The Companion - One With The Shadows Part 26

Gian cradled Kate in his arms as the wind at last died down. He didn't want to wake her when she had finally relaxed enough to doze off. When he'd come in, she was obviously in shock, trembling, her skin clammy and cold to the touch. It had been all he could do to calm her. He hadn't meant to rake up her past. The last thing he wanted was to give her pain. But he had to admit that her past explained exactly why she was so cynical, so self-sufficient.

And why she would never love him. Even beyond the fact that he was a monster in her eyes, she would never let herself love.

Maybe not anyone. Certainly not him. He'd heard the dismay in her voice as she asked about vampire society. The way they lived would certainly be daunting to a human. Perhaps she would let him be her friend. Perhaps she could grow used enough to him for that.

In the dark of the tent, with the wind raging outside and the heat making him sweat, all his doubts a.s.sailed him. Even if they could find the cursed temple they'd have to dig out the tons of sand that buried it. He'd taken blood in Laghouhat, but he could foresee a time when he would need to feed again. Elyta was probably safe up in the mountains right now, and if they survived, she'd be ready to swoop down on them. And Kate would never love him.

He couldn't think about all that. So he just thought about how to talk Kate out of buying a cottage in rural England. She could be the toast of Rome, or Vienna, or anywhere really. She just had to be bold enough to brazen it through. People would get used to her scar, in spite of what his mother said. If Kate let him be her friend, he'd make sure she never wanted. He'd invest her money for her, say it was doing well, supplement it if he must.

He was condemning himself to his mother's fate; watching someone he loved grow old and die. But what was the alternative?

Not to see her at all? He didn't have the courage for it. If she was stubborn enough to stick to her doomed plan, he'd set himself up in England, where he could watch over her. Italy held no attraction for him now.

He felt the sun go down. His entire lower body was numb from sitting in one position so as not to wake her. But now it was time. "Kate."

She roused herself. "Did I fall asleep?"

He smiled. How could one not smile at Kate? "For a little while."

"The wind has died." She scrambled to her feet.

He rose, his limbs tingling and stiff. "You stay here." He went to untie the tent flaps.

"Nonsense. I'm going with you." She came to help him with the ties.

"I don't think you want to see what may be out there."

She swallowed. "If it's bad, you're going to need help."

She was so courageous. He had placed the door to the tent toward the mountains, yet still, when he undid the final tie and pulled the flap inward, sand poured in from a drift that almost covered the doorway. He crawled up through the small opening. "Just give me a chance to take stock," he ordered. "I promise I'll come to get you when I know it's safe."

He got to his feet. The sky was slashed with red wounds where the setting sun glinted on the high, streaked clouds. The sea of sand had engulfed the tents. Only one tent pole showed above the dunes like a miniature pyramid. Two camels brayed their protest as they struggled out of the sand. There had been six including Kate's. He could see no horses.

He strode to the surviving tent and began to dig. "Are you alive?" he called in Arabic.

"Enough alive," came the reply. He scooped sand out until they were able to open their flap. He pulled them out one by one.

There were five.

Kate came up behind him with the water sacks. Could the woman never follow orders?

"Here," she offered. The men took the skin gratefully. They must not have had the foresight to grab a pack from the camels.

Together the seven of them looked around. Except for the two half-buried tents, the dapple-gray horse scrambling up out of Kate and Gian's tent, and the two camels, they were alone on the rippling sand.

"That means we lost six men," Kate whispered.

"Let's just make sure." Gian staggered through the sand to approximately where he remembered pitching the other two tents and began to dig.

They didn't find anyone else alive. Gian dug up some packs they'd taken off the camels with great effort, but they left the men who'd suffocated when their tents collapsed and the animals buried under the sand. Kate imagined the bodies becoming mummies, the sand sucking the moisture from their flesh, to be found ages and ages hence when the sea of sand rippled again with wind, and their desiccated corpses were revealed.

Gian loaded packs on the camels and a smaller one on the horse. The moon was high and cold by the time they'd finished The five men whispered together. Didn't Gian notice?

"Effendi." One Arab stepped out of the group.

Gian turned. The man slipped a long curved sword out of the scabbard at his waist and spoke again, this time an order of some kind.

Gian shrugged and opened his palms. He stepped away from the camels. But he spoke rapidly and gestured at the horse. The man shook his head and waved the sword around.

Gian's eyes went hard. Faster than she could quite comprehend, he stepped in and twisted the sword from the leader's fist. He threw it on the ground behind him. He took a handful of the man's burnoose and lifted him up, growling in Arabic. The man's eyes rolled white in fear. Gian tossed him to the ground, seemingly without effort. He landed about six feet away with a thud.

Gian glared at the others, but they opened their hands, murmuring what had to be apologies.

Gian stalked over to Kate, only pausing to retrieve the sword. "Come on," he muttered. "These cowards are no use to us."

The men hurried to the camels and pulled them to their feet. Kate watched them retreat back along the cliff walls toward Laghouhat. Gian never once looked at them. But he didn't take their water or their camels either.

He unstrapped the pack from the horse, retied the straps so that he could shrug it on his own back. Kate looked out at the line of cliffs, gray in the moonlight, disappearing into the distance. What was she doing here? For a moment she couldn't think why she had come so far, and got to this place on the edge of the world where sand and wind could kill if you didn't run out of water or if vampires didn't catch you. She couldn't have stayed in Amalfi because Elyta would have found her. But she should have stayed in Algiers.

Gian rose from his knees in the sand.

Oh. Her sense of herself shuddered back into place. She was here because Gian wouldn't give up on this mission to return the stones to a place where they could do no harm. That was who he was. And he couldn't do it without her. So that had become who she was too.

He cupped his hands and bent. "You're finally going to learn to ride a horse," he said.

She didn't want to ride while he walked and carried a pack. But she also didn't want to hold them back. So for once she didn't argue with him. She put her sandal in his hands. He tossed her up on the horse's bare back. She grabbed the creature's mane.

Gian picked up the horse's reins and started across the dunes back toward the cliffs.

There was no help left now. It was just Gian and the horse and Kate against a desert that could kill without reason, against Elyta and whomever she brought with her. They couldn't turn back until they found the place that was home to the jewels that drained a vampire's power, or drove men mad. They were goaded on by Gian's honor. Because he couldn't leave the job undone.

She just hoped this job wasn't their undoing.

Kate alternately rode and walked through the night and much of the day. They stopped to rest in the shade of the cliffs. Gian gave his share of water to the horse, but only after Kate had drunk. That annoyed her. If he could give up his water so could she. She resolved to wait until he'd had his share before she sipped next time. Then he slipped the pouch from his shoulder and handed it to her so she could take a reading from the stones.

She could feel them buzzing with energy even through the leather and their boxes. They were ramping up in power as they neared their destination. A thought occurred. She concentrated on Gian's vibrations and thought they had waned a bit. The stones were affecting him, even through their boxes. "Aren't these growing uncomfortable for you?" she asked.

"A little."

"I'll carry them from now on." He was already in pain from the light, though he kept his hands in his burnoose sleeves and pulled his hood down low over his forehead. She opened the mahogany box and took out the ruby. It gleamed like sparkling blood in the light. She relaxed her body and held it in front of her in cupped hands. She breathed in and let the air out slowly. Her hands extended almost of their own accord to the southwest and trembled. That was the strongest the stone had ever been.

"I think we're close now."

"Can you go on?"

"Perhaps, but we'll kill our trusty friend here." She didn't say that she thought Gian needed rest too. He'd been walking for twelve hours carrying a heavy pack.

He examined her and grunted. "We'll rest then."

They ate dates and dried jerky, and sipped the water carefully. She shook the water skin. There wasn't much left. Gian hugged his knees under the burnoose. She could feel his discomfort. But the moment the sun sank below the cliffs he had them moving again.

"None of these chasms looked like the one in my vision," Kate fussed, mounted again on the horse. She'd been walking for three or four hours when Gian had insisted that she ride.

"It's got to be one of these eroded wadis. The temple was cut into a chasm wall."

She thought back. "This was filled with sand. There was a huge fan of sand coming out from the cliffs."

"You mean like that one?" He pointed down the cliff face.

Kate could see nothing. "Where?"

"It's several miles away yet." His voice was excited.

"You can see that far?"

"I see well in the dark."

Of course he would. He took the horse's reins and pulled him forward. She could feel Gian's antic.i.p.ation. It was more than an hour before they reached the fan of sand and scree. Was this it? Could there be two such formations'? She slid from the horse's back and took the emerald from the pocket of her breeches. Holding the stone out in front of her, she closed her eyes. The emerald surged and tumbled from her hand. It rolled a little way up the incline of sand.

She hurried to pick it up. "Well, that's a first. It rolled uphill."

"You have your answer," Gian muttered. He was looking up the incline. His excitement had faded into... what? Apprehension?

Kate swallowed and peered up the wadi in the dark. There was a bend in the ravine. She could see nothing but the fan that seemed to gradually fill the chasm. Gian pulled the horse up the incline. It would be tough going, slogging through the loose sand.

Kate followed. What was it about this gorge that made the back of her neck p.r.i.c.kle? "Uh, Gian, you never said what the Temple of Waiting was a temple to. I mean... waiting for what?" Her voice sounded small echoing back from the walls.

"It was all only a legend until Rufford confirmed it." She heard him clear his throat. The gorge was that silent. "You'll think this is crazy."

"Crazier than stones that drive you mad and want to go home?"

"I'll grant you that." His voice drifted back on the dry night air. "There was a race here before us. They weren't like us. They were tall and gaunt, with features not quite human. When men came along, they were benevolent rulers and taught us much. The Companion existed in their blood. One of them infected a spring in the Carpathian Mountains with the parasite, has he wandered the world whether by accident or on purpose no one knows. That was thousands of years ago."

"How many thousands?" she whispered.

"Ten, maybe, or eleven. Anyway, a tribe of men drank from the spring. Most died, but one did not, and his blood could help others survive infection."

"Like immunity. If you have the pox, you can't get it again." That part sounded plausible.

"Something like that." He shrugged. "Anyway, his people punished him for his lapse in infecting the spring. When it was time to go and they gathered together from all parts of the world, they accused him. Then they left him behind when they went away."

"Went away... where?" The skeptic in her readied itself for the reply.

"One can only guess." He looked up at the stars, cold and glittering, with speculation in his eyes. "But the legend says they left from this desert. And the one remaining built a temple in the rose-colored stone of a chasm wall, where he could wait for them to return. He supposedly built a signal so they could find him again, a pulsing fountain of... jewels that sent out light and energy."

Kate frowned. "And these stones are from his signal?"

"I think they are."

A signal built of jewels? Hardly. She was breathing hard from struggling through the sand that rose ever higher in the ravine.

Still... "So Rufford says this was true?" Rufford didn't seem like one to tell wild tales.

"Yes. He found the temple."

"And the mummy of the one who was left behind?" Like Egypt and the pyramids. All this was really just conjecture on Rufford's part. There was no way to know the tale.

"Oh, the Old One was still very much alive, waiting in the temple."

Kate blinked. My G.o.d-for... for ten thousand years? Impossible. Would Rufford lie?

"His blood is very strong. He gave Rufford a cup of it so Rufford could best Asharti."

No. She couldn't imagine Rufford lying. The unbearable sadness of being the last, left behind, waiting, struck her. "How...

horrible." She wished Rufford's story wasn't true. Maybe he was just... wrong. But Rufford did not seem easily deluded either.

They turned another corner in the chasm. The walls were perhaps only twenty feet above the sand that filled it. And there, in the side of the wall, were... were stairs. There was no other word for them. They were cut out of solid rock, even, flat, smooth.

They couldn't be natural. But they were unnatural in another way as well. The risers of these stone stairs must be more than three feet high. What kind of creature used stairs like that? A giant, or... Gian stopped behind her, staring.

This changed everything.

"So... so what happened to this temple?" she asked.

"The Old One destroyed it. Rufford said there was some kind of vortex inside and... it just exploded and buried the entire place." He looked around at the sand. "Hold out a stone."

They were walking over who knew what, right this very minute. The thought made her want to shudder. She retrieved the ruby and held it tightly so it wouldn't escape. This time her arms shot out, pointing along the ravine. "Very well. We're not there yet."

They stumbled on through the deep sand again, ever upward until the walls of the chasm were no higher than their heads. The walls opened out onto a wide, sand plateau.

And there, ahead, was a striped tent, flags at each corner fluttering in the sirocco. Was it red and gold? She couldn't quite tell because the moonlight leached the color from it. One thing was not in doubt. This was the tent she had seen when she looked into the ruby. Four camels nestled in the sand to one side. Gian and Kate went still.

The tent flap opened and out stepped Elyta, followed by Illya, Federico, Sergei, and another. The air hummed with energy. They did not have red eyes, but Kate knew they could bring up their power in an instant, and that they would be too much for Gian, even if he was not still depleted from their previous cruelties.

"Welcome, Urbano, and your little scarred friend too." Elyta motioned the others forward. They positioned themselves around Gian and Kate. "I've been waiting for days."

"How did you get here before us?" The muscles in Gian's jaw bunched.

"She told me you were taking the stones home. That could only mean to the temple. You did not know its location, so you would go to Rufford in Algiers. Therefore, we sailed on west and landed at Oran. We came up northeast as you were trekking down."

She strolled forward, the aubergine of her translucent robes ruffling in the breeze. They were lined with thin gold braid and she had gold loops in her ears and a chain laced with gold beads across her forehead. She looked every inch the Berber princess, except for her milky skin. "Now," she said to Gian, "give me the stones." She held out a long-nailed hand.

"You can have them, Elyta," Gian growled. "And me. Just let Kate go."

No, she wanted to shout. You can't give them to her after all we've done to keep them from her. Maybe he was buying time. She could see he hadn't given up. His eyes flashed, not with red, but with a glint of anger.