Stop! Raif cried, trying to wrench himself free. Bitty's armored fingers sank deeper and deeper, ten knives slicing his muscle like cheese.
From somewhere far in the shadows Angus asked calmly, What; next?"
Bitty jumped on Raif's back. Stumbling forward, Raif struggled to keep his footing and failed. Air punched from his lungs as he landed hard on his stomach. Bitty clung to him like a spider, strong and inhumanly fast. Panicking, Raif bucked against Bitty s hold. Every time he took a breath Bitty squeezed him harder. Bitty's knife-fingers slid through the spaces between Raif's ribs, and Bitty was laughing, laughing, and Raif could feel the heart-shaped thing in Bitty's chest thumping against his back.
Leave us. The voice that spoke was chilling, an icy wind blowing through an open door.
Bitty froze, yet even as he stilled he became something other. Something dark and malleable, a heavy shadow spilling over Raif's shoulders and rolling across his face. Gasping for breath, Raif sucked in the shadows and breathed in the substance of Death.
Air crackled as she approached. Light failed her, sliding off her presence like dark wine poured over glass. The sweetly corrupt scent of spoiled pears preceded her as she leaned forward and laid a kiss on Raifs brow.
I believe I will call you son.
Noooooo, he screamed at her. NOOOOOOOO!
"Sshh."
Raif moved his head, tracking the new voice. As he shifted his attention one way, Death withdrew. Chuckling softly, she pulled her nightmare robes behind her, beckoned the darkness, and left. She always had the last laugh.
Droplets of lukewarm water pattered across Raif's face. As he scrunched his eyes tightly closed, he became aware that he was no longer falling. Somehow he had landed on solid ground.
Light filtering through his eyelids flickered as something moved between Raif and the source. I am awake, he said to himself, testing, his mind carefully calibrating each word. When water began to patter against his face a second time he cracked open his lips and let it fall into his mouth. His tongue soaked up the droplets like a sponge, and there was some pain as parched flesh expanded. As if that first pang had opened a door marked «Pain» Raifs mind began receiving signals from his body. His throat felt raw and scratchy, and his back and rib cage were stiff. A deep, unsettled ache in his left shoulder seemed the worst thing. It moved through his muscle like liquid.
Noises began to register. A strange chittering was followed by a rattling sound, like stones being shaken in a jar. Then footsteps, or rather footfalls for the sound was soft, subtle, owing more to the yielding of floor than the striking of feet.
Raif wondered whether he should open his eyes. Caution made him hesitate. The same instinct that told him his memory was working even though he had not probed it, told him his position here-wher ever «here» might be-was vulnerable. So he listened and waited.
Time passed. The quality of light changed, the colors filtering through his eyelids shifting from blue to red. Air cooled. A sharp burnt odor reached Raif's nose, followed by the scent of unfamiliar cookery. Bittersweet spices, licorice, clove and sumac floated upward with the scent of pungent smoke. Footfalls sounded again. A light was struck, then silence.
Raif waited, limbs still, body cooling. After a while it seemed to him that the silence had an expectant quality to it and he began to imagine he was being watched. As the hour wore on he grew more and more certain that someone was waiting for him to make a move. Raif wondered how long the watcher could keep silent, how long he or she could play the game.
More time passed, and aches and needs began to assert themselves. A muscle in Raif's damaged shoulder had tightened and needed to be flexed. Thirst gnawed at his throat, and he became aware of the fullness in his bladder. Quite suddenly he had to move.
He opened his eyes, and blinked against the light. It took him a moment to understand what he saw. He was lying in a small, high-roofed tent braced with slender yellow bones that were double-curved like sycamore wings. The tent canvas was made from clarified hides; skins of stillborn animals that had been melted to the point of translu-cence. Clan did not have the knowledge to prepare them, and Raif imagined he was looking at great wealth. Rays from the setting sun shone through the hides, illuminating whorl patterns where fur had once grown. Raif could not guess what animal they came from.
Lines of silky blue smoke rose from three seaglass lanterns raised on longbone poles. To his left Raif saw a loose pile of saddle blankets dyed in colors of yellow: saffron, ocher, wheat. The tent floor consisted of thickly piled pelts and fleeces. Raif recognized the curly-haired fleece of a bighorn sheep and the dappled white pelt of a snag cat, but he did not recognize the others. One was orange with black circles, another was horse-shaped and striped black-and-white, and another still was stiff and ridged and green as pondweed. He was lying on a mattress or mounded earth overlaid with sheepskin, and he was covered by a single blanket woven from a wool softer and lighter than musk ox.
When he was ready, Raif turned his attention to the figure standing by the roped-down tent flap. The man was tall and lean. Sable-colored robes so dark and richly dyed they absorbed light were wrapped around his head and body in loosely twisted folds. The headpiece consisted of tiers of fabric hung from a curved hood. A single bow-shaped slit revealed his eyes.
The man bowed his head slowly but did not speak. He had been waiting, Raif decided, allowing his visitor time to grow accustomed to his surroundings. Squatting, the man poured green liquid from a copper pot into a glass cup with a copper base. The liquid steamed as he crossed the small, circular space of the tent and laid the cup on the hides by Raif's bed. The man's eyes were an inky brown and his eye whites had a faint bluish tinge to them, like a bird's. His skin was ash brown and there were three small black dots spaced evenly across the bridge of his nose that might have been tattoos.
Nodding once toward the cup and then to a wooden bowl close to Raif's feet the man withdrew. Night air purled through the tent slit as he raised the guide rope and disappeared. Raif watched the tent flap spool back down. Thick raw air circled the tent, dragging down smoke from the seaglass lamps as it sank.
Raif sat up. Pain shot along his left side, spiking in his shoulder. Blood rushed to his head, making his skin flush, and then rushed back down, leaving him faint. Planting his feet on the strange green hide, he rested for a moment before standing. A question that had been waiting just beyond the radius of his thoughts came sharply into view. How long have I been here? He had no answer, he realized, no experience to relate his body's condition to time.
Standing brought on a wave of dizziness, and he clung to one of the yellow bones as he waited it out. The bone echoed when he tapped it with his knuckle; hollow as a birdbone. When the tent stopped spinning, Raif reached for the green drink. It smelled of licorice and something his memory couldn't find a name for. He did not taste it, simply drank in deep gulps, swallowing rhythmically. Done, he glanced down at the wooden pot. Shaking his head, he decided to go outside rather than piss in a bowl.
He was still in the Great Want. The knowledge came to him the instant he stepped upon the gray, powdery earth. Overhead, the great wheel of stars blazed and turned. Knowing better than to gauge the passage of time in the Want by lunar phases, Raif ignored the rising moon. A light wind was gusting, shifting the dust into dunes and car-rying the smelted-metal scent of new-formed glaciers. Raif was standing within a circle of five tents, all similar in shape and size to the one he had slept in. Outside the circle a corral consisting of tanned leathers hung from ivory tusks sheltered woolly mules and a single saffron-fleeced milk ewe. Inside the circle, at its center, four men squatted around a cook fire, spearing food from a black pot with sharpened sticks. No one spoke. All four glanced Raif's way before returning to the business of eating. They were dressed in similar robes of varying shades and it was impossible for Raif to tell which one of them had been in his tent. One of the four had plunged a lean copper spear into the soft earth, and it stood, point-up, within reach of his left hand.