Bloodstone (23 page)

Amaziga was pulling a large box toward her, and Shannow leaned in to help. “Be careful. It’s heavy,” she said. Shannow lifted it and turned toward the house, happy to be clear of the fumes from the vehicle. Once inside, he laid the box on the table and waited for the black woman.

The voice of Lucas sounded: “It may interest you to know, Mr. Shannow, that your reflexes are five point seven percent higher than normal.”

“What?”

“The speed at which you drew the pistol shows that you are faster than the average man,” explained Lucas.

Amaziga entered and heaved a second box alongside the first. “There’s one more,” she told Shannow, who left reluctantly to fetch it. This was lighter, and with no room on the tabletop, he set it down alongside the table.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked him. He nodded. She was wearing a soft long-sleeved shirt with no collar. It was dark blue, and a portrait of a leaping black man had been painted on the chest.

“Is that Sam?” he asked.

Amaziga laughed, the sound good-humored. “No, it’s a basketball player. A sportsman in this world.” She laughed again. “I’ll explain it later,” she said. “But now let’s unpack the shopping.” Glancing at a dial on her wrist, she turned to Lucas. “Six and a half hours, yes?”

“An adequate approximation,” responded the machine.

Amaziga pulled a small folding knife from her pocket and opened the blade. Swiftly she ran it along the top of the first box, then placed it on the table. Opening the flaps, she lifted clear a squat black weapon shaped, to Shannow’s eyes at least, like the letter T. More weapons followed: two automatic pistols and twelve clips of ammunition. Discarding the empty box, she opened the second, drawing from it a short rifle with a pistol grip and two barrels. “This is for you, Shannow,” she said. “I think you’ll like it.” Shannow did not, but he said nothing as she laid boxes of shells alongside the gun.

Leaving her to unpack the other box, he walked to the door and stared out over the landscape. The sun was high, the
temperature soaring. Heat shimmers were rising from the front of the vehicle. To the left he saw a movement from within a giant cactus. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the hole in the central stem. A tiny buff-colored owl appeared, launched into the air, and flew in a tight circle around the cactus before disappearing back into the hole. Shannow guessed the bird to be around six inches in height with a wingspan of around fourteen inches. He had never seen an owl so small.

Amaziga moved out alongside him, handing Shannow the ugly rifle with the pistol grip. “It’s a shotgun, and it takes six shells,” she said. “It is operated by a pump under the barrels. Try it out on that cactus.”

“There’s a nest there,” said Shannow.

“I don’t see a nest.”

“A small owl in that hole. Let’s move farther out.” Shannow strode away. The desert sun was riding high, the temperature searing. Some way to the right he saw what could have been a small lake but was more likely to be a mirage. He pointed it out to Amaziga.

“There’s nothing there,” she said. “During the last century scores of settlers died here, taking their tired oxen down into the valley, expecting water. It’s a harsh country.”

“It is one of the greenest deserts I’ve seen,” observed Shannow.

“Most of the plants here can live for up to five years without rainfall. Now, how about that saguaro? See any nests?”

Shannow ignored the sarcasm and hefted the weapon, aiming from the hip at a small barrel cactus close by. He pulled the trigger, and the cactus exploded; the sound of the shot hung in the air for several seconds. “It’s grotesque,” said the Jerusalem Man. “It would tear a man’s arm off.”

“I would have thought you would have loved that,” put in Amaziga.

“You have never understood me, woman, and you never will.”

The words were not spoken with anger, but Amaziga reacted as if struck. “I understand you well enough!” she
stormed. “And I’ll not debate my thoughts with the likes of you.” Swinging, she aimed her own squat weapon at a saguaro and pulled the trigger. A thunderous wall of sound erupted from the gun, and Shannow was peppered with bright brass shell cases. The saguaro leaned drunkenly to one side, its thick body showing gaping holes halfway up the central stem, then fell to the desert floor.

Shannow turned and headed back to the house. He heard Amaziga ram another clip home, and a second burst followed the first. Inside, he dropped the shotgun to the table.

“What did she shoot?” asked the machine.

“A tall cactus.”

“A saguaro,” the machine told him. “How many arms did it have?”

“Two.”

“It takes around eighty years before a saguaro grows an arm. And less than a second to destroy it.”

“Is that regret?” Shannow asked.

“It is an observation,” answered the machine. “The bird you saw is called an elf owl; they are quite common here. The desert is home to many interesting birds. The man Lucas used to spend many long hours studying them. His favorite was the gilded flicker. It probably made the nest hole the elf owl now inhabits.”

Shannow said nothing, but his eyes strayed to the shotgun. It was an obscene weapon.

“You will need it,” said Lucas.

“You read minds?”

“Of course. My clairvoyant abilities are what caused Amaziga to create me. The Devourers are powerful creatures. Only a shot to the heart with a powerful rifle or pistol will stop them. The skulls are thick and will resist your weapons. What are they, thirty-eights?”

“Yes.”

“Amaziga has purchased two forty-fours, Smith and Wesson, double-action. They are in the box on the floor.” Shannow knelt by it and opened the flaps. The guns were long-barreled
and finished in metallic blue, the butts white and smooth. Lifting them clear, he hefted them for weight and balance. “Each weighs just under two and a half pounds,” Lucas told him. “The barrels are seven inches long. There are three boxes of shells on the table.”

Shannow loaded the weapons and stepped out into the sunlight to see Amaziga walking back toward the house. There was a small sack hanging on a fence post some thirty feet from the Jerusalem Man. Moving to it, she pulled out four empty cans, which she stood on the fence rail around two feet apart. Stepping aside, she called to Shannow to try out the pistols.

His right arm came up. The pistol thundered, and a can disappeared. The left arm rose, but this time his shot missed. “Put them close together,” he ordered Amaziga. She did so, and he fired again. The can on the left flew from the rail. “More cans,” he called. Reloading the pistols, he waited as she set out another six.

This time he fired swiftly, left and right. All the targets were smashed from the fence.

“What do you think of them?” asked Amaziga, approaching him.

“Fine weapons. This one pulls a fraction to the left. But they’ll do.”

“The salesman assured me they would stop a charging rhino … a very large animal,” she added, seeing his look of puzzlement.

He tried to drop the pistols into his scabbards, but they were too bulky. “Don’t worry about that,” Amaziga told him. “I picked up a set of holsters for you at Rawhide.” She chuckled, but Shannow could not see the reason for humor.

Back inside the house she unwrapped a brown parcel, handing Shannow a black hand-tooled gun belt with two scabbards. The leather was thick and of high quality, the buckle highly polished brass. There were loops all around it, filled with shells. “It is very handsome,” he said, swinging it around his hips. “Yes, very handsome. My thanks to you, lady.”

She nodded. “They do suit you, Shannow. Now I must leave you again. We’ll be back at dusk. Lucas will brief you.”

“
We’ll
be back?” queried Shannow.

“Yes, I’m going to meet Gareth. He’ll be coming with us.”

Without another word she left the house. Shannow watched her move to the circle of broken stones. There was no bright light; she merely faded and disappeared from sight.

Inside once more, Shannow gazed at the calm, tranquil face on the screen. “What did she mean,
brief
me?”

“I shall show you the route you will travel and the landmarks you must memorize. Sit down, Mr. Shannow, and observe.”

The screen flickered, and Shannow found himself staring out over a range of mountains thickly covered with pine.

Jacob Moon watched as the painted wagons moved slowly out of sight, the tall, slender blond woman riding the last of them. He hawked and spit. On another day he would have extracted a price for freeing the sandy-haired young man … Meredith? And the price would have been the woman Isis. Mostly Jacob Moon liked his women fat, but there was something about this girl that excited him. And he knew what it was: innocence and a fragile softness. He wondered if she was consumptive, for her skin was unnaturally pale and she had had, he noticed, difficulty climbing into the wagon. Turning away, he focused on more important matters.

Dillon’s body lay in the undertaker’s parlor, and the Jerusalem Man rode free somewhere in the mountains. The trackers had followed him but had lost the trail in the desert. Shannow and a companion had ridden their horses into a circle of stones and vanished. Moon shivered.

Could the man be an angel? Could the whole sorry Bible fairy tale be fact? No. He could not believe that. If God exists, then why does he not strike me down? Christ alive, I’ve killed enough people! He was quick enough to strike down Jenny, and she had never harmed anyone.

It’s all random, he thought. A game of chance.

The strong survive; the weak die.

Bullshit! We all die someday.

The town was unnaturally quiet. The previous day’s shooting had astonished them. True, Dillon had been a feared man, but more than that he had been full of life. A loud, powerful bull of a man radiating strength and certainty. Yet in the space of a few heartbeats he had been cut down by a stranger who had stood in the street and named their sins.

Jacob Moon had arrived in Domango three hours after the killing, when the hunters had just been returning. Then a rider had come in from the Hankin farm. Two more men dead. The Jerusalem Man? Probably, thought Moon.

Still, sooner or later he would have Shannow in his sights. Then that problem would be over.

Moon smiled and recalled the woman. With Dillon’s blood still staining the street, she had walked into the Crusader office and approached him. “I understand, sir, that you are a Jerusalem Rider.” Moon had nodded, his hooded eyes raking the slender lines of her body. “My name is Isis. I have come to you for justice, sir. Our doctor, Meredith, has been wrongly imprisoned. Would you release him?”

Moon had leaned back in his chair and thrown a glance at the stocky Crusader standing by the gun rack. The man cleared his throat. “They’re Movers,” he said. “They come in beggin’.”

“That is not true,” said Isis. “Doctor Meredith merely erected a sign saying that he was a doctor and inviting people to visit him.”

“We already got a doctor,” snapped the Crusader.

“Let him go,” said Moon.

The Crusader stood silent for a moment, then lifted a ring of keys from a hook by the gun rack and moved back through to the rear of the building.

“I thank you, sir,” said Isis. “You are a good man.”

Moon smiled then, but he said nothing. He glanced up as the Crusader brought out Meredith, a tall young man with sandy hair and a weak face. Moon wondered if he was the girl’s lover and idly pictured them coupling. “They knew Dillon’s killer,” said the Crusader. “That’s a fact.”

Moon turned his stare to the woman. “He was wounded,” she said. “We found him near to death and nursed him. Then, later, when we were attacked, he fought off the raiders.” Moon nodded but remained silent. “Then he killed the Oath Taker from Purity. After that he rode away. I don’t know where.”

“Did he say his name?” asked Moon.

“Yes. He said he was Jon Shannow. Our leader, Jeremiah, thinks the wound to his head has confused him. He has no memory, you see. He cannot remember who shot him or why. Jeremiah believes he has taken refuge in the identity of the Jerusalem Man.”

The sandy-haired young man stepped alongside Isis, putting his arm around her shoulder. The action annoyed Moon, but he remained silent. “The mind is very complex,” said Meredith. “It is likely that his memories of childhood included many stories about Shannow. Now that he is an amnesiac, the mind is trying to piece together those memories. Hence his belief that he is the fabled Jerusalem Man.”

“So,” said Moon softly, “he does not remember where he is from?”

“No,” said Isis. “He struck me as a lonely man. Will you treat him with understanding when you find him?”

“You can rely on that,” promised Jacob Moon.

Shannow watched the screen, noting landmarks and listening as Lucas talked of the lands of the Bloodstone. Mostly the terrain was unfamiliar to Shannow, but occasionally he would see in the distance the shape of a mountain that seemed to strike a chord in his memory.

“You must remember, Mr. Shannow, that this is a world gone mad. Those disciples who follow the Bloodstone receive great gifts, but for the vast majority the future is only to die to serve his hunger. We will not have long to find Samuel Archer. The jeep will get us within range within a day. We will then have perhaps another twenty-four hours to save him.”

“Jeep?” queried Shannow.

“The vehicle outside. It can travel at around sixty miles per hour over difficult terrain. And no Devourer or horseman will catch it.”

Shannow said nothing for a moment. Then: “You can see many places and many people.”

“Yes, I have extensive files,” agreed Lucas.

“Then show me Jon Shannow.”

“Amaziga does not wish you to see your past, Mr. Shannow.”

“The lady’s wishes are not at issue. I am asking
you
to show me.”

“What would you like to see?”

“I know who I was twenty years ago, when I fought the lizard-men and sent the Sword of God through to destroy Atlantis. But what happened then? How did I use those years? And why am I still relatively young?”

“Wait for a moment,” said Lucas. “I will assemble the information.”