Lyrec (27 page)

Who was he? Hulda wondered. To have defeated such a creature as that krykwyre—something that didn’t even exist. Where had it come from, spawn of legend? Perhaps the krykwyre and the man were both legend made flesh. She considered it possible that this encounter between some legendary hero and the monster had been repeated in tales so many times that it had taken shape from the words and finally come to pass. People were forever fooling with things they knew nothing about, causing trouble for themselves. And this one, would he return to legend again when he died? “But what is this?” she said in surprise, and scuttled back to the fur.

Lyrec lay as before, his face darkened as if with rage, his head trembling. Sweat poured off him, threads of steam. Hulda bent closer, distrusting her own eyes. She carefully lifted the fur. His whole body was shivering with what seemed a terrible chill. But the wounds in his shoulders … was it possible? The wounds had begun to suppurate, ejecting the poison in rivulets. The swelling was diminishing. Most of the smaller gashes and scrapes she’d treated earlier had already vanished. Steam leaked out of the fur as if something boiled beneath it.

Hulda let the cover drop and rested her hand on her cheek. “I wish I knew the tale of you and the krykwyre—then I would know who you are. It is certain you are no man of this land.” She glanced over at Yadani. Lightning flashed, then an explosion of thunder just beyond the door that shook the whole hut. Yadani did not move. “Maybe,” Hulda said to herself, “maybe you can help her as you do yourself.”

She heard the sound of horses approaching fast and went out past Yadani to see who was trying to beat the storm. They would very likely stop here for shelter.

They might even pay.

*****

Lyrec’s breathing slowed again. His skin lost its dark flush and his sunken eyes opened again. “So, I’m going to die, am I, Hulda?” he asked hoarsely. When there was no answer, he looked back, but her chair was empty. Had his recuperation driven her away in fear? He looked around.

All sorts of objects hung from the thatched walls of the hut. Very few of them made sense to him—even the minstrel must not have known of them. He’d swept the room with his gaze once before realizing that someone else was there, and he looked again at the figure crouched near the door with its back to him. “Hulda?” he called. The figure did not seem to hear. In the firelight, it was barely more than a shadow.

Lyrec pushed back the fur and got to his feet. He recalled the old woman’s proposition and decided he had better wear at least pants. He found them in a heap, torn and stained with his blood.

The storm arrived as he was dressing. Rain suddenly drummed across the hut. Some of it trickled through and ran in a thin stream into an earthenware container on the floor near the fire.

Lyrec tested his body, flexed his muscles, bent and stretched his legs. His toes curled on command, muscles in his feet aching a little. Most of all he was hungry. How many more times would he be able to revive his body this way? He had no idea of its limitation.

A sound drew his attention to the doorway again. The figure had gone. Lyrec called out to Hulda, then walked unsteadily to the door, remembering quickly what it was like to move on two legs. Beyond the door, the roof appeared to reach all the way to the ground, enclosing the hut in a dark curving passage. The doorway cut in the roof was not directly opposite the doorway of the hut. Considering the present storm, he could see the sense of that. From the sound of the storm he knew where the door was, but moving through the dark passage, he nearly tripped over a pile of rags that lay there, absorbing a puddle.

Through the trees, the sky was green and black. It gave off enough light for him to see the shadowy figure standing not far away. But the rain stung and blurred his eyes, and he hesitated to stray from the safe shadows.

Lightning flashed overhead, displaying, for an instant, the figure as that of a woman, naked, standing in water up to her ankles. Her arms were stretched high above her thrown-back head and her fingers moved as if the raindrops tickled her palms. Running trails of mud marked her body like black veins and her hair hung straight—a waterfall of obsidian—to the ground. “You, there,” he called. The rain drowned out his voice. He muttered resentfully, then dashed out into the storm.

When he grabbed her by the shoulders, the woman failed to respond. He turned her around. Mud ran from her face and into her hair. Her features were sharp, her eyes black and wide and insensible to the sting of the rain. Lyrec shook her, but this had no effect. Finally, he had to grasp her jaw and turn her face toward him. She continued to stare at nothing. Rainwater dribbled from between her lips. He had never seen an expression so empty before; he had not even known such a blank creature could exist among higher forms. Even the Ladomantine captain had been brighter, if only slightly.

Lightning flared in the forest not too far away—it had struck a tree. Realizing just how dangerous his position was, Lyrec picked up the woman and carried her back into the hut. She rested against him like a sack of grain. They burst into the hut—and there stood Hulda, bent over the fire, her appearance only moderately soaked. She took in Lyrec and his burden and then remarked, “I thought you did not wish to couple.” He started to answer, but she waved him off. “No, do not bother explaining, men give in constantly to their urges.”

“She went out on her own.” He set her down, then grabbed one of the furs and draped it over her.

“Careful,” warned Hulda, “she would set it on fire and never know she burned.”

“Why is she like this?”

“I have no idea. Many years ago I found her, deep in the woods. She was walking just as you see her now: naked, dumb, but young, a child. I cannot even say what moved her limbs then—perhaps instinct from an earlier incarnation pierced the cloud in her head and took brief control. Once or twice this has happened since then—she walks, but without sense. She have been brutalized, or maybe she was this way from birth and so her parents chose to abandon her. I can only hope that if someone made her this way, they suffer the most cruel and hateful torture for it. More likely they have prospered.
That
is the way of the real world.”

“Still, she walked into the storm alone.”

“Twice before, she has done this.” Hulda squinted up at him. “Remarkable events seem to accompany you. Dead krykwyre, violent storms, healing powers that lie beyond my knowledge. And even the thoughtless are inspired to move. If I were superstitious—and I am—I would believe you were not a man at all.”

“What else could I be?”

“A hero, at the very least. A
cukordia
, I think—a divine, fashioned by the gods or by tales of men. I have thought about you awhile, you and the monster you killed.”

Lyrec could not help smiling. The name was different, but the sentiment—the way people sized him up—seemed to remain constant.

“Are you
cukordia
?” Hulda suddenly asked.

Rather than answer, he began to wipe the water off his torso, but stalling presented him no satisfactory answer to give Hulda. Perhaps there was no point in arguing. “Very well,” he said, “you’ve discovered my secret.”

“Of course. As ancient as the krykwyre in legend, hence found together, enemies in and out of legend. It is best you admitted it—I would have distinguished the lie.” She smiled, revealing randomly remaining teeth. “How may I serve you?”

Wrapping the other fur around himself, he asked, “Would you have any food? Cheese? Bread? Something?” He hoped that
cukordias
ate or, that if they did not, Hulda was ignorant of the fact.

“Of course,” she replied.

She had only cold things to eat, but anything would have satisfied him then. As he devoured everything she gave him, the old woman continued to question him. Most of the answers he had to invent, having virtually no knowledge of the local legends; he was too exhausted to try and borrow from her own knowledge.

Hulda, like a divine gossip, wanted to know all the embarrassing details about the lives of the gods, but in the end she told him more than he told her. While she prattled on, Lyrec studied the empty face of Yadani E’Lor, whose name, so Hulda informed him proudly, meant “shining warmth of the heart” in the native tongue of her people. Which people? he asked. Those of Novalok, she answered. While he listened to her describe her simple life here in the forest, he tried a probe of the vacant young woman. No resistance met him. No barriers, no walls, no layers of image and memory, sounds, smells, voices. Nothing. He descended far down where the most ancient of recollections lay and found there some hint of thought and purpose. On closer inspection, he found it no more than a mechanical, reptilian set of actions and reactions, not even something he
could
call purpose. Mere reflex. He retreated sadly from her empty mind. Hulda was right.

She was telling him now of the time she had met a magical being under her bed, but her father had found it and killed it. To this day, she swore, she did not know what it had been. She asked him if he could tell her and he answered without thinking, “A
glomengue.
” Hulda clapped her hands and said, “Of course,” then began a silent rumination, rocking back and forth, perhaps reliving the childhood event fully now that she had an identity for the creature under the bed.

Lyrec took this opportunity to get up from the fire and move off by himself for awhile. The food had replenished his strength enough for him to attempt contact with Borregad.

He leaned back and closed his eyes.

The darkness became smoky red. His consciousness lifted up and began to fly into the redness. He slipped past other minds, some strung across his path like cobwebs. A random word or image splashed over him as he passed near each web. Somewhere, some person would abruptly stop talking and search for a word which had been right on the tip of the tongue a moment before. Few minds sensed his passing. None saw him for what he was; he became a breeze without wind, a chill in a warm dry place, a ghostly hair-prickling. They could never have seen or heard him—his thoughts were aimed at one being alone who would hear him if hearing were possible.
Borregad
. The name went ahead of him. And the answer came.

I don’t believe it!
 
Thank you, whatever gods really reign around here. All I can say is it’s about time. How did you survive? How are you? Did it eat you?”

“I’m—”

“Where are you?”

“I’m—”

“Are you dead?”
 

“Will you be quiet?”

“’pon my soul, is that any way to talk to your poor friend, who has been grieving so mightily for you these past hours that he hasn’t even eaten? It’s been nearly a full day, you know.”

“Is that all? I thought it must have been a week, at least. Where are you, then?”

“Well, with you out of the plan, there seemed no point in going back to the tavern, because I couldn’t wield your damned
crex
if I wanted to, so I decided that I might do more good by trying to sabotage the assassination. At present, I’m on the back of a cart headed for Atlarma. It took me some while to get going—I had to leave the horse in order to protect myself. The driver of the cart is a farmer, and he eats some kind of root that gives him the most noxious breath, but I hope to arrive in Atlarma tomorrow unless he exhales upon me a few more times, in which case I don’t expect to have any fur left. Will you go there?”

“I’ll try, but I can’t say how soon I’ll arrive. I’m not sure where I am.”

“You’re north of me somewhere. I know that much just from watching that awful thing take you away. I expected you to be in afterlife by now.”

“Afterlife?”

“It’s some fanatical concept this farmer has.
 
He’s been brooding over it all day.
 
Worried sick he won’t qualify. I’ve thought of saying something to him about it, but I’m afraid he might die of shock and I’d lose my transportation. Of course, then he would know all about his afterlife.”

“Tell him to stop eating roots.”
Borregad laughed at this and Lyrec was immeasurably gladdened by the sound.
“So, you say Miradomon hasn’t unleashed his plot in Atlarma yet?”

“I hope not.
 
Word travels awfully slowly here.
 
If I hear otherwise, I’ll contact you again.”

“I’ll try to meet you there.
 
Borregad, take care now. Don’t do something foolish.”
 
He withdrew contact quickly to avoid embroiling himself in emotional hysterics, which he anticipated momentarily from the cat.

Hulda, still seated beside the fire, was staring in amazement at Yadani E’Lor. The dark-skinned, black-haired girl was looking at
him
. Her face seemed on the verge of an expression, of wonder or surprise.

The old woman gathered up her skirt and stood. “You’ve brought her to life. You were reaching into her mind then, weren’t you? You must stay and do so again. Perhaps she will learn to talk. She could tell us what happened to her.”

He looked into Hulda’s excited face and something inside him tightened. How could he explain the impossibility of that? Maybe it would be better if he did not try. “No,” he said, “that’s not possible. I have to get to Atlarma, and right away. I was about to ask you if you had a horse I could buy.”

“But this is no way to leave her. You cannot.”

“What would you have me do—take her with me?” He saw immediately what a mistake that proposal was. “Now, wait,” he said.

“I’ll get you a horse, two horses, if you will take her to Atlarma with you. At the temple of Chagri you can leave her.”

“Why there?”

“A
cukordia
should know.”

“I’m an old
cukordia
—refresh my memory.”

Accepting this, Hulda explained what she had heard of the miraculous cures occurring at Chagri’s temple. “If you can do this much, fashioned as you are, then maybe the god can give her a mind fresh and altogether. So you take her, you be responsible. Otherwise, no horses.”