Red Country (26 page)

I blinked, and in that blink it was there. The figure of a man, standing on the path.

Or so I thought at first. But there was something wrong with its stance, as if it were out of plumb with the ground. Moreover, the edges would not settle into focus, they had the continual crisp and waver of heat above a fire. And though the clothes were still the entire figure moved, as a sheet of paper ripples in a draft.

Too puzzled for fear, I blinked again. The figure of a man, in a long black robe mottled with ash, hands folded on his breast. . . .

My breath caught. There was a huge wound, wet, open, manifestly a death blow, in the side of his throat. I gasped and my eyes shot to his face.

It was marble-white, set as in death, a proud, cold, nobly boned face, but with a hint of the raptor that chilled me more than the wound. The eyes were closed. But as I watched, they opened. And whatever it was looked at me.

The eyes were white, all white, but there were irises, for they were defined by the prick and sift of red and golden fire, like the heart of a great white maerian gem. It was a movement I recognized. The aedric mobility.

Some things can be so abnormal the impulse of fear does not pertain. Yet I know now that my calmness was unnatural too. As I stared, another shape materialized beside the first.

It was a man as well. The neck was twisted awry. The mouth bore a restless, reckless, defiant smile, and that same smile shot white blades like lightning through the narrow black eyes. I did not notice the clothes, for a third figure had appeared beyond them, a woman with a riot of cornelian curls and gold-shot black eyes and a huge hideous bruise on her throat.

Others crowded them, a white-skinned, black-eyed man as lithe and sleek and deadly as a water-snake, a woman with russet eyes and a positive cloak of cornelian hair, more and more of them, all sharing a family resemblance. But then another figure appeared, well to their left, and it was quite different.

It was another man, but the hair was coppery gold, flung back from the brows as with the wind of violent speed, and the eyes were green, an intense spitting green that leapt from the thin eagle's face. I never saw such a ruthless face. If it was a predator, it was a predator on an elemental scale, volcanic in its passions, tempestuous in the mere passage of its thoughts.

Beside it appeared a man with the same bones but with golden hair and vivid sparkling blue eyes, and a mouth that smiled with caustic bitterness. The next had copper hair and green eyes; but his were fine black brows, and that face was a caricature of the master design, the violence decayed to slow, cruel, conscious wickedness. Then came a woman with the green eyes under a cap of silver hair and the passion transmuted to a bland ungovernable willfulness. I shivered, seeing her, and thanked the Four I had been born female, to escape such a woman's snare.

More and more figures crowded round them or formed fresh groups, too quickly to note individuals, but a great many bore wounds that spoke of a violent death. One group reminded me elusively of Zam, except their eyes were less gray than the white of midwinter hail. In another group I recall a woman with eyes the luminous gray of fenghend gems amid a cloud of charcoal hair, a man in chain mail with the same eyes and a hideous red mash for the lower part of his face, a white-haired man whose green eyes had a cat's cruel, impassive stare. And then I recognized a face.

Gray eyes, limpid as rainwater, arrogant bones, silver hair, hands folded on a blue desert robe. Fengthira, as Zam had shown me her in Phathire.

I must have known then, without admitting it. The spell snapped, and I was not merely frightened but caught in an overmastering terror that silenced reason and overbore reflex and drowned everything in one panic urge to run. I spun round, and recoiled.

There were more behind me. In perfect silence they had gathered, eight, ten, fifteen groups of them. The circle was shut.

I swung wildly to the front. The circle had contracted, though none of them appeared to move.

I backed. This time the circle closed in, visibly. I was looking straight at the first green-eyed man and there was life in those eyes now, they saw me, there was a reaction, and it was cruelty, pure, gloating cruelty, the eyes of a big cat poised for the quarry to run.

There was a thud of feet. Something struck my back, a hand whirled me round, my face was driven into sweat-rank blue cloth and Zam shouted with his voice cracked in frenzy, “Not her, you fools! Not her!”

Then, faster still, stumbling as over an incantation, “Arskan vist, Asthyn! Helve.” And with an impulsion that nearly lifted me off my feet, “Sha. Sha! Go!”

From his shoulder's motion he had shot his free hand out to point somewhere. As if on cue there was a stupendous crack of thunder, the short ear-tearing bolt that means something has been struck, and in pure reflex I drove my face deep into its shelter, not caring that I almost smothered, hearing the thunder of Zam's heart louder than the thunder above.

* * * * * *

It seemed a long time before he took his hand from the back of my head and stepped away, letting out a long, shivery breath. His face was white, glistening with sweat, his eyes were dark as the fringes of the storm, dark with stress and the aftermath of some dreadful fear.

Though I knew we were alone, I dared not look away from him. I heard myself say in a tiny, cowed voice, “Who—was that?”

He looked down at me, still at a double remove. “Asthyn,” he said, as if I ought to know. “The Dead. The aedric Dead.”

The fear revived. In the heat of Hethrian day I was deadly cold.

“I called them,” he said.

“You—”

“You wanted me to do something, so I did. Ruagesthyn. It's a Black Art. To call the dead.” He slapped the words at me now, with anyone else it would have been open vindictiveness. “If you go into Ammath you may as well go all the way.” He jerked his chin to the west. “I sent them out there.”

“What?” I said faintly. “Why. . . .”

“They are going to drive the Estarians out of Hethria. Not kill them outright, I did manage that. Though plenty will kill themselves. The Dead will send them mad, they'll scatter in the desert, lose their way, or just run until they drop.” His mouth twisted. “There's a legend come true for you. Don't they sing in Everran of Lossian the ghostly Hunter, whose quarry is men's souls? Did you see the green-eyed one with the black brows? That's Lossian. He'll be hunting real souls tonight.”

I could not help it. I recoiled. He looked at me with bitterness. Then he said, “I am a sorcerer. If I fight, it's in the sorcerer's way.”

That roused my wits. “No,” I said sharply. “You're doing it the aedric way. Magic, not murder. If they die, it's not your fault.”

The bitterness softened a little, so he just looked worn out. I stared round, at the lowering storm, the red rocks, the sunlit grass, the untenanted air. It had all happened too quickly for belief. “So it's . . . over?”

“Not yet. You can't run clear back to Everran in a night, even with Lossian on your trail. A few days.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes and added absently, “And, of course, the price.”

“Price?” I said sharply. “What price?”

“Nothing.” He was brusque. “It doesn't matter. What matters is to save Hethria.” He set his jaw and stared out over the storm-shadowed desert. “Even at the expense of Math.”

Thinking I understood, I forgot all else.

“Zam,” I said, “I was coming to apologize. I shouldn't have said—anything I said. It wasn't true. It still isn't true. You will save Hethria, and you won't betray Math. No bloodshed, you said at the start. And there won't be. At least, not the sort I wanted you to—I was wrong. You were right.”

He wore the oddest expression, as at an irony so bitter its only possible riposte was a laugh. I caught a flash of strong emotion that might have meant
“. . . always generous. . . .”
Then he said softly, “Yes? If you hadn't said that, I would never have acted. Just sat there and been swamped.”

Then he glanced hurriedly away to the storm and finished, “Firewood. Hurry, or we
will
be swamped.”

* * * * * *

Those next few days were strange as a dream, the sort of dream where you wander in a strange land that is elusively familiar, a well-known place somehow changed. Zam slept most of the time, when he was not following events with farsight, but he did not offer to share it, and beyond ascertaining that the scheme had worked, I did not ask. Imagination was enough. Math or no Math, I thought, the Estarians' fate had been poetically just.

Intellectually I understood the tide had turned, we were hopefully close to a decisive victory; but I could not feel anything, least of all euphoria, for Zam was oddly dejected, indeed quite morose. I put it down to the inevitable deaths; but he was also tense, nervy, jumping at noises, after the first exhaustion he slept very badly indeed, and at times he fell into a remote, unnatural calm that disturbed me deeply, for it reminded me of the old foresighted warriors before a battle they knew would be their last. Though I kept it suppressed, the word that hovered in the back of my mind was “fey.”

I was pottering over dinner the evening he came up from the finlythes, stood there a while, then said quietly, “It's done.”

I jumped up. His face left joy stillborn.

“No more Estarians,” he said, “in Hethria. Live ones, that is.”

Presently I asked “Were many—killed?”

He pulled up his shoulders. “Enough. They're trying to unravel the survivors in Everran now. Most are out of their minds.”

“Then you think—do you think—”

He gave a little snort. “If I tried to colonize a country that cost me over twelve thousand lives and a million gold rhodellin, and what turned out ghost-ridden was bare desert to begin with, I think I might call it a day.”

I drew a deep breath. “Then—it's finished. Hethria's safe.”

“Mm.”

I hesitated, my own impulse to shout, “Come on, let's celebrate!” dashed by his lack of joy, of plain relief. And by a vague, ungrounded fear.

Making the best of things, I said, “If you fill the kettle, this will be ready soon.”

He nodded. But he still gazed down the slope to the towers of Eskan Helken, copper and lambent gold above the desert's fading amber and lavender and indigo, and I had the curious impression that he was committing the image to memory, as if he would never see it again. Then it came to me that what his face showed was resignation: the look of a man consenting to some imminent, foreseen fate.

* * * * * *

Over the meal I tried to cheer him up, but he was on edge, as short and gruff as I had ever known him, once or twice almost snappish, so in the end I let it be. The fire crackled peacefully away between us, its light faint on Fengthira's morrethans, mostly gone to seed, its sound a pleasant undertone in the silence of Eskan Helken that was now ratified, secure. Yet I could not feel at peace.

A parrasoth called far out over the desert, the bird of night, with its eerie keening wail. At the sound Zam looked up, looked past me, and before my eyes his face went white.

I spun about as I sat. Something was on the edge of the firelight, something like the shadow of a man.

“Be quiet,” Zam said without looking at me. “Don't ask questions. Go in the cave.”

My muscles set in some terrible premonition. I sat on my heels and stared.

“Get up.” He struggled for control, of fear or temper I could not tell. “Go in the cave.”

With a huge bound my wits revived. “Tell me what it is,” I said. “Tell me—”

“It's nothing to do with you—!”

“Tell me, or I don't go anywhere.”

He shot me one whiplash glare, saw I meant it, and furiously gave in.

“The price. The price of Hethria. Asthyn don't kill, they can't. But they take, take, I don't know how to say it. Life. Spirit. Power. They've lost their own, and they crave it, the way we crave wine. They would have hunted the Estarians for it. It would have been worse than murder. So I made a bargain. When Hethria was free, they could have the power they wanted. Mine.”

I could not breathe. He went on, hurrying now.

“An aedr has more than a man, there's no comparison, it's a raindrop to a dam—they agreed. Now—it's time.”

I heard myself whisper, “The price. . . .”

He looked at me then. “It's better. I used a Black Art. I've fallen into Ammath.”

At that the full meaning dawned on me. I screamed.

He yelled, “Shut-up-and-go-in-the-cave!” I shrieked back, “No!”

He gave a short, furious gasp and spoke past me to the thing beyond the fire. “Wait a moment.” His voice was taut, shaking. He was terrified himself and unable to hide it all. “Let me settle this.”

He got up, grabbed my elbows with hands that bit to the bone, literally ran me to the cave and shoved me violently inside, yelling, “Now stay there and be quiet!” And as my feet took root, my tongue locked, I knew he had used a Command.

Squaring his shoulders, he turned away. Then he spoke again to the shape in the firelight, and the tremor in his voice made him sound like a small boy, struggling desperately to maintain self-control.

“I would like,” he said, “to choose my own—place?”

I could just see the shadow. It did not seem to move, I heard nothing, but Zam nodded stiffly, once. Then he said, “Good-bye, Sellithar,” and walked away from the door, out of my sight.

There was no sound outside. There was no sound inside, except the thunder of my blood and breath as I fought, gagged and bound more surely than with ropes. The struggle almost burst my lungs, red spots swarmed across my sight. Yet when the intangible bonds slackened, loosened, fell away, I would have resumed them, for I knew what that loosing meant.

Had all the Dead been massed outside together I would have trampled the lot. Before the Command gave I had staggered forward, and as it vanished I was running, full pelt out onto the slope where nothing showed now but moonlight, red embers, the shadow of the silent rocks, scanning it all in one lightning sweep before I spun with breath in my throat to shriek his name, cut off as I saw the dark shape upon Fengthira's grave.