Into the Dark Lands (29 page)

And in the darkness, with the night so clear and so strong, he could make out the throbbing pulse of her lifeblood, and the frail chain of light that bound it. He was surprised; he recognized the light easily and knew that it should not have been visible to him, not when he was separate. He started forward, drawn to it, but stopped as it began to dim.

Erin stood in one fluid motion. Her face, every detail plain to his eyes, was a mixture of rage and guilt. A familiar look,
but one he'd not yet seen her features take. He took a step back. She stood very still; only her hands trembled.

Very stiffly he said, “I meant you no harm.” Involuntarily he reached out as the light in her began to gray.

Erin stepped forward, neatly avoiding his outstretched arm. Her mouth opened silently as she stared at him, unseeing. Her fist rose in an awkward swing and crashed into his waiting hands. What started as a snarl in the back of her throat came out a whimper; she pulled against the vise that held her. Her foot lashed out, connecting with his shins. He lifted her off the ground by the arms, reducing the force her legs could muster. She met his eyes, expecting them to be red, hoping for rage or anger at the least, and, beyond that, hoping for victory, threat, or death. She looked to see the familiar image that had haunted her dreams, that had come so close to touching her the night that her mother had died. She hoped finally to see the curved claw, free from Kandor's undeserved restraint.

He did not give her what she wanted. There was no death in the eyes that met hers; just a blackness that held some hint of confusion. He shook her, but not roughly, as she dangled in the sight of his hollow eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that? What do you want?” The blows of her feet grew weaker, as her voice rose.
“What do you want from me?”

He watched her face as she walked the thin line between rage and sorrow. Both were familiar; he'd seen them, caused them, many times. But from her they suddenly felt wrong.

His answer returned in a cold whisper.

“The light, Sarillorn. The light that grows dim.”

His answer was wrong. She felt confusion begin to take hold of her and cast it off, shoring herself up with the full force of her fury. In a low, deep voice, she said, “You'll never, never do it. You'll never have your empire, or spread the disease of your city into
my
lands. The Lernari are ranged against you; the Servants of Lernan stand with us. We'll never rest while you rule a single life!”

He laughed. His hands bit into her flesh.

Now. Now . . .
She pulled her head around and down to meet his eyes. The laugh died—and so did a part of Erin.

“Little Sarillorn, what do you want from me?”

Shaking, she replied, “Your death.” But her words were empty, the rage that should have been in them misplaced. He set her down on legs that would not hold her. They crumpled,
and she felt the touch of solid earth beneath her hands and the touch of tears that Telvar would have despised on her cheeks.

His fingers pulled her chin up as he knelt beside her on the ground. “Sarillorn. I meant you no harm.”

“Don't.”

He did not release her, nor did his words. “I meant only for you to understand the things I wish to create out of the pain and bloodshed you have been party to. I meant for you to see that there is, in my goal, more than just chaos and death, more than the darkness of the first Awakening.”

“Don't!”

She pulled her chin away and he felt the touch of water. He lifted his fingers briefly to his mouth, stopped, and looked down at her more closely. In a voice that held wonder, he said, “Sarillorn? Sarillorn, I have hurt you.”

Like a child.
She tried to stop the tears before his hand could catch them, before he could drink them in like the lifeblood they were.

Oh, Telvar, you never warned me of this.

The Lady's Woodhall echoed the Lady of Elliath's words.
Nothing is unalloyed, Sarillorn.

Stefanos lifted her gently off the ground. She tried once, feebly, to release herself from the tangle of his arms.

But he would not let go; for watching her he had seen some subtle change. Rage had fled, and beneath the pain she expressed, the bands of her light were glowing faintly but surely. As he held her, as she pressed against him, tears mingled with the silk of his clothing, he reached out to touch them, to marvel anew at the foreign feel of them and the way they slipped so easily from his grasp.

He held her, his fingers trailing through her hair. After a time, he began to walk back to the road. She had fallen asleep.

How
. . .
human. How fragile.

 

“Sarillorn.”

Erin looked up. For three days she'd seen nothing but the backs or profiles of soldiers in the darkness. No one spoke to her; even those that offered her food did so in stiff-lipped silence. She wondered, often, what Belfas was doing, but was glad that he was not present to share the march; bad enough to have failed her friends in the village.

By the third day, she was almost willing to help with the
injured men, but no one in the army would acknowledge her—no one but him.

“You travel well.”

She nodded. She wanted desperately to know where she was being taken, and what awaited her, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of a reply.

“Sarillorn, are you troubled?”

Troubled?
Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth, whether to laugh or cry, not even she was sure. Her jaw clamped shut and she looked away.

Why does he have to look so human?
For it was hard to look at him; hard to see what in any other eyes would have been curiosity, even gentle curiosity, and remember whose eyes they were.

“Do you mind if I walk with you?”

She heard his words, looked up at him again, and said, “Yes.”

“Ah.”

And he was gone.

It wasn't a reaction she'd expected. Nothing he did was predictable. She tried to tell herself that she was glad of her isolation as she continued to march toward dawn.

 

“Sarillorn.”

A shadow cut the glow of torchlight as it lay upon the ground. Erin looked up, surprised. The First Servant stood before her, a small tray in his hands. In silent grace he placed it down before her and stood.

“You—you don't normally bring me food.”

She thought she could see a hint of a smile in the shadows of his lips.

“No.” He took a step forward. “I do not usually . . . serve another.”

Hands shaking, she reached for the knife on the tray. Her eyes widened slightly.

“The army is eating better than it has been.”

“Not the army, Sarillorn. Would it trouble you if I remained?”

She closed her eyes, seeing for a moment the silent, voiceless backs of the soldiers.

“No,” she said, but softly.

She ate while he watched.

“Would you—would you like to—” She gestured at the plate.

“No.” After a moment, he took a seat beside her. “It is not yet time for me to feed.”

A hint of a smile again. The food turned to ash in her mouth and she set the knife to one side. She wanted to tell him to leave, to go, to kill her—to do something that made any sense.

“Sarillorn?”

“Why do you keep coming to me?” Her hands were clenched and shaking, but she kept them at her side. “Why do you bring me this—” She waved at the food.

“It is better than the food you have been eating, and you have grown weaker this past week.”

She hadn't seen him for a week; it was too much to hope that he hadn't seen her, either.

“Why does that make any difference?”

Why?
His eyes grew remote and dark, as if the shadow that he would not wear in front of her dwelled entirely within them.

“Why do you choose to look like—like that?”

“Would you prefer the darkness? Do you desire the shadow?” His fingers began to pale into gray as his eyes flashed red.

“Don't—that doesn't answer my question. Why are you doing this?”

The emerald green of her eyes flashed, not with magic but with mortal emotion. And it would be easy to gutter them. Fingers became claws. Easy. Claws became nails. His hands fell, once again under a mortal seeming.

“Why, Sarillorn?” He stood and began to walk away. “I do not know.”

She did not know what it cost him to say it; she heard only the words that drifted from his retreating back. But the words were enough to leave her staring helplessly into the small fire.

 

He came to her the next night, again bearing his gift of food. It was venison, surrounded by greens—fresh and lightly cooked.

“Would it trouble you if I remained?”

“No.” She took the food from his hands, setting it aside for the moment, although she was hungry.

“Servant,” she began, her voice almost formal.

“Stefanos,” he said quietly. “Although I am often called ‘First' as well.”

Whatever she had hoped to say vanished. “You—”

“If it makes you uncomfortable, do not call me anything.”

Fire and food were the only two things that Erin could focus her attention on. She chose the food.

As she ate in silence, he watched her. Frustration was not a thing he was familiar with, but now he felt it keenly. Somehow, in a way that he could not understand, he had once again said or done the wrong thing.

 

The third night that he brought her dinner, she once again accepted it. Chicken this time, with corn and peas. She shook her head, wondering how on Earth he had found such food; to the best of her knowledge they had not come through any villages. She smiled almost hesitantly as she began to eat.

“Would it trouble you if I remained?”

“No,” she replied, around a mouthful of chicken.

He took his accustomed seat to her left, but said nothing.

“Do you want any of this?”

“No,” he answered gravely. “I do not normally eat this mortal fare.”

“You should try it.” She stopped, trying to remember if she had ever seen the Lady of Elliath eat anything. Her memory wasn't up to it. She doubted if anyone's was—with the possible exception of Latham or Belfas.

Stefanos watched as the fork fell slowly away from her mouth. He saw her face lengthen and felt his hand clenching once again into a fist. This time he felt he knew what he had done.

“Sarillorn,” he said, almost quickly, “if you wish, I will try what you are eating.”

She started and then looked up. “Pardon?”

“I will have some—chicken?”

The plate stared up at her as if it had become a living entity. Very slowly she cut a piece of her dinner and handed him her fork. Her hands were trembling.

He looked at it, his expression no less grave than it was when he asked if he might remain each evening. Then he took it and raised it to his mouth.

Erin watched as he chewed, each movement precise and almost meticulously timed. She counted to five and then watched him swallow.

He turned to meet her wide stare.

“It is—interesting,” he said, still grave. “Perhaps I will join you in more of this—” He gave a controlled gesture. “—at another time.”

Erin laughed.

The sound seemed to come from everywhere, enclosing him as her light had once done.

“You, you're the most powerful force the Enemy has—and you've never lifted a fork!”

He was torn then, torn between pleasure at this strange laugh and anger at being the cause of it. No mortal had ever laughed at him before.

But unlike other laughter, this held a sense of wonder in it. It puzzled him; he listened.

“Tomorrow,” Erin said, a smile lingering, “we can try vegetables.”

She began to laugh anew, but he did not ask why.

 

In the month that followed, he kept his word. He brought dinner and joined her in the eating of it. She showed him how to look “normal”—as she put it—while chewing and swallowing and how to make proper use of a knife and fork. When she laughed, she told him of her childhood, of how she, too, had needed to be civilized into eating like an adult.

In fact, as the time wore on, she talked of other things: her lessons in the drill circle, her life with Katalaan, or her attempts, failed, at the use of the longbow. But she did not talk of the war, of battle, or of the losses she had suffered there. Likewise, he did not talk of battle, or his empire, or the Dark Heart.

He learned of things human, things mundane, and she of the stretch of infinity that lay beyond the body of the Twin Hearts.

Only one thing marred the strange friendship that they struggled to share: She asked him, once, if he might let her go. And he answered.

But even then, when he came, Erin could force herself to forget that he was a Servant; she could look at the human façade that he presented, to speak and laugh with it.

When he was not there, she would think of the Lady and wonder whether or not the Lady had taken the time to learn about the things that the First of Malthan did: human things, trivial, common, and precious.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a hope to be found in the time that he spent with her; maybe there was a light, as the Lady had once said, in the darkness.

 

Erin waited as the day faded. It was one month into her travels; two weeks from the Rennath that the Servant had once talked of so proudly. She knew she was to be delivered there, but not to what. Nor did she care to question her only companion about
it; she wanted, in some way, to preserve the illusion of his humanity.