In Stone's Clasp (7 page)

Soon Jareth lay next to his wife, holding the tiny, frozen body of his infant son to his breast. On the other side of the room, Annu lay, as still and white as if she had been carved from stone. He watched his breath curl upward as his lungs continued to function, aware he was dancing on the edge of madness and praying to the blue tiger gods who supposedly took care of his people that he would slip over that edge. He didn’t want to see his breath anymore, didn’t want to be reminded of the enormous gulf that separated him from his family. So he closed his eyes and drifted.

When Altan shook him some time later, frantically rubbing his icy hands and calling his name, Jareth exploded with rage. He had been about to join them, he sensed; had been about to bridge the chasm that kept the dead from the living. But he was so cold he could not move quickly, and his fingers were too numb to choke Altan as he wanted to. He let Altan wrap him in a thick blanket, let the boy he had brought into this world walk him away from the frozen bodies of two women and a baby, sipped the hot drink Altan pressed into his hand.

And began to think.

Jareth paid little heed as the men from the village came in to take the bodies away. He knew where Taya and Annu and Parvan would rest until spring came…if it ever did. The ground was too hard for the earth to take the bodies of his wife and children; they would join the others who had died this winter in a specially built building until such time as they could be buried. And from their corpses would spring new life, he knew; flowers and trees and grasses would transform dead bodies into living things. It was sacred, it was holy, it was the natural, inevitable way of things.

He frowned and started to shiver, knowing that with that uncontrollable movement life was starting to return to his body.

But
was
it the natural way of things? Jareth had been the Spring-Bringer for several years now. No one knew the power of the earth and living things better than he; no one respected those powers more. But something was…wrong about how his family had died. The winter was unnatural to begin with; it was impossible for it to have lasted so long, yet it had. No natural storm could have swept so thoroughly through the cabin to overcome two strong women so quickly, and yet it had.

And if the way they had died was not natural, perhaps Jareth need not obey the natural laws.

He thought of blue tigers, and their powers, and that the one thing he knew for certain was that life always came after death.

Jareth heard the crunching of snow and looked up. The men were bringing out Taya now. They had tried to cover her, but the body was clearly that of a woman, and too short to be Annu’s.

“Wait,” he said, getting clumsily to his feet. The blanket and cup of hot tea fell to the snow.

“Jareth,” said Altan in a worried voice.

Jareth ignored him, moving toward the body of his wife. He touched her cold face, and reached around her slender neck to remove the pouch she always wore. He slipped it around his own neck, tucking it carefully inside his many layers of clothing with hands that did not tremble.

Don’t leave me,
he had cried the night they had first loved.

Never,
she had answered with a kiss.

“Now you may take her,” he said. The men looked surprised at how steady his voice was. Jareth turned and went back into his house. He pawed through the piled white matter like a fox, searching single-mindedly for what he wanted.

“Jareth, please, come away from there. Come stay with me, let me take care of you.”

Altan’s voice was like the buzzing of a fly to Jareth; noisy, irritating, and ignorable. He grunted with satisfaction when he found it: a handful of frozen dirt, which he dropped into another, larger pouch tied to his belt. Now, he turned to Altan.

“I will come,” he said. Let the boy think him agreeable, accepting, ready to mourn and then begin the tortuous process of recovering.

For a moment, he regarded Altan, blazing the image into his brain. He remembered when the boy had been born, slipping into life next to his stillborn sister Ilta, whom his parents had buried, had mourned. He had watched Altan grow from an appealing little boy to a gawky youth to a handsome young man with an extraordinary talent. Altan had a good heart, if on occasion a sharp tongue, and Jareth loved him.

To Altan’s surprise and his own, Jareth stepped forward and embraced him with a warmth and ease he had not been able to express to his own family. Slender and delicate, a willow to Jareth’s oak, Altan tentatively returned the embrace. His head against Jareth’s shoulder, he murmured, “You are always welcome in my home, Jareth. There will always be a place for you.”

Jareth let Altan take him to his house, ate the food the boy prepared for him, and in general permitted the
huskaa
to think Jareth stunned, but resigned to the inevitable. It was well past the middle of the night when, reassured by the sound of regular breathing on the pallet next to him, Jareth woke and stepped quietly out of the house.

Don’t leave me.

Never.

Both Taya and the earth itself had promised this; both had broken their promises.

He was not going to grieve for his dead family. He was going to make the gods bring them—and Jareth’s other great love, his connection with the earth—back to him.

And if the gods would not oblige, he would kill them.

Kevla-sha-Tahmu sat easily atop the back of the great red Dragon who had once been a god to her people. The beat of his mighty wings created a wind that caressed her body and tousled her long black hair. She stroked his scales as they sailed over the jagged peaks of the northern mountains, savoring the smoothness against her hand, content to be exactly where she was.

She glanced down at her hands, long-fingered but strong and callused. Here and there were the lighter-hued scars from countless nicks and cuts. She smiled a little as she regarded them and thought of how profoundly her life had changed.

Not so very long ago, Kevla would have been more comfortable chopping vegetables, carrying water and tending to the kitchen fires than perched atop a beast out of legend. But after hardship, fear, and the agony of devastating loss, Kevla had accepted her destiny. For perhaps the first time in her brief life, she felt calm and tranquil. At peace. Free.

Idly, she glanced down, and realized where they were heading. She frowned.

“Dragon, why do we go this way?”

“You must find the others,” came the Dragon’s rumbling reply. He craned his head on his long neck to look at her. “We have sensed only one thus far, and his land lies to the north.”

Kevla closed her eyes, recalling her visionary dream. Again she saw the man who awaited their arrival, though perhaps he knew it not. Tall, fair-haired, clean-shaven. So different from Kevla’s people, with their black hair, dark eyes and brown skin. This man’s eyes were blue, and he stood on a hill covered by a white substance that seemed to resemble sand but, the Dragon had told her, was called
snow.
The thought of meeting this man, who seemed so strong and calm, who understood what they were both working toward, was thrilling. Kevla had borne her burdens alone for so long. She would be grateful to surrender them into his capable hands. Surely he would know what to do next.

But still…

“Is there not another route?” she asked. “We are flying directly over the Emperor’s land!”

“I am not unaware of that,” the Dragon said. A wisp of smoky annoyance rose from his nostrils. “But this is the swiftest way, and time is precious.”

So are our lives,
Kevla thought. Her joy in sharing this flight with her companion ebbed, replaced by apprehension. In her heart, she knew the Dragon was right. Her dream had been tinged with urgency. Time was indeed precious. And yet…

In her two decades of life, Kevla had learned to fear many things: poverty, ridicule, the seemingly senseless laws of her people and her own potentially lethal abilities. She had learned to fear death, and killing, and the excruciating pain of losing someone she loved more than anything in the world.

And she had learned to fear the man known to her only as the Emperor.

The Emperor commanded a mighty army that would have destroyed her land, had not Kevla and the Dragon stood to help defend her people. That the Emperor possessed some kind of magic, Kevla knew; that he was bent on seeing that Kevla failed in her mission to gather the other four like her, Kevla also knew.

And that was quite enough for her to not want to fly over his country.

“Dragon,” she began again, glancing down as the mountains that had once presented an impassible barrier for her land gave way to hills and then rolling plains, “perhaps under cover of night, it is less likely that we would be seen.”

He chuckled. It sounded like the rumble of a volcano.

“Night or day, it matters not to those who have magic, as the Emperor does. We have a long way to go yet. You received the best education Arukan had to offer, but Arukan knows nothing of what lies beyond its borders.”

“And you do?” Kevla was skeptical; the Dragon had dwelt at the bottom of a volcano for five thousand years.

“This world? No. But I have known four other worlds, and the creatures in them, and I remember how long it takes to fly from north to south. The Stone Dancer is always as far from the Flame Dancer as each world allows. Think you we can find him in a single day?”

“You’re a dragon,” Kevla replied. “Can’t you?”

“A creature of magic I am, but even I can go no faster or farther than my wings can take me. Although I do not need rest or food, you do. I will go as swiftly as I may.”

Kevla sagged a little on the Dragon’s back. Somehow, she had assumed the difficult part of her journey was behind her. She had endured so much; lost so much.

As always, the Dragon sensed her mood and thoughts. “I know what you have suffered,” he said softly. “I wish I could simply carry you while you rested and recovered. I wish I could fulfill your destiny for you, but I cannot. I am a part of you, but I am not you, and this duty is yours alone.”

“I understand,” Kevla said. The burden, it would seem, was not yet to be surrendered.

Her tongue had no yearning for speech. The Dragon respected her silence, and they said nothing more until the sun began to sink slowly to their left and the sky turned deeper shades of blue and then purple.

“We will rest for the night,” the Dragon said. “I will make for as safe a place as I can, in a remote area far from the cities of this land. Before I do, I must warn you, the fact that we are in his land could well strengthen the Emperor’s powers, and it is certain he will be looking for us.”

Kevla tensed. “Then is it wise for us to land at all?”

“We must,” he replied. “You need to rest and eat and move. I will keep watch while you sleep, never fear. But you must not use any of your Dancer abilities. Magic calls to magic. If you would protect yourself while we are in his realm, quiet your mind. He’s trying to sense you, right now. I can feel it. We know he knows about you. But he may not know about the others yet. You must not be the one to inform him.”

Kevla’s heart sped up; the exact opposite of what the Dragon needed her to do. A strange bubble of mirth welled inside her. She bit it back, but she wondered if the Dragon appreciated how difficult it was to do as he had requested.

She was not to think about the man they were seeking. So instead, as the Dragon tucked his mammoth body with startling grace and headed for the earth, she deliberately thought about something else.

Kevla summoned an image that would do no harm to her or anyone if somehow the Emperor were to read her thoughts. She thought about her time as a servant in the House of Four Waters. Her mind was filled with the tasks that had occupied her days: massaging the feet of Yeshi, the great lord’s wife, cutting vegetables, carrying water from the vast caverns that never ran dry. Everyday, ordinary things.

The earth approached quickly. They left a sky crowded with stars to descend on a grassy plain. Kevla slipped off her friend’s back and her knees buckled as she hit the earth.

Her laughter surprised her. “I guess I did need to move,” she admitted, rubbing life back into her numb limbs. Her bladder was full and her belly empty, and she had to acknowledge the wisdom of her friend. She might be a powerful woman, but her body was no more and no less than human, and it had its own needs.

The Dragon had set them down near a small stream. Kevla stood for a moment, marveling at the casual ease with which this land bestowed water. In Arukan, water was more precious than gold. Her clan, the Clan of Four Waters, held much of its power because it controlled a key position at the juncture of the country’s two largest rivers. But here, the grass was green and the water flowed freely, unaware of how rare and special it seemed to her.

She knelt and splashed her face. It revived her, and made her think of her daily baths in the caverns at the House of Four Waters. She had left an Arukan where the clans had united against the Emperor’s army instead of fighting one another, where many of the old, crippling ways were being discarded. She hoped this progress would continue.

Kevla drank deeply, and refilled the waterskins her old friend Sahlik had packed for her. Her throat closed up tightly as memories washed over her, memories of the elderly head servant who had done what she could to make Kevla’s existence at the House of Four Waters bearable. Sahlik had even seen to it that Kevla and—

No. I mustn’t think of him. I don’t know the extent of the Emperor’s powers and he might sense it.

Quickly, she got to her feet and headed back to where the Dragon lay. He had stretched out to his full length, and not for the first time, Kevla marveled at him. She had feared him once. He had haunted her dreams and terrorized her, but only because she didn’t understand who and what she was. Now she did, and the Dragon seemed to her the most devoted of creatures despite his enormous bulk and powerful teeth and claws. Not to mention the sheets of flame he could breathe at a thought.

That did not frighten her, for she, too, could summon fire at will.

Kevla plopped down beside her friend and opened her pack. She reached in and pulled out a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth and inhaled the scent deeply. Her mouth watered.

“You were right,” she said, “I’m famished. It was so good of Sahlik to pack some food for me. I didn’t even think about it, and I’d—”

The words died in her throat. Curious, the Dragon inclined his massive head to see what had silenced her so abruptly.

“What is it, Kevla?” he asked.

Kevla held a wooden board. It had been painted with interlocking circles of white and black, with the overlapping areas painted gray. There was a large pouch still sitting in the pack. Her heart raced and she had difficulty breathing.

Shamizan.
Sahlik had packed a
Shamizan
set. She had known how much Kevla and the young lord of the House of Four Waters had enjoyed playing it when they were children, and no doubt, the old woman had likely thought that a set would comfort Kevla. She was suddenly plunged back in time as she stared at the board, remembering her first encounter with the game.

“Can you play
Shamizan?
” he had asked.

“What is
Shamizan?
” His eyes lit up. For the first time since she had known him, Kevla thought that he looked like a boy her own age, not a small adult. “Oh, it’s so much fun! Let me go get my set—”

He rose and ran out of the hut, returning only a few moments later, flushed and out of breath. Kevla suspected he had run the entire way. Hardly proper behavior for a future
khashim,
but it was good to see him so happy.

“It’s easy to learn.”

Easy to learn, hard to stop,
Kevla thought. At one point, she looked up from the board and saw the
khashimu
regarding her with an intent gaze. His face dissolved into delight as she ducked her head and smiled.

“You like the game, then?”

“Oh, yes, very much.”

“I am so glad. I hoped you would.”

Kevla could no longer hold the memories at bay: the memories of what they had been to one another, how they had loved…how he had died.

Even then, even when we were too young to understand it, we loved each other.

Kevla clutched the board to her breasts for a long moment. She wanted to scream, to rage, but somehow held on to sufficient sense to deny the almost overwhelming urge. They were in danger every moment they were in this land, and shrieking and shouting her grief could attract unwanted attention.

Kevla got to her feet. She hurled the wooden board as far away from her as she could, grunting with the effort. Fumbling with the drawstring, she reached into the pouch. Her shaking fingers closed on dozens of small, round, polished pieces of glass. She threw them into the distance as well, tears pouring in stony silence down her face. Then she collapsed against the strong side of the Dragon, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook.

He said nothing to try to comfort her; he knew well enough that nothing would. Time stretched endlessly, the pain not subsiding, the memories raw and fresh. She did not have many of them; the time a Bai-sha servant girl and the heir of the Clan could steal together was limited. Each memory was precious. Each touch, each word, from her first startled encounter with him as their eyes locked at a feast to those ecstatic yet horrifying last moments together, from their whispered conversations and dreams of dragons and shadowed other lives—

Something soft and dark as a shadow brushed her mind.
Yes, that’s right. Think of your Lorekeeper. What did he tell you?

Kevla gasped. The bittersweet memories shattered like a glass goblet falling upon stone. The Emperor was in her thoughts, crawling and scratching like a mouse in the granaries, digging busily for what he wanted to know—

“Don’t let him in, Kevla!” cried the Dragon, startling her out of her stunned horror. “Think of something useless to him! Quickly, tell me how you would treat an insect sting!”

“Rub it with garlic, and then apply a white clay poultice.” The mundane information calmed her, and she felt the mental probing lessen slightly.

“Good, good. How would you prepare
eusho?
”

Kevla dutifully recited the elaborate steps that went into preparing the hot, bitter drink.

No! I have you. You’re in
my
land now.

The attack changed. The Emperor was no longer burrowing into her mind, but her heart. She clawed between her own breasts, as if she could get to her heart and keep it safe before—

“Fire!” cried the Dragon.

Still pressing her hands on her chest, Kevla envisioned her heart surrounded by walls of flame. Warmth flooded back into her being. There was a harsh, searing pain in her temples. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, she was free, and she sucked air into her lungs in a great gasp.

She sighed deeply and slumped forward. She felt the sides of the Dragon heave with relief as well.