The Realms of the Gods Read online

  There was new movement on her forehead. Slowly, a hair at a time, her blindfold slipped up. At last it was over her brows. Her left eye filled with a small, inky head. The bonds that wrapped her so well apparently had no effect on a darking.

  “Thank you,” she tried to tell Leaf. Whatever sealed her mouth kept the sound in.

  “Badbad,” Leaf replied.

  Yes indeed, she thought. Badbad. I must’ve stepped into a snare laid for anything big and edible that came down here to drink.

  Turning her head, she examined her bonds, and began to shake. Not rope, but dust-gray web, gripped her. She knew what it was, having seen enough such webs in both sunlight and in the dark, when they glowed. They were the creation of spidrens.

  She trembled. Of all the immortals that she had battled over the last three years, those were the worst. They had furry spider bodies; the females were mottled, males black. At least five feet tall, their heads were human, with sharp, predatory teeth. They leaped amazing distances, and preferred human blood to any other food. She had lost count of the times that she had found humans caught in their webs.

  Immediately she listened, listened hard, for the web spinners. There was no telling which could be worse—that they had laid the trap and then left the area, or that they might be close by. At last, on the outer fringes of her magical range, she felt something immortal. If it was a spidren, perhaps she still had time to escape.

  Taking a breath, the girl became a great jungle snake. Her clothes drooped around her scaled form. Gathering herself to crawl away, she ran face first into a shrinking web. As she fought to get her skull free, it closed so tightly that it pinched her coils together.

  She changed: swan shape. The web fitted her new body perfectly, binding her. That sense of immortals on the fringes of her awareness was stronger, and familiar: spidrens for sure, three of them.

  She wanted to scream, but stopped herself. They were very close now, moving fast; they must know they had a prize.

  Perhaps small’s not the best way, she thought. Focusing on the great bears of the north, Daine shed her swan shape. The web, instead of bursting, stretched. She was as captive as before.

  If she had to face them, she needed clothes. No one could feel brave when naked, and all she wore now was the silver claw. Somehow she didn’t think she would feel dressed, meeting spidrens with only the badger’s token to wear. Eyes closed, she re-formed her true self, easing human limbs into breeches and sleeves, recovering her back and hips, until she was properly dressed. That done, she sank back. What now?

  Her dagger. She twisted, looking for it. Her forearms were plastered against her sides, but if she could reach it. . . . The hilt at her waist was covered by web. She couldn’t even touch the weapon.

  “Look, dears, we have a guest!” taunted a voice from above.

  Daine looked up. Three spidrens—two males and a larger female—descended a nearby rock face on threads of web. Her stomach rolled as they jumped away from the cliff to land near her.

  “Only think,” said a male. “All the realms know that King Ozorne of the Stormwing Alliance will heap rewards on whoever brings a certain female mortal treat—”

  “Or a long-shanked mortal mage,” interrupted the other male.

  “Quite right,” said the first. “So everyone else searches—and the treat falls right into our nets. The gods must love jokes like these; they tell them so many times.”

  The female minced over. “Greetings, Veralidaine Sarrasri. How are we today? We look terrible.” She bared silvery teeth in a grin.

  “Eat my loincloth,” retorted the girl, sweating. “It’s bad enough looking at you, without hearing your blather.”

  “Oh, tut.” The female patted Daine’s cheek lightly with a clawed leg. The girl winced—even a light spidren tap hurt. “That empty-headed mother of yours should have taught you manners.”

  “Keep your mouth off my ma!”

  The spidren crouched to bring her face closer. “You’re in no position to dictate the rules of conversation.”

  “Where’s the long man?” the male who’d spoken first wanted to know. “He’s always close to this little morsel.”

  “Can we kill her even a little bit?” asked the second male. “Can we eat her?”

  The female spun. Pink web flew out of the spinneret under her belly, plastering itself over the hungry male’s face. He screamed and fell back, clawing at it.

  “Remember Ozorne’s reward!” she cried when he’d gotten most of the pink strands off. Unlike the gray webbing, the pink left thick, raised welts. “He’ll give us human slaves for centuries! He—”

  One of the two male spidrens exploded. The female spidren shrieked, and kicked Daine to the ground behind her. The girl squinted. What had happened? One spidren was gone, blown to pieces. In the splatter of black blood that was his remains stood Numair. Livid with rage, he raised his staff as the female spidren reared.

  Jelly raced over the ground to plaster itself over the spinneret on the female’s belly, and bulged as the spidren tried to force liquid web through it. Leaf jumped from the top of a nearby boulder to cover the female spidren’s face. Her shriek was muffled; she could neither see nor breathe. Numair pursued the remaining male, beating him with his staff.

  Slowly the female spidren collapsed. When she stopped moving, Jelly dropped away from her spinneret. The liquid web that the darking had bottled up spilled to pool uselessly on the ground. The female’s head fell back; Leaf peeled itself from her face. Daine saw lumps on the hatted darking, pieces of it that had been sucked into the spidren’s nose and mouth. Leaf had suffocated her.

  Numair’s opponent was the last to die. When the immortal sank to the ground, head crushed, the webs on Daine turned liquid and flowed away. She was free.

  “Numair?”

  He stood motionless, his back to her, leaning on his staff. He appeared to be staring at the dead spidren.

  Frightened, the girl dragged herself to her knees, then to her feet. Upright, she swayed. “Please . . . are you all right?”

  He turned. “You—you’re—alive. I thought . . .”

  She staggered over to him. “I hurt too much to be dead.”

  Dropping the staff, Numair swept her up in his arms; hers went around his neck. He stroked her back; Daine buried her fingers in his hair. Pulling away, she tried to get a proper look at him. Their eyes met for a breathless moment as heat surged through her body. Then his mouth was on hers, his breath warmly mingling with her own.

  She had been kissed before, over the last two years. Perin the clerk, the most persistent of her swains, had done it a number of times since Midwinter, before the war broke out. A moment ago, she would have said that she liked kissing well enough.

  This was different. Liking did not begin to describe the thunder in her body and heart. Hot sweetness raced from his lips through her body, making her tingle, making the breath come short in her tired lungs, making her knees watery. Powerful awareness of all the places their bodies touched—from his palms on her back to her breasts, belly, and thighs crushed against his—made the blood pound in her veins.

  Numair took his mouth away. “No,” she whispered, and pulled him back. He was gentler this time, easing his lips carefully over hers, pulling away briefly, then returning.

  A good thing he’s holding me up, she thought giddily. Elsewise I’d fall down.

  He pulled away with a strangled laugh and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her over to a large rock. There he sat, cradling Daine in his lap. “Goddess bless,” he whispered, smoothing her curls away from her face. “Magelet, I thought I’d lost you.”

  On top of her recent experiences, it was too much. She buried her face in his shirt so he wouldn’t see the tears that trickled from her eyes. He seemed content to simply wrap his arms around her, lips against her hair. The darkings on the ground observed the humans, small, eyeless heads cocked to one side. Noticing them, Daine smiled.

  “We need to rest and eat,
” Numair remarked after a while. “It’ll soon be too hot to travel, and there is the path to relocate as well. If I remember correctly, this river is on the map. It parallels our route and emerges from this canyon near the path. Once you feel better, perhaps, you could fly up and locate it. What do you think?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Sweet?” Craning to see her face, he realized that she was asleep. With a sigh, he got to his feet, cradling his student, friend, and love. Daine’s only reaction was to snuggle closer. To the darkings Numair said, “Let’s find some shelter.”

  “—if I have this straight—no disrespect, Lord Badger, but I confess to some confusion.”

  Daine smiled in her dream: Queen Thayet of Tortall was never confused.

  “You and this—”

  “Gold-streak,” a tiny voice said.

  “Tell me that these two creatures—”

  “Darkings,” Gold-streak corrected.

  “These darkings are made of Ozorne’s blood, and they were created to be his spies. Now they think for themselves, and they claim they will help us, not him. Is that correct?”

  —It is.— That was the badger’s mind voice, the one he used in the mortal realms. —Now these darkings who spied on you will tell you where your enemy is.—

  “The possibilities are dazzling,” murmured the queen.

  Daine turned over, and realized that she was awake and thinking already: Reinforcements from the Copper Isles were approaching Port Legann.

  Numair had brought them to a hollow under a rock shelf in the canyon wall. The river thundered nearby. Outside their shelter, heat rose from the flat, unshaded stone on either side of the river. It would be mad to start walking for several hours, unless they wanted to lose more time still to heat exhaustion. She also ached and stung from top to toe, as if she’d been pounded with a hammer and dragged through thorns. Which I have, she admitted to herself.

  The mage leaned against the wall, dozing. Leaf and Jelly, seated on rocks by the fire, watched a small pot of soup. When she sat up, Jelly reached out a tentacle to grip the long-handled spoon and stirred. Creating a head, the darking squeaked, “Food done.”

  Numair woke up. “Very good,” he told the blots. Glancing at Daine, he blushed and looked away.

  “How in the name of Shakith did you find me?” the girl demanded.

  The man fidgeted. “It was merely a simple magic, Daine—”

  “Mouse manure,” she replied. “D’you think I’ve lived all this time with mages without knowing what it takes to find somebody and go to them?”

  “I had a focus,” he mumbled.

  “A focus? Something of mine to connect us?”

  “Yes—and I’m glad I had it.”

  “Yes—but—may I see it?” She wouldn’t like to find that anyone but Numair had a focus, something that had been hers for a long time, in his or her possession. There were all kinds of magics that could be done with focuses, including control of her body and mind.

  For a moment he looked grave; she thought that he might refuse. Then he reached across the distance between them. A bracelet appeared on his left wrist: a gold chain with an oval locket. This was the first time that she had seen it.

  The locket fell into her palm and opened. Inside one half was a miniature painting of her face, perfect in every detail, from blue-gray eyes to stubborn chin. Tucked behind a gold clip in the other half was a smoky brown curl. It seemed more like a lover’s token, not a magical device to find an errant student. She returned it to him.

  “I thought you might laugh if I asked you to sit for a portrait.” He attached locket to chain—both vanished. “The painting was done by Volney Rain.” He was a court artist they knew. “The hair I got when you were delirious with unicorn fever six months ago.”

  Going to the fire, he took charge of the soup, filling three bowls. One he gave to Daine; one he kept for himself. The third he placed on the ground. The darkings flowed over their bowl.

  Daine blew on a spoonful to cool it. “What happened to you? What about those rock things?”

  “They carried me off. I used my Gift to shield myself, but it took them some time to learn that I was the source of their pain. Once they did, they fled. When I returned to the Chaos vent, and realized that you had gone over the cliff—” He swallowed hard.

  “You can thank a number of trees and a deep part of the river that I’m reasonably alive.” She sat next to him, inching over until he was forced to raise his arm. Flinching at the bite of her cuts and scratches—she’d have to tend them soon—she tucked herself into the curve of his arm, then rested her head on his chest.

  “You’re trembling,” she murmured.

  “I’m only tired.” He was lying, she knew. “I used my entire Gift to reach you.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” she told him. “You need it to defend yourself—and we still have to reach the Sea of Sand.”

  Numair’s arm tightened. She looked down so that he couldn’t see her wince. “If I’d lost you and kept my power, I would hate myself. Eventually magic returns, even after a draining. I had no way to know if you would.”

  She looked into his face, and smiled. “It would take more than falling off a cliff to keep me from you.”

  Numair kissed her again, his mouth lingering. The flooding heat of desire nearly swamped Daine before he broke the kiss. “I’d hoped you felt that way,” he whispered. He kissed her eyelids, and the tip of her nose, then found her lips again. When he stopped, Daine was limp within the circle of his arm; now she too was trembling.

  He sighed regretfully. “I should look at your cuts.”

  Daine sat up as he drew the pack over. Gingerly—even her bones ached—she lifted her shirt hem.

  “Daine!”

  “What?”

  He had turned crimson under his tan. “You—we aren’t—you should be clothed!”

  “I’ve a breast band on, dolt. Besides, this shirt’s in shreds. Like the rest of me.”

  He shifted slightly. “It just doesn’t seem right. I feel that I’m . . . taking advantage of your innocence. A man of my—years, and reputation—”

  “ ‘Taking advantage of’?” she repeated. “And what reputation?”

  “You of all people should know that I’ve been involved with ladies of the court.”

  “What has that to do with the price of peas in Persopolis?”

  “It’s easy for an experienced man to delude a young woman into believing herself in love with him. It is the basest kind of trickery, even when the man does not intend it.”

  “Do you love me or not?” she demanded.

  “That is not the topic under discussion.” He fumbled, getting Sarra’s ointment from his pack. Jelly and Leaf trickled over, carrying a bottle of water between them. “Thank you,” Numair told them as he took charge of it.

  Defiantly the girl stripped off her shirt, turning her back to him. Her breast band was in little better condition than her outer clothes, but she didn’t care. He was making the fuss, not her! “We’re not talking about love?” she demanded, wincing as he began to clean the cuts on her shoulders and back. “What are we talking of, then? Canoodling?”

  “Daine! Is that what you think I want?” he demanded, outraged. “Sex?” Despite his dismay and fury, the hand that smoothed ointment on her was gentle.

  “It isn’t?” Rising to her knees, she stripped off what remained of her breeches. She heard Numair move away.

  Swinging to face him, she searched his eyes; when they met hers, she knew that she’d hurt him. But how? she thought, baffled. Why? Perin only wanted to bed her, as a few Snowsdale men had bedded her mother. Then she knew. Grabbing the hand with the bracelet, she held the locket. A lover’s token, she’d thought before. She had been right. “You’re in love with me?”

  He looked away.

  “Love’s fair wondrous. Where’s the harm?”

  “I was ‘canoodling,’ as you so charmingly put it, when you were four. You’re so young, Da
ine. I knew that if I spoke, you might think yourself in love with me; you might ma—” He stopped.

  “Marry?” she squeaked. “Marry you?”

  He wouldn’t look at her. “One day you’d turn to me and see an old man. You’d want a young one.” He got up and walked out of their shelter. She watched him go to the river and crouch there, a big shadow against sun-bleached rock.

  She rubbed her face. Love was well enough, but marriage? There was so much to consider. All her life she’d heard that no respectable man would marry Sarra’s bastard—though she wondered if the Snowsdale gossips would think Numair respectable.

  All those things he’d said of her waking up someday could be turned to fit him. She had managed to get a look at all of the women whose names were linked with his. They were typically in their thirties or late twenties, buxom, well-groomed, beautiful, mature.

  What if he woke up, later on, to see a baby where he wanted to see a woman?

  If they married, they would be trapped. Daine had seen enough bad marriages to know a life sentence when she saw one. Some of those marriages had involved men whose marriage proposals her mother had turned down.

  Unrolling one of Numair’s shirts, she wrapped it around herself—the scrapes on her back were healing fast, thanks to her mother’s ointment—and walked down to him.

  “Can’t we just go on as we have?” she asked. “This is a fair weight to solve when things are so—mad.”

  He looked up and smiled, just barely. “That is certainly true.”

  “I know I love you. Maybe I always have—”

  “Which is what I was afraid of.”

  She ignored his frivolity. “Once we’re home—once the war’s done—we can work it out. We’ll talk then.”

  Standing, he cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her gently. “Indeed we will.”

  Her mother’s ointment made small work of her injuries. As Numair cut his spare clothes down to fit her, she took advantage of the powerful thermals in the canyon, letting them carry her in hawk shape above the rim. There she flew upstream until she found the path of destruction that she’d left in her tumble down the cliff.