round and driving down at the women. Rel lunged, hand outstretched, and this close to a Sherim, his Gift became wild power. With Clearsight deactivated, he couldn't see the sheet of reality that scythed from his fingertips into the stream of Axtli, but the flow stopped, almost before Taslin had time to give a raptor-like scream.
In the dark beyond the crumbling wall, a forlorn bleat answered her. Trusting in his subconscious to work out the logic his front brain couldn't hope to grasp, Rel pushed against the Sherim, fighting against the Axtli almost bare-handed. Beneath him, Dora stirred, whimpered, began a soft moan. Taslin gasped, each shallow breath a dagger through the night air.
But whatever the Axtli's touch had done to her, it hadn't crippled her. She met his eyes, face unreadable but far from impassive. Then Rel felt the pressure against his hands lift as she turned her gaze on the darkness. His fingers tingled, not unpleasantly, as the bubble-skin edge of her Warding dropped through them onto the Axtli. Voice low, she said, "I've got it. Move Dora."
Rel knelt, trying to work out how to carry the Four Knot. If she woke up and he was holding her wrong, he'd be bearing the hand-print for a week. She might very well slap him regardless, but it was a risk he was going to have to take. Gingerly, he tried to roll Dora onto her back.
She spasmed, and Rel jerked back as she curled tight, letting out a prehuman howl. The black fringe of the barely-restrained Axtli moved with her.
Taslin cursed. "It's in her head!"
"Get it out!" Rel snapped, then caught himself. "No, hold it a moment. I have an idea."
"Make it fast," she said, through gritted teeth.
As it had sprayed out of the Sherim, the Axtli had been pitch black. And you use a rag soaked in pitch to make a torch, so pitch must burn. Not even sure what pitch was, Rel grabbed a stick from the fire, burning along half its length. Taslin's eyes were round with fear as she watched him. There was no way she could understand what he was about to do.
He said, "Let it go."
"You're sure it will burn?"
"First-Realm logic. Just shield Dora."
The Gift-Giver nodded, leaned back, and with a sharp gesture released the Warding. The Axtli sprang forth, and Rel told himself no, pitch sprang forth. He thrust out with the burning brand, felt the charred tip snap in the sticky, hard impact. Fire licked at the blackness, even as the top of the spray began to curve back to earth, back to claim them.
Pitch burns.
Every muscle in his body tense, Rel forced First-Realm logic onto what he saw. The Sherim twisted his efforts, but he concentrated, feeling the surge of heat as the flame caught. Then, with a whumph that washed his outstretched arm in boiling air, there was a fifteen-foot pillar of fire climbing into the night, turning, falling, sticky and deadly.
Rel jumped back, slapping at his smoking sleeve. Something very like light, but not quite, flashed as Taslin swiped aside falling fire, spraying it across the wall. Even burning to destruction, the Axtli - pitch, a fountain of pitch - made no sound, but the pitch hissed and spat as it flared out.
As panic faded, pain rose in its place. His head ached, both from tired muscles clenching his jaw and the logic-fatigue effort of making the Axtli burn. The hand he raised to knead his forehead stung with the onset of the inevitable burns. And he was cold. Cold even though he stood right next to the fire. Shaking, he met Taslin's eyes.
Her smile was weak, but warm. "Good thinking. Whatever it was you did."
"Thanks."
It took morning to reveal the mess they'd made. Rel found himself deeply glad of even the broken sleep snatched in singed blankets as he stepped out of the croft to relieve himself. The meadow below the ruin was littered with headless sheep corpses that left no space to think the Axtli a nightmare. The wind, if anything stiffer than the night before, brought the raw-meat smell up the hill, and Rel averted his eyes before he could look too closely at the red mess of the nearest ewe's neck.
Returning to the croft, he found Taslin had stirred in his absence. Numb, closer to nauseous than he wanted to admit, he gestured outside.
The Wilder actually managed to look sympathetic as she said, "The flock?" Rel found himself comforted, the sick tightness in his throat letting go. He dug his fingernails into his palm, fist clenched. She was still what she was. No Child of the Wild could understand the First Realm well enough to empathise with waking up to this kind of shock.
Still, at least anger had returned his power to speak. "It ripped the heads off the sheep. Not all of them, but..."
"It will have sensed their fear there." Taslin glanced across the ashes of the fire at the still-sleeping form of Dora. "How will she react?"
"She's pretty tough." Maybe tough enough not to throw up, at least. The Four Knot was about as far from squeamish as a woman could get. A sudden bitter thought pulled his brow down into a frown. "I don't know, though. Since you messed with her head, she's been..." He waved a hand vaguely.
Taslin waited politely, but Rel couldn't find the right word. Eventually, the Wilder said, "Would it help if I told you what's happened to her? I realised last night what it is."
"What is it?" Would she lie to him? Even a lie might help, in the long run.
The Gift-Giver actually went as far as to pantomime a nervous swallow. Rel resisted the temptation to call her out on the bad taste of the gesture. She couldn't really think he was fooled. She said, "The Sherim we were in last night is in Dora's head."
"What? That's impossible!"
"'What we know is that we know nothing', Clearseer. It was our saying before it was yours." Taslin shook her head sadly. "The Gift must have become unseated inside her and come into physical contact with her brain."
Rel sat down, aware that his legs were giving him no choice in the matter. "The Gift?"
"A Gift is a tiny piece of the Second Realm, lodged inside the head of the Gifted. Most of the Gift-Giving process is concerned with making sure it is isolated from any First Realm-matter. One Gift by itself shouldn't be enough to cause a Sherim to form, but with a second..." She tailed off. Dimly, Rel realised he was letting himself be taken in by her performance, but he was too stunned to stoke his anger and rise above it.
"What do we do about it?" The words twisted through the air, a razor-sharp silver ribbon in the steam of his breath. Dora might be sleeping, but her Sherim - if Taslin was to be trusted - was far from quiescent.
The Wilder looked down at Dora, her eyes watering. "First we need to see if she can wake up."
***
About the author
R. J. Davnall has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn’t be trusted to write his own bio. He holds a PhD in philosophy and teaches at Liverpool University, while living what his mother insists on calling a 'Bohemian lifestyle'. When not writing, he can usually be found playing piano, guitar or World of Warcraft.
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