Bloodstone

by Johannes, Helen C.

“And then what happened?”

  “We got on the horse, the old man and me. I thought maybe I could find the way back to Ar-Deneth, but it got dark and I got lost and...” He trailed off and sat staring into space.

  Durren’s senses screamed at him to load the two men onto the horse and send the animal with its burden of Death staggering back into the Wehrland. To let the Krad finish what they’d begun. The beast-men were likely trailing them anyway, scenting weakness. If the Krad slaked their appetites with these two, maybe the creatures would retreat down the mountain instead of lurking in the valley so close to Drakkonwehr. His own trail, and the boy’s and woman’s, was too cold for them to follow now, the tantalizing scent of the boy’s wound dissipated.

  What’s more, he hadn’t invited this gelatinous bag and his passenger into Drakkonwehr. They were trespassers, and—hospitality be damned!—he owed them nothing.

  That’s right, said the Voice in his head. The Shadow Man doesn’t owe them a thing.

  The remark stung like cold steel. But I do—is that what you’re saying?

  Depends on whose home this is.

  Acid churned in Durren’s stomach. Although the woman was only whispering, “Papa, please,” and he’d tried to shut his ears to the sound and balled his fists at his sides, the keening penetrated his hood, slicing at his nerves. The Shadow Man could turn them out into the Wehrland, but Durren Drakkonwehr—Damn this body!—could do no such thing.

  “Gareth, tend to the horse. Get up, fat man, you can’t sleep here.” Kneeling, he scooped the old man out of his daughter’s arms and carried him to the fire. Thank you so very much, his mind messaged the she-lion, but she merely stretched one huge paw, showing pearlescent talons before retracting them.

  ****

  Mirianna sponged her father all night, trying to revive him, to bring the fever down. He couldn’t die. Not from something as innocuous as a tiny scratch. She wouldn’t let him.

  She rummaged again and again in the Shadow Man’s herb supply, racking her brain for recipes she’d seen the herbalist in Nolar make. She’d already spooned a bit of willow bark tea into her father’s mouth, and he swallowed it. That and the sponging made his skin fractionally cooler. She made a poultice for the welt on his leg, hoping it would draw out the poison, but she couldn’t be sure she mixed the ingredients in the right proportions.

  Hours ago, the boy had fallen asleep where he sat, and she was dimly aware of the she-lion curving her huge body around the boy and pillowing his head on her shoulder. The rasp of her purr had become for Mirianna a barely noticed hum in the background, mingling with the music of Pumble’s snores. He’d sat where the Shadow Man directed him to sit, eaten a bit of dry-cake, and promptly fallen into a deep sleep.

  The Shadow Man had been gone for hours. He’d slipped off after Pumble fell asleep, and she hadn’t noted his absence until now, when her eyes burned and her back cracked as if it would break into pieces. She hiccupped a sob, biting her lip to keep it from trembling. Tears would do no good, neither for her nor her father. Pushing wisps of hair from her face, she sat back on her heels and wrung out another cloth.

  “You’re only prolonging his suffering. And yours.”

  The Shadow Man’s words bludgeoned her heart, but Mirianna tightened her lips and blinked droplets from her lashes. She wouldn’t look up with her misery stamped on her face. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  He lowered himself to a seat opposite. The hood that had terrified her for so long tilted and seemed to be assessing her father’s sunken features and flushed skin.

  She faced the hood with her chin up. “Where have you been?” Her words accused, but what did that matter? To look upon him could kill her, but what did that matter now? Her father was dying. Dying! And the Shadow Man didn’t care.

  He rested elbows on knees and clasped gloved fingers. The hood shifted in her direction. “I was doing what I could to bar the gate. In case they were followed.”

  The firelight revealed fresh scuff marks on his boots. A shred of fabric dangled as if torn from the hem of his hood. He’d likely slept as little as she these last few days, but she hardened her heart against the thought. Anyone who’d survived the devastation of this fortress couldn’t possibly have such mundane, human needs as sleep and solace and simple decency.

  “You mean, you were doing what you could to protect yourself,” she threw at him, “in case someone disturbs your precious privacy! Admit it—you’d have barred the gate against them if you could have guessed they’d come.”

  He sighed. She detected in the sound and the slope of his shoulders not only weariness but a deep resignation, as if she spoke a truth he already knew. With an economical movement, he produced a pail of fresh water and exchanged it for the one she’d nearly emptied.

  The gesture made tears burn her throat, but she swallowed them down before speaking. “He’s cooler. He’ll make it.”

  “If he should wake, make your peace with him. You’ll not have another chance.” He stood and turned toward the deep well of darkness that was the ruin of Drakkonwehr.

  Mirianna bit back another sob. He was leaving her, just like that, to deal with her misery and her pain and her grief. Alone. He would simply fade into the darkness out of which he’d come and in which he lived and moved and had his being, and she would be left by this meager fire with nothing but her two hands and a little knowledge of healing to save her father. And that after—after...

  Her head snapped up and words jumped out of her mouth, words her mind hadn’t considered but arrowed straight up from the panic choking her heart. “You promised to save him! Remember?”

  The black hood turned a fraction, and she could see it profiled dimly against the ink of the shadows beyond. A thread of unease stirred in her stomach, but she focused all of her attention on his response. He couldn’t ignore her now.

  “I did save him. And you. All of you. Remember?”

  “No!” She pushed upright before he finished speaking, stiff knees and numbed feet making her stagger while outrage burned white hot along her nerves. “He was hurt then, in that Krad attack! You didn’t save him!”

  There, she’d given voice to the thing eating at her all night, the thing that threatened whatever hope she’d clung to that her sacrifice had succeeded and her father was safe. That he would go home to Nolar and sleep out his nights in the cottage with the little garden in the back and the herb beds along the front wall. That her world—and her life—had not ended in a smoke-filled clearing in the Wehrland.

  Stiff and straight, she faced the blank hood while he turned so slowly she had to tell herself to breathe. Sparks dotted her vision. Her face tingled as if the lips she moved were not her own, but she forced them to enunciate each syllable of the one weapon that could possibly make him suffer as she suffered, make him feel...anything. “If he dies, my promise is void. Do you understand? If he dies, there is no promise between us!”

  The tall column of blackness stood square across the fire. What light the embers threw upon his figure seemed absorbed by it, as though his being sucked up all that was light, all that was good, all that was life and locked it away in a pit of darkness, of nothing. She shivered, chilled now she no longer held her father’s fevered body. That was the reason for the shaking, not any terror caused by confronting a shadow, a fiend, a nightmare. What would—could—he do? The terms of the promise had been broken. She owed him nothing. He had failed her.

  After an interminable time, the Shadow Man turned away as slowly as he’d faced her. Without a word, he walked into the darkness, vanishing even as she tried to hold onto his shape, his essence—all the while wondering why she should want to cling to terror and failure and—

  “You promised!” she shouted, but all that returned was a shrill echo. She strode around the fire and kicked the empty bucket, sending it clattering over paving stones. The sound mocked her loneliness, her powerlessness. Choking on a sob, she stumbled back toward her father, to do what little she could, t
o pour herself out for him. He was all she had. If he died, what was left for her, a woman alone?

  As she knelt, she glimpsed the lion’s slitted yellow-green eyes. The lion had comforted her before. Even saved her. She was magic, wasn’t she? “Can you heal him? Please?” she whispered.

  The she-lion’s ribs rose and fell gently under the boy’s head. Trust, echoed in Mirianna’s mind.

  “Trust who? What? You?”

  The yellow-green eyes closed and the purr intensified, enveloping Mirianna in a warmth that soaked into her bones, liquefying each one in turn. Her head hummed with the gentle sound, and the firelight faded to a glow. She was tired. So tired. If she could just close her eyes for one moment, she could lift that cloth again and wring it out. If she could just lie down next to her father for one moment, she could make more tea. If she could just...

  ****

  Durren stood with his hands braced on the wall, staring out at the valley, seeing nothing but the deep well of darkness below. Nothing stirred but the fine threads of sulfurous mist, and nothing sounded, not even the night birds.

  He’d put the courtyard with its feeble circle of light behind his back. The woman was wrong. He’d done everything he could. He had saved them. All of them. He’d kept his promise. She was just trying to get out of her part of the bargain.

  You didn’t want her here this morning, said the Voice in his head.

  I don’t want THEM here. She’s supposed to stay. She promised.

  This is her father. Her family. She loves him.

  Love, hah! Pain and misery, you mean. She’s better off without it.

  Like you are?

  Splinters of granite bit through the gloves into Durren’s fingers. He flexed his hands, easing his grip on the stone, but the ache in his chest refused to abate. Time—time heals.

  Then why does it still hurt like your heart’s just been ripped out?

  Durren ground his teeth together. He didn’t have a heart. Errek’s death had carved it out in huge chunks. The fall of Drakkonwehr and the Stone Dam at Herrok-Eneth had finished the amputation. What remained kept this damned body alive, bleeding and aching in stubborn echo. Enough to drive a man mad—if he would only let himself go.

  He broke off a stone and hurled it into the darkness.

  Pebbles aren’t much good against demons. And your demons aren’t out there anyway.

  Durren flung another, larger stone whizzing into the valley. Go to Beggeth!

  Why? So you can forget the woman?

  Her father’s dying, remember? I’m leaving her—

  To suffer alone?

  In peace, damn you!

  Coward.

  Durren broke off another piece of wall, but it crumbled in his clenched fist. Breathing hard, he watched the last grains of mortar dribble between his gloved fingers. His anger drained out with it, along with the strength in his legs. He slid down the wall until he sat on the rampart with his knees drawn up and his back pressed against the rough-hewn stone. The cold stole into his bones, but he welcomed the numbness it brought. If he could sit here long enough, perhaps it would fill him entirely. Every fiber, every muscle, every tissue in his body ached as if in these few days his body had aged every one of those suspended years.

  I’m tired of the pain. I want it to end.

  Then help her.

  How? There’s no antidote for Krad poison. He wished he could shed everything, every accumulated feeling and regret. His life was a litany of failures. Now he’d added another. The woman—Mirianna—was right about that. He was a fool to have hoped their bargain would hold, would change anything. He’d doomed himself years ago when he’d failed to learn the secrets of the scrolls.

  After her ordeal was over, he would put her on her horse and send her down the mountain with the fat man. Pumble—Was that his name?—had proved himself decent. With adequate directions, he should be able to get them to Ar-Deneth.

  So you’ll wash your hands of them. Clean your conscience in the pool, just as you always do.

  I’m doing the honorable thing! What more do you want? But an idea ignited in his mind. Startled by it, by the sheer, glittering possibility of a solution where there couldn’t—shouldn’t—be one, he sat up, separating himself from the wall. After a moment, his shoulders slumped. It won’t work.

  Doing nothing is certain failure. Warriors take risks.

  So do fools. He wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at the courtyard below. The woman’s fire had died to embers. He saw nothing but the reddish glow of it and, outside the circle, two disembodied pinpoints of yellow-green light that no longer sent chills down his back.

  “It’s time to act, Durren,” said the she-lion.

  “It’s not that simple.” He knew her now, as well as he’d known her before, but that hadn’t been well enough, had it? What was she up to? Once more he wished he’d spent time studying the scrolls. Maybe they could tell him why his hair bristled at what he was about to do, why his better sense told him it couldn’t possibly work, why his gut overrode every other thought, insisting he had to do whatever it took to hold the woman to that damned promise.

  “Doing what’s right is always simple. Not easy, perhaps, but simple.”

  He rose slowly, dusting his gloves and shaking kinks from his joints. “You have a lot to explain, Ayliss.”

  “Whenever you’re ready to listen.”

  “Wake the boy. I’ll need him.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mirianna woke when the first pale fingers of dawn reached into the courtyard. She rubbed both hands over her face, her limbs stiff with cold, her mind muzzy with half-remembered dreams. She’d been holding her father. He was sick, and she’d been trying to cool his fever.

  She sat up, saw the fire had died, and wondered why she’d been sleeping in the courtyard when her bedding lay in the chamber the Shadow Man had found for her and the boy.

  Wait! Where was the boy?

  She spun, raking the courtyard, seeing nothing stirring but one large, cloth-clad lump that seemed to be...breathing. Pumble! She jumped up, stumbled on stiff legs, and whirled around as the events of the night rushed into her memory. “Gareth!” she screamed. “Papa!”

  “Wha—?” Pumble sat up with a snort, then promptly flopped onto his back and commenced snoring.

  Mirianna fought a wild urge to kick him. Instead, she spun once more, noticing the lion was gone too. Had she really been here? But Pumble was here—Mirianna could smell him now, so she wasn’t dreaming. “Papa! Gareth!” Echoes amplified her cries, sending them booming off walls and turrets.

  A movement caught her eye, and she spun, seeing the Shadow Man emerge from the roofless Great Hall where she’d tracked him that first morning. Was it only two days ago? She had found him down a tunnel leading from one of the chambers, and he’d warned her to stay out of such tunnels. Now, in the washed out light of early morning, the blot of his form strode unerringly around the rubble piles, followed with equal ease by the boy. Both carried bundles. Gareth’s fit neatly in his arms. The Shadow Man’s blanket-wrapped bundle had legs and a head.

  “Papa...” Her heart wanted to rush to him; her feet kept her rooted. In the harsh morning light her father’s uncovered head rested like a child’s on the Shadow Man’s shoulder. His face looked ashen and the wrapping—Please let it not be so!—looked like burial cloths. Her legs wobbled, but she stiffened them and waited while the grim party strode inexorably on.

  The Shadow Man had already deposited her father on his bedding and begun speaking before her mind could attend to anything more than her father breathed! She knelt beside him and ran trembling hands over his colorless face. She touched him twice, three times before she could believe what her fingertips told her—his skin was damp but cool; the fever had abated.

  “I lanced the wound to drain it. You’ll need to put a poultice on it.”

  She looked up at the being standing across the cold fire pit. Something about the Shadow Man’s chest and arms looked d
ifferent, darker if that were possible. While she puzzled over that, she touched her father’s shoulder. The blanket enclosing his body was wet.

  Something low in her belly snapped taut, sending out tiny waves of sensation and sucking all the moisture from her mouth. Licking her lips, she slanted another glance up at the Shadow Man. Every contour of the muscles she’d sensed under her fingertips and along the length of her back two nights ago showed where the damp blanket had molded the Shadow Man’s tunic to his body. Once again she knew with heart-stopping certainty this was no hollow specter. Flesh and blood lived under that shroud. Before she could ponder the significance, he spoke.

  “I’ve done all I can. The Krad poison had two days to work on him. If he lives, he may never be the same.” He circled as if looking for something, then strode a few steps to pick up a bucket lying on its side.

  Mirianna flushed, remembering how she’d kicked it into the night when he’d left her. She’d challenged him then, heaped upon him all her misery and scorn, dared him to deliver on his promise no matter how impossible, how absurd. Now he’d returned, having answered yet another of her challenges. Amid gratitude and overwhelming relief at having her father alive and seemingly improved, simmered a growing shame at what she’d said, how she’d behaved toward the Shadow Man.

  “Gareth will bring you some water for your father to drink.” The Shadow Man handed the bucket to the boy, who’d laid his bundle—her father’s clothing—on the ground. “No one but your father drinks this water. Do you understand?”

  Mirianna nodded. Her fingers clenched so hard in the blanket over her father’s shoulder, liquid welled between her knuckles. “Why?” she said before she could stop herself.

  The blank hood regarded some spot halfway between her and the boy. A gloved hand gripped the sword hilt at his belt while she waited for him to decide how he would answer, or if. “Because I don’t know what effect drinking the water will have. There’s a chance it will help his body fight off the poison.”

  “How much of a chance?”

  “Enough that I’m willing to offer it to you. To fulfill my promise.”