Summerblood (29 page)

“A reasonable thing to want,” Rann agreed. “But why here?
Why not do what you've done before? Let us watch and observe.”

“Yes,” Lykkon broke in, as angry as Avall had ever seen him. “I'm supposed to be compiling a precise record of how the gems work. I can't do that if you withhold information.”

“But having you here means I might not be able to do what I was going to do.”

“Which is?”

“Fine,” Avall sighed. “To tell it from the beginning, it's this way. We all three know that the thing works, in part, on strong emotions—strong desires, one might say—and the strongest of those we can imagine is self-preservation. When it jumped me out of the Ri-Eron into Eron Tower, it probably knew it couldn't sustain my body in the cold much longer, that letting me die there would be bad for the gem as well, and that the only way to prevent that was to send me where I could get help. But it needed
me
for that:
my
desire, down there in the bottom of my brain, to survive, and my knowledge of where help could be located.”

“You think it knew all that?”

“I'm not sure. We know so little about jumping. We can't even make it happen when we want it to, most of the time. But I know that the desire has to be really strong. Too, I
think
one has to have been at the place to which one jumps. As far as I know, no one has ever jumped anywhere he hasn't been before, though we
have
had some luck jumping to a person
at
a place we've been.”

Rann shook his head. “But if you're hoping to contact Merry, and you don't know where she is …”

“I'm hoping to find her mind with mine,” Avall replied. “Then get her to tell me where she is, or establish a meeting place where I've been.”

“But again,” Rann persisted, “why here?”

“Because it scares me to death to work with the thing!” Avall flared, rising and starting to pace. “But every time I
have
worked with it, I've had the security of you or Lyk or Merry or Strynn nearby to save me if things got out of hand. I was thinking that the fact that help was close by might be preventing me from doing more with it. In other words, that if I bonded with it alone, and it dragged and dragged at me, and I got really scared—I might get scared enough to jump somewhere else, with or without it.”

“How do you figure that?”

“It would be in the best interest of the gem to have me sane.”

“And you're also thinking this might help cure the stone?”

“I don't think it would hurt it. In any case, my assumption was that it would read my desire for escape and jump me to where you two were.”

Rann folded his arms across his chest. “So why not tell us?”

Avall spun around to face him. “Because I was afraid that the fact that I
know
I can get help might keep me from wanting help as badly as I'd need to in order to produce the effect I want.”

“So you came here—”

“—Hoping that, about now, if things had gone as they should, I'd be appearing wherever you lads were, optimally, in my quarters.”

Rann scowled darkly. “I don't like it, Vall, yet it makes a perverse kind of sense.”

“Good, because I'm not going to let you stop me.”

“How can we help?” From Lykkon.

“By leaving.”

“That's not an option.”

Avall gnawed his lip. Time was wasting; that was a fact. And he had no energy for this. Rann and Lykkon had no idea how much discipline it took to make himself do even as much as he did. Bleeding oneself
hurt
, dammit—which people tended to forget. And every time he tried to bond with the gem—well, that was absolutely the most frightening thing in the world. Didn't they realize that? Maybe he should yield to Rann's
suggestion and let
him
bond with it. Maybe the shock would do the gem good—as Rann had more than once proposed. Or maybe it would do Rann good—by making him see, once and for all, why Avall felt as he did.

Or maybe Rann
did
know. Their emotions tended to slop over on each other these days, especially when they were in close quarters.

In any case, it didn't matter. And since it was taking all the discipline Avall possessed not to bolt, he had none left for arguing. Besides, a solution had just occurred to him.

“I have to do this my way,” he said. “It won't work if I know you can step in and save me if things get bad. And a lot of what I plan is contingent upon me having an all-encompassing desire either to get away from the gem or to reach someone who will help me. So what I want you two to do is to sit in the common hall of this place.
And wait.
If I don't appear there within a hand, come get me.”

“That long?” Rann cried incredulously. “It's never taken that long before.”

“We've never let it,” Lykkon retorted. “We've always interceded.”

“I've noticed,” Avall drawled.

Rann and Lykkon exchanged glances. “I presume it'll draw on us,” Lykkon mused. “I guess we'll feel the chill if it works. That'll be some kind of sign.”

Avall nodded. “But remember that time runs strangely when I'm bonded with the gem. That's why I said you should wait a hand.”

“You could die!”

“I don't think the gem will let me,” Avall countered. “Frankly, I don't really think it'll let me go mad—in spite of how it acts—but I'm not eager to test that theory.”

Rann snorted but stood away from his place by the door. “You owe us after this.”

“Yes,” Lykkon agreed, with atypical candor, “you do.”

“The best wine you have on this trek.”

“Chilled, and drunk in the hottest bath we can find.”

Rann chuckled grimly. “Something tells me we'll need it, too.”

“None of which you'll get if you don't leave,” Avall told them, shooing them out.

Abruptly, he was alone with his fears.

A deep breath and he returned to where he'd been sitting, pausing to loosen his belt, lest even that constriction provide an unneeded distraction. That accomplished, he set the jar of blood on the floor between his knees and reached for the chest, from which he produced the sharp paring knife that he and Strynn typically used when working with their gems. Only one more thing was required.

He tried not to think about the actuality of what he was about to attempt as he fished the gem from within his tunic and freed the stone onto his unscarred right hand, where he pondered it briefly before setting it on the scrap of figured velvet atop which the jar already sat.

Setting his jaw in anticipation of pain that was familiar, but no more pleasant for all that, he drew the knife along his other palm, opening the scar that was always healing there courtesy of this very rite. Another pause, a prayer to The Eight, and he grasped the gem in his right hand and clasped both gem and hand atop his left.

It seized him like a thwarted lover intent on rape or revenge in lieu of pleasure or satisfaction. It was like a pack of ravening birkits invading his body, and he could feel every dire thought they possessed as they roared into him in their millions. And every one savaged some part of him, tearing it free from his
self
and dragging it back to the gem so the greater madness there could dine.

Then
came the warning, where before the warning had come first. He ignored it, as he'd always done. The falling followed. And fall he did, into the expected madness, the expected pain, and—worst of all—the expected fear. But this time the warning went with him; this time he was not
completely alone as he fell. Rather, there were presences with him that shielded him from the worst of the fear, the worst of the darkness. Better yet, for the first time he could tell what were Barrax's fears and what were his, where before they'd seemed to mingle. Or perhaps to resonate: Barrax's anguish rousing an equivalent, if hidden, anguish of his own.

In spite of that, it was terrible beyond description.

And, as always, he found himself beginning to dissolve: parts of himself slowly winking out as memories dispersed. But this time he tried to watch those memories, and he realized it was not Strynn's face that was fading into oblivion, but the face of some unknown, dark-skinned woman who could only be Barrax's wife.

Or perhaps his concubine, something supplied.

And then a name:
Etall
.

And then other names flashed across his thought before they winked out like sparks from a winter fire.

Yet with every winking, Avall felt a twist in his heart—of regret, of longing, of things he could no longer want or think or say.

Yet all the while, he continued falling. And while that was the most dreadful sensation he could imagine, there was no way he could stop watching Barrax's life flash before him as, over and over, he began to die.

And then there were no more memories. Only fear. Only a sensation of being unable to breathe; of being trapped in sand, earth, and water all at once; with his senses being pressed upon, then clogged, then compressed into an ever-smaller space, where they had to compete with everything else he was.

Nothingness loomed: a thing with no color, no sound, no size or volume. Small as dust and huge as the universe.

It sucked at him with far more force than simple falling had done.

And it scared him—both of him—beyond reason.

If it touched him, he
would
die; that was an absolute. Barrax would die again and again, but this time Avall would die with
him. The gem would contain two deaths, and one was one too many.

He had to escape,
had
to. There was nothing in the world he wanted more than to be out of there. Away from there. Done.

Was the nothingness drawing away?

He couldn't tell, but relief that it might be fueled his desire to escape it forever. And so he wished, not with his intellect, or his learning, or even his emotions. He wished in that most primal part of himself, deeper, even, than his soul.

And he fled.

Take me!
something that might've been a splinter of Barrax cried.

Without pondering how that was to be accomplished, Avall did. But death was a terrible weight for fear to carry, and he could not sustain the effort.

Something ripped—or perhaps he let go.

Something—someone—
many
someones—screamed.

And then he was retreating. Out. Away. Gone.

Gone where?

Out. Away. Gone.

Where?

To the only source of aid and comfort close at hand.

Reality split, exploded, and recombined. Every tiny part of his body burst into invisible flame and was extinguished. Breath fought at his mouth and nose. Something ordered his heart once more to beat.

A final explosion of something that transcended pain as the sun transcends the light of a match …

Then his ears rang with noise, in truth.

Something hard came up and slapped him on the back, even as cold gripped him.

“Avall!” A voice like thunder.

“Vall!” Another, barely softer.

“I did it!” His own voice, then. It felt like rocks tumbling down a mountainside, as chaotic thoughts gathered noise and twisted them, by raw force, into sense.

“You did it!” Rann agreed, but then his eyes grew huge. He swatted at Avall's fist.

Already half-numb from cold, the gesture shocked Avall, so that he opened his hands.

They were empty.

“I'll go look,” Lykkon managed, shivering as he rose and staggered toward the other room.

“Something's changed,” Avall choked into Rann's shoulder as the two embraced—from relief, for comfort, and not the least for warmth. “But I have no idea what.” They spoke no more until Lykkon returned, with the gem carefully recased in its crystal prison.

“You owe us a drink,” Lykkon smirked, “and a bath.”

“I won't argue,” Avall conceded weakly. “I feel like I've been cold forever.”

“Merryn?” Rann dared.

Avall shook his head. “I can't. I dare not. I don't think I could survive that again until I've had a chance to rebuild for a while.”

“But you
will
try again?” Rann retorted. It was impossible to tell whether that was a request or a warning.

“I will,” Avall agreed sadly. “I don't have any choice.”

Merryn stopped one last time to look back at War-Hold— from the west this time. She'd spent most of the last two days skirting around it, taking her time, and trying very hard not to be seen, never mind recognized. She was in no particular hurry, anyway—which was good, because the rough terrain discouraged all but the most careful navigation, especially with the horses. Alone, on foot, she might actually have been able to maintain a better pace, for she could've gone over obstacles she'd been forced to detour around.

Still, the view was worth it. Not only did the western angle show the hold's least damaged side, it also allowed the rare pleasure of looking down upon it, which gave her a chance to appreciate the lavish use of movable gold-foil panels on what roofs were still intact—foil placed there not to evoke opulence, but for the more practical purpose of absorbing and reflecting sunlight when snow threatened to cover the skylights that lit the indoor sparring courts in winter.