by Martha Wells
Ilias leaned close to whisper almost voicelessly, “Grend.”
“Wonderful,” she replied under her breath.
Ilias glanced down at her, brow furrowed in frustration. Then he held up three fingers and pointed toward the crevice.
Ah, I get it. Tremaine nodded rapidly. He was telling her the third person in their party—Gerard—had gone that way. The grend was stalking the crevice because he must have taken shelter in it. Now what do we do?
Ilias started down, keeping an arm around her waist until she had her footing. She scrambled down to Florian, who whispered, “Well?”
“It’s a grend,” Tremaine explained, keeping her voice low. “It’s got Gerard trapped.”
“You saw him?” she demanded. “What’s a grend?”
“A big ... thing.” Tremaine flapped her arms in a vague gesture. “We didn’t see him, but he’s got to be there. If it had already eaten him, surely it wouldn’t still be hanging around.”
Florian stared, taken aback. “You know, when you’re optimistic you have a strange way of phrasing things.” She shook her head, obviously putting it aside. “How are we going to get Gerard out?”
“Don’t know.” Tremaine looked around to see Ilias rooting in a dark pile of leaves and detritus at the base of a column. He came up with a heavy stick of wood a few feet long and weighed it thoughtfully, slapping it against his palm. “You’re going after it with that?” she asked, aghast.
He glanced up at her tone, one brow quirked, his expression admitting that it wasn’t a great idea. He dropped the stick and looked around with a frustrated frown.
“What do you need?” Florian asked him.
Ilias started to gesture but all Tremaine could get out of it was “something big.” “We don’t have anything big,” she said helplessly.
Florian set the satchel down and held it open to let him go through it. “At least he’s got a plan.”
“If beating that thing with a stick is part of it, I’m not sure it’s better than no plan at all,” Tremaine replied. Rummaging in the bag, Ilias pulled out a folded square of tarpaulin. He stood up and shook it out, nodding thoughtfully to himself.
“That?” Tremaine asked, baffled.
He looked from her to Florian, came to a decision, then squatted to make a drawing in the dirt on a flat paving stone. Tremaine leaned down to look as he drew a rough diagram of the cave wall and the buildings, with dots indicating the grend, herself and Florian, then himself.
“Caertah,” he said, tapping himself in the chest and looking at them inquiringly.
Florian lifted her brows. “What do we think that means?”
Tremaine looked down at the drawing again, studying the group of figures. “ ‘Bait,’ ” she said slowly. “We think it means ‘bait.’ ”
Ilias flattened himself against the stone, easing forward carefully, the heavy cloth tucked under his arm. It would have to be a grend, he thought grimly. He should have known they were too stubborn to just die or leave; the damn things had always been Ixion’s favorites and they were probably still hoping the wizard would return.
His nose wrinkled at the heavy musky stink of the creature, detectable even over the mud. There was grend shit on all the walls and pillars, the rotted offal of their kills in every crack and cranny in this cave. Fortunately, they weren’t scent hunters like the howlers and they were too big to get down into the smaller lower passages. The odd thing was that they had seen only the one so far.
From the spoor down in the tunnel Ilias could tell two howlers had chased a man up here, a man wearing boots of the same odd make as Tremaine and Florian’s. They should have found his body by now, or what was left of it after the grend had their fun. It was lucky for the stranger, but the absence of more grend here made Ilias think of the wizards’ captive howlers. If the wizards had spooked the grend away, he just hoped they weren’t here still.
Ilias reached the edge of the wall and glanced back at the two women. He could just see them in the wan light, crouched against the tumbled stone a short distance away.
He held two fingers to his mouth, cautioning them to be quiet, and their heads bobbed emphatically in agreement.
After their escape, he knew they could both be counted on to act, but he was worried about Tremaine. From the way she had attacked that wizard, he wouldn’t be surprised if she had killed before. She had gone for him without any hesitation, as if she knew what it was to fight for her life. But when she had frozen on the bridge over the chasm, he had recognized that fey look in her eyes immediately. Giliead had lived with that same look for a long time. All through that dangerous period after they had returned from killing Ixion, when the reality had begun to set in that Amari and Irisa and the others were dead.
No help for it now, Ilias thought, so let’s get this over with. Grend preferred male victims since they liked to mate with their prey before they ate it; if this went wrong, the creature was unlikely to chase the two women. He just hoped he had been able to explain the plan coherently.
He leaned around the wall until he could see the grend, perched at the mouth of the narrow crevice. Her wings were tightly furled as she rocked back and forth, frustrated by her inability to reach her prey.
He took a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time he had faced a curseling since Ixion had tried to turn him into one. So it should be easy, he thought with a rueful bitterness that surprised him.
When Ixion had captured Ilias, he had used him in one of his transformation curses. He had been trying to make something like a male grend; Ilias had returned to consciousness to find himself a malformed winged travesty. Whether Ixion really expected Ilias to do his bidding afterward or just wanted to torture Giliead with the sight, Ilias wasn’t certain. His memories of it were confused, but he knew he hadn’t felt any compulsion to obey Ixion; what he had had was an urge to tear the wizard apart and the claws to do it. The scars that it had left behind were as much a reminder as the curse mark.
Ilias realized he was stalling and stepped out into the grend’s view. She shot to her feet, flaring her wings, her head cocked toward him.
“Come on, you’ve been waiting for him a long time,” Ilias told her in a coaxing tone. He sidestepped cautiously further out into the open plaza between the buildings and the cave wall, the cloth wadded in one hand, his knife in the other. She couldn’t understand the words but the challenging air would get across. “What’s better, one you can see or one you can’t?”
She leaned forward and suddenly she was swooping down at him, landing only a dozen paces away. Ilias dodged backward, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. He had forgotten how fast they were. Their hollow bones were light and delicate but the creatures were deceptively strong.
The grend hesitated, casting a glance back at the mouth of the crevice. “No, not him, me!” Ilias needed her attention on him; if she saw Tremaine and Florian, she might spook and retreat; they couldn’t afford to have her stalking them. “Come on, you know you want me.”
The grend snarled, crouching. Air rushed overhead as she suddenly pounced, her claws scraping on the paving stones only a few paces away. The gust from her wings sent him tumbling in a whirlwind of dead leaves and dirt.
Ilias slammed into the base of a broken pillar and scrambled back to his feet. The creature’s head tilted as she looked down at him, her yellow eyes gleaming with malice. Suddenly she jerked back, hissing angrily and flailing one arm behind her head.
Ilias caught a glimpse of Florian behind the grend, hefting another rock. The grend twisted her head around to look for them, but didn’t pounce. As he had hoped, she was distracted by the two women but too eager for her favorite prey to attack them. Lucky Ixion never had time to finish breeding these things for brains, he thought grimly, ducking backward as she swiped at him with a long clawed hand. He shook out the cloth, rocking on the balls of his feet, ready to move.
Another rock sailed over the grend’s shoulder from the other direction and she turned
at bay, snarling and flaring her wings to drive the women off. As Ilias moved to circle her, she whipped around suddenly, reaching for him. Ilias dived under a clawed hand and rolled away. He dropped the cloth rather than be tangled in it himself and scrambled under the thorny branches of the sickly brush at the edge of the plaza. In her eagerness to get her claws in him, the grend pushed forward, ignoring the branches that tore at her wings. He heard Tremaine calling his name but couldn’t see her past the grend’s bulk.
Suddenly Tremaine ducked around the creature’s wing. Ilias felt his heart freeze, thinking she was fey again, trying to get herself killed. But the expression on her face was a mix of determination and alarm. She pitched a rock, striking the grend right in the head, then bolted away as it reached for her. A hail of smaller stones from Florian peppered the creature’s back and the grend twisted away in furious confusion.
Ilias whooped in approval and rolled out from under the brush, grabbing up the cloth where it lay in the mud. He whipped it around and lunged at the grend, shouting. She snarled, turning on him again. Ilias tossed the cloth over her head and she reared back, shrieking and tearing at the heavy material. He dived under her lifted wing, rolling back to his feet to ram his knife between her ribs.
The grend shrieked in rage and pain and her wing struck Ilias across the back, knocking him flat. He rolled over to see her leap into the air. She landed near the columns, blood streaming from the wound in her side. Shrieking again, she leapt up to vanish in the darkness of the cave.
Ilias pushed himself up, feeling his ribs ache. He got to his feet, grinning, as the two girls ran up. “Now let’s find your friend.”
Gervas waited impatiently up the tunnel, watching the creature that called itself Ixion, his stomach churning with disgust. He could barely see the pale form crouched on a rock a short distance down the tunnel passage. The loose coverall it now wore didn’t fully conceal the dead white limbs, the waxy texture of its skin, the sleek shape of the malformed skull. It was a terrible thing to call ally, even for a short time.
He suspected the thing Ixion was speaking to was even more terrible.
They had gone a little distance from the base perimeter into the open caves, Gervas, Ixion and a squad of four guards. Ixion had demanded that their handlights be dimmed so that the creature he spoke to would be more comfortable. Gervas could tell it was small, barely a foot high, and the dim lamplight reflected off a glistening silver-gray hide. Its high voice trilled and sang as Ixion nodded, occasionally murmuring what sounded like endearments to it. Finally he waved the creature away and got to his feet.
“What did it tell you?” Gervas demanded. As Ixion limped toward him, Gervas gestured to the guard with the lamp to turn up the light. The electric blaze just caught the creature vanishing into a crevice, its small body another grotesque parody of the human form.
“It suspects they’ve gone toward the grend caves.” Ixion stared into the light, his lidless eyes thoughtful. “A risky move, but a bold one,” he added, half to himself.
Gervas suspected Ixion said such things to pretend he had some secret knowledge of the Rien spies, to make himself appear more useful. It was impossible, of course. With a dismissive expression he said, “That’s all? I heard as much from my own patrols.”
“I gave you the spell to keep the grend from attacking your men, you should be grateful for that.” Ixion turned to the lamp, using its light to study his half-formed fingernails. The blue and red of veins and arteries were clearly visible now under his translucent white skin. The Service man holding the lamp looked away.
Verim and his search team had been unable to trace the escaped prisoners and had gone to join the east quadrant patrol. From their last report, having the search area free of the large winged predators—the “grend,” as Ixion called them—had allowed them to cover more ground. This was fortunate, as the howlers had refused to go down into that section of the caves, no matter how much force was used. Ixion had claimed that their fear of the grend’s territory was responsible. “I am grateful,” Gervas managed to say, though the words nearly choked him. “It is a pity your other creatures, the howlers, could not hunt the spies down for us.”
“Oh, they know how to avoid the howlers, you won’t catch them that way.” The lipless mouth drew up into a smile. “They know a great deal about the grend, too.”
“They?” Gervas stared. The Rien couldn’t know of the misbegotten inhabitants of these caves. “Who do you mean?”
The lidless eyes gave him a guileless look. “I meant a generic ‘they.’ They, our enemies, that sort of thing.”
Gervas’s mouth twisted in annoyance. If Ixion did have some sort of special knowledge, prying it out of him in time to be of any use could be difficult. He was very much looking forward to the moment when he could pronounce Ixion’s usefulness over and have him shipped to Command to undergo conversion. Even with the coming invasion of Ile-Rien, Command was always desperate for more sorcerers and Gervas would win a commendation for providing another one.
“By the way,” Ixion said, “when are you going to show me that fascinating device you’ve installed in the west passages?”
Gervas pressed his lips together. “Who spoke to you of that?” If the guards had been speaking foolishly with this creature he would feed them to the howlers, no matter how short of personnel they were.
“No one.” Ixion sighed. “Oh, don’t look like that. I’m a wizard. I can hear it, I can smell it. I know you have something of great power back there.”
Before Gervas could pursue it, a shout from the other end of the tunnel made him turn. He recognized the man as the communications room runner and hurriedly waved him forward. Concealing his relief, he listened to the message, then turned to Ixion and smiled. “We’ve caught one of the Rien spies. Perhaps we don’t need your help after all.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Ixion told him, unperturbed. “You never know what you could run into down here.”
Chapter 10
Florian struck matches for Ilias and they got the torch lit while Tremaine jittered impatiently. Then Tremaine tried to charge ahead but Ilias caught her jacket and hauled her back, handing her the torch to slow her down and starting up the crevice himself. She followed, Florian close behind, both of them stumbling on the slick stone and loose rock.
The folds of stone that formed the crevice loomed up on either side as they climbed toward the spot the grend hadn’t been able to squeeze past. Ilias had just reached the narrowest part of the fold when a dark form exploded out of the opening. Tremaine yelped and stumbled back, her feet catching on the loose rock and sliding out from under her. She caught herself awkwardly on the slope, nearly falling on the flaring torch, Florian stumbling into her.
Tremaine saw Ilias duck under a dim shape that swung at his head and dive forward, tackling the figure and pinning it against the wall of the crevice. It twisted and threw Ilias off. He slipped on the loose scree and slid back, catching himself against the rock.
Florian managed to push herself up off Tremaine, who surged to her feet and swung the torch wildly to distract whatever it was. In the flare of firelight she got her first clear look at their opponent. She stopped abruptly. “Ander!”
“Tremaine?” Ander stared at her, blank with surprise, poised to swing a heavy branch. Still blinking, trying to adjust to the sudden light, his eyes widened and he shouted, “Behind you!”
Tremaine whipped around. Ilias ducked away from the torch as it swung perilously near his head. “Oh, sorry!”
“No, no, he’s our friend!” Florian explained hastily, stumbling up the slope toward them.
“What?” Baffled, Ander looked from Florian to Tremaine, his makeshift club still ready. In the flickering torchlight he looked half-wild. He was missing his jacket and his shirt was torn and bloodstained. There was a large bruise on his temple. “Are you out of your minds?”
Tremaine rolled her eyes, relief at seeing Ander alive beginning to fade into annoyance. “An
der, you scared me out of my—” It was pointless. She pushed the sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes. “Is Gerard with you?”
Ander glared at her but finally lowered the branch. “No, he isn’t! But who the hell is that?” he demanded.
Tremaine turned to Ilias. He had his hands planted on his hips and an expression that said that if this was the friend they had been searching so hard for, there was obviously something wrong with them. Mud was still smeared on his bare chest and arms, clotted in the rough material of his clothes. The patches of it left on his face looked like a tribal marking and wild streaks of blond showed through the coating of mud and dried blood in his tangled hair. And he needed a shave. She said, “He’s not as ... as he looks.”
“That’s Ilias,” Florian said more practically, digging the water flask out of their satchel to hand to Ander. “He saved us, and then we saved him when we were captured by the Gardier, and he’s been helping us since.”
“You were captured by the Gardier?” Ander repeated blankly, accepting the flask without noticing he had. “How—? What—?”
“It’s a long story,” Tremaine said brusquely. She had been sure it was Gerard that the grend had cornered and felt the disappointment keenly. “Have you seen Gerard at all? He was with us and we got separated. We think the Gardier are tracking him through here.”
Eyeing Ilias warily, Ander said, “I heard a party of Gardier a couple of times, and I could tell there was someone ahead of me but I wasn’t sure if it was one of you, so I hung back. Once I followed him down into this cavern I thought I heard Gerard’s voice. Before I could catch up to him, this big winged thing came after me.” Ander took a quick drink and wiped his mouth on his torn sleeve. “Did you see it?”
“We chased it off,” Florian told him, screwing the cap back on the flask and tucking it back in the satchel. “We’ve been trying to find Gerard before the Gardier did. We thought you were dead.”
