Waterdance (20 page)

“Finger bones,” Atheris said shortly, following the direction of Peri’s gaze. “Tokens of successful hunts.”

To Peri’s surprise and disgust, he rapidly searched the body, stuffing the Bone Hunter’s purse into his pocket.

Hoof rot and stagnant water, she thought, sickened. Robbing the dead. The man I slept with, the man who looks at me with those knowing eyes, is looting a dead man. Mahdha flay me with grit, don’t these folk have any honor?

She said nothing, however, only mounted her horse and set as swift a pace down the road as she dared in the dim moonlight. The ride between the crossroads and Darnalek had seemed almost interminable in the cart, but it seemed amazingly brief on a sound—if not exactly swift—horse; in fact, knowing she was riding toward her pursuers, it seemed altogether too fast. But there was the crossroads. Not slowing the buff mare, she turned to take the northwest road; glancing behind her, she held up her wrist and pulled off the talisman, seeing Atheris mirror her gesture, and tucked it in the saddlebag. Hopefully taking it off her person was enough to negate the talisman’s effects, because she couldn’t throw it away; she’d need it later when they turned back south.

Compared with Tajin, the mare was a hopeless plodder, and Peri chafed at the slow pace, but in the end she realized miserably that it hardly mattered; slow as the mare might be, Peri had to rein her in several times to let the gray gelding catch up. Atheris might have found time to learn swordplay as well as magic, but he hadn’t managed the miracle of expert horsemanship as well. Every such delay made her more impatient; judging from what she’d seen already, these Bone Hunters were certainly more than adequate on horseback, and there was very little doubt in her mind that they’d somehow managed to acquire far better mounts than these pitiful excuses for horses.

And these horses aren’t going to get any faster, Peri thought grimly. Not as long as we’re driving them at their best pace over land where there’s little grazing and no water. If we don’t get back across the Barrier and into Bregond soon, we’re going to be on foot again.

Her knee touched a sticky spot on the saddle skirt. It was blood, the Bone Hunter’s blood, blood of a man who’d nearly killed her, and that knowledge made her rather nauseous.

Shock, she told herself. I’ve never killed a human being before, not even those thugs last night as far as I know. Danber told me to expect it.

“Have you ever killed?” Peri asked softly.

Danber nodded gravely.

“Twice,” he said. “Once bandits tried to raid the herds and I killed one of them. The other was my uncle Berestan. He fell from his horse in a stampede and was badly trampled, his spine crushed beyond healing. He asked me for grace and I gave it to him.”

Danber shook his head.

“Both times I did as I had to,” he said. “But I will never forget their faces, that moment when the light of life faded from their eyes. When you kill, Perian, you drink in a little of your victims’ death. You must accept the responsibility for what you have done and grieve for it or that death you have swallowed will poison you. Every true warrior learns that.”

“Grieve?” Peri asked confusedly. “Why should you grieve when you know you had to do it?”

“There is always an honest cause for grief,” Danber told her gravely. “If not for the life you have ended or the act you committed, then at least for the necessity of committing that act. Or for what you’ve done to yourself by committing it.”

Never mind that I was only defending myself, Peri thought. Never mind that he was a vicious assassin, that I had no choice at all. A human being is dead by my hand. All the years he would have lived, all the things he might’ve done for good or ill—none of that will happen now because I swung my sword and spilled his blood. I’ve become a warrior who has killed. I’ve become just a little more like him. I’ll never again be the same person I was yesterday. She felt a pang on her heart and a coldness on her face; she raised her hand, surprised to feel the moisture on her cheeks.

Danber’s right, she thought, surprised. There was something to grieve for.

She wiped her eyes impatiently but the tears didn’t stop; to her disgust she felt even sicker, weak, as though all her strength was flowing out with her tears. She clung to the saddle, feeling the wind-chilled tears dropping from her face.

Mahdha preserve me, Peri thought dizzily. How much of his death could I have swallowed? He kept enough of it to die himself, didn’t he?

To her amazement, Atheris was riding beside her now—how was he keeping up? He shouted something at her, but the storm was growing worse and she couldn’t hear him over the wind, the thunder, the beat of the dragon’s wings overhead, Mahdha’s voice whispering all around her. And Atheris reached for her, but she pulled impatiently away—

“Let me alone,” she muttered. “Let me grieve it all out.”

And suddenly the ground was there, right in front of her, flying toward her—earthquake?—and she clung to it tightly as it spun and shook beneath her.

And then the feeders and the Bone Hunters and the rotting dead were upon her, dozens of them, cold rubbery hands tearing at her, horrible disfigured faces riddled with disease leering down at her, and maggots dropped out of their rotting mouths and empty eye sockets and fell on her face and she drew her dagger, slashing desperately, blindly all around her—And then a terrible bright pain in her head, and the light became darkness.

Peri woke slowly, painfully. Every inch of her body ached and throbbed and she felt horribly weak and hot. She tried to raise her hands to her pounding head and couldn’t move them; for a moment panic seized her. Then realization; her hands and feet were securely bound. Momentary relief, then new panic—

Light in her eyes, too bright, blinding. She winced away and the light dimmed. Faces, voices, one familiar, the other not.

“Demons in his blood,” a strange voice said. “You must open a vein, bleed them out of him.”

“He is too weak,” the familiar voice protested. “He will die if—”

“Huh?” Peri muttered hoarsely. “Wha—”

A hand promptly fastened itself securely over her mouth, separated from her skin by cloth—oh, yes, rags over her face—

“Thank you for your help,” the familiar voice said hurriedly. “I will attend to him.”

One less presence near her. The hand over her mouth was withdrawn, then a face appeared in her field of vision. Sarkond—enemy—familiar—

“A-Atheris?” Peri mumbled.

“Here. Drink.” A cup at her lips. Peri swallowed hot metallic-tasting water. More. More. At last the cup was withdrawn.

“Peri, listen to me,” Atheris said urgently, his face close to hers. “The wound in your leg—the blade must have been poisoned. You are badly fevered. There is no healer in the camp, and I do not know any healing magic. Tell me what to do for you.”

“Let—let me see,” Peri said. “Help me see.” Her tongue felt thick and clumsy, like the time when she and Danber had slipped out of camp and drunk two whole skins of lingberry wine, gotten silly and confiding—

“Perian, you are my dearest friend, and I have a secret I want to share with you, only you—”

Atheris pulled her up to a half-sitting position, bracing her against his shoulder. Peri looked down at her leg. Atheris had cut her trousers away from her thigh. The long cut wasn’t deep, but the skin around the wound had a greenish-gray hue that looked decidedly unhealthy and her thigh had swelled alarmingly.

Not a true poison, said that indefinable healer’s sense with a surprising detachment. More like an infection. Not a natural infection but—

“Healer’s bag,” Peri muttered. “Have to—”

Then the bag was untied and lay in her lap and her hands were untied as well; Peri dimly noted that the beaded cord was back around her wrist. She fumbled through the vials and pouches, wishing she’d taken the time to acquaint herself more thoroughly with their contents. She found what she wanted by scent.

“Four drops of this in a cup of water for me to drink,” she rasped, handing Atheris the vial, then a small pouch. “Open the cut and wash out the pus, then sprinkle it with this powder and burn it. Then pack the wound with clean mud. Clean mud. Then wrap it, but not tight.”

Then she was lying flat, her hands tied again, and Atheris’s face loomed over her.

“Forgive me,” he said gently, just before he stuffed a wad of rags into her mouth and tied it securely in place despite Peri’s struggles. Then she was glad of the rags to bite on as throbbing agony shot out from her thigh. Brief wonderful respite from pain—then something glowed orange in Atheris’s hand, and she heard a sizzling sound and smelled the sickening odor of burning flesh. Then the pain came again to carry her back into darkness.

Peri opened her eyes. There was canvas above her—a tent roof, perhaps—lit by the flickering glow of a lantern. She shifted experimentally; her hands and feet were free. Her leg throbbed miserably and every muscle in her body ached worse than the time Tajin had stumbled and fallen and rolled over her. She tried to sit up, only to find herself too weak and dizzy for more than a token attempt.

She did, however, succeed in attracting attention; almost immediately Atheris appeared by her side, cup in hand. The relief was so plain on his face that Peri wondered uneasily just how serious her illness had been. And at the same time—

He didn’t leave me. Bone Hunters on our heels, me a Bregond, and he didn’t leave me. He could’ve let them find me, gotten away cleanly with horses, supplies, gold. But he stayed. Even after I tried to abandon him, he stayed.

“I am overjoyed to see you awake,” Atheris said with a relieved sigh. “Here, let me help you.”

He raised Peri a little higher and pushed a pack under her shoulders to brace her, then held the cup to her lips. The water was almost too hot to drink, and it tasted harsh, metallic, but to Peri it might as well have been the finest wine. She drank every drop, and when Atheris refilled the cup, she drank that, too.

“Do you need more medicine?” Atheris asked, reaching for the healer’s bag.

“Not—” Peri’s voice came out hoarse; she paused to clear her throat and sip a little more. “Not till I have a look at the wound first. Help me up, would you?”

With Atheris supporting her shoulders, Peri was able to sit up, although he had to cut the bandages on her leg and peel off the dressing for her. She winced as the hardened mud pulled away burned skin, but the flesh under it was pink and healing cleanly.

“You did not say whether to repeat the drink and the powder,” Atheris said apologetically, “so I did, once a day. As you suggested, I boiled all the water.”

Almost exhausted, Peri let Atheris ease her back to the pallet.

“Once a day?” she muttered. “How long—”

“Two days,” Atheris said grimly. “And for the first I was certain you were going to die—on the second, only half-certain. You are made of hard steel, Perian. The poisons of the Bone Hunters have never spared another, to my knowledge.”

“If they were treated for poison, probably not,” Peri said wryly. “It wasn’t a poison; it was some kind of magic-bred infection, probably easily cured if you know the right counterspell. I guess you were half-right. They may want us alive, at least enough not to kill us outright, but they’ll gladly settle for dead rather than let us escape.”

She looked up at the tent roof again, then abruptly realized that a tent had not numbered among the purchases she and Atheris had made.

“Two days,” she said again. “Where are we?”

Atheris grimaced.

“In a small pilgrim caravan bound for—”

“Don’t say it,” Peri begged.

“—Rocarran,” Atheris said with a sigh. “Peri, there was nothing else I could do.”

Two days! Peri shook her head weakly, trying to remember. The fight with the Bone Hunter. The ride out of the city. The body, the crossroads—then things got fuzzy and strange, unreal.

“What happened?” she asked confusedly.

“I knew the Bone Hunters would quickly arrive, even as we planned,” Atheris told her. “But it was clear you could not ride. I hardly dared move you at all.” He sighed again. “I carried you on my saddle for a short time, but you were delirious and struggling, and I had to stop. I found some rocks to hide us for the day. Two Bone Hunters rode past not long after. I thought they would surely find us.”

Atheris shook his head.

“By nightfall I realized you were growing worse, too weak even to be carried,” he said. “So I stayed where I was and waited. You were lost in dreams, talking strangely.” He glanced at Peri oddly. “You spoke of grieving for your dead. At last I had to gag you for fear you might be heard.

“The two Bone Hunters rode back past near sundown; only a little later this caravan arrived and stopped for the night. I hoped they might have a healer. They did not, but they offered food and water and a place by their fire.”

Peri started to protest, but Atheris cut her off.

“You needed shelter and care,” he said flatly. “You were in no condition for a hard ride across country, not even with me carrying you.” He looked at her strangely. “It is nothing less than a miracle that you survived at all.”

“But the tent,” Peri murmured.

“I traded the horses for it, and for a place in one of the wagons,” Atheris said without preamble. He held up a hand, once more cutting off her protest. “They had no use for gold on the road, and we had no feed or water for the horses. By the time you recovered they would be useless. You could try to buy them back, I suppose.”

Peri groaned softly to herself. Horseless, weakened, disguised, and being drawn ever deeper into Sarkond—why did this situation seem so depressingly familiar? Was there no escaping Rocarran?

I know only that obstacles in your path guide you only more surely to your goal. That was what the old woman had said, wasn’t it, something about the inevitability of—

Peri grimaced. That was one danger of prophecies; they were usually couched in terms so vague and general that it seemed impossible to distinguish a lunatic’s or common charlatan’s ravings from the far rarer true foresight.

The other hazard, of course, was that those who allowed such prophecies to rule their lives were fools. Dangerous fools.