Nalyetari could have wept with frustration and pain. Instead,
she glared up at her captor’s ramrod-straight back. “It’s
almost sunrise,” she said tightly, hands tightening convulsively
within their bonds.
The man half-turned on his horse, and the animal stopped obediently. “We’re
not stopping,” he dictated arrogantly.
“Then I’ll die,” Nalyetari gritted back. “Or have
you forgotten?”
Her captor frowned. “They don’t cancel each other out?”
“No. So you’d better find somewhere light-proof, unless you
want to carry me in a dustpan all the way to Penglir. I guarantee, there
won’t be anything left but dust and ashes.”
Muttering under his breath, the holy stalker dismounted. Unwillingly,
he drew his riding glove off his left hand. Her captor moved close enough
to touch her, and then closed his eyes, his angelic features taking on
a look of rapt glory. His lips moved, but all Nalyetari could hear was
the soft hiss of whispered sibilants.
The stalker’s fingers pressed lightly against her right cheek, and
Nalyetari bit back a scream as each pressure point burned like acid. He
withdrew quickly, as if he found her equally painful to touch. Liquid
shadow washed over her skin, swirling around her eyes like a whirlpool
until it swallowed them—and Nalyetari’s vision filled with
the same cool darkness.
‘The sun cannot touch you now,” said the stalker, satisfied.
“Take it off,” Nalyetari panted, lips pressed tight against
her panic. “I can’t see.”
“It’s better than being dead, isn’t it?” the stalker
asked, and he scooped her up in his arms as if she were a doll. She hissed
in surprise, and her form was strangely fluid for a moment before the
silver collar cut off her air.
Her captor stiffened, and his stride jolted angrily. “There’s
no need for that. Are you trying to kill yourself?” If she listened
closely enough, she could hear the note of uncertainty in the stalker’s
voice, a boyish crack between treble and baritone.
She bared her teeth back at him as he set her on his horse, the blessed,
silver-shot rope tangling around her legs. “It’s a reflex,”
Nalyetari almost-snarled, her voice several octaves lower. “Think
you that yon,” she jerked her head at the unseen disk of the waxing,
gibbous moon, “is but a pretty light in the sky?”
He mounted up behind her, his sleeve-encased arms like iron bars on either
side of her. “I don’t know what to think,” he said harshly.
“Are you living, or dead, woman?”
“Not alive, not dead, and not undead. I die with the moon: my veins
dry up, my emotions vanish, and I no longer draw breath. Come within three
days of moondark, and I thirst as all vampires thirst.” Nalyetari’s
tone was flat and dispassionate, as if it were a mere case study, and
not the racking agony that she went through every month. “When the
moon waxes half-full, my heart begins to beat, I start to feel things,
and I can shift at will. Let it come within three days of the full moon,
and I feel every emotion overwhelmingly strong; the full moon, and the
day before and after, I must change, unless I am trussed as I am now.”
She smiled sardonically. “I’ll go mad instead, for those three
nights. People have tried it before. I have, as you’ve seen, all
the weaknesses of both creatures, excepting holy symbols.” The woman
stopped and drew a breath, head bowed.
Her captor seemed puzzled by this. “Why not holy symbols?”
He did not sound particularly thrilled.
Nalyetari turned her blind face toward him. “I was—am—a
priestess.” A tremendous weariness washed over her, so that she
reeled in the saddle. “Is the sun up?” she slurred, fighting
against the inexorable tides of sleep.
“The rim’s just come over the horizon…” was the
last thing she heard before she fell into the dream-haunted realms that
lurked behind her eyelids. |
Numair woke, still in the saddle, as his prisoner shifted against
him. Already uneasy, the big bay stallion started and shied as his passengers
moved in the saddle, the scent of the were/vampire strong in his nostrils.
“Shh, Selig, be still,” the holy stalker murmured to his mount,
conscious of the woman-abomination stiffening as she woke. The tattered clouds
were bruises against the fading red-gold of twilight, though the sun was no
longer visible.
His spell was now only a smoke-haze around his prize, and her silvery-pale skin
shone in the twilight, moonbeams through smoked glass. A strand of chestnut
hair lay across her cheek, a vine-tendril on the trellis of her sharp features.
Absently, he shifted the reins to his left hand, reaching to brush it off…
Gray eyes snapped open, and he jerked back as they blinked and focused. She
turned her head until he was fully in her view, then looked down at herself.
“Not a dream,” she muttered, clearly speaking only to herself. Then
she glared at him with the same sort of weary resignation she’d displayed
last night. “Let me walk, or ride properly. This can’t be good for
him,” and she gestured to the horse. “Not that he’s comfortable
with me anyway.”
Numair shuddered a little. He’d seen true evil before, but this woman
was different. It was as if his mage-eyes had been put behind warped glass--she
rippled light and dark that dizzied him. How could she disguise her nature like
that? Briskly, he put the thought behind him, straightening in the saddle. “We’re
stopping,” he said, voice low. “Not for you, nor me, but for Selig.”
She had turned around again, but he heard the incredulity in her voice. “What,
haven’t you stopped all day?”
“I should not rest until we reach Penglir,” he replied gravely,
with more resolution in his voice than he felt. But she needed to be given to
the temple—he was far too curious already. She probably has me in her
clutches, he thought irritably. Fine priest-mage I am, can’t even resist
such a basic glamour…
Numair dismounted to stony silence from the prisoner, who sat quietly on Selig’s
back as he set up a fire pit. He did not bother with the tent strapped to his
blanket roll. There’s time enough to sleep on the road. And she’ll
be wide awake the whole time. He could feel her eyes upon him as he spoke the
harsh cantrip for the fire spell, his fingers straining to keep the awkward
shape of the arcane pass.
When he went to lift her down, she turned her head away, as if in rebuff, but
not before Numair had glimpsed the snails’-trails of tears on her face.
Awed, and a little frightened, he untied the special ropes from her hands, and
deposited her gently by the fire.
Awkwardly, she positioned herself on her knees, her feet still bound. Bowing
her gray-streaked head, the woman knelt as though she were one of the acolytes
at Penglir, her hands folded, her eyes closed. Pale lips moved in that silvery-alabaster
face, in the shadow of the hawkish nose. The firelight brought false color to
her skin, and made her eyes seem as dark and as bottomless as the Abyss.
Warily, Numair worked around her, readying the journey-food still stowed in
his saddlebag, making flat, tasteless cakes out of the grain that served double-duty
as a treat for Selig. Glancing uneasily at the woman, he added small pieces
of dried meat to the flatbread, an addition that contributed little to the none-too-appetizing
appearance of the cakes.
The woman stirred, shifting her mud-stained knees until she could safely sit
on the hump of stone nearby. Her face was deeply lined, but there was a peace
on it that reminded him of his order again—save that no disciple of Lysander
had that haunted pain limning their expressions.
“Journeycake?” he offered, inanely, and those grey eyes sprang
sharply open. She shook her head, and hooded her gaze again, as if it
were an errant hawk.
“No slander on you, holiness, but it would make me ill.” The eyes
darkened behind her lashes. “It is ever meat or blood that must sustain
me, I fear.”
Numair lost some of his tenseness as she stared off into space, enough to venture
a question. After all, as long as she wasn’t a wolf—or whatever—she
couldn’t smell his curse on him… “Who did you serve?”
he asked abruptly, hands brushing at his dull gray robes.
She looked at him, her hair swinging over her shoulders like a mane, made ruddy
by the glow of the embers. “What?”
“Your god,” he said uncomfortably. “You said you were a priestess.
Who did you serve?”
Her chin came up. “I serve Aucria.”
“Who?”
“Aucria. The Mother of Orphans, the Keeper of the Lands of Refugees, the
Protector of the Outcast.” The woman bowed her head, and murmured, bitterly,
“The Patron of Halfbloods.” Then the brightness was back, as if
her pain were as insubstantial as smoke. “She’s the halfblood goddess
herself, daughter of the sea-elf god and the giant’s lawgiver goddess.”
She paused a moment, considering, and fished in the small pouch at her waist.
“This is her symbol.”
“Why do you still serve her?” He blushed. “I
mean, why…with this,” and he gestured at the moon, helplessly.
I must know if she keeps her faith as I do, because it is her strength.
The woman’s smile was bittersweet. “Because she is my goddess,”
she said simply, drawing her knees to her chest. “I was already
a were, when I entered her service. My ever-so-tolerant-and-enlightened
brethren had me marked for death when they found out. I only got away
because some crazy vampire was attempting a coup against the High Priestess,
and she bit me instead.” Her lips pressed tightly together. “They
banished me for that.”
Numair was about to speak, about to ask another question—invisible
fingers pressed against his lips. Hush, my son,
a strong female voice proclaimed out of nowhere. The woman only listened
attentively, her head tilted a little to the side, a smile of welcome
on her face. You must help my daughter Nalyetari, my faithful
captain. Her curse is visible to all, while yours is secret, but it will
not remain so for long. They are already figuring it out, back at Penglir.
Lysander will not deny me in this. There is but one place to go…
Numair felt very lucky that he was sitting. “My lady?” he
inquired cautiously. “Pray tell me the way.”
Pray, indeed. I know the magic in you, Numair. You must shift
to a form like Nalyetari’s for this spell, my son. Only with you
so close to inconsequential may I move you to the safe haven I have chosen
without interference from the dark gods.
He shivered again, violently, and Nalyetari, if that was the woman’s
name, stared at him. White-lipped, he handed her the key, and she gingerly
unlocked the collar, hissing as the silver ‘burned’ her fingers.
The flesh beneath the collar was blackened and oozing, and the were/vampire
threw the silver collar away with a snarl of hatred. The rope she handled
just as quickly, yelping to herself as the touch of the twice-toxic rope
raised weals on her fingertips.
She shifted, easily, her features moving fluidly. He didn’t even
know what kind of creature she was….
Sable hair turned to russet, and Nalyetari’s sharp features elongated
to the equally angular features of her were-form. The shrill human cry
shifted to a yip, and white teeth shone in a vulpine face…
Shuddering as he went, he reached for that core of power that no man was
supposed to possess. FOX, he told it. Fox, fox fox fox foxfoxfoxfoxfox…..
His body melted away into a mirror of the lithe four-legged form
that Nalyetari had taken.
“You’re a shifter?” Nalyetari asked, shocked, the question
keenly pungent with her surprise.
He flicked his brushy tail and did not reply, staring down his nose at
her with wild, frightened green eyes. “Don’t tell,”
he whispered in the fox language, “don’t tell, don’t
tell….”
Enough. Nalyetari will not need to keep your secret where
you are going, Numair. I will bid you farewell, because I cannot manifest
where I am sending you. Good hunting, my daughter, and know that I will
be with you, though you will not hear me.
The world spun around them disquietingly, and the winds keened and howled…the
twilight deepened into a darker, brooding night, and then all was still.
Panting, Numair flung himself out of animal form, his clothes forming
comfortably around him. Nalyetari gave him a long, quelling look before
she, too, shifted up and into the tall, rangy form she usually wore.
“No wonder you won’t tell anyone,” she commented, her
voice velvet-soft. “You’re really scared, aren’t you?
But there’s no pain?”
“None at all, unless I touch iron,” Numair replied, scanning
the area nervously.
“What a blessing,” the werefox/vampire husked wistfully, and
then stopped, as tense and wary as her animal form. “Someone is
coming.”
A tall, dark-skinned woman, as regal as any priestess, grinned back at
them, her greeny-gold companion—Numair thought that the creature
vaguely resembled the dragons in the Penglir bestiary—padding proudly
beside her. “We have visitors, Dulath,” she said, pleasantly.
“Welcome, both of you. Was I interrupting something?”
A voice, just as unheard as Aucria’s, slid easily into Numair’s
head—and, from her reaction, into Nalyetari’s as well. <<Yes,
welcome. You’re to Stand, of course, the both of you.>>
Dark hair shifting around her like a living thing, the dark woman shook
her head. “So hasty, Dulath. We haven’t even been properly
introduced. I suspect that I’ll be left with the explaining, once
again?”
The dragon must have made some private reply, because the dark woman rolled
her eyes. “Masterhealer Baeris,” she said politely, offering
a hand.
Numair clasped it, bemused, but Nalyetari declined, her eyes on the silver
rings that flashed on Baeris’s fingers. “Stalker Numair, of
Lysander’s Order,” he replied quietly.
“Priestess Nalyetari, of Aucria’s Order,” the werefox
offered, her voice soft and low.
“A pleasure, Numair and Nalyetari,” Baeris said with satisfaction.
“The Healing Den
welcomes you. If you’ll come with me, I’ll fill you in on
where you are, and what’s happening. After that, I’d like
to hear your side of it, if I may.”
“It is…very strange, Lady Baeris,” Nalyetari rasped.
The Healer favored her with an eldrich smile. “So
they all say, Priestess.”
|
Numair never tired of looking at his lifemate. Örth was easily
the most beautiful dragon he had ever seen, and he was still awed that this
gorgeous creature had chosen to be his partner.
The orange-black dragon stirred, slick-skinned coils sliding whisper-soft over
each other. Luminous gray eyes blinked and opened. <<I’m not that
special, Numair,>> she yawned, <<but I’m glad you think so.>>
Shuddering her sleek body from her dusky nose to her flame-orange tailtip, Örth
rose to her feet.
Smiling, the shapeshifter-cleric stroked her shoulder and the long bowed curve
of her wing. “But you know my secrets, dearest. And you are the only orange-black
dragon to be comfortable on air, land, or sea.”
<<Fine, fine, I’m fantastic and unique. But this fantastic, unique
dragon would like to get some breakfast.>>
Numair made a face. “Lysander’s golden hair, Örth, don’t
tell me you’re hungry again! I only just got the smell out of the weyr.
Can’t you eat beef or somesuch today?”
She arched her neck haughtily. <<Red meat is inferior. Poultry is unacceptable.
I want fish.>>
Grimacing, Numair clambered up her forearm and settled in the smooth dip of
her finlike ‘ridges. “And to think I never saw anything bigger than
a pond before I got here.”
<<You’re swimming with me today. We’ve got to work on that
sidestroke of yours. It’s pathetic,>> Örth informed him, toiling
up the long ramp to the surface. Reaching open air, she caught the thermal with
a snap and a bound.
Numair was too busy holding on to reply. Örth’s hide was as slippery
as a dolphin’s, and she dipped and wheeled as well as any condor.
<<Curious,>> she murmured as they flew over the feeding pens. <<There’s
a lot of outWeyr dragons about. I wonder what they’re doing here?>>
She dropped Numair where he could get some breakfast, and sped toward the lake.
There were dragons there as well. Peevishly, Örth slid beneath the waves,
her eyes first-lidded as she looked for the silver glint of her first bite.
The fish were deep and wary, and the orange-black was in a bad temper by the
time she was full. <<Get out of my way,>> she snapped at one of
the foreign dragons clogging /her/ lake.
A blue-green eye glittered inquiringly at her. <<There’s plenty
of room,>> the night brown said calmly.
<<What are you doing, crowding my lake?>> she hissed, for lack of
a better response.
<<Me, or all of us? It is the same reason. We are here for the X-gender
flight, male riders on female dragons, female riders on males. I am Zujirth,
here with my rider Avery.>>
Örth, intrigued despite herself, flickered into the air. As she flew, the
orange-black spoke quietly and forcefully into her rider’s mind. |
When the wary healer handed her the paperwork, Nalyetari’s breath
stopped in her throat. She was in the were stage of her odd life, so this
was not normal. Her body lived, however briefly, and live tissue needed
oxygen. Sometimes she forgot…but this was out of sheer shock.
She was pregnant. Multiply pregnant.
Uthnath’s apologies and guilt rattled endlessly in her head, as if
someone had turned over a rainstick. But Nalyetari, who had emotions at
this point in the month, could feel…nothing.
This is an opportunity, she told herself, numb. This is a chance to change
the world. They will be what you could have been…
Nalyetari took a while to grow used to the idea, but she decided at last
that she was glad of it. Even though she knew neither of the possible
fathers, these children would be precious to her. Only Uthnath and her
goddess had held any importance to Nalyetari at all—until now.
She gave birth to one boy prematurely, before the healer stopped the labor.
In were mode, it was easy to love him, easy to worry about her firstborn.
He was no descendent of Kalkin, even she could see that. The other rider,
who she barely remembered, was his father. A’rinar, that was it,
an ordinary mortal. Nalyetari cradled the child in her arms for a long,
long time, as exhausted as she was. He would be Nalyenar, her first hope.
And she prayed for his survival to her goddess, wondering if Aucria would
hear her handmaiden’s heart cry out in another universe.
The healers had said there was only one child left to be born, so it came
as a surprise when they laid two children in her arms one and a half months
later. This time, she was in vampire mode, but even then, her cold mind
focused on the twin children of Kalkin and found them good. She called
them Kaltari and Yelkin. Female and male, they seemed to embody a dichotomy
from the start.
She watched, worried, as they grew older. Nalyenar was sweet, a tractable
child, but Kaltari…Kaltari frightened her. Never was there a more
enigmatic, mercurial child than Nalyetari’s daughter. And Yelkin
seemed to vacillate between the two, his big gray eyes always shifting
from one to the other.
When the children were about two, she met Numair again.
It was on Lao Daemia, at Vyraelem. She’d left her brood with a nanny,
warning against sunlight. Her children had never seen daylight—she
hadn’t dared. But she had always had someone to watch them, in their
infancy, those times when she could not wake.
Uthnath had needed to hunt, had wanted wild meat. She had ventured far
into the woods, while Nalyetari walked the shore.
He was standing right there on the beach, staring into the softly glowing
sea. The moons were perfectly in balance this night—one full, one
half, and one completely dark. Nalyetari was as human as she could ever
be, but hovering on the edge between life and death. She felt…vulnerable.
Numair looked as fragile as she, standing there with moonlight on his
face. When she deliberately made some noise, he did not start, but merely
turned his face toward her, his eyes grave. He half-smiled as he recognized
her, but Örth’s rider made no move. “I have missed you,”
he said quietly.
“And I you.” Her voice was equally soft. “Where have
you been?”
He gestured to the east. “On this world, but another continent.
I have been recruited by Moire. It is a pleasant place, but it confuses
the head and heart. We are yet so small, but Moire itself is a leviathan.
It is old in the making, and touched with an ancient sorrow, no matter
how vibrant it is today.” He smiled at her again. “And you?
What have you been up to?”
“Uthnath flew here.” He had no color to him in the moonlight,
in the sea-phosphorescence. “I have been raising my children.”
His eyes went wide. “Children?” he said wonderingly. “Nalyetari,
you have children?”
“Three,” she affirmed, watching his expression. “Three
children from one flight. I can only pray that their circumstance continues
to be happier than their mother’s.”
Numair shook his head. “I cannot imagine you as a mother, Nalyetari,
but I…think I know you. You always give yourself to your duties
so completely. They’ll turn out all right.” He filled the
awkward pause that followed, saying simply, “I have missed you.”
They were very close now. She could see the vein pulse in his throat.
“But blood may—“ she began, and then he was kissing
her, full on the lips. His touch did not burn her, not here, not in this
balanced state. She thought that she had always loved him…would
continue to love him for her immortal life.
She came back with him to Moire, accepting without flinching their charitable
offer of a position. She was an official Searchrider at last, and her
children had a place to come back to, even if she was more often offworld
than on. Numair was slowly starting act as their father-figure, something
she appreciated.
And then she noticed the signs start up again. Biting her lip, she went
to tell her love and best friend that he was to have a child of his blood
soon enough…
They called her Solaire. Kaltari was, strangely, not jealous of her younger
sib. In fact, Solaire and Kaltari got on better than anyone but Kaltari
and Yelkin.
That was just another hurt when she decided, at last, that she could not
be with Numair any longer. She was corrupting him, and she could not stand
to watch it happen. He was a shining warrior of the light, a hunter, and
she…she was the darkness. They could seldom be together—and
the more she loved him, the more her curses worked against him. While
she lived, anything he did would set off her emotions to a frightening
level. When she got angry with him, it was all she could do not to shift
down and tear out his throat. And while she was undead, her passion only
made that accursed vampiric side long to drain him dry all the more.
He appeared to understand when she told him she was avoiding temptation,
but he was…changed. They agreed not to see each other any more—and
that he would raise Solaire. She had children enough, and he loved the
child so. It was so hard not to go to him when she saw him looking lonely….so
difficult not to initiate clandestine contact through their respective
lifemates. It broke her heart…at least, it was broken while it beat….
Uthnath was very hesitant to confess her need to mate to her lifemate,
and understandably, but there was no help for it. The blue-violet chose
another multi-dragon flight, this one called the Braethas Raug.
It was a fantastic flight, and well-received. But yet /again/, Nalyetari
paired with a man—and this time, he himself was part vampire. She
was unsurprised when she discovered she was pregnant again…but this
time, genuinely fearful. How would these children turn out with that much
of the vampire in them?
Her children were born after Uthnath’s many children had hatched.
There were twins, identical this time. She named them Inhetianel and Ayetahiel—but
called them Tian and Tahi. As infants and toddlers, they weren’t
that bad… Nalyenar was enchanted by them. They were inseparable
as a trio.
She missed Numair more and more, but she could not go back to him. It
was a promise she made to herself. Nalyetari always kept her word. But
she was so very lonely… And there were other lonely people out there.
His name was Al’jan, and he was charming. A Ryslen rider, he didn’t
so much capture her heart as entrance her. Al’jan was life, was
vibrant life, but he was not light, not like Numair. And he was so very
sad. He’d lost his true love, and it didn’t seem as though
he’d ever stop mourning her.
They comforted each other, played at falling in love. Al’jan was
attracted to the danger of Nalyetari, drawn to her by pity and curiosity.
She found he fascinating and clever, someone who could make her laugh
even after dealing with five children in her ‘morning’.
Unfortunately, she seemed to be having these deplorable lapses of judgment
at all her vulnerable points. It was impossible to tell when she was going
to be fertile…maybe she was fertile all the time. She conceived
again, bearing a daughter, Aljheyet. She did not tell Al’jan. He
would feel responsible, and she did not want for him to have to deal with
the were/vampire traits of a child of his blood. His friendly affection
would grow into horror, and she could not bear it. She let him go back
to Ryslen all unaware.
Nalyetari swore that she wasn’t going to do this again…but
Uthnath’s rising caught her by surprise. No one could have been
more surprised than G’zon and Linos, the two lucky riders. Brown
Nowyrth and oil-black Gozkirith certainly satisfied Uthnath as mates,
even if her rider did carry on about her promiscuity and lack of commitment.
Linos’ spirit-form was real to her undead hands…he was more
alive than she.
But how did it look to the rest of the world when she started becoming
round-bellied yet again?
Another son, Tarirez, and a daughter, Linyenosari. And she swore—swore!—that
they would be the last. Tarirez was so very reckless… and Linyenosari
was unearthly beautiful, but too quiet. Nobody knew what was in Linyenosari’s
head…
Kaltari and Yelkin almost never visited now. When they had gone off by
themselves at the tender age of sixteen, they had vowed to make a name
for themselves in the Nexus. Kaltari was romancing the tech world, and
she could not stand to stay on ‘backwards’ Lao Daemia for
long. So they never knew their young siblings.
She never could decide whether this was one of her sorrows, or simply
a disguised blessing…
The children were raised as best she could manage. Nalyetari was still
a searchrider, and an important one at that. Unfortunately, the time continuum
between Lao Daemia and the rest of the multiverse was quite disparate.
The children, since she took them with her, aged normally, but very little
time passed on Lao Daemia while they did.
She was on Search once again, this time at Fire Ridge, with hospitality
granted to her. Nalyetari never asked if they knew what she was. She simply
made her requests, and they were granted. Aljheyet, Tarirez, and Linyenosari
were teenagers now, on the cusp of adulthood, and she had let them stay
on Lao Daemia because they had asked it of her.
It was pleasant here, but most things shut down before she was even awake.
Still, being on another world was always refreshing. Nalyetari liked to
travel, despite its dangers and inconveniences. She was so tired, and
even with Uthnath, she was lonely. No more men, she had vowed, but how
could she keep that? Uthnath was her lifemate, but she was still more
of Nalyetari’s vampire side than her were side. The violet-purple
was calculating and shrewd, very intelligent and exceedingly clever, but
she did not have the nurturing and healing side that Nalyetari was craving.
The priestess missed her homeworld—she could not return, not when
her goddess had sent her away for a definite purpose—and she missed
her faith. She had been a healer once. Now, despite motherhood, all she
seemed to be was a wanderer, a stealer of children and young people.
Nalyetari walked the night, in search of, not a meal, but a companion.
The call of the moon was not strong; it could be resisted. Not so, this
mild desperation.
Nalyetari bonded brass Narwyn at Fire Ridge Weyr
|
