Some people would say “the slowest,” in fact.
And there was no point in being anything other than patient with them. The earth snake afrinn, in fact, had probably been an exception to that rule, but, then, it was made not of stone but of swiftly moving sand. So that probably explained its “hasty” behavior.
She wanted badly to sit down after a while, but the Stone Man might take that as disrespect, so she remained standing until, at long last, it gave a last grating grunt of a chuckle and reached out toward her.
She froze again. Now what?
And it slowly, with extreme care, patted her left shoulder. Three heavy, but gentle, pats.
“Aaalll . . .” it said, “. . . llllyyyyy.”
Ally! So it had agreed to be bound to the Talisman! And it evidently had found the fact that she was so apologetic to be extremely amusing.
But it’s a Stone Man. And maybe for a Stone Man being bound in a Talisman for a couple of millennia is like being left in a room alone for a couple of days to a human. Who knows, it might have been peaceful for him. Like a meditative retreat.
At least she finally had something she could talk to! Or rather, something that could answer back. “May I sit?” she asked, politely. “Humans get tired.”
It nodded, slowly, and she put her back to the wall and slid down it. And as she did that, the Stone Man slowly rearranged the boulders that made up his body so that he was “sitting” across from her.
“Teeeeeeellll,” it urged.
So, assuming that the creature knew nothing past the earliest days of the Nation at the Mountain, she recited as brief a history as she could—essentially the “child’s history” that she told over to herself when she needed to pass the time. When she got thirsty, she took a drink of water; when hungry, she ate. And just about at sundown, she finished that and began the much shorter story of how she had ended up here.
By this time she could only see the Stone Man as a darker blot of shadow unless she used Mage Sight—and then, he and the other two afrinns lit up from within as if they were lanterns. She didn’t use Mage Sight often—it was effortless for some but exhausting for her—but tonight, being able to see her allies was very comforting. The air afrinn glowed like a drawing made in the air in pale blue dust. The water afrinn was like a green glass sculpture with a glowing core.
And the Stone Man radiated a soft yellow light, all over, as if something had heated the rock from which he was made until it gave off light as well as heat.
They all sat there quietly in the dark until the air afrinn moved out into the staircase—presumably making sure none of the Karsites tried anything. Watching with Mage Sight, for the first time, she saw how it did that—flattening itself and slipping under the door.
For some reason . . . the longer Sira sat with the Stone Man, the more some of the strain she had been under eased. It was as if he were radiating peace and certainty.
Maybe he was actually doing that. Maybe that was part of his power. Wasn’t there supposed to be a Mind-magic power that worked on the emotions? It might make sense for an earth afrinn to have that.
Or maybe it was something else. For the first time, one of these afrinns had recognized her as an ally—and didn’t seem inclined to run off on her.
Finally, the afrinn spoke.
“Caaallllll fffffiiiiiiiirrrrrrre.”
Her hand went to the necklace, which now only had a single bronze disk woven into it.
The afrinn nodded ponderously. “Caaaaalllll ffffffiiiiiiiiirrrrre,” he repeated.
Well, what did she have to lose? Of all of the afrinn she had released so far, this one was by far the most conversational. The least she could do would be to do what it asked.
When she got to her feet, so did the Stone Man. It moved out of her way as she paced off the number of steps to the center of the cell, put the bronze Talisman on the floor, and went back to the wall. “You’ll want to shield yourself,” she warned the Stone Man—or trying to, because she wasn’t sure how much it understood. “I don’t know how to take the spell off, so I have to break it.”
The thing just made a sound like two bricks scraping together, so she mentally shrugged, spiked the spell, and put up her shields.
And waited.
And waited.
In fact, she waited for so long, she began to fear she hadn’t done the job properly and was about to lower her shields and check on it, when there was a huge flash of real light, and a blinding flash of Mage energy; she felt the impact on her shields and lost both real and Mage Sight for what felt like forever. In fact, she was still rubbing her running eyes when she saw a sort of glowing man-shaped blur bending over her, and she yelped.
“Aren’t you supposed to be making a polite speech at me instead of shrieking in my ears? And I do have ears, you know.”
The voice sounded amused—and also odd. As if it were coming from deep inside a well, or across an echoing canyon. And there was a hissing and crackling component to it as well, like the hissing of flames.
She knuckled both her eyes, then dropped her shields as the Stone Man let out another one of his rumbling, gravel-grating chuckles.
It was perfectly easy to see this afrinn in the dark. He glowed like the coals of a slow-burning fire, and he looked as if he were made of those same coals, too. And the air in the cell was definitely warmer, and it smelled pleasantly of scented smoke, mingled cedar and sage. “Do you want to hear the speech?” she asked.
“To be honest? Not really. I’ve heard it six times before, after all. Greetings, Sira! I am Eakkashet, and may I say, I am very glad you found a way to release us.” Then the creature bowed slightly. The afrinn certainly sounded pleased. But the wonder was that he was talking at all!
“Why is it that you can talk to me and the others couldn’t?” she asked before she thought. And then berated herself for being both rude and stupid. You don’t go demanding things of an afrinn! she reminded herself.
But Eakkashet did not seem to mind. “Borkase and I are much more powerful than the other five,” the fire afrinn said, modestly. “At least at the moment. The amount of energy it takes to remain on the physical plane with you and communicate in a way you can understand is more than any of the others could manage.”
“Caaaaan taaaaaalllk,” the Stone Man objected. “Juuuuuuuusssssst sssssssslllllooooooooowww.”
“Yes, yes, Borkase, and it would take you three turns of the glass to say a single sentence,” Eakkashet replied, and he patted the Stone Man’s shoulder. “That’s one reason why he told you to release me. The other is that he can sense the demon-summoners coming. It’s time for you to escape.”
“What?” It was a good thing she was already sitting down, or her legs probably would have given out under her. “How? And why are you helping me so much? What am I going to owe you after this?”
Eakkashet didn’t answer her directly; instead he looked at the Stone Man, who went rigid for a moment, then rumbled something.
“All right, I expect we can take a little time for explanation,” said Eakkashet. “First, Borkase can sense the demon-summoners coming because the earth itself rejects them as unclean. He knows where every single one of them is, and he feels many of them heading in this direction.”
“And why are you helping me? What am I going to owe you?”
“You’ll owe us nothing, Sira. When your ancestors took that Portal and arrived where they did, we that you call afrinns were curious about them and made some tentative alliances with the Mages among them. Now, I won’t go into a long description about politics and warfare among the creatures of other planes—just take it as a given that we do have such things, and a couple of generations later, when your people were making quite a name for yourselves as assassins, some of us found ourselves with an acute need to hide among you. Now, this was the point in time when your Mages were trying to find a way to
store the memories of the most skilled of you in Talismans so that those memories could be passed down directly. Some of us volunteered to hold those memories and be bound to the Talismans so we could hide more efficiently, and that’s what happened. And then your Mages found a better way, forgot we could also be called out of the Talismans to help out when we were needed, and we got buried in storage. Until you came along.”
A big half-circle of glowing white appeared in the glowing red of Eakkashet’s head. If it was supposed to be a smile, it didn’t succeed in looking anything like one—but Sira found it reassuring, anyway.
The air afrinn whistled like a wind among the rocks.
“Now, enough chatter. You need to escape before the demon-summoners arrive. We’re going to help you, but first you need to lend power to my friends, and then eat and sleep, so that we are all as ready as we can be.”
The Stone Man made a small noise that indicated his agreement.
“So, it is my feeling this would better be done in daylight,” Eakkashet continued.
“I agree. You’ll be providing more than enough to occupy everyone’s attention, and I haven’t had a chance to study the ground.” This was going to be hard. But if the afrinns could keep up their rampages for long enough, she could probably put enough distance between her and the prison that when they realized she was gone, they wouldn’t be able to spot her. “Are—you and Borkase or just the others going to need a boost of power from me?” she added, hesitantly.
“Just air and water.”
She was very relieved to hear that. “Uh—forgive me for asking something that is probably obvious, but—can you set things on fire?”
The afrinn roared with laughter. It sounded like a roaring fire. “Oh, I am going to be setting everything on fire that does not run away from me, Sleepgiver. So eat and drink and sleep while you can, tonight, Sleepgiver. Tomorrow we will be in a race against foes and time.”
Sira beckoned the air and water afrinns to come to her, and she lent them every bit of her magic energies that she could muster. Then she ate and drank, eating up all the bread she had, since it wouldn’t keep and was bulky to carry. But she didn’t go to sleep immediately.
Instead, she packed as much as she thought she dared carry. Her weapons, her waterskin, the dried beef. When the breakout began tomorrow, she wanted to be able to sling everything on her back and go. The water afrinn obligingly filled the waterskin until it was tight with fresh water.
Only when she was certain that she had packed everything useful in the most efficient manner possible did she lie down. And somehow . . . she fell asleep.
* * *
• • •
There was more cover than Tory would have thought from the view from the hill. Ahkhan had a knack for finding places that held deep pools of shadow that covered all three of them.
But mostly they worked their way in a zig-zagging course one at a time, with Ahkhan in the lead and the smell of dust and dead leaves in their nostrils. Ahkhan would pick a new bit of cover and scuttle into it. That was the signal for Tory to take the cover he’d just been in, and Kee to follow into Tory’s cover. Kee would give the soft whistle of the top-knot quail (something Ahkhan had taught them all) when he was safe, which was Ahkhan’s signal to find the next spot and move into it.
When they were about halfway across, Ahkhan uttered a soft hoot. Tory collapsed into his pool of shadow, got a good long drink from his waterskin, and tried to relax for a moment. From where he lay, he could see the torches of the Karsite troops manning that barricade across the road. They were tiny pinpricks of light in the far distance, visible only because there was no other light out here but thin moonlight. He was pretty confident that if (when!) they came back this way during the day, no one from the barricade would be able to see them from this far away.
Unless, of course, they were all on their feet and running.
Which would be suicidal. Obviously.
While they were resting, and Tory was looking directly at the tower, the window he was watching, trying in vain to see whatever it was that Kee could see, suddenly lit up with a brief flash of light.
“What was that?” he hissed.
“I wasn’t looking,” said Kee, alarmed.
“There was a flash of light in Sira’s cell.” Ahkhan sounded remarkably calm, but maybe that was just a thing that Sleepgivers could do—push all their emotions aside for as long as it took them to get a job done.
“There are four creatures with her now,” Kee said, instantly. “And the new one is really strong. If being lit up more than the others means power, that is.”
“She must have decided to try to escape, then,” Ahkhan mused aloud. “I cannot think of any other reason why she would have released . . . never mind. I will explain later. She must have learned that the demon-summoners are on the way.”
“Or she just guessed, given that she must have been holding them off for a good long while, and she knew they wouldn’t stand for it much longer,” Tory murmured.
“We had luck on our side getting here when we did. We cannot expect to have it for much longer,” Ahkhan sighed. “Well, we shall have to assist luck. Let’s get to the foot of the tower, or as near as we dare.”
They got in place, undetected, sooner than Tory would have expected, and once they were all well-hidden in that strip of brush and trees they’d been aiming for, Ahkhan put both hands to his mouth and hooted—an owl call, but one that Tory didn’t recognize.
He waited a long moment and hooted again.
When there was no answer, he uttered a quiet oath. “She must be asleep. Which means she intends to escape by day, which suits our plans.”
Kee looked at him incredulously. “Asleep? How could she possibly sleep?”
“Training,” Ahkhan said. “And we should do the same.”
“Well, I can’t sleep,” Kee told him stubbornly.
“Then you may take the first watch, and wake me when you find you can sleep, after all.” And with that, Ahkhan pulled his cloak around him and turned into a ball of fabric.
That left the two of them alone in the shadows and the darkness. Sounds traveled a long way in the desert stillness, and there were very faint whispers that could be the men on the barricades talking to one another, off in the far distance.
It was a reminder that they needed to be as quiet as possible. “Let’s look in on her,” Tory urged. “It’s the first chance we’ve had to do this properly since we joined the caravan. We can at least see what these four things with her are.”
Kee nodded wordlessly, and they locked hands and went hunting.
This was the clearest sight he’d gotten of this room yet. Sira was a ball of fabric in one corner of the floor, looking rather like her brother. But this time, rather than just getting a sense of something is there, Tory got perfectly clear looks at all four of the creatures.
There was one at the door, hovering in midair, a pale blue-winged lizard, transparent, as if it were made of glass. There was another curled pensively next to it, also transparent, but green, a doglike thing with finned feet, like fish fins, and fins for ears. Sitting together in the middle of the room, still between Sira and the door, were two very different creatures. They looked . . . only vaguely like humans. The first looked exactly as if someone had constructed a statue out of boulders—as if one of the hoodoos back behind them had come to life.
But the fourth—
This must be the thing that caused the flash of light. It looked like another roughly human-shaped statue but made of glowing coals instead of boulders, coals from which the occasional flame licked.
And it opened white-hot “eyes” and looked straight at him.
“Dawn,” it said, in a voice like a hissing, crackling fire. “Be ready.”
And it closed its “eyes” again.
Tory sensed Kee “tugging” at him to pull
back. He broke contact and opened his eyes and was, of course, unable to see anything of Kee but a darker shadow in the darkness.
“What—what was that?” Kee gasped.
“A friend.” Tory was absolutely certain of that. And inside, despite the danger, despite the fact that the odds stacked against them were terrible, he smiled. Because he had just seen four creatures that were, without a shadow of a doubt, made of magic. He didn’t know what they were other than that, but the mere fact that they were something other than creatures of the material world made him want to jump to his feet and shout with excitement.
“Look,” he continued. “With those four things guarding her, she’s perfectly safe until morning. I’m going to get some sleep, and I assume if there’s any night left when Ahkhan gets too tired I’ll be taking the third watch. Are you sure you’ll be all right taking the first watch?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t possibly sleep, and I don’t know how you can,” Kee retorted, resentfully.
Tory was about to snap back at him when Kee put his hand on Tory’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding it. “I’m all nerves. I shouldn’t take it out on you. I’m the one who dragged you into this in the first place.”
“That’s what friends are for—being dragged into things,” Tory countered, and steadied his own nerves. We’ve got—whatever it is that is up there helping Sira. That’s way more help than I thought we’d have. We just might get through this. “As long as you’ll be all right, I’m going to see if I can copy Ahkhan.”
He honestly didn’t think he’d actually be able to get any sleep. But the next thing he knew, he was startled wide awake. The faint, predawn light gave him a better view of his surroundings than he would have thought, and beside him Ahkhan and Kee crouched in postures of tense readiness. Then the sound that had awakened him came again, from the tower.
A bird call.
* * *
• • •
Sira came awake instantly as something nudged her toe. It was the Stone Man, and it wasn’t quite dawn, judging by the faint gray rectangles that were her windows. The Stone Man shrugged, as if in apology, and gestured to Eakkashet.
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