VirtualDesire (30 page)

With a stiff nod, Vad dismounted and handed her his reins.
Slowly, his hands out at his sides, he advanced. The first man met Vad, and the
two hunkered down and spoke. Gwen wished she could hear their words. A second
man, with some sort of crusty growth on his cheeks—warts, she realized—gave her
a wide grin. Could he tell she was a woman? Gwen thought not. Her cloak would
conceal most of her form, and the hood hid her face and hair. Nonetheless, the
man was certainly happy about something.

Vad came back to her side. “They are hungry. I have invited
them to share a meal with us. In exchange they will guide us from here to the
hounds.”

“Is it necessary to have a guide?” As the men drew near, she
realized they all had the growths on their faces and hands.

“If we wish to move forward when night falls, aye.”

“But they look scary,” she whispered. “One of them keeps
grinning at me.”

Vad nodded. “They outnumber us, probably covet the horses,
but we have little choice. I did not want to alarm you, but without the stars
or sun to guide us, we could just as easily be going in circles.”

Gwen glanced at the heavens and realized it had been over an
hour since they’d seen anything of the sun. The sky was a flat, greenish-gray
blanket overhead, hiding the lavender heavens.

She gathered what she could of dead branches while Vad
unsaddled the horses. The three men stood on the periphery of the activity and
murmured among themselves. Plotting?

After constructing a small fire on one of the few dry spots
in the bog, Vad speared several of the fungi with sticks and held them out.
While the men and Gwen held the sticks over the coals, Vad divided the apples
and bread and explained to the silent men that when they left the bog, the
remaining food would be theirs.

Gwen desperately wanted to visit the bushes, but was afraid
to leave Vad alone, or to go off on her own. She watched the Wartmen devour the
fungi. Taking a tentative bite, she almost groaned with pleasure. It tasted
like steak, tender, succulent steak. Her stomach growled with pleasure.

The Wartmen’s strong odor almost ruined her appetite. It was
less uncleanness than it was a feral scent. One man stood. He opened his cloak,
separated his clothing, and relieved himself into the undergrowth. Gwen felt
heat rush into her face.

“Gather some dry wood,” Vad ordered her, pointing to a
deadfall. She watched him conceal a small grin when she scrambled quickly
behind the snarled screen of twigs and moldy branches, grateful for his
attention to her privacy. The ground beneath her feet was soft and spongy.
There was little that was dry. Even a few moments away from Vad made her
nervous they might attack him.

Several hours later, full night had fallen, and they were
still unscathed. The three men carried torches and led the way. The bog was
filled with black shadows, but not silence. Gases burped as they passed, birds
cawed, small things slithered from their path to hide in the undergrowth. The
horses labored.

Gwen cursed their guides’ stamina. But to give them credit,
they were quick to point out hazards. Finally Gwen noticed a freshening in the
air. Vad ordered a halt. He slung one of their packs to the ground and clucked
at his horse to go around the men. Gwen stuck close to Vad’s side as they left
the three Wartmen.

“The attack will come now, I sense it. They like to gnaw on
the bones of the dead.”

“Gnaw?”

He eased from his saddle, blade drawn, and tossed her his
reins. “Ride ahead and wait for me.”

She opened her mouth, then remembered not to be a burden and
kicked her horse to a trot. The ground was firmer, but the soft, dark night
concealed small hazards. She pulled up and listened. A man shouted. Another
answered.

Her heart’s hard beat concealed all intelligible sounds from
her. It was all she could hear—that and the rush of her blood. The horses
danced in agitation, almost jerking the reins from her hand. “Stay,” she said
softly to them. “Stand.” Hers responded, but the one Vad had ridden was rearing
and pulling, almost dislocating her shoulder.

Vad burst from the night, a white specter, hair blowing,
cloak flying like wings behind him. He leaped into his saddle, shot her a quick
nod, and urged his mount to a canter. Gwen followed on his heels. Weaving
between barely seen trees, they rode hard. When Vad finally pulled up, he shifted
around to look at her. “They did attack as I expected. However, it lasted only
a few moments. Their dinner was well laced with a few drops of my potion. They
have their breeches about their ankles right around now.”

His teeth gleamed white in the shadows. “Oh, dear,” she
whispered, then burst into a laugh. “You didn’t!”

He held out his hand. “They fought valiantly for all of
three or four thrusts of their blades before ‘bowing’ to their pain and
suffering.” Impulsively he pulled her close by the hand and kissed her mouth.
“Come. We must find a dry spot to await the dawn—not far off, by my estimation.
I do not relish being lost so close upon the edges of the bog.”

They dismounted near a faint gleam of gray interspersed with
the black stumps of trees. It was not boggy ground. It was a spring, bubbling
softly from the earth. “Do not drink it,” Vad said. “Some springs are poison in
a bog, and we have no way to tell the difference.” He stamped about with his
boots and declared the ground firm. “Sit.”

Gwen sat beside him. “I was afraid they were killing you,”
she whispered. He answered by turning her head and bringing her mouth to his.

“I cannot remain angry with you,” he said against her lips.
Gently he explored her cheeks with his fingertips, opened her cloak, and in a
moment she felt the warmth of his hand on her breast. “Your skin is so silky,
just one of the ties that bind me,” he said as his fingertips stroked her. “No
matter what fate has planned for us, remember you are mine. You are mine.”

He felt every beat of her heart against his palm, reveled in
the changing textures of her body as he ran his fingertips over the smooth skin
of her breast, returning again and again to the hard, small crest. Each skim of
the tip delivered up a moan from her throat. He swallowed each soft sound with
his mouth. His body was rigid with want. It was all he could do to keep his
groans silent.

When her hand ran along the inside of his thigh, he failed
and gave voice, muffled, against her lips. He held her head with one hand, caressed
her with the other, and entreated more of her touches. Her palm on him was
ecstasy—hot, gentle ecstasy. With but a few light grazes of her fingers, she
reminded him that no other woman had this power to make him forget dangers in
the dark or dishonor in the day.

“I wish we could make love here, take what time we need,” he
said, pulling her hand away. “But I fear our friends will not be indefinitely
discommoded, and the sun is making itself known.”

He covered her mouth with his for a final kiss. The taste of
her was sweetness itself. Her fingers entwined with his, and she brought his
hand to her mouth. Each small kiss she placed on his hand pierced his insides
with desire.

The lightening of the sky told him there was no point in
delaying. With a groan, he rose and pulled her to her feet.

After a long kiss he helped her mount up, and they began the
final leg of their journey. The sleepless night of following the Wartmen had
taken its toll. Her horse scrambled over a fallen log and rocked her in the
saddle. For a dangerous moment she hung half-on and half-off the saddle. Vad
grasped her by the collar and heaved her back into place. She had to be more
careful if she didn’t want to cost him more time. “I doubt Narfrom could get
through that bog alone.”

“We have left him a rather plain trail to follow, should he
be behind us.”

Gwen whipped around in her saddle. “Behind us?” She saw
nothing except acres of forbidding trees, their twisted, leafless arms like
hands reaching for the sky, and the hollow impressions of their horses’ hooves.
Swinging back to face him, she said, “It would be a tough walk.”

“Perhaps Narfrom has no need to walk. Perhaps he will use
his magic.”

Just as she opened her mouth to reply, an eerie howl filled
the air. The hair on her nape stood up. The horses shied. Another howl joined
the first. Yips followed. “Only eight hounds? It sounds like dozens.”

Vad frowned. “The legends put the number at eight. I know
not what the reality may be.”

He dismounted and calmed Gwen’s horse, then led the two
mounts to the shelter of a large tree much like an oak. Gwen climbed down and
rubbed her bottom. In a moment Vad’s hands supplanted hers, massaging away the
aches. How easy it would be to lean back into his gentle embrace. “Enough of
that, Vad, or the treasure will never be dug up.”

Together they walked their horses to the summit of a low
hill. A glower of angry clouds filled the sky. A brisk wind lifted Vad’s hair
and whipped it about his shoulders.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. On the broad, flat plain before
them at least a dozen hounds roamed, pacing to and fro like impatient cats
caged at a zoo. And they had only three arrows.

“Why did I ever braid your hair?” Gwen muttered as her
fingers were rubbed almost raw from the task Vad had set her. He had cut long
strips of bark from a tree and shown her the stringy inner lining. Now she was
braiding the stringy lengths into long pieces of twine. No sooner had she made
a reasonable length of the stuff than Vad took it, made a snare, and
disappeared into the undergrowth to set it.

Finally, after most of the morning was gone and her fingers
were nearly bleeding, she was done, and so was he. A row of small creatures lay
before her. But despite the growling of her stomach, she had no appetite for
the raw meat Vad chopped and mixed with the potion.

He carefully rinsed the stomachs of the creatures in the
spring and then stuffed them with the mixture. Her nose wrinkled as Gwen tied
up the small sacs. “Well, Vad. I’ve lost any appetite I’ve ever had for meat.”

He patted with a certain pride the little row of sacs lying
at his feet.

“I sure hope this works. At least as well as on the
Wartmen,” she said with a smile. He looked very disheveled, his white tunic
grimy from setting snares in the undergrowth. She plucked a few errant leaves
and twigs from his hair, then traced the livid scar on his cheek. “This is
healed, now.”

He touched his knife handle. “And this restored to good
color. Your touch is healing.”

When Vad put the meat sacs in his pack, she held it at arm’s
length.

“I am hoping it puts them soundly to sleep, or keeps them
too busy to care who passes them,” Vad said. “Come.”

Vad climbed a low hill, and she had to run to catch up with
his long strides.

“Do we have enough of the meat?” she asked.

“It will have to be enough,” he said quietly. “Hope this
wind stays in our favor, too.” He went down on his haunches and idly plucked
blades of grass. “I do not want to be attacked by them all at once, so we shall
have to lure them one by one away from the pack.”

Gwen sat next to him and felt she needed to whisper. There
was something eerie about the way the hounds paced. “It almost looks as if
they’re guarding something, doesn’t it?” Their hair was pure white, their
bodies sleek. They were larger than any dogs Gwen had ever seen, like a cross
between a Great Dane and a mastiff. “If we could get to that tree, maybe we
could climb it and toss the meat down from there.”

Vad sighed. “It would be humiliating for a warrior to sit in
a tree.”

“No one will see you.” Gwen patted his arm.

He sighed again, louder. “I wish we had more arrows.” Before
Gwen could comment, he had returned to the horses. After a quick examination of
the packs, he told her to sheathe her weapons, and strap on anything else worth
taking. She chose the heavy cooking stand.

Vad slung the pack and the nearly empty quiver of arrows
over his shoulder. Loaded with weapons, they crept down the hill. They reached
the tree with little trouble. The hard wind carried sound and smells away. But
they could do little to conceal the noise they made climbing a tree only a few
yards from the hounds.

One hound swung its head in their direction and lifted its
lip in a low growl.

“Up!” Vad ordered, almost catapulting her into the air as he
planted a hand on her bottom. She landed hard against a low branch and imagined
the tear of fangs along her legs as she dangled over the head of a hound who
rushed the trunk.

Vad shoved her into the boughs and then followed. She
scraped her knuckles and chin climbing quickly to an upper branch. When she
looked down, she saw they were surrounded. “What’s the plan now?” she asked.
Her branch shook with her trembling. Below, the tree was ringed by the hounds,
who stood on their hind legs and growled.

“
Their
plan is to wait us out. When we are sleeping
and fall, they will pick our bones clean. I knew this tree was not for
warriors.”

With more anger than skill, Gwen watched Vad hack away some
of the foliage to give him a better view of the hounds. He pitched one small
sac of meat toward the hounds to gauge their reaction. In a ferocious mass,
they fell on it, tore it to pieces, and snapped it up. Gwen felt the bile rise
in her throat.

“Too many eating it that way. It will never work.” He handed
her a squishy ball of meat.

“What if we throw it farther away? Maybe we can scatter
them.”

“Well done, Gwen.” He kissed her hard. “Toss a sac as far
away as possible.”

The ground looked very far away, the snapping jaws far too
close. She climbed a bit higher and edged out on a limb. It bowed a bit, and
she quickly retreated to a steadier perch. The sac of meat was sticky. She
wiped her hands on her tunic and then pretended she was throwing a softball
from home plate to the outfield, letting the sac of meat fly.

One hound reached the meat first, and snapped it up in one
gulp.

“Another?” She put out her hand.

Vad shook his head. “We wait to see what effect it has.”

They leaned against the trunk. The hounds circled, jumping
up against the trunk, snapping and snarling. She kept her eye on the one who’d
taken the meat. Was it her imagination, or was the hound moving slower? No, she
was right. The hound circled, whined, paced away, back and forth, then fell on
its side.

“Excellent.” Vad handed her another sac of meat while he
prepared to lob one himself.

They worked as a team, pitching and throwing the meat sacs
at various distances. “We should save some for the return journey,” she said.

“If we have them to save,” Vad said. Two sacs went astray.
One broke in the air, showering the hounds with the meat.

Finally the hounds lay in blissful sleep. Only two sacs of
meat remained—not enough to get them back safely. Neither of them mentioned the
fact.

“What a team,” she said as he assisted her to the ground.

“Quickly.” He broke into a run. She followed, the heavy
cooking stand thudding against her back. Then he skidded to a halt. There
before him, his huge head swinging back and forth, stood a hound as tall as a
pony. “Stand back,” he cried.

She froze in her tracks. The hound watched them, licked its
chops, and raised its head. It howled, a wild, baying sound echoing across the
distant hills.

“Back up,” Vad said softly. His hand moved slowly to his
shoulder and the quiver. With infinite patience, he pulled an arrow, then with
lightning speed nocked it, drew, and let fly.

The hound leaped as the arrow found its mark. With a shriek
of unearthly pain, the hound landed on Vad. They went down together, rolling.

Gwen screamed and ran in circles. The dog raked Vad with its
fangs. Blood splattered across the ground.

She reached for her little dagger, then shoved it back home.
Hefting the cooking stand from her shoulder, she edged around them. The hound
savaged Vad’s arms. She swung and connected in a sickening crunch of bone. The
hound reared back and turned on her. With a low snarl, its fangs bared, it
crouched, ready to pounce. Vad drew his knife. As the hound jumped at her, he
thrust the blade home. It dropped instantly, its muzzle but inches from her
toes.

Gwen ran into his arms. “Oh, God,” she whispered. His face
was streaked with blood, his sleeves long ribbons of red. She tore off her
cloak, ripped out the lining, and wadded it against the gashes on his arms.

Vad suffered her ministrations for only a few moments, then
broke away, wiped his knife on the grass, and sheathed it. He began to sway.
She put her arm under his and supported his weight.

“It’s just a few cuts,” she said, wiping away the blood. “I
don’t even think you need stitches. How lucky. Wow. That was scary.”

Vad looked down at his arms. The hound’s bite was poison. He
had told her so, but she must have forgotten. He didn’t have the heart to tell
her that even now, he could feel an itch moving through his veins. The wounds
would fester. Quickly.

“Come on. Maybe there’s water up there by those trees and we
can wash off your cuts.”

He followed her. She strode determinedly up the hill. Under
other circumstances, her killing blow would have saved his life.

At the top of the hill she contemplated the grove of trees.
“Well, no water here. Let me look those cuts over.” She took his arm. “Not so
bad.” She ripped up more of her cloak and made makeshift bandages. “It’s not
pretty, but I think the bleeding’s stopped.”

“Gwen. We must talk.”

She jerked away. “I told you, that’s no way to start a conversation.
Now start counting branches. I thought there’d be just one tree here, but
there’s at least seven or eight.”

“Gwen.” He hooked her arm. “We have to talk about what you
are going to do. Now. While I am capable of helping you.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “You’ll be
fine. I know it.”

He pulled her close. “We will look for the treasures.
Perhaps you can use the Seat of Wishes to return home.”

“This is my home,” she said. “Here, in your arms.”

How could he answer that? “Perhaps you are right. I feel
fine.” But for how long?

They walked hand in hand from tree to tree. Then Gwen
pointed off to a distant hill. He saw what she saw, a lone tree, its eight
twisted limbs lifted to the sky.

The tree was larger than he had expected, the distance to it
greater than he had guessed. Walking took concentration. He grew lightheaded.
How like his fevers in the grotto felt this poison in his system. And maybe it
was the same poison, used by the Selaw, milked from hound fangs.

He took a surreptitious glance at his knife handle. He
tucked the handle inside his cloak so Gwen would not see it.

“Eight branches. Perfect.” She knelt at the base and began
to dig with her dagger. He set her aside and drew a digging tool from his pack.
It took all his resources to concentrate on the task and not the poison
coursing through his system. She remained kneeling at his side, her eyes on his
face.

“Nothing.” He sat back on his heels and wiped the sweat from
his brow.

“There has to be something.” She jumped into the hole and
dug furiously.

While she scattered earth in all directions, he stretched
out and watched clouds race across the sky. A philosopher once said a man’s
life passed before his eyes right before he died. A swirl of images, or
visions, raced through his mind as the clouds raced across the sky.

A woman—he now knew without doubt she was his mother—offered
him a smile. A man climbed into one of Gwen’s “planes”. The child, Kered, held
his hand. Together they jumped up and down, laughing.

They were memories—from his life in Gwen’s place.

He lost his doubts and knew his visions of the dark place,
the enveloping mist, and the hand reaching for his were real. A curious peace
fell over him.

Gwen blew hair out of her eyes and climbed out of the hole,
which was filled only with tangled roots. “What should we do next?” She turned
around. “Oh, no.” Vad lay face to the sky, eyes closed. “Vad. Vad.” She
embraced him, kissed him, her tears bathing his face. “Open your eyes, Vad,”
she begged.

His lashes fluttered.

“Come on. Please. Don’t leave me.” His eyes opened, then
rolled closed again. “Damn you, don’t leave me.” She slapped his cheek. Slowly
he shook his head and sat up. Then he fell back again.

“I am not quitting.”

He had said it before—when they’d first met. “That’s right.
You’ve crossed the ice fields. Now open your eyes.” Nothing. His skin was hot
and slick with sweat. The hound’s poison was working through his system. She
had denied the legend, dug in the hole instead of watching over him.

His blade handle was once again a dull gray. She shook him
again. “I love you. I love you. You can’t leave me.”

He didn’t respond. She shook him harder. “Come on. Use your
awareness training. You fought the fever in the grotto; you can fight it now!”
His body shuddered. He opened his eyes. Such beautiful eyes. “Wake up! You
can’t leave me here alone.”

The apple? Or lovemaking? Which did it? Which cured him?
She hacked an apple into small pieces.

As she had in the dark night, she touched the juicy slivers
of fruit to his lips, but he did not take it. Instead he pushed her hand away
and struggled into a sitting position.

“It was not the apple that made me well,” he said. His hand
was hot in hers. “Help me to rise.”

When he was upright, he swayed a bit. “You made love to me.”

“Yes. Do you think…I mean…can you?” She held him about the
waist and helped him to a cairn of rocks near the tree. Every nerve of her body
was tense with joy that he was upright and moving.

“As Nilrem is fond of saying, the spirit is willing, but the
flesh is—” he looked at his lap, “weak.”

She laid her head on his chest and encircled his waist. “We
have the same expression in Ocean City. Please fight the poison. You’re so hot.
Don’t let the fever win.”

He set her aside. The world spun before his eyes; she grew
large, then small; his breath seared his lungs. “I have failed you. Failed to
find the treasures.”

“No. No. There has to be some secret to this treasure
stuff.” She knelt on the ground at his feet and drew the map in the dirt with
the jeweled dagger. “Isn’t this about what the map looked like?”

But concentration eluded him. Her words slipped and slid
through his mind. “It looks…incomplete.” He licked his lips.

Thunder murmured in the distance.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A storm, but it is far off.”

She directed her attention to her drawing. “I know what’s
wrong; it’s missing the compass.” She slashed two crossed lines into the dirt.

“What is a compass?” He stared at her drawing. Something
tugged at his memory, but evaded his grasp.

“You know.” She touched the lines. “The thing that shows
north and south, east and west.”