The Outworlder (26 page)

Childir’s body toppled to the ground as his
head rolled with a sickening splash into the water.

The sword dangled in Jared’s grip for a
moment as he stood, breathing hard. Rafe and Brytnoth stared at
him, and Jared turned on them.

“Let’s go! We haven’t a moment to waste.”

Rafe and Brytnoth sheathed their blades
without a word. Jared stooped and wiped his blade clean on
Childir’s robe, then looked frantically around the boathouse.

“What’s the problem?” Rafe asked.

“We need to get rid of the body,” Jared said.
“But without a weight, it’ll float.”

Brytnoth crossed to the far side of the
landing and returned a moment later with a coil of heavy rope.

“Here. Use this.”

Jared obeyed and then rolled the body into
the water. After a few sickening moments, it sank out of sight.

Rafe jumped on board and headed for the
steering controls while Brytnoth began untying the ropes that
moored the boat to the dock. Jared flung their bags into the stern.
As soon as the boat was free, Brytnoth scrambled on board and went
astern, rifling through the packs until he had found their night
travel gear.

“Ready?” Jared called from the dock.

Brytnoth and Rafe, silver cloths firmly tied
around their faces and glasses fixed in place, gave him the
thumbs-up.

Jared flipped the lever that opened the river
gate and then jumped into the boat. As soon as he was on board,
Brytnoth handed him his night gear. Rafe gunned the engines,
spewing bloodied water onto the dock in their wake.

The engines were almost noiseless—the
crowning achievement of the manufacturing trade centered in the
Great City a decade ago. Everything about the boat had been
state-of-the-art, and if their errand had not been so urgent, Jared
would have fallen in love with it at once. The speed, the power,
and the freedom reminded him of spaceflight, but the rhythmic
slapping of water against the keel was far more soothing than the
sterile silence of space.

A moment later, they passed out of the gates
of the city and found themselves in a much wider channel of water.
Rafe let Brytnoth take over the steering and came forward to join
Jared in the prow.

“That was close,” Rafe said, flinging himself
into one of the bench seats that lined the prow.

Jared’s eyes crinkled as he smiled grimly and
he nodded. “I just hope we got him in time.”

“Why do you say that? I mean, in time for
what?”

“In time to keep him from summoning the
others,” Jared answered, running a hand through his hair.

“How do you know that’s what he was
doing?”

“Sahara told me.”

Rafe stared at him in silence for a moment.
“That must be creepy,” he said with a short laugh. “Hearing her
voice in your head like that.”

“It’s a bit…disconcerting,” Jared agreed.
“But it’s been extremely useful.”

“I suppose so.” Rafe sighed and then
transfixed Jared with a piercing stare. “Look, it’s probably none
of my business, but…”

“But what?”

“Do you love her, Jared?”

Jared clasped his hands behind his head and
leaned back, gazing up into the sand-filled sky. “I don’t know,
Rafe.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You either
do or you don’t.”

“Is it that simple?”

“Of course it’s that simple!” Rafe’s voice
was tinged with incredulous laughter.

Jared shook his head. “Well, you don’t know
Sahara very well if that’s what you think.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s very…complicated, Rafe.”

“People are complicated. Love isn’t. Come on,
Jared, you’re the minstrel here! You know how it is.”

“Those are songs, Rafe. Stories. They aren’t
real life.”

“And what exactly is real life? Isn’t it just
experience? What we live each day? And it seems to me—not being an
expert by any means, mind you—but it seems to me that what you call
‘real life’ isn’t really that different from the stories you
tell.”

“Why?”

“Because you remember them. The stories
become part of who you are, just like the things you do or say or
experience.”

“I tell stories because they are
entertaining, Rafe. I think you’re giving them a bit too much
weight.”

“Don’t we also tell and listen to stories to
learn something, Jared? Like those
‘once-there-was-a-boy-who-did-whatever-stupid-thing-you-just-did-and-guess-how-he-turned-out’
stories we heard all the time as kids.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with Sahara
and me.”

“I’m saying that maybe you should pay more
attention to the songs you sing. Maybe you might learn something.
Like what love really is, for example.”

“This is hardly the time for a
philosophical—”

“We’re all about to risk our lives to save
this girl, Jared,” Rafe interrupted, his voice suddenly sharp. “All
of us. Including you—the one who hears her voice in his head. It
seems to me you need to square with your feelings for her before we
get too much closer to our almost certain doom.”

Jared laughed then. “Point taken. But much as
I hate to admit it, I guess I just don’t know what love is.”

“Didn’t you love your parents? Your
sister?”

“Yes.”

“What was that like?”

Jared didn’t answer for a long time.
“Complicated.”

“How was that complicated?” When Jared made
no reply, Rafe continued, “Let me guess. You loved them, and they
died. And you dealt with that abandonment by seeking and taking
revenge. And now either you don’t know how to recognize love if you
feel it, or you do recognize it and you won’t let yourself feel it
because the one you love might be taken from you again.” He paused
and then added, “Just a guess.”

Jared stood up suddenly. “I’m going to
relieve Brytnoth.”

Rafe watched him walk away with a sigh. He
leaned back and stretched out his legs.

“Not know what love is,” he muttered under
his breath. “And I guess he wouldn’t know a crossbow bolt if it hit
him in the face either.”

The wind was gradually dying down and the
sandstorms had subsided at last. They were finally able to remove
their face cloths and goggles, and Jared inhaled deeply, coughing a
little as the still dusty air tickled his lungs. Far to the east,
the sky was just beginning to brighten, but he could still make out
the constellations glimmering in the west.

“It’s too bad we hardly ever see the stars,”
he remarked to Brytnoth. “I can’t remember a time when the dust
storms didn’t blot out the night sky.”

“It occurs to me,” said Brytnoth slowly,
“that perhaps that’s part of the Dragon-Lords’ plan too. You said
before that they control the water source—perhaps they also
desiccated the land, forcing people to settle along the banks of
the river.”

“Anything’s possible,” Jared agreed. “That
certainly would make our systematic extermination easier.”

He stared southward, straining his eyes
against the lingering gloom and the haze. The river snaked away in
front of them, and when Jared looked to the left and right he could
see the banks getting progressively higher. These gentle slopes
were crowded with lush vegetation. Scrubby trees hung their
branches out over the water and plants sent creepers and trailers
down to the river’s edge. Occasionally he saw the pale glimmer of
flowers among the deep green foliage, but the boat sailed far
enough from the shore to miss their fragrance.

He turned his attention back to the south,
eager to see what lay before them, but in the back of his mind,
gnawing at him like a ravenous hunger, lurked Rafe’s questions from
the night before.

Do I love her?
he wondered.
Can
I?

They were two absolutely distinct questions,
he knew. One suggested that the decision had been made—he did or he
didn’t. The other suggested that it was still in his power to
choose, and that there was some set of criteria on which such a
choice should be made.

They were all taking a terrible risk, he
knew. And it suddenly washed over him like a cold wave that if the
willingness to sacrifice one’s life for another was the essence of
love, then they all loved her. All of them. Not just him. He
frowned and rubbed the rough stubble lining his jaw.

“Jared?” Brytnoth leaned into his field of
vision, concerned. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He hesitated for a single moment,
and then added in a rush, “Listen. About Sahara. What are your
feelings for her?”

Brytnoth couldn’t have looked more surprised
if Jared had taken a swing at him with his fist. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why are you asking me this, Jared?”

“Because I need to know. Please.”

“I’d die to save her, if that answers your
question.”

Jared glanced at him swiftly, and the glow in
Brytnoth’s face made his frown deepen. “No, it doesn’t really
answer it at all,” he muttered.

“Well, I haven’t got a better answer than
that.” Brytnoth grinned at Jared suddenly. “But don’t worry.
Everyone knows she’s your girl.”

“She’s not—”

“Shut up. She is. You may be stupidly blind
to reality, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are. Rafe and I
have heads on our shoulders and eyes in our heads. So like I said,
don’t worry.”

Jared opened his mouth to answer, but Rafe
suddenly interrupted them. “Be on the lookout for a spot to hide
the boat and make camp for the day.”

After that, all their attention was on the
passing banks of the river. They saw nothing promising for what
seemed an eternity. With each passing moment, the sky to the east
brightened and their situation became more perilous. Jared’s eyes
snapped left and right, watching for any sign of scouts tracking
their passage downriver. Finally, just around a gentle bend, Jared
spotted a clump of low-hanging branches belonging to a small copse
of trees.

“There!” he called, pointing. “Rafe! Over
there!”

Rafe turned the boat toward the shore and
drew her up under the shelter of the boughs. They secured her and
then scrambled ashore and up the bank into the trees.

When they at last settled down to sleep, dawn
was rippling on the river and shimmering through the leaves.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Jared offered,
and neither Rafe nor Brytnoth objected. They wearily flung
themselves under the shelter of a scrub tree and left Jared alone
with his thoughts.

Jared went back to the edge of the steep
bank, looking down on the boat and then southward down the river.
The water gurgled and plashed against the hull of the boat, rocking
her to and fro. Jared felt his shoulders slowly relax as the
adrenaline that had fueled him since their encounter with Childir
finally seeped out of him.

Childir.

The realization of what had happened in the
boathouse began to awaken inside him, even as the birds stirred in
the trees and began greeting each other in sweetly cheerful
snatches of song. Arnauld had said that Childir was a father to
him, and Jared had slain him with his own sword.

Jared’s head bowed under the wave of grief
that swept through him. Even the knowledge that Childir’s treachery
had probably cost his family their lives did not fully ease the
ache in his heart. Some hurts, he reflected, cut too deeply to heal
without scarring
.

With a heavy sigh he raised his head and tore
off a tall stem of grass, twirling it between his fingers. He felt
uneasy, a vague sort of uneasiness without any apparent cause. He
had never scouted the lands to the south of the city and everything
felt unfamiliar to him.

Rolling sands flanked the verdant ribbon of
undergrowth and trees that curled along the river’s edges, but
these were not the barren drifts that undulated through the
wilderness around Albadir. Scrubby and spiky green plants
punctuated the sands, and Jared wondered if they were remnants of
what once had been a lushly fertile landscape or if they were
simply able to survive on the water that lurked beneath the crust
of sand.

Jared pinned the stem of grass between his
teeth and lay back on his elbows. The cool of the dawn had already
faded. The drone of insects among the plants down at the water’s
edge filled his ears, and the sun now beat down on their shelter
with an all-too-familiar intensity. The ground beneath the trees
languished in a maze of deep shadows and rich green light, but
there wasn’t a breath of air to stir the leaves. Jared, used to the
breezy openness of Albadir, felt that he was being smothered there
in the bracken, and that feeling only increased his uneasiness.

And then he knew he was not alone.

He flattened himself in the bracken and
slowly, quietly, rolled himself onto his side. Just across the
river, mounted on a beast unlike any Jared had ever seen, was a
Dragon-Lord scout. He was urging his mount along the bank, back and
forth, searching for something in the water. The beast—something
like a horse, but with scales instead of hair and a squatter
body—kept its ears pinned back against its meaty skull, and its red
nostrils were flared in obvious fear. When the beast’s foot
suddenly slipped into the water, it squealed in terror, nearly
throwing its rider in its mad scramble away from the edge.

He’s trying to force the thing to ford the
river
, Jared realized.
But it’s afraid of the water.

The scout beat the animal savagely with a
spiked crop, driving it toward the river bank once more. Jared slid
his hand to his sword hilt and waited breathlessly, watching.

The scout, plying the crop until the flanks
of his mount were dripping a dark blood onto the grass, managed to
get it to put its forefeet into the water. It tolerated this only a
moment, its hide shuddering and rippling the surface of the water,
and then it bolted in good earnest, throwing the scout from the
saddle in its dash up the bank. The scout chased it a few paces
with a string of terrible curses, but when he saw that the beast
had no intention of returning, he slashed savagely at the river
rushes with his crop and turned back to the water.