Sparks whirled in Bryce’s cinnabar eyes. He shifted from foot to foot, his mouth opening and closing—like a fish on a pond bank. Then the crimson began to fade around his pupils and his shoulders hunched. I heard a faint gagging sound.
My muscles tensed. Something was happening. Was Graye fighting from inside? Was Bryce losing control? My hand locked about the hilt of my rapier. I shifted my boots on the wide branch where I squatted, lifting up onto my haunches, preparing to act.
The moment passed.
Once more it was Bryce who looked up at me, his eyes blazing brighter than ever, like flaring coals.
“Do not try to task me, Ruenn,” he snarled. “I am no longer your little brother. Following you around. Wanting to be just like you.” He snarled again. “I could tear you apart.”
It was my turn to chuckle. Without humor. I gestured at the half circle of beasts that backed him.
“Then send away your little pets and face me.”
He shivered, as if with ague. His eyes dulled again, but in the next instant rekindled. He straightened, body stiffening as a spray of scarlet light misted like smoke from his sockets. His mouth fell open and he spoke, though the lips no longer moved.
“You’re gonna die now, Ruenn. Gonna die now.”
A convulsion swept him. The eyes rolled back and a total collapse followed, as if he were a sail hacked free of its masts during a storm. Bryce had moved on. The body of Diken Graye dropped, thudding to earth.
From all around in the darkness there arose a howling. Then the red-eyed beasts came swarming, mouths open, distended as they voiced their wails. For the first time I saw them clearly, in the saffron light of the fire that Bryce/Graye had built. They were maybe four feet tall, over a hundred pounds each. Their baboon bodies were squat, bristle furred, with arms longer than the bowed legs and yellow talons at all four paws.
I leaped to my feet, sword flashing into my right hand with a jingle from the scabbard hooks, my left hand slapping the hilt of my belt dagger, drawing it. There were maybe thirty of the creatures, foaming now in a gray wave about the massive base of the tree. Vines shivered as the beasts grasped them, started up the trunk, moving swiftly. The howling grew louder, insistent, maddening.
I reversed the dagger in my hand, hurled it down into an open muzzle full of gleaming, saw-edged teeth. The beast shrieked, fell back into a roiling mass of its fellows. I heard it shriek again as the other howlers tore at it.
I hacked at vines with my sword. The blade sliced through, sending more furry bodies plummeting. But there were too many vines, too many beasts. One reached the limb upon which I stood. I cut that creature down. Another hurled its body at me, using its legs to drive it. I backhanded it, sent it flying. A single talon raked along my sleeve, rending the cloth, stinging through to the skin beneath.
Turning, I took two running steps along the broad back of the tree limb, leaped outward. On a second tree, a shadowy branch loomed flat and wide. My boots slapped down upon it but skidded on the smooth bark. I stumbled, caught the trunk and held on as my body swayed out over the ground.
The red-eyed howlers swamped the limb where I’d been, filled it, with muzzles turning, snuffling. They saw me. The small fire was dying below. It was growing too dark for me to see. I didn’t think that would be a problem for my hunters. With such eyes as theirs they were surely nocturnal.
I shoved the rapier in my belt, grabbed a hanging vine as thick as my arm and started to drag myself up it. Behind me I heard leaping, thudding bodies—and howling, like goblin bells ringing.
Something grabbed my heel. Even through the good leather I felt the clasp of teeth. I kicked it away, climbed faster. The vine shuddered in my hands as another beast replaced the first. I kicked again, felt teeth and cartilage crunch. Hardened nails skittered on my jeans, fell away. I heard the creatures in the trees all around as they tried to out climb me. But their hypertrophied claws made it difficult for them. They must have been ground hunters, not used to the heights.
I dropped onto a foot-wide limb, raced along it, leaped into a third tree. Climbed. Now, a smattering of light filtered down through the canopy to help me. Nimeru had risen, the first and smallest Taleran moon, known as “the dreamer.”
A burst of howling exploded in front of me. Three of the beasts came hurtling along the branch on which I moved. They might have had me if they’d remained silent. I whipped my sword free, spitted one creature like an overripe fruit, slung it away. A second beast leaped at my face. I ducked aside. It missed, dropped into darkness.
The third struck me in the knees, sent me teetering backward on a limb that was narrow at this height. My left hand barely snatched a hold on a thin side-branch, but in the instant it took to keep myself from falling I felt teeth and a sharp, sharp pain in my left leg.
I slashed downward with the sword, cutting completely through the muzzle of the creature. Gore sprayed. It screeched, turned tornado on the limb in front of me, whirling madly in its pain, claws lashing. I spun the rapier, locking both hands around the pommel as I dropped to one knee. The good steel stabbed deep, pinning the monster to the branch. It shuddered, went still.
I rose, jerked the blade free with a steel-on-bone rasp. My breathing came with a sandpaper rawness. My heart drummed too fast. The warmth of blood ran down my leg. But there was no time to rest. All around me I heard scurrying movements in the trees. And no howling now.
I lifted the rapier, bit down on the blade to taste the wicked copper of blood. With both hands free I leaped upward, caught a limb, pulled myself up. Then did it again. And again. Sullen red eyes glittered from a dozen limbs below me. They climbed with me.
But they didn’t attack!
Bark and moss came free beneath my fingers, showered down my collar. My boots crushed scorpions, ants, phosphorescent grubs as I climbed. Sharp twigs ripped tatters in my shirt. My lungs were a bellows; the tissues of them felt torn.
Why didn’t the creatures attack? Did they fear my sword?
I reached a thorn tree, turned at bay, trying to breathe. Blood squelched in my boot. My left leg was slashed with red furrows through the faded blue of the jeans I had worn all the way from Earth. That limb trembled, though I felt little pain. Yet.
To my right, the canopy of forest leaves opened a bit. I glanced out over a clearing filled with mist and the electric blue glow of Nimeru. Emperor moths flitted there, big as a man’s hands held together. They looked greenish under the moon, though I knew they were crimson as the hearts of rubies in brighter light.
My glance turned upward. I heard a gasp burst from my own lips. Anchored to the tree a dozen feet over my head was a rope bridge leading off through the clearing toward the north, toward the jungle’s center. I could not see its end, but as I turned my head to follow its path the corner of my eye caught a hint of deep wedges cut in the tree for steps.
Quickly I looked down, and saw across from me in another tree a dozen of the red-eyed beasts. I didn’t know where the rest of them were, but these watched me, silent for the moment except for their panting breaths. My own wind was coming back. I gestured at them.
“Come on,” I growled.
They growled in return, their eyes deepening in savage color. Their movements grew more animated, their claws clicking together as they shifted from side to side.
“Come on!” I shouted at them, brandishing my sword.
I wanted them to attack me here. Now. Masses of red-tipped black thorns would keep them from climbing up the sides of the tree where I stood. They’d have to come at me along the flat of the branch where my boots were planted firmly. And they could not come all at once.
Then come they did, chittering, leaping, howling. I fought, sword flashing, the hilt tight in both hands. The steel blade stabbed, dipped, slashed, hacked, blocked, cleaved. Gore spattered. Flattened skulls sundered. Taloned limbs went flying. There was no time for thought
, no mercy to be offered.
The battle was a whirl of fetid breath, spittle, squealing mouths sharp with teeth, stinking fur crawling with vermin, of blistering red eyes, raking claws, tearing cloth and a weaving bloody sword. I saw it all in flashes, like the way night rain is stilled by lightning. I took wounds. Felt them burn. Cuts. Scrapes. Bites. I let the pain enrage me. And I killed.
The beasts went down, falling away, shrieking, tearing their own wounds, dying. I had no count of the killed before one beast slipped beneath the blade that tore out its fellow’s throat and slammed savagely into my right side. It knocked my sword arm up and back, pinned it with a hundred and twenty pounds of raging madness.
At the same moment, a growling something jerked hard on my left boot. My foot slipped in gore and I fell heavily on my back, nearly rolling off the branch into the depths. It was the beasts themselves that held me on that limb. They had me down. They tore at me. I felt teeth gouging at my arm, screamed in hot agony as fangs ripped through cloth and flesh to grind down on bone.
Still screaming, I kicked out wildly with my free leg, my boot stomping into the face of the creature that gnashed at my other foot. Its teeth gave away; its mouth pulped. I kicked again and its hold on me broke and it went spinning off the limb into darkness, falling away with a shriek that cut off in a brutal thud of yielding muscle against unyielding tree.
The beast pinning my right arm stopped its savaging of my flesh for an instant. It glared at me, rosary-bead eyes flaming red, its mouth open over vicious yellow teeth that hung with shreds of shirt and skin. Madly it glared, and just as madly I glared back. And in that instant of time, my left hand reached to the tree, found a six inch thorn and tore it loose.
The beast hissed, fur standing up all over its body. My hand rose and hacked down, and I drove the spike of that thorn through its eye so deep that it grated against the back of the creature’s skull and snapped off. The thing spasmed only once and collapsed half across me. I shoved it off, rolled onto my side, trying to get my legs under me.
A grunting snarl rang in my ears and I looked wildly about, then realized the sound was in me rather than outside me. I forced myself to silence. The night was empty. Pieces of dead howler lay scattered around but nothing lived here except for me. I’d killed all of my immediate attackers. Or driven them away.
I’d won. But at what cost? My right arm and hand would scarcely work. My left leg was mangled and smeared a blood trail behind me as I tried to move. I could hardly tell where the shreds of my left boot ended and shreds of my foot began. The only good thing was that the bone wasn’t broken.
I fumbled with my good hand and found a small limb, pulled myself up onto my good knee with a convulsive effort. Floaters bloomed and multiplied in my eyes, then slowly faded as I got back my breath. By some miracle the sword was still clutched in the rigid claw of my right hand. The fingers had spasmed and would not open. I reached with the left hand and took the blade away—though I had to jerk it free—and sheathed it at my hip.
“Get up,” I rasped at myself.
Somewhere in the trees around there were more howlers. I couldn’t see them but knew they were there. And if they attacked now they would kill me. I had to try to get away. For myself. For Bryce. For Rannon.
I reached higher on the tree, grasped another limb, hauled myself up onto trembling legs. Thorns poked and stabbed at me but the pain of them was little enough against the larger pain with which I already lived.
Just to my left was one of the deep notches in the trunk that I had noted before, the rungs in a ladder leading up to the rope bridge overhead. I forced my left leg to move, was surprised when it obeyed. Wedging a torn boot into one of the notches, I bade the leg hold. My left hand searched higher. Fingers scraped away loose bark and locked in another of the worked grooves. Gingerly, I let the weight settle on my leg. It shook, but held.
Kicking the toe of my right boot into a notch, I used the muscles in my good leg to push myself higher up the trunk. Then I brought the left leg up alongside the right, wedged the boot into the same notch. My perch was precarious. My right arm dangled. But my left hand had the strength of fear in it.
Trying to breathe shallowly to avoid having the thrust of my chest push me off the tree, I reached up with my left hand and searched for another hold. I found it, clung for a moment before pulling my right leg up to another notch.
By such inches I moved—working toward the rope bridge that led I knew not where. At first I talked to myself, urged myself on. Then even whispering came too hard and I just climbed. My thoughts drifted. I wondered if Diken Graye was alive. Had the red-eyed beasts taken him once Bryce had abandoned his body? I began to wonder where the rest of the beasts were. There had to have been at least a dozen more than what I had killed.
There was nothing I could do for Graye now. I could barely do anything for myself. The fear began to come back from the place where it had hidden while I fought for my life. But I couldn’t climb any faster.
A vine brushed my cheek. No! Not a vine but a length of drooping rope. I glanced up. The bridge was right there, right overhead. Exaltation swept me. Crashing terror followed. I was so close, and so afraid—so afraid that the beasts would come take me, drag me down, tear me apart as Bryce had prophesied.
I reached up with a shaky hand, caught one of the wrist-thick ropes that anchored the bridge to the huge thorn tree. I drew myself up. Nothing came to get me.
The bridge itself was a dense webbing of finger-width ropes woven from some plant resembling hemp. Flat boards of cedar-red wood, worked fine and smooth, lined the bottom of the webbing to make a walkway. I got my right knee up on that walkway, used my left hand to pull myself onto it. My other arm thumped painfully on the boards, although at least now I could move the fingers.
Still, nothing came for me.
I rolled over, lungs gasping for the sweet air. Nimeru was setting. Above me forged Sieona, the second moon, known as the storm queen. Her turquoise face seemed to smile at me.
I began to chuckle. And even though I knew it was not wise to make a sound, I could not stop.
They didn’t come for me, I thought. They didn’t come.
I chuckled some more.
Far away to the southwest I heard the cannonade of thunder, saw the faint splash of lightning in building clouds. Here there was only the stirring of a faint breeze.
“They didn’t come!” I said. I thought I shouted it.
An emperor moth landed on my belly. I startled, then burst out with laughter that came close to hysteria. A second moth settled on my left knee, huge scarlet wings opening and closing, its feathery antennae tickling over the lacerations on my lower thigh. The emperor moth is nearly as big as an Earthly pigeon, though weighing scarcely as much as a hummingbird.
A third moth landed on my right wrist. I tried to shoo it but it merely rose and settled again. Frowning now, I watched its tongue unfurl, black and long, looking...plumper than I’d ever imagined a moth’s tongue could look.
More fluttering movements filled the air around me. More moths settled. Dozens of them. Black, sticky tongues slid from scarlet mouths, began to lick at my wounds. I didn’t like that. I shook my left arm free of clinging bodies, began to brush the things off my belly.
Still more landed. Wherever their tongues licked a pleasant numbness began to spread, soothing, easing my pain. I stopped trying to brush them away. A lassitude gathered behind my eyes. I closed them, could not open them again.
The numbness grew. Began to burn.
I tried to scream and failed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
STORM QUEEN
There were torch-red eyes in the moonlit jungle, and the distant, bitter howling of beasts. There were the pulsations of soft, plump bodies that thudded on my cheeks, at my eyes, against my lips. And the whir of moths was as loud as thunder in the dawn, loud enough to cover my screams as
I began to choke on glistening wings.
With a cry, I jerked to full awareness, brushing wildly at my face and chest, feeling the quiver of feathery legs and antennae tickling all over me.
Nothing was there.
Sweat ran. My chest heaved. I sat up.
Nothing was there! No eyes, no wings, no ribbon tongues licking at raw wounds.
But something had been there. I remembered well the reality from which this “dream” had sprung.
Pushing away a coverlet that seemed quilted of soft, cool moss, I rose stiffly from the kind bed of woven rushes upon which I had lain. The dream and the reality slipped into the background for the moment as I found myself alone and naked in a strangely cluttered room scarcely half a dozen paces across. Before me stood a table, or rather, grew a table. It lifted in one graceful piece from the living wood of the floor. Piled on top of it were candles, crucibles, wooden plates, scraps of rusted armor, weapons, ancient books half turned to dust.
Beyond the table, in an outside wall of the same wood, was a small, rounded window through which I glimpsed afternoon light and the crowns of trees below and around me in the jungle. I was in a tree, I realized suddenly, inside the upper trunk of some forest giant more massive than any redwood I’d ever heard of.
How had I come here?
I turned to study the room, looking for some explanation of my circumstances. I found none, but the chamber and its contents were themselves arresting in their harmony and discordance. There were more windows—enlarged knotholes in the tree I saw now—and even a cloud-dimmed sun filled the space with airy brightness. How much more lovely this room would be when the sky was clear and jeweled, or when the arc of a rainbow slashed past the tree’s upper reaches.
The inside walls of the room were naturally beveled, with a hundred nooks and cubbyholes and ledges where ferns and flowers were planted in a rich humus brought up from below, or where sat tiny crystal bottles, river-smoothed stones, intricately shaped works of deadwood. Gourds and chimes hung about. Miniature figures coaxed into being from feathers, twigs, and leaves fluttered from mobiles that danced with each pant of breeze through the chamber. Everywhere there grew vines that bore delicate sunburst blooms of white.
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