by Jim Butcher
And the shadowy shape within the mound abruptly shuddered. And moved. A slow unwinding of limbs, languid, liquid, as though from a sleeper that had, after an endless passing of seasons, finally awakened. It moved, and Tavi felt its movement, felt a vast, bewildering awareness that swept over him like the gaze of some ancient and horrible beast.
Terror flooded over Tavi, raw and hot rather than cold, terror that set his limbs on fire and burned any thought from his mind, save one: escape.
Tavi spun on his heel and, heedless of the danger in revealing himself, broke into a panicked sprint.
He would remember little of his run, later. One or two chirruping whistles, perhaps, echoed through the trees after him, but they were sparse, and he left them behind him, his steps light on the surface of the croach, terror lending him more speed than he would have credited to himself before that night.
He flicked one glance over his shoulder as he ran and saw something through the glowing trees, at the base of the monolith, the opening he’d fled through. He saw something tall, glistening —alien. It stood just within the central tree, just behind the doorway. Tavi could not quite see it, but he could feel it in a way both horribly intimate and beyond simple description.
The lower-pitched whistle that went out through the trees felt, to Tavi, like some sort of hideous, mocking laughter.
Tavi fled and did not look back again.
He ran over the croach until his legs were burning and his limbs felt as though they would be ripped apart by the demands he placed on them. He almost didn’t see the strip of blanket that he had torn off and tied to a low tree branch before he left to mark his way back. He headed for it, and from that flag spotted the next, and the next, laying out his escape route back to the ropes at the base of the cliff.
“Aleran!” came a voice from before him. Kitai dropped from a tree branch ahead of him. “Do you have it?”
“Got two!” Tavi yelped. “Couldn’t get any more!”
Kitai extended her hand, and Tavi shoved one of the mushrooms into it. “Run! Go, go go!”
Kitai nodded once, then stooped to the ground. Tavi hesitated behind the girl, dancing in place as he looked back over his shoulder. “Hurry,” he panted. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
Kitai drew out the firestones smoothly, her expression cool, and struck them together. Sparks fell from the stones onto the oil-soaked blanket that lay on the croach before them. Kitai watched the flames leap up, then moved quickly, reaching up to grab the end of the fishing line that Tavi had soaked in the icy water before he left. She jerked the line toward her, hand over hand. The other end of the line looped up over one of the higher branches of the tree, up where living leaves grew above the grasp of the croach, and then fell back down to where it was tied at one corner of the oil-soaked blanket. Kitai hauled the line in, and the blazing blanket rose up into the tree’s branches and snagged among the living leaves.
Fire leapt up from the tree in a blaze, sudden and high, and once again, from the direction of the central spire, whistling shrieks rose up in a solid wall of terrifying sound—one underlaid, this time, by that deeper whistle, one that overrode the shrieks and continued over the silence.
Kitai stared at Tavi, her eyes suddenly wide. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Tavi said. “But, uh. I think, uh. I think I woke it up.”
They looked at one another once more and, in silent accord, turned together and fled toward the ropes a few yards away, toward the safety at the top of the cliffs. To either side of him, Tavi saw the Keepers flooding toward the fire through the trees, closing on them in a carpet of glowing eyes and knobby limbs and leathery shells.
Tavi had reached the ropes and Kitai was only a few paces behind when something dropped down from one of the croach-shrouded trees above them, something tall and slender and horribly fast. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a Keeper, because it reached out with one long limb and wrapped hard-looking, chitinous fingers around Kitai’s ankle, hauling her to the ground. The girl let out a scream of sudden terror and twisted in that grip.
Tavi only saw what happened in bits and pieces. He remembered turning to see something that he thought was like some kind of hideous wasp, semitransparent wings fluttering in the glowing light of the croach. It bent over Kitai, weirdly humped shoulders flexing as its head whipped down, as mandibles sank into her thigh. Kitai let out a horrible scream and struck down at the thing’s head with her fists, once, twice. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and her body started jerking and twisting in helpless spasm, limbs flailing. She kept trying to scream, but the sound came out broken, irregular.
The wasp-thing, covered in the glowing slime of the croach, lifted its head and let out a signal-whistle that echoed around the chasm like the tones of some vast bell. It shook blood from its mandibles, and Tavi caught a flash of multifaceted eyes, of some kind of yellowish fluid at the edges of Kitai’s wounds.
“Valleyboy!” shouted a distant voice. Tavi looked up to see Doroga, one hand on the rope, leaning far out over the cliff, and even from so far below, Tavi could see that his face was anguished. “Aleran! You cannot save her! Come up!”
Tavi looked back and forth between Doroga and the Marat girl on the ground, the horrible thing crouched over her twitching body. Terror rose through him, a horrible taste in his mouth, and he couldn’t see, couldn’t seem to focus his eyes. One hand tightened on the rope in helpless frustration.
Kitai had saved his life.
She had trusted his plan to get them both out of the chasm alive.
He was the only one who could help her.
Tavi let go of the rope.
He turned and ran, not toward the thing crouched over Kitai, but past it, around several glowing trees and to the one they had set on fire. Keepers crowded in all around him. He could hear them coming through the forest toward him, shrieks and whistles resounding.
Tavi leapt up to the lowest branches of the tree, hauling himself into them and started scrambling toward the top, toward the fire. Halfway there, he hauled himself up and found himself face-to-face with a Keeper, which reared back from him in surprise, its mandibles clacking against its shell.
Tavi didn’t have time to think. His hand flashed to where he’d put Fade’s wickedly curved knife at his belt. He slashed it at the creature’s eyes. It scuttled back from him. Tavi followed it, wriggling forward, thrusting the knife at the thing’s face.
The Keeper let out a shriek and fell backward, out of the tree, its limbs flailing. It hit the ground twenty feet below with a crunch and a wet-sounding splat, and Tavi looked down to see it writhing on its back, legs flailing, its broken body trailing glowing fluids out onto the forest floor.
Tavi heard more Keepers coming. He hauled himself up higher into the tree, until he reached a branch bare of the croach, slender and unable to support his weight. Farther out along the branch hung the burning blanket. Fire spread along it, toward the trunk of the tree.
Tavi hacked at the branch with the knife, the steel biting into the soft wood. Then he gripped the knife in his teeth and hauled at the branch with both hands.
It swayed and then broke, peeling away from the tree. Tavi scrambled down, trailing the long branch with its flaming leaves, the oil-soaked blanket, and when he had reached the forest floor, he ran toward Kitai.
The thing crouched over her saw him coming and turned toward him with a hiss, its mandibles spreading wide, along with its chitinous arms. Though its eyes glittered and reflected the light of the fire from a thousand facets, it had a horribly slime-covered, unfinished look to it, as though it hadn’t finished becoming whatever it was to be. Half-born, half-alive, the huge wasp-thing rattled its wings in a furious buzzing sound and whistled to the Keepers around them.
Tavi screamed and swung the branch in a broad, clumsy arc, fire trailing.
The thing hissed and drew back from the flames, jerking its wings back sharply.
Tavi seized on the advantage, shoving forward with the
branch and driving the hissing monstrosity back from Kitai’s still form. The girl lay, pale and silent, her eyes open but unmoving, her chest heaving in labored breaths. Tavi slipped an arm beneath her and, in a rush of terror, hauled her up onto his shoulder. He staggered beneath her weight, but grasped the branch and spun about, wildly swinging the blazing wood and leaves and blanket about him.
The creature leapt lightly away from him, landing on the wall several yards down from the ropes, horrible eyes focused intently on him.
Oh crows, Tavi thought. It knows. It knows I’m going for the ropes.
If he didn’t move, he was finished. Even if the creature didn’t leap on him, he would shortly be drowning in Keepers. Even his terrified strength was beginning to fade, his body to burn under all the effort. He had to get Kitai to the ropes, at least. He could tie her foot and Doroga could haul her up.
Doroga. Tavi looked up to the top of the cliff and saw Doroga’s pale form there, staring down at them. Then the Gargant headman shouted, “Courage, valleyboy!” and vanished back over the lip of the cliff.
There was still a chance. Shoving the branch in front of him along the ground, he rushed toward the creature, which scuttled nimbly up the wall, a crablike sideways motion. Tavi looked above it, to an outcropping of rock. No good. He had to get it to move toward him, toward the ropes.
Tavi ground his teeth in frustration on the blade of the knife. “Oh furies, Kitai. I hope this works.” Gracelessly, he dumped the girl onto the ground, then leapt toward and grabbed the nearest rope and started climbing.
The creature let out a whistle and scuttled toward him. He knew that he did not have a chance of escaping it, or of fighting it, there on the ropes, but he took the knife from his teeth and swiped it at the thing.
It paused, hesitating just out of his reach. Its horrible head tilted, as though assessing this new threat.
“Doroga!” Tavi screamed. “There it is, there it is!”
From above came a slow and tortured scream, bellowing in Doroga’s basso, filled with anger and defiance.
Tavi would never have believed that a man could lift a boulder that large. But Doroga appeared at the top of the cliff again, bearing a stone the size of a coffin over his head, arms and shoulders and thighs bulging with effort. He flexed the whole of his body, a ponderous motion, and the huge stone hurtled down toward the creature.
Its head abruptly whirled on its neck, whipping around to face directly behind it. The creature moved, its wings buzzing, but it was not fast enough to wholly escape the plummeting stone. It flashed by Tavi, missing him by the breadth of a few fingers. The creature leapt away from the wall, but the stone crushed against it, sending it spinning out of the air to land on the ground many yards away. The stone itself hit the ground and shattered, chips of rock flying, glowing slime from within the croach hurled into the air as from a fountain.
Hot pain flashed along Tavi’s leg, and he looked down to see his trousers cut by a flying piece of stone, blood on his leg. From above came Doroga’s defiant howl of triumph, a bellowing roar that shook the walls of the chasm.
The creature let out another whistle, this one higher, filled with fury and, Tavi thought, with sudden fear. It staggered but could not rise and instead began dragging itself back into the trees, as the glowing eyes of dozens of Keepers began to appear behind it.
Tavi dropped the knife, slid down the rope, and ran to Kitai. He seized her and began dragging her back toward the ropes, grunting with effort but moving quickly, jerking her over the ground.
“Aleran,” she whispered, opening her eyes. Her expression was pained, weary. “Aleran. Too late. Venom. My father. Tell him I was sorry.”
Tavi stared down at her. “No,” he whispered. “Kitai, no. We’re almost out.”
“It was a good plan,” she said.
Her head lolled to one side, eyes rolling back.
“No,” Tavi hissed, suddenly furious. “No, crows take you! You can’t!” He reached into his pouch, fumbling through it as tears started to blur his vision. There must be something. She couldn’t just die. She couldn’t. They were so close.
Something stuck sharply into his finger, and pain flashed through him again. The crows-eaten mushroom had jabbed him with its spines. The Blessing of Night.
Fever. Poison. Injury. Pain. Even age. It has power over them all. To our people, there is nothing of greater value.
Weeping, Tavi seized the mushroom and started tearing off the spines with his fingers, heedless of the pain. Shrieks rose all around him, came closer, though the still-blazing branch seemed to have confused some of the Keepers, to have temporarily slowed their advance.
Tavi reached down and slipped an arm beneath Kitai’s head, half hauling her up. He reached down to the wound over her thigh and crushed the mushroom in his hand.
Musty-scented, clear fluid leaked out from between his fingers and dribbled over the wound, mixing with blood and yellowish venom. Kitai’s leg twitched as the fluid touched it, and the girl drew in a sudden breath.
Tavi lifted the rest of the mushroom to her lips and pressed it into her mouth. “Eat it,” he urged her. “Eat it, you have to eat it.”
Kitai’s mouth twitched once, and then began to chew, automatically. She swallowed the mushroom and blinked her eyes slowly open, focusing them on Tavi.
Time stopped.
Tavi found himself staring down at the girl, suddenly aware of her, entirely aware of her in a way he never had been aware of anyone before. He could feel the texture of her skin beneath his hand and felt the abrupt compulsion to lay his fingers over her chest, to feel the beat of her heart beneath it, slowly gaining in strength. He could feel the surge of blood in her veins, the fear and regret and confusion that filled her thoughts. Those cleared as her eyes focused on him, widened, and Tavi realized that she had felt his own presence in the same way.
Not moving her eyes from his, Kitai reached out a hand and touched his chest in response, fingers pressed close to feel the beating of his heart.
It took Tavi a frozen, endless moment to separate the beating of his own heart, the rush of blood in his own ears, from hers. They beat together, perfectly in time. Even as he realized it, his own heartbeat began to speed, and so did hers, bringing a flush of heat to his face, one answered in her own expression. He stared at the wonder in her eyes and saw that it could only be a reflection of that in his own.
The scent of her, fresh and wild, curled up around him, through him like something alive. The shape of her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. In that single moment, he saw in her the promise of the beauty that would come in time, the strength that had still to grow, the courage and reckless resourcefulness that matched his own and flamed wild and true in her.
The intensity of it made his eyes blur, and he blinked them, tried to clear the tears from them, only to realize that Kitai was blinking as well, her eyes filling with tears, going liquid and blurry.
When Tavi had blinked the tears away, his eyes returned to hers—only to find not opalescent swirls of subtle, shifting color, but wide pools of deep, emerald green.
Eyes as green as his own.
“Oh no,” Kitai whispered, her voice stunned, weak. “Oh no.” She opened her mouth, started to sit up—then shuddered once and slumped in his arms, abruptly overwhelmed with exhaustion.
The frozen moment ended.
Tavi lifted his dazed head to see the first of the Keepers edging past the blazing blanket and branch. Tavi hauled himself to his feet, lifting Kitai, and stumbled toward the ropes. He stepped into the loop at the base of one, then reached over to the other, and wrapped it around his waist, around her legs, tying her to him. Even before he was finished, Doroga had started hauling the rope up the face of the cliff. The other rope came in as well, where Hashat must have been pulling it along to keep it tight.
Tavi held on to the rope, and to Kitai, not really sure which one he held tighter. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed, and did not open them again until he and Kitai sat
at the top of the cliff, in the cold, fresh, clean snow. When he opened his eyes again, he sat with his back against a stone and idly noted the fresh earth beside him, where Doroga had uprooted the boulder and hurled it down.
A moment later, he realized that Kitai lay against his side, beneath one of his arms, warm and limp, half-conscious. He tightened his arm on her, gently, confused — but certain that he wanted her to sleep, to rest, and to be right where she was.
Tavi looked up and found Hashat staring down at them, wide-eyed, her expression bewildered and then, by slow degrees, becoming indignant. She turned to Doroga and demanded, “What are you going to do about this?”
The headman, veins still standing out on his arms and thighs, tipped his head back and poured out a rich and rolling laugh. “You know as well as I, Hashat. It’s done.”
The Horse headman scowled and folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she said. “This is unacceptable.”
“This is,” Doroga rumbled. “Other matters are before us now.”
Hashat flipped her mane out of her eyes with a toss of her head. “I don’t like it,” she said, her tone resigned. “This was a trick. You tricked me.”
Doroga’s eyes glittered, and a smile lurked at his lips, but he said in a stern tone, “Keep your mind on why we are here, Hashat.”
“The trial,” the Marat woman said and turned back to Tavi. “Well, Aleran? Did you recover the Blessing?”
Tavi shivered and felt abruptly stupid. He had forgotten. In all the excitement and confusion, he had forgotten the trial. He had forgotten that he had used the mushroom he’d needed to win on Kitai. And though he may have saved the girl’s life, he had lost the trial. His own life was forfeit. And the Marat, united, would ride against the people of his home.
“I . . .” Tavi said. He reached toward his pouch—and felt warm fingers inside.
Tavi looked down and saw Kitai drawing her hand back out of his pouch. Her eyes blinked open once, toward his, and he felt more than saw the silent gratitude in them, the respect for his courage.