The Dreamtrails (21 page)

T
O MY HORROR
, I discovered that my powers were trapped inside my mind like a bear caught in a cage. I told myself that this was merely normality, but the thought that this dreadful isolation and passivity of mind could be called normal sickened me. No wonder unTalents loathed us. At the heart of their hated must be bitter envy.

I might have been better able to stifle my horror and fear had I not known that, in banding me, Malik unwittingly left me unable to play my part in the plan I had set in motion. I fought a suffocating wave of panic and tried to focus a probe to work the lock, but the taint emanating from the band was too strong. Desperately I tried to reach the black power at the bottom of my mind, but pain and the healing of my body drained me of the energy I needed to rouse it.

“Ye ken Vos will nowt keep his mouth shut,” grunted the man who had fastened the demon band about my neck as he poured a mugful of some dark liquid and handed it to Malik. The chieftain drank it off, then shrugged.

“I have given him makework enough to occupy him for the time being, but the fool’s role is almost at an end.”

“What about her?” The armsman nodded in my direction.

“The freak is irrelevant,” Malik said dismissively.

“Obernewtyn’s master might nowt agree if the woman is truly his doxy. He might come riding in looking for her with
some of those coercer-knights of his, regardless of what Dardelan wants. It would be inconvenient if their arrival coincides with other matters.”

He is talking about the invasion
, I thought.

A smile curved Malik’s thin lips. “I doubt Rushton Seraphim will be in any haste to get his woman back. After the priests had their fun with him, I am amazed that he could stomach her presence these long months. He might look like a man, but all that makes a man is gone. He is no more than a shell.”

Bile rose in my throat, and tears stung my eyes, for what Malik said was true. Had Rushton not said as much to me himself? For Malik to know so much, the Herders with whom he had struck his bargain must have boasted of what they had done when they had Rushton imprisoned in the Sutrium cloister. I ground my teeth in fury, and some of the quaking terror left me.

“If all is so well, Chieftain, why do ye have a troubled look about ye?” ventured the armsman.

A flicker of impatience in the cold face of his master faded into a brooding puzzlement. “It is true,” Malik said slowly. “I am troubled. Something nags at my mind.” To my dismay, he turned to look at me. “How did that fool Vos manage to capture her, of all mutants? That is what nags at me.”

My heart hammered because Malik knew me as only a former opponent can. Perhaps he was remembering the last occasion on which we had faced one another, when victory had turned to ashes in his mouth. I tensed as he took a step toward me, but he stopped, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves drumming. Malik and his men turned to face the road, no doubt imagining that Vos and his troop were riding back. But when the horses came in sight, they were riderless,
though many wore saddles and even dangerously dangling reins. Malik and his men stared, perplexed and astonished.

Malik was the first to regain his wits. “Shoot! Shoot them, you fools, for they are coming to save the freak.” His men tried to obey, but it was too late. The stampeding horses were upon the camp. Men screamed in terror and pain as they fell under flashing hooves. A few men shot arrows or threw a spear or knife, but not a single horse fell. I realized with elation that the men did not know how to fight horses, for their training had always focused on their human riders. Without warning, more horses leapt from the bushes. They were unsaddled and unbridled, which told me they were the horses that had been left in the corral back at Vos’s property. Gahltha had released them as I had requested. Then I saw him, black and powerful in the moonlight, rearing and stamping down hard, his nostrils flaring.

Huts were trampled, lanterns smashed, and brief flames extinguished as the horses rampaged through the camp. Men who had not been trampled fled from the devastation, only to find their own horses, led by Dovyn, herding them back. An armsman who tried to attack the horses was crushed so savagely that others threw down their weapons at once. I had run to one side of the camp the moment the horses appeared. Now I saw Gahltha turning his head this way and that, clearly wondering why I was not beastspeaking him.

I drew breath to call his name, but a hand closed over my mouth, and I was lifted from my feet. My captor turned and ran with me into the trees bordering the camp. I could not fight because of my bound hands, and I could not summon help with my mind because of the demon band, so I tried to bite the hand pressed over my mouth in order to scream. I was suddenly hurled to the ground so hard that I was
winded. It was dark away from the campfire and lanterns, but a shaft of light, reaching through the trees, briefly illuminated Malik’s face, contorted with urgency as he used his kerchief to gag me. I could still hear the horses and men screaming and shouting when Malik threw me over his shoudler. Then he began to run, dodging trees and crashing over bushes and fallen branches. Gradually, the sounds of the camp faded into the monotonous thud of his boots and the snap of foliage breaking or swishing as it sprang back after we had passed. Malik was breathing hard but regularly, revealing his strength and stamina. My heart sank at the realization that he might go on in this steady way for half an hour. By then we would be far from the camp. Worse, I was sure that none of the horses had seen him take me.

Malik ran without stopping or slowing for what seemed an eternity. When he did finally stop, he was panting, but he clearly still possessed strength. He drank some water from a bottle on his belt, seemed to listen for a time, and then he set off in a slightly different direction, this time walking. I could hear nothing but the creak and rustle of trees and wondered where he was taking me. Not to the coast, as I had expected, to signal his Herder friends. As far as I could tell, we had traveled parallel to the road back to Saithwold town.

A sickening hour of hanging half upside down passed before Malik stopped and hurled me to the ground. Sheer luck kept me from hitting one of the snaking tree roots protruding from the leaf litter, but instinct made me lie very still as if I had been knocked unconscious. I could tell by Malik’s breathing that he was weary now; if he felt safe enough to sleep, I might have a chance to escape, for my legs were not bound.

I heard Malik moving and sensed that he was looking into my face. I kept my breathing slow and even, knowing he
would not be able to see clearly in the dappled tree shadow. There was a long silence, but I continued to feign unconsciousness. I was just beginning to think I must have been mistaken in thinking he had been looking at me when I felt a knife’s cold edge against my face, and the gag fell away.

I gasped and opened my eyes to find Malik’s moonlit face so close that I instinctively recoiled. He pressed the knife against my neck and gave me a cruel, knowing smile that exposed my hope of escaping as the foolishness it was. His eyes told me that I would never escape him. Not alive. I felt a shudder of terror as I suddenly understood that Malik had brought me with him not as a hostage, but to finish what he had begun in the camp. Madness glimmered in his eyes along with a pleasurable anticipation that told me he meant to take his time in killing me, exacting as much pain as he could. He wanted me to grovel in terror before him.

He sat back on his heels as if the fear in my eyes had assured him that I understood his intentions. He took the knife from my throat and ran his thumb across the edge of his blade in a caressing gesture, never taking his eyes off me. His nostrils quivered as if he hungered for even the odor of my fear.

“You are a monster and a coward,” I said, looking directly into his eyes.

He laughed with real enjoyment. “You think I am that idiot Vos, to be taken in by feigned sleep or provoked to hasty action by an obvious attempt to anger me? No. I mean to take my time killing you, and nothing you do will hasten your dying. I have in mind to deprive you of all your senses first. Hearing, speech, smell, touch.” He pressed his knife in turn to my ear, my lips, my nose, my bound hands as he spoke the name of each sense, and then he lifted the tip of his blade and rested it under my eye. “But first, your sight.”

“You are wasting time in which you might escape.” I tried to sound cold instead of frightened, but, oh, I was frightened. I had never been more afraid.

He said very calmly, “What makes you think I need to escape?” He grinned at the consternation I could not conceal, for his words seemed to imply that there was something I did not know. Was he referring to the invasion, or was there something else? His look of terrifying concentration quenched my attempts to think. He lifted his knife and kissed the flat of it in a deadly salute.

I closed my eyes and let terror roil through me and flow away. I turned my mind from what was to happen and pictured Maruman and Gahltha, Dameon, Dragon, Matthew. And Rushton. The memory of those I loved could not be cut out of me, I told myself fiercely. Even when I died, my vision of them would live on in the mindstream. I wished that I could harness my mind’s power and give myself to the mindstream, depriving Malik of the satisfaction of hurting me, but the demon band would not allow it.

I summoned up a mental image of Rushton as he had been when we had parted last. I saw his coldness with compassion rather than disappointment and sorrow. I felt boundless gratitude that he had come into my life to show me how deeply I could love, and it was a little burst of light in that dark moment to realize that being able to love was life’s real gift. Without those people and creatures who had made me love them, I would be a lesser being. Even the pain of loving was a gift that had deepened me.

I felt the knife point scratch along my cheek just under my eye like the single claw of a kitten—a testing, teasing touch. I kept my eyes closed and thought of my quest. There was an unexpected peace in surrendering to the knowledge that I
could not fulfill it. I had been willing to give up everything, including my life, but now it was time to die. I would try to keep silent when he hurt me. I could do no more.

I heard a thump and resisted the temptation to open my eyes, certain that was what Malik was waiting for. He meant my last sight to be of him. Instead, I pictured Maruman. I saw his battered body and his single bright eye, and I waited.

Then I heard the breathing of two people, though I held my own. One was heavy and regular and the other, fast and uneven. I opened my eyes to see Kevrik leaning over an unconscious Malik. He looked up at me and grinned. “I hit him hard enow to brain a bull, but he’s still breathing.”

“Oh, Kevrik,” I gasped. “I have never been so glad to see anyone!”

“Doubtless,” the armsman said wryly. He gently pulled me upright and grabbed Malik’s knife to cut the ropes about my wrists. I shook my head and asked him to untie them. “We will need the rope for him,” I croaked, nodding at the unconscious Malik.

Kevrik laid aside the knife and set about loosening the ropes, talking as he worked. “I’ve been following ye since he took ye from the camp. I thought he would nivver stop. Then when he did, I heard what he said, an’ I was afeard he’d stab ye afore I could get near enow to hit him with the rock. It was cursed ill luck that I dinna have my dagger.” He frowned over a stubborn knot. “I have nivver seen anyone look at any creature wi’ as much black hate as Malik looked at ye before he struck ye. An’ when it took me longer than I expected to fall far enough behind Vos an’ th’ others so I could turn back to th’ camp, I near went mad. I was sickened by what he had done to ye, but more sickened by the fact that others did nowt to stop him. Men I have laughed and drunk ale with and
regarded as strong and courageous, all standin’ by and watching a man beat a bound maid.” He grimaced as if he had bitten into something foul.

“When I finally came within sight of Malik’s camp an’ saw ye’d nowt been kilt, I was so relieved that I dinna wonder why ye were nowt talking to me inside my head as ye said ye’d do in that dream ye put in my mind when I was unconscious outside the cells. When I did notice an’ wonder, I thought maybe ye’d been stunned. I was still ditherin’ like a ninnyhammer when the horses Vos an’ his men had ridden came gallopin’ hell fer leather along the road. It was only because I’d been looking at ye that I saw Malik grab ye. If I’d blinked, I would ha’e missed it. I just plunged after ye.”

The ropes loosened and fell away, and the armsman began to massage my wrists gently. I winced at the pain, but that pain was life, and incredulous joy swept through me. I had expected to die. I had prepared myself for it, and yet here I was, still alive. My quest had not relinquished me after all. Kevrik unhooked a water bladder from his belt, and I took it from him gratefully and drank. Then he took a long draft and restored it to his belt.

“What now?” he asked.

The welling delight I had felt a moment before faded as I thought of Gahltha and the horses. “I need to return to Malik’s camp. I was so sure I would be there to tell the horses what to do that I told them nothing save that they should stampede the camp and disarm as many men as they could. But even if they succeeded in that, how can horses keep humans prisoner?”

“It’s a long walk back,” Kevrik said. “The best or worst will have happened by now.”

I felt sick at the knowledge that he was right. “Do you
think we are closer to the road or the old cloister?” I asked.

“The road,” Kevrik said decisively. “But it’s still a good long walk. More if ye mean to bring him.”

“I’m afraid we’ve no choice,” I said. I plucked at the demon band about my throat. “I wish I could get this off, because then I could farseek Zarak to come and help us.” Malik stirred and groaned. “Better tie him up well before he wakes. Then we’ll make a litter and drag him between us.”

“I can carry him some of the way,” Kevrik said as he tied the chieftain’s hands.

I fashioned bandage sandals for myself from strips of Malik’s shirt. Then I helped Kevrik get the rebel across his shoulders, grateful the armsman was almost as big as the chieftain. Even so, Kevrik staggered slightly under his burden before standing upright. We walked almost a half hour before Kevrik’s knees began to buckle. While he rested, I used the time to replenish the tattered bandage sandals. Then we constructed a rough litter. I did not look forward to pulling it, for my stomach hurt, and a fierce jabbing pain in my chest suggested that Malik had cracked one of my lower ribs. But worst was the weariness as my body fought to repair the damage and cope with the netted fatigue I had released. When we rested again after another bout of walking and dragging the litter, I had to fight the overpowering urge to just lie down and sleep.