Deepwood: Karavans # 2 (21 page)

He squinted up through the dreya ring’s canopy, noting the double suns had begun their descent. He did not know if two days had passed in the human world; it could possibly even be a week. What he did know was that he would welcome darkness and the chance to sleep, except that he feared sleep wasn’t possible on two counts: first, he hurt too much; second, he might die. The latter possibility sent adrenaline flooding through him as all his muscles clenched, which in turn set his abdomen afire. No, sleep would not be possible on any count.

The baby, still wet, still neglected at the foot of the nearest tree, protested with swaddled struggles and increasingly unhappy crying. Rhuan apologized to Sarith because he truly felt bad, but moving to tend her would worsen his situation. Audrun would be back soon. In the meantime, it would not harm the baby to be damp, any more than it would harm his ears to hear her cries.

He swore a series of increasingly obscene curses through clamped teeth, trying to concentrate on conjured images of quietude and rest. That, too, was impossible. Then he switched to telling over the Names of the Thousand Gods, hoping the devotion and respect he offered might be rewarded; knowing, however, that it was most unlikely, as the primaries would know why he was doing so. False devotion, devotion under duress, was viewed as a time waster. But it nonetheless gave him something to do. Something to distract himself.

Then fire flared.

Rhuan could not help himself. He thrust himself up from the ground, turned swiftly and knelt, hunched, bracing himself against the ground with one hand. The other went to his belt, only to discover his knife sheath was empty.

Audrun. Of course. And she had been right to take it. Conscious, he would have told her to do so.

He still had throwing knives. But now, as he saw clearly despite the pain in his midriff, he made no move to draw them.

Just outside the ring, the winged demon stood. Pale eyes showed vertical slits for pupils. Black hair was again neat and shining, hanging past his shoulders. The black hide jacket hung askew and slightly open from his shoulders, baring the scale pattern creeping upward across his flesh from the waistband of dark leggings. Wings were folded against his back. In one hand, he held a lighted torch.

The dreya ring, threatened, yanked branches as far from the torch as possible. Rhuan felt the fear, the thrumming of tension within the ring. Dreya trees were immune to blight, to insect damage and fungus, but lightning and fire could be devastating.

The demon smiled. “
Give it to me
.”

Rhuan said, “No.”

In one stride, the demon stood beside the queen tree. Pale eyes were locked on Rhuan’s, which hazed red. An undulation went through the ring again as trees leaned away. In a matter of moments, feeder roots would begin to break free of the earth. In a matter of moments, any protection the dreya offered would end. Not because they surrendered, not because they gave up the child, but because they could not save themselves
and
the child.

“This infant,” Rhuan said tightly, “has both a mother and a father.”

The demon displayed fangs. “I. Don’t. Care.”

“You were human once. Sancorran, yes? This child is also Sancorran. Sancorran and Alisani.”

The demon leaned forward, raising the torch higher yet. “
As am I
.”

“This child has the protection of the dreya. This child has
my
protection.”

The demon laughed. “The latter is worthless. The former? Well, that shall end. See you?” And he thrust the torch up into the gleaming branches of the queen tree.

Dreya screamed as fire took hold. Rhuan immediately lurched toward the baby, reaching for the small, squirming bundle before the demon could do the same. But his hands and clawed hands closed upon swaddling at the same time. Muslin tore, tiny limbs fell free. Rhuan caught an arm. The demon caught a leg.

Flame ran up through pale branches into the high canopy. Trunks twisted and writhed. Within moments the crown of the ring was afire. Roots pulled free of the earth. Women, pale and silver, wrenched themselves out of trunk clefts. Rhuan had an impression of terrified eyes, of clothing of mist and starlight, of blazing hair. Sarith, caught in opposing hands, opposing convictions, screamed even as the dreya did.

Without their trees, all would die.

“I’m sorry!” Rhuan cried to the dreya, redoubling his efforts to claim the infant. But then a leathery wing slapped into his temple. He was flung aside, slammed into one of the now empty trunks. Within the ring, dreya burned. Above, the silver canopy became a conflagration.

Rhuan lost the child.

“Mine,”
the demon crowed.

Crumpled at the base of a burning tree, despite the flames, Rhuan fell into darkness.

AUDRUN HEARD THE screaming. Smelled the smoke and fire.

Women screaming. Close by.

Instinct nonetheless made her kneel, made her carefully set aside the melon-bowl of water. Then she ran.

O Mother, O Mother, no …

She ran, and came almost immediately upon a firestorm. Stunned, she found the ring ablaze. Saw woman-shaped pyres. Saw a roof of flame. Rhuan, unconscious. And a demon taking flight, cradling a baby.

No. No. No.

Yes. Oh, yes.

Burning brands and branches fell into the ring. Dead dreya, still ablaze, collapsed into smoking heaps at the bases of their trees. Rhuan, too, was threatened, blind and deaf to all. Fire fell from the sky.

The baby.

Gone.

“Mother of Moons!” Audrun cried.

But this was Alisanos.

The baby was gone. The trees were afire. The dreya were dead. Rhuan wasn’t.

Rhuan.

Audrun ran. She caught up a wrist, clamped her hands closed, and pulled. His body gave barely at all,
slumping sideways. Audrun yanked. She set her booted feet, drew a huge breath, and yanked again and again. A sustained pull she could not manage; he was too heavy. But panic gave her strength and a desperate determination. Grunting, gasping, gripping his bare wrist, she pulled again, yanked again, tugged at him. From above sparks flew. All around her lay the remains of dreya, of women she’d never met but who had protected her child as best they could. Dead now, their trees ablaze, the child stolen.

Audrun cried out in extremity, expending all the strength she had left. She had moved him possibly six feet. Too close, too dangerous; the trees, she feared, would burn through and fall upon them.

“Rhuan!
Rhuan!
”

He lay sprawled on his back, one arm outstretched.

She leaned down over him, placed a boot on either side of his torso, and wrapped both fists into his tangled braids. “Wake up! Wake up! I can’t move you!” By the braids, she shook his skull.
“Wake up!”
Behind her a branch fell in a whoosh of heated air. Desperate, Audrun placed one hand against the wounds in his abdomen. Gritting her teeth, she plunged two fingers into a gash. “Wake
up
, curse you! Do you want all of us to die? The demon has my baby and we’re about to burn!”

The invasion of her fingers brought him abruptly from unconsciousness, crying out in pain. Eyelids flickered.

Audrun smashed the flat of her hand across his face, bloodying his nose.

“Now,”
she shouted as she saw glazed brown eyes upon her. “Now, curse you,
move! Move! Move!
”

Rhuan rolled as if to rise. Audrun hopped out of his way. On hands and knees, bloodied braids dangling, he made every attempt to crawl.

“Yes!” she cried. “Go!” She caught an upper arm in both her hands, setting nails into flesh as she urged him onward. “I can’t drag you! I can’t! Ah, Mother, lend him strength!”

He wobbled. He crawled.

“Yes!” Audrun shouted.

Rhuan was out of the ring. Behind him, tumbling down in gouts of flame, more branches fell. Audrun put up a hand up to shield her face against the upsurge of heat. Then, seeing him wavering, failing, she reached again and closed both hands around a wrist. In fear, in panic, in utter desperation, she yanked as hard as she could.

His body followed so fast she sat down hard. And she knew, meeting his eyes, acknowledging the failure of her own body as well as his, that they were both of them done. No more. No more. He was too badly hurt, and she had birthed a baby earlier that day. Audrun sat with legs spread, knees bent, leaning against arms braced behind her back, and sucked in air again, again, again. She had no strength for tears, nothing at all for words. All she could do was try to fill her lungs.

Rhuan levered himself onto hands and knees. She saw how his arms shook. He twisted his head and
looked over a shoulder at the ring. Then he looked at her. “It won’t…” he said, “can’t…”

She barely managed, “What?”

“… started amidst a dreya ring … there it stays …”

“The fire?” Still she sucked in whoops of air. “Won’t spread?”

“
No
…” Rhuan said, and fell facedown.

AS THE SUN slid below the horizon, Davyn stepped off the nearly invisible shortcut. The ruts were broken by clusters of stone, some half buried, others on top, plus webby grass and ground-cover, and he saw now why the axle had split. It was a punishing track, the condition indicating that no one traveled it to reach Atalanda, that all went around the long way, the way the guide had recommended. But none of them had been told by fourteen—no,
fifteen
—diviners that a child must be born in Atalanda; they knew nothing of the demands of time. Davyn believed he had made the right decision regardless of the outcome; what else could he have done? Set them upon the long route, so that there was doubt they’d reach Audrun’s kinfolk before the baby came? The shortcut saved them weeks of travel. That the family now was scattered amid Alisanos changed nothing of Davyn’s decision. The loss was not his fault. The loss was Rhuan’s fault.

He had walked for hours. Now twilight came upon
him; it was time to stop for the night. He moved away from the track toward a tree that lay on its side, upturned roots displaying fresh, damp dirt. Yet another victim of the storm. Davyn found a place to spread a sleeping mat so that he could lean against the trunk and settled in. He wasted no time laying a fire. Tonight he would dine on dried, salted meat and water. And when the sun was gone and Maiden Moon rose in the heavens, he once again began the litany of prayers, the demands for aid. Alisanos was wholly unnatural, not a random act of nature. It was alien. It was maleficent. More than anything else in the world, it deserved the Mother’s wrath.

And a measure of Davyn’s. But most of that he reserved for Rhuan.

B
ETHID AWOKE AT dawn. For a moment she felt competely disoriented, squinting up from a supine position at morning sunlight through naked trees, until she made note of the glyph-carved wagon ribs and the narrowness of of her place upon the floorboards. She was hemmed in by a large trunk on one side and the cot-cabinet on the other, lying on cushions with a thin blanket over her body. This was not the couriers’ common tent.