Called to Darkness

by Richard Lee Byers

  Reassured, she nodded. Bok went into one of the caves and returned with smaller lengths of wood. She sat down and drew Eovath's dagger to help the boy carve. The whisper of their blades made a counterpoint to Denda scraping and tapping stone against stone.

  They worked for a while, until a burly man with a shaggy, grizzled beard and a necklace of big, curved claws tramped to the top of the trail. Bok spoke eagerly to his father, and Denda smiled wryly and answered back. The boy jumped up, ran to the big warrior, and then they conferred.

  At the end of the conversation, Bok ran back to Kagur, pointed in the same direction he'd pointed before, and motioned for her to stand up. Apparently, he'd persuaded the big man to take them to the place where feathers could be had.

  She scrambled up, thanked Denda for his help, and bowed in the hope that even if her tone hadn't conveyed her meaning, the body language would. Then she trotted back to the healer's cave.

  Holg was still unconscious. "I promise, I'll be back," she said, then pulled on her armor.

  By the time she hurried back out into the sunlight, two more hunters had joined the expedition, the comely lass Kagur had noticed earlier and the lanky lad eager for her company. Bok performed the introductions. The big man was Vom, the girl was Tlee, and the other boy was Rho.

  Frowning, Vom addressed his companions. Naturally, Kagur couldn't understand a word of it, but she recognized the stern tone and demeanor from the days when she'd been an eager adolescent and one of her elders was taking her and some of her peers out to hunt. Vom was stressing that he was in charge, and by the gods, everyone else had better do whatever he commanded.

  When he finished with that, Vom led them all out of the village, past the sentry post, and then down a narrower trail that branched off the primary one. Ahead lay trees that, in the aggregate, were a darker green than the jungle Kagur had traversed before. Gleaming like silver in the sunlight, a river writhed through the forest on its way to the great central lake,

  Once the hunters descended to abundant vegetation and softer earth of the lowlands, sign became more abundant. Eventually, they paused to consider big, three-toed marks in the sod.

  It irked Kagur that she, a skilled tracker in her own country, was the only one who didn't know the source of the prints. She pointed to them and then spread her hands in a way that she hoped conveyed inquiry.

  Vom hesitated as though trying to figure out how to answer without words. Then he spread his fingers wide, stuck his arm back between his legs, and waggled it back and forth in a way that reminded Kagur of the spike-tailed reptile that had pursued her and Holg.

  Vom's undignified posture made Bok, Tlee, and Rho giggle, too, until the big man snapped at them. Then, as they all set forth again, he surprised Kagur by tipping her a wink.

  As the march continued, all the cave dwellers, now realizing how little she knew about their country, and perhaps discerning a way to amuse themselves on the trek, started instructing her as opportunities presented themselves. This pink fruit was good to eat, but those little dark blue berries were poisonous. Travelers needed to keep their distance from the mounds resembling oversized pinecones, lest black ants as long as her finger come swarming out to sting.

  The teaching, incomplete and piecemeal though it was, made her feel more confident, more herself, and she fixed every bit of it in her memory. She likewise strove to retain each name for something her companions gave in the course of their pointing and miming.

  The earth grew muddier as they approached the river. Channels of water showed through the trunks of the trees and tree-ferns, and clumps of something that looked like tangled gray-green beards hung from their branches and fronds. Brightly colored flowers grew there too, somehow flourishing high above the ground, while insects hovered, flitted, and droned in even greater numbers than in the jungle Kagur had hiked through before.

  She realized this was swamp, a sort of terrain with which she'd had little experience. The landscape's own unique plants, animals, and sign elicited a new wave of instruction from her young teachers. But now they provided it in whispers and kept an eye on their surroundings as they discoursed. Evidently, they believed the game they sought was somewhere close at hand.

  Vom spotted it first. He raised a hand, and everyone froze.

  Up ahead and to the right, its feathers a mottled brown and green, a bird the size of a raven stood ripping at the carcass of a lizard. It was close enough to shoot, but before Kagur could indicate as much, Vom waved everyone forward, and she decided that was actually better. Why risk losing yet another steel-tipped arrow if one of her companions could kill their quarry with a javelin?

  Keeping low and availing themselves of cover, they crept forward. Rho stole a glance at Tlee, then tapped himself on the chest, signaling that he wanted to be the one to make the kill. He straightened up, cocked his javelin back, and cast.

  Unfortunately, though he'd moved with commendable quickness, his aim was off. The javelin plunged into the soil beside the bird, and the creature gave a harsh cry, lashed its wings, and took flight.

  Bok leaped up, pivoted, tracking the bird's motion, and threw. His weapon stabbed into the creature's body, and it fell like a stone.

  The hunters trotted up to it, and Kagur saw it differed from the birds she knew. Little pointed teeth lined its beak, while its tail was as long as its body. But it had plumage, and that was all that mattered.

  Vom picked it up and proffered it for her inspection. The quizzical expression on his square, shaggy-browed face asked, Are you sure this is what you want? She gathered the bird's meat wasn't good to eat, and the warrior had missed her demonstration of the power of her longbow.

  She nodded vigorously. In response, Vom shrugged his massive shoulders, stuffed the bird in a hide bag, and waved everyone onward as if to say, In that case, we'll go catch some more of them.

  They did, while also killing reptiles the size of hares, digging tubers that grew just under the surface of the damp black earth, and even plucking cocoons from branches for some purpose Kagur couldn't guess, and which her companions' miming attempts at explanation failed to clarify. In any case, she realized she was glad the expedition wasn't purely an act of charity undertaken on her behalf.

  But if the day's events were somewhat improving her spirits, they were having the opposite effect on Rho. He was nearly always the first hunter to hurl his javelin and nearly always missed. Maybe he simply wasn't particularly skillful, or perhaps his eagerness to shine in Tlee's eyes was making him jumpy. Whatever the problem, either Bok or the girl herself killed every green-brown bird and most of the other game as well.

  Nobody smirked or teased Rho when he missed, and Tlee showed no sign of liking one boy better than the other. Still, as the day wore on, he frowned more and more often.

  Kagur felt an impulse to pat him on the back but refrained. When she was his age, she wouldn't have welcomed such an expression of sympathy. Come to think of it, she might not even now.

  Eventually, Vom led them all back toward the crags. Kagur wondered how he'd decided the moment had come. Maybe, living his whole life beneath the unmoving sun, he'd developed an innate sense of the passing of time that had yet to awaken in her.

  Everyone remained alert. In a place so full of dangerous beasts and insects, only a fool would have done otherwise. But still, their demeanor was more relaxed, and Kagur understood why. Hunters seeking their quarry carried themselves differently than those who'd already found it and were simply making sure trouble didn't catch them unawares.

  Rho, however, plainly didn't share his companions' self-satisfaction. Sulking, he said almost nothing until the moment when he suddenly pivoted to the right.

  Kagur looked to see what had caught his eye. Well back among the trees and tree-ferns rising from a particularly low and mucky patch of ground, one of the long-tailed birds perched on the stem of a sturdy frond. A few steps beyond it, a channel flowed sluggishly.

  Kagur had previously communicated to her companions t
hat they'd already taken enough birds to provide what she needed. Still, Rho shifted his grip on his javelin and stalked toward the new one.

  Vom raised his hand for everyone else to hang back, probably to ensure they wouldn't make any noise. The bearded Dragonfly wanted Rho to have the best possible chance to finally kill a bird.

  Meanwhile, the boy changed tactics. Seemingly recognizing that throwing at long range hadn't served him well, he circled toward the channel, a course that enabled him to creep up close to the bird from behind.

  Rho slowly and silently straightened up, took a moment to aim, and then cast his weapon. It pierced the bird between the wings, and it toppled from the frond.

  Pleased to see Rho succeed, Kagur nodded. The youth hurried toward his kill—then plunged into a sandy patch of channel-bank as if the earth beneath him had suddenly changed to powdery snow. Submerged to the sternum, he gave a startled yell.

  Vom spat what could only be a curse, shouted instructions to Rho, and then led the other hunters forward. Kagur was relieved to see the boy wasn't sinking any deeper, and that the other Dragonflies were concerned but by no means panicked. Evidently they knew how to extricate Rho from the mire.

  Rho lay on his back with his arms spread wide. Possibly, Vom had instructed him to assume that position. Bok started across the sand with his javelin extended butt-first for the other boy to grab.

  Vom barked a one-syllable command. Presumably, it was "No" or "Stop." Bok did the latter and then backed up.

  The burly tribesman probed the sand with the point of his own javelin. The flint came out wet with bits of grit clinging to it.

  Apparently, no part of the sandy patch was safe, which meant Rho's companions needed something longer than a javelin to pull him out. Kagur wished she hadn't abandoned her rope along with her backpack, but maybe they wouldn't really need it. Vom looked around, found a low-hanging branch, and chopped at its base with his hatchet.

  Rho screamed.

  Kagur spun back around. Gray-black worms the size of men were crawling out of the channel straight toward Rho, and the muck didn't even slow them down. They flowed over the top of it with a motion that was half slithering, half swimming. The fanged circular maws at the front ends of their bodies dilated and puckered, dilated and puckered, the biting, sucking action constant as a heartbeat.

  Kagur drove one of her two remaining arrows into the worm in the lead. It kept coming. She loosed her final shaft. That stopped it but did nothing to deter the creatures behind it. They simply nudged the carcass aside.

  Meanwhile, Vom, Bok, and Tlee scrambled closer to the morass and raised their javelins. Just before the adolescents could throw, the big man shouted. He'd spotted two more worms crawling up out of the channel, and these were headed in the trio's direction. If the young people had made their casts, it would have left them with only their knives to meet the threat.

  As matters stood, Kagur judged that she was the only would-be rescuer still free to come to Rho's aid. Unfortunately, with all her arrows gone, such an effort would require dashing onto ground that might well dissolve into slop beneath her feet. But she was just going to have to chance it. She dropped her bow, whipped out her sword, and sprinted.

  She circled around to the far side of the sandy patch. That way, she avoided the worms humping toward Bok, Tlee, and Vom, and besides, no one had probed over there. For all she knew, the ground might be more solid.

  Or not. The sand felt soft and yielding as she raced out onto it. Refusing to think about that, she slashed at a worm that was only an arm's length away from Rho.

  The longsword sliced open the creature's hide and exposed pale, moist flesh beneath. Thin, dark fluid and a thick, dungy smell spilled out of the wound.

  Fanged maw clenching and opening, clenching and opening, the creature twisted and surged at Kagur. She took a retreat that kept it from seizing her foot in its teeth and cut at it once more.

  The stroke split the worm's head—if a mouth alone sufficed to qualify a body part as a head. The thing flopped and coiled in what she hoped were its death throes.

  That was one foe accounted for. But as she stepped to meet the next, the sand melted beneath her as it must have melted under Rho. Crying out, she slid down into it like it too was a ravenous horror bent on seizing and destroying her.

  But she stopped sinking, or at least doing so rapidly, when the muck was up to her hips. She supposed some variation in the consistency kept her from instantly plunging in all the way up to the breastbone like Rho had.

  Whatever the reason, though footwork had just become impossible, she could still wield her blade. And she was going to have to, to save the boy and herself.

  The next worms heaved and slithered at her. She cut furiously, to hurt them and to balk them with shock, pain, and sheer opposing force when they sought to bite. Some surged close enough to bite anyway, and, fixed in place, she jerked her upper body from side to side in frantic attempts to dodge.

  As she would have expected, her efforts at evasion weren't always good enough. Twice, worms clamped onto her. The pressure of the contracting rings of fangs was excruciating, and only the reinforced leather of her armor prevented them from instantly shearing into her flesh. Bellowing, she stabbed and hacked until her attackers released their holds.

  Meanwhile, she sank deeper. The sand rose over her navel and then her floating ribs.

  A worm tried to hump on past her on its way to Rho. She shifted her grip on her sword hilt so she was only holding it by the pommel, and that afforded her just enough extra reach to jab her point into the creature's flank. Distracted from its intended prey, it writhed around to retaliate.

  The worms crawled at Kagur from all sides, and she had to twist at the waist to manage any sort of attacks at the one behind her. The motion seemed to sink her even faster, like she was screwing herself into the muck, and she discerned that in another few moments, she'd be in too deep to defend herself at all.

  Make the last few moments count, then. She struck as fast and hard as she could while roaring "Blacklion!" with every stroke.

  Until the muck engulfed her to the shoulders, and it became impossible to swing a sword. Then, panting, she contemplated the lengths of torn, segmented flesh on every side and discerned that none of them was moving anymore.

  Not long after that, Vom, Bok, and Tlee hauled Rho and her out of the mire. When they did, she saw that the Dragonflies had needed to kill four worms before they were finished. In the same time, while floundering in the ooze, she'd accounted for half a dozen.

  Her companions offered what she took to be expressions of admiration. Rho, however, spoke with a hangdog air. She suspected he blamed himself for drawing everyone else into danger, and that he might even be offering apologies along with his compliments.

  Kagur squeezed his shoulder and gestured to the bird he'd killed. She hoped those crude signals would somehow convey that they'd all survived unharmed and he'd killed the game he'd been after, so as far as she was concerned, all was well.

  And maybe they did, or at least some approximation thereof. Brushing wet sand off himself, the boy gave her a smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Council of War

  Kagur didn't think Vom had originally intended that he and his companions should spend the night away from the mountain village. But everyone needed a rest after the fight with the worms, and afterward, when they'd all marched from the swamp back into jungle, he called for a halt under the spreading branches of a towering, creeper-laden tree.

  Night fell with its usual suddenness shortly thereafter, as everyone but Kagur had likely sensed it would. When they all climbed the tree, she remembered she no longer had any rope to tie herself in place. Fortunately, though, she found a fork in the trunk where she could jam herself in half lying down and half sitting up. With wood pressing in on more sides than not, she managed to sleep without rolling over and plummeting to her death.

  The rest of the Dragonflies shouted greetings when the hun
ters reached the village the following day. People waved Kagur toward the healer's cave, and she realized Holg must be awake.

  Eager as she was to see him, she hesitated before stepping into the shadowy chamber with its painted walls. She didn't want to find him maimed or dying.

  "I know you're out there," the old man called. "I keep telling you, my senses are different than yours."

  At least he sounded the same as always. Kagur snorted and strode on in.

  In fact, Holg wasn't the same. The beak and claws of the flying reptile had left livid scars. But he didn't appear to be in pain or moving any more stiffly than usual as he sat with his back against a wall sipping water from a gourd.

  "My amber fetish is missing," the blind man said. "Do you know what's become of it?"

  "Yes." Kagur started telling him about the false trail she'd laid to mislead Eovath and the reptiles.

  "Xulgaths," Holg interrupted.

  "What?"

  "According to our hosts, the reptile-men are called xulgaths." Evidently, the old man had felt strong enough to make use of his translation spell.

  "If you say so." She finished her explanation of the fate of the fetish, which led in turn into an account of all that had happened since the fight atop the cliff.

  When she finished, Holg sighed and said, "Well, I'm sorry to lose that bead. I had it for a long time. But I'm grateful to you for carrying me all the way up into these mountains."

  Kagur scowled. "Don't be."

  "All right. I was forgetting, you help me simply because you need me."

  "No! That's not what I mean! It's ..." She groped for words. She wasn't good at apologizing. In the times before Eovath had gone mad and dragged her whole life into madness along with him, she hadn't needed to be.

  "I don't deserve your thanks," she said at last, "I've been an ungrateful, surly companion."

  He smiled wryly. "I'd rather have a comrade who snaps at me but comes to my aid when I need it than one who speaks cordially but is of no use when some unpleasant creature is ripping out my liver. And I understand how grief and rage still weigh on you."