Hewn sat in his corner, hands moving gently, calmingly over the living wood of his harp as he watched the mountains burn.
The wall was a single screen now. In it, he could see bits of six fliers in addition to the one that was making the pictures; they flew parallel paths along both sides of the mountains, burning the forest and any structures that came into view, sparing only the Sleeping Grounds when they came across them.
Ilaцrn was beyond tears, beyond rage. It was too much to take in, too much destruction, too much greed, too much grief. And nothing he could do would change anything he saw. All our little schemes, he thought, they’re worth nothing against this. Caida bites that raise a momentary rash until they’re squashed and washed away.
Hunnar worked at his desk, glancing up now and again to watch the progress of the burning and make sure the Sleeping Grounds and their cocooned Eolt were left untouched. Then he went back to his reports and his plotting.
10. Scrambling to Stay in Place
It was still raining when Shadith woke.
The beat of the rain was lighter, but just as steady. The heat from the throway pac was way down and the warning light was flashing. She’d slept for over five hours. The crease on her head had scabbed over, the scab dry and pulling a little, but the pain was gone, even when she touched the wound. When she lifted her arm, there was still some soreness in her shoulder, though not enough to restrict movement.
Afraid of what she’d find, she bent over Maorgan, touched his forehead, jerked her fingers away. Hot. Well, at least he’s still alive. She checked Danor and relaxed enough to start thinking again.
“Com. Where’s the com? I’ve got to call in help. I can’t handle this.” Eyes closed, she tried to remember where she’d put the handcom, swore softly when the image came to mind of a hand tucking the black rectangle into the bag attached to her saddle.
She listened to the rain for a moment longer, shivering at the thought of going out in that, then she gathered herself, dug out a raincape, pulled it round her, hung the glowbulb to the collar and crawled from the tent.
The bulb was a feeble gesture against a night as black as the inside of a coal sac. She’d grown so-accustomed to the bright glare from the cluster stars, she’d almost forgotten what such darkness was like, how difficult something as simple as walking could be when she couldn’t see her feet. The wind was down to a teasing breeze that flipped about the flaps of the cape as she trudged through the mud and water puddles to the road and the dead ponies.
Sokli was a lump in the middle of a pool of water dimpling under the beat of the rain-and he’d come down on the bag she wanted. She sloshed over to him, knelt in the muck, and began the nauseating business of working the saddle bag from under all that stiff meat.
The icy water complicated the job, made the leather swell, and turned her fingers stiff as she tried to work buckles she couldn’t see, but it also helped once the bag was free of its tethers. She rocked it back and forth, the washing of the water carrying off some of the dirt under it, eventually giving her enough room to jerk it loose.
Back in the tent, the raincape hung on a branch stub outside, she stuck the glowbulb back on the tent pole, dried her hands and feet on a blanket, found another throway heater and started it going. Then she worked loose the leather straps and dumped the contents of the bag on the canvas floor of the tent. Everything was soaked. She wiped off the foil containers of the trail bars, set them aside, tossed sodden underwear out through the door slit, and found the handcom under a pile of disintegrating paper.
She wiped the com off, wiped her hands, slid the cover off the sensor plate, and touched it. The working light didn’t come on; that worried her, but she tapped the sensor again and waited for the squeal the recorder back at Alsekum used to acknowledge a call.
Nothing.
“Well, if anyone bears this, we’ve got trouble and need help. Attacked by chorek. Maorgan and Danor seriously wounded, need doctor bad. Cad/3as dead or run off. Come get us soonest.”
No response.
“Gods. The wet shouldn’t have damaged you, you’re supposed to be sealed against damp, good to half a mile down in your average ocean. Even the moss pony falling on you shouldn’t have knocked you out. Must have been defective to start with. Cursed cheap trash!” She was about to pitch it through the crack in the doorflap, shook her head and dropped it beside the sodden saddlebag. “Get some cha in me first, some food, then I’ll give you a look again, see if there’s some way I can jar you alive.”
She dug a pot from the gear pushed up against the side of the tent, pushed it outside to collect rainwater, then crawled over to check her patients.
A touch told her that the fevers were still going strong, maybe getting worse. She didn’t have a baseline temp for Fior, so she couldn’t be sure how bad it was. Stupid, stupid that Koraka hadn’t bothered to get a medkit calibrated to Fior metabolism. “Not only the Goлs. Why didn’t I think about that?”
Her own body was from a distant offshoot of the Cousins, far from the standard model. Add to that the time the Fior had been here, separate, in what was apparently a mutagenic environment-the moss ponies and other things she’d noted were evidence of that-and she didn’t dare try her own spraycopeia on them. Or wouldn’t until one or the other of them seemed about to die.
Such a simple thing. Ride along a peaceful roadway, traveling by invitation and under escort. Into the back country where neither Yaraka nor Chandavasi had penetrated. What could go wrong? She only had her medkit along because Aslan had insisted. She certainly hadn’t expected to need it. I can take care of myself She remembered saying that. Look, Aslan, you don’t know what I’ve survived without all this fuss. “What was I thinking of? Gods!” Why didn’t I say something about the Fior? Gods! Talk about stupid…
As the night wore on, Danor’s fever fluctuated and he slid in and out of delirium. Maorgan was very quiet, settling deeper and deeper into coma. She grew afraid that both would die on her before she could collect the caцpas and haul them to help. The years in the diadem and the talents of the brain she’d inherited when Aleytys slid her into this body had given her the translator (which was convenient), the ability to mindride beasts (useful and occasionally a pleasure), and a touch of telekineses; she could nudge forcelines if they weren’t too strong and play about with small objects, but Aleytys’ healing gift hadn’t transferred. This wasn’t the first time Shadith had mourned that fact.
She bathed Danor and laid damp compresses on his brow; she worried over Maorgan and added water to the cha pot, and when she had a moment, held the handcom and tried to feel her way into it, to find the break or the short or whatever was keeping it from working. These were throwaway units, sealed and meant to be replaced when they malfunctioned. Nobody said what you were supposed to do when you were sitting in a storm out in the back of beyond with two potential corpses on your hands and no ‘tronics store within a dozen light-years.
The crash of the rain shifted suddenly to a faint patter and the wind dropped until the flutter of the leaves above the tent was audible over its whine.
She crawled to the door flap and pushed it back enough to let her see out.
The sun was up and the clouds overhead were ripping apart. The puddles in the glade glittered silver where they puckered from the last of the raindrops. The cold was retreating, too. The air smelled of green and wetness, invigorating as cold cha.
She pulled the flap to, gave Danor another bath, replaced the cold compress on Maorgan’s brow, then pulled on a shirt and pair of shorts and went out to see what else she could find to help them survive this impossible situation.
She was stripping the rest of the riding gear off dead Sokli when she saw Eolt Melech coming against the wind, pulling xeself along with xe’s tentacles, tree by tree fighting xe’s way toward her. Xe’s dread slapped at her, so powerful it was almost strangling.
Xe saw her and called out, a bass organ note that hammered against her heart. Then xe was singing to her, demand and plea at once, chords of meaning.
Where is he? My Sioll. He suffers.
I throb to it I am wrung with it
Where is he? My Sioll. Bring me to him.
“Follow,” she sang in approximation of the Eolt song/speech. She left the dead ca6pa and moved into the trees to the glade.
Working to the sung instructions that battered at her with their urgency, she lifted Maorgan from his blanket cocoon, carried him from the tent, and laid him on the mud and grass close to one of the trees.
Eolt Melech grasped the branches with xe’s holding tentacles and brought xeself down until xe could touch Maorgan. Shadith could feel xe’s terror at being so close to earth. If xe’s lift failed or a windshear developed, xe could be dashed to the ground and xe would die there, slowly, agonizingly, xe’s membranes rotting while xe still lived.
She watched, worried. Maorgan had said the Eolt weren’t as fragile as they looked, but it was like watching a glass vase she valued rocking back and forth on the edge of a shelf.
Xe unrolled a tentacle different from the others, one xe had kept tucked up and hidden in the rootstock of the many other trailing tentacles. The end touched Maorgan’s face, splayed out across it, the translucent flesh conforming to the bumps and hollows of the Fior’s face.
For a moment nothing happened, then she saw that the skin on the tentacle was pulsing, in out in out and it glowed then went dull in the same rhythm, light and not-light, in and out. The tentacle flushed to pale pink, the pink to blood red.
The pulse quickened.
In her half-sync with the Eolt she felt Maorgan reacting, something was happening in him, she didn’t know what. She had to trust Melech, she knew the strength of the bond between xe and Maorgan, she knew he wouldn’t harm his sioll, but it was a strange thing to watch.
The edge of the sun passed into the widening rift in the clouds, the glade went suddenly much brighter. Melech’s battered, wrinkled membranes plumped out and began to glow again. Xe was golden and strong, xe sang as xe went on with what xe was doing.
The tentacle mask came free with a faint sucking sound and Melech let xeself float upward. Xe sang xe’s triumph, wordless organ notes that filled the space beneath the sky. Shadith turned her face upward, her whole body throbbing to the glory of that sound.
When she looked down, she saw that Maorgan’s face was dotted with tiny red spots as if a hundred black biters had settled on him to suck a meal. His eyes were closed, he was breathing slowly in the shallow breath of sleep. As she watched, he sighed, moved uneasily on the muck he lay in, but didn’t wake. She knelt beside him and checked his pulse. It was strong, steady. When she set the back of her hand against his face, the tight hotness of fever was gone.
Tired, irritated, and at the same time happy that one of her problems was lifted off her shoulders, she hoisted him again, carried him over to the tent. She eased him onto a bit of canvas from the packs, washed the muck off his body, then dragged him inside and wrapped him in his blankets again. He sighed a few times as she did this, muttered and twitched, but didn’t wake.
The second throway was beginning to flag. She sighed, took the hatchet and went out to cut some wood; her patients were going to need the warmth and whatever food she could get down them.
She found a downed tree a short distance from the glade; it was old and crumbling on the outside, but the inside was firm and mostly dry. She laid down the square of carry canvas and began cutting and prying lengths of wood loose. She was sweating and developing blisters when she heard a rustle. She dropped the hatchet, flung herself onto the far side of the tree, then sat up, laughing, as a moss pony edged from behind a tree.
It whuffled plaintively and a familiar smell came on the wind.
“Brйou.” She stood. “All right, bйbй, come here, luv.”
The caцpa came sidling toward her, head turning and eyes still a little wild, tail swishing.
“Ahhh, that’s a splendid pony, that is.” He leaned into her, head pressing against her breasts, making small contented groans as she rubbed his poll and dug her fingers into his roached mane. He was wet and stinky, but she was almost crying at his pleasure in their reunion.
One of the packers came easing into the small clearing around the downed tree, the pack listing, the straps of the packsaddle distorting the round of his barrel. As she worked to ease the strain and get the pack resettled, the rest of the pony string gathered around her, nuzzling at her, pushing at her as if they wanted to crawl under her skin.
She gathered what_ wood she had, slipped the hatchet through her belt, and led the small herd back to the clearing where she stripped off their gear and salvaged some corncakes from the packs she removed and piled beneath the thickest of the trees, resting them on high-kneed roots to keep them out of the muck. The corncakes she broke and put in their nosebags, left them munching away while she took her meager gleanings of wood over to the tent and got a fire started.
The light dimmed a bit as the sun passed behind a clot of dark clouds, but Melech was still bright gold and shining as xe hovered above the tent, tentacles anchoring xe to the tree. She sang a few notes to xe as she moved about, getting the grate settled above the fire and soup fixings into the cookpot.