Shadows Return

CHAPTER 45 Sorrowful Journey

THE GEDRE SHIP slipped into a remote southern inlet under the cover of night. Once again, Micum and the wizard slipped ashore unnoticed, this time with heavy hearts.

They brought along packhorses, and rode until dawn, guided by the stars and the vision Thero had been given by Alec’s ghost. This country was only sparsely habited, and they steered clear of the few villages and steadings they did see.

Micum prayed to the Four for Alec’s shade to visit them again, but Thero could not seem to summon him, though he tried several times as they stopped to rest the horses. There’d been no sign of Seregil’s ghost, either, despite the dire vision. Micum clung grimly to the hope that he’d somehow survived. Seregil always had, after all, no matter how bad things got.

The sun rose over a lonely, arid landscape like nothing Micum had ever seen. It was a dead land, with nothing green in it. He could taste dust on the breeze, and the cold wind carried scents that reminded him of temple incense. Far in the distance, the rising sun cast deep shadows across flat-topped cliffs. Apart from a few sluggish snakes, there seemed to be no life here at all.

At midmorning, Thero reined in abruptly. “I have to do another sighting. Nothing looks the same.” He dismounted and sat cross-legged in the dirt with his crystal wand between his hands. “Put your hands on my shoulders. I need your strength.”

Micum did as he asked and felt a strange sensation pass through him when Thero raised the wand and pressed it to his own forehead. After a moment, however, the wizard got to his feet.

Micum thought he saw the glimmer of tears in the man’s eyes. “What is it?”

“Almost there. That way.” Thero pointed a little east of the way they’d been going.

“What did you see?”

Thero wouldn’t look at him as he climbed back into the saddle. “Nothing good.”

They finished their journey in silence. Every so often Micum would feel that strange tingle again, and Thero would point this way or that, correcting their course. Never once did he give any sign that he’d seen them alive, and never once did Micum ask.

And so it was, when the sun was high and the bare white ground gave back the glare of it through the dust, that they made out the first dark specks circling in the sky ahead. Micum knew what they were.

“Thero- ”

“I see,” came the weary reply.

As one they kicked their sweating horses into a final gallop and closed the distance. Cresting a slight rise, Micum could see vultures on the ground, shifting and flapping in a huge circle around something there, feeding.

He rode at them, yelling to drive the carrion eaters off. They spread their black wings and retreated a little, screeching at him.

There were bodies sprawled on the ground, at least a score. Some had their eyes pecked out already, and others had their guts spilled and torn. All had short black hair and beards, and Plenimaran clothing.

At least you took some of the bastards with you, Micum thought numbly, gentling his horse when she went skittish at the smell. He dismounted and limped forward, scattering more of the birds away from more and more bodies.

The Plenimarans lay scattered in a wide circle. At its center, Seregil and Alec lay side by side, hands clasped between them even in death. A child sat slumped at their feet. Her long fair hair looked white in the midday glare. She was dressed in rags, and beside her lay an empty water skin. She had a dented metal cup cradled in her hands and that was empty, too.

“The child,” Thero whispered. “Alec said there was a child, but that’s not what that is!”

Micum ignored him, and the child. As he approached his friends’ bodies, tears slid unnoticed down his cheeks.

They were gaunt and hollow-eyed. Dried black blood covered them both, skin and clothing alike, and the white dust had settled over them in a thin pall. Their hair was dull with it and their lips were dry and cracked. And yet they looked so peaceful, as if they’d fallen asleep together.

Thero sank down beside Alec and covered his eyes. Micum dropped to his knees beside Seregil and took his hand. It was cold.

“Oh, my friend!” Micum began the grim business of looking for wounds. Lifting away the bloody coat, he found more blood on Seregil’s chest, but no sign of an open wound. As he moved to turn him, he was amazed to feel the flesh beneath his hand move. Looking up, he found Seregil’s eyes open a little, clear and grey and calm.

Micum was so startled he almost dropped him.

“Ah, here you are,” Seregil whispered, and those cracked lips tilted slightly into the old grin. “Alec said you’d come.”

“Alec?”

“Oh Illior, he’s alive, too!” Thero pressed two fingers gently to Alec’s throat, then unslung his water skin and wet Alec’s parched lips as Micum did the same for Seregil. “But how? I saw his ghost!”

Seregil swallowed a few drops from the water skin, then raised one finger slightly, pointing to the child. “He did it. Sebrahn.” His eyelids closed again, but he was still breathing. And smiling.

Micum glanced up at the child again. It still looked like a girl to him, with all that hair. His eyes were closed and he hadn’t moved, but Micum could see the long tracks of dried tears on the boy’s pale dusty cheeks. Micum reached out to see if he was breathing, but Thero grabbed his hand. “Don’t! That’s no child. Can’t you see?”

“See what?”

The child opened his eyes and Micum saw that they were the color of steel. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Thero was squinting now, as if the child was giving off a bright light that Micum couldn’t see. “It has human form, but there’s something else showing just around the edges-And magic! It’s like a storm in him, but muted.”

Sebrahn, as it was called, whimpered and crawled slowly past Thero to stroke Alec’s hair. The wizard scuttled back away from it, wide-eyed.

Micum didn’t doubt Thero was seeing something he wasn’t, but his heart went out to the child-like thing all the same. That was, until it lifted Alec’s left hand to his mouth and licked weakly at the dry blood there.

“Bilairy’s Balls!”

“It’s all right,” Seregil rasped as his eyes fluttered open again. “He’s starving. Eats…”

“Blood,” Thero finished for him, looking appalled.

“Alec’s. Just a little,” Seregil whispered as his eyes slid shut again and his voice failed. “Please, help him. Saved us. Save him…”

“You can’t be serious,” gasped Thero.

“You heard him,” Micum said. “He’s in no shape to explain.” He took out his knife and pulled Alec’s hand from Sebrahn’s grip. The child was surprisingly strong, but gave up with another pitiful little whimper when Micum gently insisted.

“Look at that.” Micum showed the wizard the tips of Alec’s fingers, all stippled with small scabs. “I guess that’s how they do it.” He nicked the least damaged finger and Sebrahn lunged forward, grabbing Alec’s hand and sucking frantically on Alec’s finger.

Micum watched in mixed wonder and revulsion. “I don’t suppose you could get word to Magyana to send us one of those translocations of hers? I don’t know what Seregil meant when he said this little mite saved them, but it can’t be much help to them anymore. We have to get them somewhere safe, and quickly.”

“Translocations don’t work that way, and even if they did, the shock of the magic would surely kill Seregil, weak as he is, and probably Alec, as well.”

Micum looked around, trying to ignore the loud sucking noises. “There’s no shelter in sight. We’ll have to make do with the tarp for tonight. Can you do more of that healing on them?”

“I can, but I don’t know how much good it will do. They need a drysian.”

“Do what you can. And give them more water. The child, too.”

Micum left him to it and led the packhorses away from the carnage. Not far on he found a dry gully deep enough to hide the horses. He used the tarp they’d brought to make a small lean-to, spread the bedrolls, and rode back for the others.

He found Thero still bent over their friends. The strange child hadn’t moved.

Thero had their dirty coats open and was inspecting their chests. “Look here!” he exclaimed, pointing to what was obviously a freshly healed arrow wound on Alec’s chest. “Seregil claimed this happened yesterday.”

“But that would have gone right through his heart, and a lung, too.”

“I know. Seregil has a similar scar here under his shoulder, and one that went into the large artery in his thigh.”

“We call that a ‘man killer.’ How in Bilairy’s name did they survive, half-starved as they are, much less heal?”

“Seregil kept insisting that this-creature did it, though I can’t get enough sense out of him to know how, and it seems to be mute.”

“Never mind. All that matters is getting them to shelter.”

Handling the wounded men as carefully as they could manage, they slung them each over a saddle. They had some trouble with Sebrahn when they went to move Alec. The child clung to him and hissed at Micum when he tried to pull him away. In the end, Thero had to hold him back until Micum could get Alec on the horse, then lift the struggling, spitting child up onto the horse behind him. Once there, still gripping the battered cup in one hand, he clutched the back of Alec’s coat with the other.

“It’s all right, little one,” Micum soothed, patting the child’s skinny leg. “You stay with him and we’ll be safe soon.”

“I’m telling you, that’s no child,” Thero warned.

“You heard what Seregil said. That’s enough for me.”

They led the horses toward the camp Micum had set up, going slowly so as not to jostle their friends too much. Even so, halfway there the child began to whimper and squirm. Then Seregil began to moan and struggle weakly.

Micum pressed a hand firmly between his shoulders. “We’re almost there. Just a little further.”

Seregil’s face was turned away, but Micum heard him gasp out, “So-undignified!”

“He’s bleeding again!” Thero pointed out. “It’s his leg.”

Looking back, Micum saw bright red splashes in the dust. He halted the horse and walked around to the other side. Seregil’s left thigh was soaked. Feeling carefully, he found the wound, then took off his belt and tightened it above the wound. “We’d better hurry.”

“Yes. Alec is bleeding a little from the mouth.”

The child grew more and more frantic as they went on, until Micum finally had to pull him off and carry him. He weighed almost nothing, but struggled all the way, reaching out for Alec and crying out softly.

At the tent, he scrabbled about underfoot until Micum and Thero had the wounded men settled on the bedrolls they’d brought. Seregil was unconscious, and Alec was in agony, coughing up bloody foam.

Micum put the child aside as gently as he could, but he persisted, tugging Micum’s water skin from his shoulder. Squatting between Seregil and Alec, he filled his dented cup, then held out one little hand.

“What is he doing?” wondered Micum.

“Cut his finger,” Alec wheezed. “Now!”

Despite his doubts, Micum did as he asked. As he and Thero watched, the child held his cut finger over the cup and something far too pale to be blood dripped into the water. There was a faint flash of light, and then a beautiful, dark blue flower appeared. Sebrahn scooped it out and put it on Seregil’s wound. It melted from sight, leaving a pleasant scent behind.

Micum reached down and felt the wound. “It’s closed up again.”

The child made another flower and placed it on Alec’s chest wound. Alec was still coughing blood, but he managed to get his breath long enough to gasp out, “That’s how-Flowers-heal.”

They watched in awe as Sebrahn repeated the procedure several times and laid more flowers across Alec’s chest and Seregil’s leg.

After a moment Seregil came around. “’lec!”

Micum clasped his hand. “It’s all right. He’s right here beside you. You’re both safe.”

Alec took Seregil’s other hand. “Told you. They found us.”

Micum carefully undressed both of them and checked for more wounds. The one on the inside of Seregil’s thigh was closed, but the skin there looked fragile and thin. The arrow wounds on Alec’s chest and throat had healed more completely, but the breath still rattled a little in his throat and bloody foam seeped from the corner of his mouth.

Micum covered them both warmly and drew Thero outside.

“What do you think?”

The wizard shook his head slowly, looking a bit dazed. “I don’t know what to think. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“But the child did heal them. He saved their lives.”

“Yes.” Yet Thero looked less than pleased. “I suppose we’ll have to stay here until they’re stronger.”

“And pray no one else comes looking for them.”

“I can hide us. I’ll obscure this whole gully if need be.”

“We should send word to Magyana and Korathan.”

“I did, while you were away setting this up. She advised me not to contact the prince yet. She thinks it would be dangerous to bring that-” He pointed into the lean-to, where Sebrahn was still crouched over the sleeping men, cup clasped in his pale little hands. “To bring him to Skala until we know more about what it is. And most especially not to the Orëska House. Every wizard in the place would feel it, as soon as it got anywhere near them, and word of it would soon reach Phoria.”

“You’re saying we should keep this from the queen?”

“She’s no friend to wizards, or to magic. I don’t know what she’d do with this thing. However, I’m more concerned with what it might do. You saw those men back there. All dead, and not a mark on them. Can you imagine if this creature felt threatened in the heart of the city? No, we can’t risk it. Magyana will meet us in Gedre. The khirnari has offered us temporary sanctuary if Seregil can give his word that it poses no danger.”

Micum shook his head. “We both saw how this little fellow can heal. He saved their lives again right in front of us. But how could it kill all those men? It couldn’t protect itself!”

“Do you have a better explanation?”

“I haven’t looked yet, have I?” He went to his horse and struggled up into the saddle. “Keep a sharp eye out, and send me one of those little lights if you see anyone coming. I won’t be long.”

Micum’s idea of not being gone long was different than Thero’s. He was about to send a sighting out for him when Micum rode back into camp, looking grim.

“What did you find?” Thero asked, helping him down from the horse.

Micum sat on a large stone and stared down at his hands; they were smeared with dark blood. “There are thirty-one men lying dead back there, and all but three don’t have a scratch on them, except that they’d bled from their eyes and ears.”

“And the other three?”

“One decapitated. One stabbed through the heart. The third one gutted and hacked to pieces.”

“In that vision with Alec, I saw Seregil running at the riders with a sword. I was sure I was seeing his death.”

“It should have been. But I’d say he managed to kill those three. They were close together, and the gutted one was dressed like a noble. Seregil must have cut the other two down to get to him. But the others? Seregil didn’t do that, and neither did Alec.”

“Then you agree that whatever this thing is it’s dangerous.”

“But it didn’t hurt us, not even when we pulled it away from Alec,” Micum pointed out.

They both turned and looked into the shelter, where the strange pale creature was curled up between the two men now, its silvery hair spread across both their chests.

Micum sighed and shook his head. “What have you two gotten yourselves into this time?”