Madbond (28 page)

Ashamed—no, there was no use in shame when I was with him, for he had always felt what folly was in me, and still there was that—that love such as I had once before lost. Lost.
Ai,
but I was afraid.

“Kor,” I pleaded, “what if a devourer were to find a way into you, too? How would I know?”

The question took his breath—I saw his face change. For a moment he stood as silent as the pool.

“Knives might be of some use after all, Dan,” he said slowly then. “I think I would kill myself before I would let that happen.”

Not much comforted, I turned and dove headfirst into the tarn.

Deep, deep, drowning deep, and so black that even in the daylight I could see nothing. And ice cold, even in summertime. And pressure, water pulling at me. It was all familiar, grim but no longer a cause for panic. I forced myself deeper, holding my breath and searching for the bottom—I did not find it. There was a singing and a pounding in my ears. When I felt as if I might faint, I faced upward and plunged back to the surface, breaking it with a gasp, thrashing—

Kor was there, kneeling at the verge, reaching out to help me. He caught me by the wrist with a strong grip. I smiled and let myself be borne up by him until my breathing quieted.

“Let me try again,” I said, and with a faint frown he released his grasp.

I pushed my way down more calmly this time, more strongly, forcing my way hands first through the blackness, until at last my hands—touched. There were rocks on the bottom, but also other things, shapes I knew, blades and hilts, more than one. My hand closed around a hilt—and the sword jerked away, turned and cut me across my startled fingers. In a moment I realized how much worse it could have hurt me. Clearly, a gentle warning.

Back at the surface of the tarn, panting, I let Kor pull me out so that I sat on the bank beside him. I held up my right hand. A shallow slash cut neatly across the palm side of all four fingers. The chill of the water had not let it bleed, but as I looked it filled with bright red. Kor looked as well and went rigid.

“Your sword is down there,” I told him, “but she will not come to me.”

For once I had truly confounded him. He could scarcely move or speak for amazement. “Bind that,” he said finally, and he got up and pulled off his tunic and breeches and boots. His plunge cut cleanly into the surface of the pool. The seal in him, I thought sitting there.

I sat in the sunshine, shivering in spite of the midsummer warmth, for what seemed a long time. I did not bind my hand, but let it bleed. Just as fear took hold of me and brought me to my feet, Kor came surging up, shaking the water out of his hair and eyes, and in his right hand he held his sword. On the pommel shone a glittering stone of pure, true red, blood red.

When I had helped him clamber out he stood before me with a rapt and thinking look, staring at the sword and then at the cut on my hand.

“A beautiful thing, for all that it is a weapon of war,” he remarked, hefting it, lifting it to the level of our eyes. Sunlight gleamed on the soaring blade. “Very clean, that cut it gave you.”

“As clean as the one I put on your neck once.” I looked. “The scar is gone.” All scars had left him in his healing.

“Matching marks,” he whispered to himself, and his eyes shot up to meet mine. “Dan, you have brothers, but I have none.”

“You want one?” I asked softly.

He nodded. “Get Alar.”

Ardor singing deep in his voice. I reached down where the scabbard lay with my clothing and drew out the sword. Blood on the hilt from my bleeding fingers.… I seemed to feel the air tingle, Alar tremble in my hand. Kor put down his blade and held out his right hand to me, palm up.

“Across the fingers, like yours.” He looked at me with a hint of a smile. “Stop shaking, Dan. I am used to scars, I feel naked without any.”

“You are naked,” I retorted. As was I. And the jest failed, for my voice quivered.

I took a deep breath to steady myself and made the cut. How he trusted me.… Sakeema be praised, it was all right. Shallow, but deep enough to bleed. The red drops welled up, shining bright as the jewel in his sword, and I laid Alar aside, turned to Kor and touched his bleeding hand with mine.

Fingers curled, clasped. Blood mingled. Eyes met.

“You have a brother now,” I told him. “It is a pledge.” And my voice was strong and warm as the sunlight, and I no longer trembled. There was a mist of tears in his eyes, like the mist over his distant home, but I saw his smile, full of strength and joy, and I knew that my smile answered his in kind—I felt tall with joy, and fearless. Kor held his head high always, but he lifted it yet higher. He must have felt that same surge of courage.

“The two of us together,” he declared, “we can do anything. And that is my pledge to you, Dan.”

We stood for a long time without moving, unwilling to let go of the moment. Until the blood dried on our clasped fingers we stood, and when at last we sighed, stirred, and loosened our grip, the cuts no longer bled.

Without speaking we moved about, softly, as if in a good dream, not wanting to mar it with clatterings or our uncouth voices. We washed at the tarn, put on our clothes. I cleansed my sword and sheathed it. Kor sat cross-legged on the turf with his in his lap, one finger tracing the long lines of the blade. He looked up at the odd spires looming above us, then at me.

“Let us camp here tonight,” he said, and though we could have ridden half a day yet, I nodded. He had turned it into a place for me to love.

I went out and hunted us ridge chickens—they are easy meat, they run rather than fly, and sometimes they forget even to run. I took two of the birds back to Kor, and we built a fire near the tarn and cooked them at our leisure. We gathered mountain blueberries, we baked flatbread on fire-heated rocks, and then we feasted, and talked easily of many things, even of Tassida. And after a while we grew silent and watched the sunset colors fade over the snowpeaks and the stars come out.

Our campfire had burned down to embers. Somewhere a whiskered owl was calling. The stars burned white in a sky as black and soft as a sable's pelt, and in the pool their shadows floated. I remember a crescent moon. The night was fair, the breeze full of heady fragrance from the pines downslope, and Kor and I sat gazing for no reason at the shadow-stars floating on the black water of the tarn.

We must have been half in a trance. Before we were well aware of it the white, glimmering flecks shifted, gathered, took shape and rose like a mist above the black pool. Or like tall clusters of white flowers half seen at nighttime, or like two hunters sprinkled with snow—no. Thin as a mist, but faintly glowing and plain in every line, two men stood there, or two ghosts of men, or visions, stood as if on rock, though the tarn water hid their feet. And they wore clothing such as I had never seen, clothing fit for kings—or gods. Robe and tunic and baldric and cape, layer on layer, long, fanciful sleeves bordered with stitchery and glimmer, cloak trailing to the heels, shining cloth gloriously wrought, and it was all white, all starlight. But although I remembered it afterward, I scarcely noted the clothing at the time. The faces held me. They were faces of men, perhaps warriors, older than I but not yet old, and there was a passionfire in them, and a sadness, and a grandeur that awed and frightened me. I inched my left hand over to where Kor sat, grasped his arm, and I could tell, by the hardness of his arm that he saw them too. Neither of us dared to further move, or speak.

The two men of starlight, the two visions, faced each other with a steady, half-smiling look, and softly they drew their swords. The swords of starlight looked much like Kor's and mine.… And the two kings, if kings they were, touched blades without a sound, touched the tips of their blades and raised them high overhead, still cleaving, in a gesture of triumph or—I was not sure what, an emblem like a mountainpeak.… Then they sheathed their swords and held out their right hands to each other. Their fingers curled, clasped. That grip, I knew it. Their eyes met with a look I also knew.

Then, turning, they looked full at us, at Kor, at me.

Their gaze—we felt it eerily, reaching us out of a distance we could not encompass, chill deeps of time. For a moment we looked into their grave, noble faces of starlight, and then we could look no longer. Terror took us, and we cried out and hid behind our arms.

“They are gone,” Kor whispered. “I feel it.”

Clenching myself, I looked up. The surface of the tarn lay still, with only the ghosts of stars floating on it like tiny lilies.

“They did—not mean to harm us—or unman us.…” Kor's voice was unsteady.

“Then why are we both quaking?” Mine was no firmer.

“Reach out your right hand to me,” Kor said.

I could just as easily have hugged him around the shoulders with the left. But I did as he said, and he held out his own, touched the raw cut on his fingers to mine. And instantly I felt a surge of strength. I shook no longer. Nor, I saw, did he. And his face was alight with wonder.

“Dan! When we two are together, we have the strength of four.”

“Who were those two on the pool?” I asked, my voice hushed.

“Sakeema knows.”

We slept, for we were no longer afraid. I awoke at sunrise to see Kor also awake, studying the early light on the odd pinnacles above us.

“Men made that,” he said. “The part on the knee of the mountain, there, that is different.”

I blinked at him, for how could men ever have made such a massive thing? And why? But remembering Tassida's tales and the vision of the night before, I did not speak my doubt.

“Well, Dan,” said Kor, as if bemused, “I have come a long way from my seaside Hold.”

“We'll have a longer way to go to beard Mahela, and a strange trail.”

So we set forth on it, two youths on heavy-headed fanged mares, upslope toward the eversnow and icefields and the passes that led toward sunset. The first day of an unlikely journey … We held the reins with our left hands only, and from time to time we lifted the others and smiled.

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Chapter One

I was dreaming of Tassida, her startling dark eyes and willful brows, her strong warrior's body, her small, tan, pink-tipped breasts. Well remembered, those breasts. Kor and I had torn her clothes off, frantic, searching for a wound, and found instead a young woman where we had expected a boy.… Much as I ached to, I had never touched Tassida's breasts, never courted her in any way, not by so much as a kiss. But sleeping on soft grass under a midsummer moon, I dreamed that she came to me. For some reason it was all right, now, for me to love her. She came in her proud way and laid herself atop me, and I caressed her breasts, kissed them, nuzzled them with my face—

Cold. That could not be true of Tass. She was all warmth, blazing heat even, passion's fire within her.

Cold as icy seawater! She stared down at me ghoulishly, teeth bared, her handsome head turning to bone, as if she were long dead and rotting—

I awoke with a panicky jolt to find that I could not move. A cold and heavy presence lay on me, holding me helpless with its weight, enveloping me in fishy folds, pinning my arms where it had found them. One hand lay trapped at the breasts. Yes, by Sakeema, the thing had breasts, huge ones, hard and chill, and my face was wedged between them so firmly that I could scarcely breathe. And the smell—Kor had not mentioned the smell. It was subtle, but fearsome, the very smell of horror, a womanly smell gone evil. And slime, threatening to choke my nostrils. But slime was the least of my peril. Down in the area of my chest and belly I could feel speartip teeth and a strong sucking force. Like a starfish on an oyster, the monster had its maw wide open, and it was working to devour me.

It was worse than any demon dream. I struggled, trying to thrash about, trying to kick away six feet of breasted body and fleshy, rippling wing atop me, and the thick, snakelike tail that wound tightly around my legs. But even in strength of desperation I could not move, fainting, there was not enough air—could not remember who I was, the devourer was turning me into—otherness, taking me within. I would no longer be—be—

I was Dannoc, Dannoc, Dannoc.

I was horse tamer, skilled archer, storyteller—Dannoc, son of Tyonoc, who had been king of the Red Hart Tribe. My father had been bested, but, Mahela be cursed, I would not be taken by any minion of hers! Hatred of what had been done to Tyonoc made me suddenly rock hard and calm. My breathing quieted, became shallow as I willed myself into a sort of trance. Merely enduring was the worst of tasks to me, for I far preferred to strike. But I had to endure until dawn, when the devourer would be forced to loosen its grip—and perhaps then I would have a blow at it.

Bowels of Mahela!

Even as I learned how to withstand the demon, it lifted off me and attacked in a different way.