I smiled at him, and he at me, and suddenly his anger went away.
An hour later, as we rode higher into the hills, a new scourge descended upon us.
Little black birds with red markings on their throats flew at us in angry flocks out of the trees. They drove their black beaks into the wounds on the horses' bodies to lap up their blood; they beat their wings and shrieked about our heads as they tried to get at the mosquito bites and leech cuts on our faces. Although they made no attack against any unmarked flesh, we bore enough wounds there that we were afraid they might pluck out our eyes. There seemed to be thousands of these bloodbirds, and they filled the air like a black cloud.
'Hoy, this is too much!' Alphanderry called out. He waved his hand in front of him as he tried to bury his head in his cloak. 'This is the end!'
The horses were all whinnying and stomping beneath the attacking birds. I managed to steady Altaru and urge him closer to Alphanderry and his bloody white horse. I waved my hand about violently, to no more effect than brushing frantic feathers. I looked at Maram, beginning to slip into despair again. I looked at Atara with her haunted eyes, and Liljana flinching beneath the birds' beaks. Their suffering made my eyes burn. And then I suddenly remembered that an infinite fire pooled always ready to fill my heart. It blazed there now, so hot and bright and full that it hurt, and I realized that it was nothing other than love. A wild and terrible love, perhaps, but love nonetheless. I whipped out my sword then, and a half-dozen birds fell in pieces to the ground. To Maram, I called out, 'Use your gelstei!'
The thousands of birds chittered and screamed as they darted and wheeled and kept diving at the horses and us. It was like being in the middle of a cloud of whirling feathers and stabbing beaks.
Maram gripped his red crystal in his hand as he called back to me, 'But Mithuna said that I shouldn't use it unless it was necessary!'
'It's necessary!' I said.
Maram struggled to position the gelstei so that it filled with light. Then something wild leaped inside him, and an orange flame shot from his stone and wrapped itself around twenty or thirty of the birds. They fell from the air like shrieking torches. I waited for another blast from the firestone to incinerate yet more of these pitiless creatures, but Maram shook his head as he shouted. 'That's all I can do for now!'
Kane, Atara and I were now laying about fiercely with our swords. But the birds had become wary of the flashing steel and mostly managed to avoid them. And then an inspiration came to me. I shielded my eyes as I called to Alphanderry, 'You found words to make the angels sing, now find those to drive away these demon birds!'
Alphanderry nodded his head as if he understood. Then he opened his mouth, and out of him poured the most bittersweet song i had ever heard. The notes of the music shifted and rose as he played with the harmonies; soon the sound of it grew so eerie and high-pitched that it hurt my ears. It seemed to unnerve the birds as well.
As the sting built louder and louder and filled all the forest with its terrible tones, the birds suddenly took wing as if moved by one mind, and vanished into the trees.
Alphanderry pressed his horse nearer to me, and his lips pulled back in a smile. 'I had never thought to do something like that,' he said.
Now the others gathered around us, and they were smiling, too.
'Do you think it will work against the mosquitoes?' Maram asked. 'And the leeches?'
'I don't know,' Alphanderry said.
I sat on Altaru wiping my sword as I looked about the woods. The oaks and poplars here were very tall, and there were fewer leeches among the vegetation than in other parts of the Vardaloon. The mosquitoes seemed less numerous as well. But whatever had been hunting us was now much closer. I felt its hunger like a gigantic leech wrapped around my spine
'There is more here to worry about than vermin,' I said. Then I took a deep breath and told them of what I had sensed.
'But this is terrible!' Maram said. 'This is the worst news yet!'
We held council then and decided to go no farther that day. And so we gathered wood for the night's fires; we cut brush to fortify our camp. When we had finished it was growing late, with perhaps only an hour left until dark.
'What is it Val?' Maram asked me. We all stood together near the rude fence we had made. 'Is it the Grays?'
I slowly shook my head as I looked for any movement about us. Next to me, Kane stared at the woods with hate-filled eyes. And then suddenly he walked over toward his horse and slid his bow out of its sling.
'What are you doing?' I asked him.
His jaws clamped together as he strung his bow and then slung on his quiver of arrows.
'Where are you going?' I asked.
He finally looked at me as his eyes took on the gleam of the black stone he held in his hand. And he growled out, 'I'm going hunting.'
He began moving toward the edge of the camp, and I rested my hand against his arm. I said, 'One alone in the woods will have no friends to stand with him.'
'That's true,' he said, looking at Atara as she, too, strung her bow. 'But one alone may go where others cannot.'
'Yes,' I said, 'all the way to the otherworld.'
'Ha - I'm setting out on no such journey!' he said. 'As with the Grays, I'll hunt whatever is hunting you.'
'Do you know what it is, then?'
'No - I only suspect.'
'You should have told me,' I said, staring at the shadows between the trees.
'And you should have told me,' he said, catching me up in the dark light of his eyes.
'You should have told me if it was this close.'
And with that, he carefully parted the brush surrounding our camp and stole off into the woods.
And so we waited. While Atara stood ready with an arrow nocked in her bowstring, Maram put aside his flrestone in favor of his more reliable sword. Alphanderry and Liljana drew their cutlasses, and I my kalama, and we joined Master Juwain in gazing out through the curtains of green all around us.
'Surely it won't come for us here,' Maram said. 'Surely it will wait until tomorrow when we're lost in the forest. And then pick us off one by one.'
Maram, I knew, was exhausted - as we all were. In such ground, fear most easily takes seed.
'We survived the Grays,' I told him. 'We can survive this, too.'
And then I thought, no, not survive. But to thrive, yes, always and only to live with the wildness that makes eagles soar and wolves to sing. I clapped Maram on the shoulder then and traded smiles with him, and after that he spoke no more words of defeat.
Liljana, after doubtfully running her thumb across the edge of her sword, came over to inspect mine. She touched my kalama without my leave, and then she touched my arm as if testing its strength. She said, 'Listen, my dear, if there's to be a battle, shouldn't you eat something first? Perhaps I could make a little -'
'Liljana,' I said, 'your devotion is even more sustaining than your meals.'
I touched her face, which broke into a wide smile, and her fear of dying unheralded seemed to melt away.
Next to me, Master Juwain looked down at the varistei he held in his hand. His mind, I thought, like a sharpening wheel spin-ning out sparks, was turniing around the same thoughts over and
over. 'What is troubling you sir?' I asked him.
He held up his green crystal and said, 'This is a stone of healing, as we've all seen.
And yet I'm afraid it has no power over death.'
'No,' I said, 'its power is only in life.'
I smiled as I gripped his wiry forearm, and I felt his veins pressing against mine. His mind seemed to find a moment of peace even as his heart beat with a great surge of life.
Alphanderry, too, came closer as he stared out into the darkening woods. He said,
'A scryer once told me that I wouldn't die without finding the words to my song. Yet today, they seem as far away as the stars.'
'And what does that tell you?' I asked him.
'That scryers are usually wrong.'
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This made Atara smile wryly, and I said to Alphanderry, 'Do you know what it tells me?'
'What, Val?'
'That this is not your day to die.'
Our eyes found each other then, and the light that came into his was almost as bright as the fire pouring out of Flick.
Atara stood staring out into the woods as if the whole world were a scryer's sphere.
I stepped up to her and said, 'You've seen something, haven't you?'
'Yes,' she said, 'so many people here. In the forest, where the oaks grow along a stream. They were slaughtered. They are being slaughtered, or will be - oh, Val, I don't know, I don't know!'
I cupped my hand around her shoulder as she rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Death clung to her like a thousand leeches; it was written across her face like the letters of Master Juwain's book.
'I don't know what to do,' she said, 'because nothing can be done. It can't be, don't you see?'
I squeezed her shoulder and said to her, 'What is it the scryers always say? That in the end, we choose our futures, yes?'
I touched my forehead against hers and felt the lightning scar there pressing against her third eye. I felt her breath against my face and mine falling against hers like fire.
When we pulled away from each other, her eyes were sparkling as if she had come alive again.
After that, we all stood watching the woods in silence. I was only dimly aware of the mosquitoes whining about and biting me; birds chirped and chittered from far off, but I was listening for other sounds. I gazed past the hanging leeches and the insect-eaten leaves, looking for something that was looking for me.
And then, out of the darkening woods, a terrible scream shook the trees. We all started at the anguish of it. I gripped my sword with sweating hands, as Maram, Liljana and Alphanderry theirs, while Atara drew her bow and sighted her arrow in the direction from which it had come. A second scream ripped through the air, followed by another, and then came the sound of something large crashing through the bracken around our camp.
'What is it?' Maram whispered to me.'Can you see -'
'Shhh!' I whispered back. 'Get ready!'
At that moment, a young woman broke from the cover of the trees running as fast as she could. Her long brown hair seemed torn, as was the homespun dress that barely covered her torn and bleeding body. She ran in a panic, now casting a quick look over her shoulder, now turning her head this way and that as if seeking an escape route through the woods. She stumbled past us barely fifty yards from our camp.
But so great was her terror to flee whatever was pursuing her that she seemed not to see us. 'What shall we do?' Maram whispered to me.
'Wait,' I said, feeling my fingers curl around the hilt of my kalama. Next to me, Atara aimed her arrow at the trees behind the woman. 'Wait a few moments more.'
But Maram, who was now trembling with anger, had suffered through too many days of waiting. He suddenly waved his sword above his head and shouted, 'Over here!
We're over here!'
At the sound of his huge voice, the woman stopped and turned toward us. The look of relief on her pretty face was that of a lost child who has found her mother. She ran straight for our camp, and we pulled aside the brush fence to let her in.
'Thank you,' she gasped from her bloody lips as we gathered around her. 'It... killed the others. It almost killed me.'
'What did?' I asked her.
But she was too spent and frightened to say much more. She stood near Maram trembling and weeping and gasping for air.
'Whatever it is,' Atara said, 'it likely won't show it face now.'
'No,' Alphanderry said, 'not until it grows dark.'
Maram, who was swelling with pity, opened his cloak to gather in the woman next to him. He wrapped it around her and asked, 'What is your name?' 'Melia,' the woman sobbed out. 'I'm Melia.'
Liljana sniffed at this bruised and beautiful woman as if jealous of Maram's gentleness toward her. And gentle .Maram was, but I could also feel his desire rising like hot sap in a tree. It surprised me to feel as well a fierce desire for him burning through Melia's bleeding body.
'They're all dead,' Melia said, pointing out into the woods. 'All dead.'
I turned to peer through the trees. Behind me I heard Maram making strangled sounds as if his desire for Melia had caught in his throat. 'Ah,' he groaned, 'ah, ah, ahhh!'
I turned back to see Melia's face pressed into the curve of Maram's neck. Her hand was clutching there, too, as she pulled closer to him. It took me a moment to credit what my eyes knew to be true. Maram's eyes, I saw, were almost popping from his head as he struggled to scream. And all the while, Melia squeezed harder and harder as she fastened her teeth into him and bit open his neck. 'Ah,' Maram gasped through a burble of blood, 'ah, ah, ahhh!'
'Hold, there!' I shouted. 'What are you doing?' I moved over to pull her away from the stricken Maram, but she raised an arm and knocked me to the ground with a shocking strength. As I was rising back up - and Liijana and Alphanderry moved toward them - Maram's cloak fell open to reveal Melia's changing shape. Now I couldn't credit what my eyes reported to me, for in only a moment Melia had transformed into a large, black, growling bear.
'Val,' Maram gasped as he struggled helplessly, 'ah, Val, Val!' The bear - or whatever Melia really was - pushed its snout against Maram as it growled and bit and lapped his blood. Its black claws dug into his back, pulling him deep into this killing embrace. I swung my sword at it then. I expected to feel the kalama's razor edge bite through fur and flesh. Instead, it fell against the bear's hunched back as if striking stone. With a scream of tortured steel, it broke into two pieces. So broke the noble blade that my father had given me. I stared down at its jagged hilt-shard as if it were I who had been broken.
'Val, help us!' Liijana called to me, I looked up to see her and Alphanderry ruin their blades against the bear as well. Atara shot an arrow point blank at the bear's back but somehow, it glanced off its furry hide. Master Juwain finally found his heart and beat at the bear's head with his leather-bound book; but he might as well have beaten at a mountain. Suddenly the bear swiped out with one of its paws and knocked Master Juwain off his feet. Then, still gripping Maram with one arm, it struck out at Alphanderry and Liljana with the other, bloodying and stunning them. It didn't take long for it to rip apart the fence surrounding our camp. Now licking the blood that smeared its mouth, it carried Maram off into the woods.
'Val, they're getting away!' Atara shouted at me. She fired off another arrow, to no effect.
For only a moment, I hesitated. Then, gripping my broken sword, I sprang after them. I ran crashing and screaming like a wild man through the thick bracken. My feet pounded against the green-shrouded earth as my eyes fixed on the black, shaggy thing pulling Maram through the bushes with an unbelievable strength. It seemed impossible that I could hurt this unnatural creature in any way. Yet I suddenly knew with an utter certainty that I couldn't fail, that a light beyond light would show me where my sword must strike. And so as I closed with them and the bear-thing raised its paw to brain me, I ducked beneath it and stabbed out with all my strength. The splintered steel drove deep into the bear's armpit. It howled in a sudden rage as blood spurted and I wrenched my sword free. Then the bear's paw swiped out again, striking the side of my head and knocking me nearly senseless.
‘Val!' Atara screamed from behind me. 'Oh, my lord, Val!'
I rose to one knee, breathing hard as I blinked and looked out upon an amazing sight. For the beast was shifting shapes and changing yet again - this time into what I took to be its true form. It had two arms and two legs, even as I did, and two hands, each ending in five thick fingers. It was entirely naked and hairless and covered with a thick, black carapace more like the burnt iron of a meteor than skin. It couldn't have moved at all except for the joints in this stone-hard armor. Into one of these, I saw, between its mighty arm and blocky body, I had chanced to drive my sword.
Although blood flowed from it f
reely, it seemed that it was not a fatal wound. It now dropped Maram onto the ground as it turned to regard me. It was a man, I thought, surely it must be a man. But only its eyes - large and lonely and full of malice -
seemed human.
'Val!' Atara shouted. 'Get out of the way!'
This hideous man suddenly moved forward, growling and cursing at me. I saw from the blazing intelligence of his eyes that this time he didn't intend to present his more vulnerable parts to what was left of my sword. He would kill me, I knew, crushing me beneath his body as easily as he might a rabbit. I might have turned from him and fled back toward our camp. But then he would have had his way with Maram. And so instead, sensing the unbearable tension in Atara behind me, I suddenly dropped to the ground. I heard her bowstring twang as an arrow shrieked through the air above my head. It drove straight into the beast-man's eye. This stopped him dead In his tracks, though strangely he did not fall And then another arrow, fired off with the blinding speed of which only Sarni warriors are capable, took him in his other eye.
'Father!' he cried out in a terrible voice that seemed to shake all the world. In this one sound were many deep emotions: astonishment, longing, relief and bitter hate. For only a moment, it seemed that a howl of grief answered him from far away. And then he died. He toppled backward to the ground like a tree and lay still among the ferns and flowers.
I was very weak, as if it had been my blood that he had drunk. Yet I managed to get up and go over to Maram. Atara and the others joined me there, too. Master Juwain found that the wounds to Maram's neck were not as grave as we had feared. It seemed that the beast-man had only pierced the vein there to take his meal. Maram, he said, had most likely fainted from the loss of blood.
'I hope that is the worst of it,' he said, looking through the woods at the body of the beast-man. 'Human bites are more poisonous than a snake's.'
He brought out his gelstei then and reached deep to find its healing fire. After a while, Maram opened his eyes, and we helped him sit up.
'Ah, Atara, you killed him!' Maram said as he looked into the woods. 'Good! Good!
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