"Venom," Ronan whispered. He spat on her fingers and rubbed furiously.
She jerked her hand back. "It's worse if it breaks through the skin." Her voice sounded so calm. As if she were treating a stranger on a battlefield. "I need to wash it off."
"There's water at camp."
"I brought a healing bag, too. There might be something there."
This isn't calm. It's shock.
She looked again at Beatrix's maimed body, and it was like a smack, snapping her out of her stupor. She broke into a run heading for camp, Tova leaping in front to lead her down a clear path.
I'm all right, she thought as she ran. My fingers sting, but that's it.
Was that calm reason talking? Or shock? Either way, it kept the panic away. Whatever poison affected Beatrix had been horrific, but it seemed to have happened quickly. It must have, if she hadn't had time to scream.
Because it burned her throat. She couldn't scream. That doesn't mean she didn't--
No, Ashyn had barely touched the poison and had wiped it right off. She'd be fine.
"You'll be fine," Ronan said as he and Wenda caught up. "We'll fix it. You'll be fine."
She stifled a laugh as his words echoed her thoughts. Yes, it's probably shock, but it's keeping me calm, so I'll take it. Just keep moving. Don't let it dull my senses and--
A curse rang through the night, so sudden and loud that it seemed to be right beside them. Ronan spun, blade raised with one hand as he tugged Wenda back. He swung between them and the noise, with Tova at his side.
Ashyn pulled Wenda against her. The girl seemed to be in shock, too, uttering not a word, shaking under Ashyn's hand. Ashyn rubbed her shoulder, trying to comfort her.
Ashyn gripped her blade and looked around. She thought she detected a scuffling sound, so distant it was only a whisper.
Then another wordless shout, and this time, there was no question of where it came from. That's when Wenda spoke, so loudly that her whole body jerked under Ashyn's hand, as if she'd just woken from sleep.
"Gregor!" Wenda cried. "At the camp!"
They ran. Ronan scooped up Wenda and swung her onto his back. It wasn't easy--the girl wasn't a toddling child--but it was faster than dragging her along with them.
Gregor shouted a challenge at some unseen attacker. Then they could see him on his feet, waving his sword at the air.
"I heard you!" he shouted. "Show yourselves, cowards! Do not slink in shadows!"
He whirled as if he'd heard something.
"Where have you taken them, cowards? If you've harmed the Seeker, you will be cursed. Do you understand that? Cursed."
"We're here!" Ashyn called. "We're--"
Something reared up a few paces from Gregor--like a snake lifting its head, but too big by far. It must be a man, crawling on the ground, starting to rise.
Gregor saw it and let out a shout. He staggered back, his sword held awkwardly, as if it were a shield. Then he screamed. A terrible scream, like Levi's in the forest, that high-pitched shriek of agony that seemed as if it should not come from a human throat.
Ronan dropped Wenda from his back and ran. Tova stayed with Ashyn as she raced toward the camp, clutching the girl against her.
Gregor dropped to his knees, his sword clanking against the rock as it fell from his grip. His hands shielded his face, and he kept screaming that terrible scream. Then he began to gurgle, his body shaking. That thing--whatever it was--stayed in front of him, reared up.
Ronan skidded to a halt about ten paces away. He let out a curse, a blasphemous commentary on the goddess's anatomy that, at any other time, would have had Ashyn slamming her hands over Wenda's ears. But she just kept running as fast as she could, while holding the girl against her.
Then she saw the creature, and she stopped, too. She may also have cursed.
It was not a snake. It was a worm. A long, reddish, segmented cylinder of a creature, at least as long as a man and just as wide. She could see no features--no eyes, no earholes, nothing. It was reared up, pointing one end at Gregor. Then that end sprang open in a giant circle of teeth, and it spat a stream of liquid.
Acid. It spat acid.
"That--that's a death worm," Wenda whispered, her thin body quaking. "From the story Moria told after the earth moved."
Moria said that each time they felt the spirits of the earth shift, blaming "death worms" for the amusement and horror of the children. Now Ashyn stood there, watching a worm the size of a man spitting acid at Gregor. Killing Gregor. Right before their eyes.
I'm asleep, she thought. Or I've gone mad. Moria's tales have come to life, and that is not possible, which means I've gone mad.
Or the world has gone mad, and we're simply trapped within it.
She looked at Ronan. He stood there frozen, blade raised. Gregor was on the ground now, writhing in agony, his screams garbled as the acid ate away his throat.
Ashyn turned Wenda away. Then she ran forward, dagger raised. Behind her, Ronan shouted. He lunged at her. Yelled for her to stop. She kept going, covering the distance between her and the worm--
It turned with lightning speed, twisting its body. She saw that terrible mouth open, the teeth flicking out like blades. A stream of acid shot straight for her face. Then the ground disappeared under her feet as Ronan whipped her back. She heard the patter of the acid hitting her shoulder. Heard the sizzle as it burned through her cloak. Heard Wenda scream, and twisted to see the worm seeming to fly at them across the rocks, so fast it was a red blur--
Ronan threw her aside. She hit the rock and scrambled up just in time to see his blade flash. The worm reared, spitting. Wenda screamed. The blade sliced through the worm, and its head fell, cleaved clean off.
Twenty-eight
Ashyn was on her feet and running to Ronan. He shoved his sword bladefirst into the sand, and was fumbling to get out of his tunic. Holes dotted the thin fabric. As she helped him out of it, she saw the acid had passed through, a line of it across his chest, holes searing to the skin.
She fetched water, and splashed it on his wounds. As she did, she heard a little voice in her head telling her to be more careful, not to waste it; this was all they had. But she didn't care. She'd use the whole waterskin if she needed to. Finally, it was Ronan who stopped her, fingers clasping her arm as he said, "That's enough," through teeth gritted against the pain.
She looked at the wounds, raw and ugly, a line of spots across his chest where the skin had burned away.
"I need to bind them," she said. "Keep them dry and clean. I have an extra tunic--"
"Later," he said. "You need to tend to your own wounds."
She shook her head. "They're only minor burns."
"Then we have to get out of here, in case that wasn't the only one."
He looked at the worm, and she was sure he shuddered. Then they heard a faint gurgling sound. They looked over together.
"Gregor," Ashyn whispered. "He's still alive; I need to tend to--"
Ronan caught her by the wrists. "Take the child. Start walking. Stay off the sand."
"But I need--"
"You can't," he said, lowering his voice. "You know you can't."
She looked at Gregor's mutilated hands. Listened to his gurgles as he tried to scream through his ruined throat. She thought of Beatrix. Of her face beneath her hands.
"Take the child. Now, Ashyn."
He pushed her toward Wenda, and she was about to refuse when she saw the girl staring at Gregor, her thin chest heaving.
She's watching a man die horribly. And I'm letting her.
Ashyn scooped Wenda up and held the girl's face against her shoulder as she hurried away. Tova followed. She could still hear Gregor's agonized gurgling. And then, she couldn't.
Ashyn looked back to see Ronan standing above Gregor's still body. He stepped aside and plunged his blade into the sand to clean it.
He killed Gregor.
No, he ended Gregor's suffering. Would you have him leave the man to die a slow, t
ortured "natural" death?
Ronan looked over. He saw her watching. He hesitated. Then he motioned that he'd gather their belongings when a shape reared up behind him.
"Ronan!" she shouted.
He turned sharply. Too sharply, slipping in the sand, one foot shooting out. She dropped Wenda and raced toward him. Ronan was on one knee, frozen in place. The worm was poised in front of him, swaying back and forth, as if it somehow couldn't see him.
She heard her sister's voice, telling her tale to the children.
"Death worms have no eyes. They spend so long in the dark that they have little need of them. Instead, they sense the vibrations of the earth and the currents in the air. So, if you ever meet a death worm--"
"Don't move!" Ashyn shouted. "It can't see you if you don't move."
She raised her dagger as the distance between them closed. She'd stab it behind the head so it couldn't whip around and spray her. Use a downward stroke, driving its head down, so it wouldn't spray Ronan.
Yes, see? I can do this. I just need to think it through--
The worm whipped in her direction.
Think it through . . . and forget the fact that I'm thundering toward a creature that can feel me coming.
The worm shot straight at her. She threw the dagger--a move that would have been so much smarter if she'd accepted any of those dagger-throwing lessons Moria had tried to foist on her.
The dagger sailed harmlessly off to the side as the worm sailed toward her. She froze then. Went completely still and sent up a prayer to the spirits--
The worm seemed to rear up suddenly. Then its head flew, hewed from its body, with Ronan standing behind it, still swinging his blade.
Ashyn watched as the two pieces of the worm twitched on the sand. When they went still, she took a deep shuddering breath as Ronan cleaned his blade.
"We need to go," she said. "Quickly. Before another comes."
"That was the same one," he said, gesturing at the worm.
"What? No. You killed . . ."
She moved forward, being careful not to step in whatever was seeping from the worm's torso. That torso had both ends cut clean.
She heard Moria whisper, "Beware if you chop off a death worm's head. It has another in its tail, teeth and all, and it'll come back. And then you'll have an even bigger problem, because the part you chopped off? It will--"
Across the campsite, she could see the first head segment twitching. Regenerating.
She pointed. "It's coming back. This one will, too. We need to--"
"Take the girl. Start moving."
"You can't kill--"
"I'm not going to try," he said. "Now move."
There was even less time for Ashyn to perform a ritual for the dead now. She had to do it as they ran, moving as fast as they could while staying far from the sand. Ashyn suspected death worms could not truly gnaw through rock, as her sister claimed. By this point, though, she wasn't taking any chances.
First shadow stalkers. Then death worms. Both had featured prominently in her sister's stories, along with snow dragons and thunder hawks and fiend dogs--
Perhaps it's best not to recite the entire list. While she was quite certain she could not conjure the beasts merely by imagining them, she was not going to tempt fate.
Finally, around midmorning, they had to stop. Wenda's legs had given out long ago, and neither Ashyn nor Ronan could carry the child another step. They rested past midday, then started off again.
They said little as they walked. Ashyn wanted to talk to Ronan about the death worms, but she didn't dare in front of Wenda, for fear of frightening her all the more.
Beatrix and Gregor were dead. They were truly the only survivors of Edgewood.
No, she reminded herself each time the thought surfaced. The children were alive. And Moria.
They ran out of water before nightfall. They'd tried to drink sparingly, but the sun beat down on the lava plains. So they'd drunk what they needed, and soon it was gone. After they made camp, Ronan set out in search of water, but Ashyn knew there was little chance he'd find it. They'd been scouring the horizon all day for any sign of greenery.
When Ronan returned with nothing, they decided to sleep and make an early start of it. Ronan thought they were only a day or two from Fairview. They'd try to travel in the morning and evening, resting under the midday sun.
She stayed with Wenda until the girl fell asleep. She'd spent the day reassuring and calming the child. Once Wenda slept, Ashyn went over to where Ronan sat guard atop a boulder.
"You'll wake me so I can take a turn?" she said as Ronan patted Tova's head. "When the moon reaches its zenith?"
He nodded unconvincingly.
"You must," she said. "We need you to be rested. In case anything else happens. I'm not . . ." She looked down at the dagger, held awkwardly at her side. "I didn't follow my lessons the way Moria did. As I'm sure you could tell."
"You did fine."
He said it easily, empty reassurance. She hadn't done fine. She knew that.
"Perhaps you could teach me," she said.
"Not tonight. We shouldn't expend the energy."
Her cheeks heated. "I didn't mean tonight. Just . . . sometime."
Another absent nod.
"I wanted to thank you," she said. "For saving me. Again."
He shrugged, his gaze surveying the empty plain. "You saved me, too."
It wasn't the same. She'd simply alerted him to danger.
He continued looking about the plain. Ending the conversation. He was tired, and she was distracting him from guard duty with meaningless chatter.
She started walking away.
"You seemed to know what that thing was," he said without turning, as if he hadn't noticed her leaving.
"A death worm," she said.
He glanced at her, his expression blank.
"Like in the old tales?" she said.
He eased over, as if making room for her. When she took a cautious step closer, he shifted more.
"Not many bards in my life," he said. "Or time for tales."
"Moria's the expert. Shadow stalkers, death worms, corpse dragons, fiend dogs, thunder hawks . . ." She lowered herself beside him. "She loves monster stories and grisly stories, and she tells them to the village children. She says she does it to get rid of them, but she knows they love it, and they love her for it. They follow her around hoping for more."
"I wager they do," Ronan said, as if he, too, would follow Moria for a story. "So she's the one who told you about these . . . death worms? That's what they're called?"
Ashyn told him what she knew, then said, "I've never heard any other story mention the part about chewing through rock. I suspect that's one of Moria's embellishments. It doesn't make nearly as good a tale if the monster can't actually get you where you live."
He chuckled, then sobered. "The Wastes are lava. The rock doesn't go down forever. They must be living under it, and they come up in the sand if they hear someone."
Ashyn shook her head. "Death worms aren't real."
"That one looked real to me. Felt real, too." He touched his chest and winced.
"I mean they aren't supposed to be real. Just like shadow stalkers. Something or someone has brought them to life."
Ronan frowned. "How?"
"Sorcery."
The corners of his mouth twitched. "Ah. Of course."
"Are you laughing at me?"
"That depends. Are you serious?"
She started to stand up, but he caught her arm.
"I didn't mean to mock you, Ashyn. It's just . . . sorcery? I suppose in a place like Edgewood they still believe in that sort of thing. Old superstitions."
She glowered at him. "And how would you explain it?"
"Do we know for certain that these creatures don't exist? Perhaps it's just that no one--"
"If you say that no one who sees them ever lives to tell the tale, I'll scream. That's what my sister always says."
He laughed. "
I'll not say she's right, but think of it this way: What if there were things like death worms in past ages? That would explain the tales. Since then, most of the creatures have died, but there are still a few, in far-flung places like the Wastes. So few that they're rarely spotted, and when they are, some might live to tell the tale, but who would believe them? Such creatures aren't supposed to exist."
"And the shadow stalkers?"
"Spirits are real. Everyone knows that. Shadow stalkers are a twisted form of them. The Forest of the Dead is an unnatural place. It's filled with the spirits of the damned, however hard the Seeker works to put those spirits at rest. Does it not make sense, then, that that bad spiritual energy could warp itself into shadow stalkers, waiting for the right opportunity?"
"Waiting for me," she whispered. "A weak Seeker. One who can't hold them back."
"I meant the blood moon. I saw it, even if you didn't."
"But it's true that I'm a weak Seeker. In past springs, the court Seeker came. She's powerful. I'm not. I wasn't ready. I tried, but--"
"This wasn't your fault."
She said nothing, but sat there, her stomach twisting. Tova rose from his spot behind her and nudged her face.
"Tova's agreeing with me," Ronan said. "You're too hard on yourself."
She said nothing.
"Ashyn . . ."
"I don't think I caused it. I just think I ought to have been able to stop it. I ought to have been stronger. Moria . . ."
"Your sister couldn't stop it either."
"But she tried. She came for me, and she got us out. She fought every threat."
Even our father. I fear I'd have stood there and let that thing kill me.
He moved closer. "You don't need to be like your sister. You didn't break down when faced with death worms. You remembered what they were and how to deal with them. You tended my wounds. Don't forget, you found Beatrix."
"I tripped over Beatrix's dead body."
His lips twitched. "Ah, yes. Sorry. But you still found her."
She gave him a look, and he laughed softly, then he leaned closer until she could see the sparkle of his eyes in the darkness, feel the warmth of his breath on her cold skin, and then he was right there, his face in front of hers.
"You did fine," he said.
She nodded, scarcely able to draw breath as she waited, her gaze locked with his. He leaned closer. His lips parted.
"Now go to bed," he whispered. "You need your rest."
He backed away, giving Tova a pat, and then shooing them both off.
"I'll call you for a shift later," he said. "Get some sleep."
Sea of Shadows Page 14