Foxfire (54 page)

He paused only long enough to acknowledge the frenzied cheers with a wave. Then, surrounded by the guards, he led Jholianna down the steps, carefully skirting the corpse. As he handed her into the litter, he slipped on the blood-slick cobblestones and had to seize one of the litter's posts to keep from falling.

Something brushed his cheek, soft as Jholianna's hair. But when he looked up, he found her gaze fixed on a clump of feathers on the cushion beside her. Bemused, he wondered how they had gotten in the litter. When his mind finally registered what his eyes were seeing, his bowels clenched.

Before he could pull the arrow free, he heard the Khonsel shouting and the frenzied slap of leather-shod feet. Someone shoved him into the litter. He sprawled across the cushions, but when he tried to sit up, a hand thrust him down again.

“The Avokhat's house! Quickly!”

As the litter lurched forward, he twisted his head and discovered the Khonsel's stark face a handsbreadth from his own. The late afternoon sunlight penetrating the gauzy awning cast a rosy glow on his cheeks, as if he were blushing.

Screams erupted as the guards beat a way through the terrified spectators with the flats of their swords. The litter rocked wildly. A violent tug on his khirta kept him from sliding out.

“Jholianna!” He had to shout to make himself heard. “Are you hurt?”

“I can't . . . breathe. Khonsel . . . please . . .”

The Khonsel shifted his weight, and her breath eased out in a shaky sigh. Rigat wriggled one hand free to give her arm a comforting squeeze and was rewarded by a wan smile.

There was a brief moment of shade as they passed under a stone archway. Then renewed heat as the litter bearers entered a courtyard. The splash of water from an unseen fountain made Rigat realize he desperately needed to empty his bladder. Only because he'd had no opportunity to do so all day, he told himself. Not because he was afraid.

Even before the litter came to rest, the Khonsel slid out and bent to lift Jholianna. Ignoring her weak protestations, he gathered her in his arms and limped off, surrounded by guards.

“My lord.” The anxious face of a young guard loomed before him. “Inside. Quickly.”

The guard extended his hand. Rigat reached for it and froze, staring at his palm.

“Sweet Zhe! Were you hit? My lord, are you hurt?”

Still staring numbly at the smears of blood, Rigat shook his head. “I don't . . . no. I . . .”

Without waiting for permission, the guards yanked him out of the litter with as much ceremony as fleshers hauling a haunch of meat from a cart.

“Shields up!”

Fingers bit into his arms as they marched him toward the dark entranceway of the house.

The interior was dim and blessedly cool, but filled with frantic activity. As Rigat obediently submitted to the hands tugging him this way and that, searching for a wound, the Khonsel barked orders to post guards on the roof and the entranceways. A dozen raced to obey. Others were already slamming wooden shutters across windows.

An elderly man—probably the judge who owned the house—watched the activity with helpless amazement. His wife snapped at the slaves to light torches to alleviate the gloom. Both fell to their knees when they saw him.

“Please,” Rigat murmured. “Rise.”

Only then did he spy Jholianna, slumped on a bench against the far wall. The Khonsel sat beside her, his face bent close to her blood-smeared arm. When Rigat spotted the shallow cut near her shoulder, the wave of relief left him giddy; he could heal that in moments.

“We've sent for a physician,” the Avokhat's wife said. “But it might take him some time. The crowds . . .”

A richly dressed girl—the Avokhat's daughter?—hurried toward the Khonsel, a bronze basin clutched in her hands. The Khonsel plucked the cloth from her arm, dampened it, and dabbed gently at Jholianna's wound.

She bore it without flinching. Indeed, she seemed scarcely aware of the chaos around her. Her head rested against the wall, seeming to sprout incongruously from the dark center of a painted sunflower. Her eyes were half-closed, but they fluttered open when the Khonsel suddenly leaned forward and seized her chin.

Rigat heard a gasp behind him and the shuffling of feet. A guard hurried forward, gripping the black shaft of the arrow between his thumb and forefinger as if he feared it would come to life. Rigat clamped his lips together to prevent a burst of nervous laughter from escaping. Then he noticed the man's expression.

Although he could still hear the slaves' bare feet slapping against the tiles and a guard racing up a flight of stairs, everyone around him was frozen, every pair of eyes riveted on the arrow. And every face wore the same expression of horror as the guard's.

The Khonsel was the first to recover. He unsheathed his dagger and sawed a long strip of fabric from his khirta. But instead of bandaging Jholianna's wound, he tied the fabric higher on her arm.

“What are you doing?” Rigat protested.

“It's poison,” the Khonsel snarled. Jholianna's arm jerked as he knotted the fabric. “The Carilians always paint the shafts of poisoned arrows black. So they don't mistake them.”

He'd assumed she was just suffering from the shock of the attack. Only now did he notice her waxy complexion and drooping eyelids. Her chest rose and fell in quick pants as she sucked at the air like a fish out of water. Spittle oozed out of the corner of her gaping mouth. The Avokhat's wife slipped onto the bench beside her and gently wiped it away.

“We can't wait for a physician,” the Khonsel said. “Fetch the Motixa. Or the Pajhit.”

Rigat had half turned to obey before he realized that the Khonsel was speaking to a guard.

“We must prepare her to Shed.” Even as he snapped out the orders, the Khonsel's hands were moving, one gripping Jholianna's wrist, the other lifting his dagger. He made two small incisions above her wound. Jholianna's body jerked in protest, but he ignored her to suck at the cuts. He reared up and spat, spraying blood onto the yellow tiles. Three more times, he repeated the ritual, then sat back, rubbing his lips with his fist.

“Can you save her? Or at least keep her alive until she can Shed?”

They were all watching him, just as before their eyes had been riveted on the arrow. Rigat tried to form words, but it was all happening too quickly.

“Rigat!” the Khonsel shouted.

“I . . . I don't know. I've never healed someone who's been poisoned. But I'll try.”

The Avokhat's daughter eased back. Her hands shook so badly that water sloshed over the side of the basin, wetting his khirta and dripping down his leg.

“I'll need to touch her. It. The wound.”

The Khonsel slid off the bench, allowing him to sit. Jholianna's hand felt limp and boneless, but her flesh was warm and her pulse thudded rapidly under his thumb.

A hand descended on his shoulder. “They use different poisons.” The Khonsel's voice was calm, but his hand trembled, and that terrified Rigat. “Usually a combination. Yew berries. Helmet-flower. Snake venom. I don't know if that helps . . .”

Rigat nodded automatically. If only his mam were here. Or Fellgair.

Silently, he cursed himself for wasting his power on cooling his body and drying his sweat, especially when it was already weakened by the interrogations. He closed his eyes, thrusting aside the useless regrets, desperately trying to steady himself. Dimly, he was aware of the Khonsel muttering orders. A woman's muffled weeping. A man's soft prayers. And the hoarse, uneven rasp of Jholianna's breath.

When he placed his right palm over the wound, heat seared him. Not the ordinary heat of injured flesh, but sharp, penetrating pain as if dozens of bees were stinging him.

He fought the urge to snatch his hand away and flung his power into the wound. Jholianna's hand ripped free of his grasp. He opened his eyes to find her writhing in the arms of the Avokhat's wife, one hand clawing at the vial of qiij at her throat. With an oath, the Khonsel stumbled to the other side of the bench, shoved the woman aside, and used his weight to pin Jholianna against the wall.

“We must give her the qiij now! While she can still swallow.”

As the Avokhat's wife fumbled with the stopper of the vial, the Khonsel pulled Jholianna into his arms and held her head back. She reared up, choking on the qiij, but he clapped his hand over her mouth until she swallowed.

Rigat squeezed his eyes shut again. Jholianna's terror screamed inside his spirit, but he could not afford to squander his power on calming her.

Despite the sting of the poison, it was as amorphous as fog. Deadly and elusive in the tidal race of her blood, every heartbeat sent it coursing through her body.

He made his power into a spear, hurling a pure current of energy through Jholianna's blood. Tiny black dots blossomed and exploded as he cleaved the miasma. But in his wake, the poison coalesced again, oozing through the chinks in the barriers he erected to dam it up.

He poured more of his power into her, fighting both the poison and the certainty that it would swallow up the healing energy, even as it was devouring Jholianna's life. He heard the wild drumbeat of her heart, then realized the sound came from outside his body.

Jholianna's heels, he realized. Pounding on the tiles.

“She can't breathe!” a woman shouted.

Abandoning the effort to hold back the poison, he sent his power surging toward her lungs. They were as flaccid as empty waterskins. He surrounded them with his power, squeezing them as the smith's apprentice pumped the bellows in the royal armory. Slowly and rhythmically, the boy had worked, and although fear urged him to hurry, Rigat did the same.

He was so focused on helping Jholianna breathe that he sensed the upwelling of her power too late. The energy crashed into him with such force that he lost connection with his body. He could no longer feel the bench against his thighs or the smoothness of Jholianna's flesh. A dense cloud veiled his vision. He could still hear voices, but they faded as his hearing deserted him along with his other senses.

Shock coursed through him when he realized that she was trying to cast out his spirit. For a heartbeat, he hung suspended, clinging to his body by a fragile thread. But if Jholianna's instinct to survive was strong, so was his.

Terror and desperation fueled his faltering power. It roared up from the core of his being, hotter and wilder than he had ever known it, spinning strength into the thread of his existence, seizing his drifting spirit and hurtling it back into his body.

Before his power, Jholianna's wilted. Neither qiij nor her instinct for survival could match it. He was ablaze with the power, gloriously alive, spirit and body alike inundated by sensations. And all so vivid, so beautiful. To feel the grain of the wooden bench through his khirta. To hear the slap of sandals on cobblestones and the anxious murmur of a guard in the courtyard. To smell the scent of fresh-baked bread from the kitchens and the oil that perfumed the Avokhat's hair and the fear-stink of the Khonsel's sweat. To be supremely alive, supremely powerful.

This was what it meant to be a god.

Light flared behind his closed eyelids—red light and orange and a fiery white. Hundreds of bursts of light that filled his senses and shimmered with the luminescence of the Northern Dancers, until his entire being seemed infused with their radiance.

A tiny red star exploded, blinding him with its brilliance. As it flickered and died, another exploded, and another and another. The dance was still beautiful, but it was dying now, the blaze ebbing to a dull red glow. A wave of sadness engulfed him, and with it, an overwhelming lassitude. Only then did he realize that it was not only the dance that was dying, but his power.

Panic destroyed the last vestiges of his exultation. His power shuddered in response to the sudden jolt of fear, and it horrified him to feel how weak it had become. Lost in the glory of the dance, he had continued to expend it recklessly when he should have been conserving it for Jholianna's sake—and his.

Her death would cripple Zheros and destroy any hope for peace in the north. The Zherosi would turn on him. For how could the true Son of Zhe fail to save their queen?

The connection between their spirits faded. Her terror leached away, replaced by anguish. And then it, too, receded, until all he could feel was her hopeless acceptance of death.

Without any power, Darak had sheltered Keirith's spirit. Surely, he could do the same for Jholianna until a Host could be found.

The Khonsel was shouting something, but Rigat ignored the intrusive voice, focusing all his energy on the link between his spirit and hers. She had drifted so far away in those wasted moments of self-congratulation. How could he have been so careless?

He drew what strength he could from the wooden bench beneath him, from the incense-scented air, from the meager light of the oil lamps, and the sweat rolling down his face. And then he opened himself and drew her fragile spirit closer.

He felt a moment of resistance as she clung to the body that she knew.

It happened so quickly it caught them both by surprise. There was a moment of shared recognition and relief. Then his limbs began to flail.

He landed hard on the tiles, writhing helplessly. He fought down his panic, trying to soothe her, to control her without terrifying her, to overcome centuries of Shedding that told her she must gain possession of this new body and cast out the alien spirit that still shared it. In the end, all he could do was retreat and throw up a barrier to shield them from each other.