Bloodstone (76 page)

“Why not? It’s close enough to the truth.”

“Why do you want me to risk so much for a boy you don’t even know?”

“Think about it. That’s all I ask. No matter what you choose, I’ll understand.”

After his father left, Keirith paced the beach angrily. He had his own battles to fight. With Natha’s help, he had cast out a few fragments of Xevhan’s spirit, but more were buried inside of him. If he couldn’t reach them, how could he reach this poor boy? Didn’t his father understand that he could hurt Hua, cause even greater damage? His newfound faith in his power was as foolhardy as his apparent belief that they would return home and life would go on as if nothing had happened.

“You’re not Morgath,” his father had told him when they first discussed the tribe’s reaction. “You didn’t destroy the Zheron for the love of it, but to save us. We just have to make the elders understand that.”

His father was so relieved that they had survived the ordeal in Pilozhat that he simply could not understand that his existence was an affront to everything their people believed. Hircha knew better; he saw the knowledge of his doom in her eyes. But there was no pity there. If anything, she seemed to admire his determination to return home and meet his fate.

Like Hua, he was ready for death. It would be a sweet release for both of them.

But Hua had. Whether his spirit had simply shattered when his parents were murdered or whether he had deliberately retreated into himself rather than face their loss, he had escaped the memories. It would be cruel to force him to confront them now.

Yet when he had told his father all that happened to him, he’d felt as if a great weight had been lifted. Like his father, he’d needed to tell his tale. Perhaps Hua did, too. But he still didn’t know if he could reach him.

Natha’s voice and his father’s battered him. By the time he returned to the hut, he had banished them and made his decision. Then he saw Jirra crouched beside Hua’s pallet, dribbling water between his lips, and Illait’s genial face shadowed by misery. And heard himself saying, “I might be able to help.”

He sat beside Hua and clasped his limp hand. Flesh dry as birch bark covered the delicate bones. Knobby wrists protruded from the sleeves of a tunic that hung on arms little thicker than sticks.

If he were a shaman, he would have a spirit catcher, a crystal he had shaped with his own hands. With it, he could recapture the fragments of a wandering spirit and bring it home, just as his father carried the spirits of the Oak and Tinnean back to the grove. But tonight,
he
was the spirit catcher and he had only his power to help him reclaim Hua.

Keirith closed his eyes, but behind him, he felt the weight of all the other eyes that watched him. Deliberately, he shut them out, along with the hiss of the fire and the smell of the stew, until there was only his heart, beating a slow tattoo within his chest, and his breath, rising and falling with Hua’s.

In darkness, he waited for Natha. In darkness, Natha came, filling him with the same sinuous warmth he had first experienced that night on the beach. Keirith let the energy pass from his hand to Hua’s. It seeped into wasted flesh and hard bone, flowed into blood, and surged through the boy’s body with the faint but relentless beat of his heart. The energy reached for Hua’s spirit as naturally as a flower turned toward the sun—and found only a dark void.

Slowly, carefully, Keirith probed deeper. It was like diving down into the lake at home with still, silent waters all around him. He had never touched such emptiness. If not for the beating of Hua’s heart, he would have thought the boy was dead.

As he sank deeper into the darkness, he felt a faint pulse of energy. Eagerly, he followed it, only to be pushed away. At first, he thought Hua was doing it. Then he realized it was Natha, urging him to go back. He remembered the allure of the elemental dance in the adder pit, the freedom of floating above his body after death. The deeper he went, the more tenuous his connection to his body. But Hua was so close; if he retreated now, the boy’s spirit would be lost.

Keirith hesitated. He attuned himself to the rhythm of his heartbeat, to the pressure of his hand clasping Hua’s. Then he dared to probe a little deeper.

Immediately, he encountered fierce resistance. His joy in discovering the strength of Hua’s spirit was tempered by the realization that the barriers he’d erected were even stronger than Xevhan’s. Born of his determination to keep the painful memories at bay, they would also shut him out. If he pushed too hard, he risked shattering that frightened spirit.

He and his father had taunted Xevhan into attacking them, but even if it meant losing Hua, Keirith couldn’t bring himself to hurt him. He cradled Hua’s spirit, sensing the terrible fragility beneath the hard shell.

As he did, an image rose before him: his mam seated beside the fire pit, rocking a fretful Callie in her arms, crooning a lullaby to ease him into sleep. Unbidden, the words filled him.

The violent outpouring of pain and denial ripped through Keirith. Images buffeted him: a man racing out of a hut, clutching a spear, a woman screaming for him to come back. And Hua’s terrified thoughts and emotions as he watched.

He didn’t know why everyone was shouting or why Grandfa and Fa had run out. He wanted his mam, but when he reached for her, she pushed him away and ran after Fa. He mustn’t cry. He was a big boy now. He had to be brave like Fa and Grandfa. He had to go with them. But Grandmam wouldn’t let him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the hut so fast he tripped and fell and skinned both knees. And he did cry then, but only a couple tears. Grandmam didn’t take him in her arms like she used to when he was little. She just pulled on his arm hard and Auntie Sariem pulled on the other and they dragged him to his feet and told him to run, run, run, fast as a rabbit, into the trees, and don’t look back.

So he ran, fast as a rabbit, and didn’t look back. Not even when he heard the roar. Not from a wolf or a wildcat or any animal he knew. It must be some awful creature the Unmaker had sent from Chaos.

All around him, people were running. Behind him, people were screaming. The beast was eating them and if he didn’t run faster, it would eat him, too.

Abruptly, the images vanished, leaving only the wail of Hua’s spirit.