Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (64 page)

She stopped, her breathing harsh and labored.

“Go, Kolan,” she said suddenly. “Please. Go. Walk—don’t run, never run, but go. Get away from me. I won’t remember—who you are.
Please.”

“There’s that conscience you keep saying you don’t have,” he said. “Come back here and face me. If you’re going to kill me, have the grace to come at me from the front. Look me in the eyes while you do it.”

“Kolan.”

“Come here.”

She stood before him, eyes more white than black, and shivered all over as she stared at him.

“You’re being very strange,” she said in a small voice. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

He brought his arms around with infinite caution and pulled her into gentle contact: torso, hip, and thigh just touching. He waited until her shivers faded to an oddly relaxed stillness, then said, “Because there’s nothing to be afraid
of.”

She stirred, then leaned slowly forward against him, her own arms wrapping around his waist, and rested her head against his shoulder.

“Your faith again,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

She sighed, a long exhalation that seemed to draw a heavy weight from her thin body with its passing. “There are no gods, Kolan,” she whispered. “Your faith is a lie.”

He smiled ruefully, recalling years of agonized doubt while writhing in the dark and the fire: asking himself that very question, for if the gods existed, how could they possibly allow Rosin Weatherweaver to exist alongside them?

The answer he’d arrived at, in the end, had been astonishingly simple.

“It doesn’t matter if the gods truly exist or not,” he said. “At the end of the day, gods are just a convenient hook to hang right behavior upon. My faith, these days, is in
that;
not in invisible, voiceless forces I can’t prove or disprove the existence of.”

“You’ll get yourself hung for heresy one of these days,” she said, then broke into sudden laughter that washed over Kolan like the clear, cold waters of a snowmelt-thick stream. He joined in; something twisted and black inside of him loosened and let go, drifting away on the wave of their shared laughter.

“Oh, it’s been so long since I laughed,” she said after a while. “So long.”

“Stay with me,” he said into her hair. “Stay with me, Ellemoa.”

She shivered again; he kept his hold light and loose and himself very still. At last she said, “Would you obey me, if I stayed? Now that Rosin’s gone?”

“No,” he said. “Never. But I’ll do what you
ask
of me, if I see it as right.”

She was quiet for a while, evidently thinking that over. At last she said, “And if I kill again?”

“I’ll stand in your way,” he said. “You’ll kill me first, before you touch another. If you can live with that—well,
I’ll
be beyond caring at that point.”

She broke out laughing again, a wild sound that rolled over into more honest amusement. “You’re as mad as I am.”

“Yes.”

Her arms tightened around him. “All right,” she said. “For as long as I can.”

She straightened, pulling away a little. He loosened his embrace, his fingers barely touching each other behind her back now, and let her choose to come to him.

Night’s blackness didn’t exist: Idisio moved through an oddly lit world, as though an amber sun shone across everything at just the right angle to remove all shadows. There were no secrets under this new, hard-edged vision. Corners angled sharply enough to cut, walls bulked strong as mountains—and at the same time, it all seemed fragile as a child’s dollhouse made of thick paper and fingernail-thin sheets of wood. He felt he could walk through anything in this new world without pause, and leave behind only as much damage as he cared to show in his wake.

On that thought, he turned and walked straight through a thick-trunked stone pine: suffered only a momentary blurring of vision and a brief itchiness across his entire body. Three steps clear of the tree, he stopped, turned, and studied the unmarked stone pine with a deep satisfaction; then walked back to it, sank his fist into the wood, and withdrew a thick chunk. The gaping hole began to weep sap instantly. He stuffed the broken piece back into the hole, where it sat crooked, like a squashed cork in a bottle neck too large for it. Sap coated his fingers; he held his hand out in front of him and
willed
the sap to slide off like water from oilcloth.

A series of thin splats rattled against the ground before him as the sticky tree-blood simply melted from his hand, leaving no residue behind.

This is what it means to be ha’ra’hain. I can do...
anything
.

Exultation filled him. He broke into a loping run and found the ground whipping by as though he were back in the teyanain’s
clee
trance; leapt, and landed halfway up a tall tree without effort. Too fast; he twisted sideways to avoid slamming into the very
solid
trunk approaching his face, intuition warning that it wouldn’t yield to him this time.

Holy gods—

Thrashing and falling through densely-needled side branches, he grabbed for purchase. Every branch he managed to grip snapped instantly. His feet caught on a wider limb; he staggered sideways from the impact and slid through something damp and sticky.
Godsdamn birds—

He began to fall again; kicked out at the trunk, shoving himself clear of the tree, and tumbled backward, managing—just—to land in an upright crouch, hands splayed on the ground. He stayed there for some time, panting a little in reflexive shock.
That’ll teach me to be arrogant....

He hauled himself back to his feet, aches flaring across his body in another reminder of unexpected consequences. Apparently, being able to do anything didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt... But even as he had that thought, the pain faded away into a ghost-echo, then a memory.

Wide-eyed, he stared at the amber-tinted, shadowless world around him.
This is what my mother was trying to explain. This is... incredible. I’m practically invulnerable.
A moment’s attention dispersed the sap and needles clinging to his clothes and skin; as he watched, the assortment of small scratches and larger cuts closed over, the blood from each wound seeming to simply absorb back into his skin.

How in the hells did Tank lay her out with a chunk of
wood?

That brought recent events to mind, though, and the dying scream of an innocent girl: rage flared, quick to catch as a long-dry torch. The edges of his vision turned an odd, hazy white. His mother had taught him to find an inn simply by thinking of it; now he turned his attention to finding
her.

Southeast. Not far away.
He set off again, more slowly, a stalking pace now. For whatever reason, she wasn’t moving. There was no hurry.

In a matter of two dozen steps, he could smell her: a distinctive aroma of rot overlaid with pungent spices. He’d never noticed it before, but he had no doubt that was her scent; it
belonged
with her, the way
sour
belonged with an unripe sunfruit.

Another scent wove through hers: a soft, deep note that somehow conveyed
male
and
malnourished.

Idisio slowed even further, placing each foot with the intense care he’d used when stalking Deiq in the ruins—it seemed so long ago! But he’d proved his point, back then: he could sneak up on Deiq. He’d be just as capable of surprising his mother, especially if she was distracted with a new victim.

He had no intention of giving her a chance to get in a blow of her own before he struck; and as he would only get one try, he’d have to make that one
count.

He eased his thoughts to utter blankness, aligning himself with the shadowless clarity of the world around him: flowed through space as translucent and silent as the air. He didn’t exist; he was a floating particle in the midst of other specks....

Idisio came to rest behind a large tree and stood still, eyes closed, listening: discovered he didn’t need to
see
her to see her. It was very like his visions of Tank, but in the moment and under his control.

The stranger had his arms loosely around her, and he was, incredibly,
smiling—
a beatific expression as though he’d never wanted anything more than to embrace a murdering lunatic. And she—leaned up against him, her entire body relaxed, her arms around his waist. Idisio had never seen her so—so
calm.
So motionless.

He withdrew into the protective haze of an aqeyva trance to think it over: comparing what he knew of her to this moment, going back over everything she’d said. In the dispassionate calm of trance, he tried to see if, after all, his perceptions of her had been skewed somehow. He searched for any indication that he’d missed a vital clue along the way.

I’m better at lying than you are, son... Humans... they’re meaningless. Insects... After so many years of being told to kill... it’s like breathing.

No. She was lying. Playing. Taunting the man with her apparent submission. Any moment now she would laugh, and he would scream, and
—no. Not again. Never again.

Rage broke him out of the trance and into a sharp hunter-focus: she remained still, unsuspecting—relaxed
—vulnerable.
Gods only knew why she was choosing to play the role that convincingly, but it was a lie. She’d said it herself: she was a very, very good liar. And he would never understand the first quarter of anything she did, kind or cruel.

His hand rested on the hilt of the long Scratha dagger for a moment; but he understood, now, that a simple knife wouldn’t do nearly enough damage. A moment later, his vision narrowed in on something that
would.

Yes. There.

Apparently ha’ra’hain also possessed that dark, compact spot of
self-ness.
Hers was larger and somehow
heavier
than Enia’s had been—which made it an easy target. In the white-edged mist of his rage, the irony of hitting her just
there
seemed incandescently appropriate.

Not willing to waste the only chance he might ever get, hoping desperately that he didn’t need to be in physical contact to get to that spot, he
reached,
fast and sure and hard; she thrashed upright in startled reflex a fraction of a heartbeat too late. He engulfed the dense mass like water flowing around a sinking stone, gathered himself around it like a net, and yanked it into himself with a brutal cruelty he hadn’t known himself capable of until that moment.

Her scream went past the human-audible range in moments. He savored the vibrating agony as it swept through the air; shame tried to get a foothold, lost, and faded away.

Apparently I’m not only capable of intentionally killing, I’m entirely capable of enjoying it,
Idisio thought hazily. Then the orgasmic rush hit, as it had with Enia—but
more,
infinitely
more,
ecstasy doubled then tripled then quadrupled—and he howled, utterly lost to anything but that all-encompassing
heat....

As the staggering intensity began to dim, memory of Deiq’s sardonic voice drifted into awareness, dragging the traces of shame along with it:
We’re not that different. Not nearly....

I believe I might owe Deiq an apology or ten if I ever see him again. Gods....

A window shattered somewhere nearby. The disruption of sound, slight as it was, served to pitch Idisio sideways into awareness of the real moment. He was on his knees, leaning against the tree for support, and panting as though he’d run from Scratha Fortress to Bright Bay. The man was on the ground, whining wordlessly, his hands over his ears.

Ellemoa still stood, rigidly stiff.

Idisio hoisted himself sideways, too dizzy and disoriented to even think about rising from his knees, and stared, unable to believe his eyes.
She’s
standing.
Oh, shit—

Her eyes had turned a lambent white; her hair was heavily streaked with pale grey and paler silver. She stared right at him. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged. After a few moments, he realized that she had no voice left to speak with. He watched her lips shape words, over and over; he’d never been particularly good at reading lips, but intuition moved in to help this time:

Finish it. Finish it. Finish it....

She’s crippled,
Idisio thought, horrified.
I did this. I don’t think she can heal—not from this much damage—she’s blind, and mute, and gods know what else.

Oh, gods. What have I done?

Her mouth kept moving:
Finish it. Finish it. Finish it....

He stared at her, and thought of a dead girl in a cottage less than a mile away. Thought of the smell of sweetened ginger, and of her conviction that humans were insects; thought of his own accelerated healing abilities, and of the risk he took if he let her live: because if she did ever recover her strength....

He shut his eyes and opened
other-
vision; found what was left of that blackness and wrapped it in a tight grip—gently this time—and softly, softly, drew it from her, little by little.

She offered no resistance. Made no sound. Slowly, slowly, sank to her knees—graceful, swaying, as though this were nothing more than a dance in the rain—and folded to the ground beside the still-whimpering stranger.

She reached out one bone-thin hand, as she drooped into a final sprawl across the cold cobblestones, and gripped the man’s hand tightly. Just for a moment. Then her hand, along with the rest of her, went limp.

Lifeless.

Oh dear and holy gods—I did it. I really—I really—
Thought shredded into incoherence.

A moment later, the stranger groaned and rolled to his knees, leaning over Ellemoa’s body; his hands caressing her in a vain, desperate attempt to shake her back to life.

“Oh, no,” he moaned. “No. No—gods!” He twisted to stare at Idisio, his face white as the stars and streaked with tears. “What have you done?
What have you done?”

Before Idisio could answer, the man turned back to the corpse and dragged it up into his arms, hugging it against him, rocking back and forth and muttering; the words stifled both by his wracking sobs and by his mouth pressing against her hair.