Suddenly a pair dropped from an overhanging branch to block her way. Heads lowered, claws flexing, the dreadful things closed in. She had to back away.
A wind came from nowhere and everywhere, knocking the nyphrit to the ground.
“Wyll!” She spun around.
Only to see Uncle Horst go down beneath a writhing mass of claws and teeth.
Scourge pranced in place, his shoulders lashed with sweat, his nostrils wide and red. “Why are you here? Why are we here? What is this?” With dark surmise. “It’s that dragon’s doing, isn’t it?”
“Take me up the hill,” Bannan pleaded. “That’s all I ask.”
“Up there?” The breeze turned numbing cold. “No! Up there is death. Today I cross and petition to return home. Today I may lead my people once more. Why—” as if they tried some trick, “—would I want to die? Why do you?”
The sound of ax to wood stopped and Tir turned to give the kruar a disgusted look. “The dragon’s the brave one, then.”
Scourge half-reared. “He’s an old fool!”
“You’re right,” Bannan said heavily.
“I am? I am! He’s a fool.”
Shaking his head, the truthseer went up to the great beast and laid his hand on the hot sweating neck, then reached up to scratch that one spot Scourge could never quite reach. “You’ve saved my life countless times, old friend. Time I thought of yours. Go. I shouldn’t have asked this. I’ll find my own way. My thanks for all you’ve done, for myself and my forebears. It’s more than enough.”
The huge head twisted to bring an eye to bear. “‘Done?’” the breeze said dubiously. “‘Enough?’”
“He means it’s time you retired, you old bag of bones,” Tir said acidly. “Go tell stories to your foals.”
“Hush, Tir. You’ve been my comrade and companion, Scourge. I wish you well.” With a final pat, Bannan turned away to search for the easiest entry into the forest.
For any. Roots writhed and overlapped, waiting to snag an ankle. Branches with cruel thorn-like twigs laced overhead. He tried his deeper sight, only to flinch as he saw the miasma flowing where there had been ground and what sucked at the life of the trees.
Nothing mattered. Blinking free, he made to step over the first root.
A familiar nudge in his back sent him staggering into a tree. “Bloody Beast!” he snapped, whirling around. “If you won’t help, leave be! I have to save her!”
“Then don’t waste time,” the bloody beast replied smoothly, a fire in his eye.
He didn’t wait to ask or doubt. Securing his axes, Bannan stepped on a root, took hold of Scourge’s excuse for a mane, and leapt astride. The kruar spun on two legs to snort an unmistakable comment at Tir; continuing to spin, he reared with a roar and launched himself at the impenetrable forest.
Heart pounding with renewed hope, Bannan laid himself along that massive neck and held on with all his might.
As the efflet dropped him, Wyll saw the old soldier fall but had no time to mourn. Nyphrit in appalling numbers whined and scurried through the neyet, gathering to attack in greater numbers. Those he’d pushed from the girl had regained their feet.
Oh, for fangs and claws and above all his own power. He’d turn them inside out and have them eat their own children. He’d . . .
All he could do was push them aside. The girl might do more, but she stood, shocked and motionless. She’d cried out his name so joyously. Now she saw for herself what little use he was.
The nyphrit changed their tactics, sending forth some to taunt while others slunk to attack. Something bit, holding to his bad arm. Something else had his good leg. Wyll shook them off, but a dozen more followed.
A nyphrit about to leap at him snapped in confusion as red scored its haunch. An instant later it was in pieces. Another squalled and died.
Efflet!
The nyphrit stopped moving, staring up with their red eyes. There was ominous movement in the branches above and to the side.
~ Careful! ~ he shouted. These weren’t the nyphrit of hedges and holes. These weren’t just larger . . .
Before he could cry another warning, nyphrit dropped from the branches, claws outstretched. Caught, injured, efflet became visible.
The nyphrit ate them alive.
He couldn’t care, he mustn’t, the girl was what mattered. If she failed, they’d all die, from efflet to old pony. But as more and more efflet were torn apart, Wyll scooped up one that fell close and tucked it in his shirt, snarling his own warning at the nyphrit who tried to snatch it, mouth gaping.
“Wyll! This way!” The girl had found a branch and swung it to clear her path. The sly things dodged back and pretended fear. They toyed with her, he knew. They lured her from him, took her where greater numbers waited in ambush.
Perhaps they wanted to tear her apart before the sei.
Even now, if he could, he’d warn them, tell them how killing the sei would loosen the edge and they’d die too. But the words burned to ash before he could utter them.
She vanished around the path’s final twist.
Wyll flung his breezes, lurched forward, tried to follow. They played with him too, attacking from one side, then another. Those he could reach with his good hand died, broken, but the rest cared not. His wounds bled, exciting them further.
~ Elder brother! Bring them to us! ~
What nonsense was this? He shook his head, blood spraying. With nyphrit clinging by claw and tooth to him, an awkward and unbalanced weight, Wyll struggled forward. He would reach Jenn Nalynn. If he could do nothing else, he would put himself between her and danger. Let them eat him first.
~ Yes, elder brother! This way! ~
TWENTY-FIVE
JENN DROPPED HER stick and tried not to step on a toad.
She hadn’t known there were so many. Hadn’t known, she blinked in astonishment, their mouths could open like that. The house toads pounced and swallowed with a methodical thoroughness, making short work of any nyphrit foolish enough to stay on the ground.
While above? Above was a curtain like spider’s silk, that glistened and gleamed and sliced any nyphrit that attempt to leap through it into very small pieces. Those who sought the safety of branches?
She couldn’t quite make out what happened to them. It looked as though leaves, which clearly weren’t leaves but she had no other word for them, were throwing tiny spears, and anything struck fell to the ground.
To be eaten by a toad.
“Dearest Heart! Are you all right?”
Was she all right? Aghast, Jenn hurried to Wyll, trying to find a place that wasn’t bloody to hold him. “We have to take you back—”
“Scratches. But this?” He surveyed the battle with clinical interest. “This is—unexpected.” In much the same tone Aunt Sybb would use for some combination of clothing Jenn had thrown on in the morning without looking.
“They’re winning.” Jenn suddenly sobbed. “If they’d come sooner—they might have saved Uncle Horst!”
“He gave the ylings time to set their trap,” Wyll said sternly. He pushed her onward, adding, to her horror, “There are more nyphrit. Now go. The little cousins have opened the door for you and defend it. You must cross. The Great Turn is nigh. Find your pebble.”
Her pebble. Jenn’s mouth watered and she looked to the massive trees that stood like gateposts at the end of the path. That was the way to the Spine, to her pebble, to whatever she must do.
Before she could take a step, several toads left their battle to line up in her way. ~ Wait, elder sister! ~ one told her, eyes bulging.
A chorus. ~ He comes! ~
“It seems,” Wyll said dryly, “they know something we do not.”
If he lived through this—Bannan stopped there, certain he wouldn’t but determined, regardless, not to fall off.
For Scourge climbed through this strange dark forest as if born to it, finding footholds where common sense said there were none, sliding his bulk and hapless rider through gaps where a
ny sense of any sort shouted none existed. Bannan would have closed his eyes long ago, but he’d forgotten how. Forced to look, he did his utmost not to comment.
It didn’t help that the kruar was purring. If he’d thought he’d tested the capabilities of this creature before, he was sadly mistaken. Poor Scourge. Bored silly in the marches, where there were roads and tracks and slopes that weren’t perpendicular. Here, at last, he was in his element.
Scourge’s head and neck lunged violently, not for the first time, jaws snapping closed over some unfortunate thing. Bannan slipped forward and barely caught himself.
Purring and hunting. “Ancestors Dire and Distracted.”
An ear flipped back, conveniently avoiding a sharp twig. “That was pleasant.” The breeze chilled. “No longer. We near the Wound. Be ready.”
Bannan braced himself, for what he didn’t know. There’d been no pull, no sense of something ominous and waiting as he’d experienced that very first night. Then again, this wasn’t night.
“Now!”
They broke into sunlight and chaos.
Loathsome gray creatures flowed like nightmares. Most were heaped over one another in a heaving mass, the outermost baring teeth and claws in threat as they noticed the new arrivals. These were nyphrit?
Heart’s Blood, Jenn had come this way.
Scourge roared with delight as he charged.
A sword flashed from the pile, skewering two nyphrit. Without thinking, Bannan jumped from Scourge’s back, landing hard but rolling to his feet, axes out and slashing in the same motion. Three down, another two. They died easily but their number?
The pile diminished as those quarreling over a share of one prey grasped there was another nearby. Bannan fought his way closer, but Scourge, head, hooves, and jaws equally lethal, made it there first.
The kruar drove his head down and pulled back up, a man dangling from his jaws. The man swore like a soldier and slashed out with his sword. Nyphrit fell back, whining as if conceding their morsel.
“Easy, friend.” Bannan dodged the sword as Scourge dropped his find and spun about exchange insults with the pacing nyphrit. “You’re—” safe? He couldn’t lie. “—not alone.”
The sword point dipped and the man crumpled. “Heart’s Blood.” Tearing a strip from his shirt, Bannan wiped the mask of blood from the face. Horst. Who else? “Horst!! Listen to me. Where’s Jenn?”
The old soldier clung to consciousness, how, considering his wounds, only the Ancestors knew. “Kept going. The dragon too. Leave me. Hurry!” His gaze was serene.
And implacable.
Bannan nodded. He helped Horst to sit, back to a tree, and put his sword in his hand.
Nyphrit watched with avid interest.
Mounting Scourge, the truthseer didn’t look back.
Shadows darkened, and the sunlight glistening along the threads winked away. The air chilled and Jenn gasped and doubled over, the cramp a warning. The Great Turn was underway. She couldn’t wait, no matter what the toads wanted.
Just as she opened her mouth to say so, a horse and rider thundered up the path.
She didn’t, she thought with frustration, need rescue. She needed to be left in peace to do what she must. Well, she’d had a certain amount of rescuing, to be fair, but really, now all she needed . . .
Was for Bannan to drop from Scourge’s back and wave the toads out of their way. “Hurry!” he cried to her and, of all things, began to run up the path.
Her path.
Spurred by an unfair outrage, Jenn ran after him. “This is my quest!” she shouted, somehow unsurprised when he glanced over his shoulder and gave her a reckless grin.
All at once, they were in the meadow.
Jenn was relieved to find no nyphrit waiting. Perhaps they needed the shelter of the old trees. Marrowdell stretched below, but it didn’t look right. This early in the morning there should be long velvet shadows and sunshine sparkling on the river.
Instead all was strangely dull. She shivered and looked for the sun.
Most of it was gone.
As, she noticed numbly, was most of her. She began to sink through the ground. “Bannan!”
He swept her up in his arms. “Which way—there!” This as a moth fluttered from the grass between the two tallest mounds. As they came close, something vast moved within the stone.
They entered the place between and stepped from dim light to none.
“You know what to do, Dearest Heart,” whispered the breeze in her ear. “Search for your pebble and you will cross. Beware—”
But the rest of Wyll’s warning was lost as Jenn, beyond desperate, wanted to find her pebble . . . wanted to find it NOW . . .
The world folded on itself.
She was gone.
Instead the warm, vibrant woman he’d held only last night, in his arms was something cold and hard that reflected clouds and sky or glinted. The familiar golden hair, caught in a braid, the farm maid’s shirtwaist and faded skirt, mocked his grief. Smooth glass turned to him instead of a face. Arms and hands of glass. Feet.
They were too late.
“Bannan? What’s wrong?”
Ancestors Blessed, her voice was the same. He closed his eyes, then opened them. Maybe it was this place . . . “Look at me, Jenn. What do you see?”
“I see you,” with puzzlement, then alarm. “Why?” A hand of glass lifted. “Oh, no! Oh—”
He pressed his face into her hair, smelling roses. “You’ll be all right,” more plea than promise.
“Did we—have we crossed?”
Pulling himself together, he looked over her head. “We must have,” Bannan said wonderingly.
He’d stood on the flat top of the Spine, between mounds of bonelike stone, his feet on sod. Impossibly, he now stood at the top of a narrow rocky path that sprang into being in midair.
And led down. To a plateau wreathed in fog, where . . .
Jenn suddenly squirmed in his arms. He tried to set her down gently, but she forced herself from him and almost fell. Whatever else, she was solid once more. To his concern, she set off on that path, although surely she saw what he did . . .
Or did she?
“Wait!” He threw himself after her and took her arm, held despite her protest. “Tell me what you see down there.”
. . . For something of astounding size lay sprawled on the outcrop below, partly buried within the stone, the rest heaved up as though, at the moment the stone hardened, it had been about to pull free. Trees, of a kind, surrounded the exposed flesh, if it were flesh, while between tree and flesh? Bannan was unhappily sure the moving gray masses were nyphrit, in incalculable number.
“My pebble,” she declared, fiercely trying to pull free. “Let go!”
His heart sank. But he released her and followed.
Despite what lay ahead, Bannan couldn’t help but look beyond. This was the Verge and he was here, in the land of dragons and kruar.
It was the world he’d glimpsed from Marrowdell. Rivers and lakes of silver sparkled in the distance. Feathered forests of purple and gold rose along the rims of valleys, and not all the valleys were in the ground. The landscape intertwined with the sky, so that down and up became a question of where one looked. The sky itself was half rainbow and half . . . and Ancestors Blessed, what was that, in the distance?
His foot slipped.
Fingers like iron steadied him. ~ Pay attention, ~ the dragon snarled.
Stones rattled and bounced off the path as Scourge pressed close behind. ~ Home! Home! ~
He wasn’t hearing them—yet was.
But what mattered ran too far ahead, braid bouncing on her back and feet flying with absolute confidence. “Heart’s Blood. Jenn!” he shouted. He went as fast as he dared, then threw any caution aside and ran as well, hearing the dragon and kruar coming behind.
He only hoped Scourge wouldn’t run them over.
She couldn’t see, really. She didn’t need to, for her pebble was so close. It was like her drea
m, where she only had to hold out her hands and it would come.
~ You have crossed to petition us. ~
That was from her dream too. She was to ask, which was only polite, but she was empty and glass and well past desperate. “I’ve come for my pebble!” she told it. And wouldn’t settle for less, not this time.
~ Come to me. ~ A slightly different voice, if either were voices. This was almost familiar. ~ Please. ~
All at once, she felt a powerful tug, as if anything could make her run faster. Her feet might be glass but they managed the rock as well as her flesh ones, maybe better, to be honest, because by now she’d have scraped her heels or stubbed a toe.
Jenn shook her head, feeling abruptly more herself. Why wasn’t she waiting for Bannan, who she could hear came behind? How brave he’d been, to cross with her, to stay with her. But when she tried to slow down, the tug wouldn’t let her. It was desperate too, and running out of time.
The Great Turn. She’d forgotten her purpose here was more than the pebble. She was to heal the sei and that could only be done during the eclipse. But there was no sun here, or none she could see, and the light was very odd, or dim, or her eyes weren’t right.
Time. It might be different here or the same, but regardless, she had to hurry.
Close now. Too close. Red eyes had spotted them and nyphrit, those not eating the poor giant creature, began to mass where the path met the plateaus. Bannan threw himself forward, but Jenn Nalynn would get there first. She ran as if oblivious to the waiting threat.
She was turn-born and glass, he tried to tell himself. Surely she was safe from them. A gamble nothing in him would accept. “Jenn! Wait!”
A shadow darkened the sky.
Bannan threw himself down. It was, Ancestors Mad and Driven, it was Scourge leaping over his head, a naked Wyll somehow hanging on to his neck.
The kruar landed, hooves slipping and scraping on the rock, then recovered. Rather than run, he jumped like a crazed goat, no longer constrained to the truthseer’s pace, covering huge lengths of the crooked path with each bound.
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