The Companion (42 page)

“What?” she asked, realizing she had missed some question. “Oh, just the small one and the little valise. The others can be stowed in the hold.”

She unpacked, used to the cramped quarters. Even she had to bend her head. She sat on her bed in the growing light, alone. When she finally went on deck, the sailors were very courteous. She made excuses for her husband’s sun sickness and promised she would not be a bother, even as the cutter rolled out into the open Channel and set to sea.

She spent the blustery day in her cabin, working out just which scrolls would be useful and storing the rest, waiting for sunset. She heard him go on deck. He did not stop at her cabin.

She came up behind him in the fading light on the leeward rail opposite the Captain’s private territory at the windward side and touched his arm. Ian straightened at her touch as though she had slapped him. Beth was hurt, but she said in a low voice, “The Captain promises ten days to Casablanca.”

“I could wish for less.”

“I will need your help to fix the likely location of Kivala.”

He nodded again and turned away. “Let us hope we can find it.”

“Surely we can go back in time,” she said, trying not to plead, “to when we were just friends. We might even find time for a game of chess.”

He glanced back at her. The pain in his eyes was the equal of any she had ever seen there.

“Is that so much to ask?” She knew her voice did not have the confidence she wanted.

“No. It is little enough. That may be why it is so difficult.” He pushed himself off the rail. “Let us ask the Captain to use his dining table for our calculations until supper.”

They pored over maps. Beth questioned Ian most particularly. After Kivala, Asharti had gone south and west to Marrakech. He had staggered east to El Golea. “The spine of the earth must be in the Atlas Mountains,” she said, sitting back. “It is the only range between the two.”

Ian leaned over the chart. “So the sandstone washes are in this diagonal.” He sighed. “It must run for hundreds of miles.”

“Do you remember how long you traveled northeast?”

He chewed those lovely lips. “Weeks.” He shook his head, despairing. “I wasn’t in great shape at that point.”

Beth thought for a moment. “You said there was an oasis two days out from Kivala.”

He nodded. “It was the only one for many miles, according to Fedeyah.”

She pulled the chart close and got out the Captain’s magnifier. “Did you hear the name?”

He hung his head and rubbed his temples. “Maybe . . . I don’t know.”

She bent over the chart, muttering. “The two peaks would have to be the tallest. That means the Middle Atlas Range. Atlas el Kebir. Stop me if these sound familiar . . . Haasi Zegdou . . . Haasi Chafaia . . . Haasi Ghemiles . . .” She raised her eyebrows at him.

He shook his head. “It’s no use. There were so many. . . .” He looked guilty and ashamed.

“And you were weak and in pain,” she said with some aspersion, “so you might just want to forgive yourself a little. Now just a few more. You never know. Haasi Fokra . . . Haasi—”

“Wait. Haasi Fokra!”

“Is that it?” She watched him stare into space.

A grin grew on those lips. “Yes. Yes! I remember. She and Fedeyah . . .” He trailed off.

“Very well then.” She smiled, cutting off his other memories. “Haasi Fokra. Our first destination.” They exchanged their first open look since the Countess’s blue bedroom. Beth found it electrifying.

“We are on our way,” he said. Suddenly he bent over the chart. “Show me.”

She pointed. He marked El Golea and then Algiers with a finger and studied the distance. “It seemed so much farther. We wandered in the desert looking for it for almost two years.”

“You must have tried here, in the desert under these mountains. See how far south?”

“ ‘Mouydir,’ ” he read. “Perhaps. I do remember an oasis called In Salah.” He pointed to other mountains in the middle of the great desert. “And here—Bir al-Kasib.”

“It looks like she was exploring washes at the base of mountains. She must have known to look for terrain similar to that around Petra. The sandstone washes lie between mountains and the desert, cut by spring runoff.”

He sat back, staring at the map. “It makes it all seem so real, seeing it on a map like this.”

“It must have seemed too real at the time, I should think.” She was in dangerous territory.

“Perhaps it is better to think it a nightmare than to believe such things can really happen, that such evil lives in the world unchecked.”

“Not unchecked . . .” she whispered.

They disembarked at Casablanca, only a week out of Portsmouth. They planned to press straight through the
mountains into the desert by camel caravan as soon as they were provisioned, traveling by night. Ian knew they would have to be discreet in Casablanca. It was now controlled by Berbers in Asharti’s service. The first night there, Ian saw two of her made vampires. Actually, he smelled them first—that distinctive, almost cinnamon smell, made more pronounced by the fact that these particular two did not see the value of frequent baths. Ian melted into the darkness of the streets and began bathing twice a day if he could manage it. The servants at their lodgings thought him mad. But better their attention than Asharti’s followers.

The days in Casablanca were frantic ones. Ian spent nights practicing his new skills of mind control and relocation. He worked for hours on end with the heavy cutlass given him by Captain Stilton, very different from the foils he had practiced with some lifetime ago. He fed frequently in little sips, lest his hunger draw him into indiscretions. He kept himself as remote as Beth would let him. His failure on his wedding night should have made all sexual activity repellent, but it did not. He found Beth’s presence continually disturbing. Several times he had had to turn away from her lest she see his erection. That was the torment of it all. He wanted her more than ever. Her soft voice was torture. Seeing the swell of her breasts brought almost physical pain, and any touch had an instant and disastrous effect. It was only the consummation of his carnal need that was impossible. His failure did not quench the fire at all.

His worst regret was that he failed Beth. A woman who wanted so much from life should not be denied this most elemental aspect of it. It tortured him that he caused her to suffer. Not only was she shackled to a monster, but one who could not fill her womanly needs. She could never love a man like that. He saw that clearly, now that he knew how much she reveled in relations between men and women. The fact that she tried to bridge his distance with her friendship only made him regret the more. He had, somewhere down deep, wanted her to love him. She had accepted what he was.
He had thought that perhaps . . . but all that was gone. She offered friendship. He would try to provide it.

He had been thinking about his failure incessantly, of course. He was amazed and touched by her giving nature, how much she enjoyed the lovemaking on their wedding night. It occurred to him that Beth’s dawning sensuality had been part of his problem. Asharti defined herself through sexuality and power over others. When Beth grew even a little more confident in her sexuality, Asharti had come washing over him and ruined all. Didn’t every man dream of a wife who enjoyed the act of love? If he could only share that with her, might she not love him?

Damn Asharti! It was his slavery to her that had unmanned him! The fear he had always felt of her turned to anger and boiled in his belly. It was a larger version of the flame that had blossomed in his heart when he decided he must face her. Her casual evil had done this thing to him, to Beth, to the world. The insouciance was what angered him most. Everyone in the world was there to be used by her. She had no conscience.

The anger continued to burn in him even through his growing doubt that he would be able to best her. She had probably taken blood of the Old One many times by now. And how would he convince the Old One to share blood, even once, with him? Ian’s only hope was that what the Old One had gotten of Asharti was not what he had counted on—a thin hope at best.

Beth seemed to have unlimited faith in him. He could not share his doubts. What he could tell her was how amazed he was at her competence. In Casablanca, Ian could only marvel at his new wife. He had given her carte blanche with his bankers and she used it. Each evening she would account for her daylight hours with casual references to contacts made with her father’s old suppliers, contracts sealed, list items completed. And what lists! She had thought of everything. She spoke Arabic and the Berber dialects. She drove a daunting bargain. And she hardly counted these skills at any worth. Beth controlled their success now. Ian wished that
control did not make him feel uneasy. She was an odd combination of innocence and practical confidence. He was comfortable with neither. He watched her sometimes as she slept. He wanted so to protect her from all ugliness in the world, including his own. She was his responsibility, no matter that she led their expedition.

“I have news, Ian,” she said, coming into their simple rooms as dusk fell ten days after their arrival in Casablanca. She was swathed in russet-colored fabric with a tiny gold geometric border. Across her forehead lay the gold chain hung with tiny moons and stars he had bought her last night at the bazaar after they finished an exotic dinner of a dozen courses one ate with one’s hands. Ian had been grateful for the napkin over his lap as she fed him succulent bits of an aubergine paste with her fingers. Her skin had fairly glowed in the candlelight. “The caravan awaits us on the outskirts of the city. We can be off.”

“Tonight?” he asked, surprised. He was oiling the mechanisms on his two pistols.

“As you like.” She opened the door and motioned to a servant who carried a large soft package and a long wrapped tube and dragged a crate across the doorsill. “I’m afraid I may not be quite as good at sizes as you were.” She dismissed the servant.

He ripped the soft package and found several striped burnooses, some soft leather boots, and a hip-length leather jacket lined with fleece. “For the mountain passes,” she murmured.

He grinned. “Excellent!” Then he laid back the paper of the long package to reveal a metal scabbard from which a finely wrought hilt protruded. He looked up at her.

“I hope this one is better than the cutlass Captain Stilton gave you,” she deprecated.

The slither of metal on metal filled the room as he took the sword from its sheath. The blade gleamed silver in the light of the lamps. The hilt balanced in his hand. It was a wonder of craftsmanship. “Thank you,” he said simply. “You are a marvel.”

“Nonsense,” she said, dismissing his praise. “Pistols carry only two shots. You need something substantial to defend yourself when they are empty. Open the crate.”

Ian pulled open the crate with his bare hands almost without effort. That always surprised him, even still. He glanced to Beth expecting dismay, but she only said, “Thank goodness. I forgot to tell the boy we needed a crowbar.”

Inside, cold emanated from cloth bundles pressed into the crate. He unwrapped one. Ice clattered to the floor revealing a jar of claret liquid. He caught his breath.

“I have been paying for donations. The ice should last across the mountains. You must get through the last two hundred miles yourself.”

“You really have thought of everything.”

“Tosh. We will find a hundred things I have forgotten. But this
is
what I know how to do. I have been doing it since I was fifteen, you know.”

He managed a smile. It could be comfortable to have her in charge. “Thank you, then.”

She bobbed her head and turned from the room. He pulled her back, on impulse. It was the first time he had initiated a touch since London. The sear of her flesh on his must surely require bandages. Then, there he was, looking at her with nothing to say. His loins began their familiar burn. “As soon as you have read the transcriptions on the tablets at the doorways, you will leave the temple and start immediately back to Casablanca with the bearers. Once I have the Old One’s blood, I will push on to Algiers alone. You understand?”

“Yes. But first, don’t we have to get started?”

He let out a half smile and nodded. “To the caravan, then.”

They slipped into the night. The bazaars were doing brisk business. It was almost March and still warm this far south. Women entirely covered in brown and black fabrics bloomed in groups like dark flowers. Men in burnooses and others in the wonderful embroidered vests of the Berbers, Nigerians in colored turbans above their black faces, milled together in the streets along with goats and sheep and pigs.
Life of a thousand varieties fought for room. The smell of exotic fruits and spice drifted in the air. Perhaps that was how Ian missed him.

He came out of an alleyway, pushed through the crowds, and jerked Ian into the darkness. Ian fell to his knees on the hard-packed sand. His adversary was Berber, and now that they were alone in the cool damp of the close earthen walls, Ian could smell the cinnamon.

“Christian bloodsucker!” he growled in English. “You are not one of Asharti’s.”

“I want only to leave your city in peace.” Ian picked himself up off the sand.

“There is no peace unless you swear allegiance to Asharti.” Ian saw his adversary’s teeth gleam in the dark. “They have sent others against her. To no avail.”

Ian drew himself up. “I’ll wager
you
did not kill those sent against her. You are a weak imitation of her. She does not allow you her own blood, does she?”

The man swelled with rage. Ian could feel him call on his Companion, and the power answer. In a second, he would strike. Ian opened up the connection to his own partner.
Companion, come to me. Bring strength and life
.

The man’s eyes went red. “For Allah and Asharti!” He charged.

Ian pushed him away, but not before the butt of his head had broken several ribs. “Give way. You cannot kill me,” he panted. The singing in his veins throbbed and flowed. His own eyes would be red now, he knew. The fool charged again, trying to get hold of Ian’s arm, no doubt to rip it from the socket. He latched on to the wrist, but Ian lifted him bodily in the air and dashed him against the wall. “Give over! You do not need to do this.”