Bloodstone (32 page)

Standing up, Mirianna smoothed her hair from her face with shaking fingers. “I—I’m going to take a walk. If my father wakes, give him more broth and this water. As much as he wants. And remember, no one but my father is to drink this water.”

“Why?” Pumble leaned over the bucket and sniffed. “Dragon’s Blood! That’s foul!”

Gareth chuckled. “That’s why.”

She pocketed the cooled eggs. She was bringing them to him because the Shadow Man needed sustenance—that’s what she’d say if her nerve failed when he demanded why she’d come. Before she could change her mind, she walked away from the firelight and the voices of man and boy.

Within steps, Mirianna found herself in a different world, one where night creatures sang and shadows pooled in doorways and arches. A few bright stars speckled the indigo claiming the sky like a slow tide. In concert, darkness crept into the courtyard, deepening in such increments she couldn’t detect the change until it settled like a gossamer veil around her shoulders.

By then she’d entered the Great Hall where rafters arched into the night sky, casting jagged bars of black over the shadowy rubble underfoot. Between the bars, bits of mica in the tumbled granite glimmered like miniature stars to light her way.

Mirianna crossed the open area, heading toward the chamber she’d found days before. She thought she knew the way, but a wall of unrelieved blackness faced her. Chewing her lip, she wished she’d brought a torch or candle, but she knew very well why she hadn’t. He lived in the dark, in the shadows she feared. To bring light would be to bring an enemy into his domain. If she meant to go to the Shadow Man, she’d have to go on his terms.

She trod a few steps, feeling with her toes, probing the darkness with outstretched arms, fingers. Was this how it was for Gareth? This complete absence of sight? This blind fear of falling, of colliding with the unknown, of danger lurking a mere breath away? Her teeth chattered, but she clamped her jaw and planted her boot. Stones crunched under the sole, rolling her off balance, forcing her to step one foot across the other.

When she righted herself, panic seized her. What if she’d turned herself around? Without something to touch, to trail her hand along, how could she know? She’d heard of lost travelers who’d gone in circles—and those poor souls had possessed their sight! How did Gareth manage?

By the Dragon, she couldn’t make herself go another step into this...
nothingness,
yet she knew a wall stood here with an arch broken out of it. Her memory of the chamber was so clear, she could count every mouse bone and bit of fur scattered on the rubble below an owl’s nest. In the dark, though, everything seemed bigger, longer, farther away. She could go back outside, wait till morning, and have light for at least a little way into the tunnel. How much beyond the point where light vanished would she find him? The journey wouldn’t seem as terrible then, starting so much closer to the end. But that meant waiting hours yet, and going backward when she’d already come so far.

So far?
She’d come no more than a few steps into the chamber. She could easily go back and try again in the morning.

When Mirianna looked over her shoulder for the glow of starlight that should be visible outside the chamber, she saw nothing. Warm air feathered her eyeballs, telling her she’d stretched wide her lids, but thick darkness enclosed her like a muffling cloak. She could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing except the internal quaking that had begun before she left the company of men and since spread to her limbs. To hold herself together, she made fists, but her body shook so, she feared she would shatter.

Her nails bit into her palms, and the pain brought her a measure of control. After a moment, she managed to slide her right foot forward. Her boot sole flexed, but not on the level paving stones of the chamber, rather on the uneven pitch of a rough-hewn floor.

The tunnel.
She almost collapsed with relief. Somehow she’d passed through the arch without knowing, but at least this space was narrow. She and the Shadow Man hadn’t been able to walk side by side here. If she raised her arms outward, she should be able to contact wall. When her fingers touched nothing but air, she inched to the right. If she could just touch stone and not some disgusting tunnel creature, she could control the gasps sawing in and out of her mouth, keep her heart locked in her chest, stop the sobs that bubbled just behind her teeth. Screaming would do no good. She was just—

There!
She clawed the rocks with both hands and hung on, panting. The tunnel went only two ways—back up or down to her goal. There was nothing to fear. She’d come this far already. If she turned back, she’d have to cover the same ground in the morning. And she would cover it, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t find a reason to hesitate, to put off doing what was necessary, what was right. Would she?

She inhaled a steadying breath, but the clarity it brought raised gooseflesh along her entire body. No matter how her better sense pushed her to turn back, to take advantage of the morning light, she knew entering the darkness had committed her. She had to find the Shadow Man—or lose herself trying. Paralyzed with fear, she choked out a sob and dug her fingers into the wall.

Trust.

She recognized the soothing reassurance of the sound echoing in her mind. She’d followed that voice before, and it had led her to safety.

No!
It had led her into danger, to this terrifying place reeking of death and grief. If she hadn’t followed the voice, trusted the voice, she wouldn’t have walked into something that felt remarkably like the stone bowels of a hideous beast!

Trust.

The voice wrapped itself around her like comforting arms. A hint of lavender teased her nostrils. When she tried to breathe it, the scent dissipated, but her mind cleared. She stood on a threshold, at the brink of something she needed to cross, someplace she needed to enter. But to do so would be to step blind into utter darkness.

I’m afraid. Can’t you show me the way?

Trust your heart.

****

The smelly man had fallen asleep after feeding Mirianna’s father more broth and water, but Gareth stayed awake, waiting. He laid his staff by his side and passed from hand to hand the stone he’d found. While his fingers stroked idly over its smooth sides, he concentrated on listening. Within minutes, the night creatures in the direction of the gate fell silent. He cocked his head, wondering if lion feet made more or less noise than the squirrels that hopped about where trees had grown up through tumbled rock. He heard a pebble rattle, and then caught a whiff of the scent that had filled his nostrils most of the previous night, the scent of warm fur.

The air stirred, caressing his face with faint pressure as she glided through it—much more silently than squirrels—and butted his shoulder. Her whiskers tickled his nose, her purr vibrated along his skin, and he put an arm around her neck, nestling into her throat. She sat on her haunches, cradling him against her tall body while she washed his ear.

Giggling, he twisted away from the rough tongue. “I knew you’d wait to come until Pumble was asleep. You wouldn’t want to scare him or the old man.” She turned her tongue on his hair, and he let her, enjoying the gentle pulling, like when his mother combed the strands with her fingers. The she-lion smelled of pine and lavender, like fresh-cut logs and the herb his mother laid beside his pillow when he had trouble sleeping. With a yawn, he relaxed between the she-lion’s forelegs. “Mirianna said you saved her too. That was good of you.”

The lion licked across his forehead, scraping the hair from it. Her action let him see, like a ghostly image, the faint red glow of the banked fire. Sighing, he rubbed the stone between his palms. “I found this today. It has six...seven smooth sides and these rough edges. But I’m careful. I won’t let it cut me.”

Her tongue washed the back of his neck with long strokes, the sensation so soothing, his head lolled forward onto his chest. His eyes may have drifted shut, but he couldn’t say for sure since that faint glow still played around the edges of his consciousness even as words filled it. The words rose up in his mind like a long-dead memory and tumbled off his lips. He could no more stop them than he could comprehend them, but his mouth seemed to know how to form the strange syllables as over and over they rolled from his tongue:

“
Beggeth beggedon tyrannor mott.

Ominoth peurinon cauldor keth.

Beggeth rappanon drakkonnor tor.

Tyrannoth drakkon ominor et!
”

When the last word faded into the silence, the she-lion lowered herself to a reclining position. Feeling suddenly exhausted, Gareth snuggled into her shoulder. Before he fell asleep, her tongue licked across the fingers still gripping the stone. He had the strangest feeling she was smiling.

****

Durren heard the rattle of pebbles in time to drop out of his float and spin toward the tunnel mouth. Just in time for the impact that plunged him, open mouthed, nearly to the rocks below. Amid a maelstrom of phosphorescent bubbles, he surfaced, coughing and tearing at what enmeshed his limbs.

Something—a hand maybe—raked his shoulder.

He kicked free, turned toward thrashing sounds, and seized something loose and flowing.

“Ow!”

Kiros!
He had her by the hair! Well, that couldn’t be helped. From the gasping and sputtering, the woman was tangled in her garments. He kicked toward the rock ledge, towing her. She came too fast, bumped his chest, and clamped onto him like a leech. They sank together, her skirt enveloping his body. He yanked his legs free, kicked to the surface, and pried with one hand at the shoulder digging into his throat while scraping her hair from his face with the other. “Don’t...choke me!”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice sounded hoarse, frightened, but her grip on his neck eased.

He treaded water, trying to orient himself. He knew every inch of the pool, every rock and eddy, yet at this precise moment, he had no idea where the shallow end was.

Her torso was pressed full length to his. Her legs—Kiros help him!—were locked around his hips with heels digging into his buttocks. For all the protection her clothes afforded her when dry, soaked they clung like skin to every female contour. Her breasts made tantalizing circles of malleable pressure on his chest, the nipples beading just above his own. Her belly was concave, a taut, tight abdomen narrowing to a mound, the contour of which he could trace through her skirt. That mound rode below his navel, and the thought of it, of what lay hidden under the cushion of curls adorning it, made blood rush to his groin. If she meant to ride him, she couldn’t have mounted him better.

She squeaked. He’d clenched her ribs, so he forced his hold to loosen. Her hands shifted to his shoulders, and her fingers flexed, the tips tentative as they slid across his skin. Her eyes reflected a phosphorescent mass drifting a few feet away. Her skirt, or part of it, he was thinking when one thigh, bare and slick, slipped down his hip and chased all logic from his brain.
Dear Koronolan!
If he pulled her down, he could have her. His body was stiff and ready. He had only to tear away any remaining fabric and thrust himself home.

At that moment, she gasped, “You—you’re naked!” Then she catapulted backward.

When Durren broke the surface again, he heard nothing but the echo of his own gasps and the slapping of waves against the sides of the pool. By Kiros, where was she? A swirl of phosphorescence in the depths caught his eye. Not her skirt; that had snagged on stones in the shallows. Gulping in air, he dove toward the glimmer. It was sinking, slowly, sinuously, into the bottomless hole where the hot water welled up.

He plunged toward the trail of bubbles, grabbed at it, found something solid and pulled. She came limply, a tangle of clothing and limbs. He seized her torso, kicked upward, and kicked and kicked until he exploded into air. Panting, he dragged her head out of the water and ripped apart the garment plastered over her face. Then he towed her to the shallows, bent her over his arm, and thumped her between the shoulder blades.

After she coughed and gasped, Durren let out the breath he’d been holding. His head spun, and a shower of red and green stars erupted behind his eyes. When darkness returned and his heartbeat slowed, he hauled her onto the ledge and rolled her to her side while she coughed out the rest of the water she’d swallowed. Despite the heat, he shivered, but not from cold. His muscles always shook after such intense exertion, after they’d responded to a demand for immediate action. This had nothing to do with fear, with the possibility she might’ve drowned and he would’ve lost her.

****

After the coughing spasms eased, Mirianna tried to breathe in through her nose and out her mouth. Maybe that way she could keep her insides—stomach, lungs, whatever else felt lodged in her throat—from heaving out of her body. But the stink wasn’t helping. No matter how she breathed, the air reeked of rotten eggs. She coughed again and tried to push over onto her back.

“Easy,” said a voice, at once familiar and yet not. Hands gripped her shoulders and lowered her gently. “You almost drowned. You may have injured yourself on the rocks, too.”

Mirianna frowned while those hands, their touch equally familiar yet oddly not so, glided across her face, the fingertips pushing aside soggy strings of her hair. They moved, business-like, over her shoulders, and then followed each arm to the hand, working the wrist and fingers together and singly. Her limbs lay like lead weights in those exploring hands, pliant but completely without strength. When the hands touched her ribs, her senses awoke with a rush. She sucked in a gasp, and the fingers stilled.

“Does that hurt?”

Hurt?
Her heart rattled against her ribcage. How could the sweet, wild thrill triggered by the touch of fingertips—
naked
fingertips!—on her bare flesh be could considered painful? If that were the case, she ached all over for more of the same! She sucked in another breath, head spinning with ecstasy. Somehow, she’d navigated that tunnel in total darkness and found him! Only he’d been—a flush swept her from head to toe—he’d been
naked
and she’d nearly drowned them. And now—her flush intensified—she’d lost her clothing, at least part of it. And he—he was still—!