I SMELL THE BLOOD ON YOU
1563 4D
Ezzar watched Andrew leaving the domed room, and shook Rennie. He sat rigid, staring straight ahead. He’d done this just once before, when Onnashak had him. The old woman returned to her seat and stood just in front of her cushion. Ezzar demanded, “What have you done to him?”
“Now, you,” the old woman said, an edge showing in her voice, “I smell the blood on you, both of you. More than on Jirinai, maybe even Torre.”
“What have you done to him?” Ezzar said again. Her knife might be useful, now. She let her hand fall from Rennie‘s arm.
The old woman’s eyes locked with Ezzar‘s. “Do you know why andros never come down here? It’s because down here they’re just food. Good meat.”
“Who would eat…? Oh, like… Onnashak?”
“Onnashak. You must mean Onnhasshakh, the old wanderer.” The old lady’s word seemed softer, darker, than the name Ezzar had used. “How do you know her name? You say it the way the little ones do.”
Ezzar told her about being cornered, and shooting to drive Onnhasshakh away, and Janny‘s name for the creature. “It… she almost ate Rennie, until I stopped her.”
“You didn’t stop her. She stopped. And why did you try to stop her? He’s just an andro.”
“I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt him.” Ezzar stood up, slowly drew her knife, and held it up to stare at the old woman across its point. “Anyone.”
“And you’ve killed many others. And so has he. How will you pay the price of death?”
“I’ll die. That’s price enough.” Ezzar lowered her blade and said, “This is just a lot of words, with no thanks for what we had to do to bring you what you need. We brought this shipment in from the mines at Drevill—“
“I know. And Torre and Jirinai and the others will make good and bloody use of it all, and come begging to me for healing. My medicines are costly, priceless, not like those surgical toys that came with the guns and explosives. And now I have to face new sicknesses that change humans into something else.”
While the old woman spoke, she gradually drew herself up until she stood tall. The gnarled hands seemed to straighten, their joints no longer protruding; the heavy breasts appeared to rise and swell as the old woman’s shoulders drew back. Shocked, Ezzar stared into the black eyes now fixing her from a smooth young olive-brown face. Only the hair kept its color and texture.
“I give life and healing,” the woman Allashani said to Ezzar, “And its price is death.”
“What are you talking about? What are you?” In her confusion, Ezzar recalled Marra and Deen. “Wait. I remember two women in the country, in the mountains. Are you like them? One was Marra from Fandarinn Coll. They healed me, but—“
“They’re partly my kin.” Allashani slowly raised a fingertip to Ezzar‘s cheek, touching her triple scar at its intersection point. “Did they leave you this?”
Ezzar recoiled. “Don’t touch me.” She turned, took Rennie‘s hand, and tried to drag him to his feet. His arm would not leave his side. Ezzar spun, rising, drawing her knife in a single motion. “Let him go, or I’ll kill you.” She held the point of her knife at Allashani‘s throat.
The woman didn’t move. From the blackness of her eyes a huge calm sorrow seemed to reach out and surround Ezzar. “Yes. You’d kill me. Others have killed me many times. Is this your only answer to what you don’t understand?”
“Tell me what I don’t understand.” Ezzar held her knife steady, but its point trembled in spite of her.
“To give to you all, I must take from you. That’s the price you pay. I only take that which has no… what you call spirit, that thing left when the body is gone. To destroy the spirit is forbidden.” The woman looked at Rennie. “He’s andro, or I thought he was. Andros have no spirit the way you do. Some of you have none, either; those who have lost it, I take. And what I take, I use to heal. But this one, something’s wrong, I don’t know. He’s not all andro.”
Ezzar broke in. “Are you an alien? You don’t understand anything about him. He loves me. I love him. I feel his spirit, even if you don’t. And how do you know, how do you sense all this?”
The woman cocked her head at Ezzar. “You aren’t the believing type, are you? The rest, even Jirinai and Torre, are happy to accept me and my needs. They make dances and songs for me, and I pull them out of darkness and death, and I give them healing and hope, the way my kindred did for so many, even you. But you come here and hold a knife to my throat.” The words came with such gentleness that shame flooded Ezzar for a moment; she lowered her blade.
Recovering, Ezzar pointed at the still-rigid Rennie. “But you’re holding him captive, you want me to give him to you, to… what? Eat? Go find your food somewhere else. Let him go with me.”
The woman turned from Ezzar to study Rennie, standing on tiptoe to look into his eyes. “I won’t be eating him. Something has happened to him, changed him, and now he is more like you, alive inside. I cannot take those who are truly alive.”
For the first time since the woman had appeared, Rennie stirred, drew a long deep breath, and put his hands at his temples. “Aah. It was dark. Ezzar?” He stared around as if blind.
She sheathed her knife and held his shoulders. “I’m here.”
“She was like a star with a body, in innerspace with me. I fell into her eyes, and…" He stopped and shook his head. "…and the light was gone. I was gone.” He turned his head, looking up at Ezzar. “But just before, I saw you there, sleeping. Light inside you. Oh, no…" he muttered; his body went rigid again, his eyes open blind.
Ezzar erupted. “Let him go! Go get someone else. We’ve made a life together, don’t you understand?” Tears wet her face. “Let him go. Please.”
“I will shortly. Curious: an andro with sentattar,” Allashani said. “He saw you there asleep, waiting for your own waking. When your body dies, you will still exist, in another form, there. When an andro‘s body dies, nothing is left. An andro would vanish from there, faster than from here. Do you want to face that moment?”
“I’ll face anything to have him now. Anything. If I have to die for him, I will.” Ezzar‘s body tensed.
At last Rennie moved his arms and head again, awkwardly. “She let me go.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “It was what I saw of you, and it was Onnhasshakh.”
“She didn’t eat you.”
Ezzar objected. “But I shot her and drove her away—"
“That didn’t hurt her. She’d have stayed and eaten him anyway. Something in him made her stop. She has a large appetite. So, I decided to look for myself, and I found in him the beginnings of something human.” The woman smiled. To Ezzar she appeared younger still. “And that means you must now take care, not just of him but of yourself. Go now. Help the others with the distribution. And except for the festival, stay out of the streets unless you know what you’re doing. When you wave a knife at them down here, they won’t listen.”
Pointing at the steel door, she waved them out of the room. “Just tell the woman at the end of the corridor that I’m going out hunting.” Before Ezzar and Rennie could leave, Allashani turned and vanished into the corridor Janny had taken.
