Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Then, before she could even blink or draw a breath, they were gone. She hadn’t even seen them move, but the only thing across from them now was a stand of bushes, the branches still quivering as the only sign that something had passed through them.

  “I think we can safely assume that they do connect us with the rockfall,” she replied, a chill climbing up her spine. “And I think we had better get back to the cave before they decide to try to cross the river again.”

  “Don’t run,” Tad cautioned, turning slowly and deliberately, and watching where he placed his feet. “Aubri said that would make them chase you, even if they hadn’t been chasing you before.”

  She tried to hide how frightened she was, but the idea of six or more of those creatures coming at her in the dark was terrifying. “What charming and delightful creations,” she replied sarcastically. “Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  He shook his head, spraying her with rain. “That’s all I remember right now.”

  She concentrated on being very careful where she walked, for the rain was getting heavier and the rocks slicker. It would do no one any good if she slipped on these rocks and broke something else.

  Well, no one but the wyrsa.

  “Has anyone ever been able to control these things?” she asked. “Just out of curiosity.”

  The navigable part of the track narrowed. He gestured to her to precede him, which she did. If the wyrsa decided to cross the river, he did make a better rear guard than she did as soon as he got turned around. “Not that I’ve ever heard,” he said from behind her. “I suppose that a really good mage could hold a coercion-spell on a few and make them attack a target he chose, but that would be about the limit of ‘controlling’ them. He wouldn’t be able to stop them once they started, and he wouldn’t be able to make them turn aside if they went after something he didn’t choose. I certainly wouldn’t count on controlling them.”

  “So at least we probably don’t have to worry about some mage setting this pack on our trail after bringing us down?” she persisted, and stole a glance over her shoulder at him. His feathers were plastered flat to his head, making his eyes look enormous.

  “Well . . . not that I know of,” he said hesitantly. “But these aren’t the same wyrsa I know. They’ve been changed—maybe they are more tractable than the old kind. Maybe the poison was removed as a trade-off for some other powers, or it contributed to their uncontrollability. And a mage could have brought us down in their territory for amusement without needing to control them, just letting them do what they do.”

  “You’re just full of good news today, aren’t you?” she growled, then repented. I shouldn’t be taking our bad luck out on him. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’m just not exactly in a good frame of mind right now.”

  “Neither am I,” he said softly, in a voice in which she could clearly hear his fear. “Neither am I.”

  Tad kept a watch all day as Blade concentrated on fishing. Once or twice a single wyrsa showed itself, but the creatures made no move to cross the river to get at them.

  Of course not. Night has always been their chosen hunting-time, and that should be especially true of wyrsa with this new coloration. Swift, silent, and incredibly fierce, he would not have wanted to face one of this new type, much less an entire pack.

  I wonder how big the pack is, anyway? Six? Ten? More?

  Were they the sport-offspring of a single female? Wyrsa were’only supposed to litter once every two years, and they didn’t whelp more than a couple at a time. If these are all from twin offspring of a single litter, back when the storms changed them—how many could the pair have produced? Four years to maturity, then two pups every two years. . . .

  There could be as few as the seven that they had seen, and as many as thirty or forty. The true answer was probably somewhere in between.

  He and Blade ate in silence, then she banked the fire down to almost nothing while he took the first watch. As soon as it was fully dark, he eased several rocks into place to disguise his outline, then pressed himself up against the stone of the floor as flat as he could. He hoped he could convince them that he wasn’t there, that nothing was watching them from the mouth of the cave. If he could lure one out into the open, out on the slippery rocks of the riverbank, he might be able to get off a very simple bit of magic. If he could stun one long enough to knock it into the river—well, here below the falls it would get sucked under to drown. Nothing but a fish could survive the swirling currents right at the foot of the falls. That would be one less wyrsa to contend with.

  He didn’t hear Blade so much as sense her; after a moment’s hesitation, she touched his foot, then eased on up beside him.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she mouthed into his ear. He nodded. Stupid, maybe, but she had good cause for insomnia.

  She pressed herself even farther down against the stone than he had; anything that spotted her from across the river would have to have better eyesight than an owl.

  The rain is slacking off. That was both good and bad news; he had an idea that the wyrsa didn’t much care for rain, and that they were averse to climbing around on rain-slick rocks. Like him, they had talons, but he didn’t think that their feet were as flexible as his. Those talons could make walking on rock difficult.

  On the other hand, as the rain thinned, that made visibility across the river better, especially if the lightning kept up without any rain falling.

  Something moved on the bank across from his position. He froze, and he felt Blade hold her breath.

  Lightning flickered, and the light fell on a sleek, black form, poised at the very edge of the bank, peering intently in their direction. And now he saw that the white glazing of the dead one’s eyes had been the real color; the wyrsa’s eyes were a dead, opaque corpse-white. The very look of them, as the creature peered across the river in their direction, made his skin crawl.

  He readied his spell, hoarding his energies. No point in striking unless everything was perfect. . . .

  He willed the creature to remain, to lean forward more. Lightning flickered again; it was still there, still craning its neck, peering.

  Stay . . . stay. . . .

  Now!

  He unleashed the energy; saw the wyrsa start, its eyes widening—

  But instead of dropping over, stunned, it glowed for a moment. Blade gasped, so Tad knew that she had seen it, too, as a feeling of faintness and dis-orientation that he had experienced once before came over him. He wheezed and blinked a few times, dazzled, refocusing on the wyrsa.

  The wyrsa gaped its mouth, then, as if recharged, the creature made a tremendous leap into the underbrush that nothing wholly natural could have duplicated, and was gone.

  And with it went the energy of the spell. If the wyrsa had deflected it, the energy would still be there, dissipating. It hadn’t. The spell hadn’t hit shields, and it hadn’t been reflected.

  It had been inhaled, absorbed completely. And what was more—an additional fraction of Tad’s personal mage-energy had gotten pulled along behind it as if swept in a current.

  “Oh. My. Gods,” he breathed, feeling utterly stunned. Now he knew what had hit them, out there over the forest. And now he knew why the wyrsa had begun following them in the first place.

  The wyrsa were the magic-thieves, not some renegade mage, not some natural phenomena. They ate magic, or absorbed it, and it made them stronger.

  Blade shook him urgently. “What happened?” she hissed in his ear. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  He shook off his paralysis to explain it to her; she knew enough about magic and how it worked that he didn’t have to explain things twice.

  “Goddess.” She lay there, just as stunned for a moment as he was. And then, in typical fashion, she summed up their entire position in a two sentences. “They have our scent, they want our blood, and now they know that you produce magic on top of all that.” She stared at him, aghast, her eyes wide. “We’re going to have to kill them all, or we�
�ll never get away from here!”

  Nine

  Tad hissed at the cluster of wyrsa across the river. The wyrsa all bared their formidable teeth and snarled back. They made no move to vanish this time, and Tad got the distinct impression that they were taunting him, daring him to throw something magical at them.

  Well, of course they were. They had no reason to believe he had anything that could reach across the river except magic, and they wanted him to throw that.

  Throw us more food, stupid gryphon! Throw us the very thing that makes us stronger, and make it tasty!

  He’d already checked a couple of things in their supplies. The stone he had made into a mage-light and the firestarter he had reenergized were both inert again; if he’d needed any confirmation of the fact that these were the creatures that had sucked all of the mage-energy out of the carry-basket and everything in it—well, he had it.

  I wonder what Father would do in a situation like this? But Skan would not likely have ever found himself in a situation like this one. Nor would his solution necessarily have been a good one . . . since it likely would have involved a great deal of semi-suicidal straight-on combat and high-energy physical action, which he was not in the least in any shape to perform. Skandranon was more known for his physicality than his raw inventiveness, when it came right down to facts.

  Oh, Tad, not you, too—now you are even comparing yourself to your father. The real question is not what my father would do, the real question is, what am I going to do in this situation!

  He raised himself up as high on his hindquarters as he could get, and gave a battle-scream, presenting the wyrsa with an open beak and a good view of his foreclaws. They stopped snarling and eyed him warily; with a little more respect, he thought. He hoped.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Blade emerged from the back of the cave where she’d been napping, hair tousled and expression sour. “It’s a bad way to wake up, thinking that your partner is about to engage in mortal combat.”

  “They don’t seem to like the look of my claws,” he replied, trying to sound apologetic without actually apologizing. “I was hoping I could intimidate them a little more.”

  He studied the knot of wyrsa, which never seemed to be still for more than an eyeblink. They were constantly moving, leaping, bending, twining in, around, over and under each other. He’d never seen creatures with so much energy and so much determination to use it. It was almost as if they physically couldn’t stay still for more than a heartbeat.

  They had come out of the underbrush about the time that the fog lifted and the rains began; if the rain bothered them now, it certainly wasn’t possible to tell.

  Then again, why should it bother them? That it did had been an assumption on his part, not a reflection of what was really going on in those narrow snake-like heads. They had neither fur nor feathers to get wet and matted down. The only effect that rain had on their scales was to make them shiny.

  “On first blush, I’d say they don’t look very intimidated,” Blade pointed out. But her brows knitted as she watched the wyrsa move, and her eyes narrowed in concentration. “On the other hand—that’s a very effective defensive strategy, isn’t it?”

  Tad gazed at the stalkers’ glistening hides, the way it moved and flashed. The patterns they moved in knotted and reknotted, like a decorative interlace. “Is it? But it bunches them up all in one place; shouldn’t that make it easier to hit one?” He watched them carefully, then suddenly shook himself as he realized that the creatures’ constant movement was making him go into a trance! He glanced over at Blade. She lifted an eyebrow and nodded.

  “Not bad if you can put your attacker to sleep, hmm?” she asked, then smiled slyly, which put Tad instantly on the alert. He’d seen that smile before, and he knew what it meant. Trouble, usually for someone else. “Well, let’s see if we can take advantage of their bit of cleverness, shall we? Stay there and look impressive, why don’t you? I need something to keep them distracted.”

  She retreated into the cave. The wyrsa continued their hypnotic weaving as Tad watched them, this time prepared to keep from falling under their spell, glancing away at every mental count of ten.

  “Duck,” came the calm order from behind him.

  He dropped to the floor, and a heavy lead shot zinged over him, through the space where his head had been. Across the stream, one of the wyrsa squalled and bit the one nearest it. The second retaliated, and Tad had the impression that it looked both surprised and offended at the “unprovoked” attack. The weaving knot was becoming unraveled as the two offended parties snapped and hissed at one another.

  Another lead shot followed quickly, and a third wyrsa hissed and joined what was becoming a melee. That seemed to be more provocation than the others could resist, and the knot became a tumbling tangle of quarreling wyrsa, with nothing graceful, coordinated, or hypnotic about it. Now most of the knot was involved in the fight, except for a loner who extricated itself from the snarling, hissing pack. This creature backed up slowly, eying the others with what was clearly surprise, and Blade’s third shot thudded right into its head. It dropped in its tracks, stunned, while the rest of the group continued to squabble, squall, and bite.

  Blade stepped back into the front of the cave and watched the wyrsa with satisfaction. “I wondered just how cohesive that pack was. I also wonder how long it’s going to take them to associate a distance-weapon with us; I doubt that they’ve ever seen or experienced one before.”

  At just that moment, another one of the creatures emerged from the bushes, and uttered a cry that was part hiss, part deep-throated growl. The reaction to this was remarkable and immediate; the others stopped fighting, instantly, and dropped to the ground, groveling in submission. The new wyrsa ignored them, going instead to the one that Blade had brought down, sniffing at it, then nipping its hindquarters to bring it groggily to its feet.

  “I’d say the pack-leader just arrived,” Tad said.

  The new wyrsa swung its head around as he spoke, and glared at him from across the river. The dead-white eyes skewered him, holding him in place entirely against his will, while the wyrsa’s lip lifted in a silent snarl. The eyes glowed faintly, and his thoughts slowed to a sluggish crawl.

  Tad felt exactly like a bird caught within striking distance of a snake; unable to move even to save his own life. It was a horrible feeling of cold dread, one that made his extremities feel icy. At just that moment, Blade stepped between them, and leveled a malevolent glare of her own at the pack-leader. In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult, and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.

  Tad blinked as his mind came back to life again when the wyrsa took its eyes off him. He’d had no idea Blade’s education had been that liberal!

  The wyrsa might not have understood the words, but the tone was unmistakable. It reared back as if it were going to accept the implied challenge by leaping across the river—or leaping into it and swimming across—and Blade let another stone fly from her sling.

  This one cracked the pack-leader across the muzzle, breaking a tooth with a wet snap. The creature made that strange noise of hiss and yelp that Tad had heard the night one got caught in his deadfall. It whirled and turned on the others, driving them away in front of it with a ragged squeal, and a heartbeat later, the river-bank was empty.

  Blade tucked her sling back into her pocket, and rubbed her bad shoulder thoughtfully. “I don’t know if that was a good idea, or a bad one. We aren’t going to be able to turn them against each other again. But at least they know now that we have something that can hit them from a distance besides magic.”

  “And you certainly made an impression on the leader,” Tad observed, cocking his head to one side.

  She smiled faintly. “Just making it clear which of us is the meanest bitch in the valley,” she replied lightly. “Or hadn’t you notic
ed the leader was female?”

  “Uh, actually, no. I hadn’t.” He felt his nares flush with chagrin at being so caught in the creature’s spell that he had completely missed something so obvious. “She’s really not my type.”

  Her grin widened. “Makes me wonder if the reason she’s keeping the pack here has less to do with the fact that we killed one of her pups, than it does with her infatuation with you. Or rather, with your magnificent . . . physique.” Her eyes twinkled wickedly.

  Whether or not she realizes it, she’s definitely recovering. But I wonder if I ought to break something else, just for the sake of a little peace?

  He coughed. “I think not,” he replied, flushing further with embarrassment.

  “Oh, no?” But Blade let it drop; this was hardly the time and place to skewer him with further wit, although when they got out of this, he had the feeling that she would not have forgotten this incident or her own implications. “You know,” she continued, “if we had even a chance of picking her off, the pack might lose its cohesiveness. At the very least, they’d be spending as much time squabbling over the leadership position as stalking us.”

  He scratched the side of his head thoughtfully. She had a good point. “We have to be able to see them to pick one particular wyrsa,” he pointed out. “And traps and rockfalls are likely to get the least experienced, not the most. But it does account for why they’re being so persistent and tenacious.”

  “Uh-huh. We got one of her babies, probably.” Blade sank down on the stone floor of the cave, and watched the underbrush across the river. He turned his attention in that direction himself, and was rewarded by the slight movement of a bit of brush. Since there wasn’t a breeze at the moment, he concentrated on that spot, and was able to make out a flash of dark, shiny hide before the creature moved again.

  “Interesting.” Blade chewed on a nail, and regarded the brush with narrowed eyes. “I don’t think we’re going to see them out in the open again. They learn quickly.”