Godbond (15 page)

“Where is that horse?” I demanded, blundering off in the direction of the herds, coughing in the smoke that still hung pungent in the air. Tass brushed past me and planted herself in front of me, straddle-legged, fists on her hips and elbows jutting.

“Calimir goes nowhere without me,” she told me frostily.

“Get your gear, then! Quickly!”

“Are you moon-mad? I am needed here! And so is your great, stupid body. Is there no honor left in you, that you would leave the Herders in such a pass and not offer to stay and help?”

Such was the tug on me that not even Tassida's passion swayed me. The blaze in her eyes only shifted my own gaze into the past. “I left my bond brother lying under the lash of Mahela's storm, once,” I murmured. “I saw him lying beaten on a shore and turned away. No, there is little honor left in me.”

Tassida gave me a glare of wholehearted, uncomprehending fury. “You can well-come-hell walk,” she said.

There must have been some honor left in me after all, for I did not consider stealing her horse or taking it by force. Instead, I thought fervidly. My long legs, dangling over a Herder's donkey, would veritably drag on the ground. Were there no other horses?

“Perhaps the fanged mares are yet wandering near where I slew their masters,” I said. “I will go that way.” Though it was likely to be a fool's journey. No affection held those mares to their masters, to keep them near the bare-picked bones. But who better than I to undertake a fool's task?

Blindly I turned and started off north and eastward, on my way toward the Traders' Trail, which would take me around the skirts of the thunder cones. But Tassida sprang in front of me again, heat in her face and her voice.

“Dan, I do not understand! One moment it was all Sakeema, Sakeema, Sakeema—”

“Curse Sakeema!” I exploded. “Curse him to Mahela's hell, if he is not dead already. He is a traitor, and he took me away from Kor.” I tried to shove past her.

It is not to be wondered at, that she thought I had gone mad. I was nearly naked, without food or water, and setting off just as I was toward the sere, deathly Steppes.

She was too angry to remonstrate with me any longer. She seized me.

I threw off her grip. With deft, battle-trained hands and body she came at me again, and again I threw her off, not without struggling, for she was skilled. But I was as skilled, and too large and strong for her. A third time she attacked me, and this time I kept hold of her wrists rather than thrusting her away. It cooled my fury and gave me pause that she was grappling with me, however harmlessly. I had fought with Kor once, less harmlessly, and I wished never again to combat with one I loved.

Tass and I stood staring at each other. She was panting with wrath or emotion—I noted the rise and fall of her small, firm breasts under her shirt.

“Come with me, Tass,” I softly requested her.

“How can I, with folk lying hurt here?” Sharp weapon-edge in her tone, as always when she felt her shield slipping. “Stay a few days, and I will come. Perhaps.”

“I cannot stay another breathspan.”

“Then go, and be damned. But at least have the decency to first say your farewells to Ayol.”

So I let go of her and did so to calm her, if only a little. And, as she had known he would, old Ayol serenely directed me to find food and water in the ruined dwellings, and to take a dead Herder's clothing and boots, for the man would no longer be needing them.

Thus it was that I set out dressed in woolens, trousers instead of my ruined leggings, and even a woolen tunic to protect me from the fierce sun and nighttime chill. Truly the world is ending, I could hear Tyee say. Dannoc is wearing a shirt. Woolens, yet. Well, it was a fitting thing, to wear clothing that did not require the killing of an animal to make it, and I had told Ayol so.

My boots, the largest ones I could find, were yet too small, for the Herders are a small folk. Before I had reached the edge of their village, I stopped and slit open the fronts of them. Then I girded Alar more tightly to my waist, shouldered my bow and bag of provision and set out at the trot.

“Dannoc!”

Only for that voice would I have stopped, even for the moment. Tassida came and stood before me, a haunted look in her eyes, but she did not speak. “Say it!” I demanded.

“I do not understand—how you can just leave.”

“I have to go to Kor. You will not come with me.”

She seemed not to have heard. “After what we have shared,” she murmured, “I had thought we would always be together.”

I puffed my lips in exasperation. “Since I have known you,” I said, “and since you have known that I love you, how many times have you left me with small ceremony? For reasons of your own?”

“We ought—I could not help it. We ought to be together. Everything has changed, now. Do you not feel it?”

Everything had indeed changed, my world had slipped into ruins around my witless head, and I did not dare to feel anything except peril in regard to her. Hers was the one plea that could have kept me from Kor's side.

“We will be together again,” I said, trying to speak gently, for it was not Tassida's wont to humble herself as she was doing, pleading with me. “You will find your way back to me again, as you have always done before.”

Her dark brows drew together. “In Mahela's hell!” she snapped, and she turned and strode angrily away. I set off at speed on my journey, not looking back at her.

Chapter Eleven

Through what was left of the day I traveled in utmost haste, at trot and brief walk and trot again, and on past dusk into nightfall, through the smother of smoke that blotted out the stars and moon that might have guided me through the night, and only for that reason, because I could not see to travel, did I stop to eat, and after I had eaten I could not rest; but stood up and paced and circled where I was. Sometime past halfnight a sharp, cold wind came up and blew the smoke away, and then I could see, though not to run for fear of laming myself against a stone, and I walked on again.

Kor.… Tass.… But Tass was in no danger except the world's danger, which was on all of us. With an effort of will I pushed the thought of her aside. Even the brief moment of thinking of her—behind me—and Kor—ahead—had made me feel as if I were being torn asunder.

At first light I began to run, and I ran on through the blazing day with only brief pauses to walk or drink, and still I had not drawn abreast of Catalin Du! By Mahela's stinking bowels, but it was a vast, doomed world to one afoot and in haste. Even had I been mounted, it was all too vast, the distance all too far that I had come from my bond brother.

That night, when full dark came, I had to rest or I would have fallen. But with first light I was up again and stumbling onward like a crazed thing, like a lemming, toward the sea. A murky sunrise the color of old blood lay over the immense eastward plain. Smoke had spread that way, lying over the world like a blanket over a corpse, making even sunlight seem dim, leaving a wincing smell and a bitter taste in the air.

Before me, the treeless roughlands of the Steppes. Behind me, small with distance but yet there, no matter how I strove to leave him behind, Methven, red tattered cape turning to dull black on his shoulders. Beside me, seeming never to change shape or move, Catalin Du, his red cloak darkening in like wise. Overhead, a vast sky that could give me no joy. I, very small, running raggedly beneath it.

I began to dream of Kor that day, seeing his face instead of what was before me, or I could not have gone on. Kor, tending the murderous madman in the prison pit. Showing me the ways of mercy. Kor, dying in torment for my sake—I blinked, shaking my head, to drive that memory away, seeing instead his sunrise smile after my tears or some uncanny power had brought him back to life. Kor, my bond brother, questing to Mahela's undersea realm with me. And the beaten despair in both of us as we had crawled naked back onto the shore.…

Vision shifted. As plainly as if it stood before me, I was seeing something new and unknown to me.

A sandy shoreline. Endless sky, endless water, ocean surf seething at my feet. And flying landward, low over the waves, two great ernes—I gasped in glad surprise, for I had never seen such eagles before except in the realm of the dead. A white-tailed sea eagle and one of pure white, its wings flashing bright as swords against a storm-dark sky. And the white eagle flew wearily, heavily, heaving at some burden that dangled from its hooked beak. The other flew close to its side, slowing its wingbeats to match its comrade's laboring speed.

They swooped down, or nearly fell down, and with a thump they both landed in the sand, just out of reach of the waves. The dangling burden was a round, bright fruit still on the stem, a fruit as blue as highmountain sky. It had rolled into the sand, and tiny grains of sand clung to its glistening rind. But I was not looking at the fruit, for the eagles at the touch of the land's edge had turned to two goodly men, and I was gazing on them in happiness and longing, for I knew them. They were Chal and Vallart.

He who had been the white-tailed erne was Vallart, and he was sitting up, then staggering to his feet. But Chal, who had been the burdened eagle of entire white—Chal was lying still, with lidded eyes, and the strange fruit had rolled away from him to nestle in the sand by his side. Then I saw how horribly he had been hurt. It was no mere tale, that he had been put to torment in Mahela's realm.

Vallart went to him, sat in the sand by his head, and softly gathered him up, head and shoulders, into his lap and arms. Then with a tremulous effort Chal opened his eyes.

“We've done it,” he murmured, looking up into his comrade's face. “We've bested her.”

Vallart nodded, swallowing, seeming scarcely able to speak. “Hush,” he said finally. “Rest. You must grow strong again. I must go find you food, some covering—”

“No. Stay with me. Please.…” Chal's voice dwindled away into a gasping breath. His eyes closed again.

“Chal.” Vallart shook him slightly, but Chal did not stir. “Chal! My lord, my comrade, you must live!” Vallart's voice broke on the words, and he held his friend and king hard, close, fiercely, as if holding him could keep him. But Chal lay still. I saw his face grow smooth as pain left him. He had ceased to breathe.

For a moment Vallart did not move. He sat as rigid as a mountain, still clutching at Chal, his body nearly as hard as mountain stone. Stunned with sorrow, I thought, not yet knowing the passions clashing inside him, the sense of duty, the anger and rebellious hope.… His head snapped up. Then with a yell of despair or defiance, a heart-torn roar that seemed to echo through generations of mortal dying to reach me, he turned and snatched up the sky-blue fruit in his hand.

He held it over Chal's wounded and unmoving chest. His fingers ripped into the bright rind, tore the fruit wide open, flung it asunder. Inside, blazing white, it was all light, so shining I could scarcely see—stones, dropping out of it, one of sun yellow, one as red as Chal's blood. And naked in Vallart's hand glowed another stone, or jewel, of such a vivid, perfect hue, nameless as the nameless god, never seen but in the flower that had perished with Sakeema's passing, the amaranth. Jewel of an impossible color made all of sunset light, dazzling me with its brightness so that I could scarcely look at it—Vallart laid it on Chal's chest, pressing it into place with the warmth of his hand, and I saw that he was shaking.

The stone flared so that its light blazed, amaranthine, even through Vallart's hand, and he cried out but did not move. Then came a gentler glow—

And Chal stirred and started softly to breathe, and I saw his wounds closing even as I looked. I had seen such a healing once before. And Vallart was weeping, his shoulders shaking, his chest heaving, weeping as I had wept, that time I had held Korridun's body in my arms, first dead, then living and healed.… Vallart's tears were falling on his comrade's face, and when Chal opened his eyes in bewilderment, Vallart gathered him up and embraced him.

“What.…” Chal struggled to sit up, his own tears filling his eyes. “My god, Vallart, I was dead and now I am alive. What price have you paid? What have you sacrificed?”

The jewel of amaranthine hue had fallen to the sand with the other two, the one sun yellow, the one red as blood. Shakily Vallart lifted it—his palm bore a raw, red wound. The stone blazed darkly in his burned hand, and Chal stared.

“No,” he breathed.

“I had to.” Vallart could scarcely speak for weeping.

“No! Better you had let me die than sunder it.”

“I could not let you die.”

“You would rather let the world go down to death?” Chal sounded not so much wrathful as utterly dismayed. “All our striving has come to naught. All goodliness of creation will come to naught.”

“Chal, do not reproach me, please!” Vallart covered his face with his hands—the fingers still glistened, moist from ripping the rind of the fruit, dewed as if with its tears. Then he let drop his hands and faced Chal starkly, heedless of his own weeping. “My lord and king, my friend, my comrade, even though the world should die I yet had to be with you.”

In the vision, it suddenly seemed to me that Chal's face was Kor's calm, kingly face, and that Vallart's impassioned face was mine. Even though the world should die, I yet had to heed my heart.

And Chal, or Kor, reached out to embrace his comrade, saying, “All will yet be well, somehow. What seems so right to you must yet somehow be well.” But the words faltered, and the beloved face was bleak.

Kor's face, bleak and grim.…

Why was I stupidly standing in a desert on the wrong side of a black cinder cone? Why was I not with him? What had seemed right to me had been wrong, wrong, wrong, or what now seemed right would be wrong, I did not know which, I knew only that I must be with him, and I felt a doom riding on my shoulders along with my heavy bags of provision, the burden I bore to stay alive. I began to run again, strengthened by desperation, the sun blazing down, my sword slapping at my leg.