Between (20 page)

Between. She could feel the winding threads of dream and waking even before her hand reached for and found the pendant. Her eyes searched out the pathway that would lead into the inevitable maze and found it on the far side of the clearing.

There would be dragons. Even if she had managed to leave behind the creature that had pursued her through the dream, there would be others. Her back itched, as though eyes were staring from out of the undergrowth, but when she looked she saw nothing more than the trees, dense and old, branches bearded with gray moss. Thorn bushes and foreign plants filled the space between their trunks.

She knelt in the cool grass beside Poe and stroked his feathers. His black eyes fixed on hers. “I don’t suppose you know what we’re meant to do next.” She spoke aloud to bolster her own courage, but her voice sounded very small and vulnerable, and it seemed that the trees were listening.

He cocked his head to one side, staring in silence as he always did.

Vivian sighed. “Great help you are. Well, come on then. Since we’re here, let’s see if we can find Surmise.”

The path was little more than a game trail, rough and narrow. Brambles tore at her jeans, branches slapped at her face, and fallen logs blocked the way, forcing her at times to work her way around through nearly impassable undergrowth. As she’d anticipated, it wound around and twisted in on itself, spinning side trails off into different directions. By the time the sun had traveled across the sky, darkening the forest to a twilight gloom, she knew she would never be able to find her way back to the clearing where she had started.

Once or twice she heard branches cracking in the distance and stopped with her heart in her throat to listen. Nothing but birds, a chirping that must be crickets or frogs, the sound of wind in the treetops. They had moved deeper into the forest, and she began to feel that they would be trapped at the center, imprisoned. The air grew increasingly more oppressive; the trees looked older and stranger. Poe waddled along behind her, ever silent, ever present.

There was no way of judging time or distance, but she guessed they’d been walking for a couple of hours before they came across the stream. Poe flung himself into the water in a belly flop that sent water spraying in all directions. Vivian knelt and splashed cool water over her face. She was thirsty. Her memory insisted on supplying images of bacteria and amoebae as seen through a microscope. Teeny little creatures lurking in the water, just waiting to cause diarrhea and vomiting to anybody stupid enough to drink. Not quite that thirsty yet, although soon she would be.

Leaving Poe to play, and hopefully find himself a frog or a minnow, she sat down on a fallen log to rest. She was bone weary, and it was so quiet. Undisturbed by people, unbothered by time, her mind drifted a little, from trees to birds to fairy tales.

When the first branch cracked in the distance, she thought it just another forest sound. A bird squawked. And then the woods went silent. Poe bellied out of the water, shook himself, and stared off into the trees.

Vivian found she was holding her breath and had risen to her feet without thought or intent.

In the forest, something lurked. Something she could feel in her blood, in the rapid beating of her heart, in every fluttering breath.
This is how the mouse feels when the cat is hunting.

Without ever making the decision she found herself running, half blind, crazed with an unreasoning terror. The path became a tunnel, roofed by low-hanging branches; then the tunnel became a funnel, one of those pens built to drive cattle into a pen, to meet the branding iron or the butcher.

She tried to stop her legs, to think, to plan, but she kept running, despite the pain in her chest and her side, the gasping agony of her breath, the aching heaviness of legs pushed past endurance.

Poe.

She looked back over her shoulder. No penguin.

Damn it.

Her legs stopped their frenetic pumping. She turned full around and retraced her steps, hands pressed to her aching sides, sucking in air in great burning gulps. Poe came around a corner at full speed, short legs churning, neck stretched forward, useless wings outspread. When he saw her, he emitted a pitiful little
quawrk
and ran full tilt into her legs, quivering, feathers ruffled, beak open and gasping.

A new sound now, in the distance. No mere breaking of twigs, but a cracking of branches. Treetops swayed, but there was no wind.

Vivian’s feet were glued to the path, bones turned to jelly. She was doomed to cower here like a frightened rabbit and let the thing get her.

No, you’re not.

Scooping the penguin up into her arms, she got herself moving again. This time she pushed her way off the path, forcing her way through a wall of undergrowth that scratched and tore and resisted her. She came to a barrier that wouldn’t let her through, solid interlaced thorns. Behind her a swath of swaying and falling treetops moved in her direction, a crashing and dragging growing ever closer.

Poe struggled in her arms, pecking at her hand. She released him and he dove forward onto his belly, wriggling through a gap, low in the tangle of thorns. Clumps of feathers caught on the branches, but he vanished from her sight and she flung herself down and followed.

Barbs tore at her shirt and into her back; she felt the sting, the wetness of blood, but she was moving through the barrier, grass and dirt cool beneath her hands, fingers digging down into the soil for traction, elbows pressed close to her
sides. It seemed to last forever; wriggle forward, dig with her fingers, pull, push with her toes. Again and again, until her fingernails were bleeding and her back burned and bled.

When she broke through the other side, the wood had changed.

Here the trees were even taller. The tops of them formed a canopy that shut out the sky. As compensation for the gloom, the forest floor was relatively clear. No more thorn bushes, no brambles.

No more maze.

Something was wrong about this. All of her experiences with the Between had involved some sort of winding pathway or tunnel or corridor. But the pendant still hung around her neck, assurance that they hadn’t passed back into a dream, and this sure as hell wasn’t Wakeworld. Uneasy, she turned in a full circle, looking for any signs of danger. So far, there was no sign of a pursuit, nothing visible that was cause for alarm.

Poe huddled at her feet, running his beak through his feathers, nuzzling, preening. A smear of red marked his breast. Vivian knelt beside him. “Let me look,” she said, and he stood still and let her examine the gash in his chest. It was jagged but shallow. Should heal up all right, although she wished she had something to use as a disinfectant.

With no path to follow, Vivian struck out in the direction she hoped led away from their pursuer. The greater the distance they could put between themselves and the dragon, the better. It would have a hard time here, if it was of the size she thought it. Most of the trees were too big to push over, close enough together to hamper its progress. Birds twittered and chirped. A woodpecker pounded away at a nearby tree. Peaceful as it seemed, Vivian kept walking, still driven by a sense of ever-present danger.

At last she felt she couldn’t take another step. Exhausted, she sank down to the earth with her back against a sturdy tree trunk. The scratches ached and throbbed, but she couldn’t reach them, could only tolerate the pain and be grateful she lived to feel it. Poe settled down beside her.

Bees buzzed around a flowering bush. A squirrel scolded off in the distance. Vivian’s nostrils filled with the scent of moss and earth, the bark of the tree. Under these calming influences her breathing slowed and deepened, her mind drifting close to the edges of sleep.

A sound startled her awake.

Not a dragon this time. Male voices, the creak of leather, the cracking of twigs. A horse whickered. Perhaps the voices meant rescue. Or not. It didn’t really matter—there was nowhere left to run.

G
et up.”

The voice is relentless. Isobel touches the ring for courage. They have not gone so very far, not this time. Landon will find her, surely, and Jehenna will grow tired of tormenting them, soon or late.

They stand together in a circular, cavernous space, lit by a ring of flaming torches. The ceiling is high and lost in shadows. A stone, bloodred in the flickering light, thrusts upward through the darkness—

through this cavern and into the dungeons above

through the dungeons and into the field where the maidens and the dragon meet—

Time slips, and she is a small child here. A dragon looms but she is not afraid of her, not of Mellisande. The creature is sad and angry, but not at Isobel. Fear beats at them both, child and dragon, bonded by mutual captivity. Something evil happens here, something dark. Isobel is a part of it, but again time fractures and she doesn’t know if it is happening, has happened, or is yet to come. A thousand warnings clamoring inside her head and no way to silence them, no way to shut them out. No way to change what will have always been…

Isobel shudders and closes that door in her mind, tries to focus on the now and not the then. Her bare feet and legs are cold. The power from the stone thrums through her body in a constant vibration. If she listens to it, tunes herself to its rhythm, the voices fade and the fear ebbs.

Power.

A man comes running, tripping over the hem of his long scarlet robes and almost falling. He smells of fear and his face is the color of curdled milk as he throws himself onto his knees, forehead pressed against the black stone.

“My Queen.”

“You know me, then.”

“We have waited your return, My Queen.” His hands are shaking, and he twists them in the robe. “Gant always said you would someday return.”

“And where is Gant?”

“He died, My Queen.”

“You are High Priest, then?”

“Yes, My Queen.”

“Has he passed on to you what must be done?”

“Yes, My Queen. Every word of the ritual has been preserved.”

“Bring her.”

“Yes, My Queen. At once, My Queen—”

He scurries off through a stone door.

A shuffling, scraping sound vibrates through the soles of Isobel’s feet. Metal screeches against stone and the dragon is coming and this has happened before, and before, and before, only this time something is different.

Mellisande is old. Always there has been a smothered rage, a longing for the sky, but now Isobel feels a deathly weariness when the dragon enters the chamber. A web of silver mesh wraps the girth of the great belly and traps the folded wings against the creature’s back. The once-fiery eyes are faded to dark amber; the heavy head hangs low.

Jehenna staggers as though she has been struck, her face bloodless. “What have you done to her?” she gasps.

The priest cowers, looking from the Sorceress to the dragon in confusion. “Idiot!” Jehenna shrieks, slapping him on one cheek and then the other. “You have let her grow old!”

He cowers onto his knees, his voice shaking. “My Queen. She is fed daily, exercised regularly. She is bathed and polished and bedded in fresh stone. She has been pining for you, so Gant said.”

“She wants to go back to her mountain.” Isobel is surprised to hear her own voice break in; she has not planned to speak, but the dragon’s misery can hardly be borne.

“What would you know about what she wants or does not want?”

Isobel knows this is a time to close her mouth and claim ignorance. An unexpected courage stiffens her spine. “I’ve always been able to read her.”

“You? You are insane. You think you hear voices everywhere—”

“Hers is louder. Can you not hear her? The silver pains her; she longs for the sky and the light, to hunt and catch her own food rather than eat the human cattle—”

“Enough of this. Be silent.”

Isobel holds her tongue while slow tears trace a path down her cheeks.

“Ah well,” Jehenna says at last. “Her blood is weakened, but it must suffice. Soon, very soon, I will have no more need of her.”

“My Queen, it will take time to contain a younger dragon—”

“I’m not talking about a dragon, fool. For now”—her voice rises into command—“I require blood.”

The dragon breathes out a flameless blast stinking of carrion and brimstone, whirling Jehenna’s hair and gown in a gust of dragon wind. But she is bound by the silver and Jehenna’s will, and she turns and lumbers away to stand broadside along the raised dais at the center of the chamber.

The priest follows, carrying a stone knife as long as his
arm. His hands are shaking; he looks as though he might fall.

“Give it to me.” Jehenna snatches the knife from him. “I’ll perform the rite myself.”

This is it, now, the dark and evil thing, and Isobel is powerless as the woman—her mother—takes her hand and leads her up the steps and onto the dais. Here the stink of rot and decay spins in her head. A basin, carved from dragon bone, sits next to the towering stone, stained black with the blood of countless years.

Isobel feels herself begin to wail, a child again. She stands where she is placed, her body shaking with cold and fear, that endless sound flowing from her throat unbidden. Jehenna presses the tip of the knife against the scar at the base of Mellisande’s throat. Leans her weight against the toughness of the dragon skin. A small pop as the blade enters, a hiss as it withdraws. Blood splashes smoking into the basin. Where it strikes the stone it sizzles; puffs of steam go up with a smell of brimstone.