesh. Foul-smelling ichor spouted, and one of the shifters roared with pain and fury, but Jael was already moving, flowing like water, like molten stone through the veins of the earth, unconsciously dodging a clawing talon, then pivoting to slash at her attacker. This time the cry was choked off abruptly, and Jael saw a head roll into the fire.

Instinctively Jael leaped to the side, turning to slash again as a shifter landed where she had just been. The shifter’s hand—if it could be called such—closed around Jael’s arm, but fell away as Jael’s sword bit deep into its midsection, cleaving it nearly in two. To her surprise, she found her dagger in her other hand, and realized amazedly that she’d made that strike with her sword one-handed. Eyes sparkled in the moonlight; she slashed at the eyes with her dagger and saw them disappear behind spurting ichor. Shifters howled as Jael’s sword sliced effortlessly through melting flesh, clearing a comfortable space around her.

Suddenly there was another scream, and Jael realized that that scream had come from no shifter. Abruptly she froze, remembering Tanis. Gods, she’d forgotten him entirely!

And now there were a least three skinshifters between her and Tanis. No time for fear now, or caution. Jael moved instinctively, relying on that wonderful
rightness
of the sword in her hand, the swift strength that seemed to move her without thought. Skinshifters roared and screamed, and Jael dodged the claw that whistled by a fingerswidth from her face. Then Tanis was there in front of her, fallen to one knee, and the smell of his blood was hot and coppery in Jael’s nose—
How badly is he hurt?
—but then he was up again, wielding his sword with a kind of desperate fury. Claws dug into Jael’s thigh, but her back was guarded again, and her sword bit into shifter flesh with new energy.

Gradually the skinshifters fell back beyond the firelit circle as the number of fallen shifters—and shifter limbs—on the ground increased. Jael did not lower her guard; she couldn’t even be certain that the shifters lying motionless on the ground were actually dead, and she knew the others were only regrouping for a new assault. With so many of them there, they could simply out-wait Jael and Tanis.

“Jaellyn—” Tanis’s voice was weak. “I can’t keep going much longer.”

For a moment, Jael felt a flash of contempt—what a pitiful weakling!—but immediately was horrified at herself. She thrust her dagger into its sheath and turned to wrap her arm around Tanis’s waist; the right side of his tunic was sodden with blood, and more welled under her hand. His right hand only barely clasped his sword, but his left still firmly waved the burning branch.

“I think we can outrun them on the ponies,” she said, forcing out each word. Somehow it was almost unbearably galling to retreat. “Leave whatever’s not packed.”

By the time she reached the ponies, having to stop twice to fend off shifter attacks, Tanis was stumbling badly and seemed only half-conscious. There was nothing else for it; Jael quickly tied the ponies together on long leads and mounted the pony behind him, holding him up. The animals were pitifully eager to be gone, and Jael didn’t have to urge them to their greatest speed: in fact, she had to hold them back so that she could be certain they wouldn’t break a leg on the uneven ground. For a few tense moments she could hear the skinshifters behind them, frighten-ingly fast and seemingly unhindered by the darkness. Gradually, however, the sounds of pursuit faded, although Jael had no doubt that the uncanny creatures were tracking them through the forest.

Now Jael faced a horrible dilemma. She had no idea how serious Tanis’s injury was, and he was barely conscious. If she stopped to treat his wounds, however, the skinshifters might well catch up with them. And she was riding blind in an enchanted and hostile wood, with no idea of her direction; for all she knew, she might well be riding ever deeper into the Singing Forest.

Jael reached out desperately with her clumsy beast-speaking ability. Now that she was away from the skinshifters, she could feel animal minds, yes—and under them, the faint sense of some larger consciousness. Gods, was the Singing Forest itself alive, some kind of gigantic hungry thing? She fumbled through the animal minds around her, wincing as she felt her clumsy touch frightening, maybe even hurting them, but at last she found what she sought—an owl hunting at what was unmistakably the edge of the forest.

Surely the owl couldn’t be too far away if she sensed it so clearly. She clung to the fierce mind as if it were a beacon and rode desperately toward it, now completely supporting Tanis as he slumped unconscious in the saddle. It seemed that they rode forever in the darkness, Jael’s fear for Tanis a greater weight than his body slumped in her arms.

As she rode, she concentrated wholly on the owl, and well that she did—it seemed as if the moonlight was now coming from the east, now from the west, the wind alternating confusingly as well. Branches seemed to reach down from the trees to rake at her, and twice Jael smelled the rank aroma of skinshifters on the crazily changing breeze, although none appeared to menace them.

The horses slowed as fatigue outweighed their fear, but Jael urged them on. When they again faltered, Jael grimly did what she’d never believed she’d be capable of—she deliberately conjured the image of the skinshifters in her own mind and projected it to the ponies, who surged forward in renewed terror. By the time Jael was certain that the trees ahead were indeed thinning, the horses were stumbling and exhausted, barely able to walk. At last Jael almost wept with relief to see open sky ahead, moonlight silvering the tall grass of a wide plain.

Still Jael would not let the ponies stop until they were clear of the last saplings. At last she reined her pony in and slid off its back, then eased Tanis carefully down from the saddle. He stirred, moaning a little as Jael lowered him to the ground. Jael was alarmed at the quantity of blood soaking his tunic and shirt, although she was relieved that there appeared to be no new flow of blood from the wound.

Carefully, Jael eased the cloth of Tanis’s tunic and shirt up, her eyes widening as she saw the fearsome wound that had almost bared his ribs—and worse, the plain marks of skinshifter teeth in the flesh. The blood there was still fresh, but Jael was reassured that there was only a slow, sluggish seeping that a tight wrapping would easily control. She quickly rummaged through their packs for her kit of herbs and salves, glad to occupy her mind with other matters, even for a moment.

When she turned around, Tanis’s eyes were open and he was struggling to sit up.

“Jaellyn?” he gasped.

Jael rushed to his side, pushing him back to the ground.

“It’s all right, we’re safe,” she assured him. “Lie still and let me clean your side.”

Tanis lay back, watching Jael as she pawed through the kit, squinting at pots in the moonlight.

“Hadn’t you better light a fire?” Tanis asked hesitantly. “I mean, don’t you need to burn—” He gestured mutely at his side.

Jael didn’t meet his eyes.

“It’s not too bad,” she said. “A good firm dressing and you should be fine, but I doubt you’re going to be using your sword arm for a while. Still, you’ll—”

“Don’t you need to burn it?” Tanis repeated. His voice was shaking now, and his hand seized Jael’s wrist.

Jael clasped Tanis’s hand, reluctantly meeting his eyes.

“Tanis, it’s too late to burn it,” she said quietly. “It’s been over an hour since you were bitten. I’ve got some scratches, too.”

Tanis said nothing, but he was shaking as Jael cleaned and dressed the cruel wound and, almost as an afterthought, the scratches on her thigh as well.

“Our bedrolls and the tents, I left them behind,” Jael said quietly. “But there’s our cloaks still. Tomorrow at dawn we’ll start back for Willow Bend as soon as I figure out how far north or south of it we are. It can’t be far to the river from here.”

“But Willow Bend has no mages,” Tanis said slowly. “And we don’t even know how far away it is from here. Wherever we are.”

“In Willow Bend we can find out whether there are mages in Tilwich,” Jael said firmly. “We’ve got time, Tanis, up to maybe a week, and we’ll ride fast and hard. We’ll make it. Besides, there’s no certainty that either of us is infected.”

Tanis touched the bandages at his side.

“If this doesn’t make it certain that I’m infected,” he said slowly, “what would?”

“Several days or a mage’s diagnosis,” Jael said gently. “Tanis, you’ll be fine. We both will. Now you need to rest.”

Tanis squeezed her hand tightly, his own hand still shaking.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep,” he admitted. “And you haven’t slept at all. Why don’t you sleep and I’ll keep watch for a while?”

Jael smiled to herself. She’d learned enough about healing to know that after a fight so fierce and a wound so serious, Tanis would be asleep very, very soon.

“All right,” she said. “Let me get out the cloaks and put my salves away, and then I’ll get some sleep and let you take the watch. In the meantime, just lie still.”

Jael laid out the cloaks, helping Tanis wrap himself warmly in one of them, and then took her time packing her herbs and dressings away, setting out the pain potion Argent had given her. Tanis would need it tomorrow. By the time she was done, Tanis was sleeping so soundly that he did not rouse even when Jael wrapped the second cloak around him.

Too sleepy to dare sit down, Jael gazed around her. Behind them was the dark, endless bulk of the Singing Forest, but ahead stretched a great, rolling plain seemingly as endless, although she saw a darker line to the west that might indicate mountains. Tall grass was silvered in the moonlight, and gentle breezes made ripples that looked like the waves Jael had seen on the southern sea.

Jael gazed out at the plain, and although she remained silent, some part of her sighed. That deeply hidden part of her relaxed utterly and stretched pleasurably, the way she stretched sometimes in the morning as she came slowly, sweetly awake in her own bed. Every muscle in Jael’s body slowly relaxed. As inexplicably as she’d felt threatened in the forest, so she now felt safe, even welcomed. It didn’t have the feeling of home, but— but something like it, perhaps.

Jael shook her head, fighting down the instinctive comfort that might lead to dangerous lack of vigilance. They were in a strange land far from home and possibly infected from the shifter sickness, and as far as Jael knew, there was nothing preventing those shifters from coming out of the Singing Forest onto this plain that felt so safe and wonderful. Jael couldn’t afford to feel protected here.

She brushed the ponies thoughtfully, enjoying their pleasure as she coaxed the snarls and tangles from their coats.
They
were calm and unafraid here, grazing on the thick grass, the skinshifters forgotten.

Sighing, Jael sat down next to Tanis and waited for dawn.

“Jaellyn?”

Jael groaned and opened her eyes, every muscle screaming as she moved. Gods, she’d fallen asleep, and now she was thoroughly chilled, wet with dew, and cramped from sitting.

Tanis was half-sitting, his hand clasping his bandaged side.

“What?” Jael said irritably. “I know, we were going to leave at dawn. I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“No, that’s not it.” Tanis’s face was blank with despair. “Look at the sun.”

Jael looked. The sun was still low and dark orange; they weren’t
that
late. The sun looked just the same as it looked every morning, rising over the forest.

Oh, gods—
rising over the forest.

“We’ve come all the way out the west side of the Singing Forest,” Tanis said. “Wherever that is. Now we’ll have to go all the way north around it—and back through the dragon hills, too—to get to Willow Bend. And there’s probably not enough time.”

Jael shook her head unhappily, her fingers involuntarily touching the scratches on her thigh.

“We’ll start north,” she said flatly. “There’s nothing else to do. Can you ride?”

Tanis struggled up to a sitting position, his face pale.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “For a while. But you’d best tie me on, just to be safe.”

“Right.” Jael helped Tanis onto his pony, loading a few bags on behind him for support, and tied him securely in place. She placed the flask with the pain potion in his hand. “Take small sips of this if you need it. I’ll just lead your pony.”

“Jaellyn”—Tanis seized her hand, looking into her eyes—”If I’m infected, if I start to turn skinshifter—”

“You won’t,” Jael said quickly. “We don’t even know that you’re infected.”

“Jaellyn, listen to me,” Tanis said urgently. “We all heard the rumors in town, that High Lady Donya’s brother became infected with the shifter curse and she had to kill him. That’s true, isn’t it?”