“South,” he whispered, as the information came. “Due south. Almost a mile.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” The Locating had faded as soon as its mission was accomplished; he didn’t resurrect it. “Some place where the terrain will favor us. Some place we can defend.”
She looked into his eyes. Deep into his eyes. “That’s a hell of a walk, isn’t it?” And he knew what she meant. He knew what she was afraid of.
“The trees didn’t attack us until we tried to rest,” he said quietly. Feeling his own gut tighten up at the thought of braving the trees’ domain once more. “If we keep moving, we should be all right.”
“You sure of that?”
He hesitated. “We can’t stay here,” he said at last. “That means taking a chance. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? If their power lies in sleep-inducement, it stands to reason they would wait until their victim’s body had done half the work for them. Or at least given them some kind of opening.”
“Let’s hope so,” she muttered.
They gathered up their things as quickly as they could. Damien took special care to see that the first aid supplies were easily accessible; there was no telling when or how quickly they might need them. Jenseny wanted to shoulder part of the burden, but when she hoisted up a blanket roll to her tiny shoulders Damien took it from her, and added it to his own. She was too small and too weak and too badly shaken by her recent experience; if they needed those small legs to keep up with them at a run, they’d better make sure she wasn’t weighted down with anything.
“I can carry it,” she insisted, and he heard the fear in her voice. Not of the trees, he thought, or even of the Prince. Of her own uselessness, and the fact that it might cause her to be left behind.
“It’s all right,” he whispered hoarsely, and he patted her shoulder in reassurance. “You just keep up with us.”
They set out from the south end of the granite island, and if there was any difference between the hard gray rock they had rested on and the frozen lava beyond it, their feet couldn’t feel it. Nevertheless, it was one of the hardest single steps Damien had ever taken. He could feel his whole body bracing itself for the onslaught of the trees, and he had to fight to make it move forward, to place even one foot on the ground which harbored that deadly species. But then he made contact and there was no assault, and he knew that the power the trees had gained over him had faded in the night. Or else been banished, by Tarrant’s chill power and his own fledgeling efforts.
A mile. That would have meant maybe fifteen minutes for him alone, a little longer with Hesseth’s shorter legs setting the pace. He didn’t want to think about how long it would take with the small girl by their side. They pushed on as quickly as they dared. Sometimes when they walked too fast for her, Jenseny would break into a short run to try to keep up with them. That was all right. She could afford a brief jog here and there; they couldn’t. At the end of this mile they would have to defend themselves against a pack of the Prince’s pet killers, and if they didn’t have their breath and their energy and their wits about them, then they could all kiss it good-bye together.
He stopped every few minutes to work an Obscuring; not because he thought that he could turn the hunters aside, but because he hoped that maybe he could slow them down. Maybe by casting out a false lead into the desert he could distract them from the true trail for a short time, and maybe—just maybe—it would take them a while to work their way back again. He could only hope. He had even tried to Work an illusion back on the granite isle, to make it seem as if they had never left, but he knew how hard it was to create an image so complete that an animal would believe it. And besides, when the beasts finally attacked, they would know the illusion for what it was and its power would fade instantly. Tarrant had the kind of skill it took to create an illusion that smelled right and tasted right and struggled properly as it died ... but he would have needed a living creature to bind it to, in order to make that work. And Damien had seen enough simulacra die on their behalf that he couldn’t have stomached another one. Not even to save their lives.
As for Hesseth, she made no offer to reinforce his Working with her own, by which he judged that the tidal power was simply not available. He deeply regretted that. As fleeting and unreliable as the tidal fae was, it was a type of power the Prince would have no experience with; Damien would have given anything to have it Obscuring them now. Perhaps it would become available later. He didn’t imagine Hesseth would have any trouble Working it on their behalf this time. Though normally she could only protect her own family, he had traveled with her long enough and under intimate enough conditions that he might as well be her blood-kin. And as for the girl ... he remembered a conversation he had half-heard one morning, as he rose up slowly from the depths of sleep to full consciousness.
Do you have any children? Jenseny had asked her.
It had taken her a long time to answer; when at last she did, her voice was strained. I had one child, she told her. She was five years old when I first went into the human lands. I left her with my kin for a longmonth, so that I might go.
What happened?
There was ... an accident. During an earthquake. It happens sometimes. A pause. I didn’t even know until I got home. They didn’t know how to tell me.... Her voice trailed off, thick with sorrow.
In a hushed whisper: Will you have more children someday?
There was a long silence before she answered. From the halting quality in her speech it was evident that she was struggling to find the right words, words that Jenseny would understand. When the women of my species are ready to have children ... it’s different than with humans. They can’t think of anything else, they can’t do anything else ... and humans would notice that. So when the khrast women want to leave the plains, they have to give that up. Forever. That’s what I did.
So you can’t ever have children again?
No, kasa. Not ever. And she added, in a whisper, But I have you.
He had felt shamed, that morning. Shamed for having traveled with her so far, for knowing her so well, yet for never having asked such a basic question. Perhaps he had felt that if she had wanted to share her private life with him she would have, and it was not his place to pry. Of perhaps—more honestly—the memory of seeing a rakhene woman in heat still made him uncomfortable, and he had avoided any subject which might link such a display to his traveling companion. An unfair prejudice, perhaps, but a human one.
Periodically he turned back the way they had come and worked a quick Knowing. It was hard to manage against the current, and he could get only snippets of information. The animals had followed the false trail. They had abandoned it. They had found the true trail again and were tracking along it, losing time here and there to circumvent his Distractings, but always returning to the trail in the end. Clearly there was no hope of shaking this pursuit, and Damien prayed that he and his companions would reach their defensive post in time. If they were caught out in the open, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
And then they came to a place where the ground fell away before their feet, into a chasm so deep and so shadowed that it was impossible to see the bottom of it. The walls of it were lined with black crystals, their edges gleaming like knives in the sunlight.
Twelve feet across, he judged. Too far to jump with any surety; certainly too far for Jenseny to leap across.
“Is this what you Located?” Hesseth asked sharply.
“Looks like it. Damn.” He shook his head as he gazed down into the depths of the abyss. “Not what I would have preferred, that’s for sure.”
“But better than open ground. Isn’t it?”
Is it? “Yeah.” He forced the words out. “A little.”
Think, Vryce, think. There’s got to be a way out of this mess.
“Can we get across?” Jenseny asked.
“Can’t jump,” he muttered.
“What about the trees?” Hesseth asked. Pointing to one particularly stout spec
imen that was rooted several feet back from the chasm’s lip.
He saw what she was driving at, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the thought of even going near one of those things again, much less cutting it down and manhandling it into position, and then trusting his life to it as they inched along its twisted trunk, over God alone knew how much empty space ... but it might work. God damn it. It might save them, if they could get across before the animals reached them and then cast off their makeshift bridge, down into the chasm’s depths.
He took a deep breath—a very deep breath—and started off toward the stocky tree. As he took his first step, a noise sounded to the north of them: a thin, wailing shriek that might have been the wind. Or a scream of pain. Or a hunting cry, voiced by an animal that had finally sighted its prey.
God, he prayed, just give us time. That’s all I ask. A few extra minutes to work with, so we can get ourselves out of here. Please, God. Just that.
The tree Hesseth had spotted was tall and straight and its base was nearly as thick around as his thigh. He tried not to think about what manner of victim had nurtured it into such healthy growth, tried not to look for the bones that must surely be scattered about its base. Those things were irrelevant now. He reached for a nearby branch and bent it down, fighting the sickness that welled up inside him at the mere thought of touching the thing. But it might have been a normal tree for all that it affected him now, and the resiliency he noted as he tested its branch spoke well for the strength of its wood. Which was a damned good thing, he thought. Because twenty feet up it wasn’t all that thick around, and he’d hate for it to break beneath their weight just when safety was within sight.
“All right!” he called back. “We’ll try it.”
He could hear the baying of the beasts now, the triumphant howls of hunters who were closing in on their prey. With a pounding heart he knelt down by the base of the tree and prepared himself for Working. No time for finesse now, or the delicate manipulations of a Knowing; he needed brute force, wielded with the Hunter’s killing power. And he would summon that force for them here and now, if he had to draw on Tarrant’s own power to do it.
Too determined to be afraid—at least for the moment—Damien plunged his will into the living wood. The shock of contact was almost unbearable, and it took all his strength and all his courage not to withdraw from it, not to try to save himself. If the tree’s power had lapped at his conscousness before, now he was wholly immersed in it, and he shook body and soul as he fought to maintain control. The tree sucked him in, deep into its soul, deep into the source of its power, and even as he struggled with it he could sense the slender roots growing toward him, hairs so fine that the porous rock was hardly an obstacle, thin white fingers of death that were even now licking at the surface beneath his feet. It took a monumental effort not to think about them, not to back off and defend himself—but if he failed now, with this tree, then he might as well just give himself over to the pack and have it done with. And that knowledge gave him fresh strength, if not added courage.
He took hold of its substance, cell by cell. He insinuated his will into the very fibers of its being, in much the same way he would for a Healing. Then, instead of forcing the tree to grow, he forced it to die; instead of forcing the cells to bind tighter together, he ripped apart the very structure that bound them. It was a perfect reversal of the Healer’s art: an un-Healing, an anti-Healing, an act that he would have found wholly repulsive had he not required it for survival. And the wood responded. Cells died, choked off by his power. Cell walls shattered and gave way, loosening their hold on their neighbors. Inch by inch he worked his way through the trunk of the white tree, cell by cell by endless cell....
And then it was done. He drew back, gasping for breath, and regarded his handiwork. The damage was barely visible on the outside of the trunk, but his Worked senses could see the wound scything through the living wood like a sword cut. Good enough. Now if he could only get the thing to fall right....
“They’re coming,” Hesseth warned.
He didn’t look. He couldn’t afford to. If he couldn’t get the tree in place by the time the pack attacked, then they were all doomed, and so he refused to spare the few seconds that looking would entail. Instead he moved to the north side of the tree and gathered all his power—not in the way he had been taught to do but the way that Tarrant did it, using the raw force of the currents to split the tree apart—and he pushed, he pushed for his life, he pushed with all the force of the earth-fae behind him, forcing the tree into a fall that would place it cleanly across the chasm and then using the earth-fae to see that it didn’t break, it didn’t bounce, it didn’t skitter off to one side or the other and go plunging down into the depths. His whole body shook as the power surged through him, using his will as its focus. And then the tree began to fall. Slowly at first, as if fighting the fatal drop. Then smoothly, almost gracefully, its topmost branches sketching an arc through the air as it hurtled toward the ground. Damien found himself praying as he watched it fall, knowing that if even one of his Workings failed this might all be wasted effort.
The tree struck with a resounding crash, and all the ground around them shook. He could sense the force of the impact coalescing in the trunk, could feel it fighting to tear the wood apart. But it held. God be praised, it held. It shuddered once or twice and then settled into place, spanning the gap perfectly.
He looked back toward Hesseth—and saw movement in the distance, the glint of white light on ivory teeth, obsidian scales. “Go!” he told her. “Take the girl.” He saw that she had taken her shoes off so that her sharp claws might help her keep her balance. “Now!”
“What about you—”
He glanced at the narrow bridge, felt fear tighten its grip on his heart. It was too thin, too thin; had he ever dreamed it would support him? “If it’s going to break, it’ll do so under my weight. You get across first, then I’ll follow.” When she hesitated, he snapped at her, “Do it!”
She grabbed the girl’s wrist and ran to the edge of the chasm. There she caught the girl up and scrambled to the upper side of the trunk. For a moment Damien’s heart was in his throat as he watched, and then—as he witnessed the perfection of her rakhene balance, the anchoring power of those long, unsheathed talons—he knew she was going to make it. The rakh were designed for such excursions.
Not like humans, he thought grimly.
With a quick glance behind him to see how close the hunters were, he bolted for the makeshift bridge. He could hear claws clattering on the hard earth as the animals rushed to close in on him, could hear their growls of hunger and exultation as they ran those last few yards to claim their dinner. And then he was up on the trunk and he was moving south, out over the chasm’s yawning mouth, trying not to look down or look back or, worst of all, think about the fact that any moment the trunk might crack and sent him plummeting down into those black, hungry depths ... the tree shook beneath his feet as the animals grabbed hold of it and he realized with sudden terror that their claws would give them perfect purchase, that they could move along the twisted trunk as easily as Hesseth had, while he dared not slip so much as an inch. Don’t think about that. Don’t. He felt his hand go for his sword, but he forced himself to use it for balance instead. One step and then another, quickly but oh so carefully managed. There had been a kink halfway up the tree and he glanced down long enough to locate it, taking care that it didn’t trip him. The wood was shaking beneath his feet; it seemed he could feel the animals’ hot breath on his heels. His every instinct screamed for him to draw his sword, a knife, anything—but he knew that if the animals attacked him here, he had no hope of survival, none at all, and so he put all his energy into speed, into care, into hoping desperately that the slender end of the trunk would bear his weight....
And then he was across. He jumped to the ground so quickly that he stumbled and fell, tangling in the tree’s upper branches as he went down. Had he been alone, that would have been the en
d of him, but even as one of the beasts lunged toward his leg, Hesseth met it head-on with a knife thrust that cut it open along the side of its neck, from the bottom of its jaw to the artery that coursed deep inside its flesh. Red blood spurted out onto the tree and the ground and the two of them, staining everything crimson. While Hesseth defended him against the next assailant, Damien struggled to his feet, and then his sword was drawn and he was cutting, thrusting, doing everything he could to keep the pack from completing their crossing. Sometimes one would get past him and Hesseth would have to bring it down, and once he heard her yowl shortly in pain as long claws raked her arm.
“The tree!” he yelled out. Hoping she understood. He looked desperately at the line of animals working their way across the bridge and saw a gap between two of them that was wider than most. Two animals down. He skewered the next that gained the ledge, and left its struggling, bloody form for Hesseth to dispatch. He thanked God for the length of his sword as he struck again, and for the advantage it gave him. He swung, and a black scaled body went hurtling down into the depths, screaming as it fell.
And then there was the gap in the rush of scaled bodies. Not much of one, but he knew in his gut that he wasn’t going to get a better chance than this and so he took it. Throwing all his weight against the trunk he tried to dislodge it from its position on the ledge, trusting that Hesseth would see what he was doing and get the hell out of the way. For a moment there was extra weight as the rakh-woman scrambled over to his side, and then her strength was added to his and the trunk began to move, ever so slowly at first and then sliding along the hard black rock, farther and farther—
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