“Is this the prize you’ve come to wrest from my hands, Prodigy?” He shook the girl as he would an errant puppy. “Seems hardly worth losing your life over.”
Teeth bared, Gryl met Rathe’s gaze over the girl’s trembling shoulder. “And yet it’s you who hides behind a child rather than cross steel,” he said. “Perhaps you’re not as certain of your skills as you boasted.”
The slaver’s grin widened, threatening to eclipse the fire. “Or perhaps I’m everything I claim and then some. Only one way for us to be certain.”
Before Gryl could say another word, Rathe sunk his sword into the girl’s neck, his smile never wavering. She went to scream but there was only the whisper of her life’s blood spewing from her throat. Gryl’s stomach knotted, nearly doubling him over in his disgust. The Xenius girl saw none of his discomfort. She squirmed, frantic to draw breath, clawing at her wound with reddening hands, but Rathe had no further use for her. He threw her behind him like discarded trash before stepping forward to meet Gryl.
“Now there’s nothing to stay your hand.”
The mercy Gryl had aspired to earlier fled the reins without a fight. Two children were dead this night, one by his own hand, and no amount of vengeance would return them to this realm. It would, however, bring grim satisfaction to see Rathe suffer something other than a quick death.
Rather than charge, Gryl knocked his skullcap from his head to reveal the patchwork of scars beneath. He slashed at the straps holding his leather vest and tore it away so his disfigured torso gleamed bare in the firelight. His blood warmed as he drew upon the sorceries etched into his skin. Worms of agonies past gathered sentience, his scars coming to life, slithering serpents beneath his puckered flesh. He glared at Rathe, willing his magic to pluck the man’s foul deeds from his soul, but no ghosts stirred the air between them. Only the void answered his call, emptiness bringing his spell to naught.
“You dare pit your powers against mine, but as you can see they are found wanting.” Rathe laughed, the temperature dropping at its heels. He patted his breastplate. “Soon there will be seven tongues hanging over my heart.” The slaver advanced like lightning on the cusp of a storm.
Gryl brought his weapons up but only barely managed to deflect the slaver’s single sword with both of his blades. The blow sent him scrambling backward, boots digging into the grass to keep from toppling. Never had he faced someone so swift or powerful, not even the monstrous Thrak berserkers. Gryl’s arms tingled from the blow, yet Rathe stood his ground, his smile eternal. The slaver had true power after all.
“After the display with my men, I thought you might be the one to provide me a true fight,” the slaver said. “Appears my faith in you is misplaced.”
As is mine, Gryl thought, shaking the sting from his limbs, but only death would still his determination. He darted forward tall, feinting high before dropping low to gut the slaver. Rathe followed him with casual ease, meeting Gryl’s strike and twisting it aside with plenty of time to do the same to Gryl’s dagger, its blade no closer to success than the first. And still a third movement drew a line of fire across his ribs, sending Gryl stumbling. He pressed against his wound with his forearm and gasped at the perplexing feeling of long-dead nerves firing anew. Gryl cursed. At least I didn’t scream.
Rathe eased about with callous disregard, resetting his stance as though they’d only been sparring. His chest barely rose with each breath while Gryl’s bellowed, the unfamiliar pain sapping his energy far too soon. The slaver seemed not to care.
One moment he stood tall, taunting, the next he was before Gryl, driving a fist into his cheek. There was a dull pop as bone gave way and Gryl’s vision blurred on his left, his eye swimming in a shattered socket. This time he did cry out, but Rathe quieted him by driving his pommel into Gryl’s gut. Sanguine spittle flew one direction and he flew another. The ground reached out to cradle him before he could react, but there was none of a mother’s love in its touch. He felt a rib snap at her embrace. Misery made a home in his flesh as he scrambled back to his feet. Gryl tasted blood and humiliation on his tongue, and he wondered if it would be the last thing it would taste before Rathe clawed it from his mouth to hang morosely about the slaver’s neck.
“It’s a pity you’re the last of your kind here in Shytan,” Rathe said, drawing closer as though he strolled through a crowd of well-wishers, each reaching out a delaying hand as if they might be graced with his glory. “I might well have to plan a journey across the Demarcean Sea to your homeland to find more Prodigies to put to the test. I wonder how many are left since the Empress sent your people scurrying home.”
It was a question Gryl had often asked since he’d exiled himself to these foreign shores, but even if he had the answer he would take it to the grave rather than offer Rathe any more satisfaction. He’s had more than enough already.
The tang of copper filled Gryl’s mouth, and he spit to clear it but the taste lingered, much like the taste of his impending defeat. Rathe lingered too, in no hurry to re-engage, happy to draw the moment out.
Gryl raged at the man’s arrogance, but he was angrier at his own impotence. “I’m not dead yet.”
Rathe only laughed. “Soon enough.” He inched forward, a cat playing with a wounded mouse.
Gryl moved away from him, trapped in the circle of the wagons with nowhere to run, his eyes rooted on the slaver as he advanced. He needed a moment to think, a moment to plot, though he wondered what that might earn him. Nothing so far. He wound his way past the fire pit, veering away from the useless emberstones only to feel something scrape against his heel. Gryl went to step over it only to realize it was fingers clasping at his boot. His head snapped about so he could bring his good eye to bear, surprised at what he saw. The Xenius girl was still alive, if only barely.
Her blood stained the grass in an ever-widening pool around her. She swam in it, one purple eye staring up at Gryl, its color draining with every heartbeat. There was nothing he could do for her, though it set his chest to aching. He whispered a prayer to the Xenius goddess Ailih on behalf of the child, for what his heathen voice was worth, and went to pull his foot away. The girl gurgled, blood bubbling from her throat, and tapped his heel with the tip of a bloody finger. She raised her hand one last time, finger pointing, and then it went limp, splashing dead into the pool.
“A shame she had to die,” Rathe said, still closing at a glacial pace, “but she was weak. Hardly a shining example of her kind.”
Gryl stumbled back, keeping the distance between them, but the blood splattered across his boot was a portend of things to come. He stopped then, his vision—blurred as it was—coming to rest on an image smeared in crimson across his heel. Gryl forced his eye to focus and felt his heart flutter with recognition at what it was. The child hadn’t pawed at him for help. She’d drawn a symbol on the slick leather of his boot in her own blood. A symbol written in the ancient script of the Xenius; a symbol he knew.
A word filled Gryl’s skull as he translated the scrawl, bringing the barest of hopes with it. He spun about to survey the wagons bunched behind him, their canvas covers pulled tight against the cages beneath. Gryl raced to the one the child had so desperately tried to point at and drew his sword across the ropes that held the tarp in place. He’d only cut the last when Rathe snatched him by the throat and slammed him to the ground.
More bones snapped as he hit, his weapons bouncing free of his hands, but only a blessed numbness washed over him in place of pain. He was moving beyond such mortal concerns, he knew, even the slaver’s magic losing its hold over him. Rathe stood above, feral grin in place, his presence looming.
“Impressive heroics, Assassin, though I’m not certain what you hoped to attain by your efforts.” He gestured to the wagon, all pitiful faces and rusty bars, the concealing cloth gone. “At least now you have an audience to your death.” Rathe struck a thoughtful pose. “Now, should I take your tongue before or after I kill you? What say you?”
Gryl’s head
lolled as he fought gravity’s efforts to drag it down. He ignored the slaver and looked to the prison wagon, sorting through the faces that stared at him with pitiful eyes. At last, he turned back to Rathe and snarled. A numb arm reached for the dagger at his boot, fingers barely seizing upon the pommel to draw it awkwardly from its sheath.
“I admire your conviction, Prodigy. You honor me by fighting to the last, but if you believe this tiny little blade can bring me low, you’re more a fool than I could ever have imagined.”
Gryl settled the hilt in his hand, barely able to feel its metal in his grasp. He coughed blood from his throat and let it dribble down his cheek. “It’s not . . . not . . . for . . .” The words leaked out slowly, but Gryl forced a pained smile to his lips as he flung the knife. “. . . you.”
The blade flew through the bars and thudded loudly into the leg of a child who’d been standing at the front of the cage. He shrieked and fell into the other children, their gathered mass keeping him from dropping all the way to the floor. His waxen face grew even paler as he howled, clawing at the knife.
“What have you done?” Rathe screamed, driving his sword downward to skewer Gryl. His eyes were wide, wild.
Gryl squirmed at the last moment, the blade piercing the meat of his side rather than his bowels. Still, it ran all the way through, grating into the ground beneath him, pinning him down. Instead of clawing at the sword, he reached out and clasped his arms and legs about Rathe, pulling the slaver into him, holding him tight. It was as if he clung to a giant, pleading not to be crushed beneath his weight.
“No,” Rathe screamed, over and over as he thrashed, unable to break free, resolving at last to slamming his forehead into Gryl’s face.
Gryl’s nose shattered on the second blow, but he turned his head aside to see the boy he’d stabbed begin to spasm and writhe. Then he went still, slumping into his companions, purple eyes sliding shut. The pressure on Gryl seemed to lift.
Rathe postured up to smash his skull down once more, but Gryl turned into the blow, slipping around the slaver’s jaw and sinking his teeth into the man’s throat. Rathe howled as Gryl chewed, tearing at the rubbery flesh until it sprung a leak. His mouth flooded with blood and Gryl rolled his head away to spit it out, warmth splashing down over his swollen and ruined cheek.
Despite his injuries, he clung to Rathe until the slaver’s life drained away, his furious resistance turning to shuddering trembles as the magic left his body, its source severed. Only when he felt the man slip loose of his coil did Gryl release his hold and push Rathe aside.
“Not dead . . . yet,” he whispered, yanking the sword from his side with a hiss.
He could feel his every wound pulsing as he dragged himself across the wet grass to the wagon. Once there, he clasped at its wheel spokes until he could sit up, propped against its hard wood. The children shied away while he dug for a pouch stashed within the inner pockets of his pants. At last he found what he was looking for and pulled a tiny vial out, holding it up to the wagon.
“Give . . . him this,” he said as clearly as he could, waving the vial before the children. “Take it. Pour . . . his mouth.”
Time dragged on as he waited, his shoulder throbbing and nearing its limits. Then, just when he feared he could hold the vial within reach no longer, a small, cold hand snatched it from him. Gryl let his arm flop to the ground. He groaned as his head lolled to his chest. The children muttered and whispered above, their words incomprehensible to Gryl, consciousness slipping away with every ragged breath.
His one good eye looked again to the mark on his boot as his vision closed in, and it brought a smile to his lips, despite it all. He read it once more.
Brother, it said.
He sank to his elbow as the last of his strength fled his body. Above, he heard the Xenius boy gasp as the antidote took hold, and Gryl let out a grateful sigh. He’ll be all right. Rathe had stolen the boy’s magic, forcing a choice upon Gryl: kill the boy or let Rathe win. Neither sat well with him, but in the end there’d been no real choice. Gryl’s only real regret was that he could do nothing for the girl Rathe had murdered, but at least her brother would live. That was something.
“Stay . . . put,” he managed to say before the darkness came for him.
His final thought before he lost consciousness was that Rathe would have to settle for six tongues in whatever hell he found himself.
It was a fair number still, but far better than seven, Gryl thought.
Fiber
Seanan McGuire
The trouble began when Laurie discovered that Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt. You know, the stuff that’s marketed at, like, middle-aged moms who want to reclaim their youth, or at least the ability to have regular bowel movements again. Anyway, Laurie loves Jamie Lee Curtis, for reasons that are a mystery to anyone whose taste in popular culture has matured past the early ’90s. Also, Laurie is frequently too lazy to chew. So when Jamie Lee Curtis said “come, my children, and eat of my poop yogurt,” Laurie was first in line.
Well, Laurie’s mom was, on account of Laurie is also too lazy to go to the goddamn store. It’s sort of a miracle that Laurie wasn’t too lazy to go out for the cheerleading squad, except for the part where once you wear the orange and green uniform of a Fighting Pumpkin, you basically have a license to cut class. She became a cheerleader because it allowed her to be even lazier. Now that was dedication.
Anyway, we were driving back from an away game against the Devil’s Spoke Scorpions—a bunch of lazy jerks whose cheer squad was barely deserving of the name, much less their pom-poms—with Jude behind the wheel, Marti in the front, and me, Laurie, and Colleen jammed into the back. The rest of the squad had gone on ahead in the football bus, choosing comfort and efficiency over the freedom of the road and being stacked like cordwood in Jude’s backseat. Which, well. The bus was seeming like a better idea with every mile we drove, since Laurie was slurping down yogurt like it was about to be made illegal, while Colleen balanced her notebook on her knee and scribbled in her weird shorthand. We couldn’t even really have a conversation, since Marti had all the windows down and the radio cranked all the way to “moving noise violation.”
At the same time, I hadn’t had this much fun in ages. Largely because I had been a zombie up until the homecoming game, when the weird girl we’d found in the woods had flung herself into the post-game bonfire, burning up and being forgotten by everyone who wasn’t on the squad in the same instant. There had been no body, no bones; only straw, and the faint scent of singed pumpkin-flesh. And I had come back to life. My heart had started beating, the scars from my autopsy had scabbed over and started to heal, and I had found myself with a lot of explaining to do.
My parents were still sort of in shock, and viewed me as something between a miracle and a test. When I’d explained, very earnestly, that my return from the grave was connected to the cheerleading squad, they had opened their checkbooks, made a substantial donation to the school, and bought me a new uniform. Being alive was pretty cool. Even if Marti did need to learn how to turn the music down.
Then Laurie looked up from her yogurt—strawberry with extra fiber—worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment, and said, “I need to go.”
Colleen kept writing. Marti kept howling along to a Katy Perry song that had been pretty much incomprehensible before it became a duet with a tone-deaf cheerleader. I blanched, leaning away from her. The worst thing about coming back from the dead: bodily functions. It didn’t matter what it was, if it came out of an orifice, I didn’t want anything to do with it. Doubly so if the orifice it came out of wasn’t my own.
Laurie scowled, guessing—rightly—that Jude hadn’t heard her, and repeated, more loudly, “I have to go.”
The car continued to hurtle down the road as fast as Jude’s commitment to safe driving would allow. The howling of the wind mingled with the howling of pop music and cheerleader, creating an unholy trio that could only be pierced by something even worse.
“I
said, I HAVE TO GO!” shouted Laurie. Colleen jumped, her pen drawing a thick black line across the center of the page she’d been scribbling on. Marti swore, loudly enough to be heard over the song. And Jude hit the brakes, slamming us all forward. I gasped, closing my eyes.
To become a zombie, you have to die. That’s just Necromancy 101. And I, well, died in a car crash when my boyfriend-at-the time decided that he wasn’t too drunk to drive. I couldn’t put all the blame on him. I had been too drunk to stop him. End result: while I don’t mind riding in cars, I don’t like it when they swerve, or brake abruptly, or do anything else that feels like losing control.
“Dammit, Laurie, you scared the crap out of Heather,” snapped Marti. I could hear her, which meant she had turned the radio off. That was a nice change.
“No one was listening to me,” said Laurie sullenly. I opened my eyes. Laurie had her arms crossed and was sulking at Marti, who had twisted around in her seat to glare into the back. Jude had pulled off to the side and was also twisted around, although her expression was more concerned than accusatory. Her sleek black hair fell in perfect wings to either side of her face, held back with a pumpkin-shaped hair clip that would have seemed immature, if not for our school mascot. Being a Fighting Pumpkin meant never needing to apologize for shopping at Claire’s.
“What do you need, Laurie?” asked Jude.
“Can we—” began Laurie.
Jude held up a hand, stopping her. “Please don’t,” she said.
We all had our little quirks, like me having been dead for a while, or Marti being allergic to gluten. In Laurie’s case, “quirk” was another way of saying “people generally did what she asked them to do.” She could turn a simple request into an order, just by phrasing it the right way. Jude had been working with her on finding ways to say things without making them an irresistible compulsion for the people around her.
Unbound Page 26