Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (16 page)

“Where’s Irissa?” Ranior took a step forward.

“I don’t know, she didn’t come back with us. I thought
she was here.” Ilias’ heart started to pound. If something had happened to
her... “Is she missing?”

But Ranior just stared at him as if Ilias was an
enemy, was someone he hated. Ranior said, “I know you’ve been sleeping with
her.”

It was as shocking as a slap to the face. Ilias fell
back a step. “No! No, Ranior, I haven’t.” Guilt made him flush hot then cold. He
had been thinking about it all the time, they just hadn’t done it.
How could
he know that?
Ilias must have been looking at her too much. He lived with
her, how could he not look at her? And they flirted, it was innocent... It wasn’t
innocent, but it wasn’t anything else, either. He stepped forward. “I swear--”

The back-handed blow knocked him sideways. It was so
fast, so unexpected, Ilias didn’t know he had been struck until his shoulder
hit the floor.

Ranior loomed over him, shouting, “Don’t lie to me,
you useless little motherless bastard! We should never have taken you in, after
your own people threw you away. Your mother’s mad, do you think we’d let you
breed with our heir?”

“Ranior!” Giliead stood in the doorway to the dining
room, shocked and incredulous. “What is...” Then his face changed, his
expression turned horrified.

Ranior rounded on him. His voice low and even, he
said, “You stay out of this.”

Giliead took a step forward. “Ranior, listen to me--”

Ranior strode toward him, and the sudden punch he
threw caught Giliead in the chin. Giliead staggered backward as Ranior hit him
again, then he fell over the little table.

Ilias shoved to his feet, sick with horror. “No, stop!
He didn’t do anything, it’s me!”

Ranior turned, grabbed up the iron brazier from the
floor, scattering ash and dead coals. “Get out, now.”

Ilias stumbled, then bolted for the front door. He
made it through the foyer and to the front portico before Ranior caught the
back of his shirt. Ilias jerked sideways to free himself but his foot caught
the edge of the first step and he sprawled face-first on the dusty ground below
the porch. Breathing hard, he rolled over. Ranior stood over him and lifted the
brazier.

Then Irissa leapt on him from behind and sent him
staggering forward. Ranior dropped the brazier as she wound strong arms around
his neck.

Ilias struggled to his feet. His first impulse was to
run, but Irissa shouted for help, her clear voice ringing out over the yard,
and he couldn’t leave her. He felt hollow, numb, he couldn’t make himself think.

Ranior grabbed Irissa’s arms and dragged her off, and
tossed her away as if she was a rag doll. She hit the ground and rolled, as
Ranior turned back to Ilias. Then Giliead slammed out of the house and leapt
off the porch to tackle Ranior to the ground.

Ilias went to Irissa, grabbed her arm to pull her to
her feet. He still wanted to run, and he had no idea what to do. Then Irissa
clutched his arm, and he realized Ranior wasn’t moving.

Giliead shoved himself up and pushed Ranior onto his
back. Ranior was limp, his eyes rolled back in his head.

A crash sounded across the yard and Ilias looked up. Macritus
and Cylides had just dropped a two-wheeled handcart of amphorae and were
running toward them. Confused herdsmen were coming out of the shed.

Then Karima appeared in the doorway of the house,
staring in incomprehension. She still wore a bed robe and her hair was down. Sabiras
and some of the kitchen workers appeared behind her. After a shocked moment,
Karima flung herself forward and dropped to her knees beside Ranior. Giliead
pushed to his feet to give her room. She cupped Ranior’s face, bewildered. “What
happened?”

Ilias shook his head. He wanted to run away, to lie,
go somewhere and pretend this had never happened, that he hadn’t been here. The
side of his face was starting to throb from that first blow, proving that the
whole nightmarish moment had been all too real. He said, “Giliead didn’t-- It
was an accident.”

Irissa began, “There’s something wrong with him, he’s
ill, it’s--”

“It’s a curse.” Giliead’s voice was flat, but it
silenced everyone.

Leaning over Ranior, Karima froze. She stared up at
Giliead. “No. Giliead--”

Ilias couldn’t speak.
Cursed.
The word burned
the shock away into sick horror. There were murmurs from the others, in dread
and disbelief.

Giliead’s gaze was on Karima. “I can see it. The air
around him is...” His voice hardened. “I can see it.”

Sabiras came down the steps, shaking her head
helplessly. “But how could this happen...”

“Send for Menander,” Karima snapped. “And someone help
me.”

Macritus jerked his head at two of the herdsmen, and
they bolted for the barn to get the horses.
Menander is on a hunt,
Ilias
remembered, trying to make his brain work again. The men would have to ride to
Cineth, then Halian would have to send a courier to the Uplands. If Menander
was on the track of a curseling, he would have to finish it off before he could
come to Cineth.

Cylides stepped forward first and leaned down to help
Karima lift Ranior. Cylides had a curse-mark branded into his cheek, from something
that had happened years ago, Ilias had never known what. It meant he had been
touched by a curse and survived, and marked forever. Ranior had given him
shelter in Andrien village, when the rest of Cineth had ostracized him. Giliead
leaned down to take Ranior’s feet and Ilias realized he should be helping, that
the others might be afraid to touch Ranior now. But then Gamias, the chief
herdsman, moved forward to help and Ilias ended up just following as they
carried Ranior into the house.

They took him to the atrium’s portico and put him on
the couch there. Sabiras hurried to get water and a blanket, and Karima sat
next to Ranior, brushing the hair off his forehead. Her voice tightly
controlled, she said, “Giliead, are you certain?”

Ilias thought,
Maybe he’s wrong, maybe he just
wants him to be cursed, so it would explain--
But with absolute conviction,
Giliead said, “Yes.”

“How did this happen?” Irissa sounded ill. She hugged
herself, and Ilias realized she was shivering. “How could Ranior be cursed? He
was fine on the way back home last night.”

Giliead told her, “It has to be something that took
time to work on him. If it had been something immediate, the god would have
heard it and told me.” He turned back to Karima. His voice was firm, his face hard,
no doubt, no hesitation. “It was something that came on the Hisian ship. There
was something about it, I couldn’t tell what it was.”

Karima’s face was drawn, but she watched Giliead
intently. “Then you think it’s Delphian.”

Giliead nodded. “None of the other Hisians came
further into town than the port.”

Macritus protested, “Dozens of strangers, travelers
and traders, have passed through the city in the last few days--”

“And Delphian hasn’t been out here,” Irissa said,
baffled. “Ranior never spoke to Delphian alone.”

“But he did,” Ilias said, startled to realize it. “At
the lawgiver’s house, after Delphian performed the poem.”

Giliead focused on him. He asked sharply, “You saw
this? When?”

“When I was looking for Karima. I found Ranior in the receiving
room, talking to Delphian.”

Everyone else stared, trying to understand. Frowning,
Sabiras said, “That’s not much to go on, is it? It could be innocent.”

“Was it innocent, Ilias?” Giliead’s gaze seemed to
hold Ilias frozen. “What was the first thing you thought when you saw them? Not
the second, not the third, but the first?”

Ilias wet his lips. Part of him didn’t believe it was
a curse, part of him was certain this was all his fault, that he had driven
Ranior to this... He tried to force that aside, to be objective, the way the
Chosen Vessels’ Journals instructed. “I thought Delphian wanted something from
him. A favor, something. They weren’t just talking. I thought Ranior was
annoyed at him. But then Delphian took the panpipe back and went away--”

Giliead said, “Ranior was holding the panpipe?”

“Yes.” The others stirred uneasily. Everyone knew that
curses could be left on objects, passing the curse to anyone who touched them. It
was one of the ways that wizards slipped curses past a god’s boundaries. Ilias
felt his heart sink. “That’s it, then. That was how he did it?”

Giliead let his breath out. “I’ll have to see the
panpipe to be sure. The curse wasn’t showing on it last night, but... Now that
it’s been used on someone, it might be visible.”

Karima touched Ranior’s hand. Ilias hadn’t thought she
could look any worse, but her face might have been etched in stone. She looked
like she was dying.

His voice thick, Macritus said, “Delphian can’t be a
wizard. Surely the god would have known.”

“Not if Delphian was careful,” Giliead said, still
certain. “There are ways to make the curses almost silent. Something like this,
carried on the panpipe, that didn’t work until later...”

“You can’t accuse him in front of others, even if--” Cylides
said, sounding desperate. Cylides knew better than anyone just how serious an
accusation like this was. “If you’re wrong--”

“I won’t accuse him, I’ll bring the god to him,”
Giliead said quietly. “If it’s not him, he’ll come to no harm.”

Cylides nodded, reassured. It was only sense, and it
quieted all objections.

Irissa said, “We’ll go now,” and no one argued with
her.

As they walked toward the waiting horses, Giliead
said, “It was a curse, Ilias. It made him say things that weren’t true.”

“I know it was a curse,” Ilias said. His heart was
like a lump of ice in his chest. Giliead didn’t know what the curse had really
done. The only thing they knew for certain was that it had made Ranior sick and
angry.

“If it’s not Delphian--” Irissa started to say.

“It’s him,” Giliead said.

* * *

But when they reached Cineth, Delphian had already
fled.

While Macritus and the others waited outside, they met
Halian and Erinni in the lawgiver’s house. The sudden arrival of the Chosen
Vessel, with Ilias, Irissa, Macritus and two other men from the farm, plus
Erinni’s orders to search the city for Delphian, meant that suspicions were
already spreading, despite Giliead’s best intentions. The Hisian ship had left
early that morning, despite the bad weather, and Halian had sent a patrol
galley after it. It didn’t seem likely that Delphian had been aboard, but they
would have to bring the Hisians back to make certain they hadn’t been cursed
too.

People started to gather worriedly in the plaza. There
had been no mistake; Giliead had looked at the room Delphian had used in the
lawgiver’s guest quarters, and seen curse trails, invisible to anyone but a
Chosen Vessel.

“Something must have changed, he’s leaving traces now.
It means whatever curse he’s carrying is stronger,” Giliead had told them, and
backed them out of the room.

Now the men and women who had been sent to search the
city were coming back with reports, and Halian told Giliead grimly, “He
borrowed a horse from Belia’s stable, before dawn, and told her he was going to
visit a farmstead down the coastal road.”

Erinni came back from the portico, wrapping a shawl
around her shoulders. “We’ve sent riders after Menander, but it’ll take some
time to find him. He must be nearly to the eastern hills by now.”

Giliead nodded. An ugly bruise marked his jaw where
Ranior’s fist had landed. Ilias’ jaw and cheekbone ached, a counterpoint to the
stiffness in his shoulder and back. Giliead said, “When Menander gets here,
send him after me.  He’ll be able to follow the trail.”

Halian frowned. “After you? What do you mean?”

“I have to follow Delphian now.” Giliead’s voice
hardened. “I have to catch him before he does this to someone else.”

“I’m going with you,” Ilias said. It sounded as if he
meant to be heroic, but he knew it was more for his benefit than Giliead’s. Ilias
thought if he stayed behind, not knowing what was happening, it would kill him.
Just knowing Delphian was out there, free, was near to killing him now.

“So am I,” Irissa added. Giliead took a sharp breath,
and she cut him off, sharp and bitter, “He’s my father. It’s my right.”

There was one thing Ilias was certain about. “Gil, it’s
your first time, you shouldn’t go alone.”

“If you try, we’ll just follow you.” Irissa made it
sound grimly final.

Giliead’s expression was an odd combination of guilt,
anger, and relief.
He doesn’t want to go alone,
Ilias thought,
he
wants us with him,
and somehow that eased some of the pain. Halian and
Erinni both spoke at once, trying to object.

Then Ilias heard hoof beats in the street, and Cylides’
voice called out, “Gil, Irissa, are you in there?”

Irissa froze, staring toward the doorway. Ilias met
Giliead’s gaze. Cylides never came into town. Because of the curse-mark, people
here didn’t speak to him, barely acknowledged his existence. Karima would never
send him as a messenger unless it was urgent.