But already the threats were great.
The things Rafe passed continued to babble but they issued warnings now, sounds that faded as they drifted to another part of his mind, or he drifted away. Heat behind him, acidic burning before him, and the only place that felt safe was somewhere far away, a land of madness and dangers that Noreelans had all but forgotten.
The voices whispered and cajoled, guiding Rafe, giving him the words to mutter as soon as he came out of his sleep. But his fatigue was great and he slept on, drifting through his own mind and wondering at the greatness it contained.
Tim Lebbon
Dusk
Chapter 23
ELDRISS MAHAY WASnot having a good time. Yesterday a foxlion had taken three of his sheebok, one after the other. Eldriss had been asleep at the time, huddled under a couple of pelts in a copse of trees. His flock were grazing on the plain, trying to fatten themselves on grass gone weak and pale over the past few years, fading, just as Eldriss had felt himself slowly fading. Age was doing it to him, and apathy as well, a continuing and growing belief that there really was no point to anything. Sleep was a retreat he sought more often than ever. Invariably when he woke up his flock was together, just where they had been when he drifted off, and it would only take an hour to gather them in for the night. Ironically, that would make him feel even more superfluous.
And then he had begun to feel ill. It came suddenly, a thump to his gut and a thud in his head, a swimming of vision and a retreat of his hearing. He had doubled up in pain and fallen to his knees, some of his sheebok glancing up listlessly, and he crawled through the long grass to the shaded shelter of the trees.
He had remained there for some time, and when he came around he felt like a stranger. The way he reacted to things was different: the heat of the sun on his skin; the shape of the sheebok; the feel of his flaccid tool as he took a piss. Everything had changed, and yet everything remained the same. It was his perception that had altered. The grass was still pale green, but it provoked subtly changed emotions. The trees he sheltered beneath were the same size, yet the height made him stretch that much more to view them. And when he thought of his family and friends in Cleur, it was with an interest that he had not felt for a long time.
He had heard the foxlion stalk in and steal the sheebok. The first one taken was almost silent, only the dull muttering of the rest of the flock giving any sign, and with his eyes closed Eldriss had felt something stretch out in his mind to test the animal’s pain. The foxlion had returned soon after and chased another sheebok, the flock parting around the pursuit like dead leaves scattered by the hunter’s feet, and at the point of capture Eldriss had felt himself lessen, caught and pulled down, as some other consciousness used his senses to observe the kill. By the time the predator took the third of his animals, Eldriss thought he was dead.
Yet he stood and moved and finally walked out from the shelter of the trees to survey the damage. There was little blood, a few scraps of wool and one whole leg, chewed off and left as a defiant sign of the foxlion’s intrusion.
Eldriss should have chased it and put a bolt in its skull, but he was barely able to hold his own weight. And yet he stood and was strong.
Something else had him.
Today, with Eldriss still trying to come to terms with these contradicting sensations-greater awareness, numbing concealment-the river had been sucked away. One hour the Cleur flowed full and steady, passing by to the north. The next-and with a sudden rushing sound that had floored birds with its intensity and driven his remaining sheebok running for cover behind rocks and trees-the water had rapidly increased its rate of flow. The banks had started to disintegrate, trees and bushes pulled in, and over the space of a few minutes the violent waters had decreased to a bare trickle.
Eldriss was terrified, but the new, greater part of him was fascinated as well. With new eyes he had viewed the riverbed, already drying in the sun, totally featureless where the rapidly flowing waters had abraded it smooth.
He lingered, but the river did not return.
Back with his sheebok, Eldriss sat beneath the trees and waited. The urge to experience scorched his mind, but his duty ensured that he did not run wild. And not his duty to the sheebok-he barely saw them now, had almost forgotten that they existed-but the obligation he felt to… to… his god.
His god.
His god would reward him well if he took her news.
So he waited and watched, comfortable in the knowledge that he would know when there was something to tell.
THAT SOMETHING ARRIVEDat sunset.
Rafe, a voice whispered in his mind, Rafe Baburn.
There were four of them walking, two more on horses, both seemingly unconscious or dead. They came toward the copse of trees, and perhaps they had not even seen him yet. He remained still, leaning casually against a trunk, arms crossed.
The woman in the lead was short, small and heavily armed. Her face was pale, even in the pink sunset, and her eyes scanned ahead, worried, constantly looking for danger. Her gaze passed across Eldriss without pause. The shadows of the trees hid him well.
There was a big man walking next to her, leading one of the horses. He looked quite old, but fit and lean. He also seemed tired. His clothes were streaked with dried mud, and he held his free hand slightly from his body as if in pain.
When they were a hundred steps from the trees they paused. The short woman muttered something and then came on alone, one hand resting on the hilt of a short sword.
Eldriss stepped out of the shadows.
Rafe, he heard, but it was echoing inside. His name is Rafe.
The woman stopped, surprised, and Eldriss raised a hand in a casual wave. “Hello!” he said. “Beautiful evening!” Two sheebok strolled before him and he patted them as he walked by. They stared up at him, and Eldriss knew that they did not recognize him. They were too stupid to show it.
“Stop there,” the woman said, and when he looked up Eldriss saw that she had unshouldered her bow. No arrow notched yet, none drawn from her quiver, but her expression showed that she meant what she said.
He stopped. “No need for nastiness,” he said, and deep inside where Eldriss was fighting to surface he was pleased, for a moment, that he had slipped some real feeling into that comment.
“Have you seen Red Monks?” the woman asked.
And the thing that had Eldriss knew straightaway. Red Monks! They fear the Monks because they are hunted by them, and they are hunted by them because…
“You have Rafe?” he asked.
The woman’s eyes opened fractionally, surprise catching and reflecting the sunset.
That was enough for the shade. It pulled away, withdrawing its myriad psychic tendrils with no subtlety, no pretense at caution, and the pain was worse because Eldriss could not scream.
The woman was moving quickly now, squatting down, arm whipping around, her hand holding the bow rising into position.
The shade was free but it thrashed in Eldriss’ mind, wrecking, tearing, giving the shepherd only agony for the final second of his life. It ripped away and left the world as the arrow flew, striking the man’s right eye and punching a hole through the back of his skull.