Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One (25 page)

A second torch flared. Its flame swept the beetles back, and Mariat stood there, facing Wask.

The creature, now up to its calves in insects, sputtered with laughter.
“There is too much of me,”
it said,
“and not enough of you.”
It chittered a command, and a low wall of night-beetles, multi-legs churning and antennae waving, turned and roiled toward her.

Sheft groped over the dark ground and seized a good-sized rock. He grasped it tightly in both hands and bore down hard on his spirikai. Ice crystallized, ran down his arms and into the rock. He could hear Mariat frantically sweeping the torch, hear the squeals of terror in her throat, but he didn’t dare look up, didn’t dare break his concentration. He squeezed the rock until frost glittered on the rough surface, then hurled it into the beetle-man’s chest.

It hit hard. A hole tore open, bleeding beetles. Unbalanced on its dissolving legs, the creature fell onto its back. It opened its rictus mouth and issued a high, thin call. The tide of insects, now barely an inch away from Mariat’s feet, swerved and rushed to the creature’s aid. They carried the disintegrating remains of its upper body onto what was left of the mattress and burrowed into the pile of bloody straw and fabric. There they sought new sustenance, new strength.

Sheft got to his feet and propped himself up with his hands on his knees. “The lantern, Mariat,” he gasped. “Get the oil lantern!”

Topped with the grotesque head and neck, most of Wask’s torso had collapsed into a living, churning heap; but the insects were refilling it, swelling into a thick chest, bulging shoulders, and stumps of what would soon be arms. The head turned to look at him, beetles swirling in its eye sockets.
“You will fail, niyal’arist. Redemption always involves failure.”

Mariat shoved the lantern into his hands. He flung it onto the beetle-infested mattress, grabbed her torch, and thrust it into the spilled oil. The straw burst into flames.

With an inhuman cry, Wask tried to twist its torso out of the fire as beetles fled wildly from its body. Like an exhaling lung, the skin emptied and flattened. Abruptly, Wask changed into an inky rivulet. It abandoned the mattress and rushed toward the barn. Sheft careened after it, wielding the torch with an icy hand. His boots crunched over the spot where a terrified little boy had first encountered the Groper, but now he bore the toltyr and a flame held high, and the night-time horror fled from him.

The rivulet rolled into the shadow of the barn. It tossed last words back to him.
“Because of you, she also will be taken.”

His breath coming in painful gasps, Sheft stopped and watched the Groper disappear into the night. It left behind a dead silence. The Riftwood, black against the starlit sky, stretched unmapped over the curve of the world, and the flame of his torch was nothing but a brief spark. His victory was a hollow gourd, and fear for Mariat rattled inside it. A deep instinct told him that the beetle-man had spoken the truth, that its every threat was a prophecy.

Sheft made his way back to her, the torch suddenly so heavy it was an effort to hold it upright. Mariat, one hand clutching her skirt, was sweeping beetles into the flaming straw with the torch he had dropped earlier. But now the insects had lost their animating force and were running about in mindless panic, so he pulled her aside and allowed the beetles to scuttle off. 

The blazing pile soon settled into ash, and the last of the sparks sailed like glowing orange crystals into the dark. It must be after midnight. Shivering inside, Sheft turned to Mariat. Her eyes were enormous, her face white.

“Are you,” they both asked in breathless unison, “all right?”

Together, they nodded. 

He guided her toward the house, extinguishing the torches on the way. Just inside the door, Mariat looked down and yelped. A lone beetle had scurried in, and she ground it furiously under her boot. With a grimace, she wiped it on the doorstep, then shut the door. They looked at each other and swallowed.

Mariat lowered herself onto the bench at the table. “Wine,” she said. “Wine would be good now.”

Wine? Tarn had no wine. But then Sheft remembered: Mariat had brought some when she had stitched up his arm in Hawk. It was far back in the cupboard. He set the bottle and two cups on the table, sank down across from Mariat, and poured a glass for her, his hand shaking so much the bottle clattered against the cup rim. She took two big gulps while he managed to pour some for himself. 

“Wait,” she said when he brought the cup to his lips. “Wait. You shouldn’t drink that on an empty stomach. When was the last time you had something to eat?”

“I d-don’t know,” he stammered. “Groats. I had a bowl of groats just after the field-burn.”

“That’s too long!” She jumped up. “I made soup. You’ve got to eat.”

He put the cup down, too hard, and wine splashed out. “No, wait a minute, Mariat. Please, sit down.” All unknowing, she had come to heal him and wound up fighting the darkness at his side. She was innocent, and he had involved her, endangered her, yet again. He owed her everything—including the truth.

“Mariat, I have to talk to you. But I don’t have much time. I think pretty soon I’m going to wind up on that mattress again.” The pain in his back, which his battle with the beetle-man had largely driven from his head, was beginning to reassert itself with a vengeance. His wounds felt swollen and hot, and the room blurred under an ice-reaction daze.

“I don’t know how you ever got off it!” she exclaimed. “What happened? Why did that—that creature—why did it
come
here? How did you drive it away?” She pointed at the toltyr. “With magery?”

Magery? He stared at her. “N-no. No magery. This is called a toltyr. The Toltyr Arulve.”

“Toltyr Arulve?”

“I don’t know what that means. Something about Rulve.”

“Riah left it to you?”

“Yes. No. It belongs to me.” He held the medallion out, as if it could explain itself to her.

Without taking her eyes off him, she sat down again. “You screamed out something. ‘Ni—nilan-rista’. What is that?”

“It’s me. I’m niyalahn-rista.” 

“Is that—is that your family name?”

“No, no. Please let me explain. My brother and I together—I had a brother, Mariat. We’re doubles.
Were
doubles. I’m sorry. But it’s not what you think.” He took a breath. “Actually—actually it’s worse.” The ice reaction made it hard to form coherent thoughts, but the returning pain told him he must speak quickly. “Riah told me before she died. We—I—am apparently this niyalahn-rista. But I don’t know what that means. I didn’t want to take the toltyr, Mariat, but now, since the—the accident, it’s become part of me.”

Seeing the look on her face, he felt hopelessly unable to explain. He rubbed his face. “So much happened to me. I don’t know where to start.”

“Wait. You have to eat something first. You’re not making any sense.”

She brought him a bowl of soup, and to please her he ate some of it. But after a few mouthfuls he put the spoon down. Mariat looked at him with wide eyes and clutched her cup of wine with both hands. “Just start anywhere.”

He began to speak—clumsily, hesitating, ashamed. He told her everything, from the beginning: about his root-ridden blood and the ice, about what happened in Miramakamen’s tent, and Riah’s rape, and his conversation with the great falconform. Partway through, he took a swallow of wine, but it tasted like vinegar and he put it aside. He kept nothing hidden from her.

She listened without interruption, occasionally motioning for him to take a spoonful of soup. It and her wine gradually dwindled away.

Near the end of the telling he was exhausted, aware that his battle with the beetle-man had taken an enormous toll. Taut with pain and humiliation, he slumped with his elbows on the table, holding his bowed head in his hands. “That’s why I had to let you go, Mariat.”

Now that she knew the ugly truth, she would leave for home as soon as it was light. Two days later he would leave too, but in an entirely different direction.

She reached over the table and took both of his hands. “You spoke to me with courage, Sheft, and humility. You are more dear to me than my own heart.”

Not sure he had heard her correctly, he lifted his head to look into her eyes. They shone with love and tears, and they were both for him. She knew everything, and still looked at him like this. Mariat stood and came around the table to him. He reached up to embrace her, and pressed his cheek against her waist. Her arms came around him, and she leaned down to spread kisses in his hair, down the back of his neck.

After a moment she drew back. “I have to replace your bandage. It’s all red, dear heart.”

Panic twisted in his stomach. He was bleeding, and had no ice left. What if the beetle-man should return? Return as the Groper, seeping under the door, or as Wask, tearing it from its hinges? Some instinct told him he would encounter the creature again, in a form even more powerful, and that it would happen soon.

“You saved us, Sheft, and now this is the price. But you won’t pay it alone.” She helped him back to the mattress, untied the bandage, and carefully removed it.

Tense, he waited while she examined the cuts.

“The stitches held, dear heart. They bled a little, but held.”

He sagged in relief.

“Now just relax, and I’ll clean your back again.” She dabbed at the wounds with a cloth wrung in warm water, prepared another salve-spread bandage, and tied it securely around him. With a glance at the door, she threw the bloody cloths into the fire.

He settled gratefully onto his stomach, his face turned toward her, and they lay side by side on their separate, narrow mattresses. Tiredness lined her face, there were dark smudges under her eyes, and her hair was askew. She was so beautiful.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked, her gaze soft with concern.

The pain made it hard to talk. “As Yarahe said. One day after the dark of the moon—that’s the day after tomorrow—I’ll go to the Wind-gate. Then through the Riftwood.” The way he felt now, it seemed like an impossible journey.

“I’ll come with you.”

They were dream-words, ice-reaction words. Cruel in their seeming reality.

“Sheft, did you hear me? I want to come with you.”

They were real words. But he could never allow her to come with him through the Riftwood. “No. You can’t.” 

She laid her hand over his arm, and the thrill of her touch fled over his skin. “I want to.”

“I could never ask it.”

“You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”

“You can’t come, Mariat.”

“You must allow me my choice. Don’t make that mistake again.”

“I
couldn’t
allow you to choose. You didn’t know what you were choosing. Now you do. That thing in the doorway—” He stopped to gather his strength. The ice-reaction was worse than he had ever experienced, and it felt as if a hot rake were scoring his back. “It came looking for me. It will come again. It wants my blood and now it wants you.”

“Me!”

“It told me, it
predicted
, that because of me, you also would be taken.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And you believed it?”

Her question stopped him, but only for a moment. “The—the mind-words, Mariat. They can’t lie.” Somehow, with a knowledge he must have been born with, he knew they came from a deep well of truth. 

“But if I come with you, I
will
be taken—in a manner of speaking.”

“No, no,” he groaned. “It wasn’t like that.”

“You drove the creature away, Sheft.”

“But can I do it the next time?” He covered his eyes with his hand. “I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know who I am.”

She drew his hand down. “Niyalahn-rista. That’s who you are.”

“But what is that? The
beetle-man
seemed to know more about it than I do.”

With a tender smile, she caressed his cheek. “We’ll learn together who you are. All I know is I fell in love with Sheft, and that’s you.” 

“But what about those deaths, Mariat? Those people who died in the village. I’m responsible for them.”

She was silent a moment, searching his face. “I think,” she said, “you’ll have to get over that. Even if that creature was looking for you and found them instead, how can that be your fault? If you let guilt eat away at you, then the beetle-man has won.”

“It’s my blood,” he groaned. “It’s cursed, packed with roots.”

She hesitated, and he thought at last the enormous truth he had told her was beginning to sink in. “I stitched you up, Sheft, twice already. I saw no roots.”

Her remark stunned him. How could she not understand? “Of course you can’t see them. They’re a—a symbol of what’s inside me. Of the thing inside me that draws the Groper.”

“I realize that, but I don’t see anything evil inside you. It’s just not there. Perhaps this power in your blood is somehow a good thing, a gift from Rulve.”

“A gift! Mariat, how can you say that? You saw with your own eyes what it summoned!”