But he could rejoice as the fish-king bellowed in dismay, turned, and retreated to the river.
And as his reason returned and his body remembered him, he could drag himself up to his feet to follow it and its fleeing offspring, pausing just long enough to pick up two empty water-skins on his way.
And he could take them to the river – the All-Year River, the bulwark of the Eiya’Krah – and fill them with the cold, clean water of his homeland, and stagger back uphill to drop to his knees beside his marka. “Weisei, wake up – we’re here.”
Weisei did not answer him, of course. But it was the easiest thing in the world to raise his head and shoulders with one hand, and to bring the neck of the water-skin to his lips with the other, and to let the barest trickle run over his swollen tongue.
Then, having served his marka first, Vuchak finally served himself. The first cold, sweet crash overwhelmed him, flooding his mouth and throat with victory, spilling streams of gratification down his chin and chest, chilling his empty insides with exquisite, unutterable relief.
They traded the rest of it between them in that same way – a careful sip for Weisei, a hearty quaff for Vuchak – until the skin was empty and Vuchak could see his marka’s throat closing in regular, reliable swallowing motions, and he knew they were going to be all right.
He carried Weisei farther up the hill, out of sight from the river and anything that might come back out of it. Then he dropped down to lie beside him, too weary to do even one more thing – too spent to think even one more thought. The last of Vuchak’s strength was spent covering the two of them with his shield, ensuring that the eye of Marhuk painted on its front could see and be seen by the thousand others in the sky overhead. We are here, it said, entreating their benevolent attention. We are coming home.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LOVES-ME
IN THE DREAM, Elim was fourteen years old and lying with Eula Lightly in the new straw of the barn’s farthest empty stall. Her milk pails lay forgotten on the floor, and his shirt and hat likewise. Her body was warm and lively – and his likewise – and her lips were wet with sincerity – and his likewise – and when she hitched herself up to straddle his coltish long legs under her gingham dress, his muddy trousers strained with his likewise. His hips rose at her weight, and his hands clutched at the sweet swelling mounds under her sweat-dampened shimmy, but what he really wanted was her mouth again, and when he reached up to help himself to it, his hand missed any hint of wiry pigtails or homespun cottons, and closed around nothing but coarse, musky fur...
The smell was too real to belong to any dream. It belonged to the monster – to fishmen and kidnapping and tangled, drowning terror – and jolted Elim awake in an instant.
Or maybe he was still dreaming. He was blind in the dark, but her naked body was still there, soft and warm and human against his chest... and behind her, his hand closed around the wolf-monster’s thick, living fur.
Elim bolted upright, and cracked his head on the stone ceiling.
He dropped back, dizzy with pain, but she was reaching for him, making strange unintelligible soothing-noises, and he wouldn’t be caught again – not again. Elim kicked and pushed her away, throwing himself towards that strip of faint starlight, and soon he’d crawled out from under the little rock-shelter and was staggering up to his feet, beating back pain and nausea and the last of that dire, morbid arousal as he ran for his life.
It was a hopelessly dark night, but that didn’t slow him one bit: he tore down the rocky slope in a scatter of dirt and loose stones, hell-bent on taking advantage of every precious second before that monstrous she-witch emerged from her cave and came after him.
Elim halted with a splash, his bare foot plunging into cold water. Was this the river? Which side? Where was he? Elim struggled to think rationally through the hammering panic in his mind. It didn’t sound like the river, or what little he remembered of it. He picked up a stone and tossed it out, about ten feet or so. It landed with a dry thunk.
A stream, then.
Streams ran toward rivers.
Rivers harbored fishmen.
Elim turned and fled upstream. They couldn’t swim it if the water got too shallow – and She couldn’t sneak up on him if he got to higher ground. So he ran onwards and upwards, ignoring the foot-piercing bite of the rocks and weeds and the sound of his own hard-running gasps. The stream ran with him, splitting and shrinking until it was just a creek, and by the time it outran him, away up a sheer rock face, Elim was tired enough to let it.
He sank down with his back to the cliff, close enough to the creek to hear its soft, fluid chatter as it came spilling down the rocks, and hopefully hid the sound of his breathing. Elim sat still for long, numberless minutes, listening for whatever unnatural sound would herald the next onslaught of terror.
Divine Master, please help me – guard me – let me not falter in word or deed, nor doubt in your everlasting goodness, but hold me in your mercy and keep me in your likeness, forever and ever.
Still, the night was quiet, and the wind was calm, and eventually Elim was brave enough to put his hand out and help himself to a more dignified drink than the one he’d gotten at the bottom of that god-awful net. He wished like the dickens he had something to eat. Or something to wear.
But for the time being, he was nothing but himself and a soggy pair of pants, and that was going to have to do. At the moment, he’d be doing well just to live to see morning. And then if he made it that far, he could go back and see what had happened to his Sundowners. He hoped they were still alive – and that he wasn’t too far away to find them.
Then again, was that really what he ought to be aiming for? Wouldn’t he do better to take advantage of all this anarchy to try and get quit of monsters and fishmen and Sundowners altogether? Elim hunched forward and rubbed his arms to ward off the cool night air. Granted, he wasn’t going to get anywhere without at least –
He stopped, unsettled by the hair on his right arm. He brushed at it, eager to rid himself of that witch-wolf’s remainders... and could not understand why it wouldn’t come off. He rubbed harder, and felt more of the same over the left side of his stomach.
And at his shoulders. And up his left leg. And down the small of his back. Elim patted himself over, his hands trembling with horror, but there was no misunderstanding it: every brown part of him, every spot and patch, had been overrun by short, fine hair. He pulled at it, first with his fingers and then in desperation with his teeth, but he might as well have been trying to rip out the hair on his head.
And when the pain finally bested him, Elim could no longer escape the obvious: after days of wallowing in heathenry and wilderness, the native part of him was waking up somehow, pulling him into whatever beastly, Sybilline darkness lurked in these hills – and Elim would not, could not let it happen. He hunched forward, pressing his torso between his updrawn knees for warmth and every ounce of comfort they could give him, and tried again. Divine Master, please, please, please keep me in your likeness...
SHEA WAS SLOW, of course, tired and wounded and nearly blind in the dark. But she would have had to be dead not to follow in U’ru’s wake.
And it was not difficult to find her: all Shea had to do was walk towards the source of that warm, wound-licking maternal love... which then flared up into shock and confusion... which finally crumbled into an awful, crushing grief.
The new puppy was not new anymore. He had grown up, his childhood having lived and died without her. He didn’t love her. He was afraid of her.
By the time Shea got close enough to hear the heartbroken sobbing coming from that rock-shelter in the hill, she had recovered her own mind enough to venture some comfort.
“Mother?” she called. “Don’t cry, Mother. It will be all right, you’ll see –”
YOU STOLE HIM!
The answer crashed so loudly in Shea’s mind that she nearly lost her footing. She gasped and stumbled forward, reeling from the force of it. “No, I – I did it for
you. They were killing them, you remember... burning our homes, slaughtering every two-color they could find. And I couldn’t let them kill us all because of him... I couldn’t bear it if you died.”
Shea clambered closer, pained by her own presumption. But she DID belong to the Ara-Naure, even if she hadn’t been born to them – and everything she’d done had been for the good of her Mother and her people.
YOU HAD NO RIGHT. That terrible weeping continued unabated, but her answer was not quite so deafening as before. And see what you’ve done. See how he’s grown. How could you?
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Shea panted, pausing to hold her side and catch her breath. “I couldn’t keep him. He was so small – he needed nursing. I had to find him a new mother... and I took him away to the east, where he would be safe... and then I went back for him, but the other mother... had sold him to feed her own babies, and nobody could tell me where...”
And she was sorry, desperately sorry for the way it had turned out – but she had done it all for the best. If she could have known what would happen, how U’ru would wreck herself and the Ara-Naure in a frantic, futile effort to find him, then certainly Shea would have acted differently. But she never would have had the strength to go through with it if she hadn’t meant it all for the best.
Shea started forward again. “And you see how I’ve brought him back to you now, how... how great and... and handsome he’s grown for you...” Privately, of course, Shea had always found him a viciously ugly child, albeit one whose ugliness had rendered him instantly recognizable from a whorehouse porch, all those days and ages ago.
He does not know me. U’ru’s moan descended into a broken, canine baying. My Loves-Me does not love me!
By now, Shea was close enough to hear the writhing sounds coming from that dark gap in the wall. She could almost feel the great lady changing, dog and woman and dog-woman and dog again, shifting senselessly, violently, in the throes of her grief. “He will, though, Mother – he only needs time to –”
I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER!
Shea halted, whitening as that dreadful howl went on.
Don’t speak any more to me, Water-Dog – and don’t come to me again until you have brought back my own loving son!
Shea swayed on her feet, an abyss opening up beneath her.
U’ru didn’t mean that, though. Of course she didn’t. She was Shea’s Mother – not the one who’d birthed her, but the one Shea had chosen for her own, the one to whom she’d indentured her soul... the one she’d killed and lied and suffered for. She couldn’t take all that away now – not after twenty-three years. Not after all Shea had endured waiting for her. Not after everything she’d done to bring her back.
A vicious snarl cut the air. GO AWAY.
Shea shrank into herself, dreading to disobey and yet frightened to turn around – terrified of seeing that trail of bloody, broken pieces stretching out into the dark behind her. The House of Losange. Henry Bon. Hakai. Brant. Fours. Día. Yashu-Diiwa himself. They would be staring up from the ground at her, a quarter-century’s worth of the faces she’d used as stepping-stones to bring her here, to this exact moment. She couldn’t turn back now. One glance would destroy her.
So she went forward – just not in the way she had planned. Forward and left, away from the shelter. Forward and down, towards a nice little stream and a fresh, self-made promise.
U’ru didn’t mean what she’d said. She was only upset, and rightly so, by the appalling behavior of that wretched, useless boy. Yes. This was all his fault. Shea only needed to beat some filial piety into his spotted hide, and everything would be right again.
She lowered herself into the water, reluctantly laying her weary bones down on the cold rocks, and refused to allow her bodily discomforts to be reflected in her thoughts. Mother U’ru had changed, but Shea was mereau. She would simply change with her. And tomorrow she would begin her new role, as the strong-handed governess of the great lady’s last and most damnably ungrateful child.
“... ELIM? ELIM, ARE you here?”
Elim looked blearily up, sure he’d been dreaming it.
“Elim, can you hear me?”
But no, his stiff neck and gummy eyes promised that he was awake, that it was morning – and that Sil was calling for him.
He bolted to his feet, instantly deaf to every ache and cramp. “Sil?”
“Elim! Where are you?”
It was coming from somewhere close by – maybe just over those rocks. Elim threw himself at the slope, clambering four-legged up past the desert willow tree and over the white-flowering shrubs, spilling little flaky stones behind him as he went. “Sil! I’m here! I’m right over –”
Elim heard a second pair of hands scrabbling on the other side, clambering over the top –
- and found himself looking up at a naked, rock-climbing fishman. It looked right back down at him, its features vaguely familiar, before breaking into a shameless, sharp-toothed grin. “Fancy a cup of tea?”
That was Sil’s voice, all right.
That was not Sil.
SHEA TRIED TO jump out of Yashu-Diiwa’s reach as his face darkened from shock to good old-fashioned whites-of-the-eyes rage, but not quickly enough: his first grab caught her by the neck and shoulder, costing him his footholds and sending them both skidding, sliding down to the bottom of the slope. At least the great lumbering brute didn’t land on top of her.
It didn’t take him long to get there, though. Shea was still breathless with pain when he rolled over to sit astride her, his hands pinning her forearms to the ground, and his face livid with fury. “You rotten toady CHEAT,” he swore, his breath hot and sour.
Shea was pleased to return every bit of his disgust. “Not very nice to get someone’s hopes up, is it?” she replied with a bitter smile. The dumb bastard had no idea how much pain he’d caused his mother. Still, Shea felt vindicated – and more than slightly pleased with her impersonation of that Halfwick boy. “Not that you’d know anyth...”
That thought died unfinished. Shea blinked and looked again, squinting to be sure. That spot over his eye was covered in a fine, brown coat of hair... as was the one under his jaw... as was his shoulder...
Shea’s gaze travelled down his body, helpless to conceal her delight. It couldn’t be – he hadn’t grown up Ara-Naure, shouldn’t have had any marks at all – and yet, when had there ever been a two-colored god-child before? All that divinity had to go somewhere, didn’t it?
And the hair was still a bit sparse, and his eyes hadn’t changed at all, and it didn’t look as if his fangs had come in yet, but nevermind: if one good licking-over from U’ru had done this much, Shea could certainly take care of the rest.
She glanced back up at his unsightly face, smiled, and batted her eyes. “Could we start over, please?”
IT WAS TRYING to weasel its way out from underneath him. Elim was sure about that much. “No dice,” he growled. “Not ’til you tell me what you’re playing at.”
“PLAYING at?” it repeated, its blunt face curling back into contempt. “That’s a fine way to thank someone who’s trudged all the way out to the middle of nowhere to help you. Great God, have you EVER washed those pants?”
Elim wasn’t buying that. More likely this one was just bait for another ambush, like yesterday. He glanced around, hunting for any unnatural shadows. “What do you mean, help me?”
The fishman followed his wandering gaze, but its reedy voice still kept that same rotten-fruit sweetness. “That is, unless you’ve taken a shine to the furry look...?”
Elim’s attention snapped back down in an instant. “How?”
It tipped its head towards the little creek, maybe ten feet down from the spot where Elim had spent the night. “Let me up,” it said. “Just to the water there.”
Elim’s jaw tensed. “Try again.”
The fishman rolled its eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake, boy – what am I going to do, wash out to sea? Do you want me to fix you or not?”
Elim’
s scowl deepened. But he desperately wanted to get fixed, and he wasn’t getting a lot of other offers. And if the fishmen were lying in wait for him here, where he’d spent all so many hours asleep, they’d have to be pretty stupid not have to jumped him by now. “You watch that ‘boy’ shit, short-stack.”
But he moved off, hauled the fishman up with a hard grip on the back of its neck, and twisted its arm to march it forward. Probably that wouldn’t make a lick of difference for whatever trap it wanted to spring – but at least he’d have a good chance of taking the trap-setter out with him.
This one was peculiar, though: its feet were as small and regular as people-feet, and its ass was almost as human as his – albeit with a big ugly scar where its tail must have been. If this was one of those hopping hellions from last night, it sure didn’t look the part.
“Careful, now – if you march me all the way to the end of the rainbow, I’ll have to show you where I buried the secret treasure.”
Elim squeezed tighter, its neck-flesh damp between his fingers. “You got a hell of a mouth,” he said.
“And you have a hell of a nerve!” It pointed to a little white-flowering plant growing at the edge of the pond, and after making one more visual sweep, Elim let it kneel. It dug and scraped at the mud just below the surface of the water, reminding him of that other, more sinister pool they’d found.
“Ah – no, wait.” It pulled up a root-tangle of some kind, then tossed that back to the water and resumed digging.
“How’s this supposed to work, exactly?” Elim didn’t lessen his grip for a second.
“Magic.” It pulled up a yellow-whitish root, rinsed it off, and inspected it again. “You don’t get fluid marks during the daytime like this unless you need them somehow – because you’re doing magic, or you’re at death’s door, or what-have-you.” It snapped off one scant thumb-nail’s length of the tip, and handed it over its shoulder to him. “And although I’d be amazed if you could even spell ‘magic’, I can believe you’ve had a rough time getting here. So if you want the marks to go away faster, you should do what you can to heal more quickly.”
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