Nightlord: Sunset (76 page)

Ouch.

I hauled back on Bronze’s mane and she thundered to a halt.  She’s not quiet at a full run—she can be heard like a semi roaring down the highway—and the chuffing smoke and flickers of flame doubtless make people more alert.  A sentry shouted as we were slowing and men turned out with clubs, knives, and bows.  The sentry was sitting atop a wagon; he aimed a crossbow at me as Bronze thundered to a halt.  I was startled.  Their response time made me think of a gypsy S.W.A.T. team.

“Hello the camp!” I called.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“A traveler in the night, seeking an old friend.”  I kept my voice level and hid the anticipation and excitement inside.

“Who?”

“She has been known by—” I began, but did not need to finish.  A door banged open and Shada came out of a wagon.  She stood on the top of the ladder-like steps and glared at me.  I shut up and stared while my insides did a quick loop and twist.  I hadn’t known seeing her again would feel like that.  I guess… I guess I missed her more than I thought.

Oh, who am I kidding?  I wish I hadn’t been an idiot and made her go in the first place.

“You!”

She didn’t sound glad to see me.  My heart dropped toward my toes.

“Shada!”

“Call me ‘Utai,’ for that is my name.”

I nodded.  The sinking sensation continued.  She wanted to put all that behind her.  I can respect that.  “Okay.  I’m glad to see you, Utai.  How have you been?”

The crowd was loosening up a little, watching us talk, but they were still suspicious.  One man said a few words to Sh— to
Utai
in the language of the
gata.
  Utai answered him, and I could only barely follow it; apparently, I haven’t eaten enough
gata
.  But the thrust of it was that she did, in fact, know me.  Although she qualified it a bit—and that I did not follow at all.

Whatever she said, it seemed to calm the grouchy people.  Most went back into or under wagons to go back to sleep.  The sentry snorted and stopped aiming at me.  Utai stepped down.

I joined in by dismounting and leaving Bronze where she stood.  I approached Utai.

“I wondered what happened to you,” I offered.  I didn’t add I’d worried about her; she might think I was saying I thought she couldn’t take care of herself.

“Did you?” she asked, coldly.

“I did.  We didn’t part under the most pleasant of circumstances.”

“I suppose we did not.”

“You’re looking well.”

“As are you.”

I thought for a second, having exhausted my ready cache of one-sided small talk.

“Nice weather we’re having?” I tried, somewhat desperately.

She frowned at me.  “What do you want?”

“Nothing, really.  I was passing by and I recall what you said about legends between the
gata
and my kind.  I also realized I haven’t seen a
gata
since I first found you; I’m glad you’re with your own people again.”

“They are not,” she hissed, “my people.”  A neat trick with so few sibilants.

I blinked in confusion.  Oh, yes.  Each
gata
is its own tribe.  Faux pas on my part.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t… I forgot,” I admitted.  I probably could have felt lower, but I didn’t have a hole to step into, despite my verbal digging.  “I
am
sorry.”

She didn’t soften for a second.  “Sorry for
what?
” she asked.

Ah.  I’ve screwed up somewhere and now I get to play a guessing game.  Not all women do this to men, but I’ve met very few who don’t.  On the other hand, maybe it always is somehow my fault and they just do it to
me.

So I thought about it.  In point of fact, I went back into my mental library and flipped back several pages to review what I knew of our last conversation.  I looked it over with the benefits of time and distance and tried to understand what I might have done to irk her.

And, hindsight being much more accurate than foresight…

“I think,” I began, “I was being stupid.”  That’s always a good guess, anyway.

She nodded.  “In that, you are most correct.”

“I assumed that… you were… abiding by the terms of our deal,” I continued.  “It did not even occur to me that you might, perhaps, possibly, have actually found your situation with me to be… ah…” I stumbled to a halt, thinking.

She didn’t help; she just stood there and waited.

“… that you might like things the way they were,” I finished, lamely.

“I see you did not.”

“Ah.  Yes.  Well, I also think—and if I’m wrong, please just tell me?—that you might have actually, at some point, decided you care for me.”

I cheated; I shifted my vision to look at her spirit.  I had to know.  Her face gave nothing away, but her spirit flickered with a bunch of colors.  I’d say I hit close to the mark.

“I did,” she admitted, in a tone that invited me to continue.  I noticed the sentry wasn’t doing his job; he was sitting in the darkness up there and grinning.  I tried to ignore him.

“I made a mistake,” I admitted.  “I thought you were merely adhering to your word, instead of actually being my… companion.  It didn’t occur to me you would; I’m not fully human, and I’m no prize to begin with.  So… I never believed—and that’s my fault for not seeing it—that you were staying with me because you
wanted
to.  I tried to be considerate and botched it; I drove you off by hurting your feelings and treating you casually—when you’re really very important to me.  You’re the first, best friend I’ve made since my trip through the shadow door.  I missed you,” I admitted.  I missed her a lot, and it took admitting it to fully realize it.  I also realized I care about her, a lot.  An awful lot.  More than I should, I guess, considering where I am with Tamara…

“I’m sorry,” I finished.

She smiled, just a little.  I was profoundly glad to see that.

“Very well.  I accept your apology.  I am still displeased with you.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.  Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

“Perhaps.  Come inside and we will discuss it.”

I heard the sentry snicker quietly, but I climbed the steps and entered the wagon.

The place was crowded as a flea market and three times as colorful.  It was a small room on wheels, crammed with drawers and boxes and cabinets, decorated simply but with a disregard for the damage it might cause to creatures with color vision.  A small window on either side could be opened for air, and the main light was a hanging lantern in the center.  The roof was only a trifle higher than my head.

Utai moved to sit atop a wide, low chest; there were cushions of all description on top of it.  She tossed a few to me and I arranged them on the floor, sat on them.

“So what can I do for you?” I asked.

“Protect us,” she answered.

I think I blinked.  “Excuse me?”

“In the old times, all the
gata
had a protector among the nightlords.  Sometimes several
gata
would be allied with one, sometimes a nightlord would bargain with only one
gata
.  But each alliance was a secret, shared with no one.  The
gata
would listen and watch for things the nightlord would wish to know; they would hide him from his enemies; they would even surrender up some of their blood to slake his thirst if hunting was poor or dangerous.

“In return,” she continued, “the nightlord of a
gata
would protect it.  When disasters struck, the nightlord would send aid.  When food was scarce, game would be driven to the
gata’s
hunters.  And when they were hunted, the nightlord would hunt the hunters.”

I thought about it for a few minutes.  She was quiet, watching me.

“So this is the deal you want to make with me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“When I need help, you help.  When you need help, I help.  We both do what we can, as best we can, and hope that’s enough?”

“Yes.”

I got the feeling that there was something I was missing.

“Is there anything, right now, you would like me to look into?”

“So you accept?” she asked.  Her voice and face gave nothing away, but her spirit was eager.

“Not yet, no.  But is there anything you would like me to do
now
?”

She looked at me shrewdly.  “Perhaps.”

Aha!
thought I.

“And what might that be?”

“Three weeks ago, Mama Aliery died,” she said.  “The wise woman of the
Athil gata
,” she amplified.  “She said something about a creature following the
gata
, something dark and dangerous, and she was going to summon it closer so she could banish it for good.”

I nodded.  It’s hard to get rid of something if you can’t even see it.  I should know; I’m hiding from a lunatic priest and his pet demons.  It works.  I just hope that Tobias never tries summoning me.

Oh, now
that’s
a bad thought. 
Can
I be summoned?  Shivers and chills.  Ick.

“She did this, calling with her magic to summon the creature,” Utai began, then swallowed.  “It must have simply appeared in her wagon.  There… there was blood everywhere…” she said, then stopped.  When she continued, her voice was much softer.  “Mama Aliery was ripped to pieces.”

“I see.  And the creature?”

“There was no sign of it.”

“Hmm.  You think it’s still following you?”

“It must be.  It has been seen, out beyond the firelight.  At least one of our animals vanishes every week.  And the children—the children wake in the darkness from nightmares.  We have lost none of them, but we dread the night we shall.”

I nodded again.  That explained why they were all on a hair-trigger alert.

“All right.  You want me to find it and kill it?”

“Yes.  I… I have tried to find it, to seek it, but my spells… I am not a wise woman; I have not the training, nor enough of the Gift.  I have done my best, but… no.  I cannot even see this beast in water or crystal.”

“So you’ve no idea what it is?”

“None,” she admitted.  “Do we have a bargain?”

“No,” I said.  “But if there is something out there with an eye on your
gata
, I’ll carve it into little chunks.”

She looked perplexed.  “We have little to offer you in return,” she protested.  “There is no accounting in the alliance of nightlord and
gata,
and we are not wealthy enough purchase service—”

“Oh, save it.  I’m doing it because I feel like it.  And because it’s you that’s asking.  I’ll do it for you. 
You,
not the
gata.
”  I stood up and ducked by reflex when my hair brushed the ceiling.  I took off my cloak; it would only get in the way.  “Wait here and I’ll see what I can find.”

She nodded wordlessly as I opened the rear door and climbed out.  I shut the door behind me and stomped off into the surrounding forest.

I didn’t see anything unusual.  It was a forest—a forest that was well-lit and shadowless, at least to me—and had the usual run of vines, undergrowth, and variously-sized trees.  The moss on the trunks wasn’t in great shape; it was pretty dry.  I circled the camp and failed to find anything larger than rabbits.

I had a mental image of Monty Python’s vorpal rabbit and ruthlessly suppressed it.  Then I gave in and ran tendrils over and through the ground.  When they brushed over anything, I felt it.  The rabbits were perfectly normal.

I made three complete circuits, spiraling outward.  Zip.

Well, so much for a simple search.

I drew a circle on the ground with Firebrand’s point, myself at the center.  I reached outward, flickering tendrils among the tree-trunks, into the camp, and beyond.  No more of this localized sensing; I reached much farther outward, tendrils pushed by my will and by magic, crawling outward in all directions to check everywhere around the camp at once.  I could feel the sleepers in their wagons, the children’s amorphous dreams of terror, the sentry’s bored-but-wakeful watching, Utai’s worry, the heartbeats of those frightened rabbits, the furtive movement of field mice, and the slow pulse of the winter sap in the trees.

The place was safe as houses. 

Then an owl flew down and snatched up a mouse.

I hadn’t seen it.  I hadn’t felt it.  I hadn’t known it was there.

And I kicked myself.

I’d looked for something on the ground.  I’d sent out seeking tendrils all through the forest, filling the local area like water fills a bowl.  But I hadn’t looked up into the trees.

I have got to pay attention to the little details.  They can get me killed.

So I stretched the whole webwork of strands upward, expanding the meshes of my magical net.  Smaller things might escape notice—like bugs and small birds—but that would be fine by me; what I wanted ate geese and ripped people apar—