Pain raking along the arm which I had flung across my face in that last instant. A weight pinning me against the mound so that I might not move, I would not look upon what held me, I could not.
“Gillan! Gillan!”
A man’s arms about me, surely-not the claws of a beast rending my flesh. A voice strained and hoarse with fear and pain, not the snarling of a cat.
“Gillan!”
I opened my eyes. His head was bent above me, and such was the agony in his face that I knew first a kind of wonder. Held me in a grip to leave bruises on my arms and back, and his breath came in small gasps. “Gillan, what have I done?”
Then he swung me up as if my weight was nothing, and we were on the platform of the mound where the moon was very bright. I lying on my robe while, with a gentleness I had not thought in him, Herrel stretched out my arm. The torn cloth fell away in two great rents and revealed dripping furrows.
He gave a sharp cry when he saw them clearly, and then looked about him wildly, as if in search of something his will could summon to him.
“Herrel?”
Now his eyes met mine again and he nodded. “Yes, Herrel-now! May yellow rot eat their bones, and That Which Runs The Ridges feed upon their spirits! To have done this to you-to you! There are herbs in the forest-
I will fetch-“
“In my bag there are also cures-“ The pain was molten metal running up my arm, into my shoulder, heavy so that I could not breathe easily, and around me the moonlight swirled, the pillars nodded to and fro-I closed my eyes. I felt him pull the bag from beneath the rug and I tried to control my wits so that I might tell him how to use the balms within it. But then he laid hands upon my arm again and I cried out, to be utterly lost in depths where there was neither pain nor thought.
“Gillan! Gillan!”
I stirred, reluctant to leave the healing dark-yet that voice pulled at me.
“Gillan! By the Ash, the Maul, the Blade that rusteth never, by the Clear Moon, the Light of Neave, the blood I have shed to He Whose semblance I wear-“ the murmur flowed over and around me, wove a net to draw me on out of the quiet in which I lay.
“Gillan, short grows the time-By the virtue of the
Bane-bloom, and the Lash of Gorth, the Candles of the Weres-come you back!”
Loud were the words now, an imperative call I could not nay-say. I opened my eyes. Light about me, not that of day, but of green flames. A sweet scent filled my nostrils and the petals of flowers brushed my cheeks as I turned my head to see him who spoke. Herrel stood against a silver pillar, his body to the waist pale silver too, for he had stripped off mail and leather and was bare of skin to ‘ his belt-save that across his upper arms and shoulders were welts, angry, red, and on some of them stood beads of blood. Between his hands was a whip of branch broken in the middle. “Herrel?”
He came quickly, fell to his knees beside me. His face was that of a man who has come from a battlefield, gaunted by exhaustion, too worn to care whether he held victory in his hand, or must taste the sour of defeat. Yet when he looked down at me he came alive again. His hand came out as if to touch my cheek, then dropped upon his thigh.
“Gillan, how is it with you?”
I wet my lips. Far within me something was troubled, as if it had reached and been denied. I moved my arm; faint pain, the lingering memory of that agony which had rent me earlier. I sat up slowly. He made no move to aid me. There was a bandage about my arm and I smelled the sharp odour of a salve I knew well; so he had plundered my bag. But as I so moved a covering of flowers cascaded down my body, and with them leaves hastily torn into bits, from which came the scent of herbs. I had lain under a thick blanket of them.
Herrel made a gesture with his hand. The green lights snuffed out. Nor could I see from what they had sprung, for they left no sign of their source behind them.
“How is it with you?” he repeated. “Well, I believe well-“
“Not wholly so. And the time-the time grows short!”
“What do you mean?” I gathered up a handful of that flowery covering, raised the bruised blossoms, the aromatic leaves to sniff them.
“You are two-“
“That I know.” I broke in.
“But perhaps this you do not know. For a space one may be made two-though it is a mad and wicked thing. Then, if the two do not meet once again-one fades-“
“That other Gillan-will go?” The flower petals dropped from my hand, once more I felt that cold within me, that hunger which could not be appeased by any food taken into the mouth, swallowed by the throat.
“Or you!” His words were simple, yet for a moment the understanding of them was not mine. And he must have read that in my face, for now he got once more to his feet, brought down his bare fists against the side of the pillar as if he smashed into the face of an enemy.
“They-wrought this-thinking that you-this you-would die in the waste-or in the mountains. This land has mighty safeguards.”
“That I know.”
“They did not believe that you would live. And if you died, then would that Gillan they had summoned be whole-though not as you, save in a small part. But when you came into Arvon-they knew. They learned that a stranger troubled the land, and guessed that it was you. So they turned again to the power and-“
“Sent you-“ I said softly when he did not continue.
He turned his head so that once more I could read his face, and what lay there was not good to behold. There were no words in me which I could summon to assuage that wound as my balms and salves could have healed torn flesh for him.
“I told you-at our first meeting-I am not as they are. They can, if they wish, compel me, or blind my eyes, as they did when they brought forth that other Gillan who turned aside from me to welcome Halse-as he wished from the beginning!”
I shivered. Halse! Had that other me lain happily in Halse’s arms, welcomed him? I put hands to my face, knowing shame like a devouring fire. No-no-
“But I am me-“ I could not set my bewilderment into words clear enough even for my own understanding. “I have a body-am real-“
But was I? For in this land I was a wraith, as its people were wraiths to me. I ran my hand along that bandaged arm, welcoming the pain which followed touch, for it spelled the reality of the flesh which winced from finger pressure.
“You are you, she is also you-in part. As yet a far lighter and less powerful part. But, should you cease to exist, then she is whole, whole enough for Halse’s purpose. They fear you, the Pack, because they can not control you as the others. Therefore they would make one by sorcery that they can.”
“And if-if-“
Again he picked the thought from my mind. “If I had done as they intended and slain you? Then they would not have cared had I learned the full truth, once I had accomplished their purpose. They do not fear me in the least, and if I had done myself harm on discovery of the murder they set me to, well, that would have merely removed another trouble from their path. To their thinking this was a fine plan.”
“But you did not kill.”
There was no lighting of his face. Still he was as one who had fallen into Hound hands and been subjected to their cruel usage.
“Look upon your arm, Gillan. No, I did not kill, but in this much did I serve their purpose. And should this hurt keep us from the road we must take, then I have done as commanded-“
“Why?”
“Time is our enemy, Gillan. The longer the twain of you are apart, so will you fail in strength-so finally you may not reach uniting in time. I speak thus that you may know what truly lies before us, for I do not believe that you are one to be soothed with fair words and kept in ignorance.”
Perhaps he paid me a compliment in that judging. I do not know. Only then I wished that he had not thought so highly of my courage, for I was shaken, though I tried not to let him know it.