Shadows Return

living throat.
    He turned slowly, still caught in a nightmare. The rhekaro was standing over Alec’s body, his mouth stretched in a perfect
O.
The sound was coming from him, and mingling with it were the screams of the slave takers and the cries of the horses as they reared and bucked.
    As Seregil watched, the remaining riders fell from their saddles, screaming and bleeding from their eyes and ears and noses. One by one they went still and silent, and only when the last one was dead did the rhekaro’s deadly song die away.
    When it was done, Sebrahn collapsed across Alec’s chest, and that pale grey little tongue flickered out, lapping at the blood on Alec’s throat.
    “Get away from him!” Seregil screamed. He staggered back to them, wrenching the arrows from his flesh as he went. “Can’t you just leave him alone? Go suck the blood from your maker, you monster!”
    Sebrahn looked up at him and Seregil saw that there were tears streaming down the rhekaro’s cheeks. Seregil pushed him aside. Falling to his knees, he dragged Alec’s limp body into his arms and felt frantically at Alec’s throat and wrists.
    But there was no pulse, or breath. Those beloved eyes had the fixed glaze Seregil had seen too often in the faces of the dead. “No! Oh Illior, no, please! Alec!”
    He shook him, and chafed his blood-soaked chest, knowing that it was useless, but unable to give up yet.
    Sebrahn pulled at Seregil’s shoulder and he shoved the rhekaro away. Choking back a sob, he pulled the arrows from Alec’s chest. When Seregil pressed his hand to the wounds, bright blood oozed up between his fingers, but it was no longer flowing.
    Only then did he notice the hot blood soaking the leg of his own trousers, and feel the pulsing wound on his inner thigh.
Ah then, they’ve finished me off after all. Small mercy.
    Burying his face in Alec’s tangled, dirty hair, he broke down completely, not caring that they were in the open, or about the carnage Sebrahn had wrought. He could feel his own strength slipping away, and welcomed it. He’d have sat there with Alec like that until they were both food for the crows, if that damn creature hadn’t kept tugging at his shoulder. Seregil tried to push him off, but Sebrahn simply wouldn’t let him be.
    “What?” Seregil demanded, wearily raising his head. Sebrahn was still crying, and holding something out in both bloodstained little hands, something he wanted Seregil to see.
    It was another of those flowers, but this one was pure white with a golden center, and as clean as if it had just been plucked from a pure lake.
    “I don’t want your healing,” Seregil growled, slapping it away.
    Sebrahn shoved him back with surprising force and dragged Alec from Seregil’s lap onto the ground between them. His silvery eyes burned with an inner light, and his tears glowed. Those pale lips moved, forcing out a hoarse whisper. “Ah-lek.”
    Growing weaker by the moment, Seregil watched as Sebrahn leaned over Alec and let his tears fall on the wounds. Everywhere a tear met blood, a white lotus sprang up, one after the other until Alec’s chest was covered in them, like a pall. Then Sebrahn threw his head back and sang again.
    Seregil thought that he would die then, like the others had, but he didn’t. Instead, the piercing sound went on and on, until Seregil could feel the vibration of it in his bones and skull. One by one, the white flowers turned to light and sank into Alec’s lifeless form. When the last of them disappeared, a tremendous shudder went through the body and Alec coughed.
    “Alec?” Seregil gathered him into his arms again as best he could, and held him while Alec coughed and gagged, bringing up long black clots of congealed blood. When he was done he went limp in Seregil’s arms and stared up uncomprehendingly at him. The death glaze was gone; those eyes were clear and blue and filled with consternation.
    “I—” he wheezed, fighting for breath. “I—”
    “It’s all right!” Seregil was laughing and crying now, on the verge of hysteria. “You were right. Oh Illior, you were right! He saved you. Your ‘child of no woman.’ You were right all along!”
    But Alec clutched Seregil’s arm, and shook his head. “I—I chose—
you.
”
    “Yes, you did!” Seregil bent to kiss those bloody lips, but a grey mist came between them and the world slid away. He smiled as he went, though, taking the sight of Alec’s face with him into the darkness.

CHAPTER