Aral impressed me mightily. I was yelling blue murder and, I am ashamed to admit it, trying to get away. She, who had been covered by the faintest of light auras, instantly shone in the dim shadows under the trees like a blue star come to rest. She swiftly drew a pouch on a long string out from under her shirt and extracted what looked like a ruby the size of her hand, then she did the most extraordinary thing: she seemed to focus her power through the jewel, at least that’s where the light went, a shaft of bright purple light straight through to Vilkas—
Who with a grunt emerged from under most of the demons. He had made a shield around himself of the power Aral sent him, but he could not keep them all off. A raking talon got through here, a bite there, and in a very short time Vilkas was looking much the worse for wear. He was doubled over, I guessed to protect a wounded side, and his face was bleeding badly.
I could not take my eyes from him, though I was not capable of assisting him. I am a gardener. I know nothing of demons and to fight them I had only my staff. Useless.
Aral, never stopping the flow of power she sent to Vilkas, drew her belt knife and held it out to me. “Will, help,” she said. “Hard to talk. Take this.”
I took it, stupidly staring at the blade.
“Cut me,” she said, holding out her left hand, but with all her concentration on the jewel clutched in her right hand and the strength flowing through it to Vilkas. He struck out with the power she sent him, but it took a great deal of time and effort for him to deal with even one of the creatures, and there were so many, so many …
“Will!”
“What? I don’t understand,” I said, “why should I—”
“Hold the blade for me then!” she cried. “I need blood!”
Without thinking I sliced the palm of my own hand. The blade was very sharp, I hardly felt it. “Here,” I said, holding out my hand to her.
It was her turn to stand amazed, but only for a second. Vilkas called out, “Aral, quickly, I can’t last much longer.” The strain in his voice shocked me, he who never had to exert himself. From Vilkas that was a scream for help.
I was starting forward, but Aral grabbed my wrist and put my hand on the jewel, so that my blood flowed freely over the glowing surface.
What I had thought was a bright flow of the Healer’s power gleamed now like the sun at noontide. I felt the most astounding sensation. Caught up in the fight, I felt just for that moment what it must be like to be a Healer. My strength was used as I could never have used it: every impulse to help Vilkas, every drop of friendship I bore him, and (I guessed) all the deep love I bore for Aral joined with her own power and whatever was in the jewel.
Now where the light touched the creatures, they hissed and screamed. Aral began to step forward, and of course I went with her, my hand on the jewel.
That was not a bright thing to do.
The creatures could not take their prey so they decided to attack the next best thing; since Aral was the source of their pain and deadly to them, the next best thing was me. I dared not remove my hand from Aral’s, so I used my staff in my left hand—very badly—to try to beat the things out of the air. They had physical form, I could knock a few of them back for a little while, but there were so many of them. In moments my arms and my back were covered with the things, biting, slashing—I began to fear for my life and I had to let go of Aral’s hand to use my staff.
They turned again to Vilkas when the bright stream of Aral’s strength was cut off, but he was ready for them this time. With a word and a gesture he made a great globe of power that surrounded them and kept them captive. Aral moved to my left side, placed my cut right palm again over the gem she bore, and reached out to touch the creatures with her left hand. I tried to restrain her, but she reached right through that globe and touched the nearest.
To my everlasting astonishment it screamed and vanished. Just like that.
It took a very short time thus to dispel the rest of them. When they saw what was happening they tried even harder to escape Vilkas’s power, but it might have been iron for all they could affect it. Each time Aral’s touch burned them, broke them, sent them back to the lowest of the Hells.
I counted fourteen despatched thus when the last of them had gone, and Aral said later there had been another half-dozen destroyed while I was fighting one-handed. I began to feel a burning in the bites and slashes that covered me, but I was most concerned for Vilkas. The moment he released the prison his power had made, he fell to his knees.
He was in a terrible state. I hurried towards him, idiot that I am, but Aral was there before me. Her hands were empty again, save for the kindly blue glow of the healing power. She sent it to Vilkas, wrapped him gently in it, drawing out the poison, knitting torn flesh. I watched it happen. If you have never seen a high-ranked Healer at work on deep wounds—well, it is astounding. It is to believe again in the sacred nature of healing. To watch the demon-tainted blood turn from black to red, to see the open mouth of a cut close seemingly of itself, and watch even the red seam of that wound fade and mend—there was no question in my mind that this was the highest gift of the Lady, of the Mother of us All.
In a very few minutes Vilkas stood, unsteady on his feet but whole. He put his long arms about Aral, gently and awkwardly, holding her tight against his chest. “Thank you,” he said simply.
I knew what she was thinking, I could almost hear her. I knew she would have given worlds for Vilkas to stay like that forever, close in her arms, but she knew too well the nature of that embrace and she wanted his love as well. For all the depth of the bond between them, for all that they had just now saved one another’s lives, she knew the embrace was friendship and gratitude and nothing more. Even I could tell as much from afar. I swear I could almost hear her.
Or perhaps it was the beginnings of delirium, for I was badly wounded myself and the poison of demon wounds works swiftly. Vilkas, seeing me waver, left Aral instantly and sent healing to me himself. Drat you, Vilkas, I remember thinking as I leaned against a tree for support for the second time in an hour, if you can’t love her, for Shia’s sake, you could at least have let her heal me so I could hold her too.
Healing leaves Healer and patient both weary. We staggered back to the road. There was no longer any concern about Gair recognising me. None of us cared. We were desperate for a place to stop and to rest, and we had three hours at least of walking still to do. We took it slow, and Vil and Aral took it in turns to keep their power called about them and ready. The shadows of afternoon began to lengthen and the clear air grew cooler. Aral stumbled. “Damnation, I’m tired,” she muttered. “Goddess, somebody start talking so I can think about something apart from sleep and demons while I’m walking.”
She turned to Vilkas. He shrugged. “Nothing to say.”
“You’re so helpful, Vilkas.” She turned to me. “You’ve usually got some kind of tale to tell, Will. Who is Gair, then, how do you know him?”
“Do you care?” I asked, managing to smile.
“No, but if you don’t talk to me I’m going to fall over and we need to get to Wolfenden.”
“True enough. But Gair’s no subject, trust me. Even older than I am and never been five miles from his doorstep. I do indeed have a story, and a true one, that you two should hear, as we’re going to that inn.” Vilkas glanced at me with one dark brow raised. Aral was delighted. “But there’s a price,” I said seriously. “To be paid before I tell my tale.”
“Name it. Unto half my kingdom,” said Aral, grinning. “Of course, my kingdom at the moment consists of the clothes I stand up in and they wouldn’t fit you, so I’m fairly safe.”
“That’s what you think,” I said. I couldn’t help grinning back at her. “Do I get to choose which half?”
“Will!” she exclaimed, batting at my arm. “And here I thought you were a gentleman.” She laughed. “Though it might be worth it to see you in skirts!”
“You’re not wearing skirts, idiot,” said Vilkas dryly.
r /> “Trust you to miss the point,” she said, with a loud sigh. “But come, Will, your price?”
“The answer to a question.”
“Ask.”
I turned to Vilkas. “Why?”
“Why what?” he said, striding along unperturbed. “And I do not recall volunteering to pay your price, Aral.”
“Oh, Vil, it won’t kill you. I need a story badly.”
“Very well,” he said with a sigh. “Why what, Will?”
“Why did you not use your power back there?” I asked. “Berys obviously fears your strength, Aral tells me every few moments what a great mage you are—”
“Liar,” came Aral’s voice. We both ignored her.
“I’ve seen you doing things half-asleep that most of the Magistri couldn’t do the best day they lived. Why did Aral have to do all the work when those demons attacked? You could barely defend yourself.”
“Ah,” he said. “You noticed.”
“It was hard to miss, Vil. A bloody great horde of demons land on you like a flock of starlings on a seed store and Aral does all the work!” I said. I gazed steadily at him in the lateafternoon light.
“What is it, Vilkas? Why could you not disperse those demons?”
He turned away from my gaze. “You tell him, Aral,” he said. “I need to stretch my legs. You both walk so damned slow.” He changed his gait, and between one step and another he was walking twice as fast as he had been before, his hands behind his back, his face set in a scowl. I watched him distance himself from us with a certain surprise.
“Don’t worry, Will. It makes him furious that there’s something he can’t do,” said Aral softly. “In every other task we’ve ever tried his power is astounding, but he can’t disperse even the least of the Rikti. Lady help us if we ever have to face the Rakshasa. More to the point, Lady help me.”
“What happens when he tries?” I asked. I was amazed. I had thought Vil could do anything.
“I—um. I don’t know,” she said, worried. “He’s never been able to do as much as try since I’ve known him. He just won’t. When I asked him about it he didn’t answer and he didn’t speak to me again for a week. When I finally saw him again he tried to tell me, but he wasn’t using words very well and what he did say didn’t make sense.”
“Vilkas not using words well?” I snorted. “That’s not possible. When did this happen?”
“Not long after we’d met. About a year and a half ago, I’d say.”
“Then he’s had enough of a rest and it’s time someone asked again,” I said decisively, and took off after Vilkas. It took a bit of effort but I caught him up. Most of his height is in his legs, the man walks as fast as most folk run.
“You can’t run away from it, you know,” I said firmly.
“I was taking the opportunity to walk at my normal speed rather than the snail’s pace you two keep. I am not running from anything.”
“Liar,” I said loudly. That stopped him in his tracks, but it stopped me as well. The look on his face was the blank wall I’d fought so long to break through. It meant I must have hurt him very badly indeed.
“Vilkas, I’m sorry,” I said. “You know I don’t mean it. But if you can’t even speak about your failure with the Rakshi you will never overcome it. It won’t go away for being ignored, you know. And you have made a powerful enemy whose chief weapons are demons. You have to think about this.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again the wall was gone. I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Being a friend to Vilkas was never easy.
“Once,” he said as Aral caught up with us. “I’ll tell you this once.” He glanced from Aral to me. “Come, let us be moving,” he said. “There’s a long way to go yet and I would gladly maim for a beer.”
We returned to a pace that Aral could keep up with while Vilkas collected his thoughts. The day was fading slowly from the sky, but there was enough yet of twilight for us all to see each other.
“It happened many years ago,” he began. Aral tried to say something, but he stopped her. “Later. Just listen. I was barely ten winters old but I was already working with the Healer in my town, learning what I could. I knew even then that I was damned good and a lot stronger than he was, and I was very sure of myself. Then an old woman came in demon-touched and asked us to help rid her of the taint.” He stood up straighter as he walked, as if he were having to literally face up to the memory. “Sandrish thought I could use practice on demons, so he showed me what to do and let me loose. I sent my power into the poor soul, and since the very idea of demons has always sickened me I poured my heart and soul into the healing. I put everything I had into it, hard and fast.”
Aral gasped and I heard her whispering “Goddess, no. Oh, Vil, no.” Vilkas ignored her. “The woman started screaming, so I tried even harder. She stopped screaming almost instantly.” His teeth came together with a click. Neither Aral nor I dared say a word. We hardly dared breathe. Vilkas’s tale was like a blow with a club.
“Sandrish did what he could but she was stone dead. I had—ha! I, the great healer, the wise child who was so very strong!” He spat the words out. “I boiled the blood in her veins, Aral, and when I heard her screaming I seared her heart.”
We said nothing, we just waited until Vilkas was breathing more normally. Until we were all breathing more normally. To my astonishment, Vilkas spoke again. “I used to have dreams after that—well, you’d expect it, wouldn’t you, but the dreams had nothing to do with my killing that poor woman. There was one in particular that I kept having.” His voice paused. “I keep having.
“I am standing on the top of a mountain—I know this sounds stupid, but it was a dream—I have fought my way to the top of this mountain and I can touch the sky. Really touch the sky. I just reach out a finger and I can feel the blueness of it, and the soft clouds. Then I am the ruler of the world. The whole world is at my feet.” He shivered. “After that, though, the dream can go two different ways. In one I became some kind of sky god, like the stories you hear of the tribes in the Far South who worship the sun—I am allpowerful and beneficent and everything is wonderful, I use my power to its fullest extent and I make the world a glorious place.”
After we had walked in silence a little way, Aral said the obvious, because someone had to. “And when it goes the other way?”
Vilkas spoke in the flat tone I had come to dread, for I was learning more of him in this one day than nearly two years had taught me. When he could not trust his emotions to stay in check he wrapped them in iron bands, hid them away in deep impenetrable caverns of darkness and spoke as if he were discussing the weather.
“When it goes the other way I am the Death of the World.” He said the words as if they were a title. “It always happens the same way. I am fighting one of the Rakshasa, one of the Lords of the Hells, and it stabs me in the heart but I don’t die. I instantly turn into a demon a thousand times worse than the one that has stabbed me. I kill it with a flick of my power, for by then I have power that has grown as vast as the world, and then I—then I kill every living thing, and to end it all I reach out and crush the sun in my hand.”
He stopped for a moment, to control his voice again. Dear Lady, I thought, what does he do with all that passion? I had never seen a man run so desperately from himself.
“And I laugh. Every time. While I’m killing demons and people and breaking mountains, when I’m putting out the sun—I’m laughing the whole time,” he said, striding forward again, and despite his best efforts his voice was thick with disgust.
I kept pace with him and demanded my answer. Without stopping to think, without any consideration for the depth of his feelings, I demanded an answer of him, “Why, Vilkas?”
“Why what?” he snarled.
“It’s important. Why are you laughing?”
His voice shocked me when he answered, for he spat out the words with a deep self-loathing.
“Because it feels good. No, it fe
els bloody damned fantastic. There is no difference between being the sky god and being the Death of the World, Will. No difference! In the dream, the feelings are the same no matter which I choose: ultimate release and fulfillment, and self-indulgence, and—fate.”
I dropped back to join Aral, who was in truth no more than a step behind. However, Vilkas had not yet ceased to astound me. Having had his say, having damned himself forever in his own eyes as being at once too weak, too strong and irredeemably evil, he made a stunning effort to seem reasonably normal. We all knew he was only bearing up by virtue of his indomitable will, and neither Aral nor I would have pricked that particular soap bubble just then for worlds.
“There,” he said pleasantly, “will that do you for your price?”
“Vilkas, I—”
“I’ll take that as a yes. At least we’re not thinking about how tired we are anymore.” He snorted, then sighed. “Hells’ teeth, this day is long as years! How far are we now from that inn of yours?”
“A little over another hour, I’m afraid,” I said. The sun was long since down and the light had leached slowly from the sky as he spoke, leaving darkness to settle cold on all our shoulders. Exhausted as we were, at least the walking kept us warm. The Súlkith Hills away west stood outlined sharply again the last fading glow of twilight. The stars were beginning to make themselves known, even some of the shy ones, for the moon was very young and the night cloudless. The trees on either side of the road were reduced to dark shadows on the starfields, and away off to our left as we walked north, the hills grew very slowly closer and higher. The sight of them lifted my heart. I had forgotten how much I missed my home.
“Then, in Shia’s name tell us your story,” said Vilkas. “And it had better be a damned fine one. I’m getting bloody cold.”
I smiled to myself in the darkness. “Well, it’s not as bad as stories go, and none the worse for being true.” I took a deep breath. “Salera saw I first in fire—sorrow sealed her, lone child and lost … .”