Bloodstone (7 page)

But he could move in yours, too,
the Voice in his head said
. As well or better than he does here.

The man shifted on his stool. The idea disturbed him although it had been fomenting in his brain since, since first seeing the boy in the stable yard? Or after listening to his voice greet and soothe Ghost? He remembered the sound of that voice, soft, womanish almost, as it straddled the boundaries between child and man.

The man snorted. He looked away from the dwindling crowd below and fixed his gaze on the triangle of deep shadow in which he sat.
This is my world. Here, on the edge of darkness. Alone. There’s no room for another!

Unless he were blind...

The man scowled.
The boy will die.

Eventually. But so will Ghost. You’re prepared to cope with that.

But Ghost isn’t human.

No,
the Voice admitted,
but you still are.

The man’s fists clenched, driving leather into skin, tendons, veins, until everything throbbed with the beat of his blood.
Damn this body!
And damn you, Syryk!
Rocketing off the stool, he turned his back on the merriment below and swept down the corridor.

****

Mirianna smiled. Her lover leaned over her, his face in shadow, the sun outlining his shoulders and head. His hand cupped her breast and kneaded it gently. She sighed and arched toward the touch. His fingertip circled her nipple, teasing the nub until its ache sent ripples through the pit of her stomach. Her legs shifted restlessly beneath the weight of his body pressing her down, holding her hard against the grass—no, the ground—no, a blanket on the ground—

“See, now? I knew you wanted me.”

Mirianna’s eyelids jerked open. In the heartbeats required for full consciousness to rush into her body, she realized the shadowy form looming over her was not the faceless lover of her dreams, but Rees. And his fingers had worked the lacings of her bodice nearly open.

“Damn you! Get off!” she hissed, shoving at him.

His hand clamped over her mouth. “Easy, love,” he murmured, straddling her. “I wasn’t going to hurt you last night and I’m not going to hurt you now. I just want to show you how much we can give to each other on these long, lonely nights.” He bent his head and touched his mouth to the hollow of her shoulder.

Bile rose in Mirianna’s throat. Rees’s thumb and fingertips dug into her cheekbones, holding her mouth pressed against his palm, preventing a scream. She knew her father slept too heavily for a muffled noise to wake. And Pumble—Rees would have set him on watch someplace too far away to interfere. She pushed once, ineffectually, at Rees’s shoulders, then fumbled for her knife. A grinding feeling beneath her back told her the weapon had slipped under her body. Her thoughts flew to the dagger strapped to her thigh, but she knew at once it was unreachable under his enveloping legs. Frantic, she launched her fingers at his hair.

He deflected her hand with a forearm, shifted his weight, and pinned her wrist with his arm. “Relax,” he murmured beneath her ear. “You’ll like this.”

“No!” Mirianna gasped into his hand. She thrashed from side to side, bared her lips, snapped her teeth at something, anything...and found the inner web of his hand.

Rees howled and jerked his hand back.

She gulped a breath, but the scream that echoed off the surrounding trees and shivered through every muscle in her body was not hers.

Rees’s eyes showed white. His gaze darted around the clearing while his body remained unmoving, frozen in the act of recoil. For heartbeats, Mirianna heard nothing but the rasp of his breath. Then, ever so faintly, a hissing sounded.

Rees bolted to his feet. “Pumble!”

The shorter man burst into the clearing, his sword drawn. “What in Kraddom was that noise?” he panted, face moon white. “The horses are jumping all over the place.”

Rees backed across the campsite, pausing once to glance at Tolbert’s still sleeping form before reaching his own bedding. “Lion, I think.” Snatching up the bow and quiver leaning against his saddle, he pivoted slowly while fitting an arrow to string, and his gaze raked the clearing’s edge.

Mirianna sat where she’d lain, fingernails digging into her palms. The forest loomed on all sides, dark and unnaturally silent. Overhead, even the canopy of leaves didn’t rustle. She heard no crickets, no night birds.

“Throw wood on the fire.”

Rees’s order startled Mirianna. When her head snapped in his direction, he jerked a nod at the fire pit. “Lots of brush. I want flames.”

Her mouth dry as cottonwool, she crawled to the fire pit. Her arms shook so, half the twigs and branches she heaved toward the coals scattered around the rock ring. Those that landed true, crackled, popped, and roared up.

“More! I want more flame.”

Mirianna threw larger handfuls on the coals. In moments, the flames strained at their rock perimeter as twigs curled and broke and leaves vanished in an explosion of heat and light. The flaring drove shadows out of the cleared space and behind the birches.

“Good,” Rees murmured. “That ought to keep the beasts at bay.”

“—Not all of the beasts—”

Every hair on Mirianna’s arms rose at the voice.

“Who—who’s there?” Rees demanded, his back jammed against Pumble’s, arrow drawn and bow raised.

“Dragon’s blood!” Pumble wheezed. He yanked a charm out of his tunic collar, kissed it, and mouthed over it words Mirianna couldn’t hear. Both men’s faces shone in the flickering light as they circled slowly, defending the clearing against...what?

Though the roaring flames assaulted her body with heat, Mirianna shivered, cold to the core. What magic was this that spoke with a disembodied voice? That screamed like a woman in agony? A lion, as Rees said? She shuddered again and dragged her wayward knife into position at her hip.
Not all of the beasts,
the voice had said. What did that mean? That the fire wouldn’t keep all the beasts in the Wehrland at bay? Which ones were invulnerable to it? The Krad? No, she’d heard the Krad were afraid of fire. What then? The lion? Teeth sank into her lower lip, she glanced toward her father who still slept, blissfully undisturbed, six feet away.

The distance was too far, much too far for a night and a place like this. Turning on her hands and knees, Mirianna crept toward him. Pebbles bit into her knees, but she ignored the stabs of pain. Her father was what mattered, her father and his safe—

A flare of yellow-green light on the fringe of her vision brought her to a halt inches from her goal. For a moment, she hesitated, thinking she’d imagined the image glimpsed yards away between a double-trunked birch, that it was a reflection of firelight off some object—a spider’s web, perhaps, damp with dew—but something within told her it was not. Holding her breath, she stared.

The image returned, sharpened, solidified.
Glowed
. The eyes—for that was all she thought they could be—seized hers and delved into them, probing her thoughts, mind, heart until her consciousness was rendered blank. She stared, powerless to move or pull away but strangely unafraid while six words slowly filled the emptiness of her mind:
Remember, not all of the beasts.

Heartbeats later, her mind was her own again. Her eyes focused and she found herself staring at Rees while he stared at her. She was awake and cold and filled with a strange whirling uncertainty that had at its core a deep, solid knowledge of...
something
that made her cringe away from him and burrow deeper into the warm arms surrounding her.

“There now, lamb,” Tolbert’s voice crooned in her ear. “You’ve just had a fright.”

Mirianna’s gaze darted across the faces ringed around her at the fire pit’s edge. “Th—the lion—?”

“Gone.” Tolbert sighed. “I didn’t even get to see it.”

I did. And it, it told me...something.
She glanced furtively at Rees, who’d laid aside his bow and was bending to the pile of firewood.

“We’ll keep the fire burning for the rest of the night.” He fed chunks of wood into the flames. At each thrust of his arm, the slice of crystal dangling from his neck danced and sparkled. “That should keep it away.”

Will it?

Mirianna tore her gaze from the glittering disk and studied the Master of Nolar’s man.
Or is there something else here, something that’s not afraid of fire?

She gripped her father’s arm and leaned into him, not arguing when he insisted she spend the rest of the night at his side.
It’s where I belong. And where I should stay, for both of our sakes.

The man opened his eyes at the sound of the knock. He’d not been sleeping, merely lying on his bed in the stale darkness of the closeted room, fully clothed, waiting.

Waiting for what?
said the Voice in his head.
A summons to act?

There were only two paths available—flesh and soul—and both, he thought bitterly, were all but closed to him. Syryk’s curse had sealed off the first.
And the second?
His interlaced fingers compressed each other. He’d slammed that door himself.

“I—uh—I have your dinner,” Ulerroth said through the heavy wood. “You didn’t come down, so I brought it up.” The innkeeper coughed. A floorboard creaked. “Uh—are you feeling well?”

And if I wasn’t? Would you do anything for me? Could you? Or would you thank everything that’s holy for delivering you from such as I?
Sitting up, he lowered his legs to the floor and stood. “Your consideration is touching, Ulerroth, but I’m quite well. Bring in your tray.”

The door opened. The unsteady light of one candle spilled into the room. “I—uh—hope you don’t mind the candle,” the innkeeper said, wiping his forehead. “I wasn’t sure...”

Sure of what? Me? After at least a dozen years, you’re still not sure of me?
His lips compressed into a thin line. “If it makes you more comfortable, why should I mind?”

Be civil,
the Voice in his head said
. The poor bastard doesn’t know any more about you than you’ve told him. And you know how little that’s been.

Bending slightly at the waist, he gestured to the table. “Are you joining me tonight?”

The innkeeper set the tray on the table and emptied it of bowl, platter and tankard. “No, I—” He rocked on his heels, then mopped his face with his apron.

What’s troubling you, friend? You’re more uncomfortable around me than usual. All because I didn’t come down to dinner?
“Is there something else?”

“Last night—” Ulerroth’s beefy hands kneaded the apron gripped in them. “I’m sorry. I—I thought…you seemed as though you wanted…some company…”

The man’s fingers clenched the chair’s back. Perspiration sheened his body, bonding his tunic to it.
So it’s you, flesh. You’re the demon in Ulerroth’s nightmare.

“It was my fault, I know,” the innkeeper rushed on. “You’ve made it plain you weren’t interested before, but the woman insisted, and I sent her up because you might’ve changed your mind, and—”

“I haven’t—” the man said, forcing the words through gritted teeth, “—changed my mind.” Refusing yet again took every bit of his willpower, but now he’d done so, he wanted nothing more than to sink into a chair and close his eyes to the consequences before his body realized what it was being denied. But there was no time. Already his loins had begun throbbing, and sweat glued the inner cloth of his hood to his face.

Go ahead, flesh! Remember how you once enjoyed yourself here!
One night—one careless, insignificant night—spent within these walls, before he entered that tunnel he saw in his nightmare. Before the world collapsed, crushing under the weight of it everything he knew and everyone he loved and everything he once was, except for this damned, mindless flesh!

“I don’t want a woman,” he enunciated to the open-mouthed innkeeper. “I don’t want any woman.”

Ulerroth stared. His hand fumbled from moustache to ear to forehead and, finally, outward. “Then wh—what do you want?”

Everything! Nothing! Something!
The words careened through his mind, clamoring at every wall, every closed door, every lock
. Nothing a whore could ever give me! Nothing at all...like...that. But something...something...

He leaned forward heavily, hands spread on the table. He knew the only possible answer. He’d known it ever since he’d entered Ar-Deneth and stood in a dark stable yard, watching and listening. It merely required strength, and acceptance of the risks, to form the words.

Sweat drenched every patch of cloth contacting the man’s body. Under the table, in the concealing shadow, he could feel his thigh muscle twitching. Soon, the dreams would come, and if Ulerroth so much as hinted at procuring a woman, he’d be lost again, this time maybe forever.

“There is something,” he said hoarsely. “I want the boy.”

For the space of heartbeats, the words hung in the air between them. Then Ulerroth’s face flushed crimson. “I’ll not—I’ll not—Gareth’s just a lad! You’ll not use him to—to—!” He strode to the door and swung round again, fists clenched. “By all the hosts in the Wehrland, I’ll not let you use that boy!”

The man closed his eyes. His gloved fingers gripped the edge of the table and squeezed until he felt each separate grain of wood imprint itself on his flesh. “Bite your tongue, you seven-times fool,” he said in a voice whose softness threatened more than a bellow. “I wouldn’t harm him any more than you would.”

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the innkeeper standing a few feet away, face white despite the color blotching his cheeks. His mouth worked like that of a beached fish, but no sound emerged.