I couldn't feel my body, except for where the tunnel had been blasted, but I realized dimly that someone was carrying me.... Why? Wasn't my body already beyond repair? For that matter, why was I even conscious? - But as soon as I thought that, I was unconscious again.
Everything spun and spun, but it made no difference, since I couldn't move the few parts of my body that I could actually feel. I could hear people talking, however, and presently I realized that I was not dead, or in Rustiven's custody.
" - survive it?" someone asked.
"There's no way to know," someone answered: my counterpart. "I've never seen that kind of counterattack before, but obviously she knows very little of magic." Even his voice was stony; dark, and textured like flint.
"Why would she wear a mage-stone, then?" a red voice asked: the city woman.
"Perhaps that's how he was controlling her."
"That's not what I sense; didn't you feel something - break? Just after - " There was more, but the words spun too fast to understand, and I faded out again.
When I smelled smoke, I came awake completely and on my feet - and on my guard - in an instant. The quartet of travelers recoiled nearly as fast; they had only been preparing to roast a few skewers of mushrooms, over a small, neatly made fire in the center of a clearing I did not at first recognize. About five hours had passed, I guessed from the midafternoon shadows, and we were further down and south on the mountain.... The whole scene seemed uncannily, almost maddeningly clear....
The city woman, who absolutely embodied the concept of "red," clapped her hands.
"Ah, she's awake!" she exclaimed. "We must introduce ourselves; Amelia - " she cued the white-clad squirrel-girl in my left. The girl stepped forward (my small knife was still clenched in my left fist; I sheathed it hastily).
"I am Amelia Wil Tesla Sailloon," she sang out with enough vigor to rattle a turtle, and thumped her chest. "Champion of Justice, Sworn Defender of the Innocent - "
"Yes, I've heard of you," I murmured quickly, performing what little obeisance I could manage without losing my balance. The pain in my chest was dizzying, but I was certain it would diminish over time. The princess sat down, suddenly disarmed, and the man on her left - the mercenary in blue - waved and grinned.
"I'm Gourry," he said simply ('simple,' I suspect, would have described a lot about him). He had unusually long blond hair, and a disturbingly familiar look ... the jawline wasn't quite right, and the eyes.... I couldn't remember. Next was the city woman.
"M - I'm - Lina Inverse," she grunted, through a mouthful of the roast mushrooms she'd been hastily scarfing down since the first introductions. The mercenary - I mean, Gourry - expressed some dismay over this realization.
"Really? I've heard of you, too," I told her, and she was startled enough to swallow her last mushroom whole (that looked painful).
"Really?" she gasped. "What have you heard?"
" ... It's not polite to repeat," I admitted, and she choked.
The last traveler stood.
"My name is Zelgadis," he said, also simply, in the voice I had appropriately associated with stone. I must have acknowledged him, but how, I don't remember; our eyes had locked again. Unconsciously, we began to circle again, more slowly, in a wide and subtle spiral.
How blue he was! Almost sky-colored . . but his eyes were very dark, and his hair tended toward indigo (had he slept on it improperly the previous night?). Were my eyes cat-slit like that? ... I realized it was a small wonder he stared back; next to him I was a bleached freak, an anemic cavedwelling albino.... The only blue I have is in the few scale-like nodules of stone which rather proclaim themselves ... the rest of me is white, absolute white. Even my hair is too pale to be considered blue, really. My eyes only make it worse - they're red (I know this because Rustiven once took to calling me 'Ruby-eyes' for a day or so, until I began addressing him as 'Weasel-face').
How very blue he was.... How very ... adjectives cascaded through my mental fingers, except one.
"Incredible," we said in unison, and immediately disregarded the coincidence. The background bickering over mushroom consumption had died out, and suddenly I felt rather self-conscious, and sat down on the side of the camp where I had come to stand. My counterpart - I mean, Zelgadis - continued to steal owlish glances at me across the fire, and I had to shrug them off.
The pain in my chest had lessened a bit with being upright, and I was surprised to find very little damage to my shirt (I would learn later that this was because the Blazer was primarily an astral attack).
"So," I began, "Rustiven had a brother. What was he like?" I asked Lina. She looked effectively at a loss for words, scouring her recollection.
"Well ... um ... er ... annoying," she assessed. "He never really said much, actually...."
I choked, hard (my chest still hurt too much to laugh like I wanted). I put elbow to knee and held my brow.
"Different, aren't they," Gourry commented.
"To say the least," I murmured.
"Hey, Ana, is there anything to eat in these woods?" Lina asked sharply. "We've been out here for weeks and there doesn't seem to be anything but mushrooms and wild carrots - I'll grow buckteeth at this rate!!"
"If you're wanting big game, it was all scared off by trolls," I told her. "Except for wild boar." It looked as if she would start whining presently, so I stood up quickly. "There's usually adequate small game, though; I'll have to check my snares." I turned to start on the errand -
"Stop." It was Zelgadis, standing again; I shot him a heated glance over my shoulder. "I'm afraid we can't allow you to go off alone: you might encounter Vrumugun's brother," he explained. I despise being chaperoned, but his argument was frustratingly valid; if I had to face Rustiven alone again, I would certainly not survive. Then he'd retrace my trail to this little camp....
"Very well," I acquiesced. "Come on, then." I let him catch up by himself. Almost beyond earshot, I heard Amelia eagerly volunteer to accompany us, and I heard Lina whip out some instant cunning:
"No, you won't," she said clearly, "You're much safer here with me and Gourry."
Heading southwest, we walked a while in silence. Well, I walked in silence; Zelgadis trod like a city-dweller. With any luck, I muttered inwardly, he'd flush out a pheasant. I picked up a stone. It was an unfortunate time of year: past the season for vegetables, not yet time for any nut harvest - and anything that would have been ripe and edible at the time, wouldn't grow in forests this dark, dense, and damp. Most tubers just rotted away underground, except the occaisonal hardy carrot. ... The terrain leveled slightly as we approached the gorge which passed for a valley at these heights (although I suspect it secretly aspired to canyon status). The view from the rim is gratifying: you can see the river wind down the mountain to a bend shrouded in trees and the veil of vapor from the next waterfalls, far downstream.
The gorge walls were pretty close to sheer vertical; the most direct way in was to ricochet oneself neatly down whatever boulder and rocky outcrops were handy. I couldn't tell if I was pleased or disturbed when Zelgadis mimicked my rockhopping exactly. On reaching the floor of the gorge, I was struck by a brief, painful fit of coughing - reflexively, I thumped my chest, and instantly I wished I hadn't ... but I kept my balance.
"What happened here?" Zelgadis asked with a note of incredulity, because instead of a sandbank, we stood on a towering pile of heavy, weathered troll bones.
"Oh," I gasped, still gathering my breath. "This is the boneyard."
"Boneyard?"
"I hunt trolls a lot," I explained "And they're so big, it's hard to dispose of the remains, so I just shove them down here. It all washes away in the spring thaw."
"Trolls?" He seemed more completely floored now than before.
I tripped away to make the rounds of my snares. Set almost at random in areas ranging from brambly rabbit-runs to the cliffside holes in the walls of the gorge, it would have been highly unlikely for all of the snares to be empty and undisturbed, and yet.... In the last trap, there was only a hysterical squirrel. I could never eat squirrel, and certainly I would never serve it to guests, so I calmed the thing down to exhausted disorientation and untangled it. It was still ... terrified.
Don't get yourself snared again! I scolded when I let it go scrambling back into the undergrowth.
Something in the locality seemed - not right. There was less animal activity than there should have been for the time of the year; but the difference was such that only I would have been able to detect it. In the past, these eerie interludes had indicated troll activity - but in the daytime?
Suspicious, I hopped up on a boulder beside the river, the better to project my talent along the gorge. Zelgadis, who had been trailing me warily, stood on a waterworn crag slightly upstream. Even if he matched me for speed and strength, it would have been child's play to evade him - at the least, I could have flipped his cloak over his head, and tumbled him into the rapids - but I was injured, and the same trick would not work on Rustiven....
"What are we?" I asked before I realized I was curious.
"You don't know?" He was caught completely off-guard. I shook my head. "We're chimerae: part human, part golem, part demon - he never told you?"
I shook my head again, folded my arms, and just stood for a moment, thinking and watching the water foam. Then I cast my mastery north and south along the gorge, searching ... the banks were nearly vacant, except for a pronounced signature to the south - a familiar one....
"This way," I directed, hurrying upstream past Zelgadis.
"What did you think you were?" he asked.
"I don't know. Unique," I shrugged.