Madbond (29 page)

Furling itself—those hard, swollen dugs shot out streams of cold liquid and collapsed. I caught a glimpse of a single great eye in the moonlight, and then the thing stood head down and upright, folded into a shape like a stubby arrow with the maw at the fore, fastened just below my ribs like a huge leech. It thrashed its flattened tail, swimming in air as an eel would in water, boring into me, mindlessly set on possessing me one way or another.

“No!” At least I could cry out, for all the good it did me. None at all.

I struggled to rise, to throw it off, and only gave myself more sickening pain, for the monster held me pinned to the ground with its great weight crushing into my gut.

Who was I? I could not remember my name!

Dannoc. Strong and tall. Dannoc, son of Tyonoc. A devourer had done this same thing to my father and turned him into a living, walking shell, demon-possessed by the evil thing hiding within. If that should happen to me, if I should then betray Kor as my father had betrayed me—

I could see Kor, my comrade. It had to be him, lying by my side, though another of the swaddling gray-skinned monsters hid him from head to foot. Only one hand lay free, curled on the grass.

He would be well enough. He was a king among his own people, Korridun, son of Kela, a wise king with many powers, and he had survived the devourers before. For me, it was the first time, and I was failing—I felt self slipping again. The thing was besting me, and I would kill my body before I let a devourer take it and turn it against those I loved.

Sakeema be thanked, at least I could move my arms. Sword and knife lay in the grass beside me, and I reached for the knife, groaning with the agony of the movement, which forced teeth yet deeper into me. Such weapons were of no use against devourers, I had been told, slicing through them as if through water, leaving no mark. Therefore I meant the knife for myself. Made of sharpest obsidian, it would find its way quickly to my heart, I hoped.… Kor's hand, lying near the weapons. He had made me this same promise, to kill himself before he let himself be possessed. Kor, my friend like no other … Hardly thinking anymore, hardly knowing who I was or what I was doing, I reached beyond knife and sword and gripped his hand, just to say farewell.

His fingers curled around mine, and strength surged through me.

Strength as of four warriors, ourselves and two out of the past. A high courage, so joyful, so effortless it could sing. I sat up, shouting out loud, and aimed a hard blow at the devourer with my fist—but already it had let go of me, had unfurled, was flying away. The other joined it, the two of them rippling away like the flat, stinging fish that live on the sandy bottom of the sea. For a moment the capelike shapes of them shadowed the moon, and then they were gone, and Kor was sitting up, blinking at me.

“Thanks,” he said.

He thought I had handbonded to help him. I snorted, spraying slime, scraping slime from my face with my fingers, and his dark eyes widened.

“There was one on you, too? Dan, are you all right?”

“Of course,” I said. “I just reached over to lend you a hand, weakling that you are.” He had been fighting off foes both human and monstrous since he was a boy.

By then he was kneeling by me, staring—there was blood all over my chest and belly. “Great Sakeema,” he whispered, and without ceremony he emptied a skinful of water on me. I sputtered, but he was intent only on washing away the blood, seeing the wound. “Great Sakeema, Dan,” he whispered again.

“It very nearly had me,” I admitted.

“You will not be riding for a while.” He brought bandaging, passed the lambswool strips tightly around my body. I sagged against the binding, for my surge of strength had passed and I was beginning to feel weak and sick. “What happened?” Kor demanded. “I would have thought, pigheaded as you are—”

I was not too weak to glare at him in protest, and he grinned.

“Stubborn as you are, you should be proof against devourers.”

I flushed—perhaps he did not see it in the moonlight, but he must have known, for he was Kor. “I was dreaming,” I mumbled. I would not say of Tassida, for he loved her, she was his by a bond I scarcely understood, part of his kingship. He was the reason I would not court her.

“Oh.” He smiled, though not to mock me. “A dream of the sort in which the cock lifts his head.”

I merely grimaced, mortified, remembering how I had been pinned with my right hand at the breasts, the left one down by my bird.

“So the creature had a goodly hold on you before you awoke.” He wadded a blanket by way of pillow, eased me down onto it. I lay there and let him wash my head and hands. A smell as of death still lingered on me, and I shivered. Kor brought another blanket to cover me.

“I keep telling you, Dan, tunics have their uses. Leather vests, even.” He was trying to rouse me by teasing. Red Hart born, I went bare-chested nearly always, even in the wintertime, and on this fine summer's night I had not been covered by so much as a fawnskin. But Kor, being of the Seal Kindred, had the sense, as he put it, to keep himself warm. I reached out with one hand and pulled up the woolen shirt the Herders had given him.

“Not a mark on you,” I said, and his smile faded.

“Luck was with me. I had the blanket up. The monsters are mindless.”

Being of the Seal, he slept under blankets and furs. Being of the Seal, again, he had a skin of seashell tan and dark hair cropped like fur, as dark as mine was sunbleached bright. My eyes were sky blue, his the deep gray-green-brown of vast water. He was nearly as tall as I, and nearly as strong, but deft, so controlled and contained as to make me feel oafish.

None of it mattered. We were brothers.

We had done it with swordcuts and a handbond beside a visionary pool, only a few days before. The cuts on our fingers were but half-healed, and the handbond had been tested for the first time this night, and had saved me.

Kor brought wood for the fire, blew embers ablaze. King he might be, but I knew he would nurse me like a mother until I was well. I knew without words that he would stand guard over me for the rest of the night. Yellow light of flames made me shut my eyes, and I dozed.

I awoke after sunrise, blinking up at tall pines and snowpeaks and the heady blue of mountain sky. My fanged mare, Talu, was ogling down at me and breathing a vile reek, stench of carrion meat, into my face. Her flaccid nose seemed uncouth, huge. Peevishly I reached up to push it away, groaning with even that slight effort. Talu gave a snort of scorn and walked off, tail swishing, to hunt a nest of asps up among the rocks. There was nothing she liked better to eat than snakes.

Kor came over, laid a hand on my forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Why do you ask?” I retorted, querulous. He knew well enough that I was wretched, for he felt it himself. He felt the passions of all whom he knew well when he was waking and near them. My sorrows, my joys, my sufferings were all his as well as mine while we traveled together. A mixed blessing; for my illness made him miserable as well.

“I ask to annoy you,” he snapped.

“Well, how do you think I feel?”

“Rather less strong than thin soup.” He sighed, giving up spleen. “There must be some sort of venom in the bite of the devourers.”

“Lovely,” I muttered.

“Something to make the victim weaken. I always felt weak and sick for days afterward, and maybe not just from self-pity.” He pulled down the blanket and had a look at me. My wound was still oozing.

“Sit up,” he directed, helping me.

Unsteadily I sat while Kor undid the bandaging—he wanted to look at the injury in the light. He made me lie flat as he pulled apart the lips of the puncture to see how deep it was. He was gentle, as always, and I had thought I would be strong and silent—a pox on silence. I screamed with pain.

“Sedna's bones, Dan,” Kor whispered, his face grave.

He bound me up again.

“If it were not for those mighty muscles of yours, the creature would have struck through to your innards. Perhaps it has, even so. Perhaps you had better not eat for a while.”

I did not much feel like eating.

How he sustained himself the next few days I scarcely know. I was reared a hunter, but he was not. His people lived mostly on fish. He knew the ways of netting birds, so perhaps he did that, or caught something in a snare. We had a little maslin flour he made into thin gruels for me, I remember. But I do not remember much. I was far away with fever.

To sustain myself, I dreamed of Sakeema.

Once in a vision I had traveled with him, with Sakeema, that king above all kings, who had lived in my grandfather's grandfather's time. King without a tribe, born in a mountain cave, suckled by a deer, king who had never called himself a king, much less a god.… He who ruled all men and all creatures, yet did not rule, but merely lived. Power of healing in his hands. Power of new life—marvelous and beautiful creatures sprang from his touch. Blue deer with antlers the clear color of ice, white eagles, butterflies bright as fire. Few of the many wondrous creatures were seen anymore, for all had dwindled and decayed since Sakeema had left us.

Sakeema, who had promised that he would come to us again. Who in my vision had given me a friend's promise that he would come again, in the way we least expected, in the time when we needed him most.

Dreaming, I yearned for him, inwardly chanting a song of longing and love.

The hart wears a crown but Sakeema wore none.

Sakeema the king, where have you gone?

Badgers have setts and the bears have their dens.

Sakeema the king, where is your throne?

What wantwits we are, what wanhopes all!

We did not know you truly until

The deer had taken you back to your dwelling.

How will you come to us, beloved king?

Perhaps even now you are walking among us,

And dolts that we are, still we do not know you.

Dear king of the creatures, prithee come back to us,

Bring back the stags of wonder, we beg you.

Our hearts ache with thinking of the small spotted deer,

Our hearts ache with thinking of the great maned deer,

Of the brown and yellow deer, our hearts ache with dreaming.

Bring them back to us, Sakeema the deer king.

Bring back the stags of splendor, we beg you.

Bring back the wolves of wonder, we beg you.

I awoke in the night, perhaps the second or third night, seeing the shadows of the looming pines, seeing wan moonlight, hearing a goshawk scream, and I felt an awful dread. I was very ill, and it frightened me, for I was not accustomed to being so sick. Wounded, yes, but not sick. Kor lay asleep beside me. I could reach over to rouse him if need be, but if I were to die I would be truly alone.

Sakeema
, I silently begged the night,
please come to me, please help me.

Awakened from my vision, I had been unable to remember his face, and I had despaired. But lying in the wound-fever and dreaming of Sakeema, I deemed that I saw him truly, for I saw Kor. No one could have done what Korridun had done for me and not be Sakeema.

Even in my right mind, I thought the same. Though at the time of which I speak I was nearly senseless. A day or two passed of which I remember little except wretchedness. A night came, moon on the wane, and I slipped in and out of nightmare. The devourer had indeed taken me, I was worse than dead, and utterly alone—no, I was waking, and the shadows lay long.

“Kor,” I begged.

He was sitting by me in the night, and he reached over and gave me the handbond, not for the first time. It strengthened me with the will and courage of ourselves plus the two kings whom we had seen in the swordpool, heroes of old whose names we did not know. It strengthened me, but it could not avert what faced me.

“I am dying,” I whispered.

He did not deny it. I could not see his face in the darkness, but I felt his taut distress as he gathered me up so that my head lay in his arms. His hand clutched mine tightly.

“I, who have faced Pajlat in battle and survived,” I complained, trying to make light of it, “I, who have brought up a sword out of the pool of vision—I, who have survived eversnow and Cragsmen and hotwind wildfire, I lie dying of a wet dream and Mahela's ill will? It is unthinkable.”

I would not have had strength to hold forth at such length had he not been handbonding me. The peril to my body remained the same, and he knew it. A sort of warm salt rain was falling on my face.

“Sakeema,” I begged him, “know yourself. Heal me.”

I had called him Sakeema once before, and he had laughed at me. This time he was in no fit fettle to laugh or argue. He spoke only four words, and his voice was choked.

“I am not Sakeema.”

“You, who died in torment for my sake, not Sakeema?”

“It was you—who brought me back, Dan.”

He could barely speak. Shamed, I kept silence.

“There is no—power of healing in me. I wish I were—who you say I am—for your sake.”

I had sensed for a certainty that he was. No one could have loved me as he had, showed me the mercy he had shown me, given self as he had given for me, without being more than man, more than king. But if he did not know it himself—and it was the custom of the Seal Kindred to humble their kings—perhaps he felt as helpless as I did.

Helpless, sinking down to death.

I felt as if I were drowning, but too weak to struggle, too weary to feel much pain. A heartsick longing for life was in me, but not much pain. Sinking, sinking down into the black water, swept along by its flow … flow turned to flight, black water turned to night sky. I seemed to drift in it without effort, looking down at my own bandaged body with an odd leave-taking tenderness, looking down on Kor where he held me in the glow of dying embers, his tears falling onto me.… I did not want to leave Kor. Above all things, I wanted to stay with him. But a tug like the current of a strong stream pulled at me—I strove against it, and still it carried me away, no matter how hard I struggled. I cried out to Kor, but he could not hear me, and soon I could no longer see him … then all was black, as if I were dreamlessly sleeping.