Summerblood (54 page)

And then that space was empty no longer.

Rann flinched away from reflex, so much so that he unbalanced his camp chair and toppled backward in an untidy heap. He picked himself up clumsily, squinting into the gloom through eyes addled by that sudden brief flare of light. And saw—

—Saw a slight youth in a simple white robe clutching another young man by the hand. Saw that the second man was naked, and then saw him crumple to the floor.

But only long enough to shake himself and rise on all fours, blinking wide eyes beneath a tangled mop of uncombed black hair.

“Avall!” That was Bingg.

“—and Kylin.” From Riff.

Avall indeed.

“Rann,” the rising figure mumbled. And joy filled Rann so fast he couldn't breathe—could do nothing but remain where he was: kneeling on the floor with one hand frozen on the table where he'd begun to lever himself up, staring at his bondbrother across no more than a span.

And then the span closed through no effort he recalled making, and his arms were clamped around Avall, their faces were pressed into each other's shoulders, and they were, for all intents and purposes, one being.

That joy—that relief and release—lasted for an eternal instant before it was ruthlessly shattered.

“No! No! Nonononononononononononono!” someone howled, in what took Rann a moment to realize was Kylin's voice. Or maybe he
didn't
realize it. Maybe it was the fact that
Avall
knew it was Kylin's voice, and he and Avall were one. Or maybe it was Lykkon who called Kylin's name.

In any case, he released his friend and looked around—to see Kylin standing where he'd first arrived, one hand still frozen in air as if it still clutched Avall's hand, while the fingers of the other curled around an all-too-familiar sword. He looked stiff enough to shatter if he moved.

Except his eyes. He'd lost his blindfold, and for all that he was blind in truth, his eyes were darting about as though they saw things no one else present could see. Worse, the pupils were dilating and expanding at a fearful rate without reference to each other.

His lips were working, too, but the litany of “nos” had ended.

For maybe a dozen breaths.

Then, like a rising tide of terror, Kylin found language again.

“Death” was the first word Rann heard clearly, and that alone sent chills over him. But fast upon it came others, mixed with a slur of syllables that might make sense to Kylin and
might not. “Death and the dark, and the dark hides death, and death hides in the dark, and reaches through it, and there are dead things in the dying dark that want to drink me down, and the dead drink the dying daily, in the dark, in the dark that I dare not enter, but that drinks me, and it's drinking me and drawing me down to death, and death desires to drink me, too, too many deaths drinking there in the dark, the dark, the dark, the dying dark of death, the dark the dark—”

On and on, in a kind of singsong chant, until Riff had sense enough to ease behind him and clamp a hand gently but firmly across Kylin's mouth. He tensed—if it was possible for him to tense more—but the babbling ceased.

“The sword,” Lykkon cried. “Get it away from him— now!”

Myx did—by accident. Drunker than the rest, yet ever the good soldier, he turned to respond, lost his balance, and fell, which took him into Riff and Kylin together, sprawling them across the floor. Riff grunted, but kept his hold on Kylin. The sword tumbled free and went sliding across the rug until stopped by a table leg, where it lay against the dark wood, gleaming. There was blood on the hilt, Rann saw. He dared not think whose it might be.

“He's mad,” Riff dared, even as he sought to extricate his bond-brother from Kylin's supine form. As for the harper—he was no longer simply lying flat on his back where he'd fallen, but had shifted onto his side and was curling up around himself, like an unborn child. The litany had resumed, too, but more softly. All Rann could hear was an occasional “death” or “dark” or “doom.”

“Mad,” Lykkon echoed dully. “Poor Kylin.”

“Mad indeed.” And
that
had been Avall. The first words he'd spoken. “I … could … feel it clamp around him when he wasn't looking,” he went on, sounding as tired as a man could sound. “I have to—That is, I need to—I can't,” he finished heavily. Rann felt him go limp. “It got him,” Avall murmured into his shoulder. “He sacrificed himself for me.”

Lykkon cleared his throat, leaving Riff to tend to Kylin, since Bingg was simply standing where he'd been, slack-jawed. “Has anybody besides me realized what's just occurred?”

“Avall's back,” Rann replied. “That's enough for now.”

“Not on the eve of battle,” Lykkon countered. “This changes everything.”

“It does indeed,” Avall agreed harshly, pushing Rann away. He blinked into the gloom. “Give me that,” he demanded, pointing to the sword.

Rann hesitated, then started toward it. But Avall was faster. Indeed, he moved as fast as he ever had in his life, so that he reached the sword before Rann did and closed his fist around the blade. He stood then, all in one fluid rush of movement. His eyes were wild, Rann realized, too late: wild and feverish. Almost as wild as Kylin's had been.

Yet he was powerless to stop his oldest, closest friend as he swung around to face the jeweler's anvil Lykkon kept in the tent, mostly—he said—to help repair mail.

“Avall!” Bingg yelped—but Avall paid him no mind whatsoever as, still possessed of that preternatural speed, he set the sword's hilt atop the anvil, snared a planishing hammer with his other hand—and slammed the hammer down atop the gem.

Rann wasn't certain he heard the words that accompanied that sickening crunch, or merely felt them in his mind. Whichever way they reached him, he knew what consumed Avall's thoughts at the moment he destroyed the gem.
You have hurt Kylin. You will never hurt anyone I love again!

And for the second time since the sun had touched the horizon, the air inside the tent was ripped asunder. But this time the few beams of light that still made their way through the slit of the tent flap shone on nothing but naked ground.

“Empty,” Tryffon spat incredulously, less than a finger later. He drew the flap aside for Vorinn to see as well. “Everything is gone.”

“Let me see!” Vorinn cried, pushing his way into what, indeed, looked like an empty tent—though not completely. A confusion of items, from stools to armor, lay strewn about the bare earth in a disarray that made no sense.

Tryffon drew him back with a sturdy hand upon his shoulder. “Avall's vanished as well,” he rumbled. “There's no possible way the two aren't connected.”

“Will Zeff still attack at dawn?” Veen wondered beside Vorinn.

Vorinn—almost—grinned at her. “The question is,” he chuckled, “will we?”

Rann awoke gradually, from his innermost brain out.

The first thing he had to do was breathe—which was not a given, since his lungs seemed paralyzed—or perhaps frozen in ice would have been a more apt description. In any case, they were empty for an endless moment, as though his breath had been knocked out of him. Perhaps he was dead, in which case it wouldn't matter. But air was prodding the gates of his nose and mouth, demanding to be admitted. He sucked it greedily, and felt life return.

And then instinct took over—enough to inform him that he was warm and safe—but that all other givens of reality had undergone some fundamental alteration, and not just in the way he was perceiving it.

He hid from it, glad for the nonce simply to breathe and feel his heart beat. But that feeling made him aware of others. Most particularly, it made him aware of the air around him, which was very warm indeed and quite dry, where it should've been moderately warm, somewhat stuffy, and musty-damp. Yet the rug was still beneath him, which didn't make sense, though someone had tilted the earth on which it rested and replaced the woodland loam with what felt suspiciously like solid rock.

At which point he realized he was lying flat on his back, as
if he'd been hurled away from something, and that his left hand lay atop what felt like firm young human flesh. Maybe alive, maybe not; it was too cold to tell.

Another breath, and his awareness leaped up a level. He could taste nothing but the residue of wine, but that was to be expected.
Smell
, however … again, the familiar overlapped the utterly strange. Wine, beer, ale, and liquors, both poured and spilled, were strongest. But more subtly he caught the odors of freshtanned leather, well-oiled mail, and the general tang of naked metal. He smelled soldier's soap, too, but also sweat, with an overall cast of mildew. Yet threading through it all was a cleaner suite of scents: hot, bare rocks; conifers; flowers; and water.

And while part of him knew he should not be able to smell water, another part of himself suggested that this was no normal state of awareness, and that when he became slightly more cognizant, he would recall why that was so.

But he felt no sense of urgency, still content to let himself drift up to consciousness—and to observe that journey.

Which had now reached hearing.

He heard wind soughing through treetops. He heard the breathing of what he was pleased to discover were six other people besides himself; punctuated now and then by what sounded like teeth chattering. He also heard a bird cry. What he did
not
hear was the steady murmuring rumble of the camp. No voices. No clang of weapons. No urgent footsteps. No creak of tent ropes or flap of canvas.

And then—at last—Rann dared open his eyes.

Raw stone arched at least three spans above his head and vanishing out of sight to either side, though more brightly lit to his left. A deep breath, and he leaned up on his elbow—and saw an arc of light cast upon the distant wall, by a sun invisible beyond—

Beyond what?

He didn't know, and so he let his gaze slide down.

Lykkon sprawled on his side next to him, lying athwart the
carpet from the tent. A smaller shape beyond was Bingg, shivering in what might be either sleep or unconsciousness. Two more shapes lay across Lykkon's feet: Myx and Riff, he assumed by their livery and Riff's fair hair. He almost didn't see the shape between them, for it had drawn in upon itself like a child asleep and remembering the womb.

Kylin.

Reality spun, returned, spun again.

Rann closed his eyes. But then he remembered.

Avall.

He twisted around, as a hand's worth of preposterous memories returned.

And saw, indeed, that Avall was there.

He lay on his back, much as Rann had lain, but with his arms outstretched. One arm held a hammer. The other …

Most recently it had held a sword, which in turn had held the master gem.

Now—

Nothing.

Avall's eyes were wide and staring like a dead man's. And had he not been naked, so that Rann could see the slightest rise and fall of his chest and the tiny twitch of pulse at his throat, he would've assumed him dead.

Instead, he called his name. Once. Softly.

Nothing.

Rann glanced around frantically, only then realizing that along with his companions some of the other contents of the tent were present: the table they'd been sitting around, for instance. A few stools and chairs. A couple of cases of wine. The rug on which they'd stood.

The sword. And more to the point, the gem.

The gem …

He sought the latter desperately, not believing that Avall had possessed the temerity to smash it. The table on which the anvil had stood was missing, but the anvil itself was present, a span beyond Avall's feet. And lying between, like ruby stars
upon a sky of maroon figured with blue and white, lay a num ber of glittering shards, each one of which was faintly glowing.

A groan.

Avall
, he reminded himself.
He had to awaken Avall.
Maybe with wine—if there was wine.

Somehow he made it to his knees, and saw, miraculously, Bingg's half-full cup still upright in the boy's hand. He snatched it, and held it to Avall's lips while he worked his arm beneath his bond-brother's head.

And was unprepared when Lykkon spoke behind him. “Where are we?”

And with that, the impossibility of the situation crashed down on Rann in truth. “I don't know,” he replied finally. “But wherever we are, it's a long way from the war.”

“Why do you say that?” Lykkon replied, through a bout of shivers.

Rann nodded toward the open space behind them. “Because it was sunset where we were. Here—it's only approaching.”

“You mean we've traveled in time?” Lykkon gasped, incredulously.

“No,” came another voice: a groggy one so close to Rann he started. “In space.”

“Avall!” Rann gasped. “You're alive.”

“Yes,” Avall slurred sleepily. “I wonder if that's good or not.”

“I don't know,” Rann told him wearily. “I fear we may have traded one war for another.”

He stared at the wall again, but this time let his gaze continue past the arc of light—which seemed to have shifted in shape and intensity—to where he'd dared not look before.

To where unworked stone surrounded a vista of cloudless, sunset sky; the tops of a file of cliffs; and, below them all, a glimmer of pure blue water.

He shuddered again, and had no way of telling whether those chills were born of cold, of fear, or of joy.