“It’s a damn shame,” he continued, changing the subject quickly, “that we can’t pluck these birds for roasting whole instead of skinning them.”
“For the fat and crispy skin,” she agreed, and licked her lips. “But—wait, why don’t we have Eakkashet burn the feathers off?”
“And spread the stink of burning feathers far and wide?” he countered. “I thought about that, but scent, especially of burning things, spreads a long way. I’m not willing to take the chance for a bit of hot, fatty skin. Besides, it’d be pretty flat without salt.”
The was a long silence. “You’re better at these wilderness things than I would have thought,” she admitted.
“Sometimes a spy has to skulk outside a town because he’d be really obvious in it,” he pointed out.
“Well—that’s true.” She looked toward him, and smiled. “Thanks for all you are doing, Tory. We’d never have gotten this far without you.”
They finished their work—Tory making sure to save as much of the fat from the bird as he could. They’d been eating trail biscuit, dried beef, and rabbit, a notoriously lean meat, for days. He was feeling a craving for fat, and he knew their bodies needed it. Bits of fat trimmed as best he could from the bird skin went into the helm with the innards. The birds had obviously been putting on weight for winter.
When they went back into the cave, they found that Eakkashet had made a sort of fireless campfire by heaping up river stones and heating them until they glowed. Sira put half the contents of the helm into Kee’s and impaled them both among the stones after Atheser added water. Eakkashet took the meat to grill. Then they all sat back wearily against the water-smoothed back wall of the cave, which Eakkashet had also heated, and let the warmth sink into their bones.
The new air afrinn stirred restlessly as they let out equally exhausted sighs, then, all on its own, moved over to the cave entrance and bubbled it. Tory was about to suggest that wasn’t necessary, then changed his mind. After all, Kee and Sira—Kee especially—could replace any power the creature spent in making its illusion.
And the illusion might confuse wolves, bears, or pards that smelled the meat and came to see where it was. Enough to give them a chance to get out their bows and discourage further investigation. Tory wasn’t naive enough to think that their bows were going to be powerful enough to kill a bear or even a pard, but a shaft in the hindquarters would be painful enough to make either bolt, without enraging them enough to cause them to attack.
Finally the stew smelled done, Eakkashet took up the helms and cooled them, and they shared the food. Ahkhan and Tory shared one helm full of stew, and Kee and Sira shared the other. The addition of the fat the biscuits soaked up answered a gnawing in his stomach that the rabbit hadn’t been able to assuage.
“What would have happened if the Sleepgivers had been transported here instead of to the Mountain, back in the beginning?” Kee asked, in a near whisper, as they finished the last of the innard stew, packed up the cooked quarters—one-half bird, one-half rabbit, each, wrapped in their rags and stowed in packs—and cleaned the helms in the stream. Tory got a last handful of skink cress and scrubbed the stones outside the cave. The stink was powerful enough to make his eyes water for a moment. But better safe than sorry. He and Sira had been kneeling there, and there was surely the smell of blood and body fluids all over those stones. This would keep animals away.
“This fat land?” Ahkhan laughed quietly. “There would be no Karsites, there would be no Sleepgivers, and probably there would be no Mags and his family. Because if there had been no Sleepgivers, my father’s uncle would have had no cause to leave the Mountain we would have built here. And we would likely be a Nation of herdsmen and farmers, with a core of Mages and a cadre of warriors to guard the rest from threats from without, just as we were in the most ancient days. And you, Kee, would have had no cause to ever meet my sister.”
“And that would have been a great—”
A blood-curdling howl split the night air.
It was not a wolf—no wolf born had ever made a sound like that. It was like the uncanny marriage of a wolf howl, a pard snarl, a bear bellow, and the sounds of humans shrieking in unbearable pain.
Tory tossed the weed into the stream, flinging himself back into the cave. Halina did . . . something that made the surface of her shiver and go slightly opaque. Sira extinguished the Mage-light, and Eakkashet put his hands on the campfire stones, extinguishing their glow and cooling them within a heartbeat. In the moonlight pouring down onto their side of the stream, Tory saw the air afrinn sealing herself down against all the external surfaces of the cave-mouth. Was she making sure no scent from in here leaked out into the night? He fervently hoped so.
The sound came again, answered by three more. The howls had the unsettling effect of sounding as if they were coming from everywhere.
“Demons.” Sira hissed, needlessly.
All of them except Halina scooted as far back into the cave as they could get. Even Eakkashet. The temperature inside the cave plummeted—was that Eakkashet’s doing, so that the area of the illusion didn’t register to the demons as warmer than the surrounding rock? It was a good idea—but that meant they were all huddled together in near-freezing temperatures, getting colder and colder as the moments passed.
As the temperature dropped, the feeling of tension in the cave grew—and the howls got closer and closer.
With a thud that vibrated the stones under them, a Karsite demon leaped down from the top of the cliff above them into the stream.
Tory stuffed his hand into his mouth to keep his gasp from escaping, as the thing looked upstream and down, its nose in the air, sniffing. It got a nose full of the skink weed and sneezed, sending foul-smelling mucus into the stream.
In the moonlight was impossible to tell what color it was except that it was pale. It had a big, blocky head that was mostly mouth. The mouth didn’t close all the way, because of the interlacing teeth, far too many of them, thin, and needle-sharp. Two horns like cow’s horns grew from its head and another from where its nose would have been. It appeared to have no neck, just a head set on massive shoulders, arms that were far too long and ended in claws as long as Tory’s forearm. Right now it had those claws curled under so it could walk on its knuckles. Its back sloped down to massive hindquarters and ridiculously small hind legs. The head had three eyes, one on either side and one in the middle. It was naked, with strange skin that looked like plates of boiled-leather armor. Tory was pretty sure if they fired an arrow at it, unless the arrow lodged between those plates, it would bounce right off.
In short, it was impossible.
It continued to sniff and sneeze, only stopping once to utter one of those howls. Tory covered his ears with his hands to keep out that sound, which was so completely terror-inducing that if he had not been sitting already, his knees would have given way.
Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the wretched thing sat right down on the bank, squarely in front of the cave entrance, continuing to look up and down the stream.
Despite the fact that he was huddled with the others, Tory felt utterly alone in his terror. He was afraid to breathe, afraid that the thing might hear it, despite the noise of the water over the rocks outside the cave. In fact, he was quite sure he had never been so terrified in his entire life.
And just when he was certain he was either going to break down or pass out from the fear—the thing stood up and roared a challenge downstream.
And it was answered by something that sounded like metal being torn in two. And it was struck by a hurtling object larger than it was, an object that was transparent, moving like a thunderbolt, and even more terrifying to look at than the demon was.
The demon was knocked off its feet and a good wagon-length upstream by the thing, which reared above the water and uttered another one of those screams. It looked like a finned serpent with the needle-toothed
, multiantennaed, spike-spined, blind-eyed head of a nightmare.
And it was bigger than the demon.
The demon got to its feet again and roared back. And that was when the new creature somehow grew larger.
Somehow? In an instant, Tory realized he knew very well how the creature was getting bigger. He saw pulses of water moving from the stream up into the creature’s body, increasing its bulk, making its teeth longer, its spines more numerous.
Tory watched, mind and body absolutely paralyzed.
It reared back and struck at the demon, which barely managed to leap backward away from teeth that snapped closed so close to the demon’s face that scarcely a hair separated them.
The demon turned tail and ran, bellowing.
The creature coiled up its serpent-body, rearing half of itself above its coils, and Tory waited in terror for the thing to figure out that they were there.
And then his insides turned to water as Halina made a hole in herself.
And the serpent looked swiftly from left to right, and dove into the cave, shedding most of its bulk into the river again as it did so.
If Tory hadn’t been so paralyzed, he would have screamed his lungs out.
But Sira leapt up from her spot against the wall and flung herself at the creature. For one, panic-stricken moment, Tory was afraid she was putting herself between it and them.
But no—she was flinging her arms around it and weeping softly, murmuring over and over, “You found us! You found us!” while Atheser whisked in excited circles around them both.
And that was when his mind finally emerged from paralysis, and he knew.
This was a water afrinn. And not just any water afrinn.
This was the first of the afrinn that Sira had released from her necklace.
And it had, indeed, found them.
19
Sira mostly just listened, still caught in the cold paralysis that the demon had sent her into. The water afrinn’s name, it seemed, was Vela. And it was not just any water afrinn. She was Atheser’s mate.
“But—how?” Kee asked Eakkashet, bewildered, looking from the small water dog to the enormous water serpent and back again.
“We are not humans. Or animals,” Eakkashet reminded her. “Also, the males of the water-kin are much smaller than the females.”
“I’m trying, and I still cannot not imagine it,” Kee sighed, “And it makes my head hurt to try. There’s one of those ley-line things really close. I’m just going to feed all of you and not think about it at all.”
Sira could not bring herself to move, not even to invoke a Mage-light, but Kee seemed to understand. He reached over to her and squeezed her hand once, then fed power into all the afrinn. By the time he was done, Vela and Atheser quite literally glowed with the power, negating any need for a Mage-light, and Vela settled herself in the corner in a tight coil, with Atheser lying down atop her.
Slowly, thoughts seeped through that cold inertia that held her. Merirat must have found Vela as well as Halina.
“You arrived at exactly the right moment, Vela.” That was Tory. “It looks like you are a match for at least one demon.”
“It also looks like the demon didn’t recognize that he’d been chased off from something he’d been sent to find,” observed Kee.
How could they talk so normally after what they had just seen? The thing had been within moments of finding them, and then it would have called for help. And she very much doubted Vela could have taken on more than one of the things!
The fire afrinn warmed the cave to the perfect sleeping temperature, and the heat overcame her desire to stay awake, stay vigilant, because surely, surely, the priests would realize that Vela had been protecting something and would send all the demons back. She tried to fight encroaching sleep, tried to hear what the afrinn and Kee were murmuring to each other—she caught “your scent in the water,” but not much else—but exhaustion was too much for her.
But her dreams were full of horror.
* * *
• • •
Tory woke to something that, until now, he would never have considered an agreeable aroma.
Hot fish.
His eyes flew open, and he saw that Eakkashet was grilling gutted fish on his open hands, and Kee was already enjoying one. He sat up quickly and reached out involuntarily.
Eakkashet chuckled and upturned his hand to drop one into his. He had to juggle it from hand to hand for a moment until it cooled enough to hold and bite into, but the rich taste of fat-laced smooth-skinned trout was one of the best things he’d ever eaten in his life. Moments later, all of the others were eating, and Atheser kept slipping out to dive into the stream and come back with more, until they were all sated without having to touch their meat from last night.
But Sira didn’t seem to be eating, and he was pretty sure why. Seeing that demon—well, it must have brought the moment she’d been captured back to her.
And that kind of killed his appetite too. Because he knew, just as Sira knew, that the moment they all stepped out of this cave, they would be back in terrible peril. The demon-summoners were somewhere out there, and hunting for them. And yes, Vela could chase off one demon, but they already knew there were more, because they had all heard the demons calling to each other last night.
And if he thought about that too hard—it would be so tempting, just to stay right here. Never leave this cave. Let the afrinn keep them all warm and fed, and maybe in a moon or two or three or by spring, the Karsites would give up and move on.
Except he knew that they never would. Once the Karsites actually knew they had found Sira, they’d call for more conventional troops to surround the area. They’d stay behind the conventional troops for safety and keep sending the demons, until all of them were either dead or captured.
And honestly . . . dead would be preferable to what the Karsites did if they were caught.
* * *
• • •
Sira woke up from her nightmares mired in despair. And the longer she sat there, the worse, more despairing, she felt. And the cave ceased to be a refuge and became a trap.
When the others had finished eating, none of them made any move to pack up and prepare to leave, either. Finally, after the sun itself penetrated the valley and made the surface of the stream outside sparkle, it was Tory who said what they were all thinking out loud.
“I really, really don’t want to leave here.”
The words fell into the silence like leaden balls. Sira felt herself just freezing up inside again, that insidious paralysis combined with the fear, and kept her mouth clamped shut.
She glanced over at her brother. His eyes were dark and full of the same fear. She’d never seen him this way before. And if he was afraid—what hope did she have?
“I don’t want to leave here,” Tory repeated. But his tone had changed. “But I’m going to. You don’t have to go with me. I wouldn’t blame any of you if you stayed here until next spring hoping the Karsites would give up on finding you. I’ve never in my life seen anything as terrifying as that demon of theirs, and we know they have more than one.” He looked soberly at Eakkashet and Vela. “I don’t think even you afrinn would be able to beat as many as they can conjure. But I’m not going to let that stop me. And if nothing else, maybe I’ll be able to pull them away from the rest of you long enough to let you escape.”
Kee glanced briefly—sadly—at Sira, and then said, “I can’t let you do that alone, Tory. I’m coming with you.”
Eakkashet let out a sound like distant thunder. “I cannot allow you to go alone, either, friend,” the afrinn said. “Vela and Halina can stay to protect and defend the others, but I will go with you.”
With that, Vela and Halina began to protest in their own way, and under cover of the quiet but vehement conversation, Sira fought against the black demon of despair in her own he
art. Logic was not working against it.
So she used something else.
She used emotion.
Here was Kee, beside her. Someone who was willing to die at the teeth of those demons in order to buy her time to get to safety. And Tory, whom she did not love as she loved Kee, but whom she had come to respect and value, equally willing to do the same so that she and Kee could escape together, despite the fact that his ties with Kee went back far, far longer than hers. And the afrinns, who really owed her nothing at all, but out of some bizarre sort of kinship and friendship were going to do their best to keep her from the Karsites, whether they went with Tory or stayed here to hide her . . .
It was a terrible battle. Perhaps the worst in her life. The black wolf of despair fought madly against the white wolf of hope in her soul.
And . . . slowly . . . the white wolf gained ground. Until the despair retreated, and only hope remained.
“No,” she said aloud. “We will go on as we planned. And we will all go together, or none at all.”
Kee turned and seized her hand in his, and his face was full of such emotion that it made the white wolf howl in triumph. “Yes, we will,” he said quietly. “Won’t we, Ahkhan?”
“As the Nation has always,” came from the corner, but now Ahkhan’s voice was no longer hopeless either. “Together or not at all, my brother.”
“Besides,” Tory said, after a long, long silence, that no one seemed to want to break, “Timing can be on our side. If we can reach the Valdemar Border before sundown, they can’t summon the demons to stop us, and we’ve won. So let’s get moving and run as fast as we possibly can.”
* * *
• • •
With Vela providing a much more effective illusion over them than Merirat had, and with no need to hide other signs of their passage when there was a water-scoured, bare rock “path” beside the stream to run on, they pushed themselves to the limit to make up for the time they had wasted. The map gave them no real clue as to where they were or how far it was to the Valdemar Border, but at this point, since the stream was running more or less directly north, it made no sense to try for the Menmellith border and have to cut their own path through the mountains. If need be, even if cliffs rose on either side of them, they could run in the stream, because Vela had assured them that, unlike Atheser, she could surround all of them with a water-free zone to run dry-shod.
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