The air was hot and still. This was not the vast rock networks of the Kartiah Mountains, nor the open stone quarries of Belegandyne or Darash. She laid a hand against the wall, feeling the blood-warmth. The room was too small, yet there was a vastness around it that lost her; it felt...
In spite of the heat, shivers prickled her skin. A sudden, hollow rush sucked the memories of Maugrim from her and left her standing, minute and utterly alone, a fragmentary mote against the all-might of the stone arrayed about her.
It felt like a tomb, ancient, vast and infinite. It felt like a church. It felt as though Maugrim’s mesmeric presence were too tiny to be noticed.
It felt as though it was waiting.
With a shudder as deep as her soul, she pulled away from the stonework, picked up the sheet and cloaked herself in it. She was chilled through, inexplicably miniscule and terrified.
She had been looking for something – !
“You’re awake, love.” The wall was rolling closed behind him. “I’ve got you some water and some clean kit.”
In his presence, the chamber was warm, her fears ashes. The sheet tumbled to the floor and she welcomed him with open arms and lips.
He kissed her briefly, squeezing a buttock, and pushed her back.
“You need to wash and dress, sweetheart, and quickly. And you need to listen.”
“Of course.” She took the jug, the garments he had chosen for her and hoped she could please him. The embers in his eyes stroked her naked skin, leaving the warm touch of trailing fingertips.
He turned away.
“You’re a healer, little lady, herbalist, apothecary and teacher. And Xenotian – meaning you’ve worked your sweet arse off for those qualifications, and you’re tougher than you look.” He turned back with that predatory smile, taking the sting from the comment. Then he said, “Answer me something, love. Does it ever get to you?”
“Get to me?” The phrase was unfamiliar. She took a cloth from the jug and tried to unclot the bloodstreaks from her hair. Chill water ran down her hot skin, evaporating before it stained the floor. The air thickened.
Maugrim raised one hand and his metal rings flashed in the rocklight – one was the fanged skull of some mystery creature, one a grey-black stone that gleamed oddly metallic.
“Get to you, love.” His expression twisted, though the casual tone of his voice didn’t change. “The whiners, the needers, the hypochondriacs, the neurotics, the weak-willed and the desperate. ‘I’m depressed, I’m lonely, I’m fat, I’ve got to stop smoking – but I’m too bloody feeble to do it myself.’ They don’t try, they don’t learn. They wallow in self-pity. They come to you so you’ll take it away – but they don’t really want to give it up. Because it’s all the meaning they have.” His smile deepened, a rush of warmth made her gasp. “C’mon love – you have them here too. It’s not wrong to resent them.”
Resent – !
In the heart of the heat, a flare of shock and shame – then all lost to wonder. She found herself laughing like release; she wanted to kiss him.
“Yes, yes, sometimes.” How had he understood? The darkest corner of her healer’s soul – illuminated by his firelight and it was all right, it was all right. “When your life is others... sometimes you do just want to say to them –”
“Get a fucking grip!” He took her shoulders, enthused at her. “You’re no saint, little priestess. In your heart, you’re just like I am. Don’t you look at them and just... wish...”
The sentence tailed into a silence laden with suggestion. He smiled, kissed her, withdrew. She wanted to reach to him, to – oh Gods – tell him the secret place he’d just touched, but his gaze had gone. It was on the chamber, stroking the faint marks on the walls.
“So many years as other people’s confidence,” he said softly, “their crutch. And then I became obsolete, outmoded by a prescription. Now, here...” When he turned back, his smile was a welcoming campfire on a chill night. “Here, little priestess, I can do magic. Miracles. I can make this world anew!”
She watched him. He was compelling, exotic, his words alien. Transfixed, her response was a whisper, almost as if she feared what he’d say. “If you’re such a healer, why do you need me?”
“Finish dressing, and quick.” He grinned, predatory and savage as a Varchinde bweao, and his gaze flicked to her eyebrow. “I need you because I can’t heal flesh, sweetheart. And they keep dying.”
* * *
Dying.
Against Maugrim’s ardour, she couldn’t focus the thought.
As her last garment was laced, he caught her upper arm in a grip like red-hot metal and propelled her from the chamber. Fragments of rocklight threw random shadows over stone walls. When she stumbled over her skirts, he gripped her harder, marching her through a tight, twisted underground maze. In places, he had to stoop, hunching his heavy shoulders against the stone; she was small enough to walk upright – just – but stubbed her toes repeatedly on an uneven floor.
Dying.
“Stop, Maugrim, stop. Wait...”
He pushed forwards, took a corner, a side passage, another. His hold on her arm was merciless.
“Where are we going? Who – ?” Who keeps dying?
“No time for explanations, love. I needed a healer – need you to do something for me.”
“Do what?” She tried to halt, tried to tug her arm out of his grip. “What do you – ?”
He spun her against his strength, kissed her with a compelling brutality, then drew back to smile at her.
“You’ll do what you’re told, sweetheart.”
Her body surged in response – she couldn’t help it. When she kissed him back, curling against him in silent need, he loosened his grip, stroked her chin with the back of his knuckles. His rings were hot.
“Trust me,” he said softly. He was fervent, alight with belief. “Your culture’s stagnating, love, no challenge, no growth, no progress – and I know what that can do. I can change it, fix it. But you have to let me finish!”
“Finish what?”
He leaned his weight against the stone beside them and it swung inwards. Amethea felt a rush of air cooling her skin but not cold enough to be fresh. Beyond the door, she sensed, lay a large, dark chamber – a cavernous belly of potential.
A crystal-cold voice, oddly atonal, said, “Maugrim. You have brought an apothecary.”
“I can’t see shit.”
“I shall give you light.”
Amethea listened, but the chamber was silent. A moment later, white rocklight flooded the passageway.
She blinked, holding an arm to shield her eyes.
He thrust her through the doorway. Unable to see, she caught her foot in the hem of her skirt and tripped, fell hands-down to the floor.
He was over her, his strange, black boots surrounded by...
Metal. Tiny, round shapes of white-metal, a swath of them across a flat, stone floor. Instinctively, she realised this room was not part of the passageways – it was newer, larger, colder. As she blinked dazzle spots from her vision, she reached for one of the discs – flat, with a hole through the centre. It was one of dozens, hundreds, casually discarded across soil and stone.
Riches to make her head reel.
As if she had blundered through some saga and found his treasure hoard.
Maugrim leaned down, caught her arm and hauled her to her feet.