He stood still a moment, trying to force his breathing to steady, his head to clear, then walked over to her.
She wasn’t sleeping. She lay full of trapped rage, like a chained and muzzled animal. Her hands were clenched, straining against her bonds. An edge of blood glistened where the cloth met her skin. He glanced at her face, and when he met her eyes it was with a shock, as if he’d put his hand down on a blade he’d thought was sheathed.
“You’d be dangerous even now, wouldn’t you, if I let you free,” he said, and the naked-blade glare in her eyes was the answer he scarcely needed.
Tiny thing, a bundle of passion that seemed too much for the little body to hold…and yet every time he met her eyes he went cold.
You’d best not sleep again. Not even with her tied up. Not even if you put her in chains.
Above them, the cliff no longer reared black and featureless. He could make out a path, a zigzag way to the top.
He found the sharp-edged shard of a broken shell at the cliff foot and bent to cut the twisted rope that tied her to the tree. She lay, glaring at him.
“We’re going to walk. I’ll untie your legs.” He hesitated. He didn’t know how close they were to the city, but the maenads could still be out, hunting. Or there could be others, loyal citizens who would know it their duty to catch—or kill—a runaway. But the makeshift ropes were bad enough, he could not keep her gagged too.
“If I untie your mouth,” he said, “will you swear by the god to stay quiet?”
She jerked her chin downwards, an angry sulky movement. But it was a nod of sorts, and an agreement to the only promise he could think would hold her, so he ran the shard up between the cloth and the back of her head. Her hair was silky against his fingers. And why would it not be? She was human after all. But somehow he’d expected something harsher, with lizard-skin roughness or underlying spines like those of feathers.
It’s the eyes. Nothing human should be capable of having that look in their eyes.
The gag fell onto the sand, and she shrieked, so loud, so unexpected, that for a split second he could not think where the sound came from.
He swung his hand into her face without thinking—“Stop that. Stop that noise.”—and she bit him, teeth sharp enough to draw blood. Still? But I thought she’d changed—
She screamed, eyes glowing with triumph, the blood—his blood—on her lips and teeth making her look as terrifying as she had a few hours ago, immersed in madness, leading her pack of killer women.
This time he hit her really hard, from fear and anger, full across her face. It took her off her feet and, her bound hands preventing her from breaking her fall, she was thrown full-length to land like a crumpled doll, as motionless as if she’d broken.
Chapter Four
It was only sand that Maya fell on, but all the same it knocked the breath from her lungs, made the world blink out, made her go limp.
The criminal—the blasphemer, the prey—bent over her. As soon as the world blinked back, she could see the stupid concern in his stupid, pretty eyes.
Blasphemer. Runaway. Scum. She spat at him, but her mouth was too dry from the gag and it was hardly an insult at all.
“Listen,” he said, and she jerked back.
“Don’t speak to me! Coward, dirty blasphemer—” She tried to shriek again, but she hadn’t regained her breath and it came out as nothing but a breathy whistle.
He put his hand over her mouth, forcing her lips down over her teeth so she couldn’t bite. “Listen, I don’t want to have to make you walk muzzled.”
I don’t care what you make me do. I don’t care. You’ll make a mistake soon enough, and I’ll kill you. Kill you and kill you and drag your carcass back to my god…
She couldn’t say it with his hand crushing her mouth shut, but it must have shown in her eyes because she saw the muscles in his face clench, a flinching movement as if he didn’t want to understand what he read in hers.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Whatever shape you turn into, you’re not that, you’re not an animal. What’s wrong with you—you can’t even keep an oath made in the name of your own god?”
She glared at him. Stupid, stupid man, asking me questions while your nasty sweaty hand makes sure I can’t answer.
As if he knew what her eyes were saying, he took his hand away. “Well? You swore by the god—”
“I don’t have to keep an oath made to a blasphemer. You don’t even count as human—you’re filthy, rotten all through, sin made you what you are—”
Anger flared in his face. As if it was a surprise to him, as if he didn’t know what he’d done to bring his unholy gift on him. Stupid, stupid, worthless—
But his next words were not an attempt to defend himself. Instead, he said, “And what made you what you are?”
She could have spat at him again. “The god made me this way, fool. His fire burns in me, I’m clean through and through. You’re just—half-animal, unnatural. Your mother lay with a pig—”
He laughed, a sound so out of place that for a moment she thought he was sobbing and cruel delight flashed through her. But it wasn’t sobbing. It was laughter.
“You don’t know what it is, do you? You’re ready to kill me and you don’t even know why. Tell me, little slave of the priests, what is the outcome of my ‘sin’? What is my filthy gift, that I deserve to die for?”
“I don’t need to know every disgusting trait you unholy ones boast of. Monsters, all of you—”
“Monsters, are we?” The laughter drained from his face. “How many people have you killed, maenad-girl? How many times have you gone home with blood and flesh and hair under your fingernails? If we’re monsters, what does that make you?”
And at that the familiar nausea hit her. Her stomach cramped, a contraction so sharp it was as if it had folded in two, and she threw herself onto her side in time to vomit on the sand rather than her own face.
It was just the aftermath of the change, that was all, that was all. Not his words, nothing he says has anything to do with me. I don’t care what he thinks, what he says—
Her stomach contracted, this time so painfully that her whole body broke out in gooseflesh. Bile came up, and blood—she’d bitten him, of course, but the maenad shriek made her throat bleed, too, and most of it was her own—and shreds of the dark residue from the volcano’s blood.
From above her cold, heaving body she heard his voice, no anger or laughter in it anymore. “Ah gods, if I’d not taken off the gag…”
Reproaching himself, or congratulating? For the moment she didn’t care. He and everything about him had gone right to the edge of her world. Nothing existed but pain and nausea and prickling cold so intense her skin felt as if it were trying to crawl off her flesh. The contraction ebbed and she tried to drag in a breath. It’d be over soon, it always was, if she could keep breathing it would be over sooner. But she hadn’t remembered to move from the puddle of slimy, stinking sand, and when she breathed, she breathed it in and started to choke—
“Hell and demons,” he said from a long way away, and she felt his hands on her shoulders, dragging her to a clean patch of sand, pulling her up so she was in a kneeling position, folded over his arm, able to cough and spit and gulp air into her lungs.
She fumbled for the edge of her tunic to wipe her mouth, and realised as she did that he’d cut the cloth tying her hands. They were cramped and cold, blood stinging out of the shallow cuts she’d made struggling to get free, but she managed to clumsily wipe her mouth, blow her nose, shuddering at the smell and taste of her own vomit.
He said nothing, but passed her a smooth object that turned out to be a water bottle. She took it, flinching from the touch of his fingers—here I am, unguarded, weaponless, forced to accept his help—rinsed her mouth, spat and drank.
The water washed through her, and the last of the power went with it, draining away. The cold on her skin sank inwards, and she shivered, her bones beginning to ache. Back at the temple, once the nausea
had ebbed, their mute servants would take them to the heated springs where the hot water eased them into normality. They would bring them liquorice-scented tea and cold well-water flavoured with ginger, then escort them to their sacred cove to wash off the blood-guilt in the clean salt ocean. In ten years she’d never been left to deal with it alone. And now, here, in the power of this damned criminal who dares to question and pity me…
She pushed herself away from him, still kneeling but determined to move out of the circle of his arm, and he let her. I could run, if I had a trace of the power left. But her limbs were shaky, and she knew from bitter, frustrated experience that, should she try to stand, her legs would not hold her. It had always seemed a cruel twist of the god’s power that he should make them so strong, so free, with limbs like bronze and the speed of a sandstorm, then leave them scoured through, weak and sick and helpless, every time the gift withdrew.
She opened her mouth to fling defiance at him—he should not think his weak show of kindness had bought him anything—but instead she found her voice, sounding thin and choked, saying, “Let me go.”
Horror at her own words went through her—they sounded as if she were pleading, although of course she couldn’t be, couldn’t be pleading with this outlaw, this subhuman—but somehow she couldn’t stop herself repeating them, with a sound as if she were crying although of course she wasn’t, wouldn’t ever, would never cry at all, let alone in front of him. “Let me go. Let me go—”
She caught herself before she said the final word, the last word that would make her sound truly pathetic, like a little girl crying for her family. But the word had formed on her tongue, and she could almost taste it, taste the longing. Home. I want to go home. I’m no longer strong and powerful. I’m afraid, and sick, and powerless and outside. I want to go home.
“I can’t,” he said.
Of course he’d say that. She hadn’t hoped for anything else—but the words sank into her stomach like weights. “Please.” She hated herself for saying it, hating the way her voice sounded. “I’ll swear not to send them after you. I’ll swear by the god.”
He bent to look into her face. “But you’ll be lying. Won’t you?”
“No. No.” But she was lying already, and she could see he knew it.
“I’m sorry.” He actually was. It showed in his face. Kindness, and pity—pity for her, maenad of the god, leader of the pack. It was like salt in a wound, and she bit her lips inward, choking down more pleading words, refusing to humiliate herself any further in front of him.
He was watching her, anxious—not for himself, anxious for her, although the god alone knew why he was so concerned. She straightened her spine, looked him in the eyes, strengthening herself with the memory of how he’d flinched before.
“Very well.” She put her hands out, wrists together. “You’d better tie me back up, then.”
“It’s not that I want to treat you that way—”
More pity. “Oh, believe me, you had better do so. I plan to kill you, after all.” She spoke the words across his, smiling her bright cruel smile, and saw, with satisfaction, the pity in his face replaced by fear.
But afterwards, when she could manage to walk and he’d tied her hands behind her back before leading them up the narrow zigzag path to the top of the cliff, the weakness clutched at her throat and she wished she’d been able to take the kindness as a comfort, as once, long ago, she would have done.
They came out on the top of the cliffs, among the scrubby bushes and sandgrass that clung there. The first rays of the rising sun met them, and over to the south, the walls of the temple gleamed suddenly white.
Still so close. If I broke from him and ran… But she’d tried and tried while he slept to break free of her bonds, and even with the residue of her maenad strength she had been helpless against them. Now that was gone and she was weak in the aftermath of the change. She had no hope. She glanced with hatred at her captor’s back. No one took maenads prisoner. They were killed by them, or—occasionally—they escaped. She’d had a few times of returning to the temple to confess failure, furious and let down, fingers aching to fasten into something. The change back was always hardest then, as if the god were punishing them for failing him.
As he’s punishing me now.
But that was edging dangerously close to blasphemy. She knew better. The god punished betrayal, those who refused to do his will, not those who tried and failed. The pain that came with failure—that was not from him, it was consequence, not punishment. And it was right, it was fair, because if you failed should you not bear the consequences?
Even the worst consequences. The girls whose bodies could not withstand the change and who died, choking on their own screams, caught halfway between human and maenad; the people who were called as sacrifices and whose only service to the god was to give themselves alive to the volcano; those who were marked as temple servants and must have their tongues cut out before they could serve; the fire-maidens who went, alone, into the labyrinth, who failed their final test and died in the lava flood…even those worst consequences were welcome. If you died doing the god’s will, you died clean, your sin shed like an old garment, your path to the afterlife clear before you.
But if you refused your calling, betrayed the god, defied his will, opened yourself to enough sin that the demon-gifts could enter and infect your body…that was when the punishment would come, that was when you’d be thrown undrugged into the volcano’s lake of fire, handed over to the maenads, flung from the highest cliffs into the ocean.
At least I have not failed. At least I’m here only because I faithfully served the god. At least I have not betrayed my calling.
Except—and the thought clutched at her, unexpected, unwelcome, tightening in her belly and chest—what if I have?
They were walking north, over the chill, shadowed sands, as fast as was possible on the soft surface. In her bonds, her hands clenched, as if she could take hold of the thought and twist it into nonexistence.
I haven’t betrayed him. I haven’t sinned.
But what if I have?
And the possibilities came pouring in, a choking swarm of them, a sandstorm of terrifying thoughts. What if she’d taken too much pride in the power she had, started to think of it as hers, not the god’s?
What if this—this humiliating capture by the prey she’d been sent out to hunt—was her punishment? What if she deserved it?
The sun came up fully, seeming to bound suddenly over the horizon, and the sand sprang into a glittering dazzle that made her eyes smart. Her captor picked up speed.
She followed, determined not to flag, forcing her knees to hold her upright, as the sun sailed higher and the sand glared its reflection—and shortly, growing heat—into her face.
What if I’m being punished? What if he’s cast me aside?
The dazzle seemed to seep inside her head, making it throb, spreading sickness behind her eyes.
No. No. I need not even think it. I have served him faithfully. I was first to find the criminal, first to draw blood…
All through the morning, during the walk across the vicious blaze of the desert, she fought with the thoughts. Sometimes they sank to nothing, leaving relief to flood through in their place. But sometimes they came surging up, sickeningly, making panic roar into her head. If the god had left her, what was left for her? What was she, if she was no longer a maenad?
And at that thought, more terrible than all the rest, her knees would no longer hold her. She stumbled, inadvertently forcing the criminal to a stop, chest heaving, throat tight. No. No. Oh God please please no.
“What’s wrong?” He looked at her, forehead furrowing in unwanted concern.
She fought the panic, fought down any signs that would let him know. No, it can’t be true, I can’t face it. I can’t.
“I need water.” She forced her voice to flat hostility. She didn’t—he’d been, if anything, overgenerous about sharing his water bottle with her—but she’d seen en
ough of him to tell he was all but unable to refuse a plea of that kind.
He passed the bottle to her, and she tipped the water down her panic-closed throat, made herself swallow it.
“Are you all right now? We’re on the route to an oasis—we can rest there for a little.”
There was concern in his voice, but he had the rope still tied tight round his wrist and his hand clamped over the piece that led to her bound hands. His kindness might be a weakness she would be able to use, but not yet. He was still wary, still afraid of her.
If he knew he would no longer be afraid…
No. It’s not true. Don’t think it. Don’t. Don’t!
She didn’t answer him. Let him worry about her, let him think he was being too harsh. Maybe he’d get careless enough that she could make use of it.
“Are you all right? Can you walk?” He waited a moment, hesitant—hardly a man at all, shameful that I should be in his power—then moved on, leading her, and she had to follow.
For a moment, the thought crossed her mind that she could refuse to walk, lie still and make him drag her. He’s not so strong that he could manage that, damn him. But it would hardly do her any good. He was kind—too kind—but he was stubborn as well. Even if she refused to walk he wasn’t going to let her go, and she could not bear to humiliate herself by trying it.
As the sun climbed to its highest point in the dazzling, liquid heat of the sky, they came to the oasis—a tiny one, no more than a couple of trees and a spring dribbling water out into a shallow rocky pool, scarcely deep enough to cover her hands when she dipped them into it.
The trees provided hardly any shade, but the spring came from a crack in a high tumble of rocks next to the trees. Its shadow pooled around it, an edge of dimness in the white-hot desert, and within that shadow the rocks were cool to the skin.
For a few moments, the oasis held comfort. Her frantic thoughts seemed to stop, like water trapped behind a dam. She drank and drank, and when the criminal offered her a handful of battered-looking dates, clumped and sticky, she could not bring herself to cast them back at him.
Blood of the Volcano: Sequal to Heart of the Volcano Page 4
