The Ghost Sister (34 page)

Though distracted, I realized that she did not ask me how I knew. I said, “Yes. Keep close to me. Keep your weapon at hand.”

We continued to walk on, but as we did so, I covertly scanned the high rocks for signs of life. The sun was falling from between the clouds, crossing the horizon's line in a blur of bronze light, and it reflected from the rocks. No one was up there that I could see. All the signs came from behind. Whoever was pursuing us was very quiet. I could not hear, but I could feel. My instincts were to run. We had allowed ourselves to become prey, and this must change. I must become predator in turn, use the bloodmind to my advantage.

But as I began to allow my senses to take hold of me, my feet strayed from the path, and a line once more rose up to meet me. It seemed to travel up my spine, seizing me in a grip like cold lightning, and the day turned black around me. I heard the ghost's voice shouting my name. As I fell, the name of the ai Staren rang in my mind, and I knew that we had once more come upon one of the lines of dark earth energy which radiated from that tower in the hills. But there was a promise in the sensation that gripped me now, something seductive and alluring and irresistible. Ignoring Morrac's cry of alarm, I began to run, scrambling down a loose slope of scree, following the line down through the rocks to an old place that smelled of blood.

Shu cried out, “Eleres! Come back!” —but it was too late. They were waiting for me.

It was twilight now, a good hour for hunting. There were four of them. Their eyes were bright in the shadows, and in a moment of clarity I realized that their song was all around me. They were perched high in the rocks, looking down, and they had drawn me in from my path as a huntress summons a bird out of the sky. One of the women slipped forward to circle me. Her speech slurred and clicked; she was not under the bloodmind, or perhaps it made no difference to them.

She said, “Ba'n'treda. Landed. A fighter.”

“Eleres!” Shu's voice came from behind me on the slope.

At the sound of my own name, something seemed to settle in my mind. Pera Cathra's old voice, telling me about the discipline of
ettouara. It does not rely on the bloodmind. It is something else, something old and quiet.
I began to sink into myself, listening to my instincts and my body. I started to relax into the movement of my sword. The huntress saw this and gave a raw little laugh.

“See?” The accent was strange, as though she spoke rarely, and then only to kindred. “I said it. A fighter.” I barely glimpsed her move. She came down from the rocks in a rush, bare handed. She wore claws attached to a mesh glove; they raked my arm as I turned aside. I dodged the next blow, but not the third. The claws came in to sear my side. I felt as though I had been licked with a fiery tongue; my skin burned with a sudden poisonous glow. I heard Morrac and Shu calling from high on the slope, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Morrac scrambling down to meet me.

“Morrac!” I shouted. “Run!” But it was too late. He reached the bottom of the slope in a rattle of loose rocks just as the huntress forced me back. I saw one of the ai Staren slip from the rocks and disappear. Morrac turned, seeking them out. But the discipline of
ettouara
slowed down the world for me, allowing me to anticipate the
huntress's moves. As she came swiftly in under my blade I grasped her by the wrist and spun her around, kicking her feet from under her and using her own weight to break her neck.

Her siblings were silent; no cries of loss or hatred, just their lethal presence as they moved toward us. Morrac grasped my wrist and we stepped swiftly backward up the slope to where Shu was hovering, but as I did so I saw the gaze of the lead huntress snap up. Her face grew slack and blank. She stopped, staring beyond me. I turned. The
mehed
were standing in a long line along the ridge and as I stared at them, dazed, they started to close in. The huntress gave a long cry of fury, and began to scramble back down the slope. My side blazed with pain and my knees gave way. I do not remember falling.

1.
The mission

Bel, Sylvian, and Dia had spent the rest of the day searching for Mevennen, but with no result. At last Dia, her face lined with weariness, told the others to call off the search.

“Wherever she is,” Dia said, “we're not going to find her now. It's getting dark, and we don't know what else might be in those ruins.”

“We can't just leave her,” Bel insisted. “She may be hurt, disoriented, frightened—”

“We'll come back in the morning,” Dia said firmly.

“But—”

“Mevennen's not the only one I'm worried about. We've heard nothing from Shu for days now. The ship can't raise the aircar and I've been unable to reach her on the communicator. It's as though something's blocking the transmission. I'm still reading the aircar's signature, so it hasn't crashed— but what if she's hurt, or held prisoner?”

“It's possibly the generator itself,” Sylvian said. “It's a powerful field; look how it affected the aircar's navigational array. Once it's turned off, we might find that things start working properly again. Perhaps Shu's been trying to contact us, and can't. But if we can't reach her after the generator shuts down, we'll go looking.”

“How close are we to shutdown?” Dia asked.

“Very close, I think. The ship's downloaded a revised set of recursive algorithms into the generator's biomorphic field. It should begin to start powering itself down on its own any moment now.”

“How sure are you that it will work?”

“I'm confident enough.”

“Good,” Dia said. She turned. “Bel, let's get going, shall we?”

But Bel was no longer there.

2. Eleres

I was stiff and shaking. Snow was drifting down and the ground was hard beneath my feet. I drifted in and out of unconsciousness, until I lay half waking and realized that I could smell water. I crawled toward its freshness and broke the thin ice that covered it. It lay in a cone of rock, a fissure in the great cliff wall that stretched above me, and it was dark and cold. I lay with the side of my face in the water. I couldn't bring my hand up to help myself drink. Then nausea took me and I vomited over and over again into the snow. I lay and retched, unable to control myself, then fell back against the side of the rock. The coldness of it was merciful. I lay there for a long time. Although it was winter-cold, the heat seemed to drift over me in waves. The thumb of my right hand seared with pain and I remembered then that I had cut it off, only to recall moments later that it was not I, but Sereth. I saw her then, standing over me with her fiery hair streaming smoke into the wind, and when her spirit caught my eye, I thought I saw her smile. Then the dull sky spun above me into delirium and I passed out again.

Later, it was night and almost as though the world had returned to normal. There was a fire, somewhere; I could hear it crackle and spit and I could feel its warmth. I could
hear a fluting, encouraging call somewhere off to the right: a huntress, calling down a bird or some animal. It reminded me of the huntress of the ai Staren, or of Sereth. They seemed to run together in my mind. My muscles and my side still burned but I was at least able to move. I tried to sit up but someone pushed me down again. They shuffled as they moved, and reeked of decay. I rolled over and curled up. I was covered in a dusty brown stain which had stiffened my clothes and which smelled familiar: salty and sweet. I decided to remain wherever I was until my strength returned. I heard no voices, only the pad of feet and movement around me and the roar of the fire. I lay and tried to work out what had happened to me.

Eventually, I managed to sit up. Many pairs of eyes turned on me, briefly, then slid away. I was among the
mehed
, many of them. They were wrapped in furs and the remnants of old garments: scraps of velvet, silks, wool. They left me alone. I rose unsteadily to my feet and moved among them and they parted, moving from me like water. Around me, the ground was barren, littered with stones that looked like fossils under the frost, and now I could smell the snow. We were in a cor-rie, sheltered within the mountains, and beyond a high white wall rose up, filling the sky. The land was known to me, its currents were pulling at my memory, and the strong tides of early autumn flowed through the earth. Ember ai Elemnai rose up in the distance.

I got up and walked across to the edge of the corrie, looking for Shu or Morrac. Something lay there like a bundle of old rags, broken and twisted. I leaned down to investigate. It was one of the huntresses of the ai Staren. The ruined hands curled in death; film clouded the eyes like the bloom of frost on a fruit. Her frozen face was as murderous and beautiful in death as it had been in life, but the rest of her was nothing more than a scatter of sinews and bones. She had been butchered. The
mehed
must have caught her,
and brought her here for food. Other bones surrounded her, white against the whiteness of the snow.

One of the
mehed
was coming over, dressed in dark and tattered clothes, handsome face pale in the snowlight, but even though I had last seen him only a week or so before, it was a moment before I realized who it was. Jheru's blue eyes were clear and his hair was still plaited in a loose untidy braid. He looked at me thoughtfully. There was no sign of the state that had driven us apart, and which had brought us back together again. I was utterly at a loss. Whatever social graces I possessed were hardly appropriate for this sort of occasion. I sat down hard in the snow at Jheru's feet.

“Do you know me?” I said. “It's me. It's Eleres.” My name sounded odd on my tongue, as though unaccustomed to being used. My friend nodded, then reached down, took my hand, and examined it, tracing the wounds of the huntress's attack with a gentle finger.

“Do you know what happened to me?” I asked. “Where's Morrac?” No reply. Jheru held my hand and looked won-deringly up into the airy darkness. We sat like this for a while. My head was spinning; there was too much to take in.

Unexpectedly, Jheru said, “I was wrong, to leave.”

I twisted around. Jheru's beautiful face was sad.

“Oh, Jheru,” I said. “What happened to you?”

“I don't know.” It was a whisper. “I promised myself that I wouldn't give in to it, to the bloodmind, but I knew in the end I would. Then I did, but it didn't stay; it ebbed with the tides. It seemed so simple when I left home, but now I'm sometimes human and yet …” He paused. “Don't you know how it is? Hasn't it taken you the same way?”

“Jheru, how did you find me?”

“The huntresses were out, along the dark line of the earth. The
mehed
are old enemies of the ai Staren. The clan takes the children of the
mehed
, when they can. This is dangerous country. You shouldn't have come here, Eleres.”

“I didn't feel I had a choice,” I said. I rubbed my eyes. “I came to find my sister. And if I found you too, as it seems I have, to ask you to come home.”

Wearily, Jheru said, “I'm not sure I can.”

“I don't think you want to stay here, though. It's all very well being sentimental. I've read all those Middle period and Esteren romances, too. I know how we try and pretend.” Jheru managed a smile. I went on. “When I was younger, I used to think of all the old legends, of Erudrai traveling through the forests of Athault; Demenera ai Ered sailing to Vithien, alone, at peace, at one with the world. It's not like that. You know that, very well.”

I saw him nod. He said, “I can hear the world calling to me at night, Eleres, while you sleep in peace. Your cousin Morrac likes the killing. I know how he feels.” The words came in a rush, and suddenly I was angry. I didn't want to be here, covered with blood and filth in the wintry wind, tired and hungry and aching. I wanted to be home.

I grabbed Jheru by the shoulders and slammed him against the face of the cliff. “Do you?” I hissed, like a child. I don't think I even knew what I was saying, only that I was furious. But it was a human, conscious anger. “Do you? Then why don't you kill me?” I hit him hard across the face so that he fell against the frozen rock, grazing his cheek. His arms were outflung, bracing himself against the rock. His head snapped up. He looked at me. And over my shoulder, I felt the
mehed
pack start to turn and gaze, drawn by sudden blood. “Go on,” I heard my voice say. “What are you waiting for?” There was a roaring in my head as the mood of the pack began to rise and change. I could see it behind Jheru's eyes, ancient instinct kicking in, but as the wish to kill grew in him, so my anger ebbed in me. I stood quietly, and looked at him. “Go on,” I murmured.

For a moment, I thought he would, and I barely cared. But an expression like that of someone old and lost passed across his face, and then Jheru said as if surprised, “No.”

And for the first time it seemed to me that I had spoken the truth all along, in spite of my worst fears: that it might be possible to make a choice about what we were and what we did, that we really could be more than our natures dictated. I took a shaking breath. Jheru turned from me and stood gazing out across the corrie, toward the gathering clouds.

I walked slowly away.

Much later, when we had taken shelter in the fissures of the cliff against the driving snow, he came to find me. His coat was stiff with frost and his face was set, but he managed a smile.

“Human again,” he said, in a whisper.

“Human,” I said. “Sometimes. And so am I, and sometimes not.” He came to sit with me on the rocks of the ledge. After a long time I said, “You know, Jheru, perhaps if we didn't spend so much time fighting it and fretting about it, we might really be in balance, after all. Maybe it's fear that causes our desires, and not the other way around.” We sat in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Humans may make mistakes, it seemed to me then, but the world does not recognize wrongness; it merely corrects imbalances. Animal and human, predators and prey: we are all part of the same system. Life, I began to understand for the first time, is impervious to the form it takes; it is utterly ruthless. It lies beyond morality, contemplation, love, or fear; it is satisfied only by being. And whether this is human life, or animal, or only a leech in a puddle of water, it does not matter. Life lives through us, regardless of the meaning and the strictures that we try to impose upon it, and it does not care as long as we carry it along. But what we make of that life is up to us.