by Ryk E. Spoor
“So why didn’t you go back home instead of staying to learn with this sensei?”
The smile grew bitter. “Because he also recognized . . . I recognized . . . that I’d probably end up breaking myself if I didn’t finish what I started. Knowing she was still out there would eat away at me every day. So he taught me, and a year later I came out, went down the alley another fifty feet, and Khoros showed up and dragged me off to fairyland.” He managed a better smile. “So that’s my story. What about you guys? What brought both of you all the way out here?”
Tobimar looked at Poplock and grinned. The Toad gave a little hop-bow. “After you, O Prince.”
* * *
Talking made the miles flow by quickly, and Tobimar came to know Xavier much better. That didn’t mean he—or Poplock—really understood Xavier, because the boy and his world were so very alien that even what seemed simple assumptions turned out to be very incorrect. But he had the same courage, loyalty, and toughness that any adventuring companion should have, and a sense of humor and curiosity that fit well with both the exiled Prince and his Toad friend. He was glad that Xavier was able to travel with them for at least a while.
Over the next two weeks they crossed a few hundred miles, partly by catching rides on caravans that moved on through the night. Tobimar’s fascination with Xavier’s little machine didn’t completely go away, but the immediate obsession dimmed quickly; the LTP’s games were amazing, but the world around them was even more so.
The three were now looking up the road where hills rose higher, the farthest piercing the lowering gray clouds, covered with the thick greenery of the jungle and showing the wavering line of the cleared perimeter narrowing. “We coming to a mountain range?”
Poplock glanced at a miniature map in one tiny paw-hand. “Um . . . Not really mountains, but that’s the Fallenstone Jumble. We’ll be going up a little, but the Great Road stays pretty level.”
“Still, we’d better be alert,” Tobimar said, feeling nervous for the first time in a while. “The Fallenstone’s the most dangerous part of this leg of our trip. The clearcut narrows in this area down to a few hundred yards, so bandits, monsters, that kind of thing have a better chance of catching people unawares.”
“Can we get through that part today?” Xavier asked.
“Not a chance,” Poplock answered promptly. “More than a hundred miles through, maybe two.”
Xavier studied the Jumble as they approached. “You know, I didn’t ask about that. Why this huge clear-cut area most places?”
“Gives room and security to build farms, little villages, things like that. If you let the jungle come in, well, gets too dangerous.” Poplock nodded sagely.
“But your people live . . . lived, sorry . . . in the jungle. So did the Artan, right? So . . .”
“Special people, special places, but it’s never safe or civilized. People like us—adventurers—go in, but it’s always a mystery.”
“Huh. Where I come from, the whole continent’s pretty much explored and safe. I mean, there’s some preserved wilderness areas and all, but I think there’s a lot more chopped down, turned to cities and fields and such, than there is wild. And no one’s afraid to go into the woods, really.”
Another huge difference, Tobimar mused. His world truly is completely different.
The hills became higher, until Xavier said that he didn’t care what they thought, these were mountains as far as he was concerned. Tobimar didn’t feel inclined to argue; the highest peaks might not be more than seven or eight thousand feet overhead, puny compared to the Firewalls or, of course, the Khalals, but they were steep and forbidding.
“Why didn’t they just build the road around these mountains?” Xavier said after a while, with the mist now descending on them and reducing sight to only half a mile.
“Oh, that’s easy,” Poplock answered. “The mountains weren’t here then.”
Xavier goggled at them both, looking momentarily like a Toad himself. “What?”
“It’s true.”
“Oooohhh,” Tobimar said, feeling revelation and surprise. This is the place! “That was here?”
“I think so. They said he fell from the sky across the Great Road and nearly broke his back, right?”
“That’s how I remember it.” What was it Khoros called it? “Chains of the Mind,” that was it . . .
Xavier was watching them as they talked, and his incredulity hadn’t faded. “You people can’t be serious. What could possibly fall down and make a hundred-plus miles of mountains?”
“A Dragon, obviously.”
Xavier was apparently still trying to decide whether they were pranking him or telling the truth when Tobimar noticed something. He pointed up the road. “Look—someone’s stopped up ahead.”
The darker shadow resolved slowly to a cart, parked slightly to one side. But as they got closer . . .
“He’s pulled in funny,” Poplock said.
Tobimar slowed, stopped, Xavier following suit. The Skysand Prince looked for a few moments, trying to figure out what bothered him. “You’re right. The way he’s diagonal down there, he’d have a demon’s own time trying to get back out.” The three were quiet a moment, studying the cart ahead.
“I’m not hearing anything up there,” Poplock said. “No voices, no movement. No animals or insects, either.”
Tobimar drew his swords, heard Xavier’s two leaf-green blades whisper from their scabbards, and even saw Poplock checking his own little Steelthorn.
The Toad looked over at him. “Could be an accident. Might need help.”
“But it’s a classic highwayman gambit, too.”
“I’ll go check it out,” Xavier said. He closed his eyes and a moment later . . . just faded.
Tobimar couldn’t sense anything from where he knew Xavier still had to be. He and Poplock studied the ground carefully, but nothing moved, even the dust on the road. It’s like he doesn’t exist when he does that.
Something’s wrong. Tobimar trusted that sense, when he was able to feel it at all. This was not just an accident. He felt Poplock shift, turning so he faced backwards; if something tried to ambush them, he’d be able to give Tobimar warning.
A few minutes later Xavier rematerialized. His dark-tinted skin had a pale hue. “It’s . . . bad.”
The two followed Xavier up. A faintly metallic, nauseating smell with a somehow sweetish undertone touched their nostrils.
“Ugh,” said Poplock.
The cart had run off the side of the road and down a slight embankment; one wheel was broken on the lefthand side and the axle was bent, showing the effect of a high-speed collision with the granite outcropping on that side.
But it wasn’t collision that had beheaded the Sithigorn harness birds, or ripped the entrails out of the two women and one man lying broken on the ground.
“We could just move on,” Xavier suggested slowly, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“Perhaps you could.” Tobimar heard the iron-cold tone in his voice, the sound of his mother’s upbringing, of a Skysand of Skysand. “You have your own journey to complete and your own honor. But a Guild Adventurer?”
“Nope,” Poplock said. “We can’t pass this by. Part of what we’re Guilded for.”
“Good,” Xavier said, and managed a smile. “I didn’t want to leave it, either. Anyway, whatever did this might be farther down the road. Who knows what it was or where it went?”
“That,” Poplock said, “is something we’re going to find out. How good are you at tracking?”
“Me?” Xavier asked. “My master taught me a lot of cool tricks, but it was all in this underground dojo; I don’t know anything about tracking.”
“I know some,” Tobimar said. Khoros had required he be able to read some tracks, make his way through a mystery by the traces left behind. “Let’s see what we can do.”
Poplock dropped to the ground. Seeming unfazed by the stomach-turning odor, he moved to the bodies. “Cut through with a singl
e sharp-bladed strike. Mostly vertical—cut from top to bottom.”
Tobimar nodded, studying the riding birds’ corpses. Clean cut, too. “More horizontal on the Sithigorns. But still it’s got a top to bottom slant.”
“Could be scythefeet, I guess.” The semi-reptilian, feathered creatures could deliver devastating, leaping blows with the large foot-claws.
“Hm . . . I’d say more doomlock spiders. Scythefeet have about eight-inch claws.”
“You’re right,” Poplock conceded, examining the bodies more closely. “This woman you could do that to with eight-inch blades, but those animals, you’d need at least a foot and a half.” He scuttled around the area, peering. “More than one something . . . two . . . no, I’m guessing at least four, maybe five. Ground’s awfully hard, mostly rock here with a little soil scattered here and there.”
Tobimar ran up the hill and back the direction they came, looking along the side of the road, trying to read the traces in the dust and mud on the road surface. “There’s marks along the side here. I think whatever it was tried an ambush from this side, drove them down this way so they’d run off the road.”
“Makes sense. What marks I see show the somethings came up around the crashed wagon on both sides. Guess they panicked the Sithigorns, then came up and killed everyone when the crash happened. Don’t see any sign of struggle, really, they didn’t get to fight. Then . . .” He bounced over, looked up. “Marks on the wagon. Went inside, came back out, left. Whatever it was probably wasn’t just predators.”
Xavier went in and confirmed. “Boxes and stuff were torn open here, but not like the bodies. Like you were looking for things you wanted.”
Tobimar followed the traces he could see . . . but the tracks seemed all muddled, and he had to at least momentarily admit defeat. “Poplock, can you get a direction for our culprits? I’m not clear, myself.”
The little Toad circled the camp three times, checking the faint scratchmarks, scuffs, indentations. “It’s really hard. Marks all over. They could have gone back to the road. I’ll have to widen the search.” Poplock bounced out farther and ran a long curve around the site.
A few minutes later he found something. “Thicker soil out in this area, and I’ve got marks heading out this way. Several of them. Not doomlocks, though.”
Tobimar nodded. “Already figured that; doomlocks are nasty, but not very bright, and don’t care about looting anything.”
“Bipedal, I think . . . hopping, too.” The three moved into the woods, the ground now rising into the higher reaches. “Hopping long distances. Some of my cousins could jump that far, but these aren’t Toad marks.”
Tobimar suddenly shivered.
“What is it?”
He felt his eyes shifting rapidly, searching shadows for movement that wasn’t there. An oppressive, heavy feeling settled over him. “I’m . . . not sure,” he said finally, hearing his own voice tense and nervous. “But I feel something . . . dark. Evil. We’re not dealing with anything ordinary.”
“Don’t sense anything myself . . . but you’ve got good instincts, I’ll bet.” They moved farther along. “Okay, now I’m wondering if my eyes are going. Was my count wrong? Just three here, now that I’ve got clearer marks. They’re hopping in a pretty organized group . . .”
“Hold on,” Xavier said, pointing.
The marks were on a tree trunk about nine feet up. Oh, smart. Very smart. Tobimar said, “Some of them are in the trees.”
Xavier frowned. “I dunno about you guys, but I’m not thinking of too many things that do most of their locomotion by hopping, and most of those would look stupid trying to climb up trees.”
Tobimar paused and looked down at Poplock. “He has a point. Your people hop, but they’re four-legged. These . . . things seem two-legged, and there aren’t very many . . . Hm. Iriistiik?”
Poplock studied the tracks again. “Could be.” The Toad sniffed at the tracks. “Smells . . . funny. Like . . . like thunderstorms and heat, if that makes any sense.”
Tobimar felt a cold shock in his gut, remembering the most ancient tales, of storms from the quiet desert when no storms had been seen. “It . . . might.” He glanced over at Xavier, then at Poplock. “I think we should turn back.”
Xavier hadn’t missed the conversation. “What is—”
Dust and sand erupted from the ground, howled from the trees, blinding and stinging and sapping strength with blasting, oven-strong heat whose bone-dry savagery was doubly shocking in what had a moment before been a wet, warm rainforest. Tobimar lost track of his little Toad friend in the maelstrom, even as figures began to materialize from the haze. Xavier and he were coughing almost in unison, blinking eyes clear, trying to be on guard, but words in a rough, hissing language echoed out and the sand itself coalesced from the air onto both of them, weighing them down. No! I can’t be caught like this . . . have to move . . . But there were hundreds of pounds of sand clinging to them, and they collapsed under its weight, pinned to the ground.
The air cleared slowly, and the tallest figure gestured; the others moved forward, weapons at the ready, and he could see that he had been right. Demons! The curse of the Skysand has followed me! There were mazakh, too, the snake-demon hybrids being smart and deadly servants for many things of evil. And other things, stick-figure skeletons on springing legs. They’re the ones surrounded by this sand-stuff.
The commanding figure was now close enough to see; it hovered in the air, its body trailing away in swirling dust that left nothing but dust behind it, shrubs and underbrush withered and crumbling in its wake. From that indistinct base rose the torso of a woman, armored in polished bone, with decorations of gems and mother-of-pearl inlaid across its surface. The face was that of a woman too, but something subtly wrong with the features, a little too long, too sharp and narrow, beautiful yet alien, and the eyes were blank, dark holes with red sparks dancing within. A mace dangled from her waist, just above the point where fading into dust began, but she had no weapon in hand.
“Lady Misuuma,” one of the mazakh said, “there are two youths.”
“I can see that,” the one named Misuuma answered, with just a hint of impatience that made the assemblage twitch backwards.
“Then which must we take?”
“The one with his eyes, of course.”
One of the demonic, skeletal things raised a hand, and the sand blew away from the heads of the youths before them. Lady Misuuma drifted forward, studying both of them; Tobimar tried not to show any reaction.
With the speed of the whipping wind, her hand grasped Tobimar’s chin with painful strength, forced his head up. Her dark-well eyes with crimson sparks bored into his, and she gave an alien, chilling smile.
“Ahh. We have found you at last. You have forced us to wait long, child. Not in Zarathanton is it wise to attempt an attack; nor, indeed, on a vessel of the Ancient Ones. But finally you have left the safety and journeyed here, and the trap has served its purpose.”
“You are the demons who follow my family.” It was not a question.
“As the Queen directs, so it is. And today another Seeker dies, as they always have.” She drew back her hand, and the fingers lengthened to claws.
I have to move!
But in the moment he gathered all his strength to try to break free, something else distracted the demons and their servants.
Next to Tobimar, the other figure bound in sand vanished . . . and the sand collapsed.
35
Ooo, thought Poplock gleefully. That’s my signal!
He had no idea how Xavier did what he did, but his timing was superb, and the little Toad knew exactly how to exploit timing. From the vantage point in a tree that he’d reached while everyone else was focused on the two eerily similar young men, he took careful aim and put a silver-coated needle right through the nearest mazakh’s eye.
The tiny, carefully inscribed runes etched on that needle exploded into ice and fire and the reptilian creature shrieked, clawing at its
face. The others spun around, seeking the source of the attack, one returning fire with a quick incantation and a gesture.
Even before the gesture was completed, Poplock hurled himself from the tree. Down down down got to get DOWN!
Fire detonated against the tree, centered almost where he had been sitting, and the concussion knocked him another several feet. The impact wasn’t too bad—when you were as small as he was, falling actually wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it was to the big people. Much worse was the fact that three of the skeletal hopping things seemed to have caught sight of his desperate leap. They bounded towards him, sand howling outwards, blotting out sight, stinging his skin.
Nictitating membranes wiping furiously, Poplock dove between two rocks, but the wind howled louder and blasted him straight through and out the other side. There was another shout from behind and he thought it was Tobimar’s voice, but he couldn’t tell if it was the sort of shout that means you’re free, or about to die. Gotta worry about me first, can’t help anyone if I’m skewered.
Two clawed, bone-white legs slammed down into the earth scant inches away. This stuff doesn’t impede their vision!
He still had an advantage of size, and the thing being so close gave him an inspiration. With a bound of his own he was on the thing, scurrying up through its ribcage. The other demons hesitated, obviously not willing to chop their companion down; the one he was inside grabbed and snatched, trying to get him as he clambered swiftly upward. Whups! Missed me! Ha, now I’m on your spine! Hard to scratch back here isn’t it? Hey, now, getting out a weapon is cheating. Back on the other side, yipe, look out, that was close, got to get farther up, up I said, stop running a sword through your own ribcage, it looks silly and you’re not hitting anything.