Heart of Light (40 page)

Kitwana nodded, wondering if the impulse was fear of hurting others or simply fear of being hurt. Did he know that Kitwana could kill him that much more easily if he were not in human form?

Peter Farewell looked at him with seemingly un-shattered calm. “You wanted to kill me . . . the dragon.”

Kitwana grunted assent.

“Why?” Farewell licked at dry, chapped lips that had turned pale pink. “Helping me? Now?”

Kitwana gestured at Emily, who knelt on his other side. “She won't let me kill you,” he said, and thought he saw a glimmer of amusement from deep within Peter's eyes. Farewell turned his head to look at Emily, who nodded and gathered herself, rising slowly. “We're going to make some tea. Would you like some?”

Peter Farewell's pale lips twisted in an approximation of his ironic smile. “Better than dying,” he said, his voice just above a whisper but understandable.

Kitwana gritted his teeth and went to the pile of wood, arranging sticks carefully atop the low-burning fire, so as not to smother it. He found another jug of water, mostly full, and poured water from it into the kettle, which needed only a little brushing away of ashes and sand.

He perched the kettle over the fire and looked at Emily. “We're still going to have to kill him,” he said.

Emily looked at him, her blue eyes serious. Farewell looked at him, but said nothing.

“He has killed people, you know,” Kitwana said. “Eaten them.” By repeating the list of Peter's crimes he meant as much to convince Emily as to make himself aware of what the man had done, to push the image of his father from his mind.

Peter Farewell flinched again. Emily looked into his eyes, and he looked away. The kettle boiled. Emily hastened over, got tea from the camp supplies, put it in the kettle.

She poured tea into a cup and brought it to Peter Farewell. She helped him rise and take a sip. He revived visibly after the first sip and took another.

“I might deserve to die for my crimes,” he said, looking at Emily, “but the only reason he wants to kill me is because that will leave the hand of the Hyena Men free to mind-enslave you.”

GOING HOME

“Father,” Nassira said as she looked at her father, still
not fully believing he was there. “How did you get here?”

He pulled away from her, gripped his herding stick tighter in his right hand and smiled. “I heard you were back in Masailand and I did a divination to find where I could meet you. Then I set out to find you.” He sighed. “Come home, Nassira. Come home and find me a son to look after my cows.”

Nassira sighed in turn. She wanted so badly to obey him. She wanted to go home, to see her mother and her stepmother again. She could almost taste the milk of her family's cows. But she knew better. There was Nigel, and he needed her. “I want to come home,” she said. “But it's not that simple. There are . . . other considerations.”

Nassira's father looked over her shoulder. “The Water Man?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nassira said.

“Nassira, I didn't expect— He's not a Masai . . . He's not—”

Nassira realized that her father would have given in to her in this, too, if she should have been strange enough to prefer a Water Person. She almost giggled, but controlled herself. “Father, I do not want him for a husband.”

Her father looked utterly baffled. “But then, what do you owe him?”

Nassira looked over her shoulder at Oldhall, saw him cringe. He wouldn't have understood a word of her father's speech, but he would understand the tone of voice quite well.

“I . . .” Nassira knew exactly why she was doing this, but she had no idea how to explain it.

Her father was proud of her, and they'd always been close. She knew she could confess any misdeeds to him in full safety. However, she'd never told him how guilty she felt over the death of her infant brother all those years ago, or how she'd protected her warrior boyfriend.

She noted that the other people with her father, the local villagers, had now left, returning to their various huts. But they would be listening from behind their walls.

So she spoke in a low tone, designed to keep family problems within the family. “My brother died when I could have saved him. So did Kume. This Water Man will die if I leave him to his own devices. I cannot let it happen.”

For a moment, Nassira's father frowned at her. Then he looked baffled. “Nassira. Your brother's death was not your fault.”

Nassira shook her head. “I could have saved him. I could have used healing magic, if I hadn't slept so soundly. And Kume . . .” She felt tears come to her eyes and swallowed.

Her father opened his hands. “Nassira, your young man seemed like a good man, a credit to his family, but he was . . . There was something not quite right there, and I very much doubt it was your fault.”

Nassira shook her head, afraid that should she speak, her voice would come out tearful and choked.

Her father stared at her for a moment, then glanced at Nigel. “He is a Water Man. What can he be in danger of? That someone will not obey him? Why should you protect the people who brought disease to our people and plagues upon our cows?”

Nassira shook her head. “It's not that simple. There is more at risk. There is danger for everything that's human. There is—”

A swishing sound, like a wind blowing far above in the night sky, a feeling of strong magic from above, made Nassira look up, surprised.

In the dark blue sky, she could dimly see something like fast-growing dots.

Nassira's father turned around at the sound. Looking up, he said, “Flying carpets. Nassira!”

At her father's shout, people emerged from the huts. Soon the clear space amid the huts was crowded. Everyone looked up and pointed.

Nigel came up close behind Nassira, pushed by the bobbing tide of humanity on all sides.

“Those are flying carpets,” he said.

Nassira raised a shoulder in a gesture of impatience before she realized that Nigel wouldn't have understood what her father said. “We know.”

“Flying carpets are European magic,” Nigel said. “At least modern flying carpets are. Who—” Suddenly understanding her father's shock, Nassira looked at Nigel in growing horror.

“Are they coming to rescue us?” Nigel asked.

He couldn't know she belonged to the Hyena Men, nor that if Europeans were indeed rescuing him, it would be from her and her ilk. He didn't mean to threaten her—and yet, if these were Europeans they would threaten her. For why would Europeans be here, unless they'd followed the Hyena Men? And how could Nigel ever trust her if he knew she belonged to the organization that had mind-bound him? Nassira grabbed at Nigel's arm and started pulling him back, away from the main press of people.

In the sky, the carpets grew closer, now revealing themselves to be individual, tiny rugs. A person sat astride each rug, although their features were still indistinguishable in the distance. These rugs were often used by the English army for rapid deployment.

Nassira swallowed. “The English army,” she said.

“The English army?” Nigel pulled the other way, toward the approaching rugs.

Nassira let go, but he didn't take more than two steps—hard fought against the press of Masai bodies. He turned around, an alarmed look in his eyes.

The lead rug, now over the village, suddenly shone with a brilliant light—a magelight, invoked by the person sitting on the rug, and it emerged from the person's downturned hand. It was the strongest mage-light anyone could command. In its downward beam, Nassira's eyes watered. But there was enough of it reflected around the mage who used it for Nassira to see a powerstick sitting across his knees.

Why would anyone shine a strong light on a crowd, with a powerstick close at hand? To pick a target?

Nassira grabbed Nigel's arm and pulled him. To her surprise, he didn't resist at all. He gave a strangled cry deep in his throat and ran after her. Perhaps he, too, had seen the powerstick and drawn the only conclusion.

Nassira ran into the shadows, trying to keep close to the huts and trees. The searchlight bobbed and swayed, trying to find Nassira—or Nigel—again. It caught Nigel's bright hair for a second and a power ray flew from the powerstick.

Nigel screamed, but the ray missed him, and he ran faster into the shadows. But the tree it caught flamed and burst into fire.

Nassira ran faster, seeking cover. Ahead of her loomed a thick patch of forest. It would offer them cover and perhaps allow them to escape this strange attack. But the forest had always seemed dangerous to the Masai. The pastoral people of the grasslands were ill at ease in the close-packed wooded expanse. There were legends of lost children and of at least one Moran band who'd gone into the forbidden forest and never returned. Some people thought they'd become part of the forest, others that they'd simply vanished.

But now and then, someone saw the Moran band roaming in the forest, captive of some magic force that would not allow them to return home.

Nassira had never believed these stories, at least not fully. But they flashed through her mind while she ran as fast as she could.

And then the searching magelight found Nigel Oldhall just behind her. Before it could get a fix—guide the powersticks on their lethal discharge—Nassira plunged into the shadows of the forest, with Nigel close behind her.

DRAGONS AND HYENA MEN

“A Hyena Man?” Emily asked. She felt as though she
could not have heard right. She turned to Kitwana, in whose countenance she'd believed to have found so much good just a few days ago. “You are a Hyena Man? All our carriers . . . Hyena Men?” Her hand went, as if by reflex, to the place on her sleeve that sheltered the dark mark of the secret brotherhood, the remnant of their attack upon her.

And yet she had expected better. She liked Kitwana, she realized, and had insensibly come to rely on him. Oh, Emily wished her husband would return. But Nigel had left her for the African woman. Was Nassira also a Hyena Man? She didn't dare ask.

She hoped her eyes conveyed her righteous indignation to the man. Her heart felt as though it had clenched in a tight ball. Was she, then, surrounded by treason on all sides?

None of this could be true. The events of this night had to be an insane dream, from which she would presently wake, safe and calm in a room in a hotel in Cairo.