Henry’s leg still wouldn’t support his weight and it hurt worse than at any time since the vaettir bit him. But it was a clean pain and the swelling was way down and what came out when Lorquin squeezed the wound was good red blood, not the yellow-green slime that had oozed earlier.
Lorquin had built him a crude shelter using branches of deadwood – where had he found them? – and the batwing thing that had covered Henry when he was cold in the night. Lorquin had also given him water, a little more of the tart juice and fed him something white and bloated that Henry didn’t care to examine too closely. It tasted of roast garlic and satisfied his hunger remarkably well.
‘Lorquin…?’
‘Yes, En Ri?’
‘Your… ah… colour. Is it natural?’
Lorquin looked at him blankly.
‘The blue colour,’ Henry said, half wishing he hadn’t started this, ‘Is it, like, your own skin colour, or do you use, you know, dye and stuff?’
‘I am Luchti.’ Lorquin shrugged, as if that explained something.
‘Luchti’s your tribe – right?’
‘My people,’ Lorquin said.
‘Where are they?’ Henry asked.
Lorquin made a vague gesture towards the distant horizon. He looked impatient with the whole conversation. Or possibly just puzzled.
Henry licked his lips. ‘How is it you’re alone in the desert? You are alone, aren’t you?’
Lorquin nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Why is that?’ Henry asked, ‘I mean, why aren’t you with your people?’
‘I seek the draugr,’ Lorquin said. To Henry’s surprise he smiled suddenly and broadly, ‘I find you.’
Henry wondered what a draugr was, but thought he might come back to that in a minute. He had a shrewd suspicion what might be going on here. ‘You’re about to become a man, aren’t you?’
Lorquin stuck his narrow chest out proudly. ‘Yes.’
Bingo, Henry thought. He’d read about this sort of thing somewhere, or possibly watched a documentary on television. Lots of primitive tribes had puberty rites for young boys. They marked the transition from childhood to manhood. You were turned loose to fend for yourself in the bush or the jungle or the desert, and if you survived the ordeal, you became a man. Sometimes it got really heavy. Young Masai or Zulu or somebody had to go and kill a lion before they were allowed back in the tribe. He hoped Lorquin’s draugr wasn’t something like that, but there was a chance it might be. He opened his mouth to ask, but Lorquin beat him to it.
‘Finding you was a good omen, En Ri,’ Lorquin said.
‘Why’s that?’ Henry asked.
‘When the Companion stands, we know the vaettir lives,’ Lorquin said incomprehensibly.
For some reason it stopped Henry dead. ‘Lorquin,’ he said. ‘The draugr thing is something you have to find in order to become a man? Like a treasure? Some rare plant? Something your tribe values very highly?’ Even as he asked, he knew what the answer would be, but he really, really didn’t want the situation to unfold the way he thought it was going to.
Lorquin grinned at him. ‘The draugr is something we have to kill, En Ri.’
The word we flashed neon lights. ‘We?’ Henry echoed. ‘You mean you and me?’
‘You are the Companion spoken of in the Holy Sagas,’ Lorquin said benignly.
‘Actually I’m not -’
‘And as Companion you will help me find the draugr, just as the songs say.’ ‘Lorquin, I don’t know anything about your songs. Or draugrs. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how to get out of this desert. I don’t even know what country I’m in. I can’t -’
But Lorquin wasn’t listening. He had that faraway look on his face evangelists get when they’re trying to convert you. ‘As Companion it is fated that you will help me kill the draugr.’
Even though he saw it coming, the words chilled Henry. He’d been telling nothing but the truth when he said he didn’t know where he was or how he got here and now, with an awful inevitability, he was being drawn into something dangerous, probably something hideously dangerous if his past visits to the Faerie Realm were anything to go by. The trouble was, he owed Lorquin his life. He couldn’t let the kid nurse him back to health, then just walk away and leave him to whatever dreadful task his tribe had decided would turn him into a man.
Henry took a deep breath. ‘This draugr…’ he said cautiously. ‘That’s not another name for a vaettir, by any chance?’
‘Oh no,’ Lorquin said. ‘The vaettir only guides us to the draugr. The draugr is the vaettir’s father.’