Bloodstone (23 page)

Mirianna’s nerves hummed a warning. He had only to show himself to her and she would die. But her questions seemed unfazed by the danger her body sensed. “You’re Durren of Drakkonwehr,
and
you’re the Shadow Man?”

The hood dipped in a gracious nod.

She rubbed her temple. “Then the Shadow Man
is
Durren of Drakkonwehr.”

“No.”

“What?” Her head pounded and she closed her eyes against the pain. “That doesn’t—”

“That needn’t concern you now. We need to get inside the fortress.” He clucked to the horses, and Mirianna gritted her teeth and hung on to the boy.

Mirianna threw her arm over her eyes. The sun had no business waking her this early. Her head had barely touched the bedding, and now it was already day? Nearly noon by the height of the sun bouncing off rocks and stone walls and penetrating the sleeve she’d thrown over her face. Groaning, she uncovered one eye and realized she’d slept for hours on no more than a blanket thrown down upon paving stones. Every joint in her body ached as she sat up and took in soaring granite walls, pitted and broken in places as though something huge had swung a club through them. What seemed in starlight like intact towers and turrets were in the clarity of day the shattered remains of a once great fortress.

Drakkonwehr.

Had the Shadow Man really told her that, or had she dreamed it? In full daylight, the idea he should claim kinship with—much less the identity of—the presumed dead Durren of Drakkonwehr seemed something her exhausted mind had created, but there was yet the undeniable reality of this fortress. The incongruity made Mirianna’s head ache. She lay down and covered her eyes, seeking to return to the sweet oblivion of sleep.

The smell of roasting meat teased her nostrils and, stomach rumbling, she turned to look for the source. A fire with a spitted rabbit suspended over it smoked within a circle of stones. Nearby, she saw a well with a bucket sitting on its rim and a trough beside it. Realizing she’d eaten and drunk nothing for the better part of a day, Mirianna rallied stiff muscles and tottered to her feet.

The chill water she splashed on her face shocked her mind and body into full wakefulness. She drank deeply, then undid her hair and refastened it, shoving loose curls away from her face with hands that shook.
Don’t think about Papa. He’s safe with Rees and Pumble. That’s all that matters.

Inhaling a steadying breath, she surveyed the courtyard. In the shade of one wall, the horses lounged, nose to tail. They’d been hobbled and their tack removed but not organized. She suspected she’d helped pile the gear against the wall, but she could remember nothing beyond lowering the boy into the Shadow Man’s arms and sliding off the gelding herself.

Of the Shadow Man she could see no sign, but clearly he’d set the rabbit to roasting. The boy still slept, tangled in his blankets, frowning against the sun. His cheeks looked flushed, so Mirianna knelt to lay her hand on his forehead. During the night, the bandage around his head had come askew and she pulled it off, revealing a puckered, reddened gash. She bit her lip, not liking the look of the wound or the dry heat of his skin.

He stirred, mumbling something like “Right away, sir.”

“Good morning, Gareth,” she said, remembering what the Shadow Man had called him, and remembering he couldn’t see her. “How do you feel?”

He yawned, stretched—and winced. “Sore, miss.” He sat up and she put his staff into his hand.

“I’ll take you to the well so you can wash.”

“Where are we?”

“At Drakkonwehr. Your master’s home.”
Or so he says.
Recalling the boy’s self-sufficiency during the Krad battle, Mirianna resisted the urge to help him while he rose stiffly and tapped the paving stones with his staff. “Do you remember anything of last night?”

“Rotten eggs.” He wrinkled his nose as he followed her to the well. “Something smelled of rotten eggs.” Setting aside his stick, he splashed water on his face, then drained the cup she placed in his hands. “Ugh. The water tastes of it, too.”

Now that he mentioned it, she recognized the sulfurous taste lingering on her tongue. “Get used to it.” She refilled his cup. “You’ll be drinking a lot of it until your fever is gone.”

Later, Mirianna rooted in the pile of baggage and found a pot, some dry-cake and an assortment of dried herbs. She cut a haunch of rabbit and gave it to the boy with a piece of dry-cake and a cup of warm water steeped with willow bark and chamomile. If she could just remember all the ingredients, she could make a paste to spread on his gashes, but although she’d watched the Nolar herbalist prepare the recipe many times while collecting her father’s teas, her thoughts refused to settle. Instead, she paced, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, and watched the boy eat. At least he had an appetite. When Gareth, despite yawning, suggested they unpack, she refused and made him lie on a blanket in the shade where he promptly fell asleep.

Mirianna hoped she hadn’t been too brusque, but she truly didn’t have the presence of mind to attempt unpacking things she had no idea where to put, and she especially didn’t want the boy to know how her insides quaked every time she thought about where she was and with whom. In the bright light of day, her situation looked no less terrifying than it had when the Shadow Man had clutched her to his chest.

She was indentured to a nightmare. Whatever name he chose to call himself, he certainly was
not
human. And this sprawling ruin was his home. Did he live among the stones, a shadow melding into shadows? Or did he thrive in the dark recesses that lurked behind fragmented doors hanging on blackened frames? Where in the name of the Dragon was he? And just where did he expect this poor blind boy to take up residence?

Perhaps if she roused enough indignation at Gareth’s situation, it would keep fear of her own tamped down. She ate a haunch of rabbit without tasting it, chewed dry-cake, and washed both down with sulfur-flavored water, then stood. If the Shadow Man wouldn’t show himself, she’d just have to find him.

****

Beneath the fortress, in a pool where one of the tunnels opened into a chamber, Durren floated, arms spread, eyes closed, the water gently bearing him up. All his aches had drained into it, even the bruise from the Krad-thrown rock. When he finished soaking, he would be clean again, purified from the temptations he’d faced down in Ar-Deneth. He opened his eyes, sighed, and touched bottom. A phosphorescent swirl showed where he’d stirred the water, but no other light touched his eyes.

He didn’t need light to know precisely where he was, how far from the bottomless part of the pool where the hot water welled up, how near the ledge where his clothes lay, in what direction the tunnel led upward to the broken ruin that was Drakkonwehr. If he’d slept, he was not aware. A man could float asleep in the warm, salty water and open his eyes hours later to see nothing but darkness. It should be full day above ground. He’d left the rabbit slowly roasting. The woman and boy should be capable of caring for themselves while he eased his soul.

He splashed water over his face, watching phosphorescence swirl between his hands. He’d once more purged the effects of Ar-Deneth, but he couldn’t so easily purge himself of what had happened since. Not while a flesh-and-blood reminder waited for him above ground. At the thought of the woman, his body tightened. With an oath, he dove, pulling himself hand-over-hand along stones at the bottom until his lungs burned and he broke the surface. He sucked in air, then swam to the ledge and climbed out. This
flesh
had brought her here. Or was it the Shadow?

Perhaps both,
said the Voice in his head.

Throughout these fourteen long years, after each necessary foray into the world of men, the pool had never failed to restore his equanimity. Until now. Durren cast a glance upward, as if he could see through solid rock.
She
was up there, most likely walking among the ruins in that homespun riding skirt he’d seen flowing about her ankles when she’d begged him to save her—and the men with her—from the Krad. He’d glimpsed her bare thigh when he held her astride his hip, and that image had burned into his brain. She smelled of lilacs, wood smoke, and...woman.

Durren broke out in a sweat. This body—
his
damned body!—knew what it wanted, what it thought it needed after he’d once more refused to slake its appetite in Ar-Deneth.

It was your choice to punish yourself again,
the Voice in his head said
. And for what—to atone for one night of selfish pleasure years ago? How do you know a few hours’ delay made the difference? Who’s to say Errek wouldn’t have died anyway? The mage was expecting you.

Go to Beggeth!
He had enough on his mind without the damned voice adding to it. Somehow, he would have to find a way to deal with her presence. Grabbing his clothes, he threw them on, letting them dry his skin. With the Sword of Drakkonwehr in his belt, he followed the tunnel upward.

He should’ve guessed he’d find the woman already in the passage. She’d gone as far as the last glimmer of outside light penetrated, and there she stood as if stymied, hand clutching the hewn-rock wall, face white enough to illuminate his way to her.

“What are you doing here?” Durren said, making her start.

Don’t be harsh,
the Voice in his head said.
She doesn’t know any better.

She still shouldn’t have come into the darkness alone. Not here. Not so close to the heart of Drakkonwehr.

“Why did you just go off and leave us?” she said as her gaze located him among the tunnel shadows.

Her question irked him. He had every right to do as he pleased in his own home, to attend to his own compelling needs. “I left you food.” Durren strode past her, indicating she should follow. “Did you eat?”

“Thank you, yes, but—”

“Where’s the boy?”

“Sleeping. He has a fever—”

He stopped and she stumbled to a halt beside him.

See. He’s ill already. You should never have brought him.

Though his gut clenched, Durren ignored the voice in his head and focused on the woman. He saw the flash of her look before her gaze skittered to the rubble littering the floor.

You’re scaring her. Is that what you want?

They’d come out into an anteroom. Through the archway ahead, long rays of afternoon sun beat down into the roofless Great Hall and illuminated their feet. Rock scuffs and pine pitch speckled her boots, and over one toe dangled a narrow strip of fabric rent from her skirt. Wondering if he’d been responsible for that, and hoping he hadn’t, he modified his tone. “What have you done for him?”

“I found your herbs and made him some tea.”

She’d attempted to tame her hair into a knot, but thick curls still spiraled alongside her face, drawing his attention to the delicate shell of her ear and the turquoise earring studding the lobe. Durren braced himself against the rush of desire scorching his skin, but all he could think was how that lobe would feel on his tongue, the fine fuzz of her skin and the cool satin of the stone.
By Kiros!

Over the hum of his blood, he realized she was speaking. “I trust you have someplace better than an open courtyard for him to sleep in tonight.”

Willing his mind into the present time and place, he recognized she’d said nothing of herself, of the fear clearly written on her face moments ago. No, she’d raised her chin and focused on the boy’s needs.

You admire that in her, don’t you?
said the Voice in his head.

What if I do?
To the woman, he said, “You’ll have better accommodations tonight, if you’ll help prepare them.”

“Gladly.” Head high, she strode across the rubble of the Great Hall, through the broken double door into the courtyard—and froze.

With an oath, Durren sprang, shoving her behind his body and drawing the Sword while spinning to face whatever caused the blood to drain from her face.

In the shade near the pile of gear, the shelion lay stretched out alongside the sleeping boy, head raised over the boy’s head, twin yellow-green eyes fixed on them. Blood stained her muzzle, and her tongue slid over it.

Durren’s fingers convulsed on the Sword before he saw the fresh carcass of a deer lying near the fire. “Don’t make any sudden moves,” he told the woman. “I don’t think the lion means to harm Gareth, but I’m not sure what she’ll do to us.” He stole a glance at the bloodstone embedded in the Sword, but it showed him nothing.

“You mean...you didn’t send her?” Despite its pallor, the woman’s face in the full sun looked more confused than frightened.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“She brought me to you. She saved me from the Krad. And from Rees. I thought...”

She saved you, too,
the Voice in his head said.

Be still!

“If you didn’t send her,” the woman said, “then who did?”

Yes, who?
the Voice in his head said.

Durren clenched his jaw so tight his teeth ached. “No one! She’s just a Wehrland lion, nothing more.”

The lion licked the last of the blood from her muzzle with a rasp that jittered his nerves. The yellow-green gaze pulled at him, but he focused between the woman and the cat so he could watch both of them.

Hands on hips, the woman said, “She spoke to me. Twice. I saw myself through her eyes. If that’s not magic, I don’t know—”

“You
don’t
know! How could you? You’re just—”

“What? A woman? Is that what you were about to say?” Her chin thrust out, but her lips trembled. “Fine! Keep your bloody Wehrland, and your big black cloak, and your disappearances in the night, and those filthy, disgusting Krad and—and...think what you want! I don’t know what in the Dragon’s name is going on or why in the world I’m here, but I know one thing. That lion spoke to me. She may want to do you harm, but she’s not going to do the least bit of harm to me!” She spun away and, head high, strode toward the she-cat before he could stop her.