Shadows (21 page)

A moment later she collapsed forward into the arms of Chell, who had come down to the water's edge to meet her. He untied the bundle of clothes and set it aside, then pulled her close and wrapped the green blanket around both of them. She clung to him, head pressed against his bare chest, while the shivers gripped her and threatened to shake the teeth from her head. “The hut is warm,” he said. “Let's get you up there.”

She nodded, and with his help, climbed up a narrow path to the small, square structure, made of weathered logs. Lichen covered the slate roof. The door latch hung crookedly from the smashed wood of the lintel—Chell's handiwork, no doubt. But inside, it was blessedly warm: Chell had obviously fed the fire when he'd first entered the hut, and now it blazed, warm and welcoming, in the hearth. A bed, a chair, and a small table were the only furniture. A second door, closed, promised a second room Mara couldn't see into.

Something about the hut seemed familiar, but all she could think of was the warmth of the fire. She broke out from under the blanket and ran to it, holding out her hands. Chell came after her, wrapped the blanket around her, and said, “I'll go get the clothes,” and went out again.

Mara sat cross-legged on the floor as close to the fire as she could get, pulled the blanket around her shoulders, and thought she had never seen anything more wonderful than that blaze. And then she remembered another time she had been grateful to see fire, in another hut, and sudden surmise brought her head around, staring, at the second door, the one that led into a little room in the back . . .

When Chell returned a few minutes later with the bundle of clothes, which he dumped on the stones by the hearth, he found her standing in the doorway to that back room. “What have you found?” he said, coming up behind her.

She turned to him. “Magic,” she said simply. She looked back into the smaller room. Just like in the hut where she had killed Grute, there was the basin of black lodestone, the black lodestone urns set on shelves beyond that, and all of it was softly lit by the sheen of shimmering light just coating the bottom of the basin.

“I can't see anything,” Chell said.

“I can.”

Chell stepped past her into the room and stared down into the basin. “Is there a lot?”

“No,” Mara said. “But it's coming back.” She stepped up beside him and looked down at the glimmer of magic she knew he couldn't see. “The smoke we saw this morning . . . the harvester was probably here last night. He emptied the basin, loaded up and was gone this morning.”

Chell looked at her. “But did he see us before he went? And if he did . . . how long before he's back here with Watchers?”

Mara hadn't thought of that, and she wished Chell hadn't, either. “Maybe he didn't see us,” she said. She looked back into the warm, cozy interior of the main room of the hut, and sighed. She already knew what Chell was going to say, and he didn't disappoint her.

“But maybe he did. We have to leave, as soon as we can.”

Mara nodded. She glanced back at the basin. Already there was a little more magic in it. “If we can delay even a few hours,” she said hopefully, “we might be able to take some magic with us. We may need it.”

Chell hesitated. “I don't know exactly where we are,” he said. “Where would he have to go to fetch Watchers, if he did see us?”

“Every village has at least one, but sometimes only one,” Mara said. “And the ones in the smallest villages aren't exactly mighty warriors. He'd want to head to a larger town.” She tried to think about the maps she had seen of Aygrima and judge how far north they had come along the coast. “Probably Stellit. It's likely the closest good-sized town. It would have half a dozen Watchers, at least.” Her heart leaped. “But it's got to be half a day's journey from here. He can't possibly be back with Watchers until evening.”

Chell gave her a long look. “How certain of you are that?”

“Very . . .” Mara hesitated. “Well,
pretty
certain,” she amended.

Chell grunted. “Well, we can't leave right this minute anyway.” He looked at the basin again. To him, Mara knew, it must look like nothing but a lump of black stone. “If I hadn't seen you use magic, I wouldn't believe in it,” he said, and then turned around and went back into the main room, kneeling by the bundle of clothes and opening it up.

“Everything is still wet,” he said. “It'll take a couple of hours to dry by the fire.” He yawned. “I could use a rest. Can you keep watch?”

Mara nodded. “There's only one blanket,” she said. She put her hands on it. “Do you want it?”

He shook his head. “You keep it,” he said. He yawned again. “It's warm enough in here with the fire going. I don't need it. And you'll need it if you have to go outside before the clothes are dry.” He stretched out the bed. “Wake me if you . . . need . . .” the words tumbled away, and he slept.

Mara studied him. He lay flat on his back, one hand stretched out at his side, the other dangling across his stomach. His bare chest rose and fell, and the dangling fingers twitched. His face, relaxed into sleep, looked younger than it did when he was awake.
How old is he?
she wondered. He'd never said.

She wondered again at his strange tattoo: red circle, green crescent, blue star, all in a line on his left breast. Her gaze traveled down his body. The thin drawers really didn't hide much at all, she realized, and her face flamed. Suddenly she got up, pulled the blanket closer around her, and hurried to the door. It suddenly seemed like a really good time to get a breath of cool air.

She stood just outside, her bare feet rapidly chilling on the flat flagstones that formed the doorstep, and stared up the slope into the forest. A path, narrow but well defined, wound through the trees. The magic harvester, if that was indeed who had been in the hut the night before, must have gone that way. But had he seen them? And had she remembered the map of Aygrima right? If he
had
seen them, and she was wrong about how far he would have to go to get help, Watchers might came galloping over that rise and down that path at any moment.

I could stop them again
, she thought.
Like I did by the stream.

She shuddered, remembering the ground softening and swallowing men and horses alike.
No
, she thought.
I can't . . .

But there was a part of her that
wanted
to, that gloried in her power, the power to avenge her father and all the others unjustly slain by the Autarch and his minions. And an even darker part, deep under that, that loved the sensation of magic rushing into her, magic she pulled from the living or the newly dead. Once she had experienced that sensation purely as pain, as unbelievable agony, the equivalent, the Healer Ethelda had told her, of a grievously wounded man being transfused with the wrong kind of blood from someone else. But now . . . it still hurt, in a way, but it also felt . . . good. Unlike anything else she'd ever experienced. A pleasure that called to her to experience it again, to find an
excuse
to experience it again. She thought back to the way she had felt when the magic from the onrushing Watchers had poured into her, explored the sensation just like, as a child, she had explored the hole left by a missing tooth with her tongue. Her breathing came quicker. Her lips parted. It had felt good. It had felt like . . . like . . .

Mara knew about the ways of men and women, though only in the abstract. But she had imagined what it would be like, often enough, and a horrible thought struck her then, as she stood in the chill doorway of the hut.

What if her Gift were getting . . . tangled up in all of that? What would happen, the first time she was with a boy in that way? Would she lose control? Would she take more from him than he intended to give, leave him a husk, leave him . . . dead?

She gasped, turned, and stumbled back into the hut, pushing the door closed behind her and leaning against it, the blanket slipping from her shoulders. She stared at Chell, lying there all-but-naked, the firelight casting a warm glow over his bare skin, turning each little hair to gold.
I'm not a monster
, she thought.
I'm not! I'm a girl. An ordinary girl . . .

Suddenly she felt an aching need to prove it, to do something that had nothing to do with her Gift/Curse, to reaffirm she was no different than any other girl. She went to the bed, knelt down beside it, stared at Chell. Her mouth had gone dry. She reached out a trembling hand and touched his stomach. It felt warm beneath her fingers, rising and falling gently. She swallowed, and leaned in closer. His lips, slightly parted, were inches from her mouth. She kissed them.

They felt so warm and alive that she almost gasped with the sensation. She kissed him again, and slid her hand lower down his stomach, to the waistband of the thin drawers, inside them . . .

And Chell jerked awake. His head snapped back. She snatched both her hand and her head back. “What . . . what are you doing?” he gasped.

Mara's blood was pounding in her ears, pounding in her whole body. “I don't want to be a monster,” she said fiercely. “I don't want to be a killer. I just want to be a girl. I want you to prove to me I'm a girl!”

Chell stared at her. “Mara, I—”

“Please!” she said. She suddenly found herself weeping. “Please.”

“Mara, I can't,” Chell said gently. “It would be wrong.”

“Why?” she said. She pointed a trembling finger at the door. “You know what's wrong? Wrong is what I did to those Watchers, to Grute, even to Stanik. Wrong is how I felt about it. I'm starting to enjoy it!” Hot tears ran down her cheeks. “I'm starting to
like
killing. Ethelda warned me, she said I could turn into a monster, I thought . . . I
know
 . . . I can use magic to help people, too, I thought that was enough, but now . . .” She shook her head. “I don't want to be a monster. I just want to be a girl. I want you to treat me like a girl. Prove to me I'm just a girl!” She flung her arms around him. “Please!”

“Mara.” Chell put his arms around her, too, and hugged her close. “Listen to me. You're not a monster. You're still a girl. But I can't . . . doing that would make
me
a kind of monster. I'd be taking advantage of you.”

“I
want
to be taken advantage of,” she said, her voice muffled. “I want to.”

“No,” Chell said. He took a deep breath. “Mara, you're only fifteen years old.”

“Old enough.”

“Physically, maybe, but . . .” Chell sighed. “Mara, how old do you think I am?”

“Eight . . . eighteen?” she said.

He shook his head. “I'm twenty-five. I look younger. It's useful when I want to be . . . incognito.” He tilted her chin up toward him and gave her a crooked grin. “I may not be old enough to be your father, but I'm certainly too old to be your boyfriend.”

“I don't care,” Mara said, but already the heat of the moment was dissipating, and she was starting to feel more than a little silly . . . and ashamed.

“I do,” the prince said. “And there's another thing you should know. I'm married. To a wonderful girl named Pim, whom I love more than anything in the world.”

Pim
. She remembered Chell saying that name when she'd first found him on the beach, wondering who it was. Now she felt even sillier . . . and stupid. She let go of Chell, suddenly embarrassed again by her near-nakedness . . . and his. “When I said I wanted you to make me feel like a normal girl,” she mumbled, “I didn't mean I wanted you to make me feel like a silly child who got her hand caught in the cookie jar.”

“Better than feeling like a monster, surely?” Chell said. Then he chuckled. “And that wasn't the cookie jar you were reaching your hand into.”

Mara felt her face go red-hot. She wanted to melt right down into the floor, but she settled for pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “I'm sorry,” she mumbled. “I don't . . . I don't know what came over me.”

Chell snorted. “You're fifteen. I remember being fifteen. I know exactly what came over you.” He patted her bare foot. “But, Mara, there's lots of time for that. And when it happens . . . it shouldn't be with me. It should be with someone you love, and who loves you in return.” He winked. “Keltan or Hyram are the most likely candidates, I'd wager.”

Mara's face flamed again as she thought of the two boys. What would they think if they knew she'd almost . . . ? “You won't . . . you won't tell them what I just . . .”

“I am a man of discretion,” Chell said. “No one but you and I will ever know.” He stood up then. “Let's see how those clothes are doing.”

Mara, who suddenly wanted more than anything else to have both of them fully dressed again, jumped up. “I'm sure they're dry enough.”

They were, in fact, still slightly damp in places, but Chell, either divining Mara's desire for more clothing or sharing it, said nothing about that, but pulled on his trousers and tunic, stockings and boots as she donned her own clothes. Then he glanced at the door into the magic room. “Anything happening in there?” he said.

Mara looked in. “The basin is filling, but very slowly. I doubt I could more than quarter-fill a single urn so far.”

He grunted. “We'll leave it until the last minute,” he said. “First we've got to see about getting off that spit.”

He turned to the door, but turned back again as Mara suddenly blurted out, “Thank you.”

His steady gaze met hers. “You're welcome. Now let's see to the boat.”

Mara nodded, and followed him out of the hut.

Rising Smoke

T
HE BOAT PROVED EASIER TO FREE from the mud than either of them had dared hope. Without their weight inside it, it turned out not to be grounded very hard at all, and by both pulling together, they were able to drag it over the shallows, clearly formed by silt from the stream that emptied into the cove along that side, and into the deeper and quieter water closer to shore. With the boat afloat once more, they took the water barrel ashore and refilled it in the stream, then loaded it back aboard along with the blanket they had found in the hut, and a single urn of black lodestone, not quite a quarter-filled with magic. Though they had searched, they'd found no food. Then they rowed out of the cove through the clear channel around the north end of the shallows and into the open water once more.

“No more night travel,” Chell said as they emerged from the shelter of the cove and the wind picked up, slapping the waves against the side of the boat with more vigor than Mara had yet experienced. She swallowed and held onto the sides while Chell set about raising the sail. “We have to stay in sight of land, and I don't want any more surprises. Shallows are bad, but a rock would be worse. Especially since you're not a strong swimmer.”

Mara nodded, and swallowed hard again. Why did it feel like her insides were thinking quite seriously about climbing up her throat? And her head was hurting again. “Is the rocking . . . going to get better?” she said faintly.

“Rocking?” Chell gave her a surprised look. “There's hardly any rocking at all.”

“It's more than last night!”

“Well, last night was almost a dead calm.” The prince tied down a rope but paused with his hand on the mast, letting the sail shake in the wind, and gave her a worried look. “You're not feeling seasick, are you?”

“Um . . .”

Chell sighed. “Well, just remember, if you throw up, don't do it into the wind, or you'll end up wearing it.”

Mara made a face. “Yuck.”

“Or worse,” Chell said, “
I'll
end up wearing it.” He gave her a smile to take the sting out of his words, then made his way back to the stern. He loosened a rope, pulled it taut, then looped it around a cleat, and the sail quieted and bellied out. The motion smoothed, a little, and Mara was able to keep her gorge from rising . . . for the moment. But she remained in the bow, sucking in as much air as she could, as they raced north along the coast.

She had no clear idea of the distances involved and no clear idea of how fast a boat could travel, and thus had no idea how long it would take them to get to the Secret City. She thought she would at least
recognize
the Secret City from out at sea, once they drew near, but she couldn't even be certain of that. One thing she
was
certain of: if it had taken them four days to ride south from the Secret City to Tamita, there was no way they would reach it today, or probably even the day after. Would they get there before Keltan and Edrik? More importantly, would they get there before the Watchers?

Only time would tell.

She watched the coastline slip by. They passed two villages, Chell steering farther out to sea as each one came into sight. They saw other sails, but only in the distance; no one came close enough to hail them or pursue them. Mara wondered what those fishermen thought of the vessel sailing so determinedly north. When they got back to port, would they discuss it amongst themselves? Would Watchers hear it? Were Watchers even now peering out to sea along the coastline, searching for them?

“Will we camp on land tonight?” she asked Chell as the sun sank toward the western horizon. They'd passed the second village some three hours previously and had seen no sign of human habitation since.

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “We can be ambushed on shore. We'll come in closer and anchor, but we'll sleep in the boat.”

Mara nodded, but inside she groaned. Her head hurt and she still felt queasy, queasy enough that when Chell suited actions to words and took them in close enough to shore that their anchor could find purchase on the bottom beneath a tree-shrouded bluff, she refused the dried meat and cheese he offered for supper, though she drank some water. The ocean remained quiet, or so Chell assured her, but the motion didn't stop. It bothered her less when she was lying down in the bottom of the boat, though, she discovered, and at least the protective power of the water continued: her dreams were only troubled, not waking-up-screaming nightmares. And maybe the warmth of Chell's body, lying next to hers beneath the blanket they had taken from the hut, helped, too.

But she woke suddenly in the middle of the night when water splashed into her face. She licked it and tasted salt, and sat up abruptly, gripping the gunwale to steady herself. There was a rushing and a roaring all around her. “What's going on?” she shouted into the darkness. Chell was no longer beside her, but instead was fumbling with something in the bow.

For an instant, the darkness was obliterated by light that flashed across the sky, revealing Chell's ice-white face, his eyes and open mouth black circles in the sudden glare, his hands pulling on the anchor rope. “Storm rolling in!” he cried as the darkness swallowed him again. “Came up suddenly. We've got to get farther offshore!” Another flash of light showed him heaving aboard the anchor, a muddy lump of lead. “Move astern!” he yelled. “I've got to get at the oars!”

Thunder rumbled, several seconds after the flash of lightning; the storm hadn't reached them in its full fury yet, but already the boat leaped about like a maddened horse. As Mara moved toward the stern, Chell grabbed the blanket and stuffed it into one of the lockers. Then he unshipped the oars, sat down on the middle thwart, plunged the oar blades into the water, and pulled hard.

The boat leaped so hard it threw Mara onto her back, her head banging against the transom hard enough to make her dizzy. She crouched lower in the boat as Chell, grunting with every stroke, drove them out to sea, away from the wind-tossed trees of the shore, their madly flailing branches visible with every flash of lightning. “Lucky,” Chell panted. “Storm came up from the south, over land. If it had come the other way the wind might have smashed us against the shore while we slept.” Lightning flashed again, and in its brief flare Mara saw his teeth bared in a grin. Thunder crashed as he vanished into darkness again. “But it's swirling, too. Wind could change any minute. We've got to get as far from shore as we can.” He hauled the oars aboard then scrambled forward to busy himself at the mast. The sail rose jerkily, flapping aimlessly in the wind until Chell scrambled back toward her. “Move forward,” he said, and feeling like a lump of lead more useless than the hauled-aboard anchor, she squeezed past him. He unlashed the tiller, which he had tied in place when they'd dropped anchor, then hauled in the sheet to quiet the flapping sail.

“The sail is smaller!” Mara shouted at him. “Did something happen to it?”

“It's reefed,” Chell said. “I made it smaller, so it won't pull so hard. Safer.”

Brilliant light flashed, a blue-white bolt tearing a jagged streak across the black sky overhead, revealing roiling clouds. Thunder hammered them, causing Mara to cry out and throw her arms over her head. “This could get nasty!” Chell cried.

Could?
Mara thought, heart pounding in terror. Each new flash of lightning showed angry water all around them, waves piling up like miniature mountain ranges, capped with foam instead of snow, and they seemed to be growing. The boat no longer rocked; now it slid down watery slopes, then up to a teetering pause, then down again. Spray crashed over the bow as it nosed up each new wave. Water sloshed around Mara's feet.

“We need to bail!” Chell shouted.

Mara knelt in the bottom of the boat, fumbling through the lockers beneath the mast, but found nothing but rope and bits of netting. “There's nothing to bail with!” she shouted back.

“Use the water cup!”

The wooden cup attached by rope to the water barrel was swinging wildly, banging against the staves as though trying to smash them in. Mara grabbed it and tried to untie it, but the knots in the sodden rope might as well have been carved from steel for all the impression her fingers made on them.

Neither of them had a knife, and the water was up to her ankles. Desperate, Mara gave up on the mug and instead pulled off her boot and began bailing with that, scooping and swinging, scooping and swinging, trying to stay ahead of the dollops of saltwater that crashed in with every wave and knowing she was losing the battle.

The lightning had become almost constant now, the thunder echoing and crashing all around them, and the wind howled through the stays. The boat labored up the side of each mountainous wave, then fell down the other side as though dropping from a cliff. In the lightning flashes Mara saw white spume flying from the wave peaks, ripped away by the gale. Her arms and back ached and her heart pounded in her chest. If the boat swamped or capsized . . . it would be the end of her. Her magic couldn't save her. Nothing could out here, not even Chell, who would be hard-pressed to save himself, even if he could swim, in the seas surrounding them now.

She'd tried to seduce Chell . . . her ears burned even in the cold and wet of the storm at the still-fresh memory of that humiliating episode . . . because she wanted to feel like an ordinary girl. The storm was certainly accomplishing that. She didn't feel special out here. She felt cold and wet and tired, incredibly weak . . . and incredibly small.

Just when powerful magical abilities would really come in useful
, she thought,
they're nowhere to be found
.

And then the heavens opened up and the rain poured down in buckets, and all thoughts but the need to keep bailing were pounded from her head.

The rain threatened to swamp them, but at least it also flattened the waves a bit, and the wind eased as well. Mara kept bailing, mechanically, almost mindlessly. The lightning became sporadic, the thunder following it at longer and longer intervals. The wind fell further, the rain eased, and finally, almost to her disbelief, there was no longer enough water in the boat for her to scoop it out, and they were galloping along through the dark with a brisk breeze at their stern over waves that had shrunk from the size of mountains to no more than good-sized hills.

Mara, gasping, flung aside her sodden boot and at last sat back on the middle thwart. “I can't feel my arms,” she said, shivering and hugging herself.

“You did great,” Chell said. With the lightning now reduced to flickers in the distance, he was invisible, but his voice sounded strained and somehow washed out. “If you hadn't kept ahead of the water, we would have swamped for sure.” He paused. “How's your seasickness?”

Mara blinked in tired surprise. She hadn't thought about her insides once, and now that she did . . . “I don't feel sick anymore,” she said.

“Good,” the prince said. “You probably won't, at least not on this trip.”

“You mean I might get seasick the
next
time?”

“Some sailors get sick every time they go out,” Chell said.

Mara groaned. She massaged her arms and stared around. “How far are we from shore?”

“Not a clue,” Chell said. “I don't think we'll see it when the sun comes up, though.” He looked up at the sky, and Mara suddenly realized she could see him now. Their surroundings had brightened from pitch-black to charcoal gray. She could see the waves rolling by underneath them, and scudding gray clouds low overhead. “Almost dawn now,” Chell said. “At least we can pinpoint east when the sun comes up . . . if we can see it.”

But though the sky grew brighter and brighter, the sun itself made no appearance. “Over there, I think,” Chell said at last, glancing over his left shoulder. “Near as I can make it. Which should mean we're heading northeast, and back in toward shore.” He turned around and peered forward again. “Nothing in sight.” His eyes lit on her once more. “Get some rest,” he said. “I'll call you if I need you.”

Mara started to nod, yawned, bit it off, finished the nod, and then yawned again. The damp floorboards looked remarkably appealing. She pulled the blanket from the locker, thankful Chell had stuffed it in there to keep it dry when the storm began, wrapped it around herself, stretched out, and almost instantly fell asleep.

The next time she woke, it was to sunlight. She blinked up at bright blue sky, and then sat up. “Ow!” she said as her muscles protested. She looked around. There was no land in sight. “Where's Aygrima?” she said in alarm.

“No idea,” Chell said. His voice sounded dull and tired, and Mara, glancing at him, was shocked by how drawn and pale he looked. “We must have been driven farther out to sea than I thought. Or else I misjudged the position of the sun this morning. By the time the clouds cleared away, it was so high overhead I still couldn't be sure of directions.”