Waterdance (18 page)

Mage? Oh, yes—Atheris said that mage was a little too curious, didn’t he? Bright Ones, if a mage gets hold of him, slaps a geas on him, and sticks him down in some cellar—NOW what do I—

Fortunately the same thought must have occurred to the recovering Atheris; he suddenly struggled violently, kicking and flailing.

Well, so much for stealth and caution. No point in drawing her sword or throwing knives—in the dark with five struggling people, she’d as likely hit Atheris as his captors. Never mind, her unarmed qivashim were well honed, and after her scuffle in the alley she was certainly primed for combat. A short sprint across the plaza and she dropped the first man with Springing Lopa, knocking a second off balance in the process and forcing them to drop their squirming burden. She didn’t wait to see whether Atheris was up and moving yet; she reached for her sword, and now it was Mahdha’s Fury that greeted them—

And before she could get her sword free of its scabbard, a solid weight struck the backs of her knees and she realized her mistake—that because she’d hit the second man, she’d assumed he was down. She held on to her sword hilt desperately as she fell—A warrior must never lose her sword, Perian, not until it falls from your dead fingers. It’s the greatest humiliation a warrior can suffer. Besides, you might land on it—but at least the one who had struck her was still down, half-pinned under her.

Which left only two now fully armed Sarkonds ready to descend upon her, thankfully wielding daggers instead of swords, maybe that would give her time to—

Then Atheris rolled over as one of the men stepped over him, and his hand wrapped around a leather-booted ankle—and the man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed limply to the ground, as simply as that. The last standing man saw and barely hesitated, but that moment was all Peri needed; she lashed out full force with both feet, catching the unprepared Sarkond solidly between the legs, hard enough to send him flying backward with a sound more whimper than shout. He fell hard, the dagger flying from his hand, and lay where he landed, groaning hollowly.

Peri didn’t take time to gloat or congratulate; she rolled to one side, jumping to her feet and preparing to settle the Sarkond who’d tripped her, who was even now struggling free of her weight and trying to rise. Even as she raised her sword, however, Atheris reached out and touched the Sarkond’s arm, and he slumped back to the ground, as limp and unmoving as his companion.

Atheris scrambled to his feet, touching the back of his head and wincing.

“We had best hurry away,” he said. “I am unprepared to deal with that mage, should he decide his henchmen cannot be trusted to subdue me alone.”

“Right,” Peri said grimly. She checked one last time to make sure none of Atheris’s attackers appeared likely to pose a threat—not immediately, at least—and paused just long enough to scoop up his weapons, which one of the men had dropped, and hand them to him; then she followed Atheris back across the plaza as fast as they could run.

As soon as they’d put a little distance between themselves and the mage’s shop, however, Atheris ducked into an alleyway and slumped against the wall, his hand clutching his side, breathing hard.

“Wait,” he panted. “I have to stop.”

“Are you mad?” Peri demanded. “If that clamor hasn’t brought guards down on us, then it’s certainly brought thugs. We’ve got to get back inside before someone comes.” Even now it was too late, she feared; there were voices approaching, and they seemed to be coming along the road Peri had taken—which put them between Atheris and her and their loft.

“I know,” Atheris gasped. “I know. You should—go on.”

“You are mad,” Peri decided. She strained her ears; the voices were definitely closer. Several. At least five or six. Guards, thugs, didn’t much matter; she wasn’t wearing her bandage disguise. “Look, if we hurry around the corner, double back on a cross street—”

“Perian, I—” Atheris grimaced, taking his hand away from his side. “I have a small problem.” He held out his hand.

It was wet with blood.

Peri groaned.

“Hoof rot and tainted springs.” Peri yanked up her tunic and heedlessly ripped away a swath of her undertunic. She pulled up Atheris’s tunic more gently to look. As she’d feared, he’d torn the entrance wound in his side open again. It didn’t seem life-threatening to her, but there was a fair amount of blood on his tunic; better be safe and treat it as if it was serious until she could see better. Peri wadded up the piece of tunic and packed it firmly against the wound, using another strip from her undertunic and Atheris’s belt to secure the dressing as tightly as she could.

“All right,” she said, guiding his hand back to the wound. “Hold that tight. Put your other arm around my shoulder and tell me if you start feeling faint or dizzy. We’ll go slow, but we’ve got to get out of here before someone sees us.”

She started to peek out of the alley, hoping they had time to flee in the opposite direction, but even as she glanced out she saw dark-clad figures hurrying across the plaza, and she hurriedly stepped back into the shadows.

“All right, alleys it is,” Peri said grimly, remembering the sounds she’d heard. She held Atheris’s arm securely over her shoulders and steadied him with her free hand, careful to avoid the wound, and guided him back into the alley.

“By my calculations,” Peri panted as they walked, “we’re heading south right now. That’s not too bad, but we need to turn east in a few minutes to get back to Orren’s. I want to get out of these alleys and back on the main streets as soon as we can. Lina was barring the door for some reason, and in this hellhole, I’d just as soon not find out what it is.”

They stumbled through the alley, Peri holding them to a snail’s pace, straining her ears and cursing herself for leaving the lantern. Once or twice Atheris bumped into the side of a building and gave a little groan. Peri realized to her dismay that she could smell the blood on his tunic, even above the seemingly omnipresent stench of the rotting city.

Only a moment after this realization, Peri froze, pulling Atheris to a halt and pressing him back against a wall despite his gasp of pain.

“Something touched me,” she whispered, drawing the scavenged dagger. She’d felt it quite clearly—a cold, almost slimy, rubbery sensation brushing along her arm, sending a chill through her. She turned her head, her ears straining, sniffing. Whatever had touched her, it couldn’t have been anything human.

Then it came again, that horrible questing touch on her skin. Her stomach seemed to flip over, and a sort of shivery nausea ran through her. Ignoring it, she slashed out with her dagger—for a moment it seemed as though she contacted something, like cutting through jelly. Behind her Atheris stiffened.

“Feeders!” he hissed.

Peri didn’t know what he meant by “feeders,” but she knew she’d felt something, and she knew that any creature her knife cut could bleed and die. She slashed out with her dagger again, but this time contacted nothing. For a moment she thought whatever it was had retreated; then that awful cold touch came again, the sick, weak sensation worse this time.

Atheris stepped to her side, raising his bloody hand palm outward, chanting in a clear voice. The cold touch seemed to cringe away from her, but returned again, stronger this time. Peri struck out more desperately, but although her blade slid through something, her attacker appeared undisturbed.

Suddenly a flash of bright light seemed to pulse outward from Atheris’s hand. For a bare instant Peri saw something through dazzled eyes, something tall and supple and semisolid like a shadow half made flesh, long boneless fingers outstretched, gaping dark sockets where eyes should have been, slick and hairless skin gray as stone, toothless mouth opened in a silent shriek. Then the light seemed to slice through it as her blade had not, and before Peri’s tearing eyes the thing seemed to shiver into smoke.

“Hurry,” Atheris gasped, seizing her shoulder. “Where there is one there will be more. The scent of blood will draw them. We must get inside, and very quickly indeed.”

“Right,” Peri said, trying to still her own shaking. She took a deep breath, telling herself ferociously that she would not vomit, would not piss in her pants, would not faint like a puling invalid. Atheris leaned on her much more heavily now, and Peri didn’t dare ask him whether his weakness was due to blood loss or exhaustion from his magic; at the moment there was nothing she could do about either.

She pulled him through the alleys more rapidly, caution forgotten. If their noises drew guards or thugs or even Bone Hunters, so be it. She’d rather fight any number of real human beings than meet another of those horrible creatures.

It was impossible to keep a straight course; the alleys twisted and turned and even curved until Peri, despite years of training in tracking, began to worry that she was lost. When she finally spotted a section of more open road, she couldn’t have cared less what part of the city she found herself in, but was delighted to see that they’d emerged on the right street, albeit some distance past their destination. Peri was so relieved that she could only manage a further dim gratitude that the streets were still empty; Atheris was stumbling weakly now and there would be no nimble darting from doorway to alley to hide their progress. She simply dragged him up the road, leaning him against the stable wall when they reached it.

Now she had a new problem. Even if she thought Orren or Lina would answer a knock at the door—and given the state of the city, Peri very much doubted that—she didn’t want them to know that she and Atheris had been out, in case questions were asked around the city about the disturbance in the market. That meant she had to get Atheris back up on the roof and through the window into the loft.

“I can climb,” Atheris panted, as if reading her mind. “You will have to help me, but I can make it. I must.”

Peri nodded, inwardly cursing her lack of foresight in not buying rope. She could’ve made a harness and pulled Atheris up much more easily, not risked tearing his wound open again—She shook her head. As the westerners say, there’s no calling back an arrow you’ve shot.

Wearily Peri boosted Atheris up as he climbed, supporting him as far as she could; then she climbed around him to the roof and pulled him the rest of the way up. By the time they crept into the loft and closed the shutters behind them, he was completely exhausted and Peri felt utterly drained, but she forced herself to keep moving. She lit two candles, enough to see by, and lit the brazier as well, laying the blade of her dagger in the coals—if the bleeding was too bad, she might need to cauterize the wound. When the blade was glowing she carefully unwound the dressing.

Peri had been right in her first estimate—the wound wasn’t as bad as it had looked. It didn’t need cautery, but it certainly needed stitching now. Atheris was relieved by the report.

“I find myself wishing, however, that you could simply cast a spell,” he said wryly. “Never mind, I have endured worse.”

“Well, don’t say that just yet.” Peri chuckled. “I’ve never stitched a human being in my life, only horses and a few ikada.” She stirred a few herbs in some of their ale and gave it to Atheris. “Drink that. It isn’t very strong—I don’t dare, not in the state you’re in—but it’ll at least help with the pain. And try to stay quiet. This is a good solid loft with a thick door, but I bet our host and hostess would still hear if you screamed.”

Once again Atheris kept quiet, and once again Peri could not help but be impressed by his stoicism. Then again, there was the long scar running down the front of his torso. Compared with that, a few stitches probably didn’t amount to much.

“So,” Peri said as she worked, “want to tell me what those things were, those feeders?”

Atheris grimaced.

“Accidents,” he said. “I told you how our priests drew life from the land to fuel their magics, sometimes from great distances—you know for yourself how far Darnalek is from the Veil. To do this they had to create—well, proxies, if you will, taps upon points of power through which the energy could reach them. Sometimes the connection between a mage and this tap was prematurely severed—by the mage’s death, by broken concentration, by magical intervention, who knows? Most often those stray bits of magic die. Sometimes they do not, and as they were created to do, they seek energy, life. One alone is not so dangerous, not to a healthy adult able to flee. But to the young, the weak, those taken by surprise ...” His voice trailed off.

Peri tied off her stitches painstakingly.

“So they’re what’s sucking the life out of everything here?” she said, grimacing. Then she had another thought, one that made her shudder. “Are those feeder creatures all over the south end of Sarkond? Mahdha’s wings cover me, why didn’t you say something? We’ve been camping out there, no watches, no protection—”

Atheris raised a hand, shaking his head.

“A feeder does not live, does not feed to sustain itself, but its purpose is to absorb energy to feed its creator,” he said. “On the barren plains where there is nothing to sustain it, a feeder would simply dissipate.”

“But in a city,” Peri said softly, “there’s always food of one sort or another. So people stay off the streets, bar the doors. But you said there’s mages here. Why don’t they simply wipe them out?”

Atheris grimaced again.

“They may be more useful to the city’s mages alive. If a mage can tap a feeder, he can harvest the energy that feeder absorbs. That is its purpose, after all. And there are few enough other sources of power for mages here.”

Peri fell silent, wondering why Atheris hadn’t volunteered this information earlier. The dead city, the barred doors—surely he must have had some suspicion. Why hadn’t he warned her?

Well, he’d never expected her to be out in the city after dark. And speaking of that—

“Are you ever going to tell me what you were doing tonight?” Peri asked conversationally.

Atheris sighed.

“I am so tired, Perian—”

Peri said nothing, but after a moment Atheris sighed again.

“I saw the fortune-teller’s shop this afternoon,” he said. “I felt the emanations of magic and concluded that the proprietor was a true foreseer, or at least a farseer. I wanted to ask him...”