Cold, it’s so cold. Why do I have to come here at night, crossing the
rapids of the Swifty over that fraying rope in the dark, the spray soaking my
legs to my thighs, as if the rope weren’t slippery enough without being wet?
And no torch. No torch! Who thought that was a good idea? I don’t care if the
old man doesn’t like it. If I break my leg on the way up, he will not even have
a Go-Between.

Silence. Except for my feet crunching dry leaves on the path, my
occasional blunder into a bush or a tree branch. The high priest told me no
animals reside within a league of the cave, but I didn’t believe him. I have to
stop and listen. There must be at least a cricket.

Nothing. My labored breaths. My heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Nothing else.

That’s the fork, right up ahead. Lit by the moon peeking through the
branches of two oaks. The fork is clear, as he said it would be. I must go
right, up the face of the mountain.

Oof! Darn rock in the path! Mother told me to wear my leather
slippers, but Father insisted on bare feet. Bare feet, two moons past harvest!
I thought he was crazy at the time, but there’s no way I could have crossed the
rope in slippers.

No sound now. No more trees, so no more leaves. My feet padding along
on dust and rock. My impatient sighs.

The rocks on both sides of me seem to rise as I climb, until I’m
almost in a tunnel, and the moon overhead casts crisscrossing shadows over my
path. I must be close.

I hunch my back, bow my head, and ignore the burning of my thighs and
my ever-present limp as the path steepens. Crazy old man. Crazy old town! Why
don’t they just move him? We have a spare room since Peter…we have a room. I
could take better care of him if he were nearby.
If
I were going to take care of him.

I chuckle at that. Silly little
girl.

And she freezes as my laugh
rumbles into the night.

Great stones! He’s laughing? The old man is laughing? But he’s alone,
he’s supposed to be alone. Who laughs by themselves?

I have to get this over with.

She appears in the doorway of the
cave and stops, hands groping for the wall.

“Two paces to your left,” I say.

She hesitates for a heartbeat,
then reaches for the wall, leaning against it for support. I’m in her mind, so
I know she’s scared out of her wits, and trying not to show it.

“Bit of a climb,” she says,
voicing the bravado she doesn’t feel.

“I wouldn’t know.”

She has the audacity to snort.

“About that,” she says,
straightening up and turning her face to my voice. “I’d like to discuss moving
you.”

I raise a thick eyebrow at her,
but of course she can’t see me in the dark.

“First day on the job and already
looking to make changes. Perhaps we should start with introductions.”

Alarm bells ring in her head, and
she knows she’s miss-stepped.

“My apologies,” she says, bowing
her head. “My name is Nilaruna.”

I have to catch my breath. “
The first light of dawn
.”

She nods. “My family calls me
Nili.”

“I am not your family.”

She nods again.

“Welcome, Go-Between. I am Maja,
Hermit and Protector of the village of Dabani.”

Nilaruna laughs.

“Am I amusing you?” I ask her.

“I thought my job was to protect
you
,” she says.

“Your job is to assist me. There
is a difference.”

“If you live like a hermit in
this cave, how can you protect anyone?”

“I can leave any time I choose,”
I say. “I choose not to.”

“And if Dabani needs your help?”
she asks. “What will you choose then?”

“To do my duty.”

Nilaruna walks five paces
straight into the blackness.

“Stop,” I say.

She takes two more steps before
obeying. “I vowed to end this farce, Maja. Nishta was my friend.”

Ah. The last Go-Between. I didn’t
know her well. Nishta fell into the rapids on the way to her third visit here,
and I was in her mind the entire time. I spoke to her. I comforted her. I tried
to tell her how to climb out, but she was too paralyzed by fear to move. I wept
for her, a girl too young and innocent to die.

“I am sorry for your loss,” I
say.

“She fell into the rapids. Did
you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you save her?”

I clench my jaw and it pops
loudly.

“Your duty is not to question,” I
say.

“Your duty is to protect!” she
screams.

I stand and lean against the back
wall of the cave. “We are at an impasse, then.”

“Impasse? Is that what you call
it? Twenty-two girls in my lifetime. Twenty-two Go-Betweens. We’re supposed to
last fifty moons.”

Nilaruna pulls a knife from the
pockets of her trousers and clenches the hilt tight in her fist.

“What have you been doing to
them?” She takes two more steps toward me.

“You do not understand of what
you speak. Put down the knife,” I say.

“I understand you are old,” she whispers.
“I understand that if you couldn’t protect the Go-Betweens, perhaps you cannot
protect yourself. And besides, given the odds, I understand my fate.”

“I would never harm you,” I say.

“Did you say the same to Nishta?”

And Nilaruna lunges for me.

***

The new Go-Between cannot see me, but she has surprisingly honed
instincts. Her knife is two paces from my face before I stop her with a flick
of my wrist.

“Stop,” I whisper.

She stops, muscles quivering from
her adrenaline high.

“Drop the knife.”

The knife falls from her grasp
and clatters on the stone floor.

“Sit.”

Nilaruna’s knees buckle, and she
falls in a heap to the floor.

I lean forward and study her.

She has a boyish figure swathed
in loose-fitting linen trousers and a billowy pullover tunic. Manly clothes.
Poking from beneath her trousers are her small dirty feet, heavily calloused
and marred by cuts and scrapes, including one deep puncture wound on the heel
of the left. Her fingernails are blunt, worn down by manual labor. She is
obviously not accustomed to servants, and this seems to be the most attractive
thing about her. Until I notice her eyes.

They are difficult to see, given
her face. The left side of her face is melted, as though it were made of candle
wax. Her left brow hangs low over her eyelid, the scar tissue almost completely
covering her eye. Her left cheek looks like the bark of a pine tree. The left
corner of her mouth sags down in a permanent pout. Dear heavens, what pain she
must have endured!

But my gaze easily slips over the
scar tissue and lingers back on her right eye. Her jade green eye. In the dark,
the pupil has dilated wide, making the green that much more vivid. The green
captivates me. It’s like I’m looking in a mirror, though I haven’t seen my own
reflection for centuries. My eyes are the same shade. Or were, once.

“I’m going to heal you,” I say,
“but I must release you from my thrall to do so. Will you remain still?”

I slip back into her mind.

He can do magic! Holy heavens, no one ever mentioned that. I can’t
stop him. This is it. I’m dead.

“I ask again, will you remain
still if I release you?”

Nilaruna nods once, and I release
her.

Her breath rushes out in one long
sigh, and she wraps her arms around her middle.

“You have nothing to fear,” I
say. “Your feet are a mess. Stretch them out in front of you and I will heal
them.”

She complies.
If he starts to hurt me, I can kick him.

I chuckle softly, and Nilaruna
stiffens, but she doesn’t move.

I want to touch her, this brave, unsightly
little creature, and comfort her in a way I haven’t comforted another in
centuries. But it is too soon, and I will not play my hand so early. So I
gather the magic in my mind and release it from afar. When the warm energy
swirls around her feet and starts to heal, I can hear Nilaruna sigh in her
mind.

Ahhh. Sweet gods. He’s really doing it. But why would he heal me?
Why? He only wants me dead.

“You have endured enough pain for
a lifetime,” I say. The healing finishes and I draw the magic back into me.
“Tell me how you sustained such injuries.”

“Crossing the Swifty and climbing
a mountain barefoot wasn’t such a great idea.”

I smile in the dark. “I meant the
injuries to your face.”

“How can you see them?” she says,
panicked. “It’s black in here.”

“My eyes have long-since
adjusted,” I say.

Her forehead crumples under the
pain of this statement.
I thought he
wouldn’t be able to see. One of my reasons for coming is gone.
“Do not pity
me,” she says.

“How can I not feel pain for what
you have been through?” I ask.

She sits up straight. “You are
Maja, Hermit and Protector, unmoved by human suffering.”

“Says who?”

“Then why didn’t you save
Nishta?”

I sigh my own sigh and raise my
eyes to the ceiling. Such a simple question. Such a difficult question.

“So your training begins,
Nilaruna,” I say. “Repeat the ritual words, and I will answer your question.”

She eyes the back of the cave
from where my voice drifts, and her gaze seems to find mine, even in the black.
“If you promise to answer my questions, truthfully, I will speak them.”

“I do.”

She nods to herself and shakily
climbs to her feet. “I, Nilaruna, Go-Between for Maja and the village of
Dabani, swear to perform my duties as Maja wills. I swear my fealty to Maja.
Everything I have is his, every thought is for his safety and protection. I
will confide in no one but him, until it is time to pass my knowledge along to
the next Go-Between. Dabani will be safe. I will it so.”

“I will it so,” I murmur.

Nilaruna half smiles. “I cannot
kill you now.”

“Not unless you want the gods to
intervene.”

“But what if you try to kill me?”

“You are my link to the village,
my purpose for existing. I would no sooner harm you than kill myself. Why do
you not believe this is so?”

“Nishta,” she whispers. And then
her voice grows stronger. “And the twenty-one before her.”

I conjure a sitting cushion with
my magic and place it on the floor next to her.

“Sit down, two paces to your
right.”

Nilaruna sidesteps, and her foot
catches the edge of the cushion. She lowers herself onto it.

“I did know when Nishta fell into
the rapids,” I say. “I did not know her well — we’d only met two times,
and we did not have a strong connection. She was frightened of me, frightened
of the trip up the mountain, frightened of what I might ask her to do.”

“So you let her drown,” Nilaruna
says, her voice a knife through my heart.

“No. Who she was has nothing to
do with that. I entered her mind and tried to help her. I told her what to do, what
rock to grab onto, how to shimmy out of her skirt lest it drag her down. She
would not respond to me.”

“You entered her mind?”

“Yes.”

“But…can you enter mine, as
well?”

I hesitate for a heartbeat.
“Yes.”

“So why couldn’t she hear you?”

“She heard me,” I say. “She was
too overcome with fear to respond.”

Nilaruna pushes to her knees on
the cushion. “But you are the Protector. You should have gone to her.”

“I could not.”

“Why not?”

This is a secret I do not usually
reveal until training is close to complete — a couple of moons away from
now, at least. But nothing about this Go-Between is proceeding as usual.

“The spell that allows me to
remain Dabani’s protector also forces me to remain on this side of the Swifty.
I can only cross it if Dabani is in danger.”

“But what of her people? Surely
danger to the village includes danger to its people.”

“I wish it were so,” I say.

“So you…did not wish Nishta
harm?” Nilaruna holds her breath as she waits for my answer.

“Never.”

She grows silent, and I slip back
into her mind.

BOOK: The Go-Between (The Nilaruna Cycles Book 1)

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