He felt himself flushing. Stupid to be embarrassed, for the gods’ sakes, but he wasn’t used to this, had forgotten what it felt like. Not that it ever felt like this before.
He’d nearly put his arm around her—damn the others, what do I care if they know?—but at that point she stopped dead, rigid with terror.
“Run,” she said, a breath of a word that nonetheless caught everyone’s attention, brought them all to a stop as immediate as her own. “They’re coming.”
Aera’s face, a pale blur in the dark, jerked round to look at her. “The guards?”
“The maenads.”
No one hesitated. No one asked her how she knew. They’d practised this, and although fear swept through them all, so strong Philos could feel it prickle over his skin, it sparked speed, not panic.
Leos shifted even as he turned to run, and Iraus clutched his mane and swung himself onto the lion’s back, clinging like a creeper-monkey with feet and hands. Sufi flowed into a tiny furry shape and was off in a looping motion, covering the ground impossibly fast, almost keeping pace with Leos’s huge lion-form. Venli flung her arms out and spun. Sand whirled in a cloud around her, thickening till the body within it had disappeared and there was nothing but a hanging sand-cloud that blew up into the night, blurring a patch of stars, and dissolved into the darkness.
Aera alone didn’t move, but her body was all at once a glowing beacon, sparks sizzling from her hair and falling like tiny stars on the sand. As long as she stayed in her lava form, she had nothing to fear from maenads or anyone else. She would cover the retreat.
Coram was shifting too, but slower than the animal-shifters, the stone seeming to creep over his body, his wings unfurling with agonising slowness.
Philos grabbed Maya’s arm. “Pick her up, now, now. Get her out of here—”
“I’m doing it.” Coram gritted out the words. “I—”
And, shrieking, the maenads surged out of the darkness and were on them.
Philos went down immediately, dragged under by a wave of clutching talons, feeling his head wrench back as claws fastened in his hair, smelling the smell he thought he’d forgotten, blood and sweat, sharp and thick and acrid. He heard Maya scream, heard the harsh sound of talons on stone and knew Coram had shifted, he was safe. But Maya, oh gods—
Something else screamed, a sound neither human nor animal, so wiped of sense that it was more like the sound of rending cloth than anything that could come from a living throat, and the maenad scent was wiped out by the horrible smell of burnt flesh.
Light flared into his eyes, blinding him, the scent filled his nostrils, his lungs, burning and choking. Maenad claws unclenched on his body and he scrambled up, wiping blood from his eyes.
Aera stood, terrifying, flaming in the night, her features blotted out by the mask of lava her face had become. A charred wreck of something that had been a body lay at her feet, and as he watched, another crumbled to pieces in her molten fist and dropped to scatter on the sand. The rest of the maenad pack had fallen away, clawed hands shielding their faces.
Maya was bleeding all over, in long scratches down every limb, her tunic in shreds. And she was shaking so hard she could hardly stand.
I should have protected her. I said I would.
“Maya,” he said, reaching out, but when her eyes met his they were blank with horror.
“No.” Aera’s voice leapt like flames. “Coram, take them. Now.”
Coram, fully shifted, nothing but white scrapes on his stone body showing where the maenads’ talons had tried, and failed, to get hold, scooped Maya into his arms and crouched so Philos could climb onto his back. When he did, blood smeared onto the stone, and as if the touch had forced him to a realisation of what had just happened, pain woke, shrieking, all over his body.
“The meeting place?” said Coram, his voice echoing like the sound of sea on rocks.
“The same.” Aera swept a look over the maenads where they still retreated into the shadows. “Don’t be afraid if I’m not there for some time. I won’t lead these creatures to it.”
Coram flexed his legs and leapt into the sky. The movement jolted Philos all over and he could not help a cry of pain. On Coram’s other side he heard Maya gasp too. Three gifts, and none of them as much use as Coram’s or Leos’s. None of them any use in saving her.
The night air rushed past them as Coram circled to gain height, up where the maenads, or any watcher from the city or temple, would not be able to see where he went. The air raced over Philos’s skin, numbing his wounds, but numbing his hands too. He locked them around Coram’s cold stone neck, hating his helplessness, hating that it was Coram who was saving them both.
Eventually Coram banked, starting the long glide down to the spot on the tablelands where they’d previously planned to meet.
Venli ran out of the shadows as they landed, her face in darkness but anxiety clear in her voice, in her hands as she reached out to them. “Coram, do you have them? Philos and Maya?”
“He has us both.” Philos eased himself off Coram’s back, stiff with cold, aware that the movement had pulled open a wound on his thigh and another on his shoulder.
“Are you hurt? Philos, are any of you hurt?”
“Not mortally. You?”
“We all got away in time.” A shudder made her voice tremble. “You’d never think you’d forget, but I had. I’d forgotten they were like that. So fast. People you could reason with, animals you could scare off, but the maenads…”
“There’s nothing that can withstand them.” Maya’s voice came out of the dark, and a stir of cold went through Philos, cold that had nothing to do with the frigid air they’d just flown through. He’d heard that note in her voice before, had hoped never to hear it again. But he’d been fooling himself. What did I think, that last night would take it away forever?
They’d set up supplies in a sheltered place behind a tumble of rocks near the edge of the tableland—a valuable vantage point should anyone follow them out from the city. One of the boys had lit a small fire, and there was hot water ready to wash wounds, herb oil and bandages.
Of the wounded, Maya was the worst, and she was mostly only shallowly wounded with talon-slashes. Although she might be left with marks, she would not be badly scarred. They’d all known there was danger, this was not unexpected, nor was it anywhere near as bad as it could have been, but even so, whenever Philos looked at Maya’s face, at the shocked blankness in her eyes, at the place where a snatching maenad hand had torn out a clump of hair by the roots, leaving her scalp bare and bleeding, horror, bleak and cold as storm clouds, billowed through him.
Aera came late to the camp, climbing in human form up the rocks at the edge of the tableland. Coram was on his feet the moment she reached the top, and she walked into his arms and stood a moment, her face against his shoulder. Then she turned, one hand on his arm, her face thrown into lines of shadow and orange light by the dying fire.
“I’ll not command anyone to go again into that,” she said. “If you’re willing, we’ll make another attempt later tonight. The maenads—they came from the desert, not the temple, they must have been returning from a hunt and it was our bad fortune to meet them. But in a few more hours the madness will have left them completely—am I not right, Maya?”
At the edge of the circle of firelight, her face in shadow, Maya nodded.
“But,” Aera said, “if anyone wishes to return, I’ll not argue with them. It’s one thing for those of us whose powers make us invulnerable. For you others—” She broke off. “If anyone wishes to return, or to stay here, come and tell me. There is no dishonour in it—no one sane would wish to even come close to facing the maenads again.”
She came nearer to the fire and knelt, reaching for a handful of the dried fruit they’d brought with them. “For now, we rest. Then those who wish to join me and Coram can do so, and we’ll try again.” She looked up. The firelight crept into her hair, making it blaze as if the lava had returned. “The
priests may have power at their disposal, but that temple is mine, and I plan to reclaim it.”
The others gathered around her, their faces picking up the fire-glow as if it came from Aera herself. But when Philos looked away he noticed that Maya had gone, slipping silently away into the darkness. He got up and followed her, out of the little circle of light, away into the dark over at the other side of the rocks.
She was sitting, knees to her chest, in the slight chill gleam of starlight that, away from the fire, was their only illumination. The worst of her wounds were bandaged, but bloody scratches showed through the claw-rips in her tunic. As Philos came to stand next to her, she looked up at him, and her face was as empty, as cold as the stars themselves.
“I can’t bear it,” she said.
Despair tightened his chest. “Maya, don’t. It won’t always be so hard.”
She slid her hands down to her knees, her wounds making her move stiffly. “I can’t do this. When they attacked I—I couldn’t even try to protect myself.”
He knelt beside her. “I couldn’t, either. But, Maya, it’s all right. Aera was there, and Coram—”
“And that’s enough?” She snapped a look at him. “I should be content with that? With having to be looked after like any stupid girl back in the city? When I—when before, when I was maenad too, no one would dare come near me. The only time anyone touched me was when they were fighting for their lives.” She put her face in her hands. “Like I was back there. I—oh gods, I can’t do it. I can’t go back to being—”
“Worthless? Maya, we’ve done that. You have to stop calling yourself worthless—”
She threw her hands down, a movement full of frustration, anger, grief. “Helpless. Philos, you’re not listening to me. How would you feel if it was you, if you lost your gift and all your strength and everything that makes you you?”
“Look, I know. I’ve imagined it, I understand—”
“How can you possibly understand—”
“I understand as best I can. Maya, the maenads attacked me too, and I was as helpless as you were.”
“But they were mine. My pack. I was one of them. And now I’m…” She stopped, her eyes fixed on the faint line of the horizon. “Back in the temple, if we didn’t change, if one day a maenad became old, or if her body couldn’t take the change anymore…”
Philos felt a shiver go over him. He’d never heard what happened to a maenad when she was no longer maenad, but he could already tell from Maya that she had no idea of an honourable retirement.
Maya’s voice had trailed to silence. She didn’t pick her sentence back up, but clasped her arms around her knees, staring out into the dark depths of the sky.
“What?” he said, more roughly than he meant to. “What are you thinking, Maya?”
Her voice was a faint thread of sound. “The volcano.”
He didn’t need to ask what she meant. Her voice, her face said it all.
“That’s what they do to you? When you’re no use anymore?”
“We do it.” Her voice was so thin it seemed to drift out into the dark air and disappear. “We do it ourselves. I always knew one day it would come, the time when I was no more use, when all that was left to do was give myself as a sacrifice. I just…” There were tears on her cheeks. “It was never supposed to come so soon.”
“So is that it? Is that what you want?” Violence leapt into his words. He was done with being gentle. Sitting here, listening to her talk about killing herself… “That’s all you had to live for, and now it’s gone there’s nothing else that’s worth you staying alive?”
She looked round at him, her expression startled out of blankness at the anger cracking through his voice. “Philos—”
“I love you,” he said. “Is that worth nothing? Has all this been nothing to you?”
“That’s not what I said. It’s not about you—about us.”
“You’re telling me you want to die and it’s nothing to do with us? Am I—” His anger died as fast as it had woken, just when he needed it as a defence against pain. “Can you not want to stay alive for me, Maya?”
“Oh gods, Philos, can’t you see?”
“No. No, Maya, I can’t. I—I’ve waited for this, for you, forever. If I had nothing else, you’d still be enough—”
“Would I?” Her eyes met his, almost as hard as they’d been that first time, on the beach when she’d looked at him and he’d known she’d kill him if she could. “Really? If you had nothing else, no strength, no power, if you’d lost everything that ever mattered, you’d still be content as long as you had me?”
“Yes, damn it. I’d grieve, yes, but—”
“Then you’re lucky.” The words struck him like a blow and he stared at her, anger flaring, until he saw the fresh tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m not the way you are. I’m sorry it’s not enough for me. I’m sorry I didn’t adapt the way everyone else managed to do. But you don’t see what it’s like for me. Everyone else—you, Aera, Coram—you escaped to freedom, to being able to use your gifts more, in the way you wanted. I know it’s freedom for me too, and I thought I could learn. I thought I could change and adapt like the rest of you. But this…” She got to her feet, slowly, favouring her unhurt leg. “It’s like bleeding to death. It’s like bleeding to death, and I can’t bear it.”
He didn’t follow her as she went slowly away into the dark. There was nothing for him to say, no argument he hadn’t already made. He didn’t think she’d kill herself. She was a fighter, she wouldn’t give in like that. And it would—it must—get easier for her, over the months and years as she became accustomed to no longer having her gift. But to watch her and know how much pain she was in…
Philos put his head in his hands. It’s like bleeding to death, she’d said. And watching her as she’d walked away, he knew what she meant. And he couldn’t bear it either.
Behind the rocks, soft talk died into silence. Silence, too, slid across the desert, like rising water, dampening out sound. A scant half-hour’s journey away, the city would be sleeping.
Philos slid his knife out of its sheath, tested its edge and found it still deadly sharp. He went to where they’d piled their supplies and picked up a coil of slim rope. Tough enough to climb down.
He stood, moving quietly in the dark, settled the knife in the sheath and climbed down onto the rocks that led to the desert floor.
It was several hours before Maya realised Philos had disappeared. The moon slid into the sky, huge and pale, and its light woke her from the exhausted sleep she’d fallen into.
She woke knowing she’d been stupid. Stupid, and cruel. Only a day ago she’d told him she loved him, told him nothing else mattered. And just hours after that, lost in the shock and grief of being attacked by the pack she used to lead, she’d said words that wiped out everything she’d said before, made them sound as if they’d been lies spoken out of little more than lust.
And he’d believed her. Momentary anger flickered within her—he should know, he should know she’d spoken from pain, that nothing had changed between them, that he was still worth losing it all for—then faded out. With what she’d said to him, how could he know?
She scrambled to her feet, smothering an exclamation of pain at the stiffness in her leg, the smarting of the still-raw scratches on legs and arms, and glanced at where the others lay. Some were resting, some sleeping, Leos alone sitting on guard. Then she limped over to the corner of the rocks where she’d left Philos. He would be sleeping too, or at least resting. She’d tell him—
But he wasn’t there. She wasn’t concerned at first. She waited, arms wrapped round herself against the cool night air, impatience knotting inside her. The look on his face before she’d left him…she had to take that away, had to tell him he didn’t need to be hurt.
But when after ten minutes he hadn’t appeared, she went to look for him. And, after another ten minutes, finding the whole of their area of the
tableland empty of everything but moonlight and coarse, sharp-edged grass, she went, her heart thumping, to tell the others.
“He’s gone?” In the moonlight, Aera’s face was bleached white, her dress flashing light like moving water. “When?”
“I don’t know. I last saw him some hours ago, I’m not sure.”
“What did he say?”
A flush, slow and painful, crept into Maya’s face. “I—it was me. I—said things, I hurt him.”
Aera’s face went still. “Wait. What is this? What have I not seen? What’s happening between you and Philos?”
“I…” I love him. She couldn’t say it, not in front of everyone staring at her, waiting for an answer. “I—we—”
But her flush, her hesitation, told Aera enough. “Oh gods,” the priestess said, and there was horror in her voice. “I should have kept closer watch. I—oh hell, I told him to warn me but I should never have—” She swung round to Coram. “Where do you think he’s gone? Revenge? But he couldn’t be so stupid?”
Coram was standing, his shoulders set as if he was about to shift shape. “What did you say to him, Maya?”
“I…” That was humiliating too, but she had to tell them, had to give them information that would help them save Philos from whatever danger he’d walked into. Revenge? On the priests? On—oh gods, no—on the maenads? “I—we talked about my—my powers, how I lost them, how the maenads had been able to overpower me as if I were nothing, just another human.” Her flush deepened. “I told him I couldn’t bear it, that if I’d been in the temple and lost my powers I would have given myself to the volcano.” She looked at Aera, panic striking through her. “But he never said anything about revenge. He was hurt, that’s all, just hurt. He’d never go—” She broke off. In her mind flashed the thought of Philos going after the maenads, alone, armed with nothing but a knife, a handful of gifts that hadn’t kept him safe from Maya herself, let alone a whole pack of maenads. Her stomach turned over.
Aera drew in a quick breath. “Very well. Coram, make a sweep between here and the temple. See if you can see him.”
Blood of the Volcano: Sequel to Heart of the Volcano Page 18
