Imraldera wished yet again that she had a voice. She could only stand and watch. Even if she could speak, what could she do to ease such painful sorrow? This little one’s heart was broken. And there was nothing worse, she knew, than a brokenhearted child.
Suddenly, as though it felt her gaze, its hands dropped away. A pinched, wolfish face turned to her, and Imraldera saw how its eyes gleamed yellow. They were animal eyes.
She recognized them.
Her heart stopped beating where she stood. She might as well be dead. That animal gaze held her in place. Then the child bared its teeth and snarled. With an agile leap, it landed on all fours in the street, crouched and emaciated. The sob was replaced by a low growl.
Imraldera swallowed and discovered her heart once more—it raced double-time. But when the child advanced, still moving on its hands and feet in a grotesque crouch, Imraldera advanced as well. She did not break its gaze. It snarled again, half lunging. She showed her teeth and took another step forward, still not shifting her eyes.
With a wolfish yell, the child barreled at her legs. Imraldera leapt to one side, caught it by the back of the neck, and pushed it firmly to the ground, holding it there. The child roared and howled and flailed its limbs, but though it struck Imraldera several times, she did not let go. She braced herself, pressing into the little one’s back as well as its neck. As it struggled, she clucked to it gently, sounds she had once made to her baby sister. The only sounds she could make, as natural and mild as wind-murmuring branches in a tree.
She could not guess how long it took; at last, however, the child ceased struggling. Sweat dripped down Imraldera’s forehead. But she did not move. The little urchin lay perfectly still for some time. Then softly, it moaned. The sound was not human. Imraldera hadn’t expected it to be.
Carefully, she loosened her grip and sat back. The child scrambled up, sitting cross-legged with its hands planted on the ground before it. It shook its head, and even this close, Imraldera could not guess its sex. It turned those snapping yellow eyes upon her, head tilted to one side.
Very slowly, Imraldera put out her hand, palm up. The child leaned forward and sniffed. Half expecting to be bitten, Imraldera leaned in and gently ran her hand along the top of the little one’s head, down around behind its ear. The child blinked. It pushed into her hand, still whining, still panting.
Then, much to Imraldera’s surprise, it crawled forward, climbed into her lap, and immediately fell asleep. Imraldera scarcely dared to breathe. She wrapped her arms around the scrawny limbs, feeling every bone in the creature’s body. Tears formed in her eyes and escaped in swift drops down her cheeks.
Poor thing, she thought, rocking gently to and fro, as a mother rocks her newborn. Poor, loveless little thing.
“I must be mistaken.”
Hri Sora stood transfixed upon her roof, watching the scene being played out on the streets of Etalpalli. She could not believe her eyes. The fire in her breast flared in her fury at such a picture of tenderness enacted in this place of death. She gnashed her teeth and tore at her own hair, leaving lines of blood streaming through the lank strands.
“I must be mistaken!” she raged. “How can a woman of the Land be . . . be compassionate to one of them? The little monsters! The little fiends! They have his eyes, yet she stretches out her hand to them?”
The fire boiled like sickness inside. She doubled over and vomited flame and ashes that fell from the rooftop down to the street below, burning the stones black.
15
IT SERVES ME RIGHT. I should never have become involved.”
Eanrin sat on the windowsill, looking up and down the street. Iubdan’s beard! He had turned his back for two minutes! Why were mortals incapable of staying put?
This was unfair, though he hated to admit it. Though the streets of Etalpalli had a tendency to look alike, he knew that this street was not the one he had left only a few moments before. Things had shifted when his back was turned. That, or the room he had just explored was some sort of portal, rather like the Faerie Paths themselves, only smaller and undirected. He should have guessed. He should have known when he sniffed those heavy shadows that they would cut him off from his companion.
What if something happened to her? A lonely mortal without guide or direction in this place of empty ghosts . . .
“Not your business!” he snapped at himself, leaping down into the street. “You should have left her by the River to begin with. How many times have I told you? Thank the Lights Above you lost the girl at last! Good riddance, I say!”
He started up the street, paused after two steps, turned, and started back down. Crouching and becoming a cat, he sniffed and strained his ears, searching. But the street was absolutely empty, without a trace of Imraldera. The girl had never been here.
“Dragon’s teeth,” the cat hissed. He sat and wrapped his tail tightly about his front paws, ears turned back and looking so much like horns that he could have been a fluffy orange devil. He closed his eyes the better to listen, the better to smell, the better to sense with that strange sixth sense of cats that would alert him to any other nearby soul.
But there was nothing.
“This is the way it will always be,” he growled, still with his eyes closed. “This is what you must expect when the Hound hunts. You’ll be driven to Paths you never chose, driven to duties you never wanted. And then, it will all fall apart about your ears! Give in once, and you’re doomed. Allow yourself to care, and—”
Here he snarled, and his eyes opened wide. “I got attached. Me. Attached! Lumé, Eanrin, you should know better! Look what happened to others who’ve walked the Paths of the Lumil Eliasul. Look at Etanun: All those holy places burned! Look at Akilun: Killed at his brother’s hand! Renowned hero to despised villain within a generation. And where are you left at the end?”
He listened. He strained all his cat senses as though waiting for an answer to this question. But none came. With a sigh, he got to his feet. “He drives us until he’s through, then he abandons us. Such is his way. Well, he’s driven you, Eanrin, into this burned demesne, though it’s unlikely you’ll see him here. And thank the Lights for that!”
It flashed across his mind that it had been his own idea to come to Etalpalli; also, that he would never have passed through the gate had he not first met the mortal girl on the River. How could he ever have worked up the nerve to jump had he not been compelled for her sake? Cozamaloti would have remained as barred to him as were the doors of heaven.
He owed the girl much.
Silence surrounded him. With a shake and a flick of his tail, he turned back into a man, picked a direction, and started down the street. “If Imraldera wants to wander off and get herself killed,” he muttered, “so be it. It’s not my business. I’m a good fellow, and I will rescue my lady Gleamdren just as I intended. No more involving myself in strangers’ business. She can live her life, and I will live mine. Never again to—”
He turned a corner and stepped from daylight into darkness in a single stride. He drew a sharp breath, his nostrils flaring. He knew what this darkness was. It was not like the palpable shadows hiding within the towers. This was Midnight.
His cat’s eyes blinked once and drew in what light they could. But he still heard before he saw the Black Dog. A low growl rattled the core of Eanrin’s bones.
If there was one thing he hated more than water, it was dogs.
He turned and ran. Enormous teeth snapped shut in the place his head had been an instant before. Baying, like a hundred voices all in one, filled his ears, and he fled down the streets of Etalpalli, racing with the daylight.
Midnight and the Dog followed two steps behind.
The child snored in Imraldera’s arms. How it could sleep in this heat, she could not begin to understand. Her arms, chest, and neck were sticky with sweat where the little one’s body pressed up against her. But she did not try to put it down. For one thing, she could not guess at the consequences.
For another, the creature was so affection starved, how could she bear to withhold what little she could offer? She felt the child eating it up, draining kindness from her in its need. And still she rocked it back and forth, clucking and pressing her cheek to the little one’s dirty black hair. The child stirred, and its moans were inarticulate but full of meaning. It nuzzled its head under her chin, pressing its cheek to her breast.
Oh, Fairbird . . .
Sweat and tears mingled on her cheeks, and her grip unconsciously tightened about the bony little body.
The child woke. Every muscle tensed, it stared up at her with its wolfish eyes. For half a moment, Imraldera was afraid. She saw the gleam of teeth and felt the strength in those scrawny limbs.
But the child merely leapt from her arms, spinning about on the red stones and shaking as though released from a cage. And when it turned to her again, it wore a great smile upon its face. The teeth gleamed. They were sharp. Yet the smile was real.
Prancing like a puppy, the little one darted up to her, grabbed her hand, dropped it, ran away again, only to spin about and return at a mad dash. It made little grunting sounds like laughter but still no articulate words.
Imraldera got unsteadily to her feet, swaying a little. Her dark skin was used to incredible summer heat, but this was unlike any she had known before. If she did not find water soon, she feared she would faint . . . and never wake again.
She had no sooner found her balance than the child rushed at her and flung its arms around her middle, clinging to her in a desperate hug. She almost fell but braced herself and hugged the little one back. It laughed. A strange sound coming from that animal face—harsh, almost a growl. But it was a laugh, and the child flashed her another smile. It bounded away from her, kicking up its heels and laughing and swinging its arms.
Imraldera steadied herself and gazed after the child. What could she do? The creature was obviously as ignorant as she herself was mute. Not stupid, exactly—she could see the sharp intelligence in those animal eyes. And there was language in the grunts and growls and even the body movements, a language Imraldera could almost interpret. But the child had no power of speech.
Imraldera raised her hands. Creatures of this new world could not possibly know the silent language of women. But desperation drove her to sign:
“I need water.”
The child tilted its head to one side, still smiling. Then haltingly, it signed back, “There is a well. Follow me.”
Imraldera stared. She must be dreaming, she thought. Hallucinating in her thirst and fatigue. Of all the impossible things she had seen and done, this was by far the most impossible.
“You speak the Women’s Words?” she signed, her mouth gaping.
“Follow me,” repeated the child. “Follow me to water.”
It wasn’t right! Only the women of the Land knew the language of hands. Not even the men would bother themselves to learn those signs. As old as speech and as secret as the hidden face of the moon, it was their one strength, the one thing the men could not take from them in a world where women were nothing but slaves.
How could this creature know? This otherworldly being that may or may not be female?
The child darted off down the street in a gangly, loping stride. Imraldera had no choice but to follow. Her bare feet were so burned and callused by now, they scarcely felt the hot stones beneath them. She thought she would lose the child, who dashed on ahead so wildly. But the street did not shift as it had before. It remained straight as far as the eye could see. When Imraldera thought she saw a tower or a pile of rubble blocking the street, by the time she reached it, it had moved. And still the street pointed straight ahead. She saw the child running up ahead and heard its barking laughter.
At last the street blended into what looked like it had once been a market square. Above Imraldera’s head, many platforms like bird perches stuck out from the high towers, yet these cast no shadows on the stones. She scanned the rest of the square, following the erratic movements of the child. In the center was an enormous well with an arch and pulley built over it. A large, iron-fastened bucket lay on its side beside the surrounding stone wall.
And tied by his feet in that place where the bucket should be, suspended above the black mouth of the well, was a man.
For one heart-stopping moment, Imraldera thought she’d found Eanrin. The hair color was the same, and the aura of immortality. But the clothing was wrong; whereas Eanrin’s was bright, mud stained, and flashy, this stranger was dressed quietly in shades of the forest. The rope twisted, the body turned, and she saw the face and form. It wasn’t the poet she’d found.
It was another Faerie, one who was also simultaneously man and animal. A badger, she guessed, though he did not wear his animal form at the moment. His face was ghastly, and she wondered if he was dead. But no . . . the immortal quality still shone from him, vivid and full of life. He hung upside down like a hunting trophy, but he was alive.
The rope creaked. The stranger’s eyes opened. He saw Imraldera. He saw the child. His mouth opened in a great O, and he bellowed wordlessly for all he was worth.
Imraldera startled, clapping her hands to her ears. But the child laughed, ran up to the poor man, and poked him cruelly in the stomach. The man bellowed even louder and made a snatch at the creature but missed. His body swung sickeningly above the well, and the rope strained.
Imraldera waved her hands. “Stop! Stop!” she signed, but the child did not see her. It circled around the captive, slapping him on the backside and shrieking with delight at the roars the poor fellow made. Imraldera could not endure it.
Her thirst momentarily forgotten, she ran across the square. The child, absorbed in its brutal sport, did not see her until she had taken it by the arm. Then it whirled upon her, teeth bared, yellow eyes flashing. She glared back and signed, “No!”
It pulled out of her grasp and snapped at her, not seriously, merely as a warning.
“No!” she signed again, scowling still more severely. “Go back!”
The child growled. But it could not break her gaze. Lowering its head, it backed away, its bony body trembling with either fear or fury. Yet it obeyed.
She turned to the captive.
“Madam,” said he, craning his neck to still see her even as the rope twisted him around, “you are a witch or a sorceress. No one can control those beasts!”
Imraldera shook her head impatiently. Princess, witch . . . these Faerie folk had such ideas about her! Her hands fumbled with the heavy ropes, but the knots were too strong and too thick. The fibers tore at her fingers. She bit her lip impatiently.
“Lass, look there. My hatchet,” said the twisting man, pointing to a weapon lying on the ground near the tipped-over bucket. Gratefully, Imraldera knelt to pick it up. What a fine piece! She hefted it in both hands, amazed at its make and balance. And what stone was this forming the head? Not any she knew, so bright and so sharp! There wasn’t a man in her father’s village who wouldn’t give his firstborn child for the sake of owning a weapon like that.
“Great dragon tails,” the stranger muttered as once more he spun around and caught sight of the girl with his hatchet in hand. “Oh, great dragon tails and spikes, I hope you know how to use that—”
She swung. The blade hacked deep into the rope where it wound up from the wooden arch. The whole arch shuddered, and the man swayed uneasily. She swung again, and this time the rope broke. The stranger had just time enough to catch himself on the lip of the well to avoid making a terrible (and rather damp) plunge. Imraldera dropped the hatchet, which rang upon the stones, and flung herself at the stranger, grabbing his shirt with both hands. Together, with much swearing on his part, they hauled him up and out. He collapsed, and she fell to her knees, panting, beside him.
She remembered suddenly how thirsty she was.
But they had only the space of three breaths. Then the stranger sat upright and yelled, “Ware! The Dog!”
Imraldera, blinking and breathing h
ard, turned.
The child stood only a few yards back. Its head lowered, and a rumbling growl filled its throat. Those sharp teeth gleamed in a dreadful, mirthless smile. Imraldera’s dry throat constricted. Her hand reached unwittingly for the fallen hatchet.
The child’s eyes darted. It saw the movement. Its growl became a gnashing snarl, and it crouched down on all fours. And suddenly it became what Imraldera had known it must be all along: a great, hideous Dog.
Midnight fell upon the square.
The only thing she could see at first were those burning eyes. Wolf’s eyes, she thought, but with flames deep inside. The Dog took a step forward. Enormous paws nearly the size of her head, with claws that could tear the hardest turf, scraped at the stones, shooting sparks.
For an instant, Imraldera’s fingers tightened about the hatchet shaft. The Dog spat saliva, twisting its head as it showed its teeth. Unable to breathe, Imraldera sucked in her lips as though to suppress all the screams that longed to burst from her mute throat.
She let go of the hatchet and stood, empty-handed.
“What are you doing, woman?” the man hissed, pushing himself up on his elbows.
Imraldera ignored him. She advanced upon the Dog just as she had advanced upon the child. It made as though to lunge, but when she did not retreat, it backed away. Its head and tail were low, its shoulder blades like knives moving up and down as it tried to circle her. She would not let it pass or go anywhere near the fallen man.
“Quiet,” she signed.
It barked, its whole body shaking and lunging and cringing at once.
“Down,” she signed.
Its flaming gaze followed her hands. The dark of Midnight emanated from its black body, surrounding them in a heavy cloak. But Imraldera did not shrink.