The Well of Darkness (23 page)

For the first time, I was
facing
Rika, rather than wielding it.

Thais another point on his side
, I conceded, then warned myself:
He
‘
s got the advantage with the steel sword; don
‘
t double it by letting it rattle you.

He came in again, swinging low this time. I blocked, whirled, swung—but he had danced away.

Remember
, I thought,
offense is his strength, defense his weaker skill.

I pressed him then, slashing and swinging, forcing him to use his sword instead of his feet. I yelled with every stroke. I outweighed the man, and I was stronger. Fury had restored the energy that had been nearly totally drained only moments before. I beat Obilin back, not caring for the nicks and dents in my own sword. He was quick. I couldn’t touch him.

When he realized I was forcing him up the slope toward the rim of the Well, he changed tactics. He started moving faster, slashing in at me between his blocks. Rika was no more than a blur in his hands. We were at a standoff, not moving in either direction.

I let my guard down on the right, hoping I could time it correctly. He lunged in, Rika swinging into my side; I jumped to my left as I blocked. Obilin saw the opening I had left him, and whirled to jump downslope.

I had my dagger in my left hand. As he turned, I jabbed at him, catching the back of his right thigh.

He fell, rather than jumped, down the slope, and I was right on his heels. He rolled to his back and braced Rika in front of his face. I pressed my sword down on Rika, straining my strength against Obilin’s, and jabbed again with the dagger. This time it lodged in his side.

Obilin grunted, and the steel sword moved fractionally closer to his body under the pressure of my sword. The little man’s good eye, unchanged by the scarred skin all around it, looked at me from above the sword with the same expression of insolent challenge that I had always seen in there.

“You can’t win,” Obilin gasped in a broken whisper. “Worfit will finish it—for me and for himself.”

“But you, Obilin,” I said fiercely. “You have failed.”

“No,” he gasped, taking in a ragged breath. “I haven’t killed you, Rikardon, but I have marked you. You and the lady will not soon forget me.” His scarred face rearranged itself into the familiar, sneering smile. “It is a … satisfactory revenge.”

I gritted my teeth and, with a terrible joy, I jerked the dagger in Obilin’s side upward to rip a long, bloody gash through clothes and flesh. Rika snapped downward, its tip grating against the rocky hillside.

I threw down the battered bronze sword, picked up Rika with a feeling of meeting an old, much-missed friend, and slipped the steel sword through my bladric. I looked down at Obilin and knew he had been right—his death would leave a deeper scar in me than any I had given him. Later, I might examine the pleasure I had taken in killing Obilin, and judge how it had changed me. Now, I only felt relief, and a sudden return of fear.

I scrambled over the rim of the well down to Tarani. I slapped her lightly; she roused and followed me back up the slope, still clutching Lonna’s still form.

She was in touch with Lonna when Obilin killed the bird,
I thought, and felt a pang of loss when I thought of the bird’s death.

I heard shouting, and looked up to see men running around the rim of the Well, and I felt my last hope give way. The fight with Obilin had taken my last reserves. I was shaking from the inside out, barely able to hold to Tarani’s hand.

I pulled Tarani into my arms, holding her and Lonna in what I believed to be our last farewell. I pressed me cheek against Tarani’s and reached out with my mind.

*
Keeshah
*
,
I thought. *
If only I could ride you one more time …
*

*
I COME!
*

It was like a shout echoing through a long corridor, at first, a sense of tremendous volume at the source but only faintly heard. Then, as if it had been beyond a barrier and the barrier suddenly dissolved, it was clear and close, the old link re-established.

*I come,*
Keeshah said again, the thought more normal in tome.
*Close. Do not die.*

I started to laugh, but my lungs still burned and the effort trailed off into coughing.

*
Die?
* I echoed. *
Who, me?
*

I gripped Rika, drawing some confidence merely from holding the steel sword once more, and faced south. Six to eight men were racing around the rim toward us, only two or three minutes away. I recognized the squat figure of Worfit in the van of the group.

When I glanced northward, however, I was greeted with a familiar, cherished sight—a lean, tawny figure streaking toward us at full speed.

Keeshah reached us a few precious seconds before Worfit, who skidded to a stop when he saw Keeshah. He turned to give orders, and discovered that he was alone. The other men had stopped several yards behind him. They replied to the roguelord’s yelling with shaking heads and a general movement backward.

I was aware of Worfit and his men only marginally. I left Tarani to fling my arms around Keeshah, and I rubbed my face into the fur behind his massive jaw, delighting in the feel and smell of the sha’um. He sidestepped, dragging me with him, and lifted and ducked his head to take full advantage of the rubbing motion.

We were together again, the mindlink clear and sweet, no thought of the past weeks intruding except in our awareness that this was a reunion. Our minds achieved the special and elemental joining that Keeshah and I had shared so often, and emotions rocketed through us—the fierce tenderness of our friendship, the exhilaration of recovered loss, needs and joys and the exquisite reality of being together—until their intensity overwhelmed us and the merging dissolved.

*
Go,
* Keeshah urged. *
Not safe here.
*

I looked around. Worfit had gone back to his men and was literally driving them toward us with his hands and sword. They were moving reluctantly, but beginning to feel the confidence of their greater number as more came around the rim to join the group.

Keeshah crouched down and I pulled Tarani toward him. She had remained standing where I had left her, showing little sign that she knew what was going on, but she paused near Keeshah’s head.

“Sha’um,” she murmured, and reached out to stroke back the fur between Keeshah’s eyes.

The cat folded back his ears and gently nosed the bloody carcass in Tarani’s arms.

*
Bird gone
,* he said to me. *
Sorry.
*

“We have to hurry,” I told Tarani gently. She nodded, her eyes still distant, and mounted Keeshah. The girl still held Lonna, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue with her. I mounted second, and Keeshah surged to his feet while the group of men closed in cautiously.

Worfit had directed them well; they had nearly circled us. A single gap remained—due north. I spared one second to look directly at the roguelord and laugh, then Keeshah carried us away from the Well of Darkness.

I didn’t have to tell Keeshah where to go. In that moment of close sharing, he had learned directly of our needs, and I had seen his. He took us into the Valley of the Sha’um.

I woke with the roar of a sha’um’s fighting challenge vibrating in my ears.

*Keeshah!*
I called, disoriented for a moment by the darkness and the odd smell.

*Stay out of the way,*
Keeshah ordered me—and memory returned.

The big cat had brought us across the remaining desert into the thick forest of the Valley which seemed, topologically, to be less an actual valley than a triangle of forested area bounded on the north by the Great Wall and on the West by the Morkadahl Mountains, through which ran the Alkhum Pass. He had threaded his way through the flatter area of the triangle and into the foothills of the Morkadahls, where briars and viney growth entangled the trunks of the tallest trees in Gandalara. He had shown us the entrance to a cavelike hollow in the snarled vines above a small clearing. Tarani and I had crept into its shadowy interior and collapsed.

I recognized it now. It had a musky, earthy smell that wasn’t the least unpleasant. We had slept on a cushion of leaves and pungent needles, and air and light penetrated the interwoven vines around us.

This is Keeshah
‘
s lair
, I thought.
He brought us home. But what
‘
s going on outside?

I shuffled through the leaves to the shaded circle that was the lair’s entrance, nearly hidden from the meadow below it by a stand of young trees. I found a place from which I could see into the meadow.

Keeshah was there, facing down a smaller, gray sha’um. Around them were six sha’um I could see, probably more waiting in the shadowy forest. But all the rest seemed content to watch.

The gray lunged at Keeshah, and the two cats clinched briefly then broke apart, snarling at one another. There was blood on the gray’s muzzle and along Keeshah’s foreleg, but neither wound looked serious. The smaller sha’um closed in again. Keeshah wrestled him to the ground, lay with the gray pinned beneath him, snarling at the others. The smaller sha’um roared and twitched, waited, struggled again, then lay quiescent.

In a swift movement, Keeshah released the smaller male and backed cautiously toward the lair. Another male, bigger than the gray and marked with a nearly white spot along one side of his muzzle, stepped forward.

*
Keeshah, what
‘
s happening?
* I asked, but was ignored.

The two sha’um went into crouch, the fur behind their heads lifting into manes and their tails whipping slowly back and forth. After they had each roared a challenge, their voices were reduced to muttering, deep-throated growls that raised my headfur. The other cats moved back, giving them room …

And a third sha’um entered the clearing, seeming to appear out of nowhere.

“A female,” Tarani said from beside me, startling me. The vacant look had left her eyes. “She’s Keeshah’s mate.”

I didn’t wonder, then, how Tarani knew that—I was much too glad to see her responding and recovering from the initial shock of Lonna’s death. And I was engrossed in what was happening in the clearing.

The female was marked for the forest rather than the desert. Her coat was brindled in browns and grays, and her fur seemed thicker than Keeshah’s. She made no move to join the fight, but walked over to Keeshah and rubbed the side of her jaw along his back. She paused to look at the other male, but made no threatening gestures. Instead she came slowly up the hill—right toward us.

Tarani stood up and went to meet her.

They assessed each other warily, the pale-skinned woman and the dark-furred cat. Tarani stretched out her hand, palm up. The female stretched her neck and dipped her head to sniff delicately at Tarani’s hand. I saw the girl’s neck muscles twitch, but she held her arm steady. The sha’um’s nose touched Tarani’s palm, jerked back, then pressed in again.

Tarani brought up her other hand slowly and touched the female sha’um’s chin. The cat flinched slightly, then stood quivering as the girl’s hand moved slowly, smoothing back the fur on the cat’s throat.

The sha’um’s ears, folded back when she had approached Tarani, relaxed forward under the girl’s caress. A sound from the clearing snapped them back again, and the female whirled away from Tarani. Tail thickened and neckfur bristling, the brindled female answered the challenge of the white-faced male and stalked down to stand beside Keeshah, making it clear that he would have to take on both of them.

I’d had enough exposure to sha’um to know they weren’t dumb.

The white-faced male backed down. He retreated into the circle of males.

Keeshak took a step forward and called his challenge again, but there weren’t any takers. The ring of sha’um shuffled backward until the sha’um seemed merely to fade away into the shadows of the forest.

I discovered I was trembling. I moved to stand beside Tarani, touching her elbow to let her know I was there. She jumped, and looked at me with shining eyes.

“Rikardon,” she breathed. “We are linked, the female and I. We spoke today for the first time, but she has been with me before now.” She spread her arms. “In my dreams I have seen this forest, moved through it on four legs, hunted glith on the plain, wild vlek in the hills above the Valley. Many different dreams, so scattered and seemingly unconnected that their strangeness frightened me.”

Tarani put her hand on my arm, and spoke tenderly.

“Now I understand more than my own dreams, Rikardon. I have learned what you and Keeshah shared, and how devastating its loss must have been for you. Your link with Keeshah—?”

“It’s back,” I said. She smiled and squeezed my arm. “It never left, really,” I told her. “It just went inactive because coming to the Valley was a biological priority. When I needed Keeshah more than his mate did, our link came back to the conscious level.”

I turned to watch Keeshah and his mate approach us. I scratched Keeshah in his favorite place, just behind the heavy jaw bone. Tarani touched the female more tentatively but, clearly, with no less joy. Keeshah’s mate accepted Tarani’s attention awkwardly as woman and sha’um began to get acquainted.

“You said you spoke to her,” I reminded Tarani. “What did she say?”

Tarani laughed.

“No words,” she said. “And not just pictures, either, the way it was with Lonna.” Her laughter died, and her hands clenched in the female’s fur, causing the sha’um to sidestep uncertainly. Tarani recovered, and resumed stroking the cat. “Not even you, my beautiful Yayshah,” she said softly, “can take Lonna’s place in my heart.”

“Yayshah?” I repeated.

“Yes, I have given her that name,” Tarani said, pulling herself away from her grief. “As I say, there were no words between us, only emotions and, well, meanings.” She shrugged. “You understand what I mean better than I, I expect. Surprise at discovering our link, and—after a moment of hesitation—a sweet, uncomplicated delight. Then she asked me if you were my mate.” She smiled, but looked at Yayshah as she said: “I said yes, of course.”