Soul of Fire (23 page)

“I can’t use witch-sniffing. Not with the tigers this close to us. The use of power will call their attention. It would also give away to them our possession of the ruby. No, Princess, we’ll have to ask around, and find where your friend might have gone by description alone.”

THE PILGRIM LODGING; MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT ALARM; FINDING SOFIE

Peter woke up in a startled panic. Part of this was not
a surprise. They had fallen asleep on the floor of a pilgrim house in Benares proper. It was the safest place Peter could think of, being so full of people. While he knew that the Hindus in general had a very relaxed attitude toward all forms of weres, he also knew that the were-tigers would be shy of attacking them in the midst of other people. After all, even in India, someone as young and beautiful as Sofie being dragged off by weres would excite interest. And Peter thought—though he wasn’t sure how right he was—that these creatures did not want light shed on their doings.

So they’d bedded down in one of the guesthouses created by some philanthropic believer. It was not, as it would have been in England, an almost monastical environment of tiny rooms. There might very well be private rooms somewhere in the sprawling building, but if so, they would be for high-caste pilgrims. As foreigners and out-castes, they’d been shown into a sort of courtyard with flagstones beneath and a high roof, supported by columns. Someone had handed out what looked like blankets, though they were truly more like cloaks made of cotton, and not scrupulously clean, but he and Sofie had taken them and bedded down, side by side.

She’d fallen asleep much faster than he; he’d remained awake long into the night. He’d been hungry—though they’d eaten some sweetmeats bought from a side-of-the-road vendor—and he was afraid that hunger would bring the dragon-shift, something that was unthinkable in this crowded room, with innocents all around. The stone under his body didn’t bother him—from Spain to Italy, from Greece to Africa, he’d slept on the same or worse—but the people around him
did
bother him, due to fear of what his other form would do to them should he shift in his sleep. If only there were some way he could control himself and make himself change only when he wished, not at the command of his body’s imperatives. He turned and looked at Sofie’s sleeping face with a kind of bewildered surprise. She’d thrown the blanket halfway over her head, and in sleep her face was even more beautiful than when awake. Gone were all learned expressions, all mannerisms, leaving only the clean lines of flawless skin, the slight arch of the nose and the long black lashes resting on the skin. He wanted to trail his fingers down her jawbone, to her neck, to caress the little bit of ear that peeked from amid the wealth of black hair.

He told himself he was foolish. Very foolish. It was the infatuation of a man grown to almost middle age without having given any vent to the passions of a young man. He’d never been in love. There were women he’d admired terribly, but there had never been love as such, not even the awkward puppy love of young adolescence. And he’d never held a woman close, never felt that most basic of consolations that other men took for granted. No. But he was not other men. As a were, with an alternate—dangerous—shape, he was forever set apart from them, as doubtless in the primeval garden the serpent had been set apart from all the other animals. Which might very well explain all the business with the apple. Being set apart, unable to fit in, unable to partake of humanity, would do that to you.

Somewhere between philosophy and self-pity, he’d fallen asleep. And woke now with a feeling that something was terribly wrong. For just a moment, caught amid one of the spasmodic coughs that usually presaged his changing shape, he trembled, and tried to control his mind and body.

Deep breaths.
He drew deep, slow breaths, suppressing the need to contort and writhe and allow his flesh to change shape. Cold sweat covered him. It was always much easier to change than to fight the change. Fighting it required all his strength, all his not-inconsiderable willpower. He clenched his fists and closed his eyes tight. He felt the blood pound behind his forehead. He felt his heart already trying to shift into the much larger heart of the beast, beating, beating against the cage of his ribs, seemingly fit to break out. And he panted like a dog, and moaned, and hoped that whoever heard him thought it was just a nightmare.

He didn’t know how long he spent fighting the change. It didn’t matter. That kind of state, like the measured time of a nightmare’s scream, had no beginning and no end. At last the need to change abated, and he found himself conscious of his all-too-human limbs clenched so tightly that his leg muscles burned with cramp and his arms were folded across his torso in the position of one who died by painful means.

His throat was sore, as though he had screamed, and his eyes, still closed, pulsed with flashes of red light, as though he’d done violence to his optic nerve. Sweat covered him, the rank sweat that accompanies certain illnesses. But he was a human, and there was consolation in that. He took deep breaths, measured and slow, concentrating on them, until breathing was the center of his existence and all he could do.

At last, sure that he wouldn’t change, he opened his eyes. And saw that the place where Sofie had lain was empty. Her blanket was gone, Sofie herself was gone.

Deep breaths. Deep. Nothing alarming. Perhaps she got up to look for a place to tend a call of nature. Women do that, too, even devilishly pretty women. Or perhaps she got up for a breath of fresh air. I’m sure it’s nothing. Deep breaths.

He stood on shaky legs and made hasty passes with his free hand to secure their possessions—the bags they’d been using as pillows. Sofie’s pillow was still there, he noted, as was the one he’d used.
Just gone for a breath of fresh air. Nothing to it. Nothing at all. You must breathe, and you must not—you must
not—
change. Not in this crowded room, with so many meals on two legs around. You will not change.

Slowly, he got up. Everyone was asleep. Everyone looked calm. Nothing bad could have befallen Sofie. Oh, it was insane of her to go out anywhere on her own, without escort, but she was, after all, a creature of impulses. He thought of her on that balcony. No, Miss Sofie Warington did not understand the normal boundaries set upon life or the normal cautions imposed on a girl so young and pretty.

The thought that she might have walked in her sleep, as she’d told him she was wont to do while in England, made him frown. He must find her, the sooner the better.

Blindly, he wandered around the first floor of the shelter, which turned out to be exactly as he had anticipated. Just rooms such as the one they had bedded down in, strung together one after the other, all around a sort of central courtyard that reminded Peter of the open areas in Roman ruins throughout Italy, with tiled floor and fountains and a sort of little pool in the center, surrounded by fragrant flowers.

He tried to go up one of the staircases, but there his progress was barred, by a tall man who spoke to Peter in a rattling tongue, of which Peter understood not a word—though the intent was obvious. It was clear that as a foreigner, he could not be allowed to profane the lodging of the higher castes.

Sighing, he realized that if he couldn’t go up, neither could Sofie. And since she was not in one of the other rooms, it stood to reason that she must be in one of two places: either the central courtyard or outside.

Assuming she had gotten up and gone somewhere under her own power—and Peter very much wanted to assume that, given that her leaving had done no more than disturb his sleep and had certainly not wakened him fully—she had probably gone into the courtyard. As likely as not to get a breath of fresh air, and perhaps to look for facilities with which this house was unlikely equipped. Steeling himself, he walked through the recurved archway at the end of the sleeping room and into the night, filled with flowers and smells and the warm summer night.

The courtyard was planted so as to make it difficult to see it completely with one sweeping glance, and Peter started walking around, telling himself he was sure to bump into Sofie any step now. And he would not scold her. If she chanced to be asleep, the poor thing, what would she know of the worry she’d caused him? And at any rate, she was very young. Almost, he thought, with a start, young enough to be his daughter. And then, with a frown, he corrected himself. After all, it was not at all normal to sire children when you were eleven. But all the same, she was young enough that he would have thought her a very charming infant if he’d met her in his boarding school days. Or perhaps not a charming infant. He’d never had much patience for the mewling bundles that tended to be wet at one end or the other, and altogether full of unpleasant smells.

Realizing that his thoughts had taken a hysterical edge, and were little more than a mad scrambling away from thinking of what to do if she had truly disappeared, he scrambled past a little circle of brambles and into what was a clearing within the courtyard. And stopped. On the ground, there, under the moon, was a pile of cloth.

It can’t be anything. Nothing at all. Just some cloth. There are piles of discarded cloth here all abouts. And it means nothing. Probably one of those wretched blankets they gave us.

But the blankets were pale blue, and atop the pale blue pile, pink flashed, the color of Sofie’s sash. She’d been wearing it so long, it was dirty and crumpled.

He knelt down and felt the fabric. It was Sofie’s sash. But where was Sofie? A faint scent of her came from the pile of blankets, and Peter sighed.

He remembered her walking out of the high forest in the Himalayas. He knew next to nothing about sleepwalking. In fact, what he didn’t know about sleepwalking could fill several very erudite volumes.

More frantic, he searched everywhere in the courtyard, but he could not find her. Which left only one option—one he was loath to think on. She must have removed her sash and headed out, through the sleeping room and then outside. In fact, it might very well have been her walking past, and not her initial waking up, that had woken Peter.

Convinced now she couldn’t be in the courtyard, he took a step toward the sleeping room. But there, at the back of his mind, insidious like a dagger slipped in under the cover of a silken mantle, came the thought that the dragon would see much farther, much quicker.

He shook his head. The dragon was also hungry.
And so what?
the thought answered, bringing with it a reptilian slither that once more made him think of the serpent and the dragon.
And so what? What does
that
mean? Surely he’ll have to eat—I’ll have to eat—before the morning is through. And that being the case, I might as well do it here and now. Surely enough of my mind remains to control the beast, that I can make sure to find some food no one is guarding, something that’s neither human nor sacred. And the dragon would never hurt Sofie.

Rash, full of the urgency of the moment, he stepped behind the same hedge that hid Sofie’s blanket and sash, and undressed. Absently, he cast a spell over his clothes so no one else would see them or be able to pick them up. And then he let go of the iron will that had been keeping him human.

His body writhed and contorted. Flesh ground on flesh and the unutterable pains of transformation took him. And the dragon sprang from the courtyard, full of the intent sense of his own needs, his desire to feed. At the back of his mind, Peter reigned the dragon in, with a mental scream:
We must find Sofie. We must find Sofie
first.

Slowly, like a man turning a boat against the force of the wind, he commanded the creature’s great wings to turn, tilting and spinning in widening circles. In Peter’s own mind, like a mad refrain, the words repeated:
Where can Sofie be? Where can she have gone? Let her not be in danger!