The Lesser Kindred (ttolk-2) (33 page)

"Don't worry, Will. It makes him furious that there's something he can't do," said Aral softly. "In every other task we've ever tried his power is astounding, but he can't disperse even the least of the Rikti. Lady help us if we ever have to face the Rakshasa. More to the point, Lady help me."

"What happens when he tries?" I asked. I was amazed. I had thought Vil could do anything.

"I—um. I don't know," she said, worried. "He's never been able to do as much as try since I've known him. He just won't. When I asked him about it he didn't answer and he didn't speak to me again for a week. When I finally saw him again he tried to tell me, but he wasn't using words very well and what he did say didn't make sense."

"Vilkas not using words well?" I snorted. "That's not possible. When did this happen?"

"Not long after we'd met. About a year and a half ago, I'd say."

"Then he's had enough of a rest and it's time someone asked again," I said decisively, and took off after Vilkas. It took a bit of effort but I caught him up. Most of his height is in his legs, the man walks as fast as most folk run.

"You can't run away from it, you know," I said firmly.

"I was taking the opportunity to walk at my normal speed rather than the snail's pace you two keep. I am not running from anything."

"Liar," I said loudly. That stopped him in his tracks, but it stopped me as well. The look on his face was the blank wall I'd fought so long to break through. It meant I must have hurt him very badly indeed.

"Vilkas, I'm sorry," I said. "You know I don't mean it. But if you can't even speak about your failure with the Rakshi you will never overcome it. It won't go away for being ignored, you know. And you have made a powerful enemy whose chief weapons are demons. You have to think about this."

He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again the wall was gone. I let out the breath I hadn't known I was holding. Being a friend to Vilkas was never easy.

"Once," he said as Aral caught up with us. "I'll tell you this once." He glanced from Aral to me. "Come, let us be moving," he said. "There's a long way to go yet and I would gladly maim for a beer."

We returned to a pace that Aral could keep up with while Vilkas collected his thoughts. The day was fading slowly from the sky, but there was enough yet of twilight for us all to see each other.

"It happened many years ago," he began. Aral tried to say something, but he stopped her. "Later. Just listen. I was barely ten winters old but I was already working with the Healer in my town, learning what I could. I knew even then that I was damned good and a lot stronger than he was, and I was very sure of myself. Then an old woman came in demon-touched and asked us to help rid her of the taint." He stood up straighter as he walked, as if he were having to literally face up to the memory. "Sandrish thought I could use practice on demons, so he showed me what to do and let me loose. I sent my power into the poor soul, and since the very idea of demons has always sickened me I poured my heart and soul into the healing. I put everything I had into it, hard and fast."

Aral gasped and I heard her whispering "Goddess, no. Oh, Vil, no." Vilkas ignored her. "The woman started screaming, so I tried even harder. She stopped screaming almost instantly." His teeth came together with a click. Neither Aral nor I dared say a word. We hardly dared breathe. Vilkas's tale was like a blow with a club.

"Sandrish did what he could but she was stone dead. I had—ha! I, the great healer, the wise child who was so very strong!" He spat the words out. "I boiled the blood in her veins, Aral, and when I heard her screaming I seared her heart."

We said nothing, we just waited until Vilkas was breathing more normally. Until we were all breathing more normally. To my astonishment, Vilkas spoke again. "I used to have dreams after that—well, you'd expect it, wouldn't you, but the dreams had nothing to do with my killing that poor woman. There was one in particular that I kept having." His voice paused. "I keep having.

"I am standing on the top of a mountain—I know this sounds stupid, but it was a dream—I have fought my way to the top of this mountain and I can touch the sky. Really touch the sky. I just reach out a finger and I can feel the blue-ness of it, and the soft clouds. Then I am the ruler of the world. The whole world is at my feet." He shivered. "After that, though, the dream can go two different ways. In one I became some kind of sky god, like the stories you hear of the tribes in the Far South who worship the sun—I am all-powerful and beneficent and everything is wonderful, I use my power to its fullest extent and I make the world a glorious place."

After we had walked in silence a little way, Aral said the obvious, because someone had to. "And when it goes the other way?"

Vilkas spoke in the flat tone I had come to dread, for I was learning more of him in this one day than nearly two years had taught me. When he could not trust his emotions to stay in check he wrapped them in iron bands, hid them away in deep impenetrable caverns of darkness and spoke as if he were discussing the weather.

"When it goes the other way I am the Death of the World." He said the words as if they were a title. "It always happens the same way. I am fighting one of the Rakshasa, one of the Lords of the Hells, and it stabs me in the heart but I don't die. I instantly turn into a demon a thousand times worse than the one that has stabbed me. I kill it with a flick of my power, for by then I have power that has grown as vast as the world, and then I—then I kill every living thing, and to end it all I reach out and crush the sun in my hand."

He stopped for a moment, to control his voice again. Dear Lady, I thought, what does he do with all that passion? I had never seen a man run so desperately from himself.

"And I laugh. Every time. While I'm killing demons and people and breaking mountains, when I'm putting out the sun—I'm laughing the whole time," he said, striding forward again, and despite his best efforts his voice was thick with disgust.

I kept pace with him and demanded my answer. Without stopping to think, without any consideration for the depth of his feelings, I demanded an answer of him, "Why, Vilkas?"

"Why what?" he snarled.

"It's important. Why are you laughing?"

His voice shocked me when he answered, for he spat out the words with a deep self-loathing.

"Because it feels good. No, it feels bloody damned fantas-tic. There is no difference between being the sky god and being the Death of the World, Will. No difference! In the dream, the feelings are the same no matter which I choose: ultimate release and fulfillment, and self-indulgence, and—fate."

I dropped back to join Aral, who was in truth no more than a step behind. However, Vilkas had not yet ceased to astound me. Having had his say, having damned himself forever in his own eyes as being at once too weak, too strong and irredeemably evil, he made a stunning effort to seem reasonably normal. We all knew he was only bearing up by virtue of bis indomitable will, and neither Aral nor I would have pricked that particular soap bubble just then for worlds.

"There," he said pleasantly, "will that do you for your price?"

"Vilkas, I—"

"I'll take that as a yes. At least we're not thinking about how tired we are anymore." He snorted, then sighed. "Hells' teeth, this day is long as years! How far are we now from that inn of yours?"

"A little over another hour, I'm afraid," I said. The sun was long since down and the light had leached slowly from the sky as he spoke, leaving darkness to settle cold on all our shoulders. Exhausted as we were, at least the walking kept us warm. The Sulkith Hills away west stood outlined sharply again the last fading glow of twilight. The stars were beginning to make themselves known, even some of the shy ones, for the moon was very young and the night cloudless. The trees on either side of the road were reduced to dark shadows on the starfields, and away off to our left as we walked north, the hills grew very slowly closer and higher. The sight of them lifted my heart. I had forgotten how much I missed my home.

"Then, in Shia's name tell us your story," said Vilkas.

"And it had better be a damned fine one. I'm getting bloody cold."

I smiled to myself in the darkness. "Well, it's not as bad as stories go, and none the worse for being true." I took a deep breath. "Salera saw I first in fire—sorrow sealed her, lone child and lost...."

I had only just finished the tale of my life with Salera when we all saw a light ahead. There was nothing else for miles in any direction, it had to be the little village of Wolfenden and the Dragon's Head. I stood up straighter and ran my fingers through my hair, wishing I'd brought more silver with me. I hoped the bloodstains on my cloak weren't as obvious as the ones on Vilkas's tunic.

The smell of hot food wafted through the cold night air and gave us all heart. "It's as good as it smells, I swear," I said cheerfully.

"I don't care if it's braised liver of cat, I'm having some," said Aral. To my surprise she took my hand as we walked in the darkness and held it, briefly. "I hope you find Salera again, now you've left Verfaren," she said softly.

"I do too," I replied. Her hand in mine felt so right, so good—and then it was gone. I kept my foolish thoughts to myself and the three of us hurried into the warm, well-lit common room of the Dragon's Head.

Dhretan led me as swiftly as he could fly up the east coast of our island. We had passed Akhor's old Weh chambers and were beginning to approach the southern cliffs and the Grandfather when he began descending. It was difficult to keep behind him, and to be honest it was difficult to fly that low, but the poor soul was working so hard.

"There," he told me in truespeech, pointing with his snout. "That cavern there, with the tiny clearing before it."

"Lead on, Dhretan, but be warned, I am going to shout," I replied.

I began in truespeech.

"NIKIS! NIKIS, AWAKEN!" I cried, as loud as I could. I kept shouting her name, and when we had come to land and Dhretan showed me the entrance to her Weh chamber I hurried inside and began shouting aloud.

"Nikis, it is Hadreshikrar who speaks! You must waken, your life is at stake!" No response. "Nikis, our home is dying, we must leave this place." As if to echo my words, there was a deep ramble and a brief earthshake even as we stood there.

There was no response from Nikis.

"Go close and call her by her true name," I said to Dhretan. "I will go out. Shout it at her and fear not, I will be too far away to hear."

I walked into the forest to find the stream I had smelled, and drank while Dhretan was yelling. I tried very hard not to hear what he was saying.

"Eldest, she does not waken!" he cried. "She has not so much as twitched."

"Touch her hide gently," I said as I returned to the clearing. "See how tough it is, that we may have some idea of how much longer she will sleep."

I heard him cry out aloud before he bespoke me. "Alas! It is barely hardened at all. Her scales bend, lord!"

As if in sympathy with his dismay, another deep rumble rolled through and the earth shook, a little longer this time. My heart was beating fast and every muscle cried out to be gone from this place, but having come this far I could not leave her there.

I sped into the cavern and noticed this time that my wings, folded tight, still brushed the sides of the entrance to her chamber. We would not be able to work together to lift her out.

Dhretan must have noticed as well, for as I ran to Nikis he nuked, "How are we to do this, lord?"

I got my first good look at Nikis—strange how you notice such detail when time is of desperate importance. She was a lovely young creature, her delicate new scales the colour of dark iron, her soulgem like a deep yellow topaz. She was only a few kells older than Dhretan, which was a blessing, but she was still larger than I could carry easily or for long. "Help me turn her over," I said. "Swiftly, swiftly!"

Together we managed to get Nikis on her back. "Fold her wings in carefully," I said, "take care that they lie to the side and not under her. Now let me get hold of—"

I was interrupted by a loud explosion. Too close! It was swiftly followed by another earthshake, which began as the slightest of movements and grew worse. And worse.

I could barely keep my feet, but I managed to grasp Nikis's shoulders under her wing-joints and cried out to Dhretan. "We must get out now, we are too close to the fire- fields! Look to her wings!"

I dragged Nikis backwards, scrambling as swiftly as I could, desperate to be out of there. I fell onto her twice, thrown off my feet by the movement of the ground. It was terrible and hideously slow; I knew her hide was being scored and her wings bruised and battered, but as long as I got her out of that cavern I did not care.

When I finally reached open air I could pull much faster, putting my back into it, and she was out in moments.

However, moments were all we had. The earth had stopped moving but the smell struck me as soon as I had emerged. When Dhretan followed Nikis out he too smelled it. "Eldest, what is that on the air?" he asked. "And the sound—it roars, Lord Shikrar!"

"It is fire, youngling," I said, trying desperately to remain calm. "Help me turn her on to her chest that I may lift her." As we struggled with the dead weight I added, "And whether it is earth or forest that burns, we have very little time before it reaches us." I shuddered, for the stench was growing thicker by the instant, and Dhretan seemed to be moving at a snail's pace. "Her back legs are tangled— quickly, Dhretan! We have no more time."

"But the smell," he said as together we rolled Nikis back onto her chest. "That is not wood."

"No. It is rock. Now get aloft, I am going to have to lilt her." What I would give for a cliff top to leap from, I thought longingly. It was hard enough to lift myself from the flat ground, and Nikis must weigh a third of my own weight. I sent a swift prayer to the Winds and wrapped my forearms about her chest. I could only just reach so far. However, I managed to interlock my talons in front of her.