Heart of Light (45 page)

Kitwana looked confused. He opened his hands, palms at the sides of his body, in a show of helplessness. “I don't know what else we can do. We must leave. Now. We must run.”

All her life, Emily had been protected and cosseted. Others had made decisions for her, told her when it was safe to stay and safe to go. And look where it had brought her.

She crossed her arms on her chest. “I don't think so, Mr. Kitwana. Even without the hindrance of Mr. Farewell's illness, we could never travel fast enough to get away from flying enemies.”

“So,” Kitwana said. He looked at her and wrinkled his forehead in confusion. “We are lost?”

Emily shook her head. “We are lost if they're after us. But if they're after us, why haven't they landed? Surely they saw our fire. I think they're after someone else. Granted, they might turn and come after us again, so we should put the fire out. In fact, I think that's just what we should do. Put the fire out and try to get some rest, and get Mr. Farewell better before we leave.”

“We can't put the fire out,” Kitwana said. “What about animals—”

“Didn't you listen when Mr. Farewell said animals will not come near him?” Emily shot one look at Peter's withered features as he attempted to smile at her. Had she ever been besotted with him? Had she ever thought he would protect her? She could not remember why.

“That salve . . . what you made before. Was it real?” she asked Kitwana.

“The healing salve?” Kitwana asked, and frowned. “You mean, would it really disinfect his wounds? Heal them?”

“Yes.”

“Of course.”

“Well, forgive me for doubting you, but you did try to kill him.”

Kitwana shook his head and looked offended. “Not kill him. Just determine if he was dangerous, if he had to be killed.”

“Are you dangerous, Mr. Farewell?” Emily asked.

Peter looked up at her and frowned. “I'm barely alive,” he said.

“Which is when beasts become most dangerous,” Kitwana said.

“Should you shift your form, would you be dangerous?” Emily asked. “Would you try to eat us? You are in great pain. Would that cause you to attack?”

“You want to kill me, too,” Peter said in sudden anger. His tired features set in something like a little boy's scowl. “Everyone hates me. Why don't you set binds on me so I can't change?”

“Because we can't do that,” Kitwana said. “You know well that no one can do that, not even yourself.”

Emily ignored them both and repeated her question. “If you shift forms, will you attack us? Or do you have any power of self-control?”

Peter looked bewildered. “I have self-control.”

“In dragon form?”

“In . . .” Peter hesitated. “In my other form, I have
some
self-control. I can . . . Unless someone attacks me.” He looked at Kitwana. “Or I'm very hungry. Most of the time I can control myself. But fear or nerves or . . . hunger . . .”

“Then you are guilty of murder. You killed strangers. Ate strangers. And you knew what you were doing,” Kitwana said.

Again, Emily ignored him. Before Peter's anger could surge, she said, “And aren't you very hungry? Won't you be very hungry if you shift forms?”

Peter shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “When I'm not myself I need more food than as a human. But I don't . . . I'm not . . . I'm very ill. I don't know. I always prefer beasts, if I can catch them.”

Emily looked at the man in front of her, dressed in his rumpled linen suit, his hair in disarray, too weak to even walk as a man. Would not the dragon suffer the same weakness? “Mr. Kitwana, please douse the fire and bring me the salve. We need to sleep and we need to decide where we shall go.”

Kitwana looked as if he'd resist her orders. And why shouldn't he? She was only a woman. As far as Emily could tell, the opinions of women were never very respected. And besides, she was wholly unused to giving orders.

Even now, she would feel more comfortable if one of the men should take charge. But how could they? Peter was half out of his mind and couldn't even give her a straight answer. As for Kitwana, he seemed to be so completely concentrated on the danger Peter Farewell posed that he could think of nothing else that might threaten them.

She watched him douse the fire. What would he know, and how well would he lead? He had fallen for the Hyena Men. And if an organization that bound people's minds wasn't evil, Emily didn't know what would be.

When Kitwana came back, he was carrying something, which he threw over Farewell. His gesture was so aggressive, it took Emily a moment to realize that it was a blanket.

“I thought you might get cold with the fever and with the fire out,” he said in a sharp tone. He brought out the jar of water he'd turned into a healing salve and poured some of it into a cup. “Here,” he said. “This has no herbs. It's just concentrated healing magic. Drink it.”

Farewell took the cup and looked at it dubiously.

“I don't kill men in the dark and by poison,” Kitwana said bluntly.

Peter looked at Kitwana, then shrugged and threw the water back in a single gulp, as if it were strong liquor. Then he screamed and folded forward, over his knees, trembling and whimpering.

“You poisoned him,” Emily said, looking at Kitwana.

“Shhh,” Kitwana said, not so much an order as a request. He put his hand on her shoulder. It felt warm and oddly comforting. After this night of shocks, she had to fight a sudden impulse to lean on him, to be folded into his arms.

If it showed in her face, fortunately Kitwana wasn't looking. He stared at Peter, who was still shaking, then back at Emily. “You know that a concentrated healing magic hurts. The body resists sudden healing as much as it resists sudden wounding.

“I am . . . not dying,” Peter said as he raised his head. He shivered. “He's speaking the truth. Mrs. Oldhall, please don't distress yourself.”

His voice did seem stronger. Presently, his shaking subsided. He snuggled down into his blanket. His eyes closed. Soon, a rhythmic breathing announced that he'd fallen asleep.

Emily watched him in wonder and fear. Had she really thought herself in love with him? She'd never even known him. A were-beast as he was, full of immense magic, and Peter Farewell was like a great British oak with rot at its core—a hollow, soft center that at any moment could cause the whole to collapse.

“I brought you a blanket, too,” Kitwana said, from beside her. He'd brought one for himself as well. “I thought it safer if we curled near him, beside the boulder. If someone should come and look for us—”

She nodded and took the blanket from him. Then she curled down on the hard ground—next to a sleeping dragon. She tried to think of Nigel, of how to find him again. But she wasn't sure she wanted to find him. Nigel had courted her and deceived her. But he was as bound as she, whether he loved Nassira or not. Within the tight, rigid structure of English society, could he tell his parents that he was in love with an African woman? Could he hope for their blessing? For a happy life in the Oldhall estate?

She almost laughed. She remembered the expression of Nigel's mother when she'd found out that Emily had an Indian grandmother. In Europe, a darker skin was inevitably, assumed to be inferior. Only Emily's large dowry and her father's name had prevented Mrs. Oldhall from forbidding Nigel's marriage to her. What would she think of a Masai girl who probably understood a dowry to be cows? Emily now wondered if she'd ever been in love with Nigel—and therefore if she'd ever been in love at all. Still, she had a natural reverence for love and a certainty that love came around but rarely. Perhaps it was the novels she had read, but she felt in her heart that if Nigel had found love with his African girl, then he was justified in doing all he could to make their union a reality and to live happily ever after.

What Emily found curious was that it hurt her so little. She mustn't have been very much in love with Nigel after all. And perhaps that was best for everyone.

She wasn't aware of falling asleep, but she woke to a sound like a growl and sat up, her hand over her speeding heart.

Animals. They were being attacked. They were—

Then she smelled the peculiar odor that she'd identified as Peter Farewell's before. She stretched her hand to where he'd been and found a cold blanket and what was surely the empty leg of his pair of pants.

He'd changed. He'd—

The growl echoed again, followed by sounds of crunching bone and rending flesh.

Emily stood hastily. But there, on the other side of the dragon's abandoned clothing and blankets, Kitwana lay, sleeping—his blanket half thrown off his dark, muscular torso, and an arm thrown up over his head with the abandon of a sleeping child.

Emily looked again to where the dragon—Peter—sat and tore at the flesh of . . . It looked like a horse, its black and white stripes visible by the scant light of a rosy dawn.

A zebra. It—he—was eating a zebra.

As Emily watched, the dragon tore at the flesh and chewed. Its eyes, immense and green and somehow as expressive as they'd been in human form, gazed at her with steady amusement.

Did she dare?

If Peter was a beast and had little control, it would never allow her to approach. If, however, the human lived beyond those huge eyes, that bloodstained muzzle . . .

Trembling, she stood and walked slowly toward the dragon, step by step. It continued eating, looking at her, giving no indication of its intentions. As she got within two steps, it stopped chewing and waited. She extended her hand slowly and lay it upon the dragon's warm muzzle.

For a moment, the creature was still and silent. Then it made a sound like growling, but more like the purring of a giant cat. It blinked the inner eyelids, and then the outer ones.

Emily had a sense—perhaps mistaken—that the great beast was laughing at her. She drew herself up primly. “Well,” she said. “Good night, then, Mr. Farewell.”

She heard the purring sound again, this time coming in short, staccato bursts. She thought it was laughter for sure, but she withdrew her hand and turned to walk back, pretending she didn't know that Peter Farewell was mocking her.

SEARCHING FOR DIRECTIONS

Nassira looked around. This did not look like the bro
ken terrain and sudden craters of her homeland. In fact, this did not look like any terrain she knew.

She stood with Nigel in the middle of a plain covered in short grass. Looking behind her, she realized without surprise that there was no forest to be seen. She hadn't expected it to be there. She thought the forest she and Nigel had crossed had been more in the mind than in reality. And now they'd come to a place quite different. There was grass and cows. They didn't look like the cows the Masai kept, but more like English cows.

Nassira and Nigel stood just outside an enclosure where some of these cows roamed, where the grass was taller and seeding.

Nigel, his hair on end, his face haggard, tottered on his feet and sat down suddenly. “The angel,” he said. “The angel of terrible countenance.”

Nassira looked at him, worried. “What angel?” she said very gently.

He frowned at her, his brows descending over his pale eyes and his whole expression one of uncomprehending surprise. “The angel in the forest,” he said. “The angel with the sword.”

“I saw no angel,” Nassira said. “There were only some Moran.”

And then her mind reproached her as she realized suddenly that in a forest that was no forest, perhaps the entities found there were also not what they seemed. “You saw an angel?”

“Yes. With a fiery sword and white wings.”

“Like the blond angels in English churches?” Nassira asked, amused.

Nigel nodded. He was looking at her in wonder, as if not sure what he could have said that was funny.

“And what did the angel tell you, Mr. Oldhall?” Nassira asked softly.

“That the ruby . . .” He shook his head. “That the queen had no more right to the ruby than the Hyena Men did. That the ruby belonged to all mankind and to the world.” He made a little sound that could be a laugh, and then again might be a sob. “That I'd come on a fool's errand.”

Nassira didn't know what to say. Coming on a fool's errand might have summed up her own part in this. She should never have left her father's kraal. After a long while, she found the words and spoke them, wondering if the Englishman would understand. “I found myself talking to Moran. They said much what your angel told you. Only, they said I was supposed to go to the ruby, but not take it. That I was supposed to protect it.” Softly, she added, “I don't know from what.”