It was the Duchess's castle in the North—many a work of fell sorcery had been accomplished behind its stark stone walls, with no one living to tell the tale. Vixen the Red, Scourge of the Night, Harrower of Hell, Doomslayer, had been here many a time before, and each time barely escaped, with Hell's own hounds snapping at her booted heels. Even the bravest freebooter would have thought hard before coming back, but Vixen had no choice. The two people she cared most about in the world—her doughty sidekick, Sister Bernadette, and Queen Gloriana's trusted adventurer-spy, the playwright Kit Marlowe—were in danger. She had to save them.
With the supernatural grace of her ninja training, Vixen scaled Castle Boleskine's outer wall. The Duchess trusted too much in the castle's terrible (and well-founded) reputation among the local peasants to bother with a regular guard other than the fierce, half-demon dogs that had the free run of the grounds after sunset.
With lithe pantherine grace Vixen sprang to the greensward below. Her sword left its scabbard in a rasping hiss and her red lips drew back in a feral smile as she heard the howl of the dogs in the distance. A little warm-up before the main event, when she would put an end to the Duchess of Darkness for once and all.
It's amazing what a little black makeup and some post-production CGI can do to tart up a Rottweiler, Vixen the Slayer thought happily.
The interior of the castle was oddly deserted. Torches burned with a weird green light, and for once the floor was blessedly free of camera tracks and electrical cables. She knew the Duchess was waiting for her somewhere up ahead, and she had to get there. If she didn't hit her marks in time, Megan would be furious with her. . . .
Vixen stopped, shaking her head in confusion. What could be wrong? She was Vixen the Red, slayer of evil and all around badass. Somewhere up ahead was Lilith Kane, the Duchess of Darkness, her sworn enemy. She hefted her sword and strode on.
The Duchess was waiting for Vixen in Boleskine's Star Chamber. The floor was composed of a single slab of meteoric iron, inlaid with a Greater Seal of Solomon and edged in Cabalistic sigils shaped and quenched in human blood. The room was hung with draperies in glowing garnet velvet, and in the center of the demonic hexagram stood the Duchess of Darkness herself, a fragile-seeming blonde in a sweeping satin gown the color of freshly spilled blood. At her side, a dark shadow to her Satanic flame, stood the reptilian Fra Diavolo, the evil Jesuit who served her nefarious ends.
"Welcome, Koroshiya. How delightful that you have joined us at last. Shall I introduce you to our other guests? But I forget—you won't need any introduction. You're among friends here—old friends," the Duchess of Darkness purred throatily.
Vixen looked around. Her friends were chained against the velvet-covered walls. Plump and perky Sister Bernadette, in her short-skirted brown nun's habit and tights—Sister B's eyes went wide when she saw Vixen, as if she wished to shout a warning but didn't dare.
Beside Bernie was the tall and slender Marlowe—Wardrobe had only been able to give him one costume change for his episode, but the teal-blue velvet doublet (re-cut from one of the ladies-in-waiting's dresses from the series premier) showed off his craggy red-headed good looks to perfection. She did wish they hadn't had to kill him off at the end of his episode, but since he'd only been dragged off to Hell by demons, there was always hope.
"Undoubtedly, you will wish to know my plan," Lilith Kane said, stepping forward into her key-light. "Behold!" she said, with a sweeping gesture.
Fra Diavolo scuttled downstage, the skirts of his black soutane swishing, to fling back the curtain at the far side of the room. Lying on a tilted table, wearing a brief white shift and nothing else, was another Vixen, identical in every respect to the original but seemingly asleep. Startled, Vixen looked down to make sure she was still her.
The Duchess laughed, a pealing laugh like silvery bells. "Surprised? I sent to Cathay for the most perfect mandrake, and from it and a drop of your blood I had the foresight to save from our last adventure I had my alchemists grow a homunculus indistinguishable from you in every degree. Soon I shall give it life, and send it forth in the world in your place, where it will undo all the good you have done in your short life and make the name of the Slayer anathema throughout Merrie England! Only two people could possibly see through this masquerade, and so I had them brought here, where their blood will give my poppet life—and seal the covenant of your doom and everlasting disgrace!"
"Oh, Jesus," Sister Bernadette muttered, sliding her hands out of the manacles.
"Line!" Marlowe shouted, looking behind Vixen.
"Effing—goddamned—amateurs!" the Duchess shouted, dropping the posh pear-shaped tones and turning away. "Christ on toast, girlie, when I was at Southland, your size-eighteen ass would have been out the gate the second time you blew your line that way."
"Hey, Zorro, you just hit 'em with your sword, right? I mean, it's not like they should expect you to talk, too—"
Vixen whirled. Standing behind her was Count Wolfgang von Blitzkrieg, Hentzau's ambassador to the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and former Eurotrash underwear model. He wove drunkenly toward her, leering sloppily.
"Leave her alone," Julie Sluice said. Vixen's former Olympic teammate was wearing her selkie costume from Episode 18, and the silver makeup glistened in the torchlight. "It isn't her fault she isn't any good. When she was on the team with me in Seoul, she always did her best. It wasn't much of a best, but . . ."
"Time is money here," Sister Bernadette said, walking forward. "How hard can it be to say 'Come, camrado, evil wakes' or whatever it is this week? For heaven's sake, Vixen, you've said it a hundred times. Just tell her she'll never get away with it, and—"
"Stop it!" Glory shouted. She threw her sword down on the stones, where it clattered ringingly. "I can't do this without a script! I don't know what to do! I'm not Vixen—I'm not even really an actress!"
"Well, we all knew that, didn't we, sweetie?" Lilith Kane vamped maliciously. She turned and began to walk briskly away, toward the back of the Star Chamber.
Glory followed her. She was angry enough to want to shake some manners into Miss High-and-Mighty Romy I-Was-A-Star-Before-You-Were-Born Blackburn, and somewhere deep inside she figured that Romy might know what was going on. The Duchess always knew what was going on—she was the one plotting all the plots, after all.
But somehow Glory didn't seem to be able to get any closer to her. She went from a walk to a run, from baffled anger to red, murderous fury, until all she could think of was getting that snooty bitch's lily-white throat between her fingers. She ran, and somehow never reached the back wall of the set, and Lilith floated on ahead, tauntingly just out of reach, her long blond hair (a wig, certainly, Romy's hair was nothing like that long) shimmering down her tight-laced red satin back beneath her lace-edged Elizabethan headpiece.
And then Glory lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of hair, and miracle of miracles, the wig held, and she snapped the Duchess back toward her like a bimbo yo-yo, panting with victory and rage.
She spun Romy around, and realized, to her horror, that the Duchess was tearing, that Lilith Kane was coming apart like a weird rubber disguise from which the contents had suddenly been removed. Suddenly Glory was alone, holding an empty dress, and the lights were going out.
"Hello?" Glory said. Her voice sounded small and frightened.
The voice seemed to come from all around her, soft yet definite. With each syllable, the world around Glory took on form, until she could see once more. She knew now that what had come before had been a dream, and that while this, too, was a dream, it was a dream of a wholly different sort—a real dream, as opposed to her mind's hermetic churning of memories and fears.
She was surrounded by stars. Beneath her feet, there was a softly glowing crystal plate a good hundred meters in diameter through which she could see more stars, though more dimly. She stood in its center, and so need have no fear of falling off, which was a good thing, because there were stars below as well as stars above, stars a thousand times brighter than anything she'd ever seen, even looking up at the sky last night from the Allimir encampment. So bright they shone in colors, unwinking and unwavering, stars all the way down to the edge of the crystal horizon and stars beyond.
There was no one else in sight.
"Ah . . . hello?" Glory said again.
"I have come to test humanity for its worthiness to be admitted into the Universal Dream," the disembodied voice said. It was cool and sexless—Glory thought of it as being female without being able to quite put her finger on any actual reason for why she thought that. Probably it reminded her a bit of a dental receptionist she'd used to know.
Glory was pleased at how well she was taking all this, all in all. It helped that she was quite certain she was asleep. On the other hand (as she belatedly remembered) she was supposed to be having an oracular dream just now.
"Erm, excuse me, but are you the, um, Oracle of Erchane?" she asked.
"I am the Dreamer of Worlds. I have come to test humanity for its worthiness to be admitted into the Universal Dream. This is your test."
"This here? Doesn't seem like much. Or what you did to the Allimir? Them having to go looking for a hero is a test for ME?" The anger that she'd felt at the dream-Romy, suicidal though it might be in this situation, came seeping back, and Glory wished she still had her sword.
"If not the Allimir, it would have been some other. These misfortunes I do not cause, nor do I need to. Hear me now if you would save the Allimir people and your own," the cool dispassionate voice commanded.
"I am the Dreamer of Worlds, and I have come to test humanity for its worthiness to be admitted into the Universal Dream. Long have I considered the case of Earth. Until I have judged humanity worthy—or otherwise—the magic of Earth is withheld from your mages; your creatures of magic are absent from your sight. Magic and creatures of magic live now only in the imagination of your peoples, but should you fail my tests, you will be denied the Universal Dream forever, and even that tiny blessing will be lost to you. You, Gloria Emmeline McArdle, are the last I will take from your world to test. Know that all before you have failed."
"Well, that's comforting, innit?" Glory muttered to herself. She looked all around, but couldn't find any particular thing that looked like a Dreamer of Worlds to glare at. "So tell me why I care about this in particular, why don't you?"
"Is it possible you do not fully understand?" the Dreamer of Worlds asked itself. "I will explain. Unless humanity passes this test, Earth will be sealed off forever from contact with all other races of the Dream—as an evolutionary dead end. All magic will be removed from Earth, and through that loss, your world and your people will dwindle away into extinction, like all failed experiments of the Master Dreamer. So choose well what you do here, Gloria McArdle."
"Wait!" Glory yelped. "You can't mean that the whole future of humanity depends on what I do here! That's stupid! What's the test? How do I pass? How do I get HOME? Come back here, you stupid pommy git!"
But there was no answer, only the slow inclination of the crystal disk beneath her feet, until she was first sliding, then falling helplessly into the sharp and merciless stars.
She floundered awake struggling and swearing, but only when she hit her head—hard—on the wall beside her did the real world of the Oracle's cavern separate itself from the terrifying fall of her dream. She sat up, running her hands over skin still sticky and clogged with the remains of yesterday's makeup. Should have had a wash in the fountain outside when you had a chance, she told herself wisely. Surreptitiously, she pulled up a corner of her T-shirt and scrubbed at her face, feeling tidier once she was done.
On the other side of the cavern there was sudden light as Belegir opened the lantern and the candle's flame rushed into light once more.
"Slayer?" he said, sounding much like any man awakened abruptly by a bellowing female.
"Okay. S'okay. I had a dream, I reckon." She rubbed her eyes, testing the memory of the dream the way you might probe a sore tooth. She'd dreamed she was standing on a dinner plate in the middle of the universe, while some invisible ABC Received type told her that the whole human race was going to live or die based on what she did here on the windy plains of Serenthodial.
Just what had been in that tea she'd drunk last night, anyway? She sighed and stretched, trying to work out the kinks that came of sleeping rough, from her body if not from her mind.
"I, too, dreamed." Belegir's voice was low. "And lo, it is morning." From the sound of things, he hadn't had a much better time of it than she had.
She kilted her blanket carefully around her waist, grabbed her jeans, and groped to her feet, feeling every muscle cry out in protest. Feeling her way over to the door, she pushed it open. It swung outward, letting the pale rosy illumination of the corridor fill the room. She ducked through the doorway and stepped down into the corridor. The smooth stone was cold beneath her bare feet. She stepped out of Belegir's line of sight and dropped the blanket, stepping into her jeans and zipping them up tight. Dressed, or at least covered, she pulled off the sweatshirt and knotted it around her waist, then began her usual morning warmup: a series of kicks, stretches, and backbends, all the while trying to get her mind to settle as well.
Kick. Kick. Step. Lunge. Turn. Bend. Her sunburn reminded her of its presence every time she flexed.
Her dream couldn't have been a true dream. Not the way Belegir understood the notion. In the first place, it was too stupid.
Kick. Bend. Turn. Twist. Reach. Twist. Bend. Kick.
In the second place, it was about Earth, and it was the Allimir who were the ones who were in trouble.
Kick. Turn. Better now. She was feeling warmed up. She fell slowly forward onto her hands, then up into a handstand—slow, still, slow—then over into a slow backflip and up. She felt a little residual stiffness, but not too much, and a longer workout should eliminate that as well.
As for the dream, it was either a really compelling nightmare, a drug-induced hallucination (just what had been in that nightcap Belegir had so thoughtfully brewed?), or an attempt of the Warmother to undermine her confidence, Glory was almost sure. Because it just didn't make sense that the fate of Earth should rest on something Glory did here, particularly when she wasn't quite sure what that might be. You couldn't pass a test when you didn't know what the test was.
She was about ready to go back inside when Belegir came out, the rest of his belongings in a neat bundle.
"We can make tea at the Pilgrim's Fountain," he said, sounding like he was hedging his bets somehow. "And make the animals ready for the journey home."
"Sure," Glory said dubiously. She'd thought there'd be more to this Oracle business than this—like maybe some answers—but it didn't seem like there were going to be any. And—it belatedly occurred to Glory—she was still here.
She didn't know what that meant, and from his face, Belegir was in no mood to be asked. She went back inside the wellspring chamber. Her things were waiting where she'd left them, but she really couldn't face the thought of getting back into the armor right now. Not without breakfast, or some of that ale that Belegir had mentioned yesterday. She shrugged, and spread out the blanket she was carrying. With a few deft motions, she folded boots, corset, bracers, slops, and sword into the blanket and rolled it up tight. It would make an awkward bundle, but not as bad as wearing it. When she'd made as neat a bundle as she could manage, she knelt by the oracular pool and quickly washed her face. She felt a faint twinge of desecration at doing so, but she really wanted to get the last of the makeup off from last night and she still felt slightly cheated by the bizarre nature of her dream. Scrubbing her face dry on her T-shirt, she scooped up several palmsful of the icy water, drank, and got to her feet. She tucked Gordon carefully into her tote-bag this time, and slung it across her shoulder before picking up her bundle. Her sneakers were in her bag, but she decided not to bother with them; the temple floor was as smooth as linoleum from here to the fountain.
Belegir was waiting patiently for her outside. She didn't know what he'd dreamed, but whatever it was, it seemed he'd taken it to heart. The hopeful optimism of yesterday was gone. Belegir had the look now of a man doing nothing but going through the motions. She guessed neither of them had dreamed anything particularly useful.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her to worry about that after breakfast. She padded after Belegir in silence, back through the jeweled labyrinth that was the Oracle of Erchane.
But when they came out on the portico at the top of the steps in the large open cavern, there were no animals gathered around the fountain. Not Kurfan. Not the three ponies. If not for the piles of droppings, and the bundles of her and Belegir's remaining provisions, there'd be no sign the animals ever had been here, either.
"This is bad," Glory said aloud. Well-worked animals simply didn't go for a wander in the middle of the night, not with water and feed available—and wasn't Kurfan's job to keep the beasts from straying?
"But what can have happened?" Belegir asked blankly.
"Trouble happened," Glory said patiently. Her hard-won American accent welled up through her voice like underground water through the rock, turning it hard and edgy. Trouble. And since that was the case, the worst thing they could do was go charging right off into it. "So be a good mage and run and get breakfast started while I get dressed. I'm not chasing horses on an empty stomach."
Belegir stared at her for a moment and began to shuffle slowly down the stairs. Glory retreated behind the pillars to strip.
She wasn't really thinking past the moment, not in so many words, precisely, but if she had been, she would have been thinking about getting the Allimir artisans to run her up a slightly more practical set of armor. Something she could still do all her backflips and walkovers in, and that might have a fighting chance of . . . something . . . but there her imagination would have faltered, because she wasn't quite sure what sort of problem she was facing, beyond the obvious (and now apparently obsolete) one of a day's horseback ride in a corset and black leather hot-pants and thigh-high boots.
So far, she had addressed the problems as they had been presented to her, and not given up. There wasn't much more than that she could do. She knew what her ultimate goal must be, but did not have even the faintest notion of how to accomplish it, or if that accomplishment were even possible. Any time she tried to step back mentally and look at the larger picture, she simply found it impossible. The situation she was in was too stupefyingly improbable to deal with in any other fashion than one step at a time.
So she would. First, she'd get dressed. Slops and corset, boots and bracers, a big sword and a heavy layer of makeup, and Vixen the Slayer was ready to ride again. She tucked her civilian clothes away in her bag, tucked Gordon carefully into the top, and skipped down the steps, braid bouncing against her back.
Belegir was waiting for the tea to boil. Without comment, he handed her a large leather mug. Without comment, Glory drained it, letting the thick chewy high-octane Allimir ale blow away the last of the cobwebs. When the mug was empty she scooped it full again from the fountain and carried that over to sit beside Belegir.
"So. What d'you reckon happened to the brumbies?" she asked companionably.
"I don't know," Belegir said miserably.
"Your world," Glory pointed out with judicious fair-mindedness. "What didn't happen to them?"
Belegir sighed, as though he were sick of answering stupid questions but couldn't think of a polite way out of it. "They did not wander further into the temple. They did not simply vanish. They did not wander back out into the forest of their own will and choice."
"And nothing bad came in and took them, because it couldn't," Glory said. "And it wasn't just some other band of Allimir, because why would they take the animals and leave the stuff?"
Belegir regarded her with grudging admiration. "And so it is something else. What?"
"We go find out." She took a sip of her water and wished for a hot breakfast, but at least there was breakfast—stale bread and apples and some dried fruit, but it filled the belly. From the look of things, they'd better find their way back to the vardos pretty soon though, or one of the two of them was going to have to develop hunting skills.
Belegir packed up everything once breakfast was done and looked at Glory. He was waiting for her to make a decision, she realized, and oddly enough, for once the thought didn't frighten her into a blue fit.
"We leave all this stuff here. Either we can come back for it, or we can't," she said with a fatalistic shrug. "Depends on what's out there."
Belegir nodded, grimly. She tucked her bag beside his baskets, and the two of them walked out of the Oracle's temple.
Almost immediately she could see the speck of daylight that indicated the cave entrance. The passage was empty. There was no sign of the animals. The sugar-fine sand underfoot was disturbed, but it didn't hold tracks well enough to tell her if something other than three ponies and a dog had crossed it recently.
This time she wasn't distracted by the murals and their teasing promise of answers to the Allimir riddle. There wouldn't be any more answer there today than there had been last night, only more questions. She concentrated on walking the stiffness out of her legs and back that had come from a long day's ride and a night of sleeping hard, stopping every ten minutes or so for some deep bends and stretches. Fortunately, the Vixen suit had always been less armor than costume, cut and gusseted to allow her the gymnastic moves that passed for characterization.
The corridor was shorter than she remembered it being. As the two of them got closer to daylight, everything about the Oracle's temple seemed to recede into the unreality of a dream, as if it hadn't quite happened, and only this was real. Glory was surprised to see that it was only an hour or so past dawn. The day seemed as if it had already been so full that it should be later than that.
She stepped cautiously out of the cave, Belegir close behind her. For a moment she saw nothing, then a flurry of movement at the foot of the steep spur-track they'd climbed last night in the dark caught her eye. Fat carrion-birds, disturbed by her sudden appearance, flapped awkwardly away from their feast, only to waddle back to it when she made no further move.
Something out there was dead, and that needed investigating.
"Stay here," Glory said in a low voice. She drew her sword.
Getting down the path was a more difficult proposition than getting up it had been, and she made it to the bottom in a controlled slide. Waving her sword like a giant steel flyswatter, she shooed the big black birds away from the body. They went, grudgingly, swearing and grumbling, eager to return.
Something had torn off its head.
Glory felt foolish angry tears prickle in the back of her eyes and fiercely willed them away. Not here. Not now. She prodded the headless body with the tip of her sword, trying to figure out what this meant. The beastie hadn't died of natural causes, or even normal ones, lacking a head as it did, unless there was something in these woods big enough to bite it off, and nothing like that had figured in Belegir's catalogue of predators of the night before. Was this Kurfan? There wasn't enough of the body left to be sure. The dirt was churned up, the earth scored by claws. She looked around, slowly, and barely choked back a scream.
It had been Kurfan. The thing that had torn the dog's head off had wedged it onto the stump of a branch. Birds had pecked out his eyes, and insects were swarming all over the head, blackening the dangling pink tongue and making the pale fur shimmer with their crawling.
Something that thought had done this. Something with hands.
She turned away and all of her breakfast came boiling up from her stomach in a rush. She bent forward and threw up.
Belegir's terrified shout interrupted her misery. Coughing and spitting, she turned around, trying not to see the impaled head as she did.
Something had come out of the forest. A monster-thing, covered in black fur but wearing clothes; its back hunched as if it were an effort for it to stand upright. It looked from Glory to Belegir, and in that flat amber gaze she caught the echo of the black wolf-dog's assessment in the village yesterday: is this prey? Is this FOOD?
And she knew what Kurfan had died trying to kill.
It was poised halfway between her and Belegir. She raised her sword. But it ignored her, turning toward Belegir, stalking him like a cat.
"Belegir—RUN!" she bawled at the top of her lungs.
But Belegir stood frozen. From fear, or because he would not lead the monster into the Oracle's temple, Glory didn't know. She only knew she had to get to Belegir before the monster did.
She reached the top of the spur-trail about the time the monster did. It was huge—a good foot taller than she was, outweighing her by at least twenty stone.
"Back off!" Glory shouted, and swung her sword as hard as she could. The flat of the blade connected with the monster's stomach with a resounding slap, and it backed up in surprise, giving her the space to step in front of it.
It bared its teeth and growled, releasing a scent like ancient sun-ripened garbage, and Glory realized with a thrill of frightened self-preservation that it wasn't going to back off, not for long. This wasn't something she could rout as easily as she could a flock of carrion-crows. She was going to have to kill it.
And there was no script in place that awarded her a guaranteed and bloodless victory.
It swatted at her and she ducked, but she wasn't sure of the countermove. This fight hadn't been choreographed in advance, so if the monster left her an opening, she didn't know how to take it. She was fighting on a steep hillside covered with slippery pine needles, and if she tried to decoy the monster to a better killing ground, there was no guarantee it would follow. It wanted Belegir more than it wanted her, or at least it seemed to.
Then she stopped thinking about things that didn't immediately matter, because it struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder, leaving deep bruising gouges down her left arm and refining all her desires down to one: to kill this thing the way it'd killed her dog.
It wasn't nearly that easy. But she did her very best. She was actually fairly good with a broadsword—and it was a real sword, forged and tempered—for the show she'd needed to be able to lift it and swing it with ease, so Bruce had taught her some katas, or whatever they were called. She knew the moves.
But the sword wasn't sharp. Why should it be, when it would never have to cut anything? And strong enough to put on a show was a far piece from being strong enough to do lethal damage with a dull piece of metal. She hurt the monster, bloodied it, did a certain amount of damage.
But not enough—and it didn't take the creature long to realize that she couldn't. It reached out, grabbing her blade in one enormous hand and squeezing until its own blood flowed between its fingers. Immobilizing the blade.
And then it hit her with its other hand.
She didn't lose consciousness. She felt a jarring shock—no pain, not then—and a sort of discontinuity, a sense of distraction as she rolled down the hillside and crashed to the bottom, lying stunned for a moment, unable to remember who she was and what she'd been doing a moment before. There was a ringing in her ears, and beyond it she could hear nothing.
When she tried to get to her feet she fell, and so she crawled, knowing she had to be somewhere other than where she was. A rush of heat roared through her body, centered in her face. Fresh sweat oozed suddenly from her skin, running into her eyes, and then the pain came, pounding hotly in time with her heartbeat, but she was already climbing back up the side of the hill.
The monster was leaning over Belegir. Her sword was lying on the ground behind it, the monster's bloody hand-print halfway up the blade.
She picked it up. She didn't think. She stepped back and took a stance, swinging the blade back over her shoulder. It wasn't a swordsman's stance, but something from the long ago summers of her life. And then she brought her bat forward, using the edge, not the flat, driving an imaginary ball past the wicket, driving the thin edge of metal into the vulnerable place where the skull met the spine in anything that walked upright, using all her anger, all her fear.
In the end, the sword in her hands was no more and no less than a long steel club. And that was enough.
The monster fell forward onto Belegir. Glory dropped the sword and grabbed the creature, dragging it off. The fur against her fingers was greasy and coarse, undeniably the creature's hairy skin, and revulsion filled her. Pain thrilled through her arm and back as though there were wires under her skin and someone was pulling on them. The monster's yellow eyes were wide and fixed, already starting to take on the glassy crystalline cast of death. She'd killed it, and with that certainty she was filled with a strange mixture of dread and glee.
She turned to Belegir and forgot those feelings utterly.
He was covered in blood. His face was bruised and torn, his robes ripped open down the front. There were deep claw-marks down his chest, and his throat was bruised. But he was breathing.
Glory moaned, deep in her throat. She knelt beside him. What should she do? What would Vixen do?
No. That wasn't any help. What would Sister Bernadette do?
Sister B would use her nursing skills to take care of the wounded, then use her detective skills to find out who'd attacked them, then explain everything to Vixen so the viewers would understand it.
"Belegir?" Glory whispered hopefully. To her vast relief, his eyelids fluttered. He tried to draw a deep breath and coughed, whimpering with pain.
"Where I come from, werewolves don't come out during the day," she said, forcing a bravado she was far from feeling. "Don't worry. It's dead. I killed it."
"One of Her creatures," Belegir whispered, and this time Glory didn't have the heart to disagree. That thing she'd killed had been evil—evil in the way that terrorists and serial killers were evil; a thing that took a personal delight in cruelty, in harm.
"I've got to get you back inside where it's safe, Bel. If that thing could of come in to the cave, I reckon it would've, so in there must be safe." Mustn't it? Please let the answer to that one be "yes." "How bad is it?"
"I can walk," the little Allimir whispered through his damaged throat.
Glory doubted it, but she knew she couldn't carry him, at least not far. She got to her feet, using her sword as a cane—everything was starting to hurt—and lifted Belegir to his feet.
The Allimir were useless in a fight, but that didn't mean they weren't brave. The guts it took for Belegir to get on his feet and stay on them without complaint made Glory feel small and ashamed. His face was grey with agony, and fresh blood welled from every wound, but he made no sound. He leaned heavily on her, and the two of them shuffled the few feet to the cave mouth.
Even that much exertion had Belegir gasping and choking for air. There was no way he could walk as far as the fountain.
"Is this safe? Belegir—is this safe?" Glory asked urgently.
"What?" he mumbled. She leaned him gently against the cool stone wall to take some of the strain off her own back and shoulders.
"Is this far enough for the Oracle's magic to protect you? Are you safe here?"
"Safe," he croaked, but she wasn't sure if he understood.
It would have to be safe enough. Because she couldn't carry him any farther, and he couldn't walk. She lowered him gently to the stone floor, placing her sword beside him—little use though it would be to him if this place wasn't safe—and took off running.
She had to get him back to the fountain. There was water there. Their supplies. Safety.
The night before on her way to the Oracle's spring, she'd passed chamber after chamber stuffed full of stored tat. What were the odds that in one of them, the cart or sledge used to bring them in was still there? And if she couldn't find one quickly, she could at least make up a travois from some of the mattresses, ropes, and blankets in the sleeping rooms. They could survive here. They might go short of food, but with all that water, they could run on scant rations a few days.
It was a long leisurely walk from the cave opening to the Pilgrims' fountain. She reached it in twenty minutes, every step jarring stars behind her eyes and making her head throb with the mother of all migraines. She stopped to drink and duck her head, rinsing the sourness from her mouth. Her shoulder was starting to stiffen, and the gashes, clotted with blood and dust, looked hot and angry even against a ripe sunburn. Her back hurt and her head and face throbbed with a dull headachy pain from the blow she had taken.
Best broker me a miracle, then, while I'm here.
"You hear that, Old Woman?" she said aloud, flipping her sopping braid back over her shoulder. It hit her back with a wet slap. "Dream-catcher, Oracle, whoever you want to be. You give us a fair shake. Or I'm climbing back up on that dinner-plate of yours and ripping your gizzard out, you nasty old bat!"
She ran up the shallow steps to the temple, something nagging at the back of her mind. Cistern. The big cisterns in the Presence chamber. You saw how far away the Wellspring was. You want to be the one carrying bucket after bucket all that way by hand? Bet they have a wagon. Have to have.
It didn't take her long, after all, to find it. There were only two sorts of places it could be: near the spring or near the cisterns, and she already knew what was stored near the spring. Near the Presence Chamber she found a series of rooms that were obvious storerooms, holding everything necessary to the life of a well-dressed Temple acolyte. One room held nothing other than several small flatbed carts of carved and polished and gilded oak. There was a swag of velvet-covered rope on the front, but Glory suspected the carts were mainly designed to be pushed. Their wheels were wood, bound with what looked suspiciously like gold. Each was designed so that two large square ashwood vats could be fitted into its bed, and the sides of the vats could be hung with golden buckets. Glory sighed and shook her head. All the treasure of El Dorado, but what she wanted was the cart to use as a gurney. She dragged one of them out of the room, and by dint of main force and using several words she hadn't known she remembered, got the cart itself into the Presence Chamber. Getting it around the narrow turn scraped the crust off her wound and got her shoulder bleeding again, and after that she left long smudgy red commas on every wall she staggered into. She wept, and swore, and howled in frustration, glad that there was no one to hear. But she got it done.
She stopped at the sleeping cubbies to load the cart up with mattresses, then hauled it out onto the portico. She looked down the long flight of stairs. No sense just giving the cart a push and letting it jounce down, when it might crash to flinders at the bottom. She sighed and backed it around, holding onto the velvet rope and preparing to use herself as a brake. The cart was all wood and heavy. Fortunately the steps were wide and shallow.
There was a tense moment near the end as the velvet rope, never designed to support the whole weight of the cart, tore free, but the cart was most of the way down the steps by that point, and all it did was bounce noisily the rest of the way down and roll gently into the middle of the floor.
Glory sighed, shaking with exhaustion and pent-up emotion, but she couldn't stop now. Belegir was counting on her.
She riffled their supplies and found the mead he'd mentioned yesterday. She took that and filled a waterskin at the fountain and added all of the blankets, loading everything on the cart, and, on inspiration, added the coil of rope that Belegir had used to lash down the pack. Then she began to push the cart through the corridor.
Across the stone floor it was fine, and across the crushed gravel as well.
When it reached the soft sand, the wheels stopped turning entirely. Pushing the cart became like pushing a sledge. If the sand had been any deeper, this might have been impossible. As it was, it was only nearly so.
She didn't stop, though the struggle was a new and particular species of hell. She desperately needed to reach Belegir, not knowing whether he was dead or alive, and she was reduced to this Tantalusian crawl. She put her head down and her shoulder down and pushed, stubbornly. Her feet slid in the sand, blurring the patterns further. Any tears she might have had left were burned away by sullen fury. And she didn't stop.
Eventually the wheels crunched across gravel, then ran free on stone once more, the lack of resistance driving her to her knees as the cart rolled fluidly away from her.
"Belegir?" Don't let him be dead he can't be dead if he's dead I'm climbing up to the top of your magic mountain and cutting your guts out whether you're real or not you poxy bitch—
But he was breathing, still, she could see it, and Glory whimpered in relief.
She grabbed the water and a blanket and hurried over to him. Moistening the edge of the blanket with the water, she dabbed carefully at his swollen blood-caked face with it, then pulled the blanket up over him.
His eyes opened slowly, then widened in fear.
"It's okay. You're safe," Glory said soothingly. "We're going to get you back inside and get you all fixed up, and everything's going to be fine. . . ." She was blowing smoke and she knew it, though she hoped Belegir didn't. She didn't know if he'd brought along whatever passed here for a first-aid kit, but she did know she didn't know how to use it if he had. Without Belegir, she couldn't find the rest of the Allimir again, either, and she doubted any of them would come looking for them when they didn't make their rendezvous.
She raised Belegir carefully to a half-sitting position and offered him the waterskin. He drank, thirstily, and when he started coughing again, there wasn't as much blood as there had been before. She wanted to be hopeful, but she felt too sick and terrified to think straight. She was exhausted with pain, and wanted nothing more than to crawl into a corner and sleep until the world went away.
"I wasn't sure—" Belegir whispered.
"Had to go whistle up a taxi," Glory answered in Vixen's flat American drawl. "Brought the mead back with me. Figure with a bellyful of that, you won't be in a position to complain about my driving."
Belegir smiled, painfully. The monster had hit him in the face and by now the bruises had the time to ripen; his nose and one eye were purple and swollen, distorting his face to unrecognizability. His lip was split, puffy and blackened. "Slayer, what then?" he asked.
Glory smiled, even though it hurt. "Then we figure out who sent tall dark and hairy. And I go explain to them why they mustn't do things like that, I reckon."
Belegir seemed to believe her—which was more than Glory did, if the entire truth be told—and when she brought him the mead, he drank until the skin was nearly empty.
"I will sleep now," he whispered.
"I hope," Glory muttered, easing him down again. Getting him into the cart wasn't going to be a picnic for either of them, and she didn't even want to think about the return trip.
She waited, kneeling beside Belegir, until she judged he was about as relaxed as he was ever going to be. Then she moved the cart as close to him as she could, remembering to turn it around so it was facing the way it would need to go. She stretched, limbering up as much as she dared, and squatted beside Belegir. She got an arm beneath his shoulders and one under his thighs, pulling him gently toward her.
I hope he isn't too broken up inside. I hope his ribs aren't cracked and one doesn't go into a lung. I hope I don't blow a disk or anything else I'm going to need.
Then she stood up, pulling him with her in a dead lift.
The world went white, and she couldn't breathe. She hugged him tightly against her, terrified of dropping him to the hard stone floor, of falling. Pain snaked down her spine and into her legs, wrapped her skull in a hot crown of barbed wire.
He gasped and choked, clawing weakly at her chest with the arm that wasn't pinned against her. She walked—tiny, staggering baby steps—toward the cart, Belegir cradled in her arms. She laid him down on the mattresses, leaning forward to do it and feeling every muscle she possessed tremble and scream. His legs dangled over the end, but only by an inch or two. Not enough to count.
"That's it. That's all. That's the worst, I promise. No more. No more pain. Belegir, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, mate. This is my fault."
"Cinnas said—" His voice was very faint, almost impossible to hear. She leaned over. "Cinnas said . . . there was a glory in war. The worst . . . outweighed the best, but . . . without war, there were no heroes." His eyes closed again.
"Some hero," Glory muttered, in an angry shaken whisper. Her eyes stung with tears, but she was too tired to cry. She covered Belegir with three of the blankets and used a fourth to make a pillow for his head. The cart was facing the temple. All she had to do now was get it there.
She glanced back at the cave opening. That thing—safely dead—was still out there.
What would Sister Bernadette do?
She'd go look for clues. There was nothing Glory could do for Belegir just now. And he deserved a bit of a breathing space before she started jouncing him back toward the fountain.
She took a deep breath and another careful stretch, and absently scrubbed at the blood trickling down her arm where the monster's claws had gashed her. It hurt and itched at the same time—a good trick, that. She stopped and picked up her sword, and cautiously headed back outside.
The monster was still lying there, looking horribly real in the bright light of full day.
Crows had already been at the body, pecking and digging, and there was a black trail of insects swarming across the pine needles toward this feast of broken meats. Glory shuddered all over, but by now she was far beyond simple squeamishness. She advanced on the creature, waving and shouting hoarsely to displace the crows. At least now she could get a good long look at what she'd killed.
A good seven feet tall and muscled like a Russian weight-lifter. Covered with greasy, rank, greyish-black fur, but wearing clothes like a person—a vest and a pair of knee-length breeches, both of plain leather, dirty and stained and worn in patches. The skin on its palms and the soles of its feet was black, calloused to grey in places. It had long curved doglike nails, though its hands and feet were human-shaped, and the nails on its hands were pointed and sharp, as if they'd been filed. It had an inhuman head, more wolflike than ursine, but with a bear's short muzzle. It had the pointed ears of a wolf, though, set wide at the edges of the high-domed skull, giving it a gnomish aspect. Its teeth were long and yellow—a carnivore's teeth, designed to tear and rend, and gulp dinner down in large steaming chunks.
It wasn't something from the murals. It wasn't anything Belegir had described, or known to expect. It had killed Kurfan. It had turned its back on her, even though she had a sword, to go for the Allimir mage, as though Belegir represented the greater threat. Had it waited for them to come out, or had that been a coincidence? Why had the animals come out at all? Belegir'd said they wouldn't, and they had.
Too many questions, and not enough answers.
She didn't really want to touch it, but she knew she didn't have a lot of choice. She was looking for clues.
She knelt beside the body, gritting her teeth, and lifted the edge of the leather vest. Nothing there. No pockets, nothing concealed.
But in the fur on the chest, a glint of bluish light.
She started to reach for it and thought better of it, pulling one of her Lucite "rowan" stakes from its sheath on her boot to poke the dead monster's chest with. When she did, she found it was wearing a pendant around its neck, a piece of oval glass about as long as her thumb that glowed with its own cerulean light. There was a hole bored through the top, and a leather cord ran through that. She used the stake to tease the pendant off over the creature's head, being careful not to touch the pendant itself. She might not be from around here, but by now she knew magic when she saw it. Only all the Allimir magic she'd seen was purple, so what was this aquamarine stuff?
She dumped the pendant into the pine needles and was about to turn back to the body when she saw motion out of the corner of her eye.
Slowly—you could mistake it for the settling/sliding any object would do on a slippery slope, but it was more than that—the pendant was sliding away, like a needle being pulled by a powerful magnet.
"God's Teeth!" Glory gasped. In one smooth (and well-practiced for the cameras) motion, she hammered the resin stake in her hand down into the dirt, skewering the knotted leather cord and trapping the glowing pendant.
"I am not cut out for this, I am so not cut out for this!" she groaned aloud. What should she do now? Sister Bernadette would sprinkle the blasphemous thing with holy water and say a few prayers, but Sister Bernie wasn't here, and Anne-Marie Campbell wasn't a real Catholic anyway (nor, for that matter, was Glory), so that was no help. She watched in horrified disgust as the pendant slowly squirmed to the end of its tether and strained southward helplessly, then turned back to the monster's body.
What Glory did know was that she couldn't leave something like this lying around loose, but it would take her a while to come up with the proper thing to do. Meanwhile, there were other chores to finish. She went on searching the body.
No pockets in the leather knickers either, and nothing under the leather except more monster. She couldn't just leave the body lying in front of the Oracle's cave like an invitation to every bug and carrion-crow in the forest, either. She was going to have to move it. Somehow. Glory sighed and got to her feet, staggering just a bit with weariness. It wasn't much past ten a.m., judging by the position of the sun, and it had already been a very full day.
She brushed herself off thoroughly, feeling imaginary and not-so-imaginary bugs crawling all over her, then used the tip of her sword to prod the monster's body over the edge of the slope. It rolled a good distance, but she'd rather have it where she couldn't see it. The heavy carpet of fallen pine needles that lay everywhere on the ground should make it easy for her to drag it at least a few yards, providing she could shift it at all.
There's always work in the Land of Erchanen for Vixen the Slayer, she told herself with gallows humor.
Before she followed the body down, she dug up a few handfuls of earth and used it to scrub her sword-blade as clean as she could, then slipped the sword into its shoulder-sheath again. This time, the practiced flourish took her three tries to achieve; her hands shook, and every muscle ached and protested, sending shooting aches down her arms and back. Then she went down the hill again.
Seeing Kurfan's ruined head again made her throat ache with pity. The poor beast had done his very best for them, and died a hero's death. She went to the monster and stripped off its leather vest, then used it to lift Kurfan's head off the stump of the branch and wrap it tenderly.
She took the dog's head and set it on the monster's chest. Let the monster be Kurfan's honor-guard across the Rainbow Bridge. That done, she dragged the head and the body as far into the woods as she could, a hundred meters or so off the edge of the trail. Bigger things than birds would find both of them soon, and in a day or two everything would be reduced to anonymous bones. It was the best she could do.
She stood for a moment among the pines, working up the gravel to go back up the trail and start the long business of getting the cart holding Belegir down the corridor, when she became aware of a peculiarly familiar odor.
Smoke. Burning meat. And in this time and place, not a good smell.
Investigate? With Belegir hurt, she didn't know how bad, and only her to care for him, and herself hurting? Not one of her brighter notions, even if it were an inevitable scriptwriter's gambit.
But if she didn't, if she did the sensible Normal Person thing and turned away, she might be leaving a whole pack of monsters at her back to ambush the two of them at leisure. And she didn't know for certain that the monsters couldn't go into the Oracle cave. She only knew that she hadn't seen this one inside.
She sighed, sniffing smoke. She couldn't afford to ignore it. But the morning had shown her that she wasn't really equipped to fight monsters, either, at least not excellently. So she'd just go see if this was something really close—and by the smell, it wasn't far—and then run off and hide. Quickly. And maybe a miracle would occur and this wouldn't turn out to be some new problem after all. Maybe it was a rescue party.
She checked the direction of the wind, and backtrailed the smoke as quietly as she could, moving through the forest. The smoke thickened the closer she got, until she was walking through low-roiling clouds of it thick enough to make her stifle a cough, and soon enough she saw why.
Somebody had left dinner on while they nipped down to the pub and never came back. And now dinner was burning.
She stopped, hidden behind a tree, and looked carefully over the scene, searching for trouble. Vixen would have charged right in with a battle-yell, but Vixen had a nice sharp sword and no hostages to fortune. And in fact, Glory realized with an unfamiliar pang of insight, Vixen had never played for stakes this high. If Vixen failed, if Vixen lost, there were always others to take her place in the battle against the Darkness. In this time, in this place, there was no one else to take up the fight. There was only Glory, and because that was so, Glory could not afford to take chances. And so she studied the situation before her very carefully.
It was a camp, one that had the look of long-usage. The fire-pit was well-dug, ringed and lined with large stones. The camp also had the smell of long-usage, the strongly ammoniac stench of something big that liked to mark its territory.
Two of the Allimir ponies were there, forelegs hobbled, and tied, for good measure, to a large log by nooses of coarsely-braided leather around their necks. They looked concerned, but not distressed enough to be making serious attempts at escape.
By the look of things, the third Allimir pony was the source of the smoke. A large portion of some good-sized beast had been spitted and left to roast over the fire, and when the fire's owner hadn't come back, the meat had begun to burn.
Gazing around, she sighted the rest of the butchered pony, wrapped in its hide, hanging in a tree out of the reach of other predators. The pony's head was jammed between two branches, just as Kurfan's had been, and now that she looked for them, she saw that most of the trees in the area were decorated with clean-picked skulls, big and little. The monster had been living here for quite some time. There was nothing much to the camp but the firepit and the horses—no bedding, no other food or drink. Just skulls, meat, and soon-to-be-meat.
And if she wanted the surviving ponies back she'd better work quickly, and hope the dead monster didn't have mates sharing its camp with it.
She went over to the spit, and heaved the joint off the fire. It must be twenty pounds of meat, maybe more. The fire was on its way to being a good bed of coals, and she looked around for something to smother it with, then gave up. It would burn itself out safely eventually. There was a large rusty iron blade beside the firepit that the monster must have used to chop firewood and butcher its meat. She picked it up and went over to the ponies.
"Now I'm going to say soothing things to you," she said to them, "and you're going to repay me by not kicking me to bits or bolting into the next county, right? It's just as well you're none too bright, or seeing your mate served up as the blue plate special here'd be in a fair way to making you pretty nervy. But you're completely oblivious, hey?" She held out her hand, and gently stroked each pony's muzzle in turn. The animals nosed at her hopefully.
"Well, let's get you out of here." I hope.
The hobbles were a simple loop-and-toggle arrangement of braided leather, easy enough to undo if you had thumbs. She shook them free, then used the heavy chopper in her hand to cut the braided leather ropes where they looped around the log. Dropping the machete, she grabbed the trailing ends and led the horses away as quickly as she dared.
The ponies followed her willingly enough, apparently on the theory she was going to feed them. Nothing followed them, but by the time the Oracle cave mouth was in sight again, Glory was so filled with unreasoning fear she could barely force herself to move forward. Only sheer luck had gotten her through that little adventure alive. She could not imagine what bold spirit of idiocy had impelled her to go wandering through the forest in search of freelance ogres to slay: if she had managed to find one, she'd be dead now. Tripping over the two surviving horses, and rescuing them, was such a stroke of undeserved good fortune that she knew it would have to be paid for with even more terrible future horrors.
She was moving by sheer will alone by the time she reached the cave entry. As before, the horses hurried to enter the narrow cut in the rock.
She dropped their leads, letting them forge on ahead, the blue flash in the dirt reminding her of something she'd managed to forget, as rattled and shell-shocked as she'd been.
The wolf-man's talisman. It was still there, still straining to get to . . . something.
She picked it up—carefully—by the end of the cord, and tucked her faux-rowan stake carefully away in its boot-sheath. As the jewel swung from her fingers, it was easy to pretend that it had never exhibited that strange pseudo-life.
But she still wasn't going to touch it. Or let it touch her.
She sighed wearily and followed the horses into the cave. In the doorway, she felt a tug. She looked down at her hand. The jewel was hanging straight sideways, as though there was some force keeping it from entering the Oracle cave.
Glory pulled. There was a weak pop, as though someone had put a lightbulb under a pillow and stepped on it. The gem came through, its light fading away.
So much for finding anything out about what it is or where it came from, I reckon, she thought sourly.
Glory shook her head. Some days were like that—just one damned thing after another. Now she supposed the thing was useless from a forensic standpoint.
The ponies were wandering up the corridor in a leisurely but determined fashion. Glory ran after them and grabbed the trailing lead-ropes—dropping the pendant in the process—and led them firmly back to the cart. After she'd gone to all the trouble of getting them back, she had no intention of losing them again.
Belegir was conscious again when she got there.
" 'Lo, Bel," Glory said. "How's tricks?"
He tried to smile, and winced instead. "Water," he whispered.
She knotted the two lead-ropes together and hooked her arm through them, then got the waterskin for Belegir and held it for him as he drank. His color was better now.
"This is one of the lustral cars," he said, in a faint voice.
"Had to put you in something."
"And you've brought the horses."
"Two of them. Monster killed the other." She took back the waterskin and drank thirstily. The water was tepid and tasted faintly of leather. It was delicious.
Glory lowered the waterskin suspiciously. "For?"
"I doubted you. When the Oracle spoke to me—"
"Well, you don't have to believe everything you read in the newspapers," Glory said hastily. If the Oracle had told Belegir she was going to fail, she really didn't want to hear it. Not when she was starting to believe in the lot of them: the Oracle, the Warmother, maybe even in the Dreamer of Worlds. "We heroes have a way of coming through in the backstretch, y'know. It isn't over till it's over. Now all we have to do," she said with a sigh, "is get you back to the fountain, and take stock."
The ponies tugged at the lead again. Probably they were thirsty, and could smell the water. Too bad she couldn't hitch them to the cart. That would solve several problems at once.
"Wait here," she told the surprised Allimir mage. "I'll be right back. No worries." She took her sword out of its sheath and laid it in the cart with Belegir. It weighed close to four pounds, and by now she felt every extra ounce.
"No worries," Belegir echoed, a smile in his voice.
It took a bit more doing than before to get a leg up over the back of one of the ponies—the beasts felt they'd been ill-done-by, and wanted everyone to know it—but she managed. It took very little urging to get the two of them moving toward the fountain, still linked together by the awkwardly tied braided leather rope. All she had to do was hang on.
When they got there, the ponies headed straight for the fountain. Glory slid off, and staggered over toward the supplies.
There was, as she'd hoped, more grain with the supplies, and several more of the compressed fruit cakes. She took some of each to use as lures while the ponies occupied themselves at the fountain, wolfed a fruit cake down herself, and turned her attention to the packsaddle. It was a simple device: a thick sheepskin pad, two cinches, a light framework of curved ash spokes to hold a pack in place. She didn't have a horse collar, and the cart didn't have any kind of hitching tree, but if she could get one of the ponies strapped into this, she bet she could use pony-power to pull the cart back here.
She went over to the fountain and pulled the horses away from the water—she didn't know how much water was too much, but they'd get another crack at it soon—and began the ticklish process of getting one of the ponies buckled into the packsaddle. She didn't even know if Marchiel was one of the two survivors, or if this animal had ever done anything like this before—but she managed. She did know that however tight she thought the cinches were now, she'd have to tighten them again later. She tossed the two saddle-pads up onto its back and added the coiled leather reins that the Allimir favored, and the basket filled with equine bribes. She wasn't going to bother to try to ride the other horse back, but all that leather should come in handy. Then she led the animals back down the corridor one more time.
Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. Her head hurt, and the gash on her shoulder was hot and swollen now to the touch. Sleep had rarely seemed so desirable. But short term temporary conditional victory was nearly within her grasp.
She used one of the saddle-pads to make a chest-pad for her designated carthorse, and ran a length of the rope over that as well. Then, if nothing broke, if the pony didn't kick the whole arrangement to flinders, she'd just re-invented the horse-drawn cart. She untied the two ropes, and lashed its mate to the back of the cart, hoping the beasts were still as docile and gregarious as they'd seemed the day before. Belegir was asleep again, which was probably the best possible thing, all things considered.
"Come on," she said, taking a handful of mane in one hand and holding out a palmful of grain in the other.
The pony started, and stopped when it felt the unfamiliar pull of the cart and heard the noise behind it. Started again at Glory's urging, trying to turn to look behind it. After a few minutes of that, she got the inspiration of bringing the second animal up and tying it to the packsaddle instead of the cart. Finally, after an eternity of coaxing, both ponies moved forward, and the cart followed. And she wasn't the one dragging it.
Though short, it was not a journey she would care to repeat.
There were probably a dozen useful things she ought to have done, once she finally got the cart to the fountain, but she didn't do any of them. She got the makeshift harness off the ponies and watered them again, then tied them up to the cart once more so they didn't either wander off or go rummaging through the supplies, giving them a bit of grain to sweeten the deal.
Belegir was asleep again, or at least unconscious. His breathing sounded steady, but his skin was hot. She wasn't sure whether it was a fever, or if it was normal with the Allimir—it wasn't like she'd spent a lot of time feeling up the little people before the balloon went up. Either way, there wasn't much she could do, and right now she was so tired she was stupid.
She filled all the waterskins, and had a big mug of water with a splash of ale in it, then she squirmed out of her costume again, sopped her T-shirt in the fountain, and used it to give herself a nonce-bath all over, scrubbing until her skin (fishbelly here, sunburned and starting to peel there, bruised and bloody elsewhere) felt a little cleaner. It wasn't enough of a bath to scrub away the smells and memories of the morning, or the feel of the monster's fur on her hands, or the way it had looked at her, but it was all she could do. Then she laid her T-shirt over the side of the fountain to dry, pulled on her (by now rather grubby) jeans and sweatshirt, got Gordon out of her bag, and curled up with her back to the fountain and her stuffed elephant in her arms, trying to summon up the strength to go up those stairs one more damn time and look for something useful. Clothes, or supplies. Something to keep them alive.
She should have brought the butchered horse with them. Meat was meat. She ought to go back for it now. In a little. When it was safe to leave Belegir. She would. In a little . . .
She woke from a confused dream of a surreal courtroom and a stern justice in wig and robes thundering down sentence upon her—or Vixen, she wasn't sure—and was unable, for a moment, to remember where she was. Then it came swirling back to her with dizzying force. The Allimir. The Oracle temple. The Warmother, and her furry little friends.
Groaning, she got to her feet and stretched, feeling the kinks and knots go off like a string of firecrackers along her back and limbs. Stiff and sore, and the side of her face ached like a broken tooth.
Belegir was awake, and trying to get out of bed.
"What do you think you're doing?" Glory snapped, hurrying over to him. She put an arm around his back and helped him sit up. That brought on another spate of coughing, and more fresh blood. She wiped his face with the edge of the blanket.
The monster had hit him in the face to knock him down, and ripped open his robes, leaving deep gashes in his chest, but what it had mainly been doing, from the look of things, was strangling him, fortunately for Belegir.
"I need . . . to get up," Belegir gasped, blushing.
"Oh. Oh." This might be Middle Earth, but the human body was no respecter of crises. Glory thought quickly. "No you don't. You wait right here. And if you move while I'm gone, I'm going to come back and make you wish you hadn't. You got that?" she said fiercely.
"Yes," Belegir said faintly, holding on to the edge of the cart.
When she was sure that he could stay where he was put, Glory left him, moving faster than she really wanted to. Back up the steps of the temple, back to the cart room to where the little golden buckets were.
"Here," she said when she got back. "Use this."
Belegir looked at her, horrified.
"Look. I don't know where the latrines are in this place, but I do know you can't walk there. Erchane will cut you a break. We'll throw it out afterward, okay? And I won't look."
Belegir managed a weak smile. "Cinnas warned us about heroes," he said, reaching for the golden bucket.
When he was finished she took the bucket and set it down beneath the cart. "Can you stand, do you reckon?" she asked. "You ought to get those tatters off. There's some robes and things up there. Thought I'd do a bit of scrounging, for new clothes and bandages and suchlike. You could do with a new outfit."
"My mage-robes," Belegir whispered sadly. "Yes, Slayer, you are right. And . . . I think I can stand." Carefully she lowered him to his feet and peeled him out of the filthy and tattered mage-robes and his tall felt boots, discovering in passing that Allimir mages were pink and hairless all over. She didn't like the angry look of the gashes on his chest—God knew what that monster'd had under its fingernails—and tried not to think about her own wound. Afterward, she rearranged the mattresses to keep him elevated—better than lying flat if there were something wrong with his lungs—and helped Belegir back into the cart, covering him up warmly with the blankets.
"Belegir, what do your folk do when someone gets hurt?" she asked, hoping her question sounded idle.
"We call for the healers, of course—or, if it is not a great injury, for the herb-doctors," Belegir said slowly. He looked at her shoulder—blood had seeped through the grey sweatshirt fabric—and sighed. "I am not a healer."
"You need a healer. I was wondering . . . do you reckon . . . do you think the Oracle's water would help? If we poured it on you?" Glory asked.
"By Erchane's Will," Belegir said listlessly. Even the short conversation had tired him, though he managed to rally a bit. "But Slayer, please . . . use a different bucket."
She grinned. "No worries. You just get some rest."
She put one of the full waterskins in the cart with easy reach, and tucked Gordon up beside him—she didn't know why, it just made her feel better. When she was sure he was asleep, she eased the bucket out from under the cart and looked inside. As she'd feared, there were dark threads of blood mixed in with the urine.
This is not good. This is so not good.
But there was nothing she could do about it.
She took the bucket to the far end of the cavern and dumped it on the floor, then sluiced down the spot with clear water from one of the waterskins—piss-poor hygiene (to coin a phrase), but the best she could manage. Then she emptied out her gym-bag and her purse, and took a quick inventory.
Logo flashlight (reasonably useless). Cigarette lighter (wonder of wonder and miracle of miracles—hot tea later!) Gordon. A copy of the script for the MTV special (useless unless you wanted kindling). Her sneakers (she stopped to put them on). Her purse: wallet, with her passport, Melbourne drivers license, Access card, and a lot of funny-looking American currency. Tissues. Comb. Lashings of makeup. Hair-pins and a couple of ribbons.
Not quite a miracle drug, but it could reduce a fever and cut minor aches and pains.
She'd worry about that later. She emptied the tote, stuffed everything she could into her purse and piled the rest beside it, and slung the empty tote over her shoulder in case she found something she wanted to carry back. Ready to go.
But something made her hesitate, and finally she came back and picked up her sword.
She wasn't sure why—there was nothing here in the temple that could harm her—but by now she'd learned to trust her hunches. In the here and now, they were all she had to go on, and so far, they were working about as well as anything else.
Then back up the stairs again—she'd lost count of how many times today that made—with all the muscles in her calves and back screaming a chorus of protest.
Her first stop was the sleeping rooms, where she grabbed a couple of mattresses to make her bed for tonight and carted them back to the top of the stairs. Next, the robing room, where she added an armful of shapeless fluffy white wool robes. They'd give Belegir a new frock, and the rest could be used for bandages, and what she wouldn't give for a pair of scissors, or even a sharp knife, right now.
The easy parts done, she grabbed one of the golden buckets, and wandered through the rest of the Temple, looking for anything useful. Unfortunately, anything useful to two bushwhacked adventurers was something of use to embattled fleeing refugees as well, and she didn't really have the time to turn the lumber rooms inside out, or the mother wit to recognize something clandestinely useful when she saw it. She saw large amounts of gold and silver Objects; paintings and tapestries, porcelain and glassware, books and scrolls; but nothing that was offhand valuable in the current situation. And she didn't really dare wander all that far from the main drag, not really. It would be too easy for her to get lost in a vast underground Temple of unknown size, and then where would they be? Bad enough that they were going to be starving soon enough. Her stomach was already rumbling, reminding her that one handful of dried fruit in about two days and a breakfast that went by twice in under an hour was not the equivalent of three squares, and no chance Belegir was going to be able to ride out of here any time soon, not with him pissing blood the way he was.
If it isn't one damn thing it's another.
Giving up on the side rooms—Allan Quartermain might have had a field day here, but he would have come with a pack full of food—she headed for the Oracle's wellspring, sword in one hand, bucket in the other. Best get the water and head back.
Everything was just as she'd left it. It was only a few hours ago that she and Belegir had woken up here after an eventful but useless night, but it seemed like that had been another lifetime. And somewhere along the way between then and now, almost insensibly, she'd developed a Plan.
Belegir said the Warmother was on the top of Elboroth-Haden—or at least that She had been. Glory was going to go see. And then she was going to kick the bitch's ass from here to breakfast. She was tired. She was pissed. And she was fed up with oracular bitches coming along and telling her she was some kind of test case and not telling her what they meant by it.
All she had to do was get herself and Belegir out of this mess alive, first.
Glory removed the bar and opened the low door to the Oracle's spring.
The cavern was still dark, and cold rolled out of the little room like the breath of the Earth itself. Glory shuddered, unaccountably reluctant to go in. But nothing bad had happened to her in there before, and Belegir said the water might help. Probably do him as much good as the aspirin, any old how. She pushed the door open wide, propping the bar and her sword against it just in case, and went in.
She knelt down at the edge of the spring. It seemed like a good time for a prayer, but Glory wasn't sure who she ought to be praying to. She'd never been a very religious person back home—she'd always felt that if God tended to His business, she'd tend to hers. Prayers and bargains always seemed a little like cheating somehow, and besides, Erchane wasn't her god.
She dipped the bucket into the spring. The water was numbingly cold. Remembering how Belegir had filled the chalice the night before, Glory plunged the bucket in as deep as she could manage, and held it there for a minute.
"All right, you," she said aloud. "Belegir's always been straight with you. He stood by you even when it didn't look like you were paying much attention. Now it's your turn to do something for him. That's all."
She felt a little silly once she'd said it, but there was no way to take the words back. She lifted the bucket out of the water—it was much heavier now—and set it carefully by the side of the spring.
And just in case there was something in Belegir's belief that the spring could do something about the infection, she pulled off her sweatshirt, unsticking it gently from her shoulder, scooped up several handfuls of the water, and washed out her own gashes thoroughly, pinching and prodding until they bled freely again. The cold made her shoulder feel better, if nothing else. She also washed her face, and rinsed the blood-spot out of the shirt as best she could. Going to have a pretty bruise in the morning, if the heat on that cheek is anything to go by.
She got to her feet, pulled the damp sweatshirt back on, picked up the bucket, and left the grotto, collecting her sword on the way. She realized she was going to have to set something down to bar the door again—not that it was really necessary, but it was the way she'd found it, so it was the way she'd leave it—when she realized that something had changed.
The door to the armory was open again, the violet light flooding out of it as if it were a high-end designer boutique on the Bois de Expensive.
She knew they'd closed it the last time they'd been down here.
She was pretty sure it'd been closed when she'd gone in to the Wellspring just now.
"God's Teeth," Glory groaned tiredly, setting the bucket down again. Cinnas' gods-be-damned Warmothering sword was in there, with all its freight of can-be-carried-by-the-One-True-Hero and all that happy hoo-hah.
Sharp enough that if she'd been carrying it this morning, Belegir need never have gotten hurt at all. She could have cut the monster up like a breakfast egg, made it bleed, ruined it with a blow or two, enough to take it out fast and sloppy. Nobody hurt. Nobody dying by inches, and her with no way to help.
She set down her sword, closed the door to the Oracle spring, and picked up her sword again, then walked into the armory, giving the floating glowing sword a wide berth.
She might as well look around here for something useful before getting herself into trouble meddling with magic. Fortunately, she found something, which improved her temper a bit. On a table in the back, there was what was obviously a maintenance kit of some sort, picks and rasps laid out on a chamois square, including several small hooked knives, sharpened on the inner side, for shortening the straps that held armor in place. The leather straps were nowhere in sight but the knives were still sharp, and there was a small stoppered pot of what was obviously leather cream—Belegir had said this stuff hadn't been used since the Time of Legend, but she bet someone had still got the job of cleaning it regularly, back when the Oracle Temple was full of Acolytes. She worried the cork out and stuck a finger in it, sniffing, smelling beeswax and lanolin. What would do for leather would likely do for skin as well. She added both knives and leather dressing to her bag, and the chamois square as well, then returned to the hovering wizard's blade.
Unless she dragged the table over, she couldn't climb up to it, and even if she did, there was no guarantee she could pry it loose from the air. Magic, Glory told herself sagely, on the basis of no information at all, was funny that way. And if the blade was as sharp as it looked, she didn't want to grab the end she could reach.
She reached up with her own sword and prodded at the other blade tentatively. It didn't even wobble, but the sound the two blades made when they connected was like hitting a tuning fork.
She winced, staggering back from the high sweet ringing. It faded quickly, and Glory had the odd feeling that Cinnas' sword was laughing at her. In a fond paternal way, but laughing at her nonetheless.
"I am not amused," she said aloud.
She couldn't knock it down, she couldn't yank it down, what did that leave?
She looked down at the sword-blade-shaped slot in the stone on the floor, and then at the sword in the air, and then at the one in her hand.
They say King Arthur got his way by pulling a sword OUT of the stone, but he was a Pom. Let's see if things go by opposites.
She flipped her sword up and dropped it, point-first, into the slot in the stone.
It had been quiet before, but suddenly it was as if a sound she'd gotten used to hearing had suddenly ceased. She jumped back with a startled yelp as The Sword of Cinnas fell down out of the air like a startled rock and clattered on the floor, bouncing and ringing on the stone floor like a crowbar flung from a speeding car.
When it was lying perfectly still, she approached it warily. The bright neon glow had faded, though the jewels set in the hilt were still rather bright, but the whole thing still looked weird as hell. Eldritch, that was the word. The sword looked eldritch.
She went back over to her prop-sword, and gave it an experimental tug, but it was now welded fast to the stone. She nodded, obscurely satisfied. Give a sword to get a sword. It made sense. She only hoped that the next bright laddie who came along needing a good blade would appreciate what she was leaving for him, and would have the mother wit to be able to winkle it out of the rock. But that wasn't her problem.
The armory was darker now, the background glow slowly fading, as if the Temple itself were telling her she had no more business in this room. She turned back to Cinnas' blade and reached for it cautiously. It seemed to be finished with signs and wonders, though, because it was nothing more than a sword in her hand, if a bit lighter than the one she'd given up. She touched the edge of the blade gingerly. And sharp as she'd thought. That was a plus. She swung it experimentally and felt herself smile. Hairy buggers beware. This time when she hit them, she'd split them for sure.
Carrying the sword carefully away from her body, she left the armory, picked up her bucket, and headed back for the front of the temple.
Getting her loot down the stairs took her a couple of trips, and by the time she wrestled the mattresses down, Belegir was awake again. Fortunately, she'd gotten the sword down on the first trip—no sense in giving the old fellow heart failure when she didn't have to. She'd tell him about the sword later.
"We'll give you a nice wash-up straight from the Oracle," Glory told him, with the spurious cheerfulness of the sickroom matron, "and then pop you into one of these lovely angel-robes and I can brew you a nice cuppa. How's that?"
Belegir had a strange look on his face, not entirely due to his discovery of the close proximity of Gordon.
"Slayer, I have no magic. And I did not think to bring flint and steel. I am sorry."
It took her a moment to figure out what he was getting at, and when she did, she smiled in relief, even if it did make her face hurt.
"No worries. For once, I brought something useful along with me. I've got a lighter. I can make the fire. We'll have tea, no worries. Now let's get you squared away. Do you think you could get a couple of pills down you?"
She got out the bottle of aspirin and shook some tablets into her hand. Two for her, two for Belegir. She thought it over, then dissolved his in one of the tea-mugs with a bit of the mead. It'd make a nasty-tasting drink, but probably easier on his bruised throat than the whole pills.
"This is going to taste foul," she said, bringing over the cup, "but it might help."
He swallowed it down without complaint, though he did shudder at the taste. She followed it with as much as he could hold of the Oracle-water—if it worked, it would probably do as much good inside as out—then sorted through the robes, selecting the largest two for Belegir's use. The hooked knife made short work of another two, converting them into large bandage-squares and a number of long binding strips.
About half the bucket was left. She dipped her rags into it, daubing off the blood on his face and chest as gently as she could.
"You are . . . very efficient," Belegir said in a breathy voice.
"I grew up on a— well, I guess you might call it a farm. Sheep station. Dad's still there, but Mum was a city girl at heart. Out in the country, you have to do for yourself. No one to do for you."
With the blood gone, the bruising was spectacular, and to her concealed dismay, the gashes on Belegir's chest were already bright red and puffy and starting to ooze a straw-colored fluid. She wrung out a cold compress for his bruised face and sopped up a couple of wooly squares to cover his chest.
"Now you just let that perk for a while. I found a nice pot of goose-grease in the back to make a proper dressing with. Not all according to Hoyle, but it should make you more comfortable." If it doesn't kill you outright. She covered him up with the blankets again. No sense him catching pneumonia while she was trying to save his life.
The most important thing done, she returned to their meager supplies. There was some grain left, a couple of the fruit-cakes, a little of the mead, another skin of ale, and of course the sugar and the tea. That was all.
She sighed, and shook her head. A steely eyed adventurer would consider the horses as extra provisions, and it wasn't that she was averse to eating a horse—well, not exactly—but she had no way to kill one of the ponies cleanly and no idea of how to butcher it, and even if she did, there was no way inside the Temple for them to cook it afterward, and she definitely drew the line at eating one of the damned things raw—which pretty much put paid to her notion of going back for the rest of the other pony, even if she was willing to risk the trip.
As for the protein on the hoof . . . they couldn't eat them, they couldn't ride them, and the cart was pretty useless outside of the temple, so there was no point in even trying to make a go of hitching the beasts to it and going on from there. All that being the case, the logical thing to do was to turn the beasts loose to fend for themselves and hope they survived.
But if she was going to do that, she might as well do it in the morning after they'd had a good meal, or as much of a good meal as she could field them. A couple of handfuls of grain wouldn't make much difference for her and Belegir in the long run. She shook her head. Soft-hearted, that's what she was.
She divvied the grain up into two neat piles, widely separated, then led the horses over to their meals one at a time. Afterward she watered them, then tied them to the packsaddle, several yards away from Belegir and the supplies. No sense leaving them to wander loose and get into trouble.
The area around the Pilgrim's Fountain was starting to reek strongly of stable, and Glory told herself she'd be just as glad to be rid of the nasty smelly beasts, but she knew she'd miss them, especially since she knew they'd probably fall down the first rabbit hole going and break a leg, or be eaten by another of those pants-wearing nightmares, or by something else just as horrible. Still, they'd have a chance, which looked like more than she and Belegir did.
She changed Belegir's compresses. Was it her imagination, or did the gashes look a little better? Please, let it be so. Then she got to work setting up the little tea-boiler.
She picked up the round pottery bottle and her lighter, and got the wick alight with a few snaps of her thumb, then set up the rest of the tea-boiler around it. When they'd had their tea, she could boil down a couple of the fruit-cakes in the pot. She didn't think Belegir was up to chewing, but the thing ought to be willing to turn itself into soup with a little encouragement.
Belegir was lying back on his improvised hospital bed, watching her. His color was better, and despite the purpling bruises, and the white cloth laid over half his face, he looked pleased.
"Here now, Bel, how much of this tea-stuff do I add to the water?" Glory asked, shoving her braid back out of the way and waving the canister.
"Come here, and I will show you," he said.
Obediently she carried the canister over to him, and watched as he measured an amount out onto his hand, looking to see that she understood. He poured the dry leaves back into canister and beckoned her close.
"I think you are a very great hero," he said, smiling.
"You're demented," Glory said, not unkindly. "The water's boiling."
After the tea had brewed and she'd poured it into mugs, she washed out the pot in the fountain and refilled it to stew two of the shredded-up cakes of fruit. Before bandaging Belegir, she tried the salve on her arm, changing back to her now-dry T-shirt first. It didn't hurt, and it might help. She wound some of the wool bandage firmly around her arm, and tied it in place as best she could. At least she wouldn't have to look at it now.
Bandaging up Belegir was an awkward and messy process, leaving her slathered with goo to the elbows before she got the dressing firmly tied in place. But once she got a new robe over his head, both of them felt better.
"I have not worn something like this since my days as a novice in the temple," Belegir said ruefully, smoothing down the pale creamy wool. "And that was long ago."
At Glory's quizzical look, he continued.
"Those of us who feel Called to be mages serve at the Temple, so that we may become used to Erchane's presence. Sometimes it will happen that there will be no place for a new apprentice for many years, or a Mage and an apprentice will not . . . suit."
I reckon there's a whole story in that, Glory thought sagely.
"So until the day comes when an apprentice may leave the temple to serve his Mage, he serves here. I served here a long time, until Acoril chose me."
"She. Very strict, very . . . all that I am not. She said I was the burden Erchane had called upon her to bear, and that she had chosen me only so that no other Mage would be so terribly afflicted." He smiled at the memory. "She did not wish me to study the Old Texts. But she chose me when no other would, and for that I honor her memory."
"I'm going to turn the horses loose tomorrow. We can't feed them. Maybe they'll find their way home," Glory said.
"You should go with them. Ride east. You will find the wagons easily enough," Belegir said.
"You know I don't ride as well as all that." Not with the Allimir idea of a saddle and bridle, not with all of Serenthodial to get lost in. Not that either of those things made any difference to her decision. Belegir had called her a hero, and she guessed she was going to have to try to be one. And heroes did not leave their wounded behind them to die alone.
She got up to stir the soup, pleased to see that the fruit had dissolved into a sort of sweet mush by now.
Had she come all this way to die here just for a run of bad luck? She didn't believe it. But maybe that was what all fools told themselves, until it was too late to say otherwise.
Never mind. They'd have dinner and a good sleep, and she'd think about what to do next in the morning.
After they'd eaten there was nothing to do but sleep, in the endless magical twilight of the enormous cavern, and she was more than ready for it. She took one of the last of the white robes, and with some merciless plying of one of the harness-knives, tailored herself a passable nightgown. A little tight across the chest and hips, but worlds better than either her armor or another night spent in her grubby jeans. After Belegir was settled and she'd performed her final ablutions, she examined her face in the small compact mirror. Yes, a lovely bruise, right along her right cheekbone. It gave her a rather dangerous appearance, the battered hero in the last reel of the summer actioner, sallying forth to kick butt and take names.
She wished it were true. She wished she'd brought a gun with her, instead of a bag full of licensed tie-ins and makeup. Or a bar of soap and some shampoo. At least she had her toothbrush. Thank heaven for small favors.
But what she had was what she had. And hey, at least now she had a magic sword. That was something.
She unbraided her hair and spent a long time brushing it, thinking of nothing, the purple sword lying unsheathed at her side.
If only she'd brought her cell phone. If only there was someone to call. If only Belegir weren't hurt, so he could be a cell phone. If only the monster hadn't been out there this morning. If only the horses hadn't wandered off in the first place. If only they'd brought more food. If only there'd been food stockpiled here.
If. Only. If only somebody'd listened to Belegir in the first place, and the Warmother hadn't gotten loose.
Brush—brush—brush— Until finally she was tired of it, and her red hair shone, crackling and curling around her brush and her hand with every stroke. Then she braided it up again, this time loosely, and curled up under the blanket Belegir had insisted she take—Gordon under one arm, the hilt of the sword loosely clutched in her other hand.
Glory woke to a confused clatter of sound. She was too tired to come instantly awake, but she was up and moving without true wakefulness, knowing nothing more of who and where she was than that she must hold onto the sword.
The shouts—of fear, of surprise and dismay—galvanized her further, without bringing her very much closer to consciousness. She swept her sword before her in a threatening gesture, trying to force her eyes open, knowing she had to move toward the right without remembering what was there that she needed to protect. At the best of times, Glory McArdle had never been a morning person.
People. Strangers. Horses. Belegir! She got her back against the cart that held him and prepared to sell both their lives dear.
"Slayer! Slayer! They are friends—friends!" Belegir gasped hoarsely, before collapsing into another coughing fit.
She lowered the sword quickly and went to help him sit upright, ignoring the others completely. Slowly, Belegir's spasm eased. Only then did she look back at the others.
It was Ivradan—Helevrin's other son—and two other Allimir she didn't know, leading half a dozen fully laden pack horses and staring at her as if she were the Warmother incarnate. She could have kissed them all out of sheer relief.
"Well?" Vixen the Slayer growled. "He's hurt. Aren't you going to help him? I hope to God you've brought coffee with you." She lowered Belegir gently down again and stalked off to the other side of the fountain, her mood abruptly darkening.
She should be happy they were here. Their presence meant she and Belegir were going to live. But instead she felt unreasonably irritated, angry without understanding why. She leaned over the fountain, splashing water on her face, finishing the job of bringing herself awake.
Ivradan and the others had clustered around Belegir, talking in low voices. The new arrivals were darting her quick worried looks. As happy as she'd been to see them a moment before, she wished them at the devil now, and she didn't know why.
Best to get out of their way until she was feeling more human, then.
She gathered up her Vixen costume, slipping Cinnas' sword into the sheath—it fit as if it had been made for it—and bundling the lot (and Gordon) under her arm. She slung her tote-bag over her shoulder and made a determined—if not entirely dignified—exit up the temple stairs. No one tried to stop her. Probably all quaking in their fuzzy little felt boots, that lot.
She went back into the Presence Chamber and sat down on one of the benches, dumping her gear at her feet. Away from the others, her black mood lifted, and she was able to reason her way to the bottom of it.
When it was just her and Belegir, well, he'd seen her pretty much at her worst. She didn't have to pretend for him. But the others . . . they'd be expecting Vixen the Slayer, not Glory McArdle, and she felt obligated to put on a show for them, like it or not. And she didn't like it, while knowing it was something she had to do.
No rush, but she'd best get on with things before they came looking for her.
She prodded at her shoulder, and was relieved to find that while it was sore, it wasn't much worse than it had been the night before. She peeled off the wool shift and went through her complete routine of morning stretches, ending with a slow walkover that assured her that everything still worked as well as it ever had. Now that she knew Glory was in good working order, it was time to add the fancy dress.
The Vixen costume was like an old friend, with its friendly false promise that she knew how to go on in the world.
She took out her compact and inspected her face. The bruises had ripened in the night, a glorious black and green welt along her cheek, and her freckles had disappeared beneath a new coat of tan, making her eyes, even without makeup, almost as gold as Vixen's.
Oh. Nice. No wonder they turned tail and bolted. Well, that's why God made Max Factor.
She daubed pancake gingerly over the bruise until the worst of the damage was covered, trying to blend it into her newly darkened complexion—the puffiness was still there, but they'd all have to live with that. A little kohl, a lot of mascara, some blood-red lipstick, and Hell's Own Harpy glared back at her out of the mirror. She smiled.
"I don't know if you scare the enemy, but by damn, you scare me, mate."
She unbraided her hair and brushed it out, using the mirror to inspect the roots critically for lighter growth. A few weeks yet before her own natural color became obvious, and by that time . . . well, maybe there was henna somewhere here in the Land of Erchanen. Belegir had been wearing mascara when he'd first showed up in her dressing room. These people weren't barbarians, after all.
She stuffed all her leftover bits and pieces back into her tote-bag and walked back out of the temple.
The Allimir had been busy while she'd been gone.
The horses, including her two survivors, were all picketed at the far end of the cavern, watched over by a couple of random dogs and one of the Allimir riders. A small fire under a portable cooking tripod was heating something that smelled a great deal like breakfast. Ivradan was tending to that, while the remaining Allimir fussed over Belegir in a reassuring fashion. They'd moved him out of the cart and onto a pallet onto the ground while Glory'd been gone, and she—at least Glory thought it was a "she"—had opened a large pack full of businesslike jars, tins, and bottles, and was re-dressing his chest-wounds. There was a large whiffy dressing covering his face as well—Glory could smell it from the foot of the stairs; something swampy and astringent, with just a hint of mint.
Glory approached Ivradan, who got warily to his feet. Remembering her lessons in dealing with Belegir, she did her best to look cheerful and nonthreatening, while feeling anything but. She realized Ivradan wasn't staring at her, but past her, and after a moment, she realized why. The Sword of Cinnas, with its hilt full of purple neon magic Erchane power crystals, was highly visible over her left shoulder.
So much for subtlety. On the other hand, he had seen it earlier, when she'd been waving it at him half-awake.
"Good morning, Ivradan." There was a pause. "Ivradan?"
"Good morning, Slayer." With a great effort, Ivradan transferred his gaze from her sword-hilt to her face.
"I'm glad you got here," Glory continued with teeth-gritting bland patience.
"I— That is, we— Helevrin thought— When you didn't—"
"Helevrin sent you after us?" she suggested.
"Yes," Ivradan said with relief. "She said that the Warmother was waiting for you at the Oracle. I found this in the Hall of History—" He reached into the pocket of his smock and pulled something out, holding it out to her.
It was the pendant the monster had been wearing, the one she'd dropped. In all the confusion, she'd forgotten about it until now.
"Yah!" Without thinking, Glory swatted it out of his hand. It went skittering across the floor.
Ivradan cowered back, terrified, and all her good work was undone.
"No— Wait, look, Ivradan, I'm sorry," Glory said quickly. "But that is very bad magic. It was around the neck of a monster I killed. It's Her magic."
Ivradan stared down at it in horror, and then at his hands. "I touched it," he said in a frightened whisper.
You aren't making things better.
"Well, I don't reckon it can do anything in here," Glory said hastily. "It was glowing when the critter was wearing it, but when I brought it in here, it stopped glowing. I forgot about it until now."
Ivradan was staring at her as if she'd just grown another head.
You FORGOT about it? Are you listening to yourself, Gloria Emmeline McArdle?
"Bring it here," Belegir said. His voice was stronger now.
Glory went over and picked it up—by the cord, she still wasn't going to touch it without a damned good reason—and carried it over to Belegir. The Allimir girl who was tending him backed away as if Glory were radioactive.
Glory knelt beside Belegir, holding the pendant toward him gingerly. She was a little bit shocked to see him grasp the pendant itself as if it were nothing much out of the ordinary, holding it up close to his good eye.
"You say the creature was wearing this?"
"I didn't see it until I searched the body. But it glowed. Blue. And after I took it off him, it . . . tried to get away, so I stuck it to the ground with one of my stakes while I went looking for the horses." She looked at Belegir. "I forgot about it," she said defensively. "I was going to show it to you. It stuck, sort of, in the doorway, and when I pulled it through, it popped, and then it stopped glowing. And then the horses were getting away, and well, I just forgot about it. . . ." she finished lamely.
"This is very bad," Belegir said. "Far worse than I'd feared, if She is twisting our own magic against us. As we have Called you to us to be our Defender, so She must have Called others to be her allies. The creature will have used this to Call the animals out to it in the night. If we had not slumbered in Erchane's embrace, we would have fallen prey to its foul casting as well."
There was a murmur of frightened agreement from the others.
Glory sighed in exasperation. "Yes, but Belegir, what does it mean? Is this blue stuff some kind of voodoo? What?"
"She uses it to enslave the will of lesser creatures and bend them to Her will, as well as lending them Her power," Belegir said. "As our magic is a link to Erchane, so this—and others like it—is a link to Her. You must destroy it," he finished firmly.
"Just promise me it doesn't involve a long trip to the top of an active volcano," Glory muttered grumpily.
"No. Nothing so distant. You must drop it into the Oracle's spring."
"But— Crikey, Bel, don't you reckon Erchane'll mind?" Glory sputtered, nonplussed.
"It must be done," Belegir said somberly. "If it is removed from the Temple it will come to life once more, and She will know all that has been done here."
"Well, we can't have that, now, can we? But d'you reckon it could wait until after breakfast?" Glory said hopefully.
"Yes. Of course. And you must let Tavara tend your injury, so that it does not grow poisoned," Belegir told her.
Tavara was the Allimir girl who had been seeing to Belegir—shy as a fawn she was, but judged against Belegir, all of the Allimir commonfolk were timid little things, ill-at-ease with the magic that Belegir lived with as a matter of course and that even Glory had come to take for granted. With trembling fingers, the girl peeled away Glory's makeshift bandage. Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of the gashes, though Glory was relieved to see they didn't look much worse than they had yesterday.
"You should see the other guy," Glory said encouragingly.
Tavara blushed hotly, too tongue-tied to speak, but her movements were quick and deft as she cleaned away the greasy salve and carefully prodded the flesh around the gouges.
"The wound is clean," she pronounced. "It will heal well." From one of the containers at her side she took a small handful of greenish dough, first rolling it into a ball, then working it into a thick patch big enough to cover the whole area. This she bound into place with a long strip of what looked like homespun linen. "You must leave this in place until it is dry. When it begins to itch, then you may take it off." She sounded as stern as a Public Health Nurse, and Glory stifled a smile.
"Gotcha. Belegir—he's going to be all right, isn't he?" She'd rather have had this conversation somewhere out of Belegir's earshot, but doubted her ability to get Tavara off somewhere private without giving the girl heart failure.
"He is old, and weak, and badly hurt. It will be many days before he can ride even as far as the edge of the forest," Tavara said matter-of-factly.
"But the day will come, right?" Glory insisted.
"If Erchane wills it," Tavara said, casting her eyes demurely downward.
Fortunately, Ivradan chose that moment to appear with the local version of a McDonald's Happy Meal—a big bowl of boiled grain spiced with raisins and cubes of smoked meat, a thick slice of buttered bread, and a wooden mug full of tea. Glory accepted all three with avaricious gratitude, and wolfed the bread down in a few short bites.
"You lot came prepared, I'll give you that," she said around bites of bread, reaching for the tea. It was scaldingly hot, but she had no complaints. It was food, and there'd been little enough of that in the past day or so.
"Helevrin told us we must. If only her True Dream had come sooner—!" Ivradan agonized.
" 'If only' gets you nothing in this life, Ivradan," Glory said with rough kindness. "You came, and you came in time to save our bacon. That's more than enough. I'm sorry about the other horse. And Kurfan. He died game." She blinked back unexpected tears. "I wish I could have saved him."
"You saved Belegir," Ivradan said, putting an awkward hand on her shoulder.
"I hope." She glanced over her shoulder. Tavara and the other Allimir were sitting beside Belegir, having their own breakfasts. Tavara was feeding Belegir sips of gruel from a small spouted cup. "She says he'll be okay?"
"When I was younger, I fell from the roof of our barn at haying time, and spent the whole season in bed. But I am here today. When he can ride again, Tavara will release the spell that Helevrin sent with us, and the Allimir will come to bear him away."
"But you and I will be gone by then," Glory guessed, looking straight at him.
Ivradan didn't flinch. "Helevrin said that also."
Glory sighed and ate weird oatmeal. It wasn't bad, particularly if you couldn't remember the last time you'd had a full meal.
"That's why you brought so much stuff."
"She said the Oracle would speak to you."
Only it hadn't spoken to her, and apparently it'd told Belegir she'd go toes-up at the first opportunity. All she'd had was a wacky dream she couldn't quite remember any more. Well, bugger that for a game of soldiers. She was going to muddle on as long as she could, and damn anybody who got in her way.
After she'd eaten, Glory got carefully to her feet. She'd eaten too much too fast, and in combination with the corset, felt like she'd swallowed a young pig, trotters and all. Still, she'd rather be full than empty.
"So, Ivradan. Want to come see the Oracle?"
She could tell from the look on his face that he'd much rather not, thank you very much. But if he was going to be her native guide to the wonders of Elboroth-Haden, the former Grey Arlinn, it'd be just as well for him to get his feet wet with some nice friendly magic first.
So, Glor, just when did you get so ruthless?
"C'mon, mate. Y'wanna live forever? Besides, there's a map in there I want you to see."
Looking as if he'd been told off to be hanged, Ivradan followed her up the stairs into the temple. She was actually getting used to the treachery of the stairs, after all this time.
He was on familiar ground as far as the Presence Chamber, but once she took him through the back wall and into the Old Temple, Ivradan's eyes bulged, and he stared at everything at once.
"Belegir says this is the part they used to use a long time ago. The floor's a map. Look. We're here." She pointed at the purple triangle on the floor that represented the Oracle. "And we need to go . . . here."
Ivradan gulped, staring at the red glyph set into the floor. If the Allimir'd had the gesture, Glory bet he would have crossed himself. As it was, one hand groped toward something hanging around his neck beneath his clothes.
"Ah . . ." he said, sighing resignedly. "Thus it must be, if Erchane wills."
"I reckon you're right there. Just get me close enough that I can find my way. I'll do the rest."
And who in God's name was writing her dialogue this morning? Glory wondered. It was bad enough to say things like this after a pint or two of overproof Allimir ale, but on tea and oatmeal it was nothing short of criminal.
After giving him enough time to gawk, she led the way back down to the Oracle spring. After so many trips this way, it had begun to seem like her morning commute. She carried the blasphemous trinket by its cord—she'd be glad enough to get rid of it, and surely Belegir knew the proper means of disposal if anyone did, but it still seemed a touch impertinent to go tossing it into a sacred well as if it were a rubbish tip. Still, she'd rather think about that than the fact that the Warmother (whether she existed or not) had apparently gotten up the brains to rope in a cadre of extra-dimensional bad guys to help her out. Apparently She hadn't had any trouble getting people to show up when she wanted them.
It wasn't fair, that was what it wasn't.
"You can wait out here," Glory said when they reached the door to the spring. "Unless you want to come inside?"
"No," Ivradan said, taking a step back. "No. Thank you, Slayer. I will remain here."
"Suit yourself." She lifted the bar, opened the door, and stepped inside, wondering—and not for the first time—just what it was these people were worried would get out. You didn't bar doors that weren't going to open, after all, did you?
She leaned over the pool, trying to see down inside, but as always, the surface of the spring was nothing more than a smooth black mirror. She leaned out over it, and dropped the pendant in as close to the center as she could manage.
She'd thought it would float, or at least sink slowly. It sank as if it were made of lead, disappearing instantly.
She'd expected more drama, somehow, but except for the floating sword, Allimir magic didn't seem to be the flashy sort, really. More results oriented. Just as well for her fragile nerves, Glory told herself wisely.
She went back outside, dropped the bar into place again, collected Ivradan, and walked back to the Pilgrim's Fountain.
"Let's go outside," she said, when they got there. Tavara was sitting beside her patient, and the young chap—Ivradan said his name was Cambros—was off grooming the horses. Obediently, Ivradan followed her.
By now, the sand paintings were muddled past all recognition. Glory thought about the hordes of Temple acolytes who must have spent hours every day putting them together, just to see them trampled by pilgrims the moment their backs were turned. Once upon a time, Belegir had been one of those acolytes, and Helevrin, and even Englor. She supposed that outside of those three, there wasn't anyone alive who knew how to do these paintings any more. She sighed. Deep thoughts for a half-talented actress and former Phys Ed teacher whose biggest qualification for either post was being able to turn three backflips in rapid succession.
"Where are we going?" Ivradan asked diffidently.
"I want to get a look at the outdoors. And I want you to get a look at that monster that came after Belegir yesterday. Maybe you'll see something I missed."
"I don't think so," Ivradan said cautiously.
It was late morning when they got to the cave opening, and Glory took a deep appreciative breath of really fresh air. She hadn't minded being inside the temple cave while she was in there, but now that she was back in the free air, she couldn't imagine how she'd stood it. She slid her eyes sideways, looking over her shoulder at Cinnas' sword, and wondered uneasily how she could have accepted the whole setup—magic and monsters and ancient temples—so effortlessly. There was something unnatural about it, as if it hadn't occurred to her until this very moment how bizarre it all was. As if magic had picked her up and moved her about like a chess-piece, for its own needs, suppressing her own sense of self-preservation, and only now, when its necessities had been fulfilled, did it release her to feel the proper fear and unease she should have felt all along.
It was creepy. She'd always thought you'd notice magic when it showed up, that it would appear in a sudden grand display that would stop everything for miles around dead in its tracks like a New Years' fireworks display, that it wouldn't be a case of looking back and realizing you'd been bathing in the stuff as obliviously as a trout in milk. It was like all those Greek myths where you couldn't see a thing unless you looked in a mirror. If you looked at it straight on, you couldn't see it at all.
She sighed. No wonder Vixen was grumpy all the time, if she had to put up with magic morning, noon, and night. Glory concentrated on her blessedly magic-free (or so she hoped) surroundings. It was a nice day. You could tell that fall was coming, though there was a long stretch of warm yet to get through; there was just something about the air, the same promise of cold to come—without anything really palpable about it—that in spring was turned to the affirmation of coming summer heat. Now, the air seemed to say, was the time to be getting the harvest in, fattening everything up for winter.
Only nobody was much getting the chance to do that, this year, were they?
She stopped and sniffed, suspiciously.
"Smell anything?" she asked Ivradan.
Ivradan obligingly sniffed. "No."
"You should, I reckon. Okay, so it's pretty cool under the trees, but I whacked that critter about a day ago, and the weather's been warmish. He should've gone off at least a little, and I didn't drag him all that far. Let's go see."
For that matter, she'd left most of Kurfan a good sight nearer to the trail, and she didn't see those remains either. Their absence could be chalked up to scavengers easily enough, but it would have to be a pretty big and a pretty determined scavenger to take on the task of moving the amount of meat the dead monster represented.
She led Ivradan down the trail and off into the wood. Her drag-marks from the previous day were still there—hard to cover your trail in a pine forest—but when she got to the spot where she'd left the body, she found that what she'd been afraid of had happened.
Kurfan's head was still there, wrapped in the leather vest, wedged between the roots of a tree, as though it had been carelessly rolled away when whatever had come for the monster's body had shifted it.
And there were no drag marks. No drag marks at all.
"This," said Glory, "is not good." She looked at Ivradan. "Something came and took the body." I hope. I hope it didn't just get up and walk away. She looked around. "I don't see any tracks. Do you?"
Ivradan considered the question carefully, looking around the clearing. "None. Not even deer have been here."
For one fey wild moment Glory thought about going back to the monster's campsite and seeing if it or something like it was there, and firmly quashed the notion. She'd gotten far too much luck yesterday to squander it today on an idiot gesture designed to impress someone who was already terrified of her anyway.
"Let's go back and spread the good news. Belegir isn't going to like this. And . . . when do you want to leave, and how long will it take us to get there?" And do you reckon there's any possibility—any at all—that we'll arrive alive, with things like that bear-wolf out there in the dark looking for us?
"We could leave tomorrow at first light, if that suits you, Slayer. From the Oracle to Great Drathil is not far—half a day, if that, and a good road to follow. From there . . ." his voice dropped, "I do not know the length of the path that leads to the Forbidden Peak."
"Well, maybe Bel will know. He knows a lot of things," Glory said philosophically.