Foxfire (88 page)

Rigat caught him as he fell. Fellgair's mouth opened, but all that emerged was a wheezing gasp. He squeezed his father's hand—the fingers like dry twigs between his—and let his power seep into him.

Fellgair's body sucked it up as greedily as Darak's. Flesh fattened the hollows between his ribs. Color returned to the ashen face. But he shook his head, his eyes so desperate that Rigat broke off the healing. Only then did the straining body relax in his arms.

“Why didn't you come to me sooner? I told you I would help.”

“I did.” A reedy voice, barely recognizable. “You were too drugged to listen.”

It was possible. He needed the drugs every night to keep the nightmares at bay. But he recalled one time in Carilia. Golden eyes staring into his. A voice calling his name. He'd assumed the drugs had twisted his perception. So he had blamed Nekif. And beaten him.

Guilt made his voice brusque. “Well, I'm not drugged now. What do you want? And if you're just going to lecture me—”

“Your mother is dying.”

Rigat recoiled. “If this is one of your tricks—”

“Don't be a fool, boy! Griane is dying! Use your power if you don't believe me. Search for her energy. But hurry. Please! There's not much time.”

The raw terror on the Trickster's face swayed him. And when Rigat focused his power on his mother and felt the uncertain flicker of her energy, the same terror engulfed him.

 

 

 

The sky blazed with color—gold, rose, purple. It reminded Keirith of the spectacular sunsets he had seen in Zheros. He was still admiring it when he heard the rustle of grass. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Hircha trotting toward him.

“I brought your supper,” she said, sliding to the ground beside him.

“You didn't have to do that. Holtik will take the watch as soon as it's dark.”

She handed him a tiny doeskin bundle. “The last of the mutton.”

“That's for the children. We all agreed.”

“The women decided the men needed the meat more. You're skin and bones, all of you.”

He unwrapped the bundle and rolled onto his side, chewing the tough meat slowly. Hircha lay beside him, gazing west.

“It's like a gift,” he said. “A final, beautiful sunset before we cross into the First Forest.”

“Do you think it will work?”

“It has to.”

“Even with Fellgair's help, we may not get everyone through.”

Keirith grimaced; talking about Fellgair spoiled the beauty of the sunset.

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“Why does everyone keep defending him? You. Mam.”

“Griane cares about him. And I . . . I care about Griane.”

“I wished he'd stayed away. Why can't he just let her go?”

“Because he loves her. Just as he loved Darak.”

“He has a strange way of showing his love.”

Still gazing out over the forest, Hircha said, “So do you.”

For a moment, he could only stare at her. Then he cleared his throat, feeling as awkward and uncertain as he had that afternoon on the beach in Zheros when she had tried to seduce him. And the morning three years later when they had kissed for the second time.

It had taken him days to work up the courage. When he had seen her walking toward the lake, he'd clutched his fishing line so tightly his nails dug into his palms. He must have looked desperate—or terrified; her smile of greeting changed into an anxious frown. Before he lost his nerve, he dropped the line and grabbed her shoulders. He could still remember her waterskins bumping against his legs, the painful click of their teeth—and then, her hands pushing him away.

A hot flush of shame suffused him at the memory. And then another—hotter still but not of shame—as her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips. He waited for her to look at him, to give him some sign, but she kept staring at the forest.

Then she licked her lips again. “Everyone in the cave . . . they're packing and talking and telling the children stories about the First Forest.”

Confused by the sudden shift in the conversation, he mumbled, “Are they?”

“The children can't wait to see the One Tree. But the adults are thinking about what might go wrong. Wondering if this is our last night together.”

“It won't be,” he said with more confidence than he felt.

Hircha nodded, clearly unconvinced.

“You said yourself there was hope.”

“Like a child reciting a charm. Say it often enough and maybe the bad things will go away. But they never do.”

For the first time, she looked at him. He was taken aback by her fierce expression.

“Well, if something goes wrong, don't expect me to say good-bye. I lost my birth family. My husband. And one by one, I'm losing my second family. First Darak. Then Faelia. And now—” She broke off. “I can't lose you, too.”

Before he could offer any meaningless reassurance, she pushed him back on the grass. His arms automatically went around her, but his mind registered the bruising intensity of her kiss, the rigidity of her body. He told himself it was only her need to make up for so many lost years. His body ached with the same need. It urged him to forget that they could be seen by anyone on the hilltop, to accept their awkward groping as an indication of passion long suppressed, to ignore the gnawing doubt that there was something wrong about this moment.

He tore his mouth away from hers to whisper, “Hircha. Wait.”

She silenced him with more kisses and shoved his tunic up. The shock of her cool fingers sliding over his flesh jolted him into momentary forgetfulness, but when she fumbled with the drawstrings of his breeches, his hands captured hers.

“Not here. Later. In one of the grottos.”

“Nay!”

The fear in her voice doused his passion. “Why not?” He grabbed her arms, holding her away from him so he could look up into her face. “Why not, Hircha?”

“I want you now.”

“We've waited this long . . .”

Strands of hair brushed his cheeks as she shook her head. Her fear stabbed his spirit, as real as the scream of the wood pigeon all those years ago, as visceral as the screams of dying men.

He pulled her into his arms and stroked her hair. One part of him marveled that this was happening; another continued to seek explanations. She could have come to him anytime since they had arrived at the hill. Why today? Especially since they had a plan that could—would—guarantee the tribe's survival.

It must have something to do with Fellgair's visit. He would not have come simply to bid Mam farewell. They were planning something. And Hircha knew about it and was determined to keep it from him.

Rigat. It had to be. Rigat was coming to see Mam. And Hircha had decided to seduce him rather than risk having his vision come true.

He thrust her away and shook her hard. “When is he coming?”

No mistaking the terror in her eyes or the desperate way she clutched at him. When he broke free, she grabbed his ankle. He fell hard, bruising his hip. She fought him as fiercely as she had kissed him, but he finally managed to push her off.

“Please, Keirith! You have to wait!”

“For what?”

Her gaze shifted past him and her eyes widened. Keirith staggered to his feet and spun around, groping for his dagger. Then he froze.

“You must wait,” Fellgair said, “for Rigat to choose.”

B
LOOD. EVERYWHERE. Soaking her skirt. Staining the wolfskins. Snaking into the crevices in the rock. Pooling in the deep gashes in her wrists. The metallic stink of it filling the tiny cave. The brilliant streams of it glistening in the firelight.

“Nay . . .”

He had expected an arrow wound, a sword slash, broken bones from a fall. Anything but this.

He had driven her from her home. Hunted her like an animal. Killed her only daughter. And now, trapped on this barren hill, she had chosen to kill herself rather than surrender to the Zherosi.

Rigat knelt beside his mother. So white, her face. And her hand, so cold beneath the warm coating of blood.

“Nay.”

He dug his fingertips into her neck. Flattened his palm between her breasts. Pressed his face against hers, searching in vain for a pulse, a heartbeat, a faint exhalation of breath.

She couldn't be dead. She was Griane the Healer. She was his mam.

“Nay!”

Three times. Three times for a charm.

The power surged on an upwelling of terror and defiance. Her body convulsed, shocked by the onslaught, but her heart refused to answer his summons.

He reached into her spirit. For a terrifying moment, he felt nothing. Then he found a wisp of energy, as fragile as a single strand of a spiderweb.

Clinging to their tenuous connection, he gave her more power, but the thread of her spirit drifted farther away, seeking the longed-for release from pain and the brilliant sunlight of the Forever Isles. Seeking Darak, her first love.

“Don't leave me, Mam!”

Hers was the face that was always before him, the voice that he always heard—sharp or sweet, chastising or praising—when he considered his actions. Long before he had recognized his power, he knew her face, her voice, her touch. And before that, a tiny creature in her womb, they had been one body, one blood, one being that was also two. Like the magical tree of the First Forest.

His power flooded her spirit, a summons, a plea, a desperate cry. The gossamer strand of her spirit shivered as new threads sprouted, twisting together into a pulsing braid of life, an umbilical cord that linked them as surely as that first one in her womb.

His power roared into her heart. Again, her body convulsed, but this time, he felt a feeble flutter beneath his hands. Like the wings of a tiny bird. Like Darak's heart.

He seized the hands that had cradled him as a babe and reached out to catch him when he took his first tottering steps. The hands that had braided his hair and sewn his clothes and bandaged his scrapes. That had tickled him and made him laugh and, once or twice, smacked his bottom before pulling him close for the hug that always followed a scolding.

If he could force open the gates of Chaos to find his father, he could defeat the Dark Hunter Ardal to save his mother.

His power spiraled into the ruined flesh of her wrists. He thrust aside terror to draw on patience, on skill, on determination. On love.

He was the spider repairing her web, the salmon that battled upstream to spawn. The fox that outsmarted his prey and the wolf that outran his. He was the relentless heat of Heart of Sky and the eternal strength of Halam, the earth goddess. He was the gentle rain of The Changing One of the Clouds and the thundering force of Lacha's waterfalls. He was Fellgair the Trickster who had defied the Lord of Chaos, and Griane the Healer who had brought the Spirit-Hunter back from death.

He began to stitch together the lacerated veins and arteries, to weave the severed strands of sinew, to patch the tough bands of ligaments. His hands grew hot. Beads of sweat ran down his cheeks like tears.

Light flared behind his closed eyelids, the same dazzling explosions of red and orange and fiery white he remembered from healing Jholianna and Darak. But there were so many more this time, as if thousands of tiny suns were exploding along with all the stars in the night sky.

Something soft against his cheek, something tickling his mouth. The swell of his mother's breast, a strand of his mother's hair. He couldn't remember slumping against her. He hadn't the strength to pull himself upright. He could only lie there, breathing in her scent as he used to when he crept under her wolfskins at night.

He could no longer feel her hands, only the cool stickiness of the blood under his fingertips, under his knees. The blood that had drained from her body.

A sob rose up in his throat. He could repair the wounds. He could jolt her heart into life again. But without blood, she would still die.

Why had he tried to repair this poor, empty shell? There was only one way to save her.

The smallest flicker of response.

The smallest spark of awareness.

The way Darak had saved Keirith.

The way he had sustained Jholianna.

Until he could find a Host for her. A new body, young and strong and whole. She would never have to endure the pain of aging. She would never have to fear injury or illness or death. And they would remain together forever, their love uniting them, their lives spanning centuries.