Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (43 page)

He should have tried. Gil would have tried. Hell, Gil would have succeeded, told some crazy story that somehow sounded plausible, left them all laughing and with the gun and ammunition resting in their pockets. Gil was dead. Move on.

His gut spasmed again, and he dug his fist into the torn muscles, chasing pain with pain. He’d thought there’d been less blood this morning, had hoped it was healing again, but carrying the boat had nearly done him in. Thank God he hadn’t had to row.

Something rustled in the thick creeper that grew beside what passed for a path. He turned, lifting the knife, and saw the leaves trembling at ankle height. Some ordinary animal, frightened by their presence: nothing to worry about. He took a breath, felt it hitch in his groin, and made himself move on.

They would find the spot, he told himself. They’d find the spot, and Jerry would set the circle, and they’d call the thing and bind it. If they could drive it out of its host, it would be trapped, would have no place to go but the tablets, and the tablets would call it, compel it. Then they would complete the binding, bury the tablets, and put an end to the creature. Or at least put it where it could harm no one else.

The path they’d been following took a sharp turn and came into a scrap of more open ground. To the left, the hillside dropped away toward the lake, a slope of earth and rock like the scar of an avalanche. The moon was up now, the third quarter lifting over the hills to the east, the clouds fading. A good night for flying, he thought, irrelevantly; good weather tomorrow, too.

“Well?” Alma said softly, and Lewis hunched his shoulders for a moment.

“Further up,” he said. “Deeper in the woods. That way.”

“Damn,” Jerry said, under his breath.

Mitch glanced back, saw him take a step and stumble, the artificial leg catching somehow so that he fell forward and sideways, the cane clattering away from him down the slope. It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen, but this time he was slow to get up, rolled to his knees and then sat back on the ground, reaching for the leg of his pants.

“No,” he said. “Oh, not now.”

The clouds cleared the moon, throwing sudden shadows, and Mitch caught his breath. The wooden peg was cracked through, bent at a thirty-degree angle a little above where the ankle would have been. There was no walking on that, not on this ground, and Mitch dug his fist into his stomach again.

“Are you all right?” Alma asked. “I mean, otherwise.”

Jerry bit back something unpleasant, and nodded instead. “Yes. But I can’t walk.”

“I see that,” Alma said, steadily. “All right. You’ll — you and Mitch will stay here. It’s as safe as any place we’ve passed, you’ll be able to see anybody coming from the woods or from the lake.”

“Al,” Mitch began, and she fixed him with a stare.

“I told you before, I know you’re hurt. And we can’t leave anyone alone.”

Lewis came back up the slope, carrying Jerry’s cane. Jerry took it from him silently and handed him the wrapped tablets in exchange. “Al’s right.”

“I know she’s right,” Mitch said. He made himself smile, though he felt more like cursing. “She always is.”

Lewis smiled back. “She’s good like that.” He looked at Alma, and she nodded. “That way.”

Mitch watched them go, vanishing almost at once into the dark between the trees. The moon was behind a cloud again, and the air felt suddenly cold.

“Damn it,” Jerry said again.

Right. Mitch took his fist away, and began looking around the slope for pieces of wood. He came back with a handful of sticks, the biggest as thick as three fingers, and sat down beside Jerry, who gave him a look.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to fix your leg,” Mitch answered.

Jerry stared at him. “What’s the point?”

“We’re going to have to walk out of here sometime,” Mitch said, and hoped it was true.

T
he trees arched overhead. Between their branches the stars shone, close and distant at once. Beneath his feet last years’ leaves crackled unbearably loud on the forest floor. He held up his hand, and Alma stopped, silent in his shadow. Sight was useless, physical or otherwise; the creature had pulled the dark around itself like a cloak. Lewis listened.

There was no sound except for the wind in the branches, the distant hooting of an owl. The woods were still.

And yet the wind told him something. A rank small, faint and real, a young man unwashed from a day of hard labor, his scent sharp with fear. He was there, just northwards, upwind. He was waiting.

Behind him Alma stood frozen, the shovel in her hands.

There was no sound.

And here was the problem. If they stopped where they were and started digging, it would be upon them. It had a knife. And it would have the jump on them. It could kill Alma before he could close, particularly if he were using the shovel, or it could attack him while she was digging. Certainly they’d never get a hole dug and some kind of ritual performed before it was on them, especially once it realized what they were doing. If Jerry and Mitch had been there — but they weren’t. It was him and Alma, and they weren’t enough. The creature had every reason to attack, and nothing to lose.

Which meant he was going to have to take it down first.

The knowledge settled over him, a cold certainty. This was what it came down to, just as it always had, hand to hand in the dark forest. He was going to have to kill its host.

And he was going to have to get rid of Alma. He couldn’t guard and hunt at the same time. While she was here, she was his vulnerability. He would guard her with his life, and in so doing, gave up initiative. He had to be free to go after it.

Lewis beckoned to her, his voice dropped low, but not whispering. The sound would carry less that way. “We need to ambush it,” he said. “This is going to take nerve.”

“Ok.” Her eyes met his squarely, light-filled beneath the stars, and it washed over him that this might be the last time he saw her. The last things he said to her would be lies.

Lies that kept her safe. “I want you to head back to the lake toward Mitch and Jerry. Don’t try to be quiet. Make it follow you. I’ll be right behind it, stalking it. That’s the only way I see to get the jump on it. You decoy it, and I’ll get it.”

She stared at him, and he willed her to believe.

“No.” Alma shook her head. “What are you really — Lewis, no.”

“There’s no other way,” he said. “Tell me if there is, you’re the Magister, but — there isn’t one.”

He saw her take a breath, saw her face crumple just for an instant, before she smoothed the fear and grief away. “No,” she said again. “There isn’t.”

He took her by the shoulders, wanting to kiss her, one quick goodbye, just in case, and she lifted her thumb to mark a cross on his forehead.

“God go with you,” she said. “You are the lodge, tonight.”

He did kiss her then, a brush of lips that was almost chaste, and released her. “Go on.”

With a nod she turned, walking straight-backed through the trees, her hair pale in the moonlight. Lewis turned his back on her, knowing it could see him, and lifted his knife. Challenge, a blade glinting in the dappled moonlight through spring branches. The oldest challenge of all.

Two men go into the wood and one returns.

There was a small, swift noise among the trees, a shadow of movement. It was angling off, uphill, deeper into the woods. It knew.

He was the hunter now. He would follow and avoid its traps, follow relentlessly. Every sense sang, and his sweat dried cold on his skin. Branches stirred in the wind, moonbeams making a track through the forest. He would do what had to be done.

Hunter and hunted, they passed into the eaves of the forest.

A
lma walked straight-backed down the path that led back toward the lake, too proud to turn, too afraid of what she might already see. She was tempted to turn back, so tempted — she was the Magister, after all, she had more than a knife at her disposal, and Lewis, strong as he was physically, was metaphysically untried. But. She was Magister, and this was her task. The story had passed beyond her. She had given her blessing, and let him go.

Because now she could not mistake the story. Two men go into Diana’s grove, and only one returns, but he returns a king. Two men go into the grove….
He doesn’t need to return a king, Diana, so long as he returns.

She kept walking, careless of the noise she made. The creature was hunting elsewhere, neither she nor Mitch nor Jerry were at risk now, not unless…. She slew that thought. Her clothes were still damp, sticking to her body, and she pulled them free, scowling. Her wrist and ankle stung where the net had chafed them. Her heart leaped then, but Lewis had the tablets. Jerry had given him the other one after he had broken his leg. So he had all the tools, everything he would need except the training.

And that’s why I should be there, she thought, rebelliously. That’s why I should go back. I know what to do, I’ve been trained, and I’m strong. But I wasn’t chosen. She lifted her head, looking for the moon among the leaves above her head. That was the heart of the matter, and the hardship: Lewis had been chosen, and she had not, and by all her oaths and training, she was bound to bless him and walk away. That was what it meant to command, to be Magister, to be able to send the right man and not go herself, even into the heart of danger, and she would pay that price. And if it required more…. She shook her head, refusing to allow the words to form. If it required more, well, she knew loss already. She would survive.

L
ewis pushed his way through the undergrowth, leaves catching at his sleeves, slapping at his face. The creature had long since left the trail; he followed the noises it made, and it followed him, the two of them circling in the dark. He had no idea how to find the trail again, but that was a worry for later. Now there was just the dance, the hunt.

He could hear something moving off to his right, a sudden thrashing in the underbrush. He took a quick step back, and a deer leaped through the gap between two trees, disappeared again into the dark. Disturbed by the creature, he guessed, and braced himself for the attack. For an instant, he caught the smell of it, sweat and fear, and then it was backing away, the sounds receding, surprise lost.

Lewis took a deep breath, let heart slow, and touched the tablets in his pocket. Ok, he thought, still there. Jerry said if it was dragged out of its host and couldn’t go anywhere else, it would go into the tablets, and, let’s face it, I’m probably going to have to kill this guy to get anywhere. And then it will be in the tablets, and I can take them back to Al and Mitch and Jerry and they can do whatever they have to do to bind and bury it. Maybe, if I’m really, really lucky, I won’t have to kill him. But somehow I’m going to have to force it back into the tablets. Somehow. If that was the story.

He looked up at the moon, just visible now between the leaves. Whatever else this was, it was her story, Diana’s story, her grove and her injury and her ancient enemy, out there in the wood. He’d seen it when he sent Alma away, though he hadn’t fully understood, and now that he did understand, he felt the chill of fear on his skin. Who was he to do this? Nobody, a washed up ex-Army pilot with a failed marriage, a weak sister who was happy to sponge off his friends, to let his girlfriend wear the pants, too cowardly to risk doing the right thing….

Alma’s voice spoke in memory:
if we don’t do this, who will
?

Who am I? A wry smile twisted his lips. I’m who there is.

I am yours
, he said to the moon.
Merciless one, untouched and untouchable, I am yours.

He passed between the trees where the deer had jumped, and found the path its herd had worn through the forest. The creature had moved off, out of earshot for now, but Lewis knew it was waiting, ready to strike. He followed the deer track anyway, figuring he’d trade mobility for exposure, and came abruptly to a fork in the path, the track dividing beneath the trees. The hairs at the back of his neck prickled. Crossroads.

He knelt down on the loam to taste the wind, to look for tracks and consider.

The procession came among the trees in bright sunlight, maidens in white leading it, their arms loaded with flowers. Youths followed, their tunics ungirdled, freshly leafing branches in their hands. And behind the ram walked, his horns wreathed with ivy, fresh to the sacrifice….

This way. This way was the grove, the original temple. It had not been a building of marble by the lake, not to begin with. It had been a grove in truth, a place in the wild wood where Diana laid Her hand long before Rome was built, before black ships plowed the seas.

The paths divided in the wood. Lewis took the left hand one.

A
lma made her way out between the trees and found Mitch and Jerry waiting in the clearing where she had left them. Jerry had his cane ready to hand, a pitiful weapon, and Mitch bent over him as though he were bandaging Jerry’s wooden leg. No, she realized, splinting it, mending it — so very Mitch, to ready himself for the future even at the worst of times. They both looked up at her approach, and Jerry closed his eyes, seeing her alone.

“Lewis?” Mitch sat back on his heels, frowning.

“Back in the woods,” Alma said. Her voice threatened to break, and she controlled it ruthlessly.

“You didn’t leave him,” Mitch began, and she glared down at him.

“Yes, I did. It was necessary.”

“But you’re our Magister. It’s your job to protect him.”

“I did everything I could,” Alma answered, stung, “and this is the way the cards fell.”

“He’s gone to the grove,” Jerry said, and Mitch gave him a startled look.

“Damn it. It should have been me,” Mitch said.

“Or me, or Jerry, or anyone, yes, I know.” Alma made her voice hard so that no one could hear the tears. “But it’s not our choice, it’s moved beyond our choice. He’s gone to the grove.”