The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (26 page)

He wrapped her in it carefully, then lifted her into his
arms. He didn’t want to strap her across his saddle like a sack of
potatoes, so he held her in his arms as he walked back across the ford, Mortiss
following behind him. His Benesh’ere friends parted quietly as he
walked through them to find Baldrak. He handed the girl to her father and said
nothing.

~~~

As the Benesh’ere carried away the wounded
warrior and boy, Rhianne turned toward her hut and began walking. Dusk had
already arrived, and night would soon be upon them. At least the nights had
grown warmer, and didn’t require as many blankets or as much coal
for their small hearth.

As she approached their hut she noticed that no light
leaked past the shutters of their small window. Braunye should be preparing dinner,
and she wouldn’t do that in the dark. Perhaps she’d
gone out on some errand.

Rhianne pulled the rope latch on the door and opened it. The
only light in the room came from the dim glow of their small hearth, and it
provided no more than a faint reddish illumination. But the dying light of dusk
that splashed through the door showed her that Braunye had fallen asleep in one
of their two rickety chairs, her back to the door, her arms on the table, her
head resting on her arms. She hadn’t bothered to light a lamp,
probably because it had still been daylight when she’d fallen
asleep. The poor girl had been badly traumatized by such a violent assault on
the man and boy, and must have been exhausted by the experience. Rhianne
herself stifled a yawn, for the afternoon’s events had stressed
them all.

When she stepped into the hut the smell hit her: the
stench of blood and feces and urine. She gasped, left the door open so she had
some light by which to see, rushed across the room and gripped Braunye by the
shoulders. She shook her. “Braunye, what’s wrong?”

The girl remained totally unresponsive, so Rhianne pulled,
needed most of her strength and grunted with the effort to raise the girl’s
shoulders. When she succeeded, Braunye’s face peeled away from her
arms with a sticky, sucking sound. She pulled the girl’s shoulders
upright, though her head remained tilted downward.

“Braunye, girl, what’s happened?”

She pressed the palm of her hand to the girl’s
forehead and raised her head. But when she got it upright, the girl’s
head fell back to an angle beyond anything humanly possible, almost tumbling
from her shoulders. Her hair stuck to the side of her face, glued there by
blood, and her open eyes stared blankly at nothing. Someone had cut the girl’s
throat so viciously and deeply that only her spine connected her head to her
shoulders.

The door slammed and a deep, grumbling voice growled, “She
ain’t going to wake up,”

Before Rhianne could react, an arm wrapped around her
throat with crushing force. She struggled, kicked and spit, tried to scream,
but the vice-like clamp on her throat only tightened. Then a hand slapped
something against her forehead and she felt a strange magic wash through her,
though in some way it felt oddly familiar.

“Stand,” her captor said, “make
not a sound, and do not move.”

The arm about her throat slackened, allowing her to
breathe again, but though she wanted to, she could not cry out. He released her
completely, and her first thought was to run, or cry out or scream, but her
muscles refused to move or respond in any way. He’d left her
standing in the middle of the floor, the door to her hut on her right just
barely visible in the corner of her eye. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a
shadowy figure as it approached the door, but try as she might she could not
turn her head to look his way.

She heard him pull the latch, heard the door creak open,
though only a crack. She saw enough to know he peered out into the night,
checking the street carefully. Then he said, “Good,”
and threw the door wide.

He gripped her by the collar of her dress and said, “Come
with me.”

Her legs obeyed without any conscious volition on her
part, but she didn’t move fast enough for him and he dragged her
stumbling out into the street, then around to the back of her hut. There, he
marched her into the forest and led her along a small game trail. She stumbled
and landed painfully on her hands and knees, her dress tangled in the
undergrowth.

“Blast you, woman. Stay on your feet.”

He picked her up by her collar again, choking her. She
coughed and struggled to breathe as he dragged her further into the forest. She
stumbled again, and again fell to her hands and knees in the brush.

“By the name of the Dark God himself,”
he snarled. He gripped her around the waist, lifted her as if she weighed
nothing and tossed her over his shoulder. She tried to struggle, but he
snarled, “Lay still and be quiet,” and her muscles
went limp.

He carried her to two mounted horses tied to a tree deep
in the forest, then hoisted her into the saddle of one. He tied her hands to
the saddle horn, then mounted the other horse. And holding the reins of her
horse in one hand, he nudged his gently forward, leading her deeper into the
forest.

Consciousness seemed a distant thing as she remembered the
feeling of this magic. Valso had done something similar to her when she’d
tried to kill him with a poisoned needle in Castle Elhiyne. As awareness and
sanity eluded her grasp, she remembered this magic well, for it tasted of Valso’s
corruption.

Chapter 19: Spinning, Spinning,
Spinning

The Benesh’ere built a small pyre for
Felina. Morgin, and the smiths, and the members of her family, and those close
to her, each contributed a piece of wood to the pyre until it stood about waist
high. Baldrak laid her wrapped corpse gently upon it, then turned and strode to
the Forge Hall. He returned, carrying a hot coal from one of the forges in a
pair of metal tongs. He placed the coal on a small pile of kindling at the base
of the pyre, then knelt down and blew on it carefully until flames licked
upward.

He stood beside Morgin as they watched the pyre burn,
watched it consume the wilted husk of her body in fire from the blood of our
kin. Morgin couldn’t suppress the tears that streamed down his
cheeks. But the whitefaces stood stoically, and looked upon the fire without
sorrow or tears, just that determination he’d seen before.

When the pyre had burned down and nothing but ash remained
of Felina, Baldrak used the same tongs to retrieve a hot coal from the embers,
then turned and carried it to the Forge Hall. Other whitefaces followed his
queue, retrieving burning embers in various ways, some carrying them on a bed
of leaves in the palms of their hands, some with tongs like Baldrak’s.
Morgin understood then that the whitefaces were adding them to their cook fires
and forge fires so that Felina’s fire would burn with the fire
from the blood of their kin.

The Benesh’ere retreated to their cooking
fires while Morgin stood alone and watched the pyre cool and slowly dwindle to
mere ash. He could not put the Kull’s message—Valso’s
message—out of his mind, that wherever he went someone would pay
the rent of his freedom with the lives of the innocent. He could not escape the
fact that Felina had died a most horrible death because he lived among her
people. He struggled to think of a way he might continue to do so without
paying that horrible price. But no matter how vigilant the Benesh’ere
might be, Valso’s Kulls would always find a way to make someone
pay.

“Come, Elhiyne,” Baldrak said. In
the dark, and with his concentration wholly focused on the ash of the pyre,
Morgin hadn’t noticed him approach. “Come and eat
something.”

Morgin couldn’t look away from the remains of
the pyre. Baldrak cleared his throat and said, “If you are like
me, or my wife, or any number of us, you’re trying to find many
ways to blame yourself for this. But this is the life of the Benesh’ere,
the heart of the Benesh’ere . . . the heart of the
sands.”

Morgin got a little drunk that night, knowing he’d
have trouble finding sleep and hoping the alcohol might help. But when he
climbed into his blanket he lay there awake and relived time-and-again the
events of the afternoon. If he could discover in those events a way he might
have prevented it, then perhaps he might stay with his Benesh’ere
friends. But as he struggled with that thought, he realized it didn’t
matter. Aethon’s tomb called to him. Something remained unfinished
there, and he knew now that he must answer that call.

Once he made that decision sleep came easily, and he
dreamt of the blade and its hungry, demanding power. When he thought of killing
Valso, the blade hungered to help him do so. And when he thought of more
pleasant things the blade still hungered, but without a specific target for
Morgin’s anger, it merely hungered to take life, any life, friend
or foe.

He dreamt of Felina laughing and skipping out the door of
the Forge Hall to go to the plainface town. At that moment, he could not have
believed that such a day would end in such tragedy.

He dreamt too of Aethon’s tomb and it pulled
at him. He knew now that his destiny demanded he backtrack up Morddon’s
trail and find the ancient crypt. “I’m waiting for
you,” the skeleton king told him in his dream. “One
last time you must come to me.”

“But why?” he asked in the
dream. “Why now?”

The skeleton king turned the black pits of his eyes on
Morgin and said, “Because the time is now right for the forging.”

Morgin awoke tangled in his blanket, groggy, his stomach
twisted in knots. He’d turned and struggled so much in his sleep
he had trouble extracting his feet from the snarled mess. But after a few
moments of effort he pulled free, stood and walked down to the lake. He
splashed water on his face, hoping the chill would clear the fuzzy thoughts
clouding his mind, but Felina and the sword and the crypt refused to give him
peace.

When he stepped into the Forge Hall, Chagarin took one
look at him and said, “You look like netherhell.”

“Didn’t sleep well.”

“No,” Chagarin said. “None
of us did.”

“I’m leaving,”
Morgin said.

Chagarin nodded. “I know.”

~~~

Rhianne awoke, her head resting on the ground, the embers
of a small campfire still smoldering. As the sun rose in the east it cast long
shadows across the ground on which she lay. She recalled a collection of
fragmented memories, her captor telling her what to do, her body obeying him
under the control of a powerful compulsion spell. She struggled to remember
that he’d dragged her out of her hut, lifted her into the saddle
of a horse and tied her hands to the saddle horn. Then he’d
mounted another horse, and they’d ridden for quite some time
through the dense forest.

South,
she thought.
We rode south—or was it east?

The spell muddled her thoughts, made it impossible to
think of anything more complex than simple bodily commands: raise her hand,
lower her eyes, walk, stop, sit. Her forehead felt odd, so she reached up and
found some sort of medallion attached there. She tried to peel it off, but it
defied her efforts and remained attached to the middle of her brow.

“Sit up,” a gruff voice said,
the same voice that had assaulted her in her hut.

She didn’t recall going through the motions,
but she now found herself sitting on the ground, her legs crossed, facing the
smoldering fire. A piece of wood landed in the embers of the fire, sending
sparks flying, then another, and another. A man in simple livery stepped into
view, bent down with his back to her and began blowing on the wood. It took
three or four huffs of breath for the wood to catch, then it crackled and
flames fluttered upward.

The man straightened, stood tall and blocked the rising
sun for a moment, then stepped around the fire and sat down facing her. Recognizing
the sparkling blue eyes, the long blond hair and heavy blond mustache waxed at
the tips, she gasped and said, “France?”

The man grinned, the kind of unpleasant grin she’d
never seen on the swordsman’s face. “Well now, pretty
one,” he said, this man who was France, and yet not France. “I
wear him well, do I not?”

He said it as if discussing wearing a suit of clothing. When
she looked more closely, she saw that the sparkle in the swordsman’s
eyes had been extinguished. His eyes remained blue, but flat and unflattering. She’d
seen such eyes before, the night Valso had given her to his Kulls. “You’re
a halfman.”

“Aye, but not just any halfman.”

She shook her head frantically, trying to keep one
coherent thought connected to the next. She snarled, “France would
never have consented, and it takes the consent of the man to make a halfman.”

He nodded, agreeing with her. “And yet, there
is one exception.”

She had heard of an exception, hadn’t paid
attention at the time, never thought she’d need to know such
details. The man’s consent was not required for the most powerful
of the demons that made a halfman. She gasped, and couldn’t stop
herself from hissing, “Salula!”

His grin broadened. “Not only pretty, but
smart. And that’s a good thing.”

Instinctively, almost as a reflex, she called forth her
power and reached for it. But it burned her, seared a hole into her soul and
the contents of her stomach spewed forth, splattering bile down the front of
her simple homespun dress. She choked and coughed as her stomach heaved, though
nothing remained to disgorge. She lay on the ground, panting as the spasms
slowly diminished.

“Not so smart after all,” Salula
said. “But still, a lesson well learned.”

He stood abruptly and barked, “Stand.”

Again, her body obeyed with no conscious thought on her
part, and she stood up immediately. He stepped around the fire toward her, and
she started to step back away from him but he snarled, “Stay.”

Like a dog ordered to heel by its master, she froze in
place. He stopped less than a pace away, leaned forward and sniffed at her
neck. “I’ll not forget your scent, pretty one.”

He leaned back, gripped her by both shoulders with his
hands and said, “Now close your eyes.” Again, she
could not have disobeyed. Then he gripped her shoulders and spun her, spun her
about her own axis, spun her like a top. She twirled, could not stop herself
from doing so, felt the spell washing through her, and she became acutely aware
of the blade. It seemed to be spinning about her, circling her rapidly, but she
knew the blade remained stationary while she spun, conscious of its direction,
most conscious of it each time she spun to face it, and then spun on. Her
spinning slowed, then finally stopped altogether with her facing the direction
from which she sensed the power of the blade, for this spell had not allowed
her to face any other direction.

“Good,” Salula said. “Due
north. He hasn’t begun to move yet. But he will.”

~~~

JohnEngine waited in silence while Brandon read the
parchment carefully. When he finished he put it down on the table in front of
him, then ran his fingers through his hair tiredly. “ErrinCastle
writes that BlakeDown has repeatedly overridden his choices for border patrol
lieutenants.”

JohnEngine crossed the room, reached down and picked up
the parchment, scanned it as he asked, “And this Lewendis?”

Brandon turned away from the table between them, crossed
the room to a small table against one wall and filled a goblet from a pitcher
of wine. JohnEngine’s cousin usually drank only in moderation, had
never really joined in when the rest of them went whoring and drinking, but now
he gulped at the wine hungrily.

He turned and faced JohnEngine. “ErrinCastle
writes that Lewendis is a hothead, just as you surmised. They’ve
kept him on a short leash on the Tosk border for years for exactly that reason.
With Tosk sworn to Penda he could do no harm there. BlakeDown’s
intervention worries ErrinCastle; it’s as if someone is counseling
BlakeDown to assign command of the patrols to the worst possible leaders. It
makes me wonder if someone truly desires war between Penda and Elhiyne.”

JohnEngine joined his cousin at the small table and filled
a goblet for himself, saying, “The Decouix wouldn’t
mind seeing us ripping each other’s throats out.”

“Agreed,” Brandon said angrily. “But
Valso has very little influence in Penda. And I can’t believe
BlakeDown would be stupid enough to let the Decouix drive a wedge between us.”

Brandon frowned and asked, “Who’ve
we got on the border now?”

“DaNoel,” JohnEngine said.

“Good,” Brandon said. “He’ll
keep a calm head.”

JohnEngine dearly hoped Brandon was right about that.

~~~

Morgin gathered up his few belongings while the smiths’
wives packed his saddlebags with twelve days of compact trail rations. As he
saddled Mortiss and packed up his gear, a continuous stream of whitefaces came
to see him: Jerst, Harriok and Branaugh, LillianToc, Jack the Lesser, Baldrak,
Delaga and Fantose. They all tried to talk him out of leaving, but he’d
made up his mind somewhere in that dream, and his dreams rarely left any room
for argument.

Angerah and Merella came to him last, and they did not try
to dissuade him from leaving. They said their farewells, and Merella finished
by saying, “We know you must leave.”

Angerah said, “And we know you must return.”

He said a quiet farewell to Chagarin and Baldrak, then
rode out of the Benesh’ere camp.

~~~

Rhianne spun like a top, spinning, spinning, spinning,
conscious of the blade and its malevolent power, conscious only of the blade
and its direction. When Salula spun her like this her will evaporated
completely. Each morning she awoke, and each morning she resolved not to aid him,
and each morning he spun her. He spun her at dawn, midday and dusk, and each
time he spun her she betrayed the man who now carried that blade.

The spinning slowed and she tried to come to a stop facing
away from the blade, facing any direction but the blade. But the spell
overpowered any choice or desire on her part, and she came to a stop facing it
squarely. She could not have done otherwise.

“Ahhh!” Salula growled happily. “This
morning, due north. And now, northwest. Maybe he’s on the move. We’ll
have to wait until dusk to be certain.”

Rhianne sat down by their campfire and sobbed openly,
shedding tears of frustration and anger. Salula interpreted them as the tears
of a frightened young woman. She chose not to correct him on that matter, for
if that tiny bit of misdirection gave her some advantage at some point, she
would be a fool to give that up now.

Salula sat down opposite her. “He’s
moving slow and careful, so we’ll take our time and be sure.”

She asked, “How did you know something in me
could be used to find that blade?”

Ignoring her question, Salula grinned and laughed, but
said nothing.

She now knew to a certainty they were camped due south of
the Benesh’ere camp. They hadn’t moved since he’d
brought her here with her hands tied to the horse’s saddle horn. He
fed her, not well, but well enough. He kept the fire low, clearly not wanting
to draw attention with a trail of smoke during the day, or brightly glowing
embers at night. But he did burn a fire and kept it just high enough to give
her the warmth she needed so she didn’t take a chill and fall ill.
No, he had to take care of her so she might betray whoever now carried that
blade. But how did he know she could sense the blade so?