“We have to get out of here,” he told Hesseth. Cradling the girl’s limp body in his arms. Was that stuff still growing inside her, still feeding? Had it gotten inside him? “Fast.”
She nodded her understanding. Her eyes were fixed upon the blanket’s surface, and her expression was one of horror; she had figured it out, then. Good. She would know to watch for the roots while she gathered up their supplies, to leave behind anything that had been contaminated. God alone knew what these things required in order to reproduce, but he was willing to bet that a small clump of fibers, even one detached from its main body, could become a tree in time. Would become a tree in time, if it was rooted in something that would nourish it.
Like the fibers inside the girl?
He tried not to think about that. Tried not to think about the fact that the fibers might be inside him as well, and inside his rakhene companion. They didn’t dare stop to check. It was too important that they get away from this area before the trees’ influence grew stronger, before the unnatural exhaustion that still dogged their steps overcame their will and their survival instinct and turned them into sleeping foodstuffs for the hungry plants.
Hurriedly they gathered up their things, packing them hastily into bundles wrapped in spare clothing, bound in belts and scarves. Hesseth had to do most of the work herself; Damien was afraid to put the girl down for even a minute, afraid that once she made contact with the earth it would claim her again, maybe this time for good. If it hasn’t already, he thought grimly, shouldering the dead weight of her unconscious form. Maybe it was his imagination, but it seemed to him that there were more and more white filaments rising up through the ground each moment that they delayed. He could feel the power of the trees beating against his brain, and once he nearly fell as a result of it. But the sheer horror of touching that ground, of lying down upon it again, was enough to keep him upright. He was acutely aware that if his nightmares had not awakened him when they did, they might all be plant food by now.
At last Hesseth was finished, and without a word he began walking quickly south. He was still too dazed to think about direction, and for now it didn’t matter; the most important thing was to get away from this tree cluster, fast. Dimly he was aware of all the items they were leaving behind, blankets and clothing and some of their foodstuffs. Organic matter, all of it. No doubt it would serve as food for the hungry plants, allowing them to grow and spawn and spread ... and hunt.
They walked. In the heat of the morning sun, which blazed livid orange to the east of them. Dry, exhausted, afraid to stop for either water or rest, they continued onward, struggling to make every footfall steady enough to bear their weight. Within minutes their camp and the trees that surrounded it were left behind, but the dark malaise that gripped their limbs refused to relinquish its hold on them; once or twice when they stopped to catch their breath, or when Damien paused to shift the weight of the girl on his shoulder so that he might bear her more easily, he felt that deadly sleepiness stir within him again, and he knew that if he stopped to rest for more than a minute he would drift away into sleep, long enough and deep enough for the local plant life to sense his presence and respond to it.
“Where?” Hesseth hissed. She looked out toward the horizon, where endless miles of basalt faded into the hot morning sky without visible juncture, a mirage of brilliance. “Should we turn back?”
He thought of all the miles behind them, of how much ground they had covered the night before. “Can’t,” he whispered hoarsely. They would never make it, not in their current state. And if they did, what then? Their only chance of long-term survival lay in reaching the rakhene lands and making their case with that people. If they went back to the human lands—assuming they got there at all—they would spend their last days waiting for the Prince to find them. That land would not shelter them forever, nor would it support their mission.
“We go on,” he told her, and though fear flashed deep in her eyes she nodded, understanding. We go on—because there is no other choice.
Mile after mile the black desert stretched out before them; hour after hour they forced themselves to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving at any cost. Once when they stopped for a moment, to drink from their precious stores, Damien dared to sit down on a jagged outcropping of rock—and almost immediately he felt the trees’ mind-numbing power engulf him, so suddenly and so forcefully that the cup he was drinking from dropped from his hand and the precious water spilled out upon the earth. It was a wonder he didn’t drop Jenseny as he struggled to his feet, or when he turned to look back at the rock he had been sitting on. No white strands there, not yet. But he had no doubt that they were present, buried deep within the porous rock, wanting only the prolonged heat of his flesh or the spark of his life to start growing toward the surface.
Water. Walking. Food without taste, hurredly swallowed. More walking. The child was a hot weight on his shoulder, and his whole body ached from supporting her. Once or twice he shifted position, trying to find a more comfortable means of carrying her. Once Hesseth moved toward him as if she meant to take the child, but he waved her away. He gave himself reasons for that, like the fact that he was stronger and taller and more capable of bearing her for long periods of time ... but he didn’t really know the limits of either rakhene strength or rakhene endurance, and was aware that the two might well surpass his own. The truth was that as he walked he imagined he could sense the roots within her, still growing, and while he trusted himself to put up a good fight if they came through the surface of her flesh and tried to link up with his, he didn’t know if Hesseth could handle it. And so he carried the girl through the endless miles, until his back and his legs and his feet burned with the pain of it, and tried not to think about what it would feel like when the slender roots invaded his flesh, tried not to think about how peaceful it would be when their power wrapped itself around his brain and cushioned him down in deep, numbing sleep....
“We need Tarrant,” he whispered hoarsely. Clinging to the name like a lifeline. Tarrant would be immune to the trees’ power—or he would make himself immune, with much the same result. Tarrant would know how to excise the alien tendrils from the girl’s flesh—and perhaps from their own—without killing them in the process. Tarrant would save them, as soon as night fell.
If they lived that long.
Hours passed, without rest or relief. They came to a crevice, earthquake-born, that turned them aside to the east for several miles. And then another, its tributary. The hard rock was brittle and seismic shock had taken its toll in this region; they tried to hold to a southward course, but sometimes it was impossible. Once they skirted a deep chasm whose rim led them directly into the sun; after nearly an hour of staggering toward that blinding disk, Damien’s eyes were watering so badly that he could barely see. Still they kept moving. He didn’t dare ask himself how long they could keep going, or what they hoped to accomplish. They could never reach the rakhlands by nightfall, and it was clear that this land offered no safe refuge. Time and time again they passed tree clusters that were littered with bones, and now that he knew what to look for he could clearly see what had taken place there. One tree, rooted in a human rib cage, rose up like a surgeon’s scalpel just beside the sternum; another had cracked through a pelvis in its quest for further growth. They passed one skeleton that might have been rakhene, but neither he nor Hesseth wanted to stop to examine it. And what if it was, anyway? They knew the two peoples were enemies. Doubtless there had always been madmen of both species willing to brave the Prince’s wasteland in search of vengeance or glory or some other gain. And doubtless they all had expired here, some taken in their dreams their first night in the Wasting, others struggling onward as Damien and Hesseth were now doing, until sheer exhaustion forced them to their knees and the Prince’s creations claimed them at last.
There was no shelter. No hope. If they could make it until nightfall, then Tarrant might be able to help them, but if not ... he didn’t dare think about that
. Not now. It sapped his strength, to fear like that.
And then they came over a rise and he heard Hesseth hiss sharply.
“Look,” she whispered. “Look!”
They had been traveling due west for a while, and it was in that direction that she was pointing. The sun had begun to sink and was now directly ahead of them, which made it almost impossible to see; he blinked heavily, as if the moisture of his tears might somehow clear his vision. Black land, ripples and knots and whorls of it ... what had she seen? A mound in the distance, somewhat taller than most, but that was no surprise; the vagaries of the lava flow had produced a number of swells, all of which served as host for at least one tree cluster. Yet it was clearly the mound she was pointing to. He stared numbly at it, trying to understand. At last, with an exaperated hiss, she grabbed him by the wrist and guided him on. The girl’s weight jarred into his spine as he staggered westward, following her lead, wondering at her sudden spurt of energy.
And then they were walking on rock, only it wasn’t basalt any more; it was rough and it was gray and he knew without Knowing it that it was granite, blessed granite—a granite island in the midst of the black lava sea, about which the magmal currents had parted so many eons ago, leaving it high and dry ... and safe. Praise God, it was safe! No trees broke through its surface, though there were clusters enough about its boundaries. It stretched for hundreds of yards in each direction, and all those yards were utterly barren. Bereft of bones. Bereft of life.
It was sanctuary.
With a moan he fell to his knees, and he lowered the girl from his shoulder as gently as he could. Pain lanced through his spine as her weight finally left him, the agony of sudden relief. He could feel himself shaking—not quite in fear, not quite in joy, but in some strange admixture of the two that was totally overwhelming. And he succumbed to it. For the first time in long, tortured hours, he embraced the utter abandon of submission. Emotions engulfed him that he had been fighting off since morning; the weakness which he had fought for so long was at last allowed to take hold.
We made it, he thought. His heart was pounding, his body filmed with sweat. Thirst rasped hotly in the back of his throat; with shaking hands he managed to uncap his canteen long enough to take a drink without spilling anything. One precious mouthful, savored cool and sweet on his tongue. In the midst of this black desert he dared drink no more.
He looked out over their granite island, Hesseth’s crumpled body, the girl’s. “We made it,” he whispered. To them. To no one.
Made it ... to what?
“It’s still alive,” the Hunter pronounced.
Damien pressed a hand to his head, as if somehow that could ease the pounding inside it. “Can you help her?” he asked. “Can you do anything?” He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice, knew that his weakness was painfully evident.
Night had come. Tarrant had been late. And Damien and Hesseth had spent a small eternity fighting off the faeborn scavengers that scoured the desert night for food. They were simple creatures, primitive in form, unschooled in demonic wiles and guises—but their simplicity made them no less deadly, and by the time Tarrant had arrived, the granite island was littered with the bodies of the fanged and toothed nightmares that the desert had thrown at them. One for each human who died here, Damien thought grimly. Or maybe more. Spawned by the terror of those whom the desert entrapped, given shape by their dying fears. It would be a slow death, to have one’s flesh consumed by the trees; a man would have time enough to create a legion of monsters.
The Hunter leaned back on his heels and studied the girl. Stripped to the waist, she lay facedown on the bare rock before them, as still and unmoving as the trees themselves. Circular welts pockmarked the region between her scapulae and down to the right of her spine; here and there a white root was visible, pricking out from the swollen flesh.
“It’s alive,” the Hunter mused aloud, “without doubt. And still growing.”
“How far has it gotten?” Hesseth asked.
Tarrant hesitated; his gray eyes narrowed as he focussed his Sight on the girl. “There are tendrils in her lungs, and at least one has pierced the heart. The other major organs seem to be unviolated ... so far.”
“Can you kill it?” Damien asked sharply.
The pale eyes narrowed disdainfully. “I can kill anything,” the Hunter assured him. “But as for removing it from her system ... that would leave wounds I cannot heal.”
“Like an opening in her heart.”
“Precisely.”
Damien shut his eyes and tried to think. His head throbbed painfully. “Then we do it together,” he said at last. He couldn’t imagine himself Working, not in his current state, and the thought of Working in concert with the Hunter was abhorrent to him at any time ... but what other choice was there? The girl couldn’t recover with a root system feeding on her vital organs.
A strange look came into the Neocount’s eyes. “I don’t think that would be wise,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” Damien agreed. “And it won’t be pleasant, that’s for sure. But I don’t see an alternative. Do you?” His expression dared the Hunter to state the obvious: that by killing the girl here and now they would be saved the necessity of such a trial.
But Tarrant, for once, did not rise to the bait. His lips tightened ever so slightly. A muscle tensed along the line of his jaw. He said nothing.
“Well?”
“I think it would be unwise,” he repeated.
Anger surged up in him, hot and sharp. “Look. I won’t kill her. I won’t leave her behind. And I can’t carry her for another day. That means she has to be healed, right? And if you can’t do it alone and I can’t do it alone, then we have to do it together, right?”
The Hunter turned away. Said nothing.
“Is it the act of Healing? Is that it? Are you afraid—”
“I would be killing a plant,” he said brusquely. “Nothing more. The healing itself would be in your hands.”
“Then what’s the problem? There’s already a channel between us. Are you afraid of using it? Afraid that I might see something inside you so terrible—”
He stopped suddenly. He had seen the Hunter stiffen, and suddenly, with all the force of a thunderbolt, he understood. And the understanding left him speechless.
You’re afraid, he thought. Afraid I’ll see something inside you that I shouldn’t. Something you don’t want me to know about. The concept seemed incredible. They had experienced close contact before, once when the channel between them was first established and then later in the rakhlands, when the Hunter’s soul took control of his. And Tarrant had fed on him for more than five midmonths on board Golden Glory, which was as intimate a contact as you could get. So what was he afraid of now? What new element was alive inside that dark and deranged soul that he didn’t want Damien to see?
He looked at the Hunter standing there, so still, so alone, and he thought, I don’t know this man any more.
“Look,” he said quietly. “You do what you can. I’ll move in and Heal her as soon as you’re finished. If we’re lucky, if we’re fast ...” Then she won’t bleed to death before I can fix her up, he thought. “All right?”
The Hunter nodded.
It was a nightmare Healing, and not one he would ever care to repeat. The network of fibers had invaded a good part of her body, and was still growing even as Tarrant focused his power on it. Damien Worked his sight so that he could watch the operation, but otherwise kept a respectful distance. He watched as the Hunter destroyed the network, strangling its life branch by branch, fiber by fiber. Watched as he degraded its substance, so that it might be broken down and absorbed by the fluids of the young girl’s body. Watched as the slender branches dissolved into fluid, leaving pock-marks and scars wherever they had touched her flesh—
And he was Working then, quickly, before her flesh had a chance to react to those wounds. Closing up the wall of her heart where it had been ruptured, repairing the torn tissue in her
lungs, sealing and cleansing and forcing cells to replicate themselves with feverish haste, before her fragile life could seep away. It seemed to him in that moment that he had never Healed so fast or so hard in all his experience.
When it was all over—at last—he sat back and drew in a deep breath, shaking. The girl was still asleep, but she seemed to be all right now. Physically, at least. God alone knew if that fragile spirit would respond to his ministrations and find its way back to the flesh that had housed it ... but he had done what he could. The rest was in her hands.
“It would have been a mercy to leave her here,” the Hunter said quietly. “To let her die.”
For once, Damien didn’t respond in anger. Wiping the sweat from his brow with an unsteady hand, he gazed out at the desert before them. Miles upon miles of broken black landscape, that stood between them and their destination. Thousands upon thousands of deadly trees, and who knew how few islands like this one? Maybe a hundred such granite havens. Maybe a handful. Maybe only this one.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Maybe it would have been.” He looked up at Tarrant. “How far did we get?”
“In miles traveled, a considerable distance. That’s why it took me so long to find you. The distance is a monument to your stamina.”
“More like our desperation,” Hesseth muttered. She had the girl’s head in her lap and was stroking her hair gently, oh so gently. Damien wondered if the child was even aware of it.
“On the other hand,” Tarrant continued, “you hardly kept to a direct route.”
“There were a few minor obstacles—” Damien snapped.
“I wasn’t criticizing. I was merely pointing out that in terms of passage south, you are hardly farther along now than you were when I left you at daybreak. Though considerably farther west.”