Taz and Viss exchanged glances. Gareth’s gorge turned sour as he realized they had taken the implication of cannibalism seriously. He did not want to find out why. His story might fall apart within moments of testing, but with any luck, he’d managed to discourage their interest.
Robbard heaved himself to his feet. The sun had dipped halfway behind the ridge line, and the slanting light bathed his face in an unhealthy flush. “Don’t know about you, but I’m about gabbed out. If those women are anything like this sink of a planet, you can have them all, tied up with a ribbon. Uhn!” Wincing, he rubbed his belly.
“You okay?” Taz said.
“Sure. Should of known better than to drink so much, all in one go. A little lie-down’ll see me right again.”
Gareth watched as Robbard lumbered to the barracks entrance. Although the spacer looked steady enough on his feet, Gareth remembered that horses could get sick from drinking too much when they’d gone too long without. But horses weren’t men. Men didn’t get colic.
Neither Taz nor Viss seemed to be ill, but the heart had gone out of their talk. They no longer seemed to care about the village women.
As for Gareth, he was content to sit here, watching the lengthening shadows, when his companions shuffled off to their bunks. A soporific warmth clung to the earth. His muscles felt heavy. The sounds of the machinery receded, distant and dull. He bent his head, resting his forehead on his folded arms, and closed his eyes . . .
. . . and opened them to the sound of Offenbach shouting. By the fading western light, he guessed he’d been asleep for an hour. The air was noticeably cooler.
“Hai-yi-yi!” A shriek, shrill as a raptor’s cry, shattered the dusk.
Gareth scrambled to his feet as a mounted horse raced past. Hooves pounded over the bare earth, throwing up billows of dust. His eyes streamed tears so freely that he could barely make out the attackers. There was a second rider . . . a third, all of them screaming at the top of their lungs and brandishing spears. Shouting came from the barracks.
The horsemen galloped between him and the building that housed the captain’s office. They circled, swerving and changing direction. Gareth was reasonably certain they hadn’t spotted him. He could rush them—and do what? All he had was the little knife he’d been allowed to keep, utterly useless in a fight. His hands ached for a sword.
One of the riders sprinted into Gareth’s field of vision, wheeled his horse using knees and balance, and hurled something. The next moment, dust erupted like a fountain in front of the barracks door. A figure stumbled through the wall of dust—Gareth thought it was Viss, rather than Taz—and fell to his knees, clutching his belly.
Gareth rubbed his eyes and regretted it the next instant. His lids burned as if someone had thrown a handful of pepperspice in his face. With an effort, he wrenched his hands away. Through streaming tears, he glimpsed the center of the camp. A spear clattered off the metal side of the crawler, an instant before another landed between two water casks.
Gareth darted along the side of the barracks and hauled Viss to his feet. Retching, the older man half-fell into Gareth’s arms. Gareth dragged him back into the open barracks doorway. The reek of vomit filled the room. His stomach clenched in rebellion. When he released his hold, Viss bent over, knees folding. From the far bunk, Taz struggled to rise, then fell back. In the gloom, Gareth couldn’t see any reaction from Robbard or Potbelly. There was nothing more he could do here. He ran out of the barracks.
Shouting, two figures emerged from the office building. Gareth couldn’t make out their words over the cacophony of war cries, neighing of the horses, pounding hoofbeats, and the muffled yelling from behind him. One of the figures, by his size and the controlled power of his stride, was most definitely the guard.
The guard raised his weapon and took aim. A bolt of searing light pierced the layers of dust. A horse screamed and reared. Only by a feat of athletic skill did the rider cling to its back. Apparently the horse had not been hit, only startled, for the next moment, its rider urged it into a hard gallop toward the office building.
The rider drew back his arm, readying his spear. The guard shifted his weight, settling deeper into his firing stance, and brought his blaster around.
“No!” Gareth darted forward, sickened with the certainty of impending, unstoppable tragedy. His warning blew away on the dust.
A second rider barreled past, so close that only a lucky reflex saved Gareth from being run down. The rider joined the spear thrower, the two of them sprinting for the office building. Gareth raced after them.
He slid to a halt just as the beam from the guard’s weapon shot out. A shriek of inhuman agony drowned out all other sound. With tears still flooding his eyes, Gareth couldn’t make out who’d been hit. He heard shouting in Dry Towns dialect, a high keening cry, then the syncopated beat of a horse’s retreating gallop.
The guard stood half a pace in front of Poulos, Offenbach at the captain’s shoulder. The guard still held his blaster at the ready in both hands. Danger radiated from the stillness of his posture. A few meters away lay the rounded form of a horse. Its legs splayed out from its immobile body.
Someone whimpered in pain.
“Robbard! Taz! Viss! Where the hell are they?” The captain’s gaze lit upon Gareth, his face a mask of fury.
Gareth gestured back toward the barracks.
Poulos jerked his chin toward Offenbach, who headed in that direction at a near run. Then, to the guard: “Keep an eye on him.”
The guard shifted his blaster to point directly at Gareth. Gareth dared not move other than to breathe. A trick of light glinted off the guard’s eyes, as uncaring as obsidian.
Poulos strode over the fallen horse. Gareth heard another sound of excruciating pain. Was the rider, pinned beneath his own mount, still alive? The moment stretched out as the rider’s cry faltered, then rose again. All the while, Poulos watched, impassive.
Do something! Don’t let him suffer like this! In the guard’s unrelenting glare, Gareth dared not speak.
Offenbach emerged from the barracks and hurried over to the captain. “Taz and Viss are sicker than rats. Robbard’s dead. Lakrin—” that must be Potbelly’s real name, “—he’s barely breathing.”
The guard’s vigilance heightened. Nothing moved, not even the air in Gareth’s throat. Then, with a curse in a language Gareth didn’t know, Poulos lashed out with one boot. The kick landed with the sound of leather against flesh, of splintering bone, and then there were no more tortured moans.
Poulos inhaled, the air hissing between his teeth. A little of the raging tension went out of his massive shoulders. “Let the kid bury Robbard. It’s got to be done right away in this heat. The others—” with a flicker of his gaze toward the guard, who gazed back impassively, “do what you can for them. Offen, we’ll need a specific, if you can analyze the agent.”
Offenbach nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
Poulos responded with a brief, almost invisible hunch of one shoulder as he pivoted and headed back to his sanctuary. Offenbach, grim faced, followed him like a shadow. The guard waited for a long moment before lowering his blaster.
Gareth swallowed. “It was the water. That’s why the captain didn’t get sick.”
“He knows, sonny. He knows.”
Something in the guard’s words, spoken ever so softly, chilled Gareth to the marrow.
22
Gareth halted at the door to the barracks. The stench from inside hit him like a physical blow. In his death throes, Robbard had clearly fouled himself. The smell added to the general stink, a mixture of vomit and sour sweat. Gareth’s mouth filled with bile-tasting saliva. Gulping hard, he fought against his body’s reflexive need to purge itself.
“Steady, kid.” Surprisingly gentle, the guard touched Gareth’s shoulder.
They went in. A tube of yellow-hued lighting ran along the cent
er of the roof, casting a sickly illumination over the interior. Bodies stirred on two of the bunks. Neither Robbard nor the fourth man, Lakrin, moved. The guard checked them and then pulled the blankets over both bodies.
“Oh, god . . .” the nearest man moaned in a voice so raw it was unrecognizable.
Gareth bent over the feebly writhing man. It was Taz. He’d never looked robust, but in the last hours his body had shriveled in on itself. He struggled to lift his head, then fell back, retching dryly.
“Come on,” Gareth said, slipping one arm beneath the sick man’s shoulders, “let’s get you out of here.”
The guard nudged Gareth aside and picked up Taz without visible effort. Gareth folded up the pads from the unoccupied bunk and took them outside. In a few minutes, they were able to lay both sick men in the open air.
Twilight washed the sky in hues of mauve and deepening purple. Nightfall, when it came, would be swift. For the moment, there was enough light to work by.
Gareth knelt beside Viss, who was in worse shape than his comrade. His swollen tongue protruded from his mouth and his breathing was rapid and shallow. His skin felt dry and hot to the touch.
“He needs water and hydration salts.” The guard squatted on his heels, surprisingly limber for a man his size.
“I think there’s a little water left of the old supply,” Gareth said. “It should be safe. I drank it and I’m all right.”
The guard’s moon-round face remained impassive. Gareth could not sense anything of his thoughts or emotions. Either the man had unusually strong natural psychic barriers or else he came from a race that had no laran at all. Finally, the guard rose and disappeared into the barracks. From this, Gareth understood that he was to care for the two sick men while the guard took care of the corpses.
There was no use protesting that he had no experience in healing, certainly not patients as dreadfully ill as these. He would simply have to do whatever was necessary.
The dehydration must be addressed first. Gareth used his own cup to carry water. Crouching beside first Viss and then Tas, he lifted each man’s head and steadied the cup for him to drink. By Evanda’s blessing, both were able to swallow. Gareth didn’t know what he could have done otherwise.
One at a time, the guard dragged the bodies from the barracks. He’d improvised a sledge from the disassembled rails of a bunk and what looked like a long-tailed coat. He disappeared into the gathering dark.
Offenbach came out and took a sample of the contaminated water. He paused for a moment to watch Gareth. Gareth kept doggedly to his work, although each cup drained the small amount of water left in the old cask still further. The guard returned, took a tool like a spade from one of the storage sheds, and left again, all without a word.
After a time, Gareth decided that Viss and Taz had drunk as much as was prudent. The water had turned slimy, and he feared it might harm as much as help. He found a pile of wadded-up clothing in a cabinet just inside the barracks door and tore the most worn of the shirts into strips. These he wet and began washing the faces and hands of his patients. He hated to leave them in their vile-smelling clothes. His initial burst of energy had faded, and doubts circled like kyorebni. Should he venture back into the barracks in search of clean garments? Or set to work washing up the mess inside? His gorge rose at the prospect, but perhaps if he didn’t think, if he just did it . . .
Then one of the men—Gareth thought it was Taz—groaned and shifted to his side, and everything came clear. The barracks room didn’t matter. Clean clothing didn’t matter. What mattered was just getting these two men through this night.
Gareth lowered himself to the ground beside Taz and cupped the side of the other man’s face with one hand. Taz jerked away, muttering incoherently. His skin no longer felt hot but clammy and alarmingly cool. The physical touch catalyzed a rush of sensations, fleeting and jumbled. Gareth bit back a curse. He felt as if he were half-blind and half-deaf, when he needed to be at his sharpest.
He glanced around for any sign of the guard’s return and saw nothing. Offenbach had not emerged from the headquarters since he’d collected the water sample. Taz and Viss were too far gone in delirium to pay attention, or so Gareth hoped.
It took Gareth a few tries to find the clasp, but at last the Nebran locket popped open. Blue-white light flared as the starstone tumbled into his open palm. For an instant, it felt as if an answering light sprang up within his core. Brilliance filled him, even as a twist of light filled the crystal.
Gareth settled beside Viss, straightening his spine as he had been taught. Your body is your foundation, your springboard, your anchor, Grandmother Linnea had told him more often than he could count. Make it strong and steady, so that petty discomforts will have no hold over your mind.
Petty discomforts . . . Systematically, Gareth turned his attention to how he was sitting, the balance of his torso as it rose from his pelvis, the lift and fall of his chest, the position of his head, the suppleness of his neck. He was holding tension in his abdominal muscles again. Grandmother Linnea would scold him if she were here. Visualizing his breath descending along a channel of light directly in front of his spine, he felt his belly soften. Nodes of laran energy ignited inside him like a chain of miniature suns.
In his loosely closed hand, the starstone radiated warmth. He focused on it, knowing that his body would remain poised and energized. Behind his closed eyelids, he could still see the play of light in its faceted depths. He opened his mind and felt the psychoactive gem enhance his own abilities. And yet, he noted curiously, it was as if the stone were more mirror than amplifier.
Once he had established the flow of laran through his starstone, he directed it to the man lying before him. At first, he visualized the rough outline of a body. Then, as his mind penetrated more deeply into the patient’s energy fields, he sensed a network of luminous strands. Some were thick cords, others no more than gossamer threads. Colors pulsed along them. . . .
Gareth noted patterns corresponding to internal organs. Red hues darkened into browns and grays, ugly shades reminiscent of stagnation and deterioration.
If only he knew more, knew what to do! Seeing what he saw, he did not think Viss would recover on his own.
Trained or not, competent or not, it was up to him. There was no one else.
Aldones, Lord of Light, what must I do? Sweet Evanda, Cassilda of the blessings! I’ve messed up everything I’ve turned my hand to, but don’t punish this man for my shortcomings! Show me how to help him!
There was no answer. Of course, there was no answer.
He searched out the darkest, dullest channels. A tracery of charcoal filaments wove together, loose as a fisherman’s net. The more he focused on them, the more their overall distribution became clear. He was not seeing blood or lymph vessels, nerves or bones or sinews, but a tapestry composed of millions of faintly glowing motes . . . living cells?
There, a voice whispered in his mind, or perhaps it was only his imagination, go there . . .
He didn’t have the faintest idea how, except to trust to the instinct that had been bred into his lineage since humans landed on Darkover.
Let the light guide you . . .
The starstone ignited in response, burning even more brightly until his own body filled with blue-white flame. He opened the gates of his mind and let the energy pour out, seeking its own path.
For a wild and terrifying moment, fire raged through his inner senses. He lost all orientation, all connection with his body, his starstone, and the man into whose energy body he had ventured.
Down . . . This way . . . Seek . . .
He grasped the telepathic commands as a lifeline, grasped and held. And found himself once more floating above a web that ranged in hue from orange to barely luminescent gray, marked here and there by patches of black. As he watched, more threads dwindled and the dead zones enlarged. He heard—he felt—dyin
g intestinal cells and, fainter yet deadlier, irreversible damage to kidney . . . liver. . . .
Down, the voice had urged, so down he went. Down between the flickering strands, down into a sea of particles that blurred and shifted so quickly he could not follow the changes. Infinitesimal energy surges, like motes of invisible lightning, buffeted him. Fear curdled within him, gelid and enervating, fear that he would become lost, shredded, torn apart, unable to return. In the back of his thoughts, he remembered the admonitions against unmonitored laran work, the dangers an untrained telepath posed not only to others but to himself. Whatever the risk, it was too late to pull back now. He lowered the last bulwarks of his mind and let the light take him.
In that moment, he became the light, and it became him. Exuberant, extravagant, unquenchable, it obliterated all awareness of himself as a separate entity. Boundaries melted. He had no thought of what he must do or how. The surging brilliance carried him, suffused him . . . penetrated the cells of the dying man.
Sparks flared as light answered light. Tendrils of brightness, of the very stuff of life, infiltrated the knots of blackness. Molecules combined, neutralizing toxins. He had no knowledge of the processes he was witnessing, only the deep intuitive sense of rightness.
Metabolic fires ignited as biochemical reactions built into a cascade. Fluids surged through vessels, drenching tissues, a flood that carried away the ashes of dying cells and swept clotted debris from kidney tubules. Muscle membranes repolarized; nerves shimmered with electrical charge; synaptic gaps danced with transmitters. Diaphragm muscle fibers tensed and ribs lifted; air rushed through bronchioles.
Currents of air and blood caught him up, tossed him this way and that. Images sped by, too many and varied, too overwhelmingly fast for recognition. Flashes of color battered him. Within moments, he lost all sense of orientation.
The light that had sustained him wavered. Senses in disarray, he tried to grasp stability. He found none, and each effort only intensified his desperation.