"Lyon," she stammered. "Pendarlon, what is it?" Her jackals crouched back from her in a semicircle, barking in gleeful, red-eyed malice. "It passed through my hand. My stick went right through—what manner of beast are they?"
The leosol glanced over one shoulder and stared at her, startled—but only for a moment.
His pack of jackals had not paused, even to taunt him with laughter. Aeriel saw more blood on the lyon's coat, though for the most part he seemed to be keeping the braches at bay with furious snaps of his jaw and powerful sweeps of his paw.
"Specters!" he cried suddenly. "Daughter, I should have seen it...."
Now it was Aeriel's turn to stare. "Specters," she murmured. Her mind seemed too dulled to take it in. It came to her slowly then, memory of Bomba's cradle tales with their specters: images without substance, able to be seen and heard, but neither touched nor felt___Aeriel shook her head,
catching sight once more of the sunlion's golden blood. "But you are wounded," she exclaimed. "How could they have harmed you?"
Her jackals had begun to mill and circle again, heads lowered, grinning. Aeriel brandished her stick, wondered what good that would do. The witch-dogs redoubled their mocking laughter.
"Desert jackals only run in pairs, daughter," panted the Pendarlon, keeping his own attackers back. "I grasp it now. The witch could not have had time to assemble all her jackals, nor has she power to control them all so far from her." One of the braches came too close. Aeriel caught a glimpse of the lyon's paw passing through her solid-seeming body. "Only two of this pack can be real," the lyon muttered, "the rest created in their images to confound us."
He cuffed at another brach-jackal and his paw met only empty air. Only two of the pack were real, had he said? thought Aeriel. His bright blood gleamed from the flesh wounds on his shoulders and forelegs. But those two real dogs were obviously dangerous, and lost in this shifting crowd— "How may we find them?" she cried. All the dog-jackals prowling before her looked exactly alike, as did the braches.
"We cannot," gasped the lyon, lunging and feinting. "She has made perfect likenesses.
We dare not disregard any one of them lest..." His last words ended in a snarl. Aeriel turned in time to see one of the brach-jackals—the real one, clearly—sink her teeth into the great cat's pad, draw blood, then dodge out of reach before he could knock her away.
They're just toying with us, thought Aeriel, for sport. They could have finished up long since, did they not so joy in baiting us.
Aeriel felt a sudden rush of motion along her side and realized she had dropped her guard. Something hot and sharp grazed her forearm. She whirled away with a cry, bringing her knotted stick down on solid, shaggy bulk. She heard a yip of pain, surprise, and the dog-jackal fell quickly back, head low, blank lidless eyes glowering at her.
He
is the one, thought Aeriel. Her heart lifted; she ignored the pain of the gash along her arm. If I can but keep my eye on him...
She aimed another blow of her staff at the witch's dog. But he fell back from her, deliberately, lost himself in the shifting shimmer of his fellows. Aeriel could not keep her eyes on him in the dance of spots. The jackals sang their hunting song and laughed.
Aeriel halted, afraid to advance more than a pace from the lyon's side lest one slip behind her.
Aeriel heard a sharp yelp from one of the Pendarlon's jackals, glanced to see a brach tumbling away from the leosol's mighty paw. For an instant all the other braches vanished. Downslope, the brach he had struck—the real one—staggered to her feet, one forepaw crumpled to her chest, and shook her head.
Her fellows suddenly reappeared, barking and lunging about the lyon's ears, to no effect.
He had the real one in his sight and she was injured, could not leap and lose herself among the others. Aeriel saw the great cat belly down to the sand and move fluidly forward. His golden blood gleamed in the light of Solstar.
Blood on the teeth, thought Aeriel suddenly, returning her mind to her own fight now.
Only a real jackal can harm me; only the real one has wounded me. Her slashed arm ached. The real witch-dog, Aeriel realized, must have my blood on his teeth. She searched the miasma of roving red eyes and broken black spots before her, tried to find fangs, stared at them—yes. One of the jackals did have a smear of rose on his white curled lip.
He stood out from the others now as she recognized how to spot him. And she realized, too, as she studied him, that only he cast a shadow across the orange sand. Gripping her walking stick, she darted toward him, landed three quick blows to his head and shoulders.
He barked, snarled, backed away from her. She followed, ignoring the howling pack of specters that sprang at her. She waded through their nothingness and aimed again at the one witch-dog she knew was real.
"Stop," the jackal growled at her. He crouched, shoulders hunched; no laughter thickened his voice now. Abruptly the noise of the others ceased. Their images vanished. Aeriel was dimly aware in the sudden stillness that the false braches about the Pendarlon had also vanished. "Enough," the jackal crouching before her snarled. "You recognize I am the one. Very well. I shall stop toying with you. Even without my specters, I can kill you.
Do you really think that stick would stop me?"
"The Pendarlon will soon finish with your mate," panted Aeriel. Despite the other's surly confidence, she felt flushed and dangerous. "Do you think you could stand against him?"
"I said, enough!" the jackal snarled. "I do not intend to stand against him. I intend to kill you and run. Have done with this game and save yourself death. Hand over to me the starhorse's hoof."
Aeriel stared at him, startled. Was it the star-hoof they truly sought, not her? She felt a brief rush of gratification flit through her to realize perhaps she had done right in taking the hoof, interpreted the rime and the little mage's hurried instructions correctly after all.
She blinked once to clear her thoughts, and searched her mind for cunning. "And... and what if I had this thing you ask for," she started, trying for a tone of confidence, even scorn; she was winded. She needed rest. "What would you do with it?"
"There is no 'if,' " the jackal barked. "The lyon took you to the horse: so much we can guess. What other reason than to have its hoof? I and my fellow servants have been scouring these dunes a dozen years to find it...."
"But why?" demanded Aeriel, stalling, stalling—would the lyon never come? From one corner of her eye she caught sight of him, now halfway down the slope, almost caught up to the limping, fleeing brach.
"Our mistress requires it," the dog-jackal snapped, baring fang. "Ask no more. Hand it to me."
Aeriel shook her head, slowly, held tight her walking stick, her muscles tensed, eyes on the jackal—but she made her face and voice all ignorance. "I do not have it," she replied.
"This robe has no pockets." She raised her arms slightly to show him. "Did you think I might secrete anything upon my person?" The jackal cocked his head, eyed her with red suspicion. Aeriel dropped her arms. "I brought back nothing of the star-horse. He was dead."
"Liar," spat the jackal. "You have it—you must—somewhere upon you. That pouch..."
Aeriel lifted the black velvet bag, still slung from a thong about her neck, prayed for the lyon to come. She wrung the limp bag in one hand. "It holds nothing." In the background she heard the death cry of the brach in the lyon's jaws.
"Liar," the witch-dog growled again, his muscles bunching, his eyes upon the pouch.
"More likely charmed and only empty-seeming—"
He sprang—so suddenly Aeriel was taken by surprise. Snatching the bag in his teeth from her hand, he knocked her back. She cried out, used her staff to ward him off. Falling, she felt the thong break from about her neck. The hard sand knocked the breath from her. The jackal came down upon her. For one instant his red, carbuncle eyes glared at her; his hot, foul breath scathed her cheek. Then she heard the lyon's roar and the jackal sprang away.
She scrambled to her knees, saw all in an instant: the witch-dog already two bounds down-slope, the Pendarlon crouching over the fallen brach. A long wound was torn along his left leg and shoulder—she had not seen that slash before; his stance during the fight had hidden it. The jackal fled.
"Pendarlon, stop him!" Aeriel cried. "He has
the pouch___" But she realized even as she heard
herself speaking that with such a wound, even the leosol could never have caught him.
The great cat staggered to his feet, lurched half a pace toward her. "Aeriel," he called—
but his voice seemed oddly weakened, strained. "Aeriel, your staff!"
But Aeriel's thoughts were already ahead of his words. Scrambling up from her knees, she snatched at her staff, lying where she had dropped it when she fell. Just out of reach, it slipped beneath her fingertips, sifted further into the coarse, slippery sand. Aeriel lunged for the stick, caught it up, whirled. She saw the pale, dark-spotted jackal, pouch in teeth, now halfway to the foot of the slope. Gauging the distance in that instant, she knew were she to wait even a half second more, he would be beyond her range and away.
Aeriel gathered herself. Without a pause, striving to recall everything Orroto-to had taught her, she flexed her arm and cocked her wrist, took two half-running strides, and threw. The knotted staff arched up, sailed high like a javelin, point first. Reaching its zenith, it hung a moment against the black, starlit sky. Then it plunged, dropped. Aeriel, standing halted, panting on the hillcrest, saw the jackal, unaware of the danger overhead, sprinting down the pale orange duneside straight for the point where the shaft would come to earth.
The thrown stick fell, fell, and just before it hit home, Aeriel's wrist-flick as she had launched it caught up with the shaft, snapped it around so the great knob of its head struck the dog's skull like a stone. Aeriel saw the jackal somersault, the black pouch fly from his teeth, and heard no cry. A great splash of sand flew up as the jackal landed, rolled limply a few paces to the slope's foot, and lay still.
"Well done, daughter." She heard the lyon's cry dimly above the harshness of her own breathing and the pounding of her heart. "Well done."
Aeriel half-ran, half-waded down the brittle-crusted, sliding slope then to retrieve the duar-ough's velvet bag and her walking stick. The jackal was dead. As Aeriel knelt in the sand beside him, she saw his eyes were clear now, colorless as glass and no longer red.
The whiteness of his pelt, too, was losing its lambence; the once depth-less black of its rosette spots had dulled, looked flat and dusty now. Her pulse and breathing quieted.
Aeriel lifted the velvet pouch and brushed the sand grains from it, reached her hand inside to be sure that the equustel's hoof was still within, and unharmed. It was; Aeriel felt its cool, smooth, uneven solidity against her fingertips. She reknotted the broken thong and slipped it once more about her neck. Retrieving her walking stick, she rose, turned away from the dead jackal, and started back up the slope.
The Pendarlon reclined upon the sand, facing away from Aeriel. The dead brach lay nearby him, her eyes, like her mate's, also gone colorless, her spotted coat likewise lost the gleam of its whiteness and the depth of its shadows. But as Aeriel drew near the reclining sunlion, she noticed another thing. His coat, too, had faded; its fiery radiance was weaker. His fallow mane no longer fiercely glowed. His own pelt, the brach beside him, and the sand all were spattered with bright golden blood.
Aeriel stared a moment in utter astonishment, then ran to him. Falling to her knees beside him, she found him barely able to raise his cheek from the sand. "Pendarlon," she cried, taking his great, shaggy head onto her lap. "Pendarlon, you're sorely hurt."
"No, daughter," he scoffed, faintly. "A little. Only a little."
"What may I do for you?" she exclaimed, reaching to press his wounded shoulder in effort to stanch the blood that oozed there. But in the next instant she had caught her hand back with a cry. The long, golden slash was hot as burning butter.
"No, do not touch my shoulder, child," the leosol told her. "Our bodies—the bodies of the Ions—are not like yours. We are made of a fiercer, more volatile stuff...." His voice faded to a whisper. He drew breath. "But do not fear."
"I do, though," Aeriel told him, stroking his paled, silk mane with her free hand. Her chest was tight. Her voice trembled. "Lyon, I do fear."
He smiled, faintly, seemed to gather himself. From deep in his throat, she almost thought she heard a purr. "Do not. I will be well enough again before sun reaches noon next day-month. Ravenna gave her wardens power to heal themselves at need."
"But how may I aid you?" she whispered, already reaching to the pouch at her throat. "Do you require food?"
He shook his head. "No, but I require rest." He closed his eyes a moment, as though too weary to continue.
Aeriel felt her own helplessness knotting like a fist about her throat. "But what may /
do?" she cried softly. "Tell."
He opened his eyes then, and she saw that their golden fire, at least, remained undimmed.
It gave her courage. "Look to yourself," he told her, "first. Your arm is wounded. Salve a little of my blood upon it. It will help it heal."
Aeriel shook her head, made to protest. How could she tend her own scratches when he lay so hurt? But the lyon's eyes compelled her. Slowly, reluctantly, she spread a little of the hot substance from her hand along the long, shallow slash on her forearm. The golden stuff first burned, then tingled with a soothing warmth. "Lyon...," Aeriel started.
But again the great cat shook his head. "Daughter," he interrupted, "surely you can see I cannot bear you any farther toward the desert's edge. This wound of mine will mend in time, but I must lie here long hours in the light of Solstar, drawing strength from it, before I am sound again. You must go on alone."
"I won't leave you," Aeriel cried, almost before she herself was aware she had spoken.