Indigo - Inferno Part 4

She nodded, then looked over her shoulder at Chrysiva. The girl still seemed to be sleeping; her face was turned away. Indigo sighed.

"I dreamed of Fenran again, Grimya. But this time he was dying of a fever."

Grimya whined softly in her throat. It was the story this woman told that put you in mind of such things. She, too, has lost her mate and pines for him. She hesitated. I have never had a mate.

But I have a friend, and I think I understand.

There were parallels between Chrysiva's tragedy and her own, Indigo thought with wry bitterness, and it deepened her sense of fellow feeling for the girl. She stared down at her tightly clasped hands and said: "I only hope she has a greater chance of finding her love than I have of finding mine."

You shouldn't say such things, Grimya chided anxiously. While we live, there is hope, "Hope?" Indigo's face was suddenly haggard, then her expression tightened into a mask. "Yes; there's hope." Abruptly she turned away and got to her feet, brus.h.i.+ng herself down with unnecessary energy. "It's cooler now. The worst of the day's over-we should move on."

Grimya made no further comment, but as Indigo went to saddle the pony-refusing to meet the she-wolf's gaze-she padded to where Chrysiva lay and nudged gently at her to rouse her.

"In-digo..."

Her tone carried an undercurrent of alarm. Indigo rubbed quickly at her eyes and looked back.

"What is it?"

"She... will not s-stir. I th-ink she is s... sick."

Swiftly Indigo came to join her, and turned Chrysiva over. There was dried spittle on the girl's lips; she moaned and mumbled something unintelligible, but either would not or could not open her eyes.

And her skin was hotter than was natural even in such a climate.

"She has a fever." Silently Indigo cursed herself for the shortcomings in her own medical skills.

She had a small collection of herbs in her saddlebag, but her knowledge extended little further than an ability to stanch bleeding or splint a bone or relieve pain. To give the wrong potion to the sick girl, or even the wrong dosage of the right potion, could do more harm than good.

If only she had attended more closely to Imyssa's teachings... the thought was bitterly ironic, andangrily she thrust it away, straightening and staring at the volcanic peaks piling into the sky above and before them.

"She needs better care than I can give her," she said harshly. "We have two choices, Grimya.

Either we take her back to the town, or we go on as we planned, and hope that the fever will burn itself out."

"We cannot... go back."

"I know. But if we don't-"

"She may d-die." Grimya moved closer to Chrysiva and sniffed at her face. "But there is s-something...." She raised her head in puzzlement. "This sickness. It is not... usual."

"What do you mean?"

"It is... ah, I do not have the w-words.... ' The wolf grimaced with frustration, then gave up her panting efforts to speak aloud. Her thoughts touched Indigo's mind. The thing that ails her is something that no man-healer could cure.

Indigo dropped to a crouch and studied Chrysiva more intently. The blotches, the sores... she recalled the disfigurements sported by so many of the Charchad faithful, and the miners in the square with their dreadful afflictions, and felt suddenly cold.

"We must go on," she said. "You're right; there's no other choice."

"And the w-woman?"

She didn't fear fever or sickness. That, too, was part of her curse. "Hope and pray for her," she said with quiet bitterness. "We can do no more than that."

By the time the sun began to set they had found no path to lead them deeper into the mountains, and Indigo's early hope had dulled to leaden pessimism. The track through the rock fault continued to rise perceptibly but otherwise showed no signs of changing, and when the last light failed, they stopped by the side of the path and made a makes.h.i.+ft camp.

Indigo sat on the ground, clasping her own knees and peering into the darkness ahead, not wanting to share her gloomy thoughts even with Grimya. Behind her, Chrysiva was propped against the rock wall: during the past hour she had rallied a little and was now conscious, though too weak and disoriented to be coherent.

A faint whine from Grimya alerted her and she looked over her shoulder. The she-wolf lay sprawled a few paces away, and in the dimness Indigo could just make out the flickering red of her tongue as she stretched her head back, one paw twitching. Grimya was almost asleep, the sound nothing more than an expression of her lupine dreams, and the girl smiled faintly. She, too, should be trying to rest, but she could no more sleep than grow wings and fly. The night was hot, the canyon preternaturally quiet, and she couldn't still the restiveness within her, the frustrated urge to be doing something more positive than simply awaiting the dawn.

She looked up at the narrow band of visible sky above the canyon. The light of the moon was eclipsed by the cold, unnatural glow that from this vantage point dominated the upper atmosphere and cast peculiar, dimensionless shadows on the peaks. From here she might have expected to feel some vibration from the ma.s.sive, day-and-night mining operations that could be no more than a mere two or three miles away; but there was nothing. Only the stillness, and the silence.

She touched a hand to the lodestone, but didn't take it out to examine it. To do so seemed futile; she knew well enough what it would tell her. But how? she asked herself-or perhaps asked the stone-wordlessly. How are we to find our way into the mountains, when there's no path, no track, nothing but this endless canyon?

Something flickered momentarily at the periphery of her vision; a firefly perhaps, darting in the air and glinting red gold. Indigo rubbed her eyes, which p.r.i.c.kled with heat and dust, then shook her head to clear it as the firefly's afterimage danced on her retinas. She stretched her arms, flexed her fingers to ease cramp-then stopped, and stared along the path.

There were more tiny sparks hovering in the canyon; but they weren't fireflies. Their formation was too contrived, too regular: as she stared harder she realized that they made an unevenly flickeringpattern. Almost a crude representation of a human outline...

Slowly, cautiously, Indigo began to lever herself to her feet. Another glance over her shoulder showed Grimya now apparently sound asleep, and Chrysiva's face was turned away, her shoulders apathetically slumped. Indigo fingered her knife, then on impulse crept to where her saddlebag lay and loosed her crossbow from the thongs that secured it. She set a bolt into the bow, thrust three more into her belt, then looked along the canyon again.

The dancing image was less clear now, but still visible. Grimya*s tail twitched and she made an odd, throaty noise, but she didn't wake, and Chrysiva paid no heed as Indigo stepped quietly onto the path and moved toward the peculiar lights. Her eyes were as adjusted to the dark as they would ever be, and she judged that the sparks were perhaps fifteen or twenty yards away, neither approaching nor receding. Closer, and for a moment the humanlike pattern seemed to glow brighter as though on the verge of taking three-dimensional form-then suddenly, as she prepared herself for a swift rush toward it, it vanished.

Startled, Indigo couldn't stop the reflex that had already begun to propel her forward, and she swore under her breath as one foot stubbed painfully against a low rock projection. Firefly ghosts echoed in her vision, confusing her; she reached out to the cliff to steady herself and regain her balance- And sprawled full-length into a gap in the rock wall.

Indigo sat up, spitting dust and nursing a grazed hand. For a few moments she couldn't a.s.similate what had happened; but then realization dawned, and with it came a sharp stab of excitement.

There was a break in the cliff. It was barely wide enough to accommodate a broad-shouldered man, but, against unimaginable odds, she had stumbled into it. Heart thumping, Indigo scrambled to her feet and turned around, stretching her hands out before her into the gap. She antic.i.p.ated the disappointment of meeting a solid barrier, of finding that the flaw was no more than two or three feet deep; but the disappointment didn't come. And when, cautiously, she moved forward, groping ahead, still there was no barrier, and the ground beneath her feet began suddenly and sharply to rise.

A gully into the mountains. And no more than thirty steps from where they had abandoned their search. Indigo's excitement caught stiflingly in her throat, and she forced herself to take several deep breaths to calm her thoughts. If-if, she stressed to herself-the gully led anywhere, then it would be a hard route for the pony, especially with the added burden of Chrysiva. The gap between the walls was barely wide enough now for the animal to squeeze through; any narrower and it would become impa.s.sable.

When daylight came, she and Grimya would be well advised to explore further before committing them all to a trek that might prove fruitless.

When daylight came... Indigo looked back along the track, then into the gully again. Impatience gnawed at her; she didn't relish the prospect of lying wakeful and restless, counting the minutes until dawn. She wouldn't sleep, not with this discovery so close yet so frustratingly out of reach. And she didn't want to wait for morning.

She could, surely, explore a little way into the gully at least? The going would be slow and tricky, but the eerie glow in the sky did a little to alleviate the darkness, and if she took care, she should come to no harm. Grimya would disapprove, but with luck Grimya would sleep on until her return and be none the wiser. Just a short way, she thought. To be certain.

She looked back once more, but her companions weren't visible, and her eagerness was urging her on. Shouldering her crossbow and keeping one hand pressed to the rock wall beside her as a sure guide, Indigo moved on and up into the gully.

She had resolved to count no more than fifty paces before turning back. But after fifty paces the gully was still rising quite steeply, and had widened a little, making the going easier than she had feared. So fifty became a hundred, and then another twenty, and another, until she told herself that if she pressed on just a little farther she might emerge above the lower volcanic slopes, where the light in the sky would be sufficient to show the way ahead far more clearly.

She paused at a place where the gully curved, to resettle her crossbow, which had been slipping and threatening to unbalance her. She was sweating, and the night air tasted faintly metallic; from thepumice-like feel of the rock beneath her fingers she hazarded that the path was winding through the petrified course of an ancient lava flow. Indigo knew little about geology, but it seemed logical to surmise that the flow must have originated in the mountains' heart, and could therefore be her one chance of finding a way into the depths of the range.

Just a few more steps, and she would turn back. The return journey would be easier; she could reach the camp in a matter of minutes. And then she would have a tale to tell when Grimya woke- Indigo yelled in shock as, from nowhere and with no warning, searing red light suddenly blasted through the gully. A wave of intense heat erupted from the ground, s.n.a.t.c.hing her breath away; the gully floor lurched and she spun off balance, stumbling against the wall and falling to hands and knees. She started to get up: then froze as, through eyes nearly blinded by the brilliance, her stunned senses registered a mad image of something vast, heaving, boiling, blazing red-hot, rolling down from the surrounding peaks toward her. Lava-molten lava, burning and hissing and crowned with roaring flames, belching out of the night in a monstrous, slow-moving river.

All coherent thought collapsed into chaos, and Indigo's entire body turned slick with the sweat of terror. It was impossible-these volcanoes looked as if they had been extinct for centuries; their lava flows were fossilized, petrified. This could not be happening!

The crackling roar of fire dinned in her ears, counterpointed by a ma.s.sive, thundering vibration, and the heat of the oncoming molten river beat against her skin like great breakers. Impossible or not, the lava flow was real-and it was searing through the gully, straight into her path!

She turned, slithering on shale and loose pumice, struggling to hold back the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She had to keep her wits, or- Horror hit her like a physical punch to the stomach as she saw the blazing orange tributary that had diverged from the main flow and curved around behind her to burn a swath through the cliffs at her back. Already rocks within the gully were melting, losing shape and solidity, glowing crimson, then scarlet, then gold. In seconds, her retreat would be cut off.

Indigo ran. A sane part of her mind screamed that it was hopeless, that she couldn't reach safety before the lava came boiling across her path; but desperation made her hurl the knowledge aside as she plunged down the slope. Underfoot the ground was blisteringly hot, already burning through the soles of her shoes; she ran faster, and her skirt, which she'd hitched about her thighs as she climbed, suddenly came loose in a tangle of fabric that caught about one foot and tripped her. She hit hard rock, rolled, felt heat blast her as yellow brilliance erupted in her path-then as her eyes refocused, she screamed.

A huge, phantasmic creature reared on the path before her, reptilian forelegs flailing, forked tail las.h.i.+ng, vast, membranous wings beating the air toward her in suffocating waves. A corona of fire blazed about it and it roared, the sound breaching dimensions from reality to nightmare.

Dragon! her mind shrieked. But it was a myth, a legend, an impossibility-there were no such things as dragons! And suddenly through the cacophony of panic Indigo knew with a sure and terrible instinct what was afoot. Sorcery-and she had walked blindly into its trap!

She rolled again, springing to her feet in the same movement, and spun around to race back up the gully, away from the rearing, bellowing phantom.

She had taken three strides before the scene in front of her exploded. A wall of sound, thunder and earthquake and tornado together, smashed down from the mountain peaks to hit her full on, and with it came a wave of furnace-hot power that buffeted her oft" her feet and sent her tumbling back down the defile like a leaf in a gale. She heard the dragon scream a furious challenge, and as the world fragmented around her she had a mad, momentary glimpse of a human figure, arms raised, wreathed in white flames that silhouetted him against the burning sky.

Heat-a new onslaught of power-agony-Indigo's consciousness raced head-on into darkness, and smashed through it into nothing.

*CHAPTER*V*

She tried to move her arms, to ease the pressure against the small of her back; but they refused to respond. Someone's fingers were clasped on her wrists, pinning them... she writhed, attempting to pull herself free, but only succeeded in losing her balance and sliding like a child's rag doll to lie helplessly on her side.

Not fingers. Her mind was unclear still; but they were not fingers holding her. Not hands: rope. It chafed, and when she tried again to move her arms, she felt the rough bite of its strands against her blistered skin.

Hot. She could feel sweat trickling between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and down her spine, and her hair was plastered clammily to her cheeks and forehead. The air was hot; the floor on which she lay was hot. And she couldn't quite make herself remember where she was, or how she had come to be here.

Indigo opened her eyes, blinking in an effort to clear them. There was light, and though it wasn't intolerably bright, she couldn't focus at first on anything in her field of view. Then after a few seconds her vision cleared a little. And she found herself staring directly at a small shrine. Different-colored stones had been set carefully before it, forming a neat semicircle, and at the shrine's center, lit by a smoking votive lamp, was a figure the size of a man's hand, hewn from what looked like basalt. Agates glittered in its eye sockets, and the tongue that protruded from its open mouth was carved into the likeness of a flame. Its hair, too, was fas.h.i.+oned to resemble flames; a halo of fire like a stylized solar corona, and in between its outstretched hands it held a frozen bolt of lightning. The figure was naked, female, and with a twinge of shock Indigo recognized a skilled craftsman's representation of the fire G.o.ddess Ranaya.

And with a second shock, the fierce image pulled together the tangled threads of her memory.

"Grimya-"In her sudden alarm Indigo forgot the bindings on her wrists and tried to get up, only to fall awkwardly back again. Nearby, something hissed angrily-she froze; then slowly turned her head.

Two feet away, something that she had thought existed only in legend crouched on the uneven rock floor, staring at her with alien yellow eyes. A salamander. Its body was, perhaps, as long as her arm, and made of green flame so translucent that she could see tiny arteries of scarlet fire pulsing beneath its burning skin. Golden claws sc.r.a.ped the rock, and where its body touched the floor, the floor smoked and sizzled.

Indigo gasped and shrank back. The salamander opened its fiery mouth and hissed again, adopting a hostile stance as though to lunge at her-then from somewhere beyond Indigo's head a voice that carried dangerous undercurrents of both fury and loathing grated: "If you so much as move again without my permission, my servant will burn your heart from your body!"

A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to see her captor standing over her.

He was tall, and his height was emphasized by the fact that undernourishment had reduced his frame to a bony gauntness under his old and tattered clothing. Hair that in his youth had been black but was now graying-in places almost white-tumbled in a wild ma.s.s over his shoulders and halfway down his back; the overall impression was made doubly bizarre by the fact that the tangle was overlaid by cl.u.s.ters of intricate braids, and something about the peculiar style rang a bell in Indigo's mind. But she had no time to search her memory, for the stranger was leaning over her, shoulders and chest heaving with quick, angry breaths. Crazed green-brown eyes stared into hers from a face that was lined by unnatural strain, and he hissed, "Do you understand me? Do you?"

Indigo got a grip on her pounding heart and quelled her own rising anger, aware that any attempt to argue could be very dangerous. "Yes. I understand."

The salamander settled onto its haunches; she could feel the heat emanating from it, as though she were lying too close to a fire,...

"Then understand, too, that I shall have answers." The man began to turn away, then spun back to face her, pointing a threatening finger. "Answers! And if you dare to lie, you will burn!"

Indigo twisted uncomfortably in her bonds. Although she was prudent enough to realize that at the smallest provocation he both could and would hurt her, she couldn't crush her anger. It was there, and it was growing stronger.

Teeth clenched against her natural instinct to give vent to a furious tirade, she snapped, "I've already said I understand you! Ask your d.a.m.ned questions, and have done!"He continued to stare at her for a few moments more. Then, so quickly that she was caught unawares, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a handful of her hair and yanked on it, lifting her and slamming her back against the cave wall. Indigo's skull cracked against rock, and giddy nausea made her gasp; when her senses stopped spinning and she was able to open her eyes again, he was crouched in front of her, staring madly at her as though he sought to see into her soul.

"Why did you come here?" His voice was husky with suppressed rage. "What devious motive brought you creeping along my paths like a snake in the gutter?" A hand shot out and gripped her jaw, squeezing painfully. "How did you know where to find my sanctum ?"

"d.a.m.n you!" Indigo wrenched her jaw free, breathing hard. "What in the name of all that's sacred makes you think I was looking for your sanctum? I don't even know who you are!"

"Liar!" He drew back his hand as if to strike her, then paused. "There's no other living soul in these slopes, and you know it! You knew I was here! You were searching for me!"

"I was not!" Indigo fired back.

"No?" He rose, flexing his hands. "We shall see, saia. We shall see." A crooked smile distorted his face, and his eyes took on an odd, distant look. "You're no ordinary intruder, that much I can judge well enough. You have a little power of your own. Haven't you?"

Indigo looked away.

"Yes," he continued thoughtfully. "A little power. But not enough." The smile widened. "No match for my illusions. My rivers of lava. My dragons. My pets."

The salamander rose to its hind legs, and a shrill, unearthly sound vibrated in its throat.

"Wait, little one. In time; in time." He saw Indigo's gaze slide unwillingly to the elemental and chuckled softly. "When they are called, they must be fed before they can be banished again. And when they feed, they char both flesh and bone. It isn't a quick process. But it is, I understand, very painful." He paced slowly away from her, paused, turned, came back. "So. The truth. How did you find me? And why did you come?"

Indigo's gaze slid surrept.i.tiously past him as she attempted to take in her surroundings. They were, it appeared, in a large cave, modestly but adequately lit by candles set in rough alcoves about the walls. On the far side the mouth of a tunnel gaped, but she could see nothing in the darkness beyond, and certainly there was no obvious way of escape, even if she could have loosed her hands or evaded the salamander.

She looked at her interrogator again, and realized that he wasn't sane. The anger that burned in him, whatever its cause, was looking for an outlet: he wanted to hurt her, and was only waiting for her to give him justification. Her gaze flicked to the little statue of Ranaya again, and it gave her a glimmering of hope where otherwise there would be nothing. Whatever else he might be, this man was clearly no devotee of the Charchad. He had power; he had proved that shockingly with the illusions by which he had trapped her in the gully. But his G.o.ddess was an avatar of the Earth Mother, so the power on which he called was a dean power.

He said: "I await your answer."

She had to tell him the truth. She had nothing to lose.

"My business in these mountains has no connection with you," she said, her throat dry. "I knew nothing of your existence until you used your sorcery to capture me, and I had no intention of trespa.s.sing on your sanctum or anyone else's. The plain truth is that I was trying to find a way of reaching the mines without alerting those who work there to my presence." She blinked, licked her lips. "That's the long and the short of it, and you may believe me or not as you please."

Silence followed her statement. Whether or not the man was considering her words seriously she couldn't tell; his expression was unreadable. The only sound in the cave was a faint crackling from the salamander, which was growing ever more restive.

At last her captor spoke. "A way of reaching the mines." One bony finger rested lightly on his chin, then suddenly his gaze snapped to her, manic. "Why? What business have you there that must be conducted in secret?"

Earth Mother, she thought, aid me now, if you can.... And aloud she said: "I am searching forthe source of the Charchad."

The salamander whistled shrilly, and white fire flared from its nostrils. Its fury was reflected in the eyes of the sorcerer, which seemed suddenly to catch light with a surge of insane rage. For an instant only he was motionless, rigid; then he swooped down on her and dragged her to her feet, shaking her as a blood-maddened shark might frenziedly shake its prey.

"What have you do with that filth?" His voice was a screech, echoing horribly in the cave, and he slammed Indigo again and again against the wall. "Answer me! Tell me, before I tear you apart with my bare hands! You serpent, you miserable, squalling abortion-what are those demons to you?"

Indigo cried out, the sounds torn involuntarily from her throat as, with a strength that belied his build and gauntness, he flung her to the floor. The elemental sprang at her head, eyes burning white-hot, mouth agape, but he commanded harshly, "No!" and the creature fell back. Indigo lay retching, every nerve aflame with pain, and from a vast, whirling distance she heard his voice grating close to her ear as he dropped to a crouch beside her.

"Tell me the truth! That poor woman in your charge-where were you taking her? What have you done to her?"

"Uhh... "She couldn't articulate, couldn't think; her senses were red, burning. "Chrys... iva. She...

oh, Great G.o.ddess, help me!" And through the daze she felt it coming, rising. The anger. The fury. The hatred and the loathing that had lurked like a disease in her heart and in her stomach since she had first heard the name of Charchad. There was bile in her throat; she choked it back and the hatred found a focus in her tormentor, in the man who had hurt her and her friends and now threatened to wreck her only hope of reaching to the heart of Charchad and combating its evil- "Let me alone, you stinking piece of offal!" Her voice rose shrilly, close to hysteria, as any consideration for her own safety shattered and the rage came roaring through. "How dare you accuse me of such blasphemy! The Earth Mother curse you, and shrivel your soul! Untie me! Untie me, you coward, you cur, you-"