Karavans (58 page)

Through the roaring of the wind she heard him calling for her. His voice sounded more distant.

Panic swept through her body. “Gillan?” She ran three steps, then stopped. What if she was moving away from him? What if he was going in another direction as he looked for her? “
Where are you
?”

This time she heard nothing.

In her head she said:
Mother Mother Mother … O, Mother of Moons
…

She was alone.

Ellica grabbed up her skirts and began to run.

IT OCCURRED TO Audrun to doubt herself when she saw the human-shaped form. Was it the guide? Could it
be
the guide? Or was it a hallucination, a wish wished so hard, a prayer prayed with all the conviction of her body, with such an investment in belief and hope that she fooled herself?

It was him. It had to be; she wanted it too badly.

His features were indistinct. The only thing recognizable in the rain now beating down was the shape of his body and the telltail swinging, as he turned, of multiple braids. It was. It
was
.

She shouted his name. And took such sheer joy in relief that weariness dissipated. She could run again, and did, even as he, echoing her movements, came running in her direction. She registered braids, the gloom-dulled shine of ornamentation, the shape of his body, so lean and fit, and the burgeoning of a grin, as he arrived, that displayed white teeth and deep dimples.

And then she saw the grin fade, saw horror reshape his features. Saw a helplessness in his eyes.

Fear replaced relief even as she gasped for breath.

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer. He drew his knife and cut into his left wrist. Before she could speak, he sheathed the knife and took the single stride necessary to stand very close.

With one hand he cupped the back of her skull, holding it still; he pressed his left wrist, his bleeding wrist, against her mouth. “Drink.”

Audrun recoiled, stunned, but his right hand held her in place. She jerked her face aside hard, feeling the warmth of blood on her face. Mother of Moons, what
was
this? His blood? “What are you doing!”

“Drink it.” Grim determination and an unshielded desperation shaded his tone. “I know—I do know it sickens you … but you must. I swear it. You must.”

She struggled to break free, but now his right hand gripped hair as well as her skull. Her lips pulled away from her teeth. “Are you mad?”

He turned her then with both hands, blood still flowing freely from his left wrist. “Look. See it?” Fingers bit into her shoulders. “This is to keep you safe—to keep you as you are. Do you wish to be changed? Be certain of this: Alisanos will do it.”

He was close to her, so close, right arm around her ribs, the left wrist once again pressed against her mouth. But now she didn’t move. She didn’t protest. She stared across his forearm, transfixed.

Blackness crawled across the ground. It was flood tide, it was wildfire; it was consumption of everything. It crept forward inexorably, swallowing earth and air.

IN THE SHELTER of the boulders, shielded by close-grown trees, wrapped in blankets and oilcloth, Torvic scooted closer to his sister. “Meggie, don’t cry. They’ll come find us. The guide said so.”

But she cried all the harder.

“Meggie, stop.”

Sobs wracked her words. “I want Da … I want Mam and Da!”

“He went to find them. He went to find all of them. They’ll come, Meggie. Don’t cry.”

Lightning sliced through the trees. Accompanying thunder crashed over their heads.

“We have to wait,” Torvic said. “He told us to wait. He’ll bring them. He said so.”

Megritte cried.

Torvic wormed an arm behind her back. It wasn’t long enough to curl around her ribs the way Da did it. “They’re coming, Meggie. He promised. Don’t cry.”

But as Torvic hugged his sister as best he could, tears ran down his face.

FERIZE SHED HER clothing. Brodhi, still smiling into the storm, watched her dance, shared her joy, understood the exuberance of her spirits.

Nude, she thrust her arms into the air over her head as the wind whipped at her hair. She spun and spun, and with each revolution color came into her flesh. He watched as the scale pattern asserted itself, climbing from naked toes up toward her knees, slipping earthward from her neck. Bit by bit she was clothed in scales, in the complex latticework of multihued opalescence. When all of her flesh was colored she stopped her spinning, stopped her dance. Her eyes, as she looked at him, were green. The pupils were no longer round. Her tongue, as she opened her mouth, was forked.

Despite the human-shaped body, what looked at him now had no humanity in her.

“Go ahead,” Brodhi said indulgently. “You know you want to.”

Ferize laughed at him. Then she leaped into the air and exploded in a shower of crystalline flakes as she sought to ride the wind.

He grinned. She was nothing now but a blot in the sky, stretching wings and claws and tail.

Heated rain, crimson lightning, unceasing thunder. Earth that shuddered.

Brodhi fell to his knees. He stretched out his arms, arched his spine, tipped his head backward, turning his face to the heavens. He laughed for the joy of it.

Alisanos was coming.

PAIN WAS A KNOT in Audrun’s chest. “My children!”

“Drink,” the guide directed.

But she could not. It sickened her.

“We can’t escape,” he said, “not anymore. But if you take my blood into you, there may be some protection.”

She knew exactly what it was, the devouring blackness. He had warned all of them. He had tried to keep them from placing themselves at risk. He had tried to see them to safety after risk became reality. She trusted him.

But to drink his blood?

Once again he pressed his bleeding arm against her face. “
Please
.”

Her gorge rose. She wrenched free, spinning in place, turning her back on the black tide consuming the grasslands. She caught one glimpse of the knowledge in his face, of the fear so like her own, though she knew, without knowing how she knew, that his fear was for her. Not for himself.

Because Alisanos would change her.

Panic put her to flight. He leaped, and caught her. Dragged her close. “We have to stay togeth—” But the world went black around them, smothering her scream, stealing the air in her lungs. It took her into itself and slammed the door shut behind her.

As consciousness waned, Audrun was visited with a vision: an old, filthy man with claws in place of hands, begging her to take him back to Alisanos.

To take him home.

And then the guide was torn from her, or she from him, as her presence in the human world was erased.

T
HE EARTH BENEATH ILONA SHUDDERED. A bolt of crimson lightning hissed across the heavens with thunder on its tail, thunder loud enough, strong enough, to threaten her hearing. Ilona hunched shoulders against it and ducked her head, flinching. And the reflex hurt. Badly.

She cradled her injured arm against her breasts and gasped in pain, clamping teeth shut on a moan. She could see nothing; the day itself had been swallowed by a frightful dance of harrowing wind, blinding lightning, and burning rain; of dirt and debris and the turgid blackness of roiling clouds. Her hair hung loose and heavy, tangled and wet, straggling down into her lap as she sat upon the trembling earth.

She drew in a breath—and held it. For a moment she believed she was imagining it, but no. The rain
had
slackened. It had been a hard, painful rain, scalding against her scalp, unlike any rain she had endured. This was a rain created by Alisanos.

But now it ceased. Ilona released her breath on a murmured prayer to Sibetha.

The quality of light changed. She looked up into the sky. Black clouds were thinning. Lightning had ceased, and thus the thunder. Even the wind was losing strength, fading to a
breeze that was also dying out. And the sun, occluded for so long, burned through the thready remains of dissipating clouds. Day dawned again.

But Ilona closed her eyes.

Day dawned—but was it over Sancorra province? Or did she live now within the confines of Alisanos?

IT TOOK HIM. It tasted him. It spat him out.

Rhuan, rousing, could only laugh hoarsely.

No more wind. No more lightning. No more thunder. No more rain. No more world as he had known it, living among the humans.

He lay upon rock, arms and legs sprawled, face upturned. The primary sun was very white in a pale sepia sky, while the small secondary sun burned yellow. The double suns of Alisanos heated the stone beneath him. His body answered the comfort, aches and pains fading. He found himself disinclined to leap up, or even to sit up. Upon stone humans would find hot, he lay and reveled in the heat. He was a creature of such warmth, was a child craving it.

The membrane in his eyes covered them against the brilliance of two suns, turning the world red. But as he came back to himself, the membrane lifted. It slid away, banishing the haze, and he saw clearly again.

Sepia sky, not blue. White sun, yellow sun. Trees grew up from the earth twisted, not straight, rose from the tangle of roots serpentining upon the earth from tree to tree to tree; rose from the heavy underbrush of thorns, briars, and needles. Blackened trunks knotted, branches latticed, bearing wide, sharp leaves and twining purple vines. Vines that reached to other trees like humans holding hands.