When the mumble of voices continued and the click of dice and sticks did not cease—and when their minds were touching—Thorn thought that he was ready; and down the tunnel in the darkness Elodia let out a scream that made the blood go cold. A scream of pure terror that he had felt her building, getting ready to deliver, for some minutes. It was so good a scream he wanted to laugh with the pleasure of it, but there wasn’t time; the two guards boiled out. He caught the second in the knee, in the groin, felt him twist, pulled his arm behind him, and heard the other shout where he had bolted down the corridor into the children. Thorn stabbed again, felt the guard go limp, and pelted after the first, found him fighting rope and girls and Toca in a melee so confused it was all Thorn could do to sort out the right thing to hit, afraid to use the knife. The drugged Children stood looking on, like shadows.
When they had the man down, Thorn decided to let him live, tie him and question him. The man was gone in drunkenness; Thorn could smell the liquor. Disgusted, but glad for the advantage it had given them, he tied him well, and they dragged him onto one of the slabs.
Now the brewing room was empty. They made quick work of the MadogWerg, mixing the ground leaf with dirt, then burying the whole mess. There was quite a lot of it, the dry, bronze leaf crushed to a fine powder, and some not yet crushed, gathered into small sheaves, the round separate leaves quite beautiful, just as Tra. Hoppa had described—the most potent of all the drugs.
They poured the brewed liquid into the Kubalese’s liquor cask. A little welcoming draft for the next Kubalese who came along. But Thorn saved back that in the cup, he did not know why.
The drugged Children who had followed them stood clutched together like moon-moths in the doorway, clinging to each other. Thorn brought them in, pushing, gently cajoling until they were seated, close together still, on the lower bunk. Nine of them, frightened and pale and confused—even the four adults—by the lantern light and by being awake and walking, by the world which they all seemed to have forgotten. When they smelled the reek of drug from the cold-still, they stared toward it longingly until Thorn tipped it over with one blow and smashed the tin cups and the tubing under his heel. Then they looked terrified indeed, whether at his violence or at the destruction of the still, no one could be sure.
The cave was fairly large, with the table in the middle next to a supporting post, the bunks by the door, clothes on pegs, and a tangle of things at the back—crocks and barrels and a small cooking stove like an iron pot, with a bit of chimney that attached to three tubes in the dirt ceiling. Thorn examined these. “They’re no bigger than rabbit holes,” he said admiringly. “And there were plenty of rabbit holes up there. A little bit of smoke, carried off by the wind . . .”
There were half a dozen black rabbit skins hanging, dry, on one wall, and rabbit carcasses, dried and smoked, hung from the main beam of the room. Zephy opened a barrel to find it filled with golden-colored grain. “Would we dare to eat the food? We’ll have to feed the Children. They wouldn’t have drugged all this; they must have needed it themselves. What did they feed the Children? Besides the . . . besides the MadogWerg. It must have been liquid, they were hardly awake,” she said, touching a big iron pot. “They had to feed them, Thorn, they would have died otherwise.”
“Could you make some soup?”
She and Elodia set about it at once, tipping water from a barrel and adding the grain and dried rabbit and some tammi and kebbel-root. The fuel for the stove was dried cow dung, hot burning, that filled a linen bag. She wished she had milk for the children.
The Children’s eyes had followed her as she investigated the room, and at the words MadogWerg they had seemed to tense, their faces to harden and to become slyly eager—the most alive they had looked since they had been awakened. She could feel their thoughts, their increasing desire for the drug as they came more fully awake and felt the sharp pangs of withdrawal. She felt, with them, the ugly quick pains in her body, in her legs and hands. She should have felt sorry for them, but she could feel only repulsion. She wished they could be shut away, she realized with shock. Oh, how could she think such a thing. She stared at Clytey Varik’s blank face, and felt a horror at her own emotions. Yet the Children were so like something dead that the feel of them, sick and negative, was almost more than she could bear. It was as if their very spirits tainted everything around them with a heavy intensity of lifelessness, with such a pall that joy and love were made somehow indecent in the presence of their intense death-wishing.
She looked up and found Thorn watching her and knew they had shared this. And she knew that their very sharing was repugnant to these drugged, sick Children. She felt a passion to get away from them, and then a gripping pity that made her turn and stare at them, so she almost cried out in agony at what they were.
As one, Toca and Elodia rose, and the four of them took hands and stood as before touching the runestone and trying to waken the Children more completely, awaken them to life, to wholeness. They breathed such passion into their effort, into the Children, breathed the very souls of their spirits into them. But they pulled away at last exhausted, near dropping with fatigue and discouragement; for the Children had remained as they were, their eyes and spirits willfully unseeing; blank and defiant.
Now Thorn looked at Zephy for the first time without that spark of challenge and assurance. He seemed to have lost hope suddenly. She stared at him with chagrin. “They don’t want this,” he growled angrily. “They don’t want to be better. We can’t make them want it, we’re not strong enough.”
“We are! You’re stupid to say we can’t! You’ll undo everything!”
“Undo what? They’re dead—they’d be better dead. Look at them! They want to be dead!” He swung to face the silent row where they crouched on the bunk, staring dully. “Look at you! You’re nothing. You’ve lost your very souls, you’ve let them be taken from you. You can’t even fight for your life! All you want is a morass to wallow in. To die in!” He turned away furious, his eyes dark with anger and his fists clenched as if he would like to hit them.
And Zephy, watching the Children with apprehension, saw the blonde young woman’s eyes go clear suddenly, saw her looking back at Thorn with life in her face. Zephy caught her breath, cried silently to Thorn, saw him turn and take the woman’s hands.
The woman looked at Zephy now, and smiled. Tremulous, uncertain, but aware. Very much aware. Thorn pressed the stone in her hand and they held it, the three of them. Zephy could feel the change then, could feel that now, at last, the bodily pains and depression did not matter, that something else stronger had taken hold. That life had returned, the stubborn eagerness for life.
At last the woman said her name, Showpa, and that she was of Quaymus. And they set about, together, bringing the others back. For with Thorn’s anger, all of the Children had begun to reach out, to feel out toward his strength. And toward the runestone. Had begun to fight at last.
TWENTY
Zephy woke cold and stiff from sleeping on the stone floor. She could not tell whether it was night or day. The constant darkness of the cave depressed and upset her. She had awakened several times, longing to see daylight. She rose and went into a side corridor, where there were several holes in the cave ceiling to let in air, and stared up at the barely light sky. The cold, predawn air felt so good. She had a terrible desire to leave the cave and run across the hills, free.
Instead she hunkered down against the stone wall, waiting for some sign of life from the others, thinking that otter-herb tea would taste wonderful, wishing she could wash herself properly.