Part 10 (1/2)
Dindrane was still shouting. ”Send to Pellam! He has an army on his doorstep!”
Tangled among sweat-soaked sheets, Alouzon Dragonmaster awoke to the ringing of the telephone.
The sound jarred her into action. Days of living on the run and in peril had irrevocably wedded the strange with the dangerous, and she reached automatically for the Dragonsword, came up empty-handed, grabbed her boot knife instead, and found herself in the novel position of holding a razor-keen blade to a set of touch-tone b.u.t.tons.
The phone, unruffled, continued to ring. Dry-mouthed, shaking with abruptly broken sleep, she picked up the handset. ”h.e.l.lo?”
”Suzanne?” Brian O'Hara.
She swallowed. She wanted to say yes. She felt that she must say yes or go instantly mad. But Suzanne was gone. Dead and gone. She was Alouzon now. Forever. ”No.”
”Who the h.e.l.l is this?” demanded Brian.
”I'm . . .” Who, indeed, was she? Suzanne's alter-ego? A G.o.ddess? ”I'm Alouzon.” She kept herself from adding Dragonmaster only with conscious effort.
Brian was in one of his moods. ”What kind of a name is that?”
She clenched her jaw. Brian's comment seemed excruciatingly rude after the exacting courtesy of Gryylth and Vaylle. ''Call me Allison.''
Allison. The name had come out before she had considered it. She felt suddenly warm in spite of the air conditioning.
”Are you her roommate?”
Well, she considered, she and Suzanne had slept in the same bed. She supposed that counted for something. ”Kinda.”
”Well look, Allie ...”
Alouzon winced. Kyria's use of the diminutive had been bad enough.
”... I need to talk to Suzanne . . .”
And, indeed, what about Kyria? Alive? Dead? Helen's body had been on one of those gurneys.
”. . . about some tests she's got . . .”
And all her friends. What about them?
”... you know, you can't just go running out on a teaching job. You have to be responsible about it.”
She nearly laughed. Responsible? He did not know the meaning of the word. But she suddenly felt disoriented. What day was this? The dude in the Mercury had told her that it was Sat.u.r.day morning, but Brian did not usually pester on weekends.
Holding the phone to her ear while he continued to whine about Suzanne's sudden absence, she opened the Venetian blinds. The sunlight dazzled her for a moment, but when her eyes adjusted, she could see the San Diego Freeway grinding through morning rush hour.
How long did I sleep? Long enough, it appeared. The Grail had seen to that.
”Listen, Brian,” she said. ”What day is it?”
”Huh?”
She sighed with frustration, though she felt like screaming. She was probably sounding utterly deranged, and she knew without asking that she had slept through the weekend. ”Never mind. Suzanne's . . . uh . . .”
Odd. Her old name sounded as foreign on her tongue as Alouzon Dragonmaster had when she had first arrived in Gryylth.
”Uh . . .” She groped for a plausible story. ”Suzanne went out of town. Back to her ... uh ... folks.”
”Why the h.e.l.l did she do that?” said Brian. ”She's got a teaching job.”
Alouzon snorted. ”She told me she'd quit.”
Brian fell silent. ”I wasn't aware,” he said at last, ”that we'd reached any final decision about that.”
”Well, I think you'd probably better consider it final. '' Why the h.e.l.l am I talking with this simp when all h.e.l.l is breaking loose in Gryylth? ”She's gone.”
A long silence. Then: ”f.u.c.k. She left the university, too?”
”Probably.”
Another silence. Brian, Alouzon knew, was stewing. Fine. Let him stew. In his own way he had caused Suzanne as much grief as Solomon.
”Listen, Allie,” he said, ”could you do me a favor?”
Do I have anything better to do? ”Depends.”
Brian did not hear the qualifier. ”Suzi's got a bunch of papers and books that I gave her for research, and a bunch more that had to do with the cla.s.ses she was teaching. Can you get them together and bring them to my office?”
She looked around the bedroom. The glare from the sun turned it into a dusty study in white walls and graduate student neglect. She found that she missed very much the pallets and furs of Gryylth. ”Well...”
”I just can't figure out what got into her. She blew up at me and stomped out when I tried to give her some advice about her job. Now I've got to cover for her.”
Alouzon sighed. She was committed to Gryylth and the Grail completely now, but she had once been Suzanne, and the least she could do for her old, shattered, tangled life was to leave it neat and tidy, with all its pieces ordered and put away. G.o.ds knew, it had never been that way when she had lived it. ”Yeah,” she said at last. ”I'll bring them. Give me a few. You in your office? ”
”Kinsey Hall 288. You come out Bruin Walk past Powell Library and-”
”I know where it is, Brian. I'll be there.”
She hung up without further comment or explana- tion, and for a moment, she stood, her hand still on the phone, wis.h.i.+ng that she could call someone. Anyone. h.e.l.lo, Mom? Dad? This is . . . well, I mean, I used to be your daughter Suzanne. I've changed . . .
”Yeah, right. Sure.” She realized that she was still holding her knife, and Cvinthil's gold signet ring winked at her as she slid the weapon back into its sheath. For a moment she considered, then sat down on the bed and pulled off her boots and rubbed her feet. The trek across Vaylle and up the Cordillera had been hard and long, and though most of her thoughts were still pent up in a frustrated turmoil about the fate of her friends and her world, a small part of her was grateful to the agency-draconic or divine-that had brought her to Los Angeles, put her to bed, and given her a chance to clean up and think about what she was going to do next.
It was an enforced leisure, but it had its advantages. Her last weeks in Gryylth and Vaylle had been spent at a dead run, with no chance for planning or deliberation save over the immediate future. Now she had been given a chance to ponder the depth of what was being asked of her: no longer only a Guardian, she was to be a G.o.ddess.
She pa.s.sed a hand over her face. ”Haven't got much choice, do I?”
Rising, she stripped off her soiled tunic and padded into the bathroom, rubbing sleep and dirt from her eyes. Her wounds, characteristically, had healed quickly, and now a shower and clean clothes sounded very good. But when she switched on the light, the sight of the utter stranger in the mirror-naked and brown and uncompromisingly real amid the prosaic familiarity of tile, sink, and toilet-made her cry out involuntarily.
Suzanne h.e.l.ling had been rather average: a plump, round-faced earth mother who wore her dark hair straight and parted down the middle. Alouzon's body was muscled like that of an athlete, and her bronze mane, dirty though it was, hung in thick ringlets and framed features that would not have been out of place on a fas.h.i.+on model save that they were stronger, more serious, the brown eyes flas.h.i.+ng and intent.
The face and body of a G.o.ddess.
She hung her head. Real. Too real. Like the sword waiting for her in the living room. Like the white-shrouded bodies on the gurneys. ”You're not gonna let me forget, are you?”