Stalking Darkness (64 page)

“It was some kind of sacrifice,” explained Mirn. “The guards came every night at sundown and you could see everyone trying to shrink down out of sight any way they could, hoping they wouldn’t be the ones chosen. We were on the other side of camp from the ceremony most nights, but we could hear well enough to know that they were cutting up the poor buggers alive—“

He broke off, shuddering. “Afterward the other wizard, the man, would conjure up a black fetch to take away the bodies. The next day we’d march right over the spot where it happened and I swear to you, there wouldn’t be so much as a drop of blood anywhere.” “A black fetch?” several riders murmured uneasily. “By the Flame! You suppose that’s what we heard howling in the woods last night?” Tare asked. “Go on,” Beka urged, ignoring the others.

“What I’ll never figure is why they didn’t do us,” Gilly groaned, his voice suddenly unsteady. “By the Flame, Lieutenant, we were enemy captives. They planked us, all right, but nothing more. All the rest of the lot were plain folk: sailors taken by press gangs, Skalans, Mycenians. Women and children, too. But most of them were Plenimarans. Their own people!”

Both men fell silent, then Mirn sighed. “Sorry, Lieutenant, that’s about all there is to tell.”

Beka shook her head. “Don’t apologize. You rest easy now.” Getting to her feet, she looked around at the others.

“I figure we can’t be more than four or five days ride from Mycena. If we’re lucky, our side’s made some headway south by now. Ariani, I’m sending you back to the regiment with a verbal dispatch. Take the two best horses, ride as hard as you can, and get word back to Commander Klia about what we’ve seen.”

Ariani snapped a proud salute. “I will, Lieutenant.”

“Corporal Nikides, you’re in charge of taking back the wounded. We’ll rig up drag litters for Mirn and Gilly here. Steb, you’ll go with them. The rest of us will dog the column for a few more days.”

Steb looked down at Mirn, clearly torn in his loyalties. “With all due respect, Lieutenant, that only leaves twelve of you. I can shoot and fight as well with one eye as ever I did with two.”

“That’s why I need you to protect the wounded,” she told him, and saw his look of relief. “That goes for you, too, Nikides,” she added, seeing that the corporal was about to object. “Head north as fast as you can. You’re my secondary couriers in case Ariani doesn’t make it. The rest of us are staying to spy, not fight.”

Leaving Braknil in charge, Beka made a wide circuit of the camp, coming to a halt at last on a west-facing outcrop downhill from the others. She could hear them grumbling among themselves.

Those being sent away were none too happy about leaving the others behind; those staying wondered what more there was to be learned.

Beka sighed heavily. She’d already wrestled with the decision to further fragment what was left of the turma. None of her superiors would fault her for turning back now.

But what would they say about her reasons for staying? As her eye wandered north up the coastline she again felt the strange impression of familiarity and lightness that had come over her the night they’d first seen the comet.

Whoever this Lord Mardus was, whatever he was up to with his necromancers and pointless marches to nowhere, newly honed instincts told Beka that she was too close to learning his secrets to leave off now.

C
ries rang out behind him as Alec fled the little clearing. The voices of the Man and the Other mingled for a moment, then were silent. An inchoate sense of confusion stirred again, but his animal consciousness drove him on, deeper into the forest and away from the carrion reek. He scented other Men in the forest around him but they were easy enough to evade.

The first time Nysander had cast the spell of intrinsic nature on him, all those months ago in the safety of the Oreska garden, Alec’s conscious identity had been so totally overwhelmed by that of his beast form that Nysander had hastily changed him back before he could harm himself or anyone else in the resulting confusion.

It was the same this time, and it had been his overpowering animal flight instinct that had undoubtedly saved his life.

The wind was alive with scent as he dashed headlong through the darkness. Heeding the warnings that came to his nose, he avoided the Plenimaran pickets, bounding through thickets and over gullies and deadfalls with unthinking ease. As he fled, his mind slowly recovered from the shock of the change, blending with that of the stag into a state of heightened awareness that was neither animal nor human.

Emerging from the trees onto a rocky sea cliff, he stopped for a moment, muzzle dark with foam. Below him the tide crashed against the rocks, sending up great fans of spray.

The comet was burning across the sky and sight of it sent a fresh wave of panic through him. Every muscle trembled and twitched, every instinct screamed flight.

But he remained still, long sensitive ears sharply forward, nostrils wide. As his strange blood slowly cooled, something new caught at his senses.

Pawing the rock with one cloven hoof, he uttered a plaintive bellow, then stood motionless, listening.

The answering call was nothing more than the faintest of whispers in the silence of his mind. There was no voice or scent or image, only the summoning of instinct.

North, still north. Follow and trust.

Like a bird that suddenly recalls the route south after the first frost, Alec gave himself up to the pull of that faint glimmer, his mind still too clouded by the stag’s to question or doubt.

With another deep-throated cry he set his face to the wind and bounded onward.

Moon shadow patterns slid across his broad back as he ran and his human mind gradually began to marvel at the sensation of this startling new body.

He could feel the strain and bunch of the stag’s muscles as he sprang, the pumping of its great heart, the weight of the heavy rack that it bore with no more thought than he’d ever given to a hat.

The familiar scents of sea and forest took on a new richness beyond human perception. Pausing to drink at a flowing spring, he couldn’t resist the aroma of young mallow shoots growing around it. The wet green taste of them filled his mouth like honeycomb. A little grey owl winged across his path with a soft rush of feathers as he set off again.

The coastline grew more desolate as he moved north, and in the distance he could see a solitary peak jutting up against the stars. The ledges were broader here, extending out into the sea and cleft with crevasses and bands of darker stone. Farther up, where rock met grassland, mats of crowberry and lichen sent up a sweet aroma as he trampled across.

The sea slowly retreated down the rocks toward the low mark, leaving behind glistening tide pools that shone like black mirrors in the darkness. The moon sank into the sea and the stars danced toward home. As the wind shifted and night scents began to fade he smelled horses and men.

Picking his way down into a gully, he stood motionless, sniffing the breeze, until they’d passed him and disappeared to the north.

Alec sensed the coming dawn long before the first tinge of it appeared in the sky. The pellucid light of the false dawn welled up behind the mountains, waking flotillas of gulls and ducks that had ridden the waves out beyond the pull of the breakers. Something in the change of light tugged at his memory, but consumed by the irresistible pull of instinct and the summons, he could not recall what it was.

The first ray of true dawn touched him as he sprang across a foaming cleft in the rocks. The stag form blurred in midair, leaving in its place a thin, naked youth.

Sheer momentum carried Alec across. He landed awkwardly, skinning his knees and elbows. Still reeling from the transformation, he sprawled on his back and blinked up at the marbled gold sky, wondering dully where he was and how he’d come to be there.

Waves surged up the cleft he’d just jumped, flinging glittering white spray across his bare skin.

As Alec struggled to his knees, he realized he was still wearing the ivory vial he’d taken from Vargul Ashnazai. Prying it open, he emptied the contents into his palm, a few dark slivers of wood.

A blinding flash of memory rocked him—Ashnazai toying with the vial as he wove his tortures aboard the Kormados, the look of satisfaction on his face when he cut Seregil’s throat, There’s last despairing cry as it mingled with the howl of whatever had been unleashed against them after their escape. With a choked sob, he flung the pieces into the sea and screamed his sorrow after them.

But even as he mourned, the summons was still there, fainter somehow but still clear enough. North.

The first Plenimaran scouts reached the temple site just after dawn. Micum was on watch and heard their horses in time to hide in the underbrush next to the track. He waited until they passed him, heading toward the white stone, then hurried back to the pine shelter to warn the others.

“They’re on their way,” he whispered, crawling under the screen of branches. “Two Plenimaran scouts just went by on the road, headed north.”

“It is fortunate that they keep to the road,” Nysander murmured, stroking his chin absently. “Why is that?” asked Seregil.

Nysander sighed heavily, then looked up at his two companions. “Alec is on his way to us. He is keeping to the shoreline, so it is fortunate that the Plenimarans take the road.”

“He’s on his way?” Micum gasped, incredulous. “How do you know? When did you know?”

Seregil said nothing, but Micum saw the sudden tension in him, and the hectic spots of color that leapt into his sunken cheeks.

“I sensed him just after midnight last night,” replied Nysander. “You knew he was out there and you didn’t tell us?” Seregil hissed. “Illior’s Light, Nysander, why not?”

“You would only have charged off in the darkness with very little hope of accomplishing anything but damage to yourselves. He was too far away for you to reach on foot. Thero seems to have had a hand in his escape—“

“That traitorous bastard?” Seregil’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Stop it, Seregil!” Nysander ordered, finally giving rein to his own anger. It flashed across his face, startling as lightning from a clear sky. “Whatever Thero’s past actions may have been, it would appear that he used his own magic to aid Alec’s escape, quite possibly at the expense of his own life. Alec is alone. This has brought him closer to us than losing either of you would have. If Mardus’ scouts have reached us already, then the man himself cannot be far behind.”

Seregil opened his mouth to protest but Micum spoke first. “I don’t like it either, but he’s right and we both know it,” he said grudgingly.

“Well, what about now, then?” demanded Seregil, still boiling. “We can’t just sit here hoping he finds us by sheer luck! Bilairy’s Balls, Nysander, if you’re so certain of where he is, magick him in!”

“You know I cannot expend that kind of power now. However, I was able to send a summoning and place some protections around him, as well. Mardus will not find him by magic.”

Seregil reached for his boots and sword belt.

“But you knew about him last night,” Micum said, frowning. “How did you do that, if not with magic?”

“I did nothing. The knowledge simply came to me.”

“Then why don’t Micum and I sense him?” Seregil demanded.

“Who knows? Go to him now; help him. He is coming from the south.”

“Ah, that’s one of my titles, isn’t it? The Guide?” Seregil growled, grabbing up a water skin and pushing out through the branches.

Micum moved to follow, but Nysander laid a hand on his arm. “Let him go.”

Seregil’s anger quickly gave way to cautious joy as he loped along over the rocks. During the long days on the Lady, hope had dwindled to a stubborn refusal to imagine the worst. Now it seemed Nysander’s faith in the prophecy had been proven. Against all odds, the four of them were being brought together again on this hostile shore.

The tide had just turned past low, leaving tide pools and treacherous masses of bladder wrack gleaming in the morning sun. Great green swells rolled in from the open sea, wave upon wave smashing to geysers of glistening spume against the rocks. A freshening wind off the water carried the spray up the shore; Seregil turned his face to it as he stalked along, tasted salt on his lips.

Nothing else mattered. Alec was alive.

He kept one eye on the trees as he went. One patrol had shown up already; there would be others. Within the hour he spied the glint of sunlight off metal.

Taking cover in a rocky cleft, he listened as a group of riders passed at a gallop. From the sound of it, there were at least a dozen of them. Waiting until the last sound of their horses had faded away to the north, he continued on his way.

Another hour passed and he began to worry that they’d somehow missed each other. Alec could have taken refuge, as he had, under an outcropping or in the forest. Or had an accident or been recaptured. Reining in these dark thoughts, Seregil sat down on a damp block of stone to catch his breath.

His arrival dislodged a small nation of striped periwinkles, which clattered and rolled away like a cascade of marbles into the tide pool at his feet. A gull circled down to drink on the opposite side.