“I’m sorry,” said Drusl. “I’m sorry.” She looked to Xus and then to me but whether she saw me or not I do not know. Her gaze was far away and then it focused, returned to her shaking hands, regarding them as if they were covered in blood only she could see. I started forward. A firm hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“No, Girton,” said my master. “It is too dangerous for you.”
“He wanted to hurt me; they all wanted to hurt me.” Drusl lifted her hands and stared at them with wide brown eyes. I think she could see nothing else. Another long breath struggled in and out of Xus’s lungs. My heart broke within my breast.
“All?” said my master softly. “Kyril and Leiss? They wanted to hurt you too?”
“Yes,” the word barely audible. “I never wanted to hurt them but they wouldn’t go away. They wouldn’t. I only wanted to make them go away.”
“Stress and hurt are often the triggers that wake us, girl,” said my master softly, taking a step towards her.
Drusl seemed to see us for the first time, and her face twisted into a grimace. The floor and walls started to sweat.
“I didn’t want it. They cut power into me. I didn’t want it.”
“Who did this?”
“I won’t give up the other girls. It isn’t their fault.”
“What you are is no one’s fault, Drusl,” said my master. I watched, rooted to the spot like a tree. “But someone woke your power with pain, Drusl, on purpose? Is that what you mean when you say they cut it into you?”
She nodded slowly then fell to her knees and stretched out a hand as if to touch Xus before jerking it back in horror at the sight of him. “Xus,” she said, “poor Xus.” She turned from the mount to my master. “They said the symbols would stop me hurting anyone.”
Gossamer flakes of ash hung in the air around us as I watched, unable to think or move.
“It was a lie,” said my master. “They sought to control you but have only twisted you; they have taught you no control at all.”
My words came then—desperate ill-thought-out words planted in the sour ground of desperation, not reality.
“We can help you escape,” I said.
“Oh Girton.” Drusl gave me a small, shy, smile. “I knew you’d want to help.” She held out a hand towards me, then looked at the dying Xus and her smile fell away. She turned back to my master, the small hope I had seen in her eyes dying. “But he doesn’t understand, does he? There is no escape from this, is there, wise mother?”
The old woman stares at his master, and a tear tracks down her face, flowing along the banks of her many wrinkles.
My master’s face was set like stone and if I could have found my voice I would have begged her not to speak.
“No, daughter,” she said. “There is no escape.” Drusl bowed her head, and her hands fell to her side. She took a deep shuddering breath and then raised her head.
“I love you, Girton. What I am doesn’t change that.” She tilted her head to one side. “It’s not all bad. I saved you from the dogs, slowed them for you.”
“That was you?”
She nodded.
“It was worth it for that at least.”
“Drusl,” I said. My voice died in my throat.
She watched her left hand as she ran it through Xus’s coat. His fur came away at her touch, falling to the floor to lie against his barely moving side. The mount’s breathing had slowed until it was hardly discernible. “I love Xus too.” A tear ran down her face. “I never meant to hurt him; I never thought I would hurt him.” She stared at the dying mount and then raised her face to me. “You love him.”
I nodded. “And you.”
“No one will find out about you, Girton. Don’t worry.”
“You knew?”
“Of course.” She looked puzzled and then smiled. “You didn’t? It makes me love you more.” She met my eye, something steely in her gaze. “Remember our happy times together, Girton, and take this gift from me.” She reached into her tunic and drew out a small knife, the type used to pare the hard claws of a mount. “Don’t forget me, Girton,” she said in a whisper. Then, with a final smile, she brought the knife up and it flashed in the torchlight as she opened her neck. A jet of arterial blood sprayed out over the dying Xus. It seemed to slow, to bend and twist, becoming elastic and wrapping itself around the dying animal.
It feels like a dream.
I scream, I think.
The blood, so red, floods my memory. My master holding me tight. I fight her. She stops me running to Drusl. Blood flows, sprays and turns.
“This is what she wants, Girton. This is what she wants.”
“No.”
I struggle. I kick. I cry.
“This is what is best.”
“She’s dying.”
I struggle. I kick. I cry.
“Nothing can stop that now. Let her blood flow as she wills it.”
This is not a dream.
Drusl slumped forward, and I folded into my master’s arms, crying “No” again and again. I felt the movement of life around me. What had been contained and bound by Drusl’s blood was freed and sought its source, binding itself to the great animal lying before me. I felt the walls of his fluttering heart thicken and strengthen. I felt his huge lungs fill with air and begin to work like blacksmith’s bellows. Colour crept across his fur, changing it from grey back to brown and white, and it thickened as though he moulted his summer coat and grew his winter one all in seconds. The muscles of his neck twisted and knitted themselves back to strength, and his heavy head with its huge spread of antlers rose. He struggled, clawed feet slipping on the bloody ground, but only for a moment, and then, with a shrill cry of triumph, he lifted himself and stood over us, huffing and hissing, shivers passing along his flanks.
And at the same time Xus was standing, breathing, living, my mind was working, seeing pictures. Making sense of what I had seen—what I had missed.
“Others.” I said the word quietly into my master’s chest. “She said there were others.” I heard a voice I could not quite place. I saw a priest in a place he should not be, heard a woman crying in the distance. I saw groups of letters in the back of the book of names and they burned across my mind with new meaning. I raised my head, looking into my master’s face. “Drusl in the stable,” I whispered it to myself as if to test the truth I found in the words. Columns of letters span in my mind, twisted around themselves. One particular grouping shining especially brightly. “DTS,” I said. “Drusl, the stable.”
“What?” said my master as I untangled myself from her arms.
“The priest Neander did this.”
“What do you mean?”
I stood.
“She spoke of others. The letters in Neander’s book. They were names and places. DTS, Drusl, the stable.”
“Girton, you cannot be sure.”
“But I am.”
I walked away from her as guards swarmed through the stable doors.
“Get out of my way,” I said and drew my blades. They lowered their pikes, but I would not be stopped.
I could not be stopped.