Sarra started her second war of conquest in the early summer after the first planting. By now Bassa had organized an army from the men of our four villages, so Sarra didn’t seem to use any witchcraft as a preliminary. This war lasted much longer than the first, almost a month. It would have gone even longer if Bassa, that cocky fool, hadn’t got himself killed trying to face twenty men at one time, alone. Oh, he took them all with him, but they were using poison arrows and he was all by himself out on the plain, without food, friend, or water.
I got to carry his corpse back because I had the wagon. When I found him he was just a shriveled shell of his former self.
“Dehydrated,” I thought.
It was curious, though, that as I lifted him into the wagon I thought I heard a voice, much like I’d heard years before at Devil’s Rock.
Well, Sarra was furious when I brought the body in. Then she switched from furious to delirious and back again until it was almost like there were two mourners in her. She turned the body on one side. There was a curious mark on it, black, about half an inch across, shaped like a cat’s nose—sort of triangular but rounded at the corners. She hiked up her blouse and touched the mark with a similar mark on her own side. Then she broke down crying in what sounded almost like relief.
I tried to calm her and she settled down—quite rapidly, in fact. She looked me straight in the eye.
“You were a warrior once, Mikal, weren’t you?”
“A gladiator,” I answered guardedly. “Why?”
She came closer and put her arms around me. The effect was quite pleasing … even though she was my sister … even though … she gave me the kind of kiss that a woman gives to the man she thinks is the most wonderful man in the world. She finished it with a little involuntary sigh, put her hands on my chest, and her head on my shoulder.
“Our warriors need a leader if we’re to continue. If we stop now, there’ll be chaos and disarray. My enemies will take advantage of that and do me harm—” Then her voice changed suddenly in a strange, strange way. The best way I can describe it is that it stopped sounding human.
The new voice said, “I need your body.”
I jerked back. “Who’s that?” I said involuntarily.
“I am the spirit that lives in Sarra. My fellow spirit is held in Bassa’s body. Although he could not save Bassa, he has managed to save himself, but he is weakening rapidly and needs a new host immediately. He says you touched him when you were carrying Bassa and he found you were barely compatible—but much better than death, very much better than death.
“We want you to accept him, now.”
“Accept him?” I said.
“Take him into your body, as Sarra has taken me. It will be a cooperative arrangement. You will feed him, carry him about, and be his eyes and ears on the world. In return there is much he can do for you.”
“Do you really want me, with my game leg?”
There was no answer while Sarra’s face went through several changes of expression, like a spider was crawling around inside her mouth. Then her face stilled and the strange voice continued.
“Yes—and he can fix that leg of yours. But we have very little time, which is why I am interrupting Sarra’s seduction of you. I cannot keep control when she fights me … as she is doing now.”
Sarra’s face underwent another change and she let out a long scream. Her face was full of unnatural fury.
“EIEEH! I wanted to tell him!” she cried in her own voice. “I wanted to do it my way. You’ve spoiled everything!” Then her eyes crossed and she started babbling like she was having an internal argument with her spirit.
I’d had enough. There was no way I wanted a spirit in me, especially not one that did things like that to a person. It looked like an appropriate time to take my leave.
I started running out of the house as fast as my thoroughly scared legs could carry me. But for the second time in my life I wasn’t fast enough. Sarra and her spirit had stopped arguing. Moving quick as a cat, she caught me and covered my face with a noxious-smelling hood. As I struggled to remove it I blacked out.