Into the Dark Lands
Page 22
He held her, his fingers trailing through her hair. After a time, he began to walk back to the road. She had fallen asleep.
How . . . human. How fragile.
“Sarillorn.”
Erin looked up. For three days she’d seen nothing but the backs or profiles of soldiers in the darkness. No one spoke to her; even those that offered her food did so in stiff-lipped silence. She wondered, often, what Belfas was doing, but was glad that he was not present to share the march; bad enough to have failed her friends in the village.
By the third day, she was almost willing to help with the injured men, but no one in the army would acknowledge her—no one but him.
“You travel well.”
She nodded. She wanted desperately to know where she was being taken, and what awaited her, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a reply.
“Sarillorn, are you troubled?”
Troubled? Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth, whether to laugh or cry, not even she was sure. Her jaw clamped shut and she looked away.
Why does he have to look so human? For it was hard to look at him; hard to see what in any other eyes would have been curiosity, even gentle curiosity, and remember whose eyes they were.
“Do you mind if I walk with you?”
She heard his words, looked up at him again, and said, “Yes.”
“Ah.”
And he was gone.
It wasn’t a reaction she’d expected. Nothing he did was predictable. She tried to tell herself that she was glad of her isolation as she continued to march toward dawn.
“Sarillorn.”
A shadow cut the glow of torchlight as it lay upon the ground. Erin looked up, surprised. The First Servant stood before her, a small tray in his hands. In silent grace he placed it down before her and stood.
“You—you don’t normally bring me food.”
She thought she could see a hint of a smile in the shadows of his lips.
“No.” He took a step forward. “I do not usually . . . serve another.”
Hands shaking, she reached for the knife on the tray. Her eyes widened slightly.
“The army is eating better than it has been.”
“Not the army, Sarillorn. Would it trouble you if I remained?”
She closed her eyes, seeing for a moment the silent, voiceless backs of the soldiers.
“No,” she said, but softly.
She ate while he watched.
“Would you—would you like to—” She gestured at the plate.
“No.” After a moment, he took a seat beside her. “It is not yet time for me to feed.”
A hint of a smile again. The food turned to ash in her mouth and she set the knife to one side. She wanted to tell him to leave, to go, to kill her—to do something that made any sense.
“Sarillorn?”
“Why do you keep coming to me?” Her hands were clenched and shaking, but she kept them at her side. “Why do you bring me this—” She waved at the food.
“It is better than the food you have been eating, and you have grown weaker this past week.”
She hadn’t seen him for a week; it was too much to hope that he hadn’t seen her, either.
“Why does that make any difference?”
Why? His eyes grew remote and dark, as if the shadow that he would not wear in front of her dwelled entirely within them.
“Why do you choose to look like—like that?”
“Would you prefer the darkness? Do you desire the shadow?” His fingers began to pale into gray as his eyes flashed red.
“Don’t—that doesn’t answer my question. Why are you doing this?”
The emerald green of her eyes flashed, not with magic but with mortal emotion. And it would be easy to gutter them. Fingers became claws. Easy. Claws became nails. His hands fell, once again under a mortal seeming.
“Why, Sarillorn?” He stood and began to walk away. “I do not know.”
She did not know what it cost him to say it; she heard only the words that drifted from his retreating back. But the words were enough to leave her staring helplessly into the small fire.
He came to her the next night, again bearing his gift of food. It was venison, surrounded by greens—fresh and lightly cooked.
“Would it trouble you if I remained?”
“No.” She took the food from his hands, setting it aside for the moment, although she was hungry.
“Servant,” she began, her voice almost formal.
“Stefanos,” he said quietly. “Although I am often called ‘First’ as well.”
Whatever she had hoped to say vanished. “You—”
“If it makes you uncomfortable, do not call me anything.”
Fire and food were the only two things that Erin could focus her attention on. She chose the food.
As she ate in silence, he watched her. Frustration was not a thing he was familiar with, but now he felt it keenly. Somehow, in a way that he could not understand, he had once again said or done the wrong thing.
The third night that he brought her dinner, she once again accepted it. Chicken this time, with corn and peas. She shook her head, wondering how on Earth he had found such food; to the best of her knowledge they had not come through any villages. She smiled almost hesitantly as she began to eat.
“Would it trouble you if I remained?”
“No,” she replied, around a mouthful of chicken.
He took his accustomed seat to her left, but said nothing.
“Do you want any of this?”
“No,” he answered gravely. “I do not normally eat this mortal fare.”
“You should try it.” She stopped, trying to remember if she had ever seen the Lady of Elliath eat anything. Her memory wasn’t up to it. She doubted if anyone’s was—with the possible exception of Latham or Belfas.
Stefanos watched as the fork fell slowly away from her mouth. He saw her face lengthen and felt his hand clenching once again into a fist. This time he felt he knew what he had done.
“Sarillorn,” he said, almost quickly, “if you wish, I will try what you are eating.”
She started and then looked up. “Pardon?”
“I will have some—chicken?”
The plate stared up at her as if it had become a living entity. Very slowly she cut a piece of her dinner and handed him her fork. Her hands were trembling.
He looked at it, his expression no less grave than it was when he asked if he might remain each evening. Then he took it and raised it to his mouth.
Erin watched as he chewed, each movement precise and almost meticulously timed. She counted to five and then watched him swallow.
He turned to meet her wide stare.
“It is—interesting,” he said, still grave. “Perhaps I will join you in more of this—” He gave a controlled gesture. “—at another time.”
Erin laughed.
The sound seemed to come from everywhere, enclosing him as her light had once done.
“You, you’re the most powerful force the Enemy has—and you’ve never lifted a fork!”
He was torn then, torn between pleasure at this strange laugh and anger at being the cause of it. No mortal had ever laughed at him before.
But unlike other laughter, this held a sense of wonder in it. It puzzled him; he listened.
“Tomorrow,” Erin said, a smile lingering, “we can try vegetables.”
She began to laugh anew, but he did not ask why.
In the month that followed, he kept his word. He brought dinner and joined her in the eating of it. She showed him how to look “normal”—as she put it—while chewing and swallowing and how to make proper use of a knife and fork. When she laughed, she told him of her childhood, of how she, too, had needed to be civilized into eating like an adult.
In fact, as the time wore on, she talked of other things: her lessons in the drill circle, her life with Katalaan, or her attempts, failed, at the use of the longbow. But she did not talk of the war, of
battle, or of the losses she had suffered there. Likewise, he did not talk of battle, or his empire, or the Dark Heart.
He learned of things human, things mundane, and she of the stretch of infinity that lay beyond the body of the Twin Hearts.
Only one thing marred the strange friendship that they struggled to share: She asked him, once, if he might let her go. And he answered.
But even then, when he came, Erin could force herself to forget that he was a Servant; she could look at the human façade that he presented, to speak and laugh with it.
When he was not there, she would think of the Lady and wonder whether or not the Lady had taken the time to learn about the things that the First of Malthan did: human things, trivial, common, and precious.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a hope to be found in the time that he spent with her; maybe there was a light, as the Lady had once said, in the darkness.
Erin waited as the day faded. It was one month into her travels; two weeks from the Rennath that the Servant had once talked of so proudly. She knew she was to be delivered there, but not to what. Nor did she care to question her only companion about it; she wanted, in some way, to preserve the illusion of his humanity.
She watched as the torches were lit, listened as the night came down. The Servant did not arrive. She felt an odd disappointment then and wondered at it as she made ready to march. Twice she scanned the ranks of the men before and behind her, but no hint of the Servant’s shadowy presence was evident.
Maybe he would join her on the walk.
But he did not. And as she looked around at the tense, silent legion of men, she felt her heart sink.
Don’t be silly, Erin, she told herself as she shivered. Just because he doesn’t come for one night doesn’t mean that he’s—he’s . . .
No. The month of evenings shattered into painful, brittle fragments.
Her hands folded into themselves and grew taut; the edge of her nails bit into her skin. Before a scream cut the silence, she knew what he must be doing, and when the cry came she knew where.
No!
The ranks buzzed with a sudden relief; the tension that she’d been peripherally aware of faded into grim acceptance in everyone present—everyone but Erin.
No man made move to stop her as she pushed by them, her sense of direction and place honed by blood-power. Only three present could see how she smoldered with white-light in the darkness and they also let her pass, satisfied that at last she would meet the death due to her.
Your word, Erin. Remember you gave him your word not to break the binding. She kept her flame contained, but barely, barely. She flew across the rocky terrain, her footing sure for the first time in weeks. Her eyes were blazing with the power that she had vowed not to release. No—I only promised not to try to escape with it.
She saw him, bent over a body that shuddered in a silence near death.
He saw her, a living pillar of fire that cut through the night.
Their eyes met, red and green, over the distance that Erin had not yet covered.
She began to walk slowly, hands at her side. The man beneath the Servant gurgled once as the grip that clenched his face went slack. Erin could see the glinting white of the man’s eyes before they rolled shut.
Just as slowly as she approached, the Servant assumed his full height, as if they moved to the beat of the Twin Hearts. His eyes narrowed at the brilliance she held within; he could not make out the details of her face. Nor could she clearly see his; even to the whiteness of her power he was shadowed and gray. There was nothing remotely human about him.
It was Erin who spoke first. She was shining. “Don’t do this.” She lifted one hand, palm up. In it, a haze of white stirred.
“Sarillorn, I hoped to spare you this.” He raised his own hand, red claws that glowed gently. “But this is what I am.”
She shook her head once, side to side, the movement slow and deliberate.
He offered her a smile he knew she could not see. “Lady, while I might force you to do other than you desire, I know I could not force you to be other than what you are—except in death. This—” He gestured at the man on the ground. “—is part of what I am. You have only two choices. Accept it, or try to banish me with the fire you hold, as all others of your lines would do.”
Again she shook her head, but this time the motion was sharp.
“I gave you my word.”
His smile dimmed. “The word of a Lernari. Yes. And I accepted.” From the corner of his eye, he could see the man inch his way across the dirt toward Erin. Reaching down, he lifted the man up by the neck, dangling him to one side as he continued to watch the Sarillorn of Elliath. He knew that this glowing, dangerous light was the light that his army had met on the fields.
She flinched and took a few steps forward.
“Your word . . . Then you have only one choice.” He readied his own ward to counter her attack. But it felt wrong to him.
“No.” Quickly, lightly, she walked over to where he stood. “I have others.”
He gestured briefly with his free hand and was surrounded by a dark red halo. Her face, closer and clearer, was odd; he saw a trace of hesitation in it, fear in the eyes that would not waver from his. But it was not the fear he was accustomed to seeing, for it was not directed at him.
“Are you frightened, Sarillorn?” His voice was calm; he might have been asking her what a word meant, or a gesture.
“Yes.”
Her answer surprised him with its stark simplicity. He looked down at her for a time before replying.
“You have nothing to fear from me. It is not your life that I have chosen this night.” He knew what she would say; she did not disappoint him.
“It isn’t for my life that I fear.”
“This one’s?” He held up his victim.
Again she surprised him, reaching into herself for an answer that she could never have given him at any other time.
"No.”
“Then what?”
“I’m afraid that I won’t be able to stop you.” She said each syllable slowly.
A touch of frustration showed in the furrow of his brow—and this, although his brow was ash-gray and shadowed, was also familiar to her.
"Sarillorn, this man is a soldier. Many must have died trying to kill him. Had you won, he would no doubt be dead at the hands of your people. How is my action different?”
How? “I am not afraid of his death. Only the manner of it.”
“What does it matter? In the end the result is the same.”
Those claws had held cutlery. She had shown him how to do it. “No.”
"And if I chose to break his neck instead?”
She shook her head.
"Sarillorn?”
Softly, she repeated, “I’m only afraid that I will not be able to stop you.” Then, reaching out, she touched the arm that held the man.
Both Erin and the Servant flinched at the same instant that red met white. The air crackled sharply. Neither recoiled.
I am afraid, she said, silently, of hope.
Then this is your chance, Erin. Let him feed. Get rid of any hope permanently. Let him do what he has done for millennia; watch it, feel it, and see it. Accept the truth of what he says.
I am afraid, she replied, of the death of hope.
Or the true birth of it? For what is the Enemy if you can stop him? What are you really afraid of?
I’m afraid that I will be able to stop him.
She cringed at the mental dialogue, her eyes going through the Servant. Seeing, beyond the shadow, the emergence of a man.
“But I have to try.”
“Sarillorn? ”
“Stefanos.”
The shadow flickered as the name slowly drifted away on the night air.
“I cannot force you to be other than what you are. But nonetheless, I ask it of you.”
“You are very formal tonight, little Sarillorn. It is—unusual.” His hunger was forgotten for a moment.
He raised his free hand and brought it to rest a hair’s breadth from her chin.
“I do not believe that you have been entirely honest with me.”
She said nothing.
“Or perhaps with yourself; I know little of humanity’s more subtle emotion. You are afraid, yes, but it is not—” It was not a fear that roused his ancient hunger, not a fear she offered to him. He had never felt its like.
Gently she touched the hand that clutched the man’s neck. As she did, she met the nameless man’s eyes. She felt his call and let her hands cup his sweaty face. “Please, Stefanos. Please put hunger aside for now.”
Then she went out, washing over the terror and agony that wracked the body of the Servant’s victim. Dimly she heard laughter, cold and chill, permeating the air around her. It didn’t matter; fingers of her comfort picked up the fragments of a mind almost lost to the nightwalker’s hunger, pulling them together and binding them beneath a fragile peace, a fragile sleep.
And when she looked up, she saw that the soldier lay stretched out along the cold ground. A few feet away the Servant stood, arms crossed, as he watched her.
She rose, the light of her power dimmed by her effort.
She was weary, too weary to be surprised or afraid. She walked over to the Servant, to Stefanos, a sad, bitter smile touching her lips and eyes. She wanted to weep and hated herself for the desire.
He reached out to catch her hands and felt the heat that they still radiated.
“Why?” she whispered, making no move to free herself.
He touched her face, his expression distant and grim.
He would not answer that question—not for her, and never for himself.
“Come, Sarillorn. You have far to walk this night.”