The Infinity Gate: Darkglass Mountain: Book Three - By Sara Douglass Page 0,80

that you will live.”

“Then do it,” she said. “Do it.”

Axis watched, appalled.

Isaiah sat behind Inardle, his legs sprawled to either side of her. His hands rested as they had initially and again they pressed into Inardle’s flesh, but deeper this time, the expression on Isaiah’s face one of intense concentration.

It caused Inardle to cry out immediately, twisting under Isaiah’s hands, but his grip was so tight, so profound, nothing she did could free her of him.

Axis stayed where he was, only moving to give a calming sign to the soldiers and shepherds, who had risen, concerned, at Inardle’s first loud cry.

He knew better than to interfere.

Isaiah kept his hands pressed against Inardle’s neck and chest for several long minutes, then he moved them, running them all over her body. His hands and fingers pressed deep into her flesh wherever they travelled; occasionally they paused so that he could sink the heels of his hands in as deeply as possible, as if he were collecting great pools of poison beneath them.

Then, very gradually, he began shifting the poison up Inardle’s body, from her toes into her torso and toward her shoulders.

All the time Inardle wept and twisted. Axis understood it was not the pressure of Isaiah’s hands that caused her so much pain: partly, it was the poison Isaiah shifted through her body, and partly the deep intrusion into Inardle’s body of Isaiah’s power. Axis thought that he must have endured only a fraction of the discomfort that Inardle must be feeling.

He was shifting water. He was using the water within Inardle to flow the poison back toward the puncture wounds.

Axis was not sure at what point he realised this, but somehow he did. Isaiah was using his own deep affinity with water to manipulate this mysterious water element within Inardle’s body, to remove the poison from her system.

Isaiah’s hands travelled faster now, from toes to hips, from hips to belly, from belly to breasts and thence to shoulders; and from her fingers all the way up her arms, over the elbows, to shoulders again.

There Axis saw blackness pouring forth from the wounds, more of it than he would have thought, a vile flood of poisonous substances that actually steamed in the cool night air.

It stank, too, and Axis had to swallow on several occasions in order to keep his bile down.

Praise the stars this poison had no effect on him.

As he watched, Axis began to feel guilty about his hard words earlier, insisting that Inardle could heal herself. He wished he hadn’t said them, although he reasoned he had actually been entitled to speak them.

Inardle had, after all, very effectively tricked him with her previous, healable, wounds.

Damn it. He wanted to continue to be angry with her, but right at the moment he could feel only sympathy.

Isaiah sat back, finally done. Inardle lay before him, crying softly, arms outstretched, pools of vileness collecting under her shoulders.

“I’ll find some water,” Axis said quietly, “and some wash cloths.” Isaiah nodded at him, and gave him a small smile.

He looked very weary.

Later, when Inardle had been washed, and her wounds bound loosely to collect the last of the poison as it drained forth, Isaiah came to sit with Axis.

“She will be better when she wakes,” Isaiah said, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Inardle’s sleep. “Tired, exhausted even, for a few days. But she will recover. She will be able to close over her wounds herself when she wakes.”

“Good,” Axis said.

“Good?” Isaiah said, a glint of humour in his eyes.

Axis gave a small, indifferent shrug of his shoulders, and Isaiah repressed a wider smile.

“What is this strange ‘water’ you found within her?” Axis said. “What is its importance? And it came from her Skraeling blood?”

Isaiah took a long time to answer, and when he did it was no answer at all.

“I think maybe this Skraeling alliance is a good idea, after all,” he said. “We should meet with them, you and I and Inardle. But when we do, there shall be one slight change to your plan. I should be their Lord, not you.” He grinned. “Isaiah, Lord of the Skraelings. It has a nice ring to it, yes?”

Chapter 20

The Twisted Tower

“Maxel, Ishbel, I am glad to see you.” Josia beckoned them up to the fifth level of the Twisted Tower where he had managed to clear a space and find some chairs for them to sit on. “Ishbel, Maxel told you why I wanted to see you?”

“Yes,” Ishbel said,