Heart of Light (51 page)

In that moment, Kitwana—who'd never have thought to find a woman he could take home to his father's village—realized that he'd found her. And yet she was European and would never look twice at him. Which might be just as well, since he was exiled and not sure he could ever go home.

Carew Oldhall was silent a moment, then his voice roared in outrage. “Why, you impudent chit. I order you to—”

They never knew what he ordered Emily, because at that moment Peter Farewell glowed with an inner light, as his body twisted and writhed in the grip of change.

Kitwana—although knowing it would be insufficient to defend them—grabbed a powerstick and prepared for a desperate fight against the dragon.

LION IN THE GRASS

“A lion,” Nassira's voice sounded, high and suddenly,
startling Nigel.

He widened his eyes at a flash of something tawny and airborne.

They'd been walking through the tall grass most of the day, talking calmly. The fisherman had brought them safely across the lake, then left them with his profuse thanks. They'd walked on, south and west on faith, hoping that indeed God wasn't a trickster.

All of a sudden, it was as though everything around him moved unnaturally slowly and became terribly clear. He could smell the tall grass, verdant and full of sap, and the green, refreshing aroma of water somewhere nearby. And he could smell the lion, its musk hot and pervasive. He could see it so clearly that he would have been able to count the hairs on its body. It seemed to him, too, in that stretched-time moment, that he would have the time to.

But the inner Nigel, the one not affected by his fear or surprise, informed him that Nassira was somewhere behind him, unarmed and unable to defend herself. That ahead of them was a half-eaten carcass of some animal that the lion had been eating. They'd come on the lion suddenly, startling him at his feast.

And then Nigel remembered Nassira's actions when she'd killed the lion, and he repeated them, with sudden, balancing grace that he had never displayed on the playing field.

He thrust Nassira away, as she had once thrust him away from danger, and stepped neatly in front of the airborne lion, lifting his lance aloft, knowing rationally that it didn't have a chance of piercing the lion's hide with the force Nigel could put behind it.

But he'd seen Nassira's crude lance kill a lion before, and now he ran forward, so that the lion's body was directly above him, and held the lance firm. And saw—still in that unnaturally slowed time—it pierce the tawny hide, and felt the shower of blood. He felt the lance give under his hand as the wood splintered, just as Nassira grabbed Nigel's arm and pulled him aside forcefully.

They fell in the tall grass, Nigel still dripping blood, and Nassira yelling at him, “Why were you standing there? It could crush you as it falls.”

There was a loud roar, and Nigel turned to the lion, sure that the creature would be ready to ravage them. But the beast was writhing in its death throes.

Nigel sat up, rubbing his hand on his face and bringing it away blood-tinged. And Nassira was looking at him, wide-eyed, shocked. “Mr. Oldhall!” she said.

“Call me Nigel,” he snapped, suddenly impatient with formality, impatient of all but this reality—blood on his fingers, grass under him, and ahead of him the corpse of a lion he'd just killed—on his own and with no help from anyone. The lion that surely not even Carew could have killed.

There was a sound like strangled laughter in Nassira's throat, and had she not been a Masai—had she been a properly brought-up British woman—Nigel would have known she was about to be hysterical.

He turned sharply to her and heard his voice say, snappishly and full of English propriety, “Don't go missish on me. It's not like that. But we are comrades-in-arms. We've both killed lions.”

And Nassira threw her head back and laughed—a full-throated, roaring laughter that Nigel had never imagined could come from a feminine body. “Oh, I wouldn't know how to be missish. Nigel, don't you understand?”

He looked at her in puzzlement, wondering if she had gone crazy or if this was a form of hysteria peculiar to African women, and wishing vaguely that he had on hand the ubiquitous bottle of salts his mother carried everywhere.

But Nassira shook her head. “When you said it was not . . . what you expected . . .” A gurgle of laughter. “The greatest of honors, the highest courage is attributed to the young man who kills a lion. He's respected lifelong for it. And here you are, a Water—an Englishman whom we must now consider a brave warrior of the Masai.”

Nigel looked at her curiously. This added to the vague exhilaration he felt at being competent enough to save himself and her, his feeling that even Carew could never have done this. But he disciplined his face to show nothing, and said nothing beyond “Really?”

She nodded at him desperately, a frantic expression beneath her shining eyes and smiling mouth. “But now we've both killed lions, Nigel! A woman and a Water Man. Oh, Mokabi would die if he knew. Comrades-in-arms indeed. We
must
make you a headdress and a fetish from it. I know how to do it by magic. And you must have it.”

Sitting on the ground, with lion's blood on his face and suddenly wondering how long it would be before he could wash, Nigel nodded absently.

FIRE AND BLOOD

One's dead relatives aren't supposed to come back
from the dead, Emily thought. And if they must do that, then they should refrain from being not at all as one's in-laws had described them.

She'd just gathered enough from the conversation with Peter to know that Carew was not at all like the selfless man his mother talked about the brave, reserved creature of his father's fantasy; or even Nigel's more subdued but still conventional portrait of the son and heir. Nor did she need Peter's words, having quite a good brain to think with, and having managed to realize that no man who was truly good and kind and loyal and brave would come in search of his sister-in-law with an armed party and then proceed to besiege her for hours before speaking.

So Emily, despite Kitwana's seeming reasonable analysis of the situation, had never intended on surrendering, never considered for a moment that she might want to walk out into the open and deliver herself to the men who'd been preventing them from leaving. She merely wanted to know why and what was at the back of Carew's plan. And why Carew had disappeared.

And then Peter explained, seemingly without realizing. He, and others like him, had ambushed Carew's party and stolen the compass stone. Left for dead, Carew had refused to be defeated and leave Africa. He'd formed or taken over the despicable organization that had branded Emily.

Seething, she paused for a moment and then realized from the eerie light and the contortions that Peter was changing shape.

She was startled by a thought that Peter was not as well made as Kitwana, whose legs were longer and turned in exquisite perfection between slimness and muscle. She wanted to laugh at herself. Since when had this African become the paragon of masculinity in her mind? And since when was masculine beauty the most important thing when you're about to be trapped in a small space with a dragon? Perhaps she'd had too much brandy.

Seeing Kitwana lift a powerstick aimed at Peter's heart, she didn't even turn from the horrible yet beautiful spectacle of the dragon changing. “Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Kitwana,” she said. “Put that down.”

And Peter—a changing Peter, his mouth filled with suddenly sharp teeth, his tongue seemingly too long to pronounce words properly—hissed out, “She is right,
Mr.
Kitwana. I mean you no harm.”

Then Peter's body writhed a final time. Kitwana, startled, let go of the shield for just a moment, but it was enough. Peter—the dragon—sprang.

It had to spring, Emily thought. There was no possible way the narrow space between the rocks would contain the immense body that jumped and unfolded overhead, wings spread to the sky.

For a moment, Emily could not breathe. Then she heard the screams of the Hyena Men and then their shouts.

“Lay into him. Use the spelled powerstick,” someone yelled.

“No! The lance for the dragon,” another shouted. Carew's voice. “The one with the silver tips. Grab them. I brought enough for all.”

Emily turned away from the voices and was aware that the shield had been lifted and that the Hyena Men could now fire upon them. But no power surged between their insufficiently sheltering rocks to singe her. There was nothing save flashes of light, as if from a fire, that reflected in on them. And she seemed unable to turn, unable to see the dragon—such a beautiful creature she'd once felt her heart go out to, she'd once saved—lay waste to human flesh.

Instead she looked at Kitwana, who was looking over her shoulder and between the opening in the rocks. His face had gone ashen, his lips almost gray. And looking into those horror-stricken eyes, she could well imagine the chasing dragon, the fire blasting from its jaws, searing human flesh.

The odor of burning flesh and wood reached her. And the screams were now loud, incoherent. And not a powerstick had been fired. Not one.

“Tell me, Mr. Kitwana,” she said, making her voice loud to be heard over the din, so that he could understand her in whatever state he'd abstracted himself into. “Are the lances they brought effective against him?”

“It . . . They seem to be,” he spoke, his eyes still wide, his voice sounding as if it came from a very distant place—a chill place full of cold and dark recrimination. “He's bleeding more than he did when—” A forceful swallow. “But he's still attacking. He's . . .” He swallowed again, hard. “Mrs. Oldhall, he's sacrificing himself for us.”

And on those words there was a sound like that of a giant tree falling. A trembling on the ground, like that of a giant animal spasming underfoot. A high keening that could not come from a natural throat.

And then nothing, save the crackle of fire and—slowly, faintly, at first almost imperceptibly—the steady patter of a soft rain.