Mindbond Page 17

  Flash before my eyes, moon-colored, and it was she, the white seal, my sea-maiden lover, nose to nose greeting me, her flippers beating the water like a bird’s wings, faster than heartbeats, fighting against the tide.

  For life’s sake, lovely one, get away from the shore!

  But of course she could not hear me. Kor came up beside me—perhaps he was pleading as well.

  Dive, go out to sea, white maiden! I begged. Body of Sedna, you will be flung against the rocks and killed!

  But of course she could not get away, any more than we could. And even as I thought it a cold grip took hold of us, a fist immense and stronger than ten tens of bison trampling, stronger than a hundred Cragsmen made of mountain stone, roaring, seemingly solid as the mountains, crashing—name of Sakeema, I do not like to think of it. That mighty force pushed and pounded us headlong at the sea stacks: the white seal and Kor and me. And with a rush it took us between the outer ones, toward the shore. But then there was a great tumult of surf, and a feeling as of rearing horses, and we were smashed—the white seal had been swept to the fore, smashed against rock, and I atop her. Crushing her. I heard her shriek as she died.

  No time even to cry out in sorrow. A thump—Kor glanced off me, hurtled onward. Thunder sound, or was it surf? Yes, surf. All was harsh whiteness, and the waves carried me in to the shore, as Kor had once told me they would. Flung me, rather. Far more roughly than he had thought at the time, so long ago.

  Wet sand. I dragged myself up it a short distance, very short. The sea still washed at my—legs? Something had touched me to change me—I was a man again. I did not care. Naked, I laid my face down in the wet sand. I did not care about anything.

  “No, sweet mercy, no!” It was Kor, somewhere not far from me, groaning aloud. “Devourers.”

  I had to respond to that. “Handbond,” I whispered, and I raised my head a little, turned to look for him, opened my eyes. Then I stared, my hand stilled even as it inched toward him.

  Devourers, yes. Devourers to the number of twelve less four, I daresay. Gray, rippling flesh swirled to all sides of us, looming and threatening like the tempest, shutting out the sun. Fishily gleaming—the sight of it made me shiver. And the single eyes, whitely flashing. And the strong, snakelike, flattened tails, lashing the sand and the air.

  But Tassida was there. Standing straddle-legged over Kor and me, her head high and the color riding in her cheekbones, hair rising in the wind, lightning of the seaward storm flickering behind her as if it were a part of her, as if it were burning in the long cloud of her windblown hair or flying from her brow, her fierce eyes. Fierce, joyous. Sword lifted high, and it shone like the lightning. Tass stood glad and defiant over us, and such was her presence that the fell servants of Mahela did not dare to approach us.

  And Kor, my bond brother, lay shivering at her feet, his shoulders hunched as if he had tried to raise himself and could not, his face wintry white, as pale as the spindrift on the waves.

  My look caught on him, turned to a stare, stayed. Exhausted, he did not feel my stare or look back at me, and I felt darkly glad of it, for I did not want to meet his eyes. There would be that bleak look in them, I felt sure of it. He was defeated. For all that we had escaped, Mahela had bested him. We had not brought back with us those whom we had gone to save. Those who had befriended us had perished. Even the white seal had been slain.

  I did not know then about Istas. But heart sensed that we had been defeated, and there was a bitter taste in my mouth that the sea had left there. We were alive, that should have been cause for joy, but I was not much accustomed to being rescued. We were helpless, and I blamed Kor. He was Sakeema, he should have stood in glory—

  He was not Sakeema.

  My own utter weariness enabled me to think it, but colored the thought with despair. I laid down my head in the wet sand again and knew nothing more.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I awoke to a feeling of warmth. A sizable driftwood fire burned not far from me, and I was lying on some sort of warmly furred pelt, with more furs covering me. Sand beyond that, but dry sand—I had been moved up the beach, away from the water, into a sort of dingle of dry, soft sand half-surrounded by tumbled rock. The stones threw back the heat of the fire, and above them the tops of twisted spruces met my sight. An odd, wrenching feeling in me to see them—and it was daylight, gray with brume yet very bright to me, no greenish undersea twilight and no black belly of storm.

  A deer gut hung from three crossed stakes near the fire, giving forth the rich odor of stone-boiled fish chowder.

  “Mother of my body, no!” I burst out. “Not more fish!”

  I heard a low laugh, Kor’s, and looked to find him. My own feet were in the way, and I felt nearly too weary to move them. But at last I saw him a small distance around the fire from me. He lay propped up on one elbow, mostly swaddled in furs as I was, but they had fallen away from his shoulders so that I saw the bruises, the color of storm clouds, blue-black and swollen, or older ones fading to sea green. Scarcely a handspan of him had escaped punishment that I could see. And his face, bruised as well, with a raw scrape across one cheekbone. And his sea-colored gaze was on me, dark with his memories of Mahela’s realm, yet merry.

  “I thought you liked fish now,” he teased. “Many many fish.”

  I did not answer, for Tassida was sitting near him, helping him with the eating of some chowder. Tassida. I had to look at her, and it was no use trying to conceal the surge of love I felt for her. At once I moved to sit up, talk with her, perhaps, but I floundered as if I were but a great fish myself. My body would not obey me.

  “Dan, lie still,” said Tass as gently as I had ever heard her speak to either of us. “Wait, I will get you something to eat. You two, you are so weakened, so beaten! What has happened?”

  Her soft query touched me so that my throat closed, I could not speak. But Kor spoke. “Mahela happened,” he said.

  Bitter undertone to that. I looked at him again. Yes, he was defeated, but in a different way from my father. Something hard in him. Sullen. Not … Sakeema …

  “What? She took a blackwood club to you, belabored you herself?” Still gentle, Tass was trying to tease some truth out of him.

  “She might as well have.”

  “Kor. Do I look as beaten as you do?” I asked abruptly.

  “Only on the outside.” As if his strength had all in a moment given way, he let his arm fold, his head fall onto his bed of furs. Tass covered him and came over to me.

  Name of love, the warm touch of her hands as she helped me up. She settled herself beneath and behind me, she let me lean against her, my head resting in the curve of her shoulder, her arms around me to hold the bowl. So stunned was I, and so happy, I ate the reeking fish without a word to please her. The food would give me strength, she said. But it was out of her that strength seemed chiefly to come, warmth and comfort and strength flowing to me from her touch.

  I ate all the food she gave me, and then she settled me in my bed again as tenderly as a mother might, all but kissed me. She told me to sleep, and I did so instantly, as if I had to obey her or risk breaking the spell of sweetness that seemed to be on us both. Name of love was … Tassida.…

  Kor had once said that she loved—me! That was his honesty, but had he abated his ardor for her since saying it? He was only a man after all, and no god, I reminded myself with an angry pang. So perhaps he had. I should have known better, but I wanted to think he had. It quieted my uneasy sense of honor—for I was dreaming of her.

  When I awoke it was nighttime, a night black and soft with fog, and I was feeling the urge that follows food. Thinking of a private place down by the sea, I struggled and sat up—stronger, yes! Started to throw off my coverings, then realized I was naked as a skinned rabbit beneath them, and stopped.

  “Go ahead, Dan.” Tass spoke from behind me, where she was tending the fire. “Sakeema knows, I have seen you often enough.”

  Which was true, and many times she must h
ave seen me relieve myself against a rock or tree, those days when she had been a youth and a warrior traveling with us. But I did not move, and she came over to me, offering a hand, as if to help me stand and walk. I refused it, hoping she would not see in the firelight how my face had reddened.

  “Everything seems very different now,” I mumbled.

  “How so?” She sat by me.

  I could scarcely say, but I was damned by Mahela if I was going to let her take me to the cuck-pit. “Tass,” I burst out, “just bring me some clothes, would you? Please?”

  She shrugged and got up. “Bring mine, too,” came Kor’s voice from the darkness beyond the fire, and Tass nodded, then went off in the night to get them.

  “Her camp must be up in the spruces somewhere,” Kor said.

  He was awake, he understood what was happening, and he would help me for all he was worth, blast him. Feeling as sure of his aid as if he had spoken, and oddly vexed, I kept silence.

  Tassida returned. I took the bundle she gave me, fumbled through it in the firelight, and girded on the lappet before I flung off my blanketing pelts. Finally I wobbled to my feet. There was just strength enough in me to let me unsteadily stand and walk. In breeches tied crookedly, Kor tottered over to stand beside me.

  “Handbond,” he said. “For strength.”

  “It is too petty a matter for handbond,” I told him coldly.

  “Truly? You prefer to fall on the rocks?” He raised his brows at me, then shrugged. “As you will. Just give me your other hand, then. We’ll be a horse of four legs—when one end stumbles, the other end stands firm.”

  Firelight flickered on the pale waves of sand, making them seem to shift and surge like sea billows, or so I thought for a moment. Perhaps it was my own blinking eyes and light head that made it seem so. I gave Kor my left hand, and the two of us swayed off toward the water’s edge.

  “Your swords are in the cave,” Tass called after us, mocking or amused. “Get them, O mighty warriors, if you can lift them. You may have need of them soon.”

  Kor and I staggered to a stop, nearly falling, and fear sent our right hands flying to bond despite any misgivings of mine. And Kor was yet my bond brother, whatever my dark thoughts, and strength surged through me from his grip. We both stood more steadily, but staring like gudgeons.

  For lying at the tide line, lying in a rippling, slitted, foul-smelling mass was—a devourer. No, it did not move, even though the shadowy night at first made it seem to do so, and plainly its innards were spilled, and its greenish life’s blood. It was dead.

  “Scum of Mahela!” Kor exclaimed.

  “The sword is of good use against them,” Tass told us across the night, a note of triumph in her clear voice.

  Kor looked back at her across his shoulder. “You have a tale for us.”

  “The twelve less one are now but seven. That is tale enough.”

  We passed the felled devourer at a distance, and though we did not speak of it, I for one felt queasy so close to the thing, as if it might somehow poison us or harm us, even dead and dismembered as it was. We made our way down among the rocks of the shore, and I did what I had come to do. Kor stood at a small distance. In the darkness I heard him chuckling, and the sound annoyed me.

  “What is it?” I grumbled.

  “I have never known you to be modest, Dan.”

  I blazed at him, “Well, what would you have done?”

  “I truly believe I am past caring.” Something harsh beneath his amusement. It angered me.

  “Well, I am not! You are the more to be pitied, then.”

  “And you are in parlous ill humor, Dan! Why?”

  He was not Sakeema. But he had never claimed to be.… Shamed, yet no less sullen, I kept silence.

  “Here,” he said finally, “take my hand.”

  I had to, or fall. Presently we found the cave, teetering, trying not to slip on the hard, smooth-worn stone. This was how an old, old man might feel, I mused, afraid of falling, afraid of pain and brittle bones and not being able to get up again. The old are defeated, contemplating the face of Mahela. Well, I was not so old, and breaks would heal, and pain was only pain.… A faint light, fainter than starlight, showed us our way to the ledge where the swords lay. The stones in the pommels dimly glowed, showing us the glint of crossed blades lying just as we had left them.

  I reached for Alar, and eagerly the sword slid toward me, presenting her pommel to my hand. I gripped it as if gripping the hand of an old friend well met, and I held Alar high awhile, gladly hefting her, letting her blade gather light and send it flashing, before slipping her into the leather scabbard and fastening it to my belt. And Kor still stood looking at Zaneb, and had not yet raised his hand to greet the sword.

  I stared at him. He felt the gaze.

  It feels—like the taking up of a doom.

  “I thought I was the one afraid of my sword,” I said. I had been, once. But Kor had never been a madman, with a madman’s fears. What ailed him, I could not guess, and I was tired, I had no patience to stand there with him. “Come back when you feel stronger,” I told him.

  “No. Doom is now.” He reached up, fingers open to receive the hilt, and it flew gently to his hand. Whatever doom there might have been, I could not feel it.

  But Kor seemed shaken, and stood woodenly. I took his arm, urged him back out of the cave and up the beach. Only when we had nearly reached the fire did he collect himself enough to stop and gird on his sword.

  Tass was uncovering something she had roasted in coals. I sank down thankfully on my pile of furs, spent, so weary I was scarcely interested even in supper, until she laid the wooden bowl in my lap.

  Meat! Red meat!

  “Rabbit!” I blurted aloud, grabbing at it and burning my fingers. She laughed. Kor was staring, not at me but at her.

  “You do have a tale to tell us, Tass,” he said abruptly.

  “A tale? Of the snaring of a coney?” She laughed anew. “Eat, be well and strong.”

  We all ate. There were oat cakes as well as the rabbit. The fire burned warm—in Mahela’s realm, I had scarcely dared to believe that I would ever sit by a fire again, dry and warm, mortal, amidst—friends.…

  Kor caught my glance and quietly smiled. But his eyes were full of thought, not all of it glad.

  When we had eaten and thrown away the bones he spoke. “So, Tass, the tale. Truly, please. Tell us how it is that you are no longer afraid to be with Dannoc.”

  Was the change in her? I had thought it was the joy of our homecoming gathering her in. But she knew what Kor meant, and there was not much guile in her that night. She sobered and looked down at the sand, denying nothing, saying nothing.

  “Will not the morrow be time enough for tales?” she asked at last. “You are both mending, you should rest.”

  “Sakeema knows what will happen on the morrow,” said Kor starkly.

  So she told us.

  It had seemed a long winter to her while Kor and I were in the sea. She had not gone off on her lifelong wandering quest, as we had assumed she would. As she had always made us think she did when she was not with us. In fact, she had never been far from us since the first day she had met us, never more than three days hard riding away, most often much closer. Near us, yet afraid to be with us, she admitted with her eyes downcast and her hands stroking the sand. Like a moth following a flame. But she had not been able to follow us into the sea.

  That being so, she had set herself to watching the sea and our swords and our steeds. Sora and Talu were wandering with Calimir somewhere in the spruce forests, not too far away. Tass had built herself a shelter of poles and skins, setting it up against a cliff and a shallow cave, a short walk from where we were, though it had been too distant for her to drag us there when we were limp weight just washed ashore. (We could go there now if we liked. Not now, we told her, Thank you, but no.) She had spent the winter living there, hunting and fishing for her food. Folk from Seal Hold had discovered she was there, and som
eone came from time to time, bringing her oats and talk. Nor had it taken them long to comprehend that she was a maiden—perhaps she had not hidden it as fervidly as before. And they had accepted it in her. But most of the time she had been alone. She had never spent so much time in one place and alone. It had seemed a long, gray winter.

  Then she had been afraid.

  “The jewel lights went out.” She raised her dark eyes and looked levelly between us, toward the sea, and her eyes were as dark as the Mountains of Doom, as deep as the sea. “In the hilts of your swords, the stones. One day their light was gone, they lay as dull as pebbles, and I knew you were—dead.”

  Kor looked down with a small grimace, as of discomfort. I shivered, suddenly feeling the nighttime chill on my bare spine.

  “I—I panicked, I grew frantic. I snatched at the swords as if I could warm the life back into the jewels with my hands, or shake them, something—I am not sure what. But they did not let me touch them. They warned me away.” Smiling, Tassida raised both her palms toward us in a gesture that made her seem magical, a wise woman, a seeress. And across the four fingers of each hand ran a thin, white scar, very much like the ones Kor and I each bore.

  We were stupid with weariness and our own unspoken quarrel, worn down by Mahela’s torments, or we would have known, then. Everything.

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps the pattern was too vast for us to comprehend so quickly, a vastness like that of sky or sea. Perhaps poison of Mahela was darkening our sight. Perhaps neither of us had courage to see. Not Kor, who I had thought was a god. Not I, who now felt pain as if I had been betrayed, thinking he was not.

  For whatever reason, we said nothing, and Tass went on.

  “There was nothing I could do but wait. And then the devourers came, all of them at once, in the daytime. When did they grow bold enough to fly in the daytime? Bowels of my mother, but I was afraid.” She hesitated, her head once again bowed, her hands down, fingers tracing in the sand. “You have heard—there is a mode of attack folk do not care to speak of. Shameful in men. All the worse in devourers.”