Shadow's End (53 page)

Leely came drowsily naked out of some crack or crevice where he'd been sleeping, cast them a sidelong look, and went past them toward a tilted arch of starlit stone, a window onto the night, where he stood waving his hands.

Lutha didn't move. Lutha was lost among the animals. Oh, the colors of them. Oh, the sounds they make. The eyes of them, bright and quick and full of accusation. Who was Leely in the face of this … this!

Too battered by sensation even to be curious, she watched openmouthed as he turned, again, again, wearing his Leely face, swaying and waving, a familiar and aimless activity. Then his face took on a new expression. Not his usual quiet satisfaction. Not his hungry look or his chilly look or his sleepy look. Not any expression she had seen before. This was something else. A kind of wake-fulness.

He opened his mouth very wide, his tongue quivering in the midst of that round, red hole, deep as an abyss his throat. He screamed a sound that went endlessly out into the world. Not any sound they had ever heard him make before. Not a sound any child should be capable of making, a sound that fled unmuted across the moorlands like the shadow of a cloud, sweeping across the world, south, away: a trumpet, a roar, a shriek, a cry, a whistle, a bellow, a blast … They could almost watch it go!

Leelson grunted, “By my manhood!”

Mitigan shook Lutha by the shoulder. “What?”

She couldn't tell him. She didn't know!

And normal sound came back all at once, as though a finger had been snapped.

In the window Leely sucked his fingers, murmuring, “Dananana.”

He had exorcised the ghosts. He had driven them away. What right had he to do that?

They breathed deep into oxygen-starved lungs.

“Lutha!” Leelson demanded. “What is this?”

“Why ask me?” she cried. “How would I know?”

“You're his mother!” he shouted.

“Bernesohn Famber was his mother and his father,” she yelled back. “Bernesohn designed him. Too bad Bernesohn isn't around to give us the operating instructions.”

While babble broke out all around, she sat down and wept, feeling her face smart from the salt, feeling her nose swell and turn red, that familiar pain behind her breastbone like a swallowed stone. Obviously, Leelson hadn't told them what they'd figured out about Leely. Well, neither had she. They were both … what? Ashamed of it? Probably. How can one tell friends and acquaintances that one's great passion, one's world-shaking romance is no more than a mating dance between ephemerids, that all one's achievements count to nothing in the face of a biological destiny hoicked up by a runaway Fastigat in a makeshift laboratory on a very minor planet!

She wept while Leelson explained, as Fastigats do, unemphatically but in great detail and with all possible inferences.

It would have bored anyone. It bored Lutha. He talked so long she tired of sniveling and began wiping the wetness from her face.

“But what is he?” Jiacare Lostre demanded.

“A virus,” said Leelson, without emotion. “To all intents and purposes. Morphologically, he's human, born of a normal zygote that carries a lot of something else—something Ularian. He's a hybrid. He has enough brain to get along at the level of a …”

“A chicken,” Lutha said bitterly, feeling a new gush of tears. There were no chickens left, but the word remained. One of those sorts of words that did remain.

“Something like that,” Leelson admitted.

“Whatever he's carrying, it gets around the Ularian immune system,” Snark supplied. “I found disrupted cells in the dropped tentacles, and in the dying shaggy.”

Leelson nodded heavily. “He's also carrying an agent or genetic program that promotes rapid healing in humans. It's in his saliva. Probably in his blood. Maybe he had to have that to retain human shape with all that Ularian stuff in him.”

“Or it was purposeful, so people would value him,” offered the ex-king. “Maybe Bernesohn was looking ahead. He would want his … virus to survive. He knew people would value something that could heal their ills.” He furrowed his brow, continuing in a doubtful voice: “Of course, that would have depended upon people knowing about it.”

“He prob'ly meant 'em to know,” breathed Snark. “Meant 'em to know about the whole business. He sure wouldn't depend on it bein' found out like this! By accident!”

Mitigan hoisted Leely high and presented his wounded arm, still festering and red.

“Dananana,” Leely caroled, giving Mitigan's arm several wet kisses.

“Me,” said Snark. The wound she'd sustained during the Kachis birthing was also inflamed. Leely kissed the bite marks. Lutha had seen dogs lick wounds like that, in old nature chips. She shook her head, ashamed. She had known about Leely's healing ability the day before. She should have told Snark. And Mitigan.

Saluez noticed her pain. She took Lutha's hand, peered into her eyes. “Lutha. Lutha, sister.” Her eyes filled and Lutha turned away, unable to bear her compassion. By the Great Gauphin, Lutha didn't want anyone to share her feelings. Her feelings were her own, singular, unique!

Which was bosh. They were the world's woes, as Mama Jibia used to say. No matter what the world, the woes are
the same. Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can't.

Lutha felt Leelson reaching for her, and shook him off, surprising on his face a reflection of her own. He felt miserable. She'd planned his misery, but she hadn't realized she'd be in it with him.

And why should it be so upsetting? She'd guessed the biggest part of this. What had changed since then? Nothing, except the knowledge that she was as responsible as Leelson. Leely himself was as he had always been. Only her hopes had changed. Her hopes and whatever was out there at the edge of the world. The trembler. The world shaker.

She took Leely from Snark, settling him on her hip. It was time they went back to sleep. If they could sleep.

Leely patted her face, opened his dreadful mouth, and said quite clearly, “Lutha Lutha Tallstaff Lutha sister mother love.”

It was a person's voice, totally unfamiliar, not a child's voice.

Silence. Shock. Indrawn breaths.

Leelson cleared his throat, a scritch like iron dragged on stone.

Leely turned, cocked his head, said, “Leelson Leelson Famber damned Fastigat darling.”

No one even breathed.

Leely said, “Saluez of the shadow. Snark love Laluzh. Mitigan Mitigan of the Asenagi.” He smiled. “Ex-king ex-king of Kamir Jiacare Lostre. Leely baby Leely love Leely yourson myson.”

“He's naming things,” said Leelson in a hollow voice.

“Pee—peeeple,” said the ex-king, awed into virtual incoherence. “People.”

Lutha had been holding Leely pressed against her, but now she felt it was safer to set him down.

“Lutha Tallstaff Lutha Lutha sister mother love,” he said, making a mirror likeness of her on the skin of his chest and belly. He showed her as she was, dressed in her gray-green overall.

“Why now?” cried Leelson in petulant, almost horrified surprise. “Why
now
!”

“He's never been out among people before,” whispered Saluez. “Not since he was a baby.”

It was true. From the time Leelson had left them, they'd lived almost alone. Those who came and went were seldom repeat visitors. Those who came to see Lutha often did not see Leely. Only since this trip began had Leely heard Lutha's name used by this one, that one. She recalled Leelson's outraged, “You're his mother.” So now she was Lutha Tallstaff Lutha Lutha sister mother love.

“When he made the pictures back to the Rottens!” she exclaimed. “That's when he made the connection. They have color titles. We have verbal ones.”

“That's a title?” Leelson bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Leelson Leelson Famber damned Fastigat darling?”

“Hush,” she hissed, pointing through the tilted arch at the shaggies floating against the stars. “Leelson, damn it, don't yell at me. It's not my fault; I didn't do it; I'm not responsible for it. Will everyone just please remember where we are and shut up.”

As they did quickly enough, for they felt once more that tremble in the core of the world, heard once more, though briefly, that flattened sound.

Even Leely was silent as Lutha sat down upon her blanket, cradling the child against her. He looked thoughtful. Mitigan and Leelson whispered together, but Lutha was too drained to care what they were talking about. Joy and hopelessness and fear were all fighting for supremacy. If something had harmed Leely as he had been, she would have grieved. But, oh, to be in this danger with him
changed! Now if something happened to him! Her child, her son, if anything happened to him now!

“You always said he would talk,” Saluez reminded her.

Yes. She had. She had thought he would say Mommy and Daddy and the other things babies say. She had not thought he could tremble worlds with his voice.

All such thoughts were cut short. She saw Mitigan's head come up, alertly, swiveling as he listened, his hands going to his weapons belt. They all heard it then, a sound like rain, like a pouring of sand, an endless hissing. They twisted, searching for the source….

Which slid onto the sand of the cavern like a runnel of dark blood, scaled from its gaping mouth to the darkness in which its body was still hidden, serpent king, snake lord, mighty monster, thick through as Mitigan's body, and all around it, its children, its kindred, the small ones of its kind, striped and mottled and jewel-marked, sinuous and horrid.

“Out,” cried Mitigan, something very like panic in his voice. “Out!”

They stumbled to their feet and ran, out and away, Saluez supported on either side by Lutha and Snark, Leely running beside his mother. Mitigan's voice shouted battle cries while Leelson and Jiacare urged him to run. They did run, with snakes all around them, striking from crevices, dropping from holes, slithering across their feet as they struggled on, bruising themselves on the jutting rocks, scraping themselves on the rough stones until they came out under the sky. Leelson erupted from the rock pile, dragging the ex-king behind him. He had thought to bring one of the survival packs with him, and a lamp.

“Mitigan?” cried Snark.

“Coming,” said Leelson, dragging the ex-king toward us. “Here, Jiacare's been bitten!” Lutha stood stupidly, not realizing what he wanted.

“Leely,” Leelson cried. “Come see the bite.”

The ex-king pulled up a trouser leg, displaying puncture
wounds that seeped a yellowish ichor. The flesh around the wounds was green. “I fell on it,” he said. “I don't think it meant to bite….”

Leely ran to him, hugged the bitten leg, effectively tripping the ex-king, so that he fell heavily and was unable to get up. Leely kissed the bites, then hugged the ex-king once more.

“Jiacare Lostre, ex-King of Kamir,” cried Leely. “Poor Jiacare!”

“Can you walk on it?” demanded Leelson, heaving Jiacare to his feet.

“If I have to.” He stood up, took one experimental step, and groaned.

“Mitigan!” demanded Snark once more.

“He's either coming or he's dead,” grated Leelson.

“Where are we going?” Jiacare smiled as he asked the question, a thin, fatalistic smile.

“Wherever we're allowed to go,” Leelson muttered.

Mitigan appeared at the entrance to the rockfall, staggering toward the others. His face and arms were covered with bites. “Hard to kill,” he muttered. “Oh, they're hard to kill.”

He fell. Leely looked at his wounds, then at Leelson. “Dananana,” he said, uninterested.

Leelson thrust his fingers into Leely's mouth, then rubbed the wet fingers onto Mitigan's wounds. The assassin gasped, as though in sudden agony.

“Mitigan Mitigan of the Asenagi,” Leely said in a tone of disapproval. “Mitigan fought the snakes.”

Where Mitigan had emerged from the rocks was now a darker shadow. They stared at it, trying to find in it the coils of a serpent, the twining shape of the snake. It wasn't a snake. Something deep inside them told them that. Snakes to flush them out, but something else to drive them.

Eyes reflected the light from the lamp Leelson carried. A wavering howl split the air.

“Wolves,” Lutha breathed. “It's wolves.” How many times had she seen them, recreated in story, remembered in myth? How many times?

As though answering to their name, lithe forms spewed from the rock pile. Some of them loped up the slope toward the camp, others made a line to the north. The way was open south or west, but in no other direction. They were not all wolves. Some of them were other things, shamblers, gigglers, mutterers, throat growlers.

Mitigan stumbled to his feet. He and the ex-king staggered up the slope, the rest following. As they went the bitten men gained strength. They crested the ridge, walking almost normally, then stopped. Across the narrow valley the wolves had made a line barring the way to the south. The only open way was the valley, the crescent of gravel that was the beach. They were being forced toward the sea.

“Make a stand,” muttered Mitigan. “Get into one of the storm caverns and make a stand.”

“No,” said Leelson. “Let's just go along for the moment. See what's intended.”

Lutha stared blindly into the dark. Even Leely could not live in this place without food, without shelter. What was intended was eradication. What was intended was that no one of them should return to Alliance to tell men what they knew.