VirtualHeaven (5 page)

Trying not to retch, Maggie decided to risk offending his
masculine pride. “Perhaps we should use this opportunity to test my weapon. You
know, make that rock they’re hiding behind disappear?” She waited for his
reaction.

Kered turned and looked at her with quiet speculation. “The
weapon can do that? Make their shelter disappear?”

Maggie chewed her lip. “I’m not sure. We can try, can’t we?”
At least he hadn’t resisted outright. She watched myriad emotions cross his
face.

“A good commander values even the smallest contribution of
the standard bearer,” he said, grinning and digging her gun from his pack.
“Make the stone disappear.”

Maggie took the gun. With a silent prayer, she braced
herself against the bole of the tree. Her arms trembled as she sighted down the
short barrel of the game gun.

She fired on blue.

The rock disappeared. Three Wartmen stared about in
astonishment. Kered rose, a star at the ready.

He never threw it. A blur of black leaped over the crouching
men. A confusing pile of Wartmen and Gulap stayed his hand. Blood sprayed and
splattered on the dirt like a light rain.

Maggie gagged. The gun fell from her limp fingers.

Maggie looked over her shoulder again and again. She
couldn’t help it. No matter what Kered had told her, she kept expecting the
Gulap to come bounding up, a bloody Wartman’s hand dangling from its mouth.

Despite the blistering heat and blazing red sun in the
purple sky, Kered’s easy acceptance of the grizzly end of the Wartmen chilled
her blood. His practical retrieval of his stars sickened her. It had taken grim
determination to walk past the Gulap’s feast and follow Kered to this stark
plain.

Red dust matted the hem of her dress and rose in swirls
around her ankles. Her lower legs were thick with it and her shoes were
unrecognizable as black suede flats.

She paused. Ahead of her loomed jagged, red-striated
mountains that reminded her of the buttes of Monument Valley. The air had a
similar dry scent. There appeared to be no way up the mountains and no safe way
down. Unless, of course, you sprouted wings and took flight like the blue-hued
hawks that occasionally soared overhead, cawing an eerie cry into the silent
landscape.

Behind her were the more rounded and softer peaks of
Nilrem’s Hart Fell. The gentle slopes, green with coniferous trees, struck a
sharp contrasting chord to the sights before her. Yet she now knew that even
that placid landscape, scented with fresh pine and delicate white wildflowers,
harbored denizens more frightening than any from her imagination.

Nilrem’s world retreated with every step. Their goal, the
jagged red mountain before her, scarcely seemed any closer, the cave they
sought for the night no nearer.

Comfortable with the long distances and monochromatic views
of her parent’s home in the Southwest, Maggie judged the distance as more than
they could travel before the sun set. Of course, who really knew how long that
ugly red orb took to orbit this Tolemac earth? Perhaps they had days of
sunlight left, or minutes. She dropped her pendant into her neckline to still
its annoying thumping against her chest.

Kered marched at a relentless pace. He never looked back and
never spoke. Wasn’t he thirsty? Wasn’t he hot? His fur-lined cloak was an
incongruous outfit for this desert-like environment.

From the warrior’s conversation with Nilrem, Maggie knew
Kered needed to earn two arm rings to sit on the Tolemac council and try to
negotiate peace. Would it make that much difference to his quest if they made a
pit stop or two?

Maggie swallowed against the dryness of her throat. Her
mouth tasted like an old boot, or worse—like the sweat in an old boot. She
wanted her toothbrush.

She frowned at Kered’s large footprints stretching out
before her. He needed a lifemate. One with power. What woman would want such an
inconsiderate man? Maggie played a game, leaping from one footprint to the
other to stem the boredom and divert her mind from her physical discomforts.
Long ago, she had read somewhere about judging a person’s height from his
stride. She was five-feet-nine-inches and she came to Kered’s armpit. That made
the warrior six-foot-seven or eight. Taking a final hop and stomping one of his
footprints to dust, she halted.

Kered marched at least fifty yards before he realized Maggie
wasn’t following. Turning back, he waited. She waited. With an audible sigh of
resignation, he strode back to her.

“What is the problem?” He made no attempt to temper his
impatience. “Darkness is falling. All manner of creatures walk the night.
Surely you understand that now?’’

Maggie darted nervous glances about the vast, wasted
landscape. “I need to go to the bathroom!”

“You require a bath?” he roared. “Here? Now?”

“No.” Maggie’s voice rose to join his shouts. “I don’t
require a bath. Don’t you have to go?”

“Go? I have been going. You are the one standing still!” he
bellowed, slamming his pack to the ground and flinging off his cloak.

Maggie danced in place. Stress gave an edge to her voice.
“You are the most vile cur. You have no manners despite your snotty-sounding
speech. You have no consideration for women. We have been marching along for
hours. Don’t you have to-to-to answer a call of nature?”

Kered became aware of her fidgeting, her flushed face. He
moved closer, fascinated by the change of color on her cheeks. He almost
reached out and touched her, but restrained himself. Then understanding dawned.

“I see. You are a slave.” He crossed his arms on his chest
and nodded sagely.

“What does that have to do with this?” Maggie snarled.

“Slaves never reach the seventh level of awareness. More
proof.”

Maggie gritted her teeth. “What is the seventh level of
awareness?’’

“It is a level of control over one’s mind and body. I can
control those needs until a more appropriate place and time. Slaves never care
to take the time to learn such control. Women slaves especially.”

Maggie twisted her hands in her skirts as her need became
urgent. “Look. We could argue—”

“I do not argue with slaves.”

“But I need to go now!”

“I will turn my back. ‘Tis the best I can offer.”

At that moment, Maggie really didn’t care if he watched. She
motioned for him to turn around.

A huge grin lit his face. At any other time, Maggie would
have been felled by the effect. The damn man had dimples—two—symmetrically
placed, of course!

Kered shouldered his pack and strode off across the dusty
plain. Maggie somehow knew he would not look back. When she was finished, she
ran to catch up with him. Breathing hard, she passed him, turned, and jogged
backward for a moment. He arched a brow at her, but continued his relentless
pace.

“What’s your hurry?” Maggie asked.

“Get behind me, slave.”

“Cur.”

“My name is Kered. Diminution of a name is
disrespectful—punishable by flogging.”

Maggie stopped moving, fisted her hands on her hips, and
began to laugh.

Kered halted. His swift pace carried him past her and he
needed to turn back. She bent at the waist and laughed harder.

“What amuses you so?” He strode back to her, his voice
rising again to a shout.

“I wasn’t shortening your name! I was calling you a cur.
C-U-R.”

“What is a cur, pray tell?” he asked, puzzled, dropping his
pack once more and raising a cloud of dust.

“A mangy, mean-spirited, ill-bred mutt!” Maggie spat out.

Kered slapped the sleeve that concealed his arm rings. “I am
far from ill-bred.”

“Ah-hah! So you admit, at least, that you are mean-spirited
and mangy!”

“I am not…any of those things,” he sputtered. “We have no
time for this, slave.” Kered swept a hand to the heavens. “The sun will set,
and you do not wish to be here on The Scorched Plain when darkness falls.”

A prickle of fear crept down Maggie’s spine.
The Scorched
Plain
. She nodded and gestured him onward. He bent to pick up his pack, but
paused.

“Your feet.” He knelt by her and lifted her right foot, his
fingers skimming over the delicate black shoe, a frown creasing his otherwise
perfect skin.

Teetering and off-balance, Maggie grabbed his shoulders.
Rock slabs. Mesas of shoulders.

“Sit,” he ordered.

Maggie sat. She had little choice with one foot aloft and
him twisting it in the air. Flailing her arms, she fell on her rear. “Yikes.”

Kered drew his knife from the leather scabbard strapped to
his thigh, and Maggie gulped back any other thought of chastising him for his
treatment. The blade had a small, dark splotch staining it on the hilt, an ugly
reminder of his knife fight. In one swift movement, Kered sliced a wide strip
from his cloak. He sheathed his knife and searched through his pack. The object
he withdrew resembled an awl.

Maggie’s mouth gaped as Kered folded himself into a
cross-legged posture. He poked holes and slashed at the fur-lined strip,
cutting it into two pieces. Occasionally he held the strips of cloak up for
inspection, moving them close to his face and then holding them away at arm’s
length, scowling and muttering inarticulately as he worked. “Come here,” he
said finally.

“Please? Oh, never mind.” Maggie scooted close to him. She
stared down at his handiwork.

“Foot.” Kered turned a hand palm up to her. She slapped her
dirty shoe into his waiting hand, like a nurse assisting a surgeon. He clamped
his fingers tightly about her ankle.

“Yow!” Maggie gasped at the strength of his grip.

Kered wrapped the strip of cloak about her shoe and then
used a curved hook from his pack to thread a leather thong through the holes
he’d punched along the edge. He squinted with displeasure all the while.

When he had finished and placed her foot in the red dust,
she wore a furry boot. She offered her left foot and he swiftly secured the
second strip of cloak.

He rose to his full height and stuffed his tools into the
pack. Slinging it over his shoulder, he began to march away.

Maggie ran up to his side. “Thank you, Kered. These shoes
are for dancing, not marching. My feet were killing me.”

“Fourth level of awareness,” he snorted, staring straight
ahead.

“Fourth level? Gee, foot discomfort takes a lot of awareness
to overcome, doesn’t it?”

“No, the fourth level of awareness is when you learn to
admit to weakness and seek solutions.”

“How humiliating,” Maggie murmured as she fell into step
behind him, placing her furry boots in his footprints. “Cur.” She stuck her
tongue out at his back and determined not to say another word to him.

Darkness fell with no warning. The wind rose, swirling cold
streams of air up her skirt as she plodded along. Every muscle in her body
ached and her nose itched. Her shoulders drooped. They’d reached the mountain
range at least an hour before and had been walking parallel to its base. Except
for its color, Maggie was reminded of a string of Devil’s Towers, marching arm
in arm, as far as the eye could see.

“There.” Kered pointed to a dark shadow fifteen or twenty
yards over their heads.

“How do we get up?” Maggie tipped her head back and gulped
at the sheer, ragged wall of rock.

Kered ignored her question and strapped his pack to her
back. “Climb on.” He turned away and went down on one knee.

Without thinking about what he intended, Maggie threw her
arms around his neck and wrapped her legs about his waist. He leaped against
the rock face.

She screamed all the way to the cave, in his ear, long and
loud. He climbed with little pause to search for handholds or footholds, just
seemed to cling to the rock and scramble up and up.

When he set her down at the cave’s mouth, she collapsed in
shock. “Stop grinning, you arrogant—” She swatted away his proffered hand. “I
can get up on my own. Next time, warn me before you do something so dangerous.
I need to say my prayers before I die! Who taught you that? Spider-Man?”

“Spider-Man? You babble nonsense.” He shook his head and
disappeared into the black interior of the cave.

It was almost as dark inside the cave as it was outside. She
staggered to her feet silently and nervously. Where was he? He moved so quietly
that it was as if he had vanished into thin air. Goose bumps broke out on her
arms, and she rubbed them briskly to warm herself.

Kered stepped from the shadows. “Come.” He paused and
gripped her arm. “What is this? A disease?”

Maggie shook her head. “No, it’s called goose bumps. I’m
cold. Don’t worry, it’s not catching.”

“Hm.” He turned her arm over, holding it away and turning it
back and forth. “‘Tis strange. Most strange.” He dropped her arm, then moved
swiftly into the cave.

Eagerly she followed him, snatching at his cloak and hanging
on so he didn’t get away this time. They wove through the silent black cave. He
seemed to navigate easily despite the lack of light. Probably the fifth level
of awareness, she thought, seeing in the dark, ignoring the possibilities of
creatures in corners. Maggie thought of spiders and bats and bears, not to
mention Gulaps and Wartmen. She grabbed bigger handfuls of his cloak and ran up
his heels.

The path jogged left, then right, and emerged into a small
rock chamber lit with a dim glow from an aperture overhead. Maggie stepped near
the opening and peered up into the indigo sky. The four orbs of the
conjunction, slightly off-kilter now, shone brightly. Their combined light just
about equaled that of a quarter moon. At her feet lay a ring of small stones.
The scent of charcoal embers still lingered about the long-extinguished fire.

“Sit here while I gather firewood.”

“Wood? Where will you get wood?” Maggie looked about the
barren chamber.

“I have stored a supply farther along the path.” He gestured
into the shadows and when Maggie nodded, he vanished again.

Maggie remained rooted to her spot until he returned, arms
laden with short, thick logs and small twigs. He stacked them neatly and
reached into his pack, removing a flint. He struck a spark and held it to
several small sticks. They caught immediately, and he fed twigs to the flames,
gently breathing them into life.

“Tend the fire,” he ordered and rose, dusting off his hands.

“Where are you going? Don’t leave.” Maggie didn’t want him
out of her sight again. The cave echoed and his brief journey to get wood had
made her feel vulnerable. “Don’t leave me,” she repeated, ashamed of her
pleading tone.

Kered grinned. “You would not want to accompany me, I
think.”

“Sure I would,” she said, smiling back. “The fire will be
fine.”

“It is now time for one who has attained the seventh level
of awareness to tend those needs of nature of which we spoke.”

“Oh.” Maggie gestured him off. “Shoo. Come back soon.”

Without another word, he blended into the darkness in the
direction of the entrance. Maggie crouched by the fire. As her wait lengthened,
she became aware of aching muscles. Her headache had returned, and she unwound
her bandages and used her hands to comb through her hair. Gently, she probed
the lump at the back of her head. Satisfied that it hurt no more than when
Nilrem first bandaged it, she carefully folded the clean cloth and stowed it in
Kered’s pack. There was no blood visible on the cloth, and she had been taught
to waste nothing.