Resenting the Hero (37 page)

“He opened and closed the ground above us. I kind of noticed that.”

I focused my wandering thoughts and asked, “Creol came down here every day?”

“He got a kick out of tossing our food at us. His honor and privilege, he said, to serve such worthy bonded Sources. And he liked to brag. He never wanted to waste an opportunity to tell us how eagerly our Shields were serving him.”

“Waxed poetic about it, he did,” one of the other Sources commented. “Particularly about you. Said you were most keen to serve him in any manner he cared to suggest.”

I sniffed, all the response such a comment deserved. Though I didn't like how often I had been portrayed as a devoted slave to whichever Source I happened to be working with at the time. “From his visits you figured out how to do what he does?” I asked Karish, my feelings a little too chaotic to allow this amazing discovery to cause any more mental commentary than
Zaire!

“I think so,” he answered with untimely modesty. He continued in a whisper, “It seems to me that all he does is lower his shields and invite the forces in. It's a little like what I did with Miho and Val.”

“Eh, now, play nice,” one of the others chided. “Share with your friends.” Karish ignored her.

“That's it?” It sounded too easy to me. Especially considering all the damage it could do.

“I think so.”

Not a rousing response in the affirmative, but he would know more about it than I, so I supposed I had to believe him. “Have you tried it?”

“Of course not. You weren't here.”

I lowered my voice even further. “You can heal without me,” I reminded him.

“I wasn't going to try it, Lee. I kind of like breathing.”

I wondered that Creol had risked putting me in the pit with my Source. If shaking the ground apart were so simple as Karish implied, did Creol really believe none of the Sources would try it once a Shield was among them? Or did he honestly believe he was the only one who could do it? “Do you really think this'll work?” I asked Karish.

“I think so.”

Gods, Karish, you're supposed to be arrogant. You're supposed to announce your expertise with annoying confidence.
“Fine. Let's give it a shot.”

“Not now. We have to wait until the meeting's broken up and everyone's gone home. If Creol's right on top of us when we do this, he might feel the earth moving and come to investigate.”

The music had me itching to be active. But he was right. “And then what do we do? Once we get out?”

“I don't know.” I felt him shrug. “I'm making this up as I go along.”

So we waited. The music didn't last much longer, and while it did I curled up in a ball on the floor and thought about how much I hated Aiden. We waited a while longer, so we could be sure everyone was gone and at home before we made our attempt to break out. The other Sources, either believing the two of us were deluding ourselves or beyond the point of caring about anything, even their own survival, seemed to go to sleep. Aiden kept his mouth shut. I was happy about that. I didn't want to hear anything he had to say. Ever.

After a long period of beautiful silence I nudged Karish. He had fallen asleep, too, and he woke with a jolt. “What's wrong?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing. It's time to get going.” I rose to my feet a little unsteadily, my legs numb with cold. “We don't want to give Creol a chance to get started.”

He nodded, stretched a bit, and stood up with a discomfort I could feel through his movements. I wondered if he was up for experimentation but didn't ask. It was not the time to make him doubt his confidence. “Are you ready?” he asked me.

“Aye.”

“Then let's get to it.” He lowered his shields and I raised mine.

At first nothing happened. We just stood there, Karish's mind wide open, and I didn't like it at all. We had no real idea what would respond to Karish's mental invitation. Perhaps there were some weird forces out there that might rush in and warp his mind. Maybe that was what had happened to Creol. Maybe this was a really bad idea.

But then it started, and it was too late to stop.

It was different, but then wasn't it always? Instead of one great gush there was a quieter sensation of movement, almost like something was squirming. Like the power was a great slug writhing into Karish's mind. It was not a pleasant sensation. But it changed under Karish's touch, disintegrating, threading out, becoming lighter and moving more freely. And what swept through my Shields was more like what I was used to feeling.

The earth above us opened, and the weak sunlight of dawn streamed in. A welcome break from the unrelieved darkness. I watched the ground slide back and wondered again how that could work.

In no time at all it was done. Karish pulled the forces back from my Shields and sent the writhing beast back to wherever it had come from. I dropped my Shields as he raised his.

And something obvious sank in. Karish could make the earth move. Literally. He could heal—why hadn't I understood the true significance of that before? Who knew what else he could do? He did, probably, and he kept it under wraps and did his best to behave as if he were an ordinary person. What I'd always said in jest suddenly struck me as truth. Karish was something else, something other. I stared at him with wonder. “Holy hell,” I muttered.

He was looking at me warily. “Don't you start, Lee,” he said, almost pleading. “I mean it. Really.”

All right. I could keep my mouth shut. Adoration wasn't my style, anyway.

I looked at the other Sources, who had been roused by Karish's stunt. Two women, four men, all of them staring at me blankly. I didn't know how long they had been down there, but they all looked awful. I wondered what lack of light could do to a person, combined with little freedom of movement, poor food, the stress of incarceration, hopelessness of rescue, and fear of death. Even if they were all guilty of the crimes of which the Shields had accused them, I didn't think rotting in a pit was a fitting punishment.

“How do we get out?” one of the men asked sourly.

“You're not getting out yet,” Karish informed him bluntly. “Lee and I'll”—here he was interrupted by protests lodged in such weak voices that he easily rode over them—“get out and fix things and then come back for you.”

“You go to hell, Lord Shintaro,” one of them snapped. “You think you can leave us down here?”

Karish flicked his filthy hair back from his face with impatience. “We'll come back for you,” he repeated.

“Excuse me if I have some trouble believing that.”

“I don't care what you believe. You can't get out without help, and we're not helping you until we're ready.”

“You're in no fine shape yourself, Stallion. You going to leap out of this hole all by yourself?”

The man did have a point. Karish was a mess, though by no means in as bad a shape as the others.

“I'll toss Dunleavy up,” was Aiden's unexpected contribution. “Once she's up, she can pull while I push.”

I looked at him. Who asked him? Awfully presumptuous of him to assume we weren't going to bury him down there. He didn't really think I'd trust him after all he had done, did he?

Karish put a hand on my shoulder. “We need a quick way out, Lee,” he reminded me. “You two are the strongest people here, and he's the tallest. And it's in his best interest to help us.”

We couldn't be sure of that. Perhaps Creol was only pretending to condemn Aiden, so we would sympathize with the poor, misguided, lovelorn fool and trust him again. He would listen in on our plans and go running off to Creol when it was convenient. He'd done it before.

Of course, he couldn't run anywhere if we left him in the pit. I could pull out Karish, and we would leave Aiden and the others down there until we were ready to come back for them. At this point the only way Aiden could betray me was to drop me, and I knew how to fall.

I nodded. Aiden cupped his hands and I stepped into them, climbing onto his shoulders as he straightened to his full stance. From there it was easy enough to scramble onto the ground.

I looked back down over the edge. “Karish next,” I said.

“No goddamned way,” one of the women snapped. She clutched at the wall and got herself to her feet with a disturbing lack of grace and surety. “Once you two are out, you'll take off and leave us here.”

Yes, that was the plan, as we'd already said.
“Aye, and we'll come back with an easier means of getting out, because there's no way you'll be able to do it the way I did,” I pointed out. “You can prove me wrong by preventing Karish from coming out next.”

She glared at me. Karish didn't look too thrilled with my suggestion either. I tried to prevent pity from rising in my chest. The Sources really were disgustingly thin. I wondered if any of the Shields had a real idea about how close to death the Sources were. Out of self-interest alone, I would have thought the Shields would have had more concern about how healthy their Sources were kept. But then, I was no healer. Maybe they only looked really bad. But that was enough to make me wish we could get them out of there and somewhere decent for a bath and some real food.

“What about me?” Aiden asked quietly.

“You'll be no use to us, and we can't trust you,” I told him. “And there's no one here who can push you up, anyway.”

He seemed to accept that. I'd never thought he was stupid.

“I'm not sure I can get out your way, either, Lee,” Karish said. “I don't think I can keep my balance.”

“Of course you can,” I said briskly. “Use the wall. I'll help you from up here. Piece of cake.” Because there was no way I was going to leave him down there.

Karish studied Aiden, who returned the look with glowing hostility. “I really don't think this is going to work,” my Source muttered.

Aiden snorted. “Don't worry, Your Lordship. I won't dump you on your head.”

“I have some difficulty believing that,” Karish retorted.

“I'm not an idiot,” Aiden claimed. “I know I've bungled things. It won't help my cause if I break your neck and keep her from saving the world, will it?”

Nothing would help his cause, but I saw no need to point that out at that exact moment.

“That's a motive I can appreciate,” said Karish, and he stepped into Aiden's hands.

His ascent wasn't as quick or as graceful as mine, but we got him on the ground, where he stretched out on his back to catch his breath. His face was too pale.

“You need to get some exercise, Taro,” I told him, and I grinned into the force of his lethal glare. “All that lazing about you've been doing lately. You've got to change that wastrel lifestyle.”

“Now, Lee, you know if I showed the slightest trace of industry you would be left with nothing to do. Could I do that to you?” He gasped as he sat up.

I helped him to his feet, hoping he didn't need it. “Are you all right?”

“Are you kidding? I'm free. I feel great.”

He didn't sound as though he were being sarcastic. Good enough. “We'll be back with a ladder,” I called into the pit. Or we'd be dead. Still, if we failed, Creol would go back to see how we had escaped. They would be no worse off than they had been before.

“You can't leave us here!”

“Damn it,
come back
!”

Wordlessly, Karish and I left the hole, their shouts and protests following us.

I didn't like leaving them there. It had to be awful to have escape so close at hand, but impossible to reach. To be left behind with no control over what was going to happen next. It would have driven me frantic. But we couldn't take the time to get them all out. Karish had barely made it out, and he was the healthiest of the lot. It couldn't be helped.

Karish grabbed me again, and somewhere he found the strength for another bone-crushing embrace.

“Gods, man!” I gasped. “Stop doing that!”

He loosened his hold only long enough to kiss me. “You have no idea how it feels to be out and free,” he swore fervently. “I thought I'd been tossed into hell.”

I didn't want to talk about it. I couldn't stand to think of him stuck down there while I was eating and drinking and laughing with his captors. I managed to disengage from him. “We've got to get going.” We started off to town at a pace that was slower than I liked but probably all that Karish could manage.

I would worry about the guilt later.

Chapter Twenty-five

Karish was in a bad way. He was walking as fast as he could—running or even jogging was beyond him—and it was draining him. I didn't know what we were doing, trying to dash back to Creol with no plan of action. I didn't know how we were going to find him. I didn't know where he lived, and anyone who saw us in the street would be able to stop us. And even if we did find Creol, what were we going to do with him? Tell him not to attack High Scape? That would be effective.

Karish stopped suddenly, his hand tightening around mine. His eyes got that faraway look. I caught my breath and readied for action, but his shields didn't drop. They only wavered a little. “It's started,” he said.

“What? What's happening?”

“The attack on High Scape.”

What, didn't Creol sleep?

Karish's tone was absentminded, most of his attention directed inward. “He's opened his mind. He's allowed in all the forces he can accommodate, many more than he uses to move the earth over the pit.” A little line appeared between his eyebrows as he frowned in concentration. “He's directing the forces to High Scape. He's been there. I don't think he can attack a place he's never been. He needs to know exactly where it is in relation to him.”