Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar

Prologue
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“Grimya!” Her mind was floundering and she called the wolf’s name aloud, groping for a spar of coherence in the heaving sea that her consciousness had become.

Grimya’s mental voice seemed to come from a vast distance.
I can’t reach you! They are holding me back! Indigo—

But suddenly the wolf’s call was cut off as though a solid wall had crashed down between Indigo and her own senses. A jolt shot through her body, a moment of excruciating pain gripped her ...

And a dark cold voice began to address her.

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

AVATAR

Copyright « 1992 by Louise Cooper

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24th Street

New York, N.Y. 10010

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

ISBN: 0-812-50802-5

First edition: January 1992

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

Let them hate, so long as they fear.
—Lucius Accius, 170-90 bc

For Tim and Dot Oakes
One of these days we
will
have that jam.

Now, on the rare occasions when she looks in a mirror, she asks herself:
how long has it been
? And the answer sends a shiver through her marrow.

For almost half a century she has roamed the earth, and in all those long years she has aged not one day, since the moment when she left her homeland, far in the south, to begin a journey that, seemingly, has no end. She cannot die, she is immortal; and her name might by now have become a legend, but for the fact that in her fifty summers of wandering, she has taken care that the trappings of fame, or notoriety, or even simple knowledge, should not attach themselves to her. She has good reason to ensure that no one should know the name she was given at her birth, long ago and far away in her father’s home at Carn Caille. And the name she uses now—Indigo, which is also the color of mourning in her homeland—is one she hopes that those she meets upon her long road will forget in good time.

Half a century ago, she was a princess. Half a century ago, wild curiosity got the better of her and she broke a taboo that her people had upheld since time immemorial. Seven evils, pent for centuries past in an ancient and crumbling tower long shunned by mankind. Seven evils, released upon the world by her hand, to wreak havoc. Seven evils, which she alone must find and conquer and destroy, if she—and the world—are ever to know peace again.

Indigo’s travels have taken her to strange countries and led her into stranger adventures. She has seen the burning heartlands, where smoke blackens the sky at noon and the thunder of volcanoes shakes the land’s very foundations. She has lived among the shimmering, dreamlike palaces of Simhara, fabled city of the East, where Death wore a deceiver’s mask. She has danced and sung with the traveling players of Bruhome, where she learned the true meaning of illusion. And she has turned her face to the freezing snows of the polar north, and heard the ominous voice of the Snow Tiger that promised joy and grief in equal measure. She has made dear friends and bitter enemies, she has seen the beginnings and the ends of many other lives; and now four evils, four demons, have been destroyed by her hand. But the price has often been a cruel one, and though from time to time she has rested from her wanderings, she knows that her quest is by no means ended.

For a few years she has known a kind of peace. From the icy northern wastes she traveled south when spring opened the sea-lanes, and in the cheerful, sprawling ports of Davakos, famed for its ships and mariners, she returned to the seagoing ways of her own people, and for a while found something akin to happiness. Now, though, the hiatus is over and she must move on. The lodestone that has guided her in her wanderings is alive again, and this time it is urging her eastward to the Dark Isle, whose peoples and ways are shadowed in mystery. Another demon awaits her; another battle must be joined.

Yet Indigo will not face this newest battle alone. Throughout the years, one friend has remained constantly by her side; a friend who has chosen to share her immortality, and whose loyalty and love have become a touchstone in Indigo’s life. The mutant she-wolf Grimya has also known what it is to be an outcast among her own kind, and the bond that has formed between them is one that no power could ever break.

Now Indigo and Grimya have made their last farewells to Davakos, and to the ship that carried them to the Dark Isle’s hostile and sweatingly humid shores. Ahead lies an unknown country, with unknown dangers, and they know that at the end of their road, they must face another mystery. They have learned that it is wiser not to speculate about the nature of each new trial. But as the long trek begins, through strange forests and among alien creatures, perhaps they cannot help but wonder, despite their resolution, what their future may hold this time....

From the heart of the forest something vast, invisible and decaying exhaled a huge breath. The air shifted, stirring leaves on the branches of the overcrowded trees, lifting dust in sluggish eddies; and a sweet-sick stench of earth and rotting vegetation and mortifying flesh filled the she-wolf Grimya’s nostrils as she raised her head, alerted to the sudden change in the atmosphere.

Her long, lean body quivered and the brindled fur along her spine rose, bristling. A growl formed in her throat but died before she could voice it. The rising of the wind presaged rain; she could feel it as surely as she felt the ground under her feet, and she didn’t like the omen. By the time the sun touched the treetops, this road would be a river, yet still there was no sign of anyone who might help her.

She turned and looked back along the empty track. The trees crowded in like predators, their branches tangling overhead to form a dank, gloomy tunnel. Only a few stray shafts of sunlight broke through here and there, creating distorted shadows, and the heat under the claustrophobic green blanket was becoming insufferable. Even the background racket of the jungle, which had been beating against her ears in an incessant, inescapable and nerve-racking assault, had ceased utterly: not so much as a bird’s cackle broke the oppressive silence.