Vengeance

Tali roused from tormented dreams with the call reverberating in her head like a pealing bell. She forced the shell to close around it and managed to choke it down to a whisper, though for the first time she could not close it off completely, and surely that meant …

Tobry moaned, a piteous sound.

She felt about in the dark. His left arm was thrashing up and down. She caught it and held him. ‘Tobry, what is it?’

‘Urggh! Unrggh-rrggh, rggh!’ He slumped onto her, squashing her down until her head hit the saddle horn.

She pushed herself upright. He was hotter than Rix had been when she’d laid her healing hands on him by the lake, and from such an awkward position she could not help Tobry.

If she dragged him to the ground, she would never get him back into the saddle. Tali heaved herself around until she was facing him, ignoring the spears of pain, and took his face between her hands. She was attempting to work the healing charm when her mind-shell was wrenched wide and the call went off like a shriek. No, like a beacon calling her enemy to her.

She tried to close the shell but something was forcing it wide open from the other side. Something far stronger than her was trying to snap it at the hinges so it could never be closed. She could barely hold it, and Tobry was growing ever hotter under her hands. If she could not summon her healing gift he would die, consumed from the inside. Yet if she did use it on him, she would not have the strength to hold the shell at all, and that would be very bad …

Mine, came a whisper, and she sensed shadows groping in a deeper darkness, familiar shadows, searching for her. You’re mine and you will bring her to …

Tobry shuddered; panted; groaned, ‘No!’

It was as though two people were fighting over her. She felt resistance, then the voice continued, I left my mark in you. You can’t keep me out. Bring her!

‘I won’t,’ she ground out, and lurched backwards in the saddle. ‘Get out of my head!’

Shock! Alarm, then the sounds retreated until they were a meaningless buzz — coming from Tobry’s head!

The voice had not been speaking to her. It had been giving orders to Tobry, orders about her. To bring her where? To the murder cellar?

The familiarity crystallised. Rix had been right to be worried — the wrythen had left something in Tobry when it attacked him in the caverns. Now it was trying to take control of him and make him do the job Tinyhead had failed at. The wrythen and her enemy were the same, and if he took command of Tobry, she was lost. Tobry must have been expecting it — that’s why he had refused to help with her magery.

Tali could not see how to block a presence that was within Tobry, not herself. Wait! The wrythen was tracking her via the call, and only after he forced open the shell had he broken through to Tobry. The call had to be blocked before she tried to help Tobry — if she still had the strength to block it.

Tali squeezed her palms around her own head, one hand pressing against her forehead and the other on the back of her skull, as if by doing so she could prevent her enemy from doing to her what he had done to Tinyhead. She squeezed so hard that her thigh wound began to pulse. She had to ignore it; had to turn her enemy aside and block the call before it betrayed her.

Harder she squeezed, and harder, conjuring up the image of the protective shell and forcing it closed with all her driving will.

‘Stop!’ Tobry cried, swaying wildly and almost falling out of the saddle. ‘It’s burning, burning. Tali, help!’

One flailing hand struck her on the cheek, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She lost concentration for a second, the shell was forced wide and she heard another voice …

The thing in the dark. Shadow and shape, shiftin’, always shiftin’.

A huge, loping creature stopped, stood up on back legs until it would have towered over Rix, and turned in her direction, sniffing the air. Sickle-shaped pupils contracted to points; claws clotted with rancid fat and day-old blood extended; shadows fluttered around it, expanding and contracting. She caught a whiff, or imagined she did, of hot breath tainted with offal and carrion, then the maw opened wide, emitting not the roar she would have expected, but a repeated pinging sound, a false note like some corrupt mimicry of the note that was a distant reply to her call.

Pinnnng, pinnnng, pinnnng.

That’s it, said the wrythen. Fix on her. Steady, steady. Take her and you can drink the foul magian’s blood. But do not harm her.

Tobry’s moan, deep in his throat, made her hair stand on end. His cheeks were glowing red in the dark, his eyes taking on the same gleam as Tinyhead’s had before his head had been burnt through, now showing a trace of yellow.

Pinnnng, pinnnng, pinnnng.

The sounds rose and fell as though a beam was sweeping across her and back, and sick terror overwhelmed her. She wanted to fling herself off the horse and run, anywhere. Tali struggled to fight it. She could not run. She would be lucky to stand up. And without her, Tobry was going to die. Clamping her hands harder around her skull, she squeezed with all the strength remaining to her.

Pinnnng, pinnnng, pinnnng.

‘Close, close!’ she gasped, forcing physically and mentally at the same time.

With an audible snap, the shell slammed, and both the call, the pinging and the presence in Tobry’s head cut off. So did the sense of that loping creature but she knew it was still out there, searching.

With a little sigh, Tobry toppled sideways out of the saddle. Tali almost followed him, for she was shaking so badly that she could not hang on. Twisting her hands through the stirrup straps, she half fell, half slid down, hit the ground and her bad leg crumpled under her.

Her head was ringing, her hands trembling so violently that she could not hold them against him. She crouched over Tobry and pressed her forehead to his.

‘Heal, heal!’

Normally she could feel the healing force leaving her as she worked, but Tali was so drained that she felt nothing now. She lay beside him, her cold cheek touching his feverish one. From way out in the Seethings echoed an eerie shriek, so uncanny that she could not imagine any normal beast making it.

‘Heal,’ she whispered. ‘Please heal, Tobry, or we’re both dead.’

CHAPTER 55

Tali was lying on hard ground, so drained that she could not move, while the horror hunting her drew ever closer. She thought she saw it fleetingly, a shadow darker than the night, shifting, always shifting from one form to another. Was it shadow, dream or hallucination? In her feverish state she could not tell the difference between reality and imagining, sleeping and waking, normality and nightmare.

Something leaned over her, half lifting and half dragging her. She flinched and tried to beat it off, but even the smallest movement speared jags of pain through her inflamed thigh.

‘Try not to move,’ said a hoarse voice, Tobry’s voice.

‘You’re alive,’ she whispered. She opened her eyes on a night black as a pit.

‘Thanks to you.’

‘I thought he’d got you.’

‘He nearly did.’ The rasping croak sounded as though his throat had been burnt. ‘I don’t know how you saved me, but — ’

‘It’s not over. The shadow-creature is out there, hunting me. For the wrythen. It’s big, Tobry. Bigger than