by John Daulton
“Sah-vah ahn lan-sohm,” Djoveeve replied, pronouncing the elven words phonetically. “It means ‘Assassin of the Vale.’”
Pernie looked suddenly to the Royal Assassin standing there beside Seawind. Shadesbreath, the bodyguard of the Queen of Kurr. That was the only assassin she’d ever seen. The only one she’d ever heard about.
“You mean …,” she began, sorting it out and unable to help a certain flicker of giddiness, eagerness shaping itself from the possibilities. “You mean, I get to be like him?”
Djoveeve nodded. “If you are up to it. Which we will have to see.”
Pernie frowned down at her at that. “I can do anything I want to if I want,” she said. “Kettle told me so a thousand thousand times.”
“As I said, we shall see.”
Pernie was sure she saw Shadesbreath smile before he turned away.
Chapter 2
Pernie stood amongst twenty elves beneath a jungle canopy that spread high above her and seemed as if it must never end. A warm, sweet-smelling humidity hung heavily in the air, filled with the calls and cries of birds and creatures for which Pernie had no mental imagery. Of the elves, Seawind was the only one among them that she recognized. They were all male, not a single female in the lot, not even Djoveeve, who Pernie hadn’t seen in at least a day. With her absence came the absence of anything resembling a kind look or sympathetic eye. There were only stern stares and a smattering of derisive smirks.
“So, young Sava,” Seawind began, striding toward her as he spoke. “Today is your first hunt. Today we will see what you are made of.”
Pernie looked to the slender black-shafted spear he carried, then glanced around at the rest of the group as well. Each elf held a spear just like the one Seawind had.
“Where’s mine?” she asked, reaching out for his somewhat hopefully.
He pulled it out of reach, shaking his head as he spoke. “You’ve got no need for one of these just yet, Sava. It will be enough if you can keep up with the rest of the hunt.”
Pernie glowered at him and looked back at the gathered elves again. One of them, a bit leaner of frame and smoother of skin than the rest, leaned forward and regarded her dubiously. “Look at her, she’s hardly even a runt,” he said. “Skinny as a reed. She has no chance of running with us, and we all see it. She may be a human, but I see no point in getting her killed. Her people will complain and use it to begin the wars again.”
“She will be fine. And I believe the humans have had enough war for now, friend Sandew. Their lands are still damp with the blood of the dead, as is the ink, still wet upon their treaties.”
“Well, I won’t die to save her. She is your responsibility, Seawind, not ours.”
Seawind inclined his head slightly, a gentle nod in acknowledgment.
“Let’s be off,” said an elf standing beside Sandew.
In the time it took Pernie to turn her gaze from him toward Seawind, the rest of them were gone. Only the subsiding movements of a few broad leaves and low branches marked where they had disappeared into the jungle. She couldn’t hear them running at all.
“Good luck,” Seawind said. “Keep up as best you can. Now run!” He ran off after the rest, gone so fast she had no time to call out that he might wait and tell her where to go. He moved like a deer, darting away in an instant, and in moments he and his green-leaf armor were gone after the others. Vanished into the mass of greenery.
Pernie stared after him, trying to make sense of what she saw: the crisscrossing tree trunks, the dangling vines, the upthrust fronds and brambles and shovel-shaped leaves of so many unfamiliar plant varieties. She’d spent her entire childhood roaming freely in a forest that was just as large as this, she was sure, but despite all that time and experience, nothing in Great Forest had prepared her for this. The whole jungle seemed a great bramble of entangled everything.
But still, the elves had run right off through its density, and they were all bigger than she. If they could, she could. And so, off she went, running right after them.
She sprinted through the section of jungle Seawind had vanished into, slapping aside the leaves and leaping through the dense patches of dewy ferns. She fought off the tangling vines as she ducked and darted under and around great limbs and tree trunks completely hidden beneath blankets of ivy. She leapt over puddles that splashed warm water when she landed short on the far sides. She wove her way around large clumps of thorny bushes, and had to slow and scoot sideways through a thick patch of odd bulbous things that sprouted long, narrow leaves shaped like sword blades and which were just as sharp. By the time she came out the other side, she was crisscrossed with red lines of blood on her face, neck, legs, and arms.
But still she ran. She ran as fast as she could. She startled creatures large and small as she ran. Brightly colored birds squawked and flapped noisily out from hiding places near her head, and a small group of brown-and-orange-striped foxes went scooting for cover as she plunged through a clearing suddenly. At the far end of it, a dozen huge black birds, crows with reptilian heads, flew up like slicks of tar as she ran at them, the lot of them rising together from the half-eaten and rotting carcass of something very large and, by its stench, long dead.
These startled her and put a fresh burst of speed into her wild, careening pursuit of the hunting elves. She continued to crash into the jungle depths after them, her breathing growing louder as she leapt and scrambled through vegetation that was completely alien to her, not only unlike any she’d ever seen but unlike any she’d ever imagined. Some of them made noise. Others grabbed for her or bit at her or threw up strange clouds of spores, which she knew well enough to avoid. She saw plants fighting with one another. She saw plants fighting with animals. She even saw one plant eating some sort of wild pig, the stout body of the animal half-swallowed as if by a python, wrapped up in a roll of wide yellow leaves like a cigar. She paused long enough to watch the pig until it stopped thrashing. She shuddered and ran on.
She had to fight her way through a thorny thicket, and when she burst through it, she tumbled down a steep embankment and landed with a splash in a stream. When she rolled to a stop, she sat up, one eye twitching and the corner of her mouth curling into a snarl, intent on being in a mood. But no sooner had she blinked the water from her eyes than she found herself nose to horn with a giant rhino, which stared back at her with its tiny little eyes and huffed a hot, wet breath at her, coating her with slime. This made her forget about moodiness. She squealed and scrambled back, the sweet smell of chewed grass in her nostrils and a greenish film slicking her face.
Sidling up the creek, she slowly worked her way farther and farther upstream until she found a place where the trees grew too close together for the rhino to pursue—or at least she hoped they did. With heart pounding, she inched a little closer to the trees, then, finding a burst of courage, she took her eyes off the rhino and charged once more into the verdant maze of the jungle all around.
As she ran, she listened for sounds of the rhino’s pursuit as much as she listened for any sound of the hunting elves. Preoccupied as she was, it was only by purest reflex that she was able to duck beneath the spear-thrust of the giant mantis that tried to stab her through.
She saw the blur of movement, yellow like maple leaves in the fall, a blur against the green and yellow of flowering vines. She sensed the movement more than she really saw it in the way one sees normal things, and with that gift of reflex with which natural athletes are blessed, she managed to tumble aside and roll under one of the arcing roots of an enormous rosewood tree.
The mantis jabbed at her again. She slipped back under another protective arc, the whole of the root like a great wooden serpent rising in and out of the soil in waves. Her assailant stabbed once more. Splinters of wet wood flew. Pernie dove back the other way.
This time, the mantis’ spiked limb thrust itself a hand’s width deep into the hardwood flesh of the tree root, allowing Pernie to roll to her feet. She spun round and got her first good
glimpse of her attacker: an insect twice as tall as she was, working to yank itself free, having struck so violently its spiked forelimb was stuck in the root. It jerked at its caught extremity, scrambling with the five that remained free for purchase to brace itself. Its spindly legs articulated like fingers made of sticks, and its angled feet thumped on the mossy jungle floor. It turned its head toward her, facing her, its huge eyes staring down at her, emotionless and watching. They gleamed wetly in the filtered morning light, each eye shaped like an inverted tear bubbling out of its triangular head. Its mandibles opened slowly, just once, then closed, giving the impression of its having licked its lips. It looked back to its work, yanking at the trapped spear tip of its forelimb.
Pernie knew better than to wait and see how long that extrication took, and without another thought, she was off and running yet again. She sprinted for all her skinny little legs were worth, her little heart pounding in her chest as she stretched every stride to its fullest. Perhaps at this pace she would catch the elves soon.
She burst out of a thick stand of trees and ran up a short incline, coming upon a wide patch of ferns. They were big ones, bright green and nearly as tall as her waist, with delicate leaves all intertwined, transparent together like a vast silk screen. The gentle rise and fall of them all had the effect of a green mist clinging to the ground.
She searched for sign of the elves, but found none. She risked a glance back over her shoulder to see if the mantis was closing in, but the jungle was so dense and so dripping with vines and ivy that she couldn’t see more than a few paces into it, the rest an impenetrable mass of unchecked growth.
Still, she heard something back there, something slapping leaves and snapping limbs. So she ran on. It didn’t matter whether it was the rhino or the insect.
She ran through the ferns and found as she did that they threw up clouds of strange yellow dust. It got in her eyes and blurred them some, but it didn’t sting. It tasted sweet, like citrus in honeyed tea. She kept on as best she could, but she startled something living beneath the ferns, something big, which ran heavily across her feet, a cascading passage of many, many pointy feet. She caught a glimpse of something greenish gray and then traced its path by the rustling of the ferns, headed off in a direction to her left. Whatever it was, it moved with astonishing speed. She was glad that whatever it was, it was running from her rather than after her. She was certain she could not have gotten away.
She shuddered, but pressed on in her chase, running once more through the ferns, stirring up the powdery fluff. Twice more, something brushed against her legs, and twice more, she saw it—or them—run off and disappear beneath the cloud of ferns. The fourth time it happened, she tripped over it and fell, crashing into the ferns and landing face first in the powder beneath the misty fronds.
She found herself in another world of sorts, a jungle canopy in miniature, one that existed beneath the larger one. The ground was covered by a layer of the yellow dust, soft like crushed chalk. She looked around in the filtered light and saw that there were creatures everywhere, long, flat creatures that seemed to hug the ground with what had to be at least a hundred long, slender legs. They reminded her of the centipedes back home, only these were much larger than those by far. A pair of them skittered closer to her as she lay there, and she dared not move.
They watched her through eyes that waved atop antenna-like appendages that sprouted from their heads. As they drew near, she could see that their bodies were segmented, and from the dull sheen of their gray-and-mottled-pink backs, she thought they might be covered with some kind of shell. They emitted a twittering sound from mouths that were tiny compared to the rest of their bodies, almost absurdly so, barely as big as an apple seed, yet meant to feed a creature nearly as long as Pernie was tall and more than three hand spans wide.
Pernie noted it and counted herself fortunate, for it seemed unlikely that such creatures would eat meat, at least not meat as large as Pernie. However, she wasn’t completely comfortable yet, given the way they were looking at her. Others were coming too, the chorus of their vocalizations coming in response to the first two.
Pernie looked out across the micro-jungle she’d fallen into and realized that she was being surrounded by the strange creatures, or at least nearly so, and she had to throw off the natural curiosity that had left her there staring as she was.
She climbed to her feet and found that she was somewhat dizzy. She blinked to clear her eyes.
One of the creatures touched her leg.
With a shriek, she sprinted for the trees again, but found that she was having trouble seeing where she ran. Twice she ran straight into giant tree trunks, and a third time she tripped over a fallen limb and went sprawling into a patch of mud. The hundred-legged creatures were everywhere.
She staggered down a steep embankment, trying to grasp limbs, vines, or trunks for balance as she stumbled along. Every time she touched one, there were the soft touches of those many legs upon her heels, the chattering twitter in her ears.
Glancing around, she spotted a rock nearby, small enough to lift, but big enough to use against one of these strange … bugs?
She went to it and bent to pick it up, and as she did, one of the creatures rushed at her and ran right up her back. It was heavier than she thought, and its weight bore her to the ground.
She blinked, trying to see through her blurry eyes as the ground came up at her. She could feel all its legs moving upon her skin like so many staccato heartbeats as the creature skittered around. It stayed on top of her as she rolled, scrambling in place like the woodsmen did back home when they rode the logs down the river toward Leekant. No matter how she rolled to get out from under it, it stayed right on top of her.
She stopped rolling and, with a thrust of her arms, pushed it off, at least twenty of its pointy legs all waggling to hold onto her hands and wrists.
She had to fight to break it loose, screaming and jerking and kicking at it until she was finally free. She ran back and picked up her rock. The creature was already there waiting for her. She smashed its head in with the rock.
Two more were behind her, one once again crawling up her back. The second one began climbing up the front of her legs, but she bashed it off with the rock as well, denting in two segments of its shell.
She tried to shake off the one on her back, but it was too well placed, its gripping legs too efficient at holding on.
She scanned around her everywhere, looking for something else she could use.
She saw there was another stream a few hundred spans away. She wondered if the creatures knew how to swim. They were awfully heavy—but then, so were horses, and Pernie knew they swam just fine. But perhaps the creatures couldn’t hold their breath. Pernie could, and she could hold it for a good long time. She’d been practicing all her life.
She threw down her rock and ran through the haze of her increasingly cloudy vision. She ran toward the gurgle of the water flowing over stone. The creature came around to her front, entangling her arms and covering her face. The second one, apparently not dead despite the bashed-in body plates, caught right back up to her with ease and entangled itself in her feet. Once again she sprawled face first to the ground. The creature covering her face adroitly scrambled around her, logger-like, and managed to be on her back by the time she hit. She screamed as the second one also clambered aboard, and she soon realized the weight of them both was too great for her to stand.
The first one slid around her ribs as she got to her hands and knees and once again put itself right in her face. She saw the small mouth open right before her eye, only a vague black spot in the thickening goo that was her sight. Something was coming out of it, something short and sharp, but hollow at the tip.
She screamed again and found a spasm of strength and rage. She teleported herself into the creek, some twenty paces away. She didn’t do it on purpose. She couldn’t even say how she’d done it, but it happened just like it had those times before, back at Calico Castle�
�like when she’d somehow teleported onto that orc’s back as it was attacking Altin; like when she’d teleported out of harm’s way in the fight upon the knoll as the orcs laid siege to their home; and like she’d done when she suddenly found herself teleported inside of Tytamon’s tower, all alone with the orcs just down the stairs from her. It was her magic manifesting, nascent power, uncontrolled.
But, uncontrolled as it might be, it worked. She was out of their grips, but not out of danger, for the two creatures were there immediately, right at the edge of the stream. They’d run the distance almost as fast as she’d teleported, but perhaps this time it wasn’t fast enough. They darted back and forth along the water’s edge, but they didn’t come in.
Soon it was clear that they couldn’t swim, or at least that they weren’t so inclined.
Pernie grinned, relieved, even jubilant with the sudden victory, the magic victory. Master Altin would be proud when he found out.
But the creatures weren’t going away either. Worse, one of them ran upstream, streaking off at a speed nearly impossible to see, and then, a few moments later, it came back again on the other bank, cutting off her escape. On land, she was surrounded.
She weighed her options. Obviously she didn’t want to go upstream, for there was something up there that had allowed one of the bugs to cross. That meant she could either stay where she was and wait for them to go away, or head downstream and hope for better luck.
She stared off in the direction of the current, trying to see what might lie ahead, but the creek vanished—like everything else had today—into the green knots of the jungle. It occurred to her she was never going to find the elves.
Downstream seemed the only option that didn’t involve waiting helplessly, and who knew what the hundred-legged bugs were going to do. They were obviously communicating with one another, so there was no telling how many more were on their way. Which meant it was time to get moving.
She lifted her feet and began to swim with the gentle current, her efforts and the flow moving her along at a pretty good clip. The creatures ran right alongside her.