The Dreaming Void (33 page)

“Now, please,” Akeem pleaded. “Get out. Do not waste your life, Edeard. Don't make some futile gesture. Please. Remember, the Blue Tower in Makkathran. Go there. Be someone.”

“I can't leave you!” he cried into the terrible night.

“The village is already lost. Now go. Go, Edeard. Don't let everything be wasted.”

Edeard wanted to shout out that his Master was wrong, that his valiant apprentice friends and strong Masters such as Melzar and Wedard were leading the fight. But looking at the fiery devastation around him, he knew it was not true. The screams still were filling the air, along with the snarl of fastfoxes and the deadly clamor of guns. Resistance was contracting to a few guild compounds and halls. The rest of the village was burning to ruin. There was nothing to be saved—except Salrana.

Edeard forced himself to his feet and started running toward the market again. Once a bandit hurried past him along the street, not five yards away. The man never knew how close they were. Edeard could have killed him easily, extracted some vengeance. But that would have shown the watchtower bandit where he was, and even through his anger and desperation Edeard knew he had neither the skill nor the strength to win that confrontation.

He sped past three more bandits before charging into the marketplace. The square was surrounded by a wall of flame, but it was cooler amid the stalls. Two bandits were holding down a woman, laughing while the third of their band raped her. Their fastfoxes prowled around the little group, keeping guard.

Edeard just could not ignore it. He even recognized the woman, though he did not know her name. She worked at the tannery, helping prepare the hides.

The first the bandits knew of anything amiss was when their fastfoxes suddenly stopped circling. All six beasts swung their heads around, huge jaws opening to ready fangs the size of human fingers.

“What—” one of the bandits managed to say. He brought his gun up, but it was too late. The fastfoxes leaped. More screams echoed out around the stalls.

“Ah, there you are,” a longtalk voice gloated. “I was worried you'd run away from me.”

Edeard snarled into the smoke-wreathed sky. Try as he might, he could not track where the longtalk was originating.

“Now, what are you doing there, apart from slaughtering my comrades? Oh, yes, I see.”

Edeard was aware of Salrana hunched up behind the counter in the corn measure stall, glancing upward with a puzzled expression. He started to sprint toward her.

“He's in the marketplace,” the bandit announced across the whole village. “Close in.”

Edeard sensed bandits turning to head toward him.

“Oh, she is lovely. The very young one from the church, isn't it? Yes, I recognize her. Well, congratulations, my tough little friend. Good choice. She's certainly worth risking everything for.”

Edeard reached the corn measure stall and dropped his concealment. Salrana gasped in astonishment as he appeared in front of her.

“Got you.”

Edeard was only too well aware of the urgent satisfaction in the bandit's longtalk. There was the tiniest flashover of pounding feet, leg muscles straining with effort to get there, to capture the feared boy.

“Right at the end I'm going to cut your eyelids off so you have no choice but to watch while I fuck her,” the bandit said, twining his longtalk with a burst of dark pleasure. “It'll be the last thing you see before you die. But you'll go straight to Honious knowing this: I'll keep her for my own. She's coming with me, tough boy. And I'll put her to work every single night. Your girl is going to spend the next decade bearing my children.”

“Get up,” Edeard yelled, and tugged at Salrana's arm. She was crying, her limbs limp and unresponsive. “Don't let him get me,” she wept. “Please, Edeard. Kill me. I couldn't stand that. I couldn't. I'd rather spend eternity in Honious.”

“Never,” he said. His arms went around her, and he enfolded her within his concealment.

“Get the fastfoxes in the market,” the bandit ordered. “Track him. Find his scent.”

“Come on,” Edeard whispered. He started for the main entrance, then stopped. Over ten bandits with their fastfoxes were heading up the street toward him. They ignored the frantic chickens and gibbering ge-chimps that were running away from the swirl of lethal flames consuming the buildings. “Lady!” He searched, not daring to use his farsight in case the diabolical bandit could detect that.

“I don't care if the fire's making it hard to track. Find him!”

The bandit's tone was angry, and that was the first piece of good news Edeard had encountered all night. Now he glanced around and saw just how awesome the fire had become. Every building was alight. A foul smoke tower billowed hundreds of feet over the village, blocking the constellations and nebulae. Below its dismal occlusion walls were collapsing, sending avalanches of burning furniture and broken joists across the lanes. Even the bandits were becoming wary as the smaller alleys were blocked. Of course, the blazing destruction also was closing off Edeard's escape routes. What he needed was a distraction, and fast. His third hand shoved a pile of beer barrels, sending them toppling over. Several burst open. A wave of beer lapped across the cobbles, spreading wide. At the same time he grabbed the minds of as many genistars as he could reach and pulled them into the market, offering them sanctuary. The animals bounded over the stalls, stampeding down the narrow aisles. Flustered fastfoxes charged after them, shaking off their mental restraints to obey more basic hunter instincts.

“Almost clever,” the bandit announced. “You think that'll cover your smell? Well, why don't you avoid this, tough guy.”

The bandits in the market square formed a loose line and began firing, sweeping their blazing gun muzzles in wide arcs. Genistars howled and whimpered as the bullets chewed through their flesh. They jumped and sprinted for cover as lines of bullets swept after them. Fastfoxes snarled in hatred and distress as they, too, were hit. Dozens of animals tumbled lifeless onto the cobbles. Blood mingled with beer, washing down the slope.

Edeard and Salrana hunched down as bullets thudded into the stalls around them. Wood splinters whirled through the air. They started to crawl. It was not long before the guns stopped. Edeard waited for the next longtalk taunt, but it did not come. “Hurry,” he urged her. Holding hands, they ran for the alley that led around the back of the Carpentry Guild compound. Bandits and their fastfoxes were on patrol around the walls. The inside of the compound burned like a brazier as fire consumed the woodworking halls and timber stores, sending vast plumes of flame into the smoke-clotted sky. The slate roof of the main building already had collapsed. Edeard wondered if anyone was still alive inside, maybe sheltering in the cellars. Surely Obron would have found a way. He could not imagine a world without Obron.

They came to a crossroads, and Salrana made to turn right.

“Not that way,” he hissed.

“But that's down to the wall,” she whispered back.

“They'll be expecting that. The fastfoxes will scent us if we try to climb over the ramparts.”

“Where are we going, then?”

“Up toward the cliff.”

“But won't they search the caves?”

“We're not sheltering in the caves,” he assured her. He found a dozen genistars still alive nearby, mainly dogs, with a couple of chimps and even a foal, and ordered them to walk across and around the track they were leaving to lay false scents, though he suspected that not even fastfoxes would be able to track them with so much smoke and ash in the air.

It took a couple of minutes to reach the site where the new well was being dug. So far Wedard and his team had excavated only five yards down, with barely the top third lined in stone. “In you go,” Edeard told her. There was a small ladder leading down to the wooden framework at the bottom of the hole where ge-monkeys spent their days digging into the stone and clay.

“They'll look in here,” Salrana said desperately.

“Only if it's open,” Edeard said grimly, and gestured at the big stone cap that would seal the shaft once it was complete.

“You can move that?” she asked incredulously.

“We'll find out in a minute. But I'm pretty sure no one can farsight through it.”

Salrana started down the crude ladder, her mind seething with fright. Edeard followed her, stopping when his head was level with the rim. This was the biggest gamble, the one on which both of their lives now depended, but he could not think of any way out of the village, not past the fastfoxes and alert bandits. He fired a longtalk query directly at the Eggshaper Guild compound. “Akeem?” he asked quietly. There was no reply. He still did not dare use his farsight. With a last furious look at the raging firestorm that was his home, he reached out with his third hand and lifted the huge slab of stone. It skimmed silently through the air, keeping a couple of inches off the ground before settling on the top of the well shaft with a slow grinding sound. The orange glow of the flames and the sound of collapsing masonry and human anguish were cut off abruptly.

         

Edeard waited for hours. He and Salrana clung to each other on the planking at the bottom of the pit, drawing what comfort they could from each other. Eventually she fell into a troubled sleep, twitching and moaning. He would not allow himself that luxury.

Is this all my fault? Were they seeking revenge for the ambush in the forest? But they started it.
The worst guilt came from a single thought that nagged and nagged at his soul.
Could I have done more?
Now that he was sober and the worst of the hangover had abated, he kept thinking about the sensation that had woken him so abruptly. It
was
the same as the alarm he had felt in the forest, a foresight that something was wrong. The senior priestesses of the Empyrean Lady claimed to have a modest timesense granted, of course, by the Lady herself, so such a thing was possible.
If I hadn't been so stupid. If I hadn't wasted the warning … 

He did not want to open the stone cap. The scene that he knew would greet them was almost too much to contemplate.
My fault. All my fault.

A few hours after they took refuge, some slices of pale light seeped in around the edge of the cap where the stone rim was not quite level. Still Edeard waited. The rise of the sun was not going to make the bandits go away automatically. There was nothing left for them to fear for tens of miles. It would be the villages now that would wait for the fall of each night with dread.

“We never suspected they were so well organized,” Edeard said bitterly. “Me of all people; I should have realized.”

“Don't be silly,” she said. In the dark she reached out for him again, her slim arm going around his waist. “How could you have known? This is something beyond even the Mother to see.”

“Did Mother Lorellan have a timesense?”

“Not much of one, no. Yesterday evening she was concerned about something, but she couldn't define it.”

“She couldn't see her own murder? What kind of timesense is that?”

Salrana started sobbing again.

“Oh, Lady, I'm so sorry,” he said, and hugged her tight. “I didn't think. I'm so stupid.”

“No, Edeard. You came to help me. Me, out of everybody in Ashwell. All your friends, your Master. Why? Why me?”

“I … All those years, it was like just me and you against the world. You were the only friend I had. I don't think I would have made it without you. The number of times I thought about running off into the wild.”

She shook her head in dismay. “Then you'd have been a bandit. You would have been one of the invaders last night.”

“Don't say that. Not ever. I hate them. First my parents, now …” He couldn't help it; he hung his head and started weeping. “Everything. Everything's gone. I couldn't help them. Everybody was scared of how strong I am, and when they really needed me, I was useless.”

“Not useless,” she said. “You helped me.”

They spent a long time pressed together. Edeard's tears dried after a while. He wiped at his face, feeling stupid and miserable. Salrana's hands came up to cup his face. “Would you like me?” she whispered.

“Er … I. No.” It was a very difficult thing to say.

“No?” Her thoughts, already fragile, fountained a wave of bewildered hurt. “I thought—”

“Not now,” he said, and gripped her hands. He knew what it was. The shattering grief, the loneliness and fright—all so evident in her thoughts. She needed comfort, and physical intimacy was the strongest comfort of all. Given his own shaky emotional state, it would have been heartening for him, too. But he cared too much, and it would have felt like taking advantage. “I really would, but you're young. Too young.”

“Linem had a child last year. She wasn't quite as old as I am today.”

He could not help but grin. “What kind of example is that for a novice to set for her flock?”

“Flock of one.”

Edeard's humor faded. “Yes, one.”

Salrana looked up at the stone cap. “Do you think any of ours are left?”

“Some, yes. Of course. Ashwell village is stubborn and resilient; that's what Akeem always said. That's how it's resisted change so effectively for the last few centuries.”

“You really wanted to?”

“I—” He found it disconcerting the way she could jump between topics so lightly, especially when
that
was one of the subjects in question. “Yes,” he admitted cautiously. “You must know how beautiful you're becoming.”

“Liar! I have to visit Doc Seneo three times a week to get ointment for my face.”

“You are growing up lovely,” he insisted quietly.

“Thank you, Edeard. You're really sweet, you know. I've never thought of any other boy. It's always been you.”