She’d been running head down, flat out over the sand, but as they swooped over her Philos saw her head come up, and the moment they landed her eyes, black and bright and alien, fixed on them. Dread crawled through him, and a certainty of failure. The madness had her entirely. In those eyes, in every tautly held limb, there was no trace of the girl he’d fallen in love with, of the body he’d explored with such heartstopping delight. There would be no reasoning with her, no hope in talking. As she’d said herself, “There’s nothing that can withstand them.”
“If you can’t get through to her,” said Coram, “we’ll take her back with us nevertheless. The madness will wear off in time, and she was committed to our army, that won’t have changed.”
Philos glanced down at him—he was riding on Coram’s shoulders and could catch a glimpse of his face. The words had been practical, to do with their wider mission, that was all, but Coram’s voice was gentle, and although he was entirely shifted, face and eyes and everything, Philos thought he could see compassion and sympathy in the stone face.
Across the desert, Maya swerved in a spray of sand and took off running away from them.
Coram laughed a little. “She must be mad indeed, to think she can escape me.” He rose into the air once more, and landed a short way in front of her.
Maya swerved again. For a little while it was like a dance: the maenad figure curving this way and that across the sand as it rose in plumes around her feet, the huge stone gargoyle arcing each time above her, all lit in the cold, colourless moonlight. Philos clung tight to the ridges of stone hair on Coram’s head, watching the dance—the hunt—hating that this was Maya, his Maya, turned into little more than a savage animal, having to be hunted down like a wild dog.
Eventually she made one more sharp turn to race in yet another direction, her foot slipped from under her and she fell, hard, her prone body obscured for a moment in a cloud of pale dust. She was up in an instant, braced, claws out, but this time she didn’t run. Even from where Coram had landed, Philos could see her sides heaving, every rib outlined as she strained for breath.
Coram crouched so Philos could slide off. “Now. Talk to her now. Our gifts fade when we’re exhausted—maybe she’s the same.”
Philos took a handful of steps towards her. Those eyes fixed on him, and he felt that jolt in his stomach, the jolt of an animal confronted by a predator, an instinct of fear nearly impossible to ignore.
“Maya,” he said, knowing already that it was hopeless, knowing there was nothing here of the girl he knew. “Maya, come back with me.”
She snarled, every sharp tooth bared, eyes empty of anything human. There was nothing that would get through to her, no way of speaking past the madness to the person he knew must, must be somewhere within her. Oh, of course Coram was here—he could overpower her, they could tie her up and take her back, but when the madness left her and Maya returned—his Maya, who feared being controlled, being helpless, more than she feared anything else—what would that do to her? He’d let her down and hurt her; if he took away her power—again—would she ever forgive him? Would she ever recover from being controlled like that over and over and over?
“Maya. I know you can hear me. I know you’re still…sentient in there. I know you’ll remember what you’re doing. Please, try to remember before, before the madness.” He swallowed, words forming in his head, words that seemed stupid to say to a maenad, but nevertheless that he needed her to hear.
“Maya. I said I wasn’t sure I loved you. But please hear me. I don’t know, I can’t know, not yet, not for sure. But I think it’s real. I don’t think it’s just you.”
Her expression, her whole stance, didn’t change. She watched him, blank and inhuman, claws out, body tensed for attack.
I know she can hear me. Before, when I was hiding in the ravine—
His thoughts stopped dead. He had never spoken to her in her maenad form, but he had made her hear him nonetheless. His gift had affected her the way it affected anyone, had convinced her he wasn’t there, had made her start to turn away.
I could do that now. If I use my gift, speak into her mind, make her hear me…
He was shifting before he knew it, his body taking on the hue of the moon-soaked sand, feeling the texture of the desert, the night, every tiny particle of dust in the air. He reached out with his mind across the space between them, feeling for the connection he could use, ready to send the tendrils of his thoughts creeping into hers, slipping through the clouds of madness into the girl he knew was still there…
And like a steel blade, a falling weight, the oath he’d made crashed into his mind. He’d sworn not to do this, sworn on everything that mattered, promised her that whatever else she feared, she need never fear this from him.
But this is to help her. She cannot stay like this, locked in madness. I need her back—we all need her back.
It didn’t matter. He’d made her a promise, he’d sworn that even in fear of his life he’d not do this to her. Whatever the reason, however good it seemed, he could not do it now.
He let the gift fall from him, let himself shift back, become visible. She was staring at him still, her chest heaving in another breath, motionless and unchanged. And he could do nothing about it.
“Ah gods,” he said, “Maya, you mourned this power. I’ve returned it to you. I’ve put you out of my reach and now I can’t do anything to get you back. You have your power back. Can you not use it, this time, for us?”
“You have your power back. Can you not use it for us?”
The words hummed in her head, trailing sparks, all tangled with the chimes of the madness and the hot scent of the volcano blood. Power. Her power.
Somewhere, underneath the noise and scent and the thoughts that smoked upwards, heavy with incense and thick with insanity, memories began to gather like raindrops, running together like rainwater on tiles.
She knew this man. She knew what he could do, she’d felt the touch of that mind on hers before. She’d felt it begin this time too, felt the…invasion, like fingers inside her head, alien, terrifying. But then he’d stopped.
She stared at him—man, criminal, victim, the words she knew were right but that seemed all at once wrong—trying to see him clearly, trying to think through the chimes and the incense and the blood…
A name came to her, wavering first, a reflection in water, then steadying, becoming clear. Philos. And words. “What I did. I swear, I’ll never do that to you again.” Then more words, this time in her own voice. “Don’t. Don’t give me the power to kill you.”
He’s not my enemy. The thought didn’t match what the chimes and the scent told her, but these were her own memories, her own words coming back to her mind. He’s not my enemy. I know him. He gave me promises, and he kept them. And I…what did I give him?
That came back to her too. Memories without words, memories she felt in her body, not her mind. She shivered, the remembrance of heat rippling through her, and without her meaning it, her hands relaxed, dropped to her sides, her body moved out of its attack stance.
“Philos?”
“Maya.” He strode towards her, hands outstretched. Her own hands went out to him, but then that huge thing behind him, that stone man, gave a warning exclamation, and Philos stopped dead.
“She’s still maenad,” the stone man said, his voice almost too low to hear, grating from between his stone teeth.
“She remembers me. Maya, say something. Say you remember.”
Her voice, in contrast to the stone man’s, sounded shrill and high, sharp-edged and brittle. “I remember you. You, not him.”
“You don’t remember him? You don’t remember Coram?”
“She’s not fully back,” the stone man said. “If that stuff blots out part of her mind, her memories—Philos, don’t go near her yet, she may not be safe.”
Maya narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m safe. Philos is safe from me.”
“He is? When less than an hour ago you attac
ked him?”
“I…” She shook her head, trying to clear the haze, but all that happened was that it swam across everything, blurring the memories she already had, blurring even Philos’s name so it became a sound with no meaning. “I…attacked…?” The word sounded right. That was what she did, she attacked, she chased, she killed. She didn’t stand and talk with the shifters who were supposed to be her victims.
The chimes rang up into her head. Red mist thickened behind her eyes. What was she doing? That man…she remembered his scent, she’d been sent after him to kill him but she hadn’t succeeded, she’d failed. If she did it now…
Beyond the haze, shouts rose.
“Philos, look out!”
“Damn it, no, I’m not losing her again!” And then hands on her arms, holding her hard. “Maya, you know who I am! Stay with me, stay with me.”
It was the touch that did it. All the rest of her memories crashed upon her, sending the haze of madness streaming away into nothing. She remembered him, she remembered it all.
But his touch didn’t just bring the memories. It brought the pain. He was holding her, staring at her, urgency in his hands and face, just as if he loved her. But he didn’t love her. It had all been a horrible, humiliating mistake—his, for not being careful, for not warning her; hers, for letting herself fall so easily.
She tried to jerk herself free of his grip, but he hung on, muscles standing out on his arms with the effort of fighting her maenad strength. “Maya, listen to me. You remember me—”
“Let me go.”
“Maya—”
“I remember you. I remember everything. Everything, do you hear me? Now let me go.”
She wrenched backwards as his grip slackened, stepped free and stood alone.
“You remember—”
“Everything. Yes.” For an instant the bloody mist rose before her again, but she set her jaw and forced herself to see through it, forced it to clear. “I remember you told me you loved me, but you lied.”
“Maya—”
“Oh, enough.” She felt a snarl rise, fought it down. I won’t let this control me. I will be mistress of myself. “There’s nothing you can say, Philos. Nothing I want to hear. Dawn is coming, and we have a war to fight.”
Coram had come up behind Philos. He’d part-shifted, and looked at her with human eyes. “You’re still in maenad form, and you’re going to help us fight our war?”
She glared at him, seeing him with something like double vision, the huge stone-shifter, hated and unclean, and Coram, whom she’d come to respect, almost like. “It seems I have more control than I thought.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “So it seems. Will you fly back with us, then, Maya?”
This time she did snarl, instinct taking over at the idea of touching a shifter, an enemy, a runaway. Philos jumped back at the sound, and stone surged through Coram’s face, leaving him fully shifted, invulnerable. They were that afraid of her, still. Once, that would have been a source of joy. Now, though…
Pain threatened to rise to drown her. It hadn’t been real. She’d thought he loved her and it had never been real. But she was in her maenad form, and the pain turned halfway to steel, stiffening her all through, changing any weakening emotions to more strength, more power.
“I’ll run,” she said.
Chapter Eighteen
It was still night as they approached the outer wall of the temple, but Maya’s maenad-enhanced senses caught the slight change at the very edge of the sky, the almost-scent that told her dawn was on its way. As the little band of people drew close to the shadow cast by the wall, she breathed in all the other assorted scents of the night, tipped her head to catch the tiny sounds all around them, let them make sense in her mind. One pair of guards was around the other side of the temple compound, the other pair was close by and coming nearer.
Maya beckoned, and Coram and Leos came up on either side of her. She pointed in the direction from which the nearer guards would come, and the moment they appeared Coram and Leos struck.
The guards went down. Sufi and Iraus dashed out from the shadows and within moments they were bound and gagged, dragged into the darkness at the foot of the wall. Maya’s nostrils caught a trace of blood, a bright spiral of scent in the air, from where Leos’s claws had broken skin or where the rope had scraped too tight. Involuntarily, her lips opened to drag the scent into her lungs, her fingers stiffened.
No. She fought the instincts driving through her body, clamped her mouth shut, refusing to acknowledge the taste that had touched her tongue, the desire it had awakened. No. This is not what I am.
She listened again. The other guards had rounded the far side of the temple wall. She could hear the slow, muffled tread of their feet coming closer. She waited, Coram and Leos both tensed, watching her, and just at the right moment gave them the signal.
It happened as smoothly as the first time, and with scarcely a sound, their way into the temple became clear.
Sufi and Iraus left the unconscious bodies of the guards at the bottom of the wall. Aera bent over them briefly, touched a pulse, then straightened and nodded to Sufi. He shifted fast and silently, then his roof-rat form flowed up and over the temple wall, the light stripes of his tail gleaming under the moonlight. The silence stretched out for a minute before his distinct, high chirp came to them.
Leos followed him, taking one swift, smooth leap that carried him halfway up the wall. For a moment it seemed his claws would lose purchase and he’d come slithering back down, but then the pale silhouette of his body heaved, scrabbled, and he was over.
When Coram had changed shape he’d done so slowly, to avoid any betraying rustle of stone on stone. He spread his wings, also slowly, and leapt upwards with a single downbeat, Aera in his arms, her arms tight about his neck. After several long moments he returned, to make the journey for, in turn, Venli, Iraus, Maya and Philos.
Maya tensed herself to bear the stony touch on her skin, fought the instinct that bade her attack the shifter, shriek a warning to her pack. Madness or not, maenad or not, I’ve chosen this side.
Coram let her down, and she dropped to the floor of the courtyard she’d spent half her life in. The very smell came back to her, captured sharply by her maenad senses, incense and spice and old lamp oil. Of course, why would anything have changed in less than a month? Her whole world had changed, but the priests’—and the other maenads’—hadn’t.
Coram let Philos down with a quiet thump next to her. For an instant it was his smell that touched her nostrils, after even such a short time as achingly familiar as the smell of the temple. Pain made her momentarily breathless and she stepped farther away. Then the power of the madness snatched up the shards of pain, turning them to molten metal in her veins, firing her with purpose.
Somewhere remained the cold thought, like lead within her. When it’s over, when the power leaves me, I will have nothing left but the pain…
But she need not think about that now. She need only think about the task she had to do, she need only think about the quickest, quietest way of getting Iraus through to the highest place in the temple.
She beckoned the others and they crept round the outer wall, keeping to its shadow. Sufi stayed in his rat form, but Leos and Coram had both changed back. All of them except Sufi, silent as a tiny shadow, seemed far too loud to Maya’s ears. Their feet scuffed on the ground, their breathing whispered through the air. She wanted to turn on them, snarling with bared teeth, frighten them into silence. She wanted, too, to shriek an alarm. Outsiders, outsiders in the temple, in our own sacred space. She did neither.
They went past the entrance to the maenads’ underground cave. For a moment Maya’s feet stuttered on the stone. I belong there. My pack. My pack. But the door was shut, and she tightened her muscles—she could not clench her sharpened teeth for fear of cutting herself—and walked past.
They’d reached the place where it was the shortest distance between the outer wall and the temple. Maya looke
d through the shadows with her sharpened eyes—I’d forgotten what this was like, to see so clearly even in the dark—saw nothing move, and beckoned the others quickly across the open space.
From here it was only a little distance to one of the small entrances to the main temple. The door was locked, of course, but the lock broke easily, with no more than a muffled crack, under Coram’s shifted hand.
They went through into almost complete darkness. Maya could see, as could Sufi, by the way he went looping along the short corridor and up the spiral stairs in front of them, but behind her she caught the others’ breaths of dismay, the almost-silent stumbling of their feet. She reached back a hand and found Aera’s, and linked like that, they made their way up turn after turn of the staircase that wound around the shaft through the centre of the temple.
Aera’s hand trembled within Maya’s, and through the bright, sharp-edged barrier of her maenad state, she remembered that Aera had not come here for five years, and last time she’d been shut in the labyrinth and left to die.
The staircase opened out into moonlight, bright after the darkness within the temple. The temple’s flat roof stetched out around them. Maya swept another look round, but they were safe. There’d been no guards posted up here, either. There was nothing but the flat, unwalled roof, and the dark square that was the centre shaft. It descended throughout the temple, then penetrated farther into the earth beneath, becoming a well so deep it could have been endless.
She let go of Aera’s hand, and between her and the head of the stairs the others dropped hands, too, and relaxed—just a little.
“It’s safe to talk,” Aera said to them, her voice very low. “When the sun comes up we must make sure to keep down—if anyone farther out in the courtyard looks up they’ll be able to see us if we’re any higher than kneeling.”
Before she was halfway through the sentence her words blurred, became sound without meaning. A wave of confusion rose to engulf Maya. Whom had she pursued up here, to kill in the sight of the cold moon? They all smelled like criminals, runaways, those whom the god wanted as victims, but she couldn’t think, she couldn’t remember how she’d ended up here, without her pack, with so many unclean ones…
Blood of the Volcano: Sequal to Heart of the Volcano Page 20
