Heart Thief (35 page)

Her fingers left her mouth to find the travelfood bar in her pouch and break off another piece. She barely had room to lift it to her mouth. Nuts and oats and a bit of dry fruit lay on her dusty tongue. With effort she chewed and swallowed.

“Ailim?”

“I'm here.”

The hole above her darkened, and Ruis looked at her. Thank the Lady and Lord he couldn't see her condition.

“Tell me about the corridor under the lake,” he said.

She stiffened and coughed and dirt rained. “There's a hall from the Residence through the lake to the HouseHeart.”

“And where's the HouseHeart?”

Something only D'SilverFir and the Heir should ever know. “On this side of the lake,” she admitted.

“What's the corridor's state of repair?” he asked. He sounded so sure and confident, she couldn't quite grasp it. Totally in command and in charge.

She inhaled slowly to keep her voice from trembling. “Not good. Much of our gilt goes to maintaining it. I noticed cracks near the ends a few hours ago.”

“If the hallway collapses the D'SilverFir Residence foundation will be compromised.”

“I know.” Her voice shook.

“On the other hand,” he said softly, “if we rescue you and destroy the amulet, I can refurbish the corridor and stabilize the fault.”

His words made no sense. How? “What?” she choked out.

“The colonists made the corridor?”

“Yes.”

“What the colonists made, I can fix,” he said with patent confidence. She remembered the Earth toy zooming around the pavilion. The idea wrenched awful hope within her.

“Ruis, I want you to leave. I'm getting my strength back. In a septhour or two—”

“We have about fifty-five minutes before the pressure in the ground generates an earthquake.”

Her gasp echoed up and down the tube of her prison until it repeated again and again in her ears. She wiped her nose with a fold of her cloak, licked dry lips with her dry tongue. “I want you to go. I can use my Flair for an emergency Broadcast. It may ruin the Family, but it will save the Residence.”

“I want you to trust me,” he said. “I have a machine on the way that can free you. You know I can negate the amulet.”

She shuddered and dirt pattered from above her head to her shoulders.

“I can't,” she said. Trust an ancient Earth thing that didn't work with Flair? Trust something so incomprehensible? That she had never experienced and never known? “I can't. Please go. Save yourself and Samba and let me—”

More dirt fell on her as opening widened. He flicked on his strange light and she winced.

“Look at me, dear one.” He angled the light up in his own face. Lit that way, and with the odd shadows from the cave-in, he should have looked like a demon. Instead he looked like her lover.

But his eyes were more intense than she'd ever seen them, his face sterner.

He looked like a nobleman, a GreatLord secure in his power—but not arrogant. Assured but not imperious.

His voice continued, soft and persuasive. “I can do this. Let me. I can get you out of there, destroy the amulet, repair your tunnel, and stabilize this fault.”

Why didn't she laugh at his unbelievable claims? Why did she even imagine he could do as he promised?

Ruis's gaze turned shrewd. “You don't look like you have much Flair. What would an emergency broadcast alarm cost you? Do you know who'd hear, who'd come? How long would they take to get here and organize a rescue? You can't teleport with your foot caught in the ground.”

“Bucus.” The name escaped on a gasp. Bucus T'Elder was her nearest neighbor. What would happen if he found her first?

“What!”

Ailim bit her lip to stop a whimper from the grinding pain of the rocks on her foot. “Menzie is your uncle's mistress. He gave her the amulet. He was at D'SilverFir this afternoon, visiting his nephew, Donax—and her, too. I believe he gave her orders to throw the amulet in the fault. She acted as if she was bewitched.”

The angle of his jaw sharpened in the wavering light.

“Bucus! Donax isn't his nephew by blood. He's my aunt Calami's. I'm Bucus's nephew. He's your enemy, too.”

“Yes.” She sighed and collapsed against her prison walls.

“Ailim, my dear one. You know I'd never hurt you.”

She didn't answer.

There was a moment of silence, and when his voice came it was full of suppressed emotion. “If you want me to leave so you can use your Flair, I will. I'll stay near to help in any way I can, at any cost to myself.”

“No.” She could hardly envision the tumult a broadcast alarm could cause, nobles 'porting here, confusion, the capture of Ruis. “You must not be found in Druida.”

She stared up and they locked gazes. Her face crumpled. “Will you coerce me by saying that you will stay and be caught if I don't do as you wish?”

His breath hitched, his expression froze. Pain ripped across his face. “No. That would be blackmail.” He spoke, words jerky. “If you insist, I'll go and watch from afar. Not come near you.”

She heard the echoes of a lifetime of rejection in his undertone. She tried to clear her mind. His ideas were fantastic; she couldn't imagine how he could do as he said. His solution was inconceivable. She couldn't weigh her choices. Except to consider the man himself. She had to decide whether to trust the man himself. Her heart cracked at the amount of faith he was asking, how vulnerable she'd show herself to be if she trusted him—having so much trust in him that she would believe him able to achieve the impossible on his word alone.

But she loved him.

“I'm your lover.” He echoed her thought, his words dropping as softly as tears. “Can't you trust your lover?”

Ailim surrendered. Stripped to her core, she knew herself, knew she loved Ruis. Love demanded trust and faith. “Yes.” She shifted to be as comfortable as possible and closed her eyes to his scrutiny. “Bring on your Earth machines.”

Her eyes flew open a moment later as clinking sounded above her. Her mouth slackened as a long gray tentacle slithered down the hole. She didn't know how the machine had gotten there, hadn't heard a sound.

The cylindrical thing slid against her body as it burrowed. She screamed.

“Easy now, dear one, nothing to fear,” Ruis said.

Ailim glared up at him. “You aren't the one being fondled by an unnatural snake!” Watching in fascinated horror, she had second thoughts as the tentacle flexed and poked.

Snick! Four shiny metal prongs sprang out. Ailim tried to crawl out of her hole.

“Easy!” Ruis said.

You fine
, Samba mewed.

The snake angled down toward her ankle, probed around the compacted dirt and rock. With a whir, it drilled into the stone. Ailim panted. Sweat from fear and the heat the tool generated coated her body. She moaned.

“Ailim!”

“Yes, Ruis?”

“Take this.” He tossed an odd little ball down and Ailim caught it. It fit in her palm. The upper half was metal with switches and buttons. The bottom was encased in soft fabric and snuggled into her hand.

“The red button is a lazer. Don't press it,” he said. “The blue switch is a light, the green one is a little scry. If you turn on the scry and the light, I can see what the digging machine is doing.”

She blinked. The amulet's evil waves were much less noticeable. “Ruis?” she asked.

“Yes?” He sounded preoccupied.

“This object you gave me—”

“The multitool?”

“Yes.” She held it up to her temple and tried a small telepathic spell to Samba. She'd been able to sense Samba's thoughts just a moment before—nothing! She looked at the tool in wonder, turning it over and over. “This sphere has a small energy field that works much like your Nullness.”

“What?” He sounded startled. His head darkened the hole, his eyes round with curiosity.

She held up the tool. “It dampens my Flair. A pity it's too strange and large to carry in my pockets.” Ailim studiously avoided glancing at the writhing tentacle near her ankle. She tried not to speculate what the loud noises were. She realized the snake-arm smelled familiar, like that additional tang of Ruis's personal scent.

Ruis frowned, examining the multitool. “Interesting.”

The pressure on her foot vanished. Ailim moaned as a tide of numbness, then a different pain from her foot flooded her.

“Ailim?”

She knew she needed to attempt to move her foot, but had to regain control. A couple of minutes, maybe.

“I'm all right,” she said through gritted teeth. “I'm free.”

“Wonderful! Lift!” Ruis ordered.

Before she was ready, the arm curled around her waist, squeezed too tight, then relaxed as if sensing her weight and its surest grip.

It dragged her up, and her useless foot bumped against rock. Ailim clenched her hands tight around the tentacle to keep from crying out. The snake-arm didn't compress under her grip. After a meter, there were no walls close and she dangled in space, inching up. Ailim panted, then Ruis's arms reached for her, drew her close to his body.

He held her too high for her to set her good foot down. His strength and warmth and the pounding of his heart overwhelmed her as much as sheer relief. She couldn't prevent a steady oozing of tears.

“Shhhh. Shhhhhh. I've got you. Almost over.” He cuddled her close, then lifted her and walked.

Ailim blinked, unable to comprehend what she was seeing until she was on a floating raft with strange machines.

Ruis gestured to a squat white one with a red cross painted on it. “Scan GrandLady D'SilverFir's left foot for harm.”

The little robot waddled up and extruded a soft white cradle. Ailim decided she was supposed to put her foot in it. She bit her lip when the weight of her foot hung in the cradle. The robot hummed as warm yellow lights flashed on her foot. She turned to ask Ruis what was going on. He wasn't there.

Squinting, she saw him being lowered into the hole, holding another little machine. Terror jangled her nerves. The robot peeped.

“Ruis!”

He lifted a hand. “I'm getting the amulet!”

“Don't! Forget it!” Nothing was as important as his life. Not her estate, not her Family, not her own life.

He disappeared. She tried to move, but her foot was trapped again, this time by an infernal machine. She felt a sting and her gaze shot back to her ankle. A long shining needle-like instrument slowly withdrew from the slit in her boot. At the end of it a single red drop of her blood beaded.

Her mouth fell open, dizziness overcame her. She battled the dark, but it won.

 
Ruis's lips peeled back from his teeth when he found the
amulet. The charm bag was filthy, the smell disgusting. The odor comprised the well-known stench of his uncle when in a torturing mood: high excitement, sweat, and his cologne. There was the stink of rotting corruption like when he faced Hylde's body; the sickening aroma of a woman, and a note of frantic, rough sex. Ruis struggled to keep his gorge down. He sipped the hole's air shallowly through his mouth.

Pulling a ragcloth from his belt, he dropped it over the thing and gingerly scooped the shrouded amulet up, treating it as if it were the decaying corpse of a small animal.

“Up full speed!” he shouted.

He was whisked from the hole in less than ten seconds. He glanced at the raft—Ailim was sleeping. Good, the best thing for her.

On either side of the main hole other machines were venting the crust at intervals to dissipate noxious Flair-energy.

He walked along the ravine, away from the epicenter of the faultline, and crossed into Elder land, discernable by the lack of fir trees. He found a barren spot and dropped the revolting amulet. The ragcloth opened. The bag had shriveled into a small dry lump. Getting his lighter, he flicked it and looked at the clean orange flame. He calculated the amount of time he'd been close to the bane, whether his Nullness would have allayed the evil spell. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes before Ship's deadline. After his watch ticked away four minutes, he torched the rag. Black flames spewed up. Ruis jumped back. The thing burned gray, then purple, then blue, and finally vanished in a cracking white flash.

When Ruis touched the ash mummy of the amulet with his boot toe, the bane flaked to nothingness and drifted away on the wind.

Ruis grinned and dusted his hands. He threw back his head and laughed, triumph rising in him. He'd beaten his bastard of an uncle. He'd won!

This battle. This first battle, he'd won!

 
 
Sensations slowly filtered into Ailim's mind—an acrid smell
that made her wrinkle her nose, the sense of lying on a hard pad, her ears filled with a humming and breathing of more than one set of lungs. Her mind quested—nothing.

She jerked upright and opened her eyes. Her vision blurred and she fell back into Ruis's strong arms. He pulled her close and she heard his heartbeat's steady
thump-thump-thump.

Ailim touched her skull where she'd had a lump. It was gone now. Daring pain, she pushed her fingers against her head. Nothing. She wiped dirt from her eyes and looked down at her feet. They were bare, looking pink and healthy and freshly washed. She rotated her left ankle and flexed her left foot. No pain.

She opened her mouth to comment, then noticed the strange surroundings. The walls were a mixture of brushed metal, glassy panels, and woven tapestries. The bed she slept on was nothing like she'd ever seen before—an inset mattress filled with a firm but supportive substance that didn't feel like permamoss. She poked it. “What is this?” she said.