Chapter 10: The Living Dead

I clutched Nîn to me as the sky reft and wept. Her skin clammy to my hands. My face struck with chill rain as I raised it in hope to the black, denying heavens.

I wrapped her in my sodden cloak. Still she swooned. She was colder than the ground, but not dead, no! Her heart beat its threnody. Fast but light, like rainfall patter on leaves. It takes a deal to kill the Firstborn.

Somehow, against my will, sleep caught me up. Woke with the acrid scent of sweat-scorched lanolin in my nostrils. Ripe and sharp. The heat baking from Nîn like fresh bread, and some tang in it that set the hairs to stand upon my neck. And then I no longer wanted her in my arms. I tensed, a thrall waiting for the lash to fall. But I held her.

Telperion ascendant. An arc of silver, falling over us. I saw Nîn stir. Flinch, febrile, as from a flame brought close. A guttural noise, part whimper, rose from her lips, and with it, the note of something spoiled. High, ketotic, like ripe meat. And the penumbra of light breaking upon us revealed a delicate tracery, ink-black, of veins outlined. A chart, marking ruinous rivers. And though I did not understand, then still was I appalled.

Her eyes opened. Lashes gummed. A hot gaze, bloodshot eyes. Nîn looked up at me as though from afar. From the bottom of a well. There was distance there, and depth, like the unsounded chasms beneath the ebon skin of the Sea of Helcar. Lightless gulfs, where hot currents rise strangely, twisting through the murk, and anything whatsoever can coil and wait. Eyes grown bulbous, wide as dinner plates, all pupil, the better to know light and shun it. Battening on unclean things, on things like itself but weaker.

Nîn's eyelids fluttered. "Eöl.." she managed, dragging up the words like an anchor from the seabed. Then her eyes closed, and her curdled breathing deepened. Thickened, clotting as blood scabs wound.

Healing, I hoped, unwitting.

I listened to the change in her, until I, too, slept.

I came round to her clung about me. Her head buried in the hollow of my neck. I did not open my eyes. Caution informed me.

Felt the points of her teeth trace down from my jaw, coiling delicacy in her movements. I stiffened, and she stilled, like an adder does when you surprise it crossing a forest path. I caught a glimpse of her eye – and recoiled in horror. Onyx eyes. Glossy black, avid.

Hissing sudden, she was on me, now I began to know her for what she was. I got my forearm under her chin as she tried to bite me, and it was all I could do to hold her off me, the hunger in her making her fell and fierce. She was strong, the more so envenomed, and I fought for dear life, flesh crawling in horror.

Close pressed together, as she sought my flesh. A bleak parody of coupling, limbs writhing entwined. But I proved the stronger, because I think .. I hope .. the part of her that remained Nîn fought alongside me against the vampire. Still, it was all I could do to keep her teeth and nails from me, until at length Laurelin rose in auric splendour, and at the touch of the Tree's searing rays, the unclean spirit fled from her, unable to bear that God-hallowed light.

Sweat-soaked, weary, soul-sick, we knew each other at a glance, honest tears spilling down her cheek, welling up from those black, staring weals. Not a sound we made, either of us. Then Nîn sprang up, and fled me again. This time I let her go.

I knew what she would do and I, coward, did not have the strength to see her do what was necessary.

I found her quickly, when I heard her cry. It was done cleanly. Her, folded over a stake of rowan wood whose point she had driven into her breast. The blood berries weft into her hair. Her eyes were her own again. That was a mercy, I think.

I fell by her side, and swooned as one who is dead.

I woke. Made myself busy, taking my axe to the grove in a frenzy, finishing what Nîn had begun, teeth bared, hacking, the sweat rolling off my brow. From branch and bough of those youngling trees, I made a travois, strips of bark weaving to knot the frame together, and on it, I laid my grey cloak. I had washed it in the beck, and wrung it dry of tears.

Nîn I laid on the bier, and folded the broad cloth over. Bound her onto it with my bowcord. Closed her eyes with my fingers. Crowned her brow golden with laurels. For I must bear Nîn, daughter of none, back to our people, that we might do her honour.

And after…I was minded to set her bier upon my long ship. Set her prow North, to the star, and take a maiden voyage into Helluin, flame in heart, flame in hand. Flame upon pyre, flame to claim the living and the living dead. Thus I reckoned myself.