Authors: Alice Borchardt
“Oh, Christ!” Igrane whimpered. “It that . . . ? Oh, God!” Then she leaned over and vomited on the floor near her feet. “I knew those servants of his frightened me, but he never described what . . .”
There was no more laughter, and this surprised Igrane.
“No, he wouldn’t,” was the thoughtful, almost sad, reply. “I remember he told me once we were almost the perfect servants. He need not worry about treachery, stupidity, or greed. When he was done with us, he dismissed us to our tombs, where we lay silent, imprisoned, sleeping. Sometimes dreaming, sometimes harboring nightmares, until we were summoned by him to serve again.”
Igrane pushed the mantle back from her head. The cold air felt good on her hot face.
“I’ve made a mess,” she said.
“No!” The cowled figure gestured. The stuff on the floor dried, fell to dust, and a puff of air blew it away.
“This place . . . those clothes . . . he created . . . it. How . . . ?”
A sniff from the cowled figure. “He? Create this? No! My little dear, it created him. Whoever owns it is Merlin. The Merlin. He is gone, whoever he was—Emyrs some say. I cannot tell. I never knew his name. Otherwise, I would not be this dried trophy, testament to his sorcery. I would have bound that name in death ruins. I may yet.
“No, that—” She pointed to the symbol. “That is the heart of this place.” It still throbbed, lightening, darkening, but still seeming to be illuminated by a scarlet glow. “It summoned me, telling me there must be a new candidate for the position of Merlin.”
“Who?” Igrane asked, realizing it must be between the two of them.
The cowled sorceress answered, “Need you ask?”
“You,” Igrane said.
“Foolish one. I’m dead. Yes, animated, but to all intents and purposes, dead. The person allowed to take the Merlin’s seat must be living. Igrane, Queen of Cornwall, that person is—you.”
Black Leg woke in warm water. It felt so good, he kept his eyes closed, thinking it might be a good dream and not wanting it to go away. Afraid he might awaken and find reality too much to bear.
“Huh! Fine warrior I am. What am I going to do? Curl into a ball and hope to be without pain?”
He opened his eyes. She was bending over him.
“Thank God,” she said. “I was afraid you might have damaged yourself too badly to recover.”
“Jesus!” he replied. “Every time I wake up, I find out you came across another little green thingamajiggy that does something weird. What’s this one?”
He was glancing around at the bath he was in. It was located in the back of the cave where they had been hiding, in a hollow fed by a spring trickling slowly from a crack in the rock wall at the rear of the cave. It was lined with greenish-gray, fuzzy, small plants he had only barely noticed when they crept in here to hide.
Then he felt something at his groin and anal area that felt decidedly . . . strange. Then he screamed, “Oh, my God! It’s eating me!!!”
He tried to sit up and scramble out of the hollow. She slapped him back down.
“My hero!” she snarled. “It is not! Besides, you never seemed to object when I did it.”
“Holy God! I knew you’d get me killed sooner or later.”
“No, stop it! If it was going to eat you, it would have hours ago, when you started up. When . . . when you—ah—messed up the floor.”
“Hell. Now you’re prudish!”
“Hell, no! I’m polite!” was the reply. “But if you want, I can be explicit. You pissed and shit yourself, then vomited. And son of a bitch, you sure ate a lot, ’cause that was one of the worst messes I ever saw. It stank, too. I couldn’t do anything. I just lay there on the floor and hoped those damned birds didn’t get in. Because I couldn’t mobilize the wolf body enough to even stand up. But you wet down all those little whatevers and they started taking care of you right away.
“The rock started dripping water, then the air temperature warmed. And those . . . I think they’re some kind of lichen . . . began filling with moisture and they didn’t seem to be doing you any harm, so I concentrated on learning the wolf body as fast as I could. By the time the moon came out and the birds left, I could walk. And I went out and gobbled down as much food as I could and brought back as much as I could carry. So shut the fuck up and lie there in the water while I feed you, ’cause if they haven’t eaten you by now, they won’t! Goddamn it! Got that?”
Black Leg did, and subsided, though he kept watching the water for blood. He didn’t see any, and the sensation never got any worse than that of a scrubbing with a slightly rough sponge. In a short time, he decided she was right, and as his stomach filled up, he began to feel much better. That is, until he looked through the small opening in the rock where the spring originated.
He nearly bit off some of her fingers.
“You know,” she told him, sounding dangerous, “I’m getting tired of you.” She was examining her hand.
“I didn’t hurt you!” He was a little disgusted, because he sounded defensive.
“No?” she said.
“No! Besides, you didn’t see what I just saw.”
She went wolf and bared her teeth—all of them.
“Look! Look! If you don’t believe me, look!”
She leaned over him, got a good eyeful, then jerked back.
“They’re . . . they’re . . . dead!” She was woman again, her face pale. She had freckles now, and they stood out against her skin.
“Yeah,” Black Leg said. “And did you see that one looking right at us?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere quite so full of nasty surprises.” She spoke thoughtfully.
He was feeling stronger and sat up, hips and legs still in the moss-filled hollow. “You’re sure they’re dead?”
“No!” she answered in a dull voice. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. Not after what you just did to me—not after all the things that have happened. What’s wrong with me anyway? I feel so weak.”
“You’re probably just tired,” he said.
“Tired! Tired! I’m not the sort of being who gets tired. Yes, I can sleep. It passes the time. But I never get tired. I told you, I’m not the sort of being who gets tired.”
“You are now,” he said rather grimly.
He got his arms around her and rested his head on her shoulder. She rested hers on his.
“I think I’m better now,” he told her. “The food, the water. I feel stronger.”
“Is this what tired means? I feel worn out, but irritable and alert. God, you saved my life with what you did. And I’ve been acting like a complete bitch ever since.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to take,” he said. “It’s changed you, and I can’t help but think that, in the long run, you won’t be happy with the changes.”
“No? Well, I’ll learn to be happy with them. If you hadn’t done whatever it was you did, I wouldn’t be here for the long run at all.”
He was looking past her at the narrow window slits. “The moon’s out, if that is a moon.”
“I know. The birds won’t come while the light comes into the valley at all. They can’t seem to bear the light of either sun or moon.”
“We should get some rest,” he said. “But I don’t like sharing this hideout with whatever those things are in the other room.”
“They’re dead,” she said flatly.
“We hope. We wish. I just don’t want to find them in . . . say a few hours . . . creeping in here to join us. Like I said, one of them was looking right at me.”
“Quit it!” she snapped. “You’re messing me up. This isn’t the place to gather round the fire and tell ghost stories. Besides, we got no fire.”
The room was dim. If either of them had been completely human, they probably wouldn’t have been able to see at all. The strongest light came from the enormous moon outside, but the moss glowed a strange, clear shimmer that reminded Black Leg of massed stars. Because he was wolf and she used to finding her way in the depths of rivers and lakes, their vision was adequate. But neither wanted to confront what they had both seen through the opening in the rock.
She reached out, lifted a clump of the lichen that had warmed and cleaned the chamber. She blew on it and it glowed more brightly.
“Not great, but better than nothing,” he said. “Sort of a corpse candle.”
“Are you working at annoying me?” she told him. “If you are, stop it! Things are tough enough without you sniping at me.”
They both shifted into wolf form and began to investigate the long, narrow room they were in. She carried the clump of glowing lichen in her mouth. The rock wall on the side opposite the windows appeared impenetrable.
Yes, there was a lot of the strange lichen on both walls and floors. Now that they knew what it could do, it was noticeable even in its dry, resting state. And yes, the crack that opened to trickle water appeared to have many counterparts. But he could see no door or any other opening wide enough to admit him to the room that must exist on the other side of the rock wall.
“Well, if we can’t get in there to them, they certainly can’t get in here to us.”
They were human again and knelt in each other’s arms.
“You did save my life. I’m not sure how to react,” she said as she kissed him. “Usually mortals don’t give. They just take. At least in my experience that’s all they do.”
“I never thought about it,” he said, kissing her back with obvious pleasure.
“That’s one of the problems,” she answered grimly. “You don’t think about much.”
His hand was twined in her hair, and she was all heat, nipples erect, sinuous curves pressing against his—velvet, sinuous curves. They sank down toward the floor together.
“My lady,” he whispered before inserting his tongue into her mouth. “As far as thinking is concerned, you are not guiltless in that respect. Let us not throw stones at each other.”
She said, “Ahhhaaaa,” because they were each exploring each other’s mouth with their tongues, and body with their hands.
“I hope you don’t have anything radical in mind,” she whispered when at length they both surfaced from the bliss.
“No. Only pleasure.”
“There is plenty of that,” she whispered.
There was.
The little clump of wet lichen dimmed as though offering them privacy. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.
The arrival of the birds at first light woke them.
His eyes opened first. When he saw her eyelids rise, he laid his finger on his lips.
The birds remained longer this time. They began to devastate the garden. Screaming the raven call to arms, they attacked the trees, throwing down the fruit whether green or ripe, attacking the vines with a cold-blooded malice by cutting their stems. Attacking the earth around the masses of tender, sweet, bitter, and aromatic greens that filled every crack and cranny between food beds. The life of the valley endured the attack in stoic silence. He knew such attacks must have come before; they had learned to accept them.
She hadn’t, though. The blue eyes closed and tears began to trickle from under her lids.
He watched the carnage helplessly until the sun came to the rescue. The ravens rose, a black, swirling mass. The flock churned like a whirlpool over the water, then flowed out of the canyon like a river toward wherever they roosted by day.
“We caused this, didn’t we?” he asked quietly.
“They know we’re here. That’s a safe assumption,” she answered. “The garden shelters us, so . . . they took out their frustrations on whatever hapless creatures they could punish.”
“Think they left us anything to eat?”
“Oh, yes. There’s too much out there to be destroyed in a few minutes. That is all they had before the sun got to them.”
He nodded and they walked along, back to the entrance, side by side. Suddenly she stopped.
“Oh, hell. I know how.”
“How what?”
She didn’t answer, but dropped down flat and peered under the solid wall.
“Oh,” he said, then lay down beside her.
The slit wasn’t very big. Beyond, they could see the other room. It was filled with bones and there was way too much light.
“Do we have to?” he asked.
“Yes, I think so. There’s an entrance in there somewhere. I can see sun on the walls. We’re damn lucky we woke up at all. If those birds had gotten in with us . . . I’m going to try as a wolf.”
It worked. She had to lie on her belly and wiggle under, but she got in. He was bigger and lost a lot of hair and some skin, but was able to follow.
The bones weren’t white but yellowed and black with age. He touched the femur of the nearest one with his nose and it fell to dust. She rose as a woman and began to explore the chamber, peering at the bony fragments, then at the obvious entrance where the birds must have gotten in. Like the other chamber, it was long and narrow; the opening was at one end. It wasn’t large, about the size of a shield boss. Too small for a human but big enough for even a very large raven.
“How did they break through the stone wall?” she asked, mystified.
“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “They did.”
“I don’t know,” she questioned.
“I didn’t believe you about those lichens but . . .” He paused and stood over a set of bony fragments that looked as though they had been ripped to pieces. The skull was lying in the rib cage; the bones of the leg and arms were jumbled finger bones, scattered everywhere as though something had fed on them. In other cases the torso was separated from the entire spine in fragments as though the individual had been disemboweled and the feeding had begun before it was entirely dead.
“I know . . . I know one thing,” he said fervently. “I sure as hell don’t ever want to meet those birds again. Let’s get out of here!”
“No!” She glanced up from the pile of remains she had been inspecting. “Think,” she said. “What I accused you of last night is equally true of me. You were so kind as to point that out. Neither of us is thinking. All we’ve been doing is panicking and reacting to one threat after another.”
“And?” he asked.
“This chamber is the first really good clue to what happened here that caused this world to be the way it is. And it’s another world, I’m sure of it. One I’ve never been to. If we hope to survive, we’ve got to work this out. Because if we don’t, sooner or later those birds are going to get us. Last night we were just lucky. But we can’t expect that to last.”