The Well of Darkness (2 page)

I felt a surge of protectiveness and tenderness as I held her. Protection she didn’t need; we had been through too much together for me to underestimate her toughness. But the tenderness seemed to be welcome.

Tarani was taller than most Gandalaran women, her body slim and supple from years of dancing, a little thin now from the past several days of hurried travel. I stroked her headfur with my cheek. Her body tensed; she raised her head and brought her hand up to find my face in the darkness.

I pulled her more tightly against me as we kissed. I wasn’t thinking of the night in Eddarta, or of the reasons I had turned away from her then. I wasn’t remembering her association with Molik, or her engagement to Thymas. I wasn’t even aware, consciously, of what Thymas had said just a few hours ago, right before he had left us: “She loves
you.
“

I was just holding her, and it felt good. Then she moved in my arms, stepped away, tugged at my hand. It was too dark to see her face, but I had no trouble reading the invitation.

I had the same trouble accepting it as I’d faced in Eddarta.

Tarani was two women—but she didn’t know that, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.

Whatever force had snatched Ricardo Carillo’s personality from the deck of a Mediterranean cruise ship had also brought Antonia Alderuccio, a sophisticated, worldly, and wealthy young woman with whom Ricardo had been talking. Antonia’s personality had arrived in Gandalara four years, objective time, before I had awakened in Markasset’s body:

More than the time factor was different. I had
replaced
a Gandalaran personality that had died only moments before my arrival. Tarani had been sixteen years old, and very much alive, when Antonia took up residence.

This was all deduction, based on what I knew of the disruption that had changed Tarani’s life at age sixteen, and supported by one startling piece of evidence. In Eddarta, moved by passion, Tarani had spoken my
human
name,
Ricardo.
She hadn’t heard the difference from
Rikardon
, hadn’t noticed the absence of a final consonant, characteristic of Gandalaran names for men. The realization had hit me in a shocking flash of intuition, destroying the mood between us.

Now, as then, I struggled with the conflict. Which woman attracted me, Tarani or Antonia? Could I risk telling Tarani the truth, when doing so would expose the lie which had lain between us since we met? Tarani, like the other few Gandalarans who knew I was no longer Markasset, believed that I was a “Visitor” from the ancient past of her own world, not an absolute stranger. I couldn’t discuss Antonia without introducing her to Ricardo.

Entirely aside from how she would feel about me, however, my primary question was: how would she feel about
Antonia
, the alien personality which had detected the sexual value of Tarani’s illusion skills, and had guided the virginal sixteen-year-old into a profitable, but life-marking liaison with a powerful roguelord? Tarani had been well taught by Volitar to despise any means by which one person controlled the life of another. I could only think that, if she knew about Antonia’s presence and subtle influences, she would feel manipulated, degraded, and furious.

Rejecting Tarani without giving her
any
reason wasn’t honest, or even nice—but …

“Keeshah’s restless,” I said, hanging back from her tugging. “We only have a few hours to sleep—”

She stopped, and we stood silent for a moment, barely visible to one another, our hands touching in a carefully neutral manner. At last she asked: “Will it be like this all the way to Raithskar?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said.

She released my hand. “The answer, then, is yes,” she said, impatience plain in her voice. “I do not know how it is that you can bear the continual pressure of this need, Rikardon, but I cannot. It must either be satisfied or set aside entirely. You have made that choice for us.”

“I have no choice,” I said lamely. “If I did …”

“Speak not of caring,” she snapped, then her voice softened. “Not until this—restriction which I cannot understand has left us.” An awkward silence followed. “Rest well,” she said at last, and moved away from me.

The soft whisper of cloth against cloth helped me follow her movements as she settled herself in the sand and rocked back and forth to dig out a body-shaped groove. After once more fighting and controlling the impulse to join her, I pressed out my own sleeping area.

She was right; the choice was made. And I was no happier with it than she was.

I reached out to Keeshah for comfort, and found him still restless, the odd blockage still present. For the first time since I had arrived in Gandalara, I felt lonely.

I woke up to a sense of panic. The cloud layer above us was luminous with the spreading waves of color that marked sunrise in Gandalara, and a sleek shadow wheeled overhead. Part of my mind recognized the shadow as Lonna, the large-winged bird who was Tarani’s companion, while another part rejected it as the source of the panicky feeling. That disturbance came from inside, and it wasn’t entirely my own.

*
Keeshah!
* I called. *
What is it? What
‘
s the matter?
*

I looked around for the sha’um and saw him, several yards away, looking tense and restless. His tawny fur rippled with color and muscle as he paced beneath the reddening sky.

It was an ordinary sight—usually the sha’um was ready to travel before I was, and his impatience often made itself known to my sleeping mind and awakened me. But this was far from an ordinary morning.

For one thing, Keeshah’s movement had a different character. This was no graceful, leg-stretching, wakeup kind of activity. Keeshah took only a few quick steps in any one direction before whirling to start in another. His tail whipped back and forth as he walked, now and then kicking up little puffs of sand where it lashed against the ground.

The most significant change was in the silence. There was usually a soft, growling mumbling noise, as though the huge cat were talking to himself. Often, too, through our sometimes subconscious telepathic link would flow a stream of good-natured banter of the “move it out, sleepyhead!” variety.

Both of Keeshah’s voices were missing.

It scared me.

“Rikardon!”

There was urgency in Tarani’s voice, and I forced my attention to focus on her. She was sitting up in the sand not ten feet from me. The big white bird had settled, wingtips crossed at the base of her tail, on Tarani’s outstretched leg, and was crooning softly under Tarani’s caressing hand.

“Lonna tells me that we are being followed.”

“How many?” I asked, rather sharply. Keeshah’s silence was omnipresent, a weight on my spirit. I had to struggle to control the panic that swelled within me—I couldn’t tell whether it was Keeshah’s feeling, or merely my own reaction to his oddness. “How far away are they?”

Tarani slipped into communication with the beautiful bird, using a mindlink that was only barely similar to what I shared with Keeshah. Tarani had told me that theirs was primarily an exchange of images. The bird could hold images of where to go or who to find, and remember what she saw, so that she had been useful more than once as a messenger and scout. She had also, under Tarani’s direction, saved my life in Dyskornis and helped us fight off wild vineh on our trip toward Eddarta. The few seconds Tarani communed with Lonna seemed an eternity.

“Only two men,” she said at last. “But there are six dralda with them, and they are barely two days behind us.”

“Dralda?” I repeated, groping through Markasset’s memory for the meaning of the word. I discovered that, to the young Gandalaran, it really was little more than a word. But if Markasset had never seen the creature it named, Ricardo had some association for its vague image.
Dogs
, I thought.
Wild dogs. Tarani said she formed her bond with Lonna by saving the bird from a dralda. But I’ve heard the word since then
… “Zefra!”

“What about Zefra?” Tarani asked.

“I was just remembering,” I said. “The night I met Zefra in the garden, she mentioned ‘Pylomel’s dralda’.” I smiled a little shakily, the strange unrest making it seem as if my nerve ends were remote and hard to control. “Your mother threatened to feed them my heart, if you came to harm.”

She smiled back, and I could see that the thought of her mother’s concern made her feel sad and tender. Then she shook her shoulders a bit—a gesture I had learned to associate with moving away from memory—and said: “Yes, she mentioned to me that the High Lord had managed to have some dralda trained for hunting. What puzzles me is—there are two men among the dralda, setting the pace for their travel, and yet they are amazingly close. How can that be?”

I puzzled over that for a moment, too. Keeshah could travel three times as fast as a man—that is, the Gandalaran standard of distance was a “day”, referring to the distance a man could travel in one day. Keeshah could travel a “day” in only a few hours. The measurement was based on an average, of course, but by that standard, any man-speed pursuit should be at least three days behind us, maybe four.

“If there are only two of them,” I said, “that, in itself, would give them a little extra speed. Indomel must have sent them out right after we left.” I didn’t want to mention the prerequisite to that action. When we had left Lord Hall, Zefra had laid a compulsion on Indomel, her son and——thanks to Thymas’s dagger in Pylomel’s heart——the new High Lord. For Indomel to have acted so quickly, he’d have had to throw off Zefra’s control. What had he done to Zefra then? “That still doesn’t account for their closeness,” I said. “Indomel must have picked the fastest …”

Oh, no,
I thought.

“Tarani, the men—is one of them a little guy, with almost a reddish tone to his headfur?”

She nodded. “You know him?”

“Obilin,” I said grimly. She looked blank for a second, then realization crossed her face.

“The High Guardsman whom Pylomel sent to claim Rassa,” she said, and shuddered. “Not a pleasant man.”

That
‘
s an understatement,
I thought grimly.

“He’s
the
High Guardsman,” I said. “I had to fight him to get that place in the guard, and you can bet he’s put me together with Pylomel’s death. He probably begged Indomel to let him come after me.”

“I see that he might be faster than other men,” Tarani said, “and spurred on by his pride. But the other man—”

“Wouldn’t dare
not
keep up, if you see what I mean.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Still,” I said, with a reassurance not entirely sincere, “we have a good lead, and Keeshah’s speed will increase it quickly …”

Tarani stared at me as my voice trailed off, but I turned my head away from her to stare, in turn, at Keeshah.

*Must go now,*
Keeshah had announced to me through our mindlink.

I refused to understand what he meant.

*We are ready to travel
,* I assured him hurriedly.

*
Must go alone,
* he said. *
To the Valley. Now.
*

Keeshah took a few steps away from me, his head lowered, the powerful muscles of his shoulders tense to the point of stiffness.

“Rikardon?” Tarani’s voice was far away, unimportant.

The Valley of the Sha’um—Keeshah’s birthplace. Fear crawled in my groin, coated my tongue with bitterness. Markasset had always known that Keeshah would need to return to the Valley one day. The only sha’um who left the Valley were males. They were required, for the sake of the species, to go back and mate. Sometimes they were gone for a year or so. Sometimes—my heart stopped at the thought—sometimes they never came back from the Valley.

*
Let me come with you,
* I begged.

Keeshah whirled and stalked back toward me, impatience growling in his throat. His mane rippled up around his neck; his tail whipped up a frenzy of dust behind him. The block between his mind and mine dissolved as Keeshah reached out to me, trying to make me understand. Then it was clear that he had been hiding from me only to spare me.

I caught my breath and flinched physically at the onslaught of emotion and need. I wasn’t aware of Tarani’s hand on my shoulder, her voice urging and questioning. I was in the grip of an obsession, a need far stronger than anything I had ever felt before. It was more than desire—much more.

The female who hovered, faceless, odorless, at the far range of the image which called to me was only part of the need. I longed for the cool sweetness of the forest where I had been born, for freedom from the unnatural bond to the man, for communion with my own kind, and, yes, for the challenge and the passion of the female. It was all one, and calling sweetly, imperiously, irresistably—
I had to be free of the man!

I staggered as the contact broke. For a moment I rested, rubbing my hands over my eyes to shake off the lingering touch of Keeshah’s rage. Then I stepped forward, my heart aching when the big cat backed away. But I had to touch him once more. I couldn’t let him go without saving one memory of his fur against my face, his muscles smooth and hard under my hand. He suffered my approach, and
endured
my arms around his neck for a moment, then shook himself and sidestepped.

Through the overwhelming tangle of emotions, I caught a light, flickering thought from him:
*Can’t help it. Sorry.*

*I know, Keeshah
,* I told him hurting all through my body and mind.
*Come back to me, if you can.*

*Yes.*
His mindvoice was faint, fading.
*Try.*

He stood only a few feet away from me, but Keeshah was already gone, his consciousness totally absorbed in the need that had claimed him.

It was a stranger I watched, a beautiful, dangerous animal, as Keeshah laid back his ears, tested the air, and ran westward—without looking back.

I was alone.

It didn’t matter that Tarani was near me, speaking across the vast gulf of physical space. I saw her, felt her touch, occasionally answered her questions—though usually I didn’t bother. I had a memory that she was important to me, that I cared for her. But the memory had the disreality of hallucination, the detached feeling of a dream.