When Bevn joined Gabrielle on the sand below, the ground rolled unsteadily beneath his feet. The Lûk laughed among themselves as he staggered away to relieve himself off the edge of the plateau.
When he returned, the Lûk had laid out items for a makeshift camp and were lashing the tips of four tall spears together, probably for some kind of tent, Bevn guessed. They had marked the perimeter of the camp with a great double circle scribed in the sand, with various symbols scribbled in the rim.
Jek was sitting beside Gabrielle talking, as if he had nothing better to do. Gabrielle didn’t even notice Bevn’s return, she was holding the captain’s left arm and tracing the lines of his tattoos as Jek explained their significance. Bevn grew jealous. Gabrielle was his woman, not theirs. They had no rights to her.
“What about supper?” Bevn demanded.
Jek looked up mildly. “Food? We have eaten today.”
“I need more than those mingy scraps you gave us during the ride,” Bevn declared.
“With your little body? I think not.” His jibe had a sinister undertone, as if the Lûk captain might lose his patience.
“But I must have supper. I always have supper!”
Jek just turned away and looked out over the desert. “How much food do you see out there?”
“Don’t you eat more than once a day?” Bevn cried out, refusing to let them get away with their bad treatment of him. He couldn’t believe the big men weren’t hungry. Jek had food, he knew it. The Lûk were just hiding it from him and Gabrielle.
Jek rose and regarded Bevn with a hard stare. “It seems that we do not have the luxuries you are accustomed to, Bevynn of Eyri. Whatever the Black paid us, it was not for keeping you in the manner of a spoiled bogadin. When you travel with us, you live like we do. If you don’t like it, you can go and walk upon the wildfire.”
The man was hard, the muscles stood out in his arms like tree roots. The Kingsrim did not seem to affect him at all, but then Bevn supposed he had no Eyrian blood—none at all. He was truly a savage.
Bevn clamped his jaw shut and ground his teeth, but said nothing more. He whirled and strode away.
Two crew-members were strolling away from the camp with some tools, two shield-like boards, some short spears and a big pale sack. Bevn trotted after them.
“Where are you going?” he asked, when he’d caught up.
The two Lûk carried on walking. When he asked again, the nearest one, Kal, answered reluctantly. “To our fortune find. Big lode of jeweldust at the edge of the grey, as we in came.”
Digging for treasure! Now that was something worth doing.
“Can I watch? Please can I watch?”
Kal shot a glance to the second one. “Eitan?” The man just shrugged.
“All right, but don’t in our way get,” Kal warned. “This is delicate work. What we find belongs to the cutter.”
“I’ll come with you as well,” said Gabrielle, suddenly there at his side. “If the men don’t mind.”
She had come after him! She preferred him to the captain, but when he glanced her way he wasn’t so sure it was devotion that caused her eyes to glint. She looked as dangerous as ever. Maybe Jek had sent her, to keep him out of trouble. “I’ll be fine,” he said curtly.
“So you think, but you never know when you need to be careful.” She smiled disarmingly, and Bevn decided she must have meant it in a nice way. He contented himself with having a shapely rump to watch. Besides, Gabrielle wore a tight leather halter-top. The Lûk men didn’t seem to notice her body the way Bevn did. They probably preferred women to be craggy, grey and all covered with tattoos, the ignorant idiots. They just strode on with an even pace, their eyes on the feathered edge of the plateau where the grey ended.
“What do you look for?” Bevn asked.
“Depends,” answered Kal. He pointed to a section where the lip had collapsed and spilled chunks of rock onto the soft angled skirt of silver sand. “When wildfire on certain minerals ignites it forces them new forms to take. Clusters like that can blasting oil within them have. Blackballs on the surface means there’s cracklesalt nearby, which is many a hair in our land worth, and even more if trade to the Hunters open is. Then there’s krong, spring-rock, the red ore, which the miners by Clankorin so much like, but it’s a long way such a heavy harvest to take and it’s hardly worth taking it anymore, with the great shaft of it what opened was when the Writhe through the Winterblades came. Maybe we bluemitre find, which our wine-makers in Sess will be happy about. The Lakelanders want singing beads to have, they want always singing beads. Who knows what they with them do. Right now hoping I to a lode of purple mishkr find. You just do not get a sealant better than purple mishkr, because it is light-shedding as well as like glue sticking. There is a great need for it in Rek and Jho while they on rebuilding the woven road work.”
Bevn didn’t understand much of what Kal said, but he could work out the basic tools they carried. The shield-like boards still puzzled him. They were glittery green and polished, and they looked hard and too narrow and long to be useful shields.
“What are the green things for?”
“What, these? Jojotin. Bugboards. We can walk out on the wildfire a short way if we need to. Now hold your tongue and let us our work to do.”
Bevn dropped back a few steps from the rude Lûk. What were the boards made of, that they were resistant to the wildfire? Probably the same shiny green substance that was used on the running-boards of the cutter.
They walked quite a way, and the ridge of grey soil rose until they were on a narrow crusty finger pointing out over the silver desert below. Kal told Bevn and Gabrielle to wait where they stood because it looked too unstable ahead. Gabrielle sat obediently, and told Bevn to do the same, but he just pretended he hadn’t heard her. The two Lûk men edged forward, using their spears to balance upon as they leant over the rim of the ridge.
“Mishkr!” shouted Eitan, beckoning to his companion. “You were right, it is a good one.”
Kal went cautiously to where Eitan kneeled. He gripped Eitan’s ankles, which allowed the bigger man to lie on his stomach and reach over the lip. Eitan pulled the pale sack close then scooped something into it. He reached down again and scooped another load into the sack, but Bevn couldn’t see what it was. He’d never heard of mishkr before.
He moved to take a closer look. Gabrielle lunged to catch his ankles, but he’d expected her to do that. He jumped and she missed. He ran up to the Lûk men and set his foot close to the rim to see around Eitan’s back.
Kal turned around. “No! Get back!” he cried.
There was a sharp crack, and the ground gave way under Bevn’s feet. He kicked back and scrabbled to get away from the collapsing bank. A cloud of gritty dust billowed past his knees. Slabs of grey crust tumbled onto the slope below, throwing silver sand outward as they thumped down. A whole section of the ridge gave way.
“Boh, Eitan, boh!” cried Kal. He was lying on his stomach at the edge of a hollow little cliff, his arms outstretched. But his hands were empty.
Amidst the jumbled scree, the fallen Lûk man fought, a writhing fury of grey arms and patterned trouser legs and a bright red headscarf. He was too deep in the silver sand, deep in the wildfire, and he fought with himself.
Bevn watched, horrified but fascinated, as the magic fed upon the living man’s flesh. Chaos.
The Lûk tried to beat at his back with his hands, and he screamed. The sand shifted around him as if it consisted of motes and he was a Shadowcaster summoning power to himself. The silver essence swarmed toward him, collecting upon his chest, and his hands became like glistening mercury balls as he tried to slap the advancing wildfire away. His fingers smoked and his palms turned white then erupted with rampant growth, swelling, changing—growing fat and pincer-like. His head bulged under the red headscarf, the whitening skin spread outward in a ring from his temples, making his head flat and wide, and beastly. His eyes were stretched into slits under the deepening forehead. His sc
reams were cut off as his chin sank into his chest. He leant forward as his back became elongated, curving and curving until his awful pincered hands pushed into the sand. The headscarf fell off, revealing a scalp that was hard, shiny-white and hairless. His knees burst through his trousers—sharp, barbed knees.
He shrieked, a horribly alien sound that sent a chill up Bevn’s spine, then the Lûk-that-was-not-a-Lûk crouched down on all fours as if readying himself to spring. His mouth was lipless and full of small serrated teeth.
Kal held his spear high as if intending to kill the creature, but he seemed incapable of loosing the deadly weapon. He shook all over, and his face was the colour of ruddy clay. A horn blew back at the camp. They must have seen the rising dust and heard the screams. They would be coming.
The creature watched Kal. It rocked backward and forward on all fours, uncertain. The tatters of patterned trousers still hung from its waist. The inked symbols of the Lûk still showed in some places on its hardened skin, but it would never be a man again—it was a truly fearsome beast. The transformation was incredible.
“Did you see that?” Bevn whispered to Gabrielle. “The freak grew crab arms! The wildfire is awesome!”
The creature moved. The spear flew from Kal’s hand.
But he had not thrown it at the monster. The tipped shaft whistled through the air, spinning directly at Bevn’s chest. His legs went weak and wouldn’t respond. The leading point was like a sword, the edges of the oval circle as sharp as a blade. He could see down the throat of the hollow spear, the throat that would drink his blood.
Oh father I’m going to die!
Gabrielle slammed into his shoulder, knocking him aside, but the spear was faster. It pierced his shirt, and sliced his arm, throwing him to his left and pinning his shirt to ground where he fell. He was aware of the Lûk man approaching, fast.
“That was my brother!” Kal screamed as he leapt for Bevn’s throat.
Gabrielle moved in a blur.
Then the spear shivered, once. Pain ripped through his arm. A gurgling sound came from above him, and something warm rained upon his cheek. Bevn turned his head. The world began to swirl. A booted foot was hooked around the shaft of the spear, just above his arm. At the far end of the spear, the Lûk man hung, his thick arms slack, his head forced back. His neck gushed blood. He had been impaled on the other end of the twin-tipped spear. Gabrielle stepped up to the Lûk quickly, gripped his head and shoulder, and pushed him off the spear. The pain in Bevn’s arm flared as the spear moved against his wound, and he cried out.
Gabrielle ignored him as she set the Lûk gently down onto the dirt. Blood pumped all over him.
“Shit-oh-shit-oh-shit!” Gabrielle cursed. “He’s dead. We don’t need this now. We don’t need this!”
She spun on Bevn, gripped the spear and heaved it out of his arm. Bevn screamed.
“Get up!” she shouted at him. “We have to run!”
Bevn didn’t understand what she was saying. He was just filled with a sickening bright fire of agony. She had pulled the spear out! Was there a hole in his arm? Had it gone right through? He rolled his eyes at the wound beside his face, and saw the blood spreading through his torn shirt.
“Get up!” Gabrielle screamed. “They won’t understand this! Get up!”
Bevn shook. He couldn’t move. He was bleeding!
Gabrielle grasped his shirt by the collar, and hauled him to his feet.
“Now run!” she ordered, and sprang away with the spear.
Bevn reeled. There was blood on his arm—his own blood, his precious royal blood—and it was leaking out of his body. Dizziness rushed through him. He staggered back, one step then two. He remembered the collapsed ground, and took a last quick step to regain his balance. But there wasn’t another step of ridge-top to take.
He toppled off the edge. A little cry escaped from his lips.
As he hit the slope, he managed to grasp onto his crown. I won’t be changed by the wildfire, the Kingsrim will save me, please let its magic save me, please don’t let me die! He clutched with dumb terror to his crown as he rolled toes-over-nose down the slope. All he could think about was that horrible creature waiting for him somewhere down on the sand, and the way the silverness had rushed toward the Lûk man, searching out his lifeblood, dancing on his body until there was nothing left of what he had been before the change.
Sand rammed its way down his shirt, into his boots, into his clenched teeth.
Bevn rolled out of the soft slope and onto the hard-packed desert floor. He came to a sudden stop against something hard, face down. His heart thundered in his ears. For a while he didn’t even feel the pain in his left arm, he just waited, breathless, for something to happen. He could feel the metallic roughness of the silver sand against his lips. Something hissed beside his wounded arm.
Slowly he righted himself.
The air shimmered with disturbed grit, but it was a brownish golden colour, not the silver he’d expected. He spat out the sand that had crept into his mouth—dull gold mud. A horn sounded off to the left, drawing near. There were shouted words and commands, unintelligible foreign words. The Lûk were coming.
Gabrielle was standing alone on the crest of the ridge, gripping the long spear, staring down at him.
Bevn stood and brushed himself clean. The dust and grit fell off his clothes, fading into the soft-coloured sand at his feet. The wildfire upon which he stood had been transformed, as if he was the centre of a small place of calm, a few paces wide. He took a step, and the circle moved with him. The Kingsrim did something to the chaos magic in the soil! It altered the silver essence, but only close by. A golden haze surrounded him, as if the sun shone on his crown and reflected light into a mist. Points of gold winked out of sight at the edge of his halo where they touched the last of the airborne silver grit. Then the haze cleared and the disturbance around him faded away.
He could stand in the wildfire! He didn’t need the Lûk and their stupid spider-ship. He could run away across the desert, and they couldn’t follow him now, not without wind.
Gabrielle was still on the ridge above. The Lûk burst into sight over the ridge top. They were almost upon her, and they would kill her for what she had done. So what? It wasn’t his problem. The Lûk had spears and he knew they could throw them hard. He didn’t have time to wait for the woman. He had to get out of range himself. He didn’t need her. Besides, she was a Shadowcaster, she knew how to fight. But he knew he was lying to himself. She hadn’t drawn any Dark essence to her hands—he didn’t think there was any Dark essence out here in the desert. And, although she could fight, her style of fighting relied on stealth. There she was, in plain view, one woman against five angry men, strong angry Lûk men with grey skin like tough stony hide. The leading Lûk howled with rage—Jek, the captain. He had seen the body at her feet, and the blood splashed across her chest.
Bevn paused. He would be leaving her to her death.
Well, he hadn’t asked her to come. He couldn’t help it that she wasn’t a king and didn’t have a magical crown. A while ago she’d said she was only with him because she’d been promised gold by the wizard. She was a greedy trollop, that’s all she was.
Then why did he feel so wrong when he wanted to abandon her? He couldn’t understand his feelings. She shouldn’t matter. He ignored the uneasiness in his thoughts and began to run away, into the desert, but he just had to see what was going to happen.
Gabrielle dropped her spear and bent down beside the dead Lûk. She fretted with something at her feet. Why wasn’t she standing ready to fight? Bevn slowed to a trot, trying to keep an eye on both the ground ahead and Gabrielle behind. Just as the Lûk threw the first of their spears, Gabrielle jumped over the edge of the cliff. She had two green plates upon her feet. The bugboards! Bevn had forgotten about the sand-shoes the Lûk scouts had carried. Gabrielle landed hard on the slope, but kept her balance. The boards were shiny and curved underneath, and the silver sand sprayed out to each side as she
slid down the slope. She stumbled at the base of the slope and careened on the hardpacked silver on one foot for a while, then regained her balance as she slewed to a stop. She looked over her shoulder and began to scamper toward him, moving the boards awkwardly like oversized snowshoes.
A spear thudded into the ground beside her. The Lûk had gathered in a cluster on the ridge. Gabrielle turned and dodged from side to side, reading the trajectory of each spear before it reached her. The Lûk were throwing from too far away to be effective. As soon as the barrage stopped, Gabrielle turned to Bevn again.
“Now wait for me, you little bastard! I can throw my knives from this distance.”
She plucked the last spear from the ground and used it to punt herself forward across the sand. She glanced nervously over her shoulder as she moved, but the Lûk had used the few spears they had brought with them, and nothing came down upon her.
Gabrielle reached the perimeter of the Kingsrim’s protection, where the silver sand was altered. She slid right up to him before daring to test the sand with her leather boot. Her sole rested on the surface, so she transferred more weight onto the sand. The boot held firm, it didn’t smoke or go white or do anything strange. Gabrielle slipped her other foot out of the strap on the top of the board, and stood wholly on the golden sand.
“Move out of my range, and the knife will be in the back of your head before the wildfire burns me.”
Her face quivered, and her nostrils flared with every breath. She was spitting mad and Bevn was worried she might reach for the knives at any moment and kill him. Gabrielle had a few reasons to be angry with him; Bevn decided not to test her mercy. After trying to find a way to carry the boards, she dropped them, probably deciding that they were too heavy. They ran together into the desert.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 23
