“Gabrielle!” he cried, as heavy hooves pounded on the turf behind him.
He’d meant for her to protect him after Saladon had saved him from the pigs, not before. He’d wanted her to be his shield when Saladon chastised him for the prank. Instead, she was preventing the wizard from getting into range. She might be obeying his command, but in truth she was using his own words against him.
There was a soft implosion, and a cry, and Saladon threw Gabrielle clear.
That was all he saw of Saladon’s approach, for the sow scooped him up from behind with her tusks, and flung him back over her head. The tips of her tusks scored a stinging streak across his ankles. He cart-wheeled in the air, then he was tumbling headfirst, watching with horror as the ground came up. He was going to hit hard, and that was not the worst of it.
He was going to land right among the piglets. The daddy-pig wasn’t going to like that at all.
The leaves and humus littering the ground broke his fall somewhat, but he hit his head a dizzying blow and felt the Kingsrim tumble away, and with it, his courage. He reached for it blindly, and poked one of the piglets in the eye instead. It squealed. It was trampling the crown. He tried to slap the piglet aside and almost broke his hand its hide was so hard. The others piglets ran, jumped and grunted, and squealed around him in a maddening flurry of activity. They seemed excited, rather than scared. One of them nipped his thigh.
Where was the boar? He couldn’t see it. Bevn staggered to his feet.
A horrendous impact took his legs out, and the world went topsy-turvy again.
He tasted wet leaves and earth. A tusk drove into his side, hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. He tried to fend off the attack, but he was so dizzy and suddenly sick he couldn’t tell up from down. He cried out and caught hold of a tusk on the second strike and clung on as tightly as the pain in his chest would let him. At least if he held on, he figured the boar could not run back for another lunge. The boar thrashed from side to side, dragging Bevn across the dirt, then it advanced again, pushing him backward. He thought he might have a chance to get to his feet then, and as his sight began to clear he shifted his grip on the tusks. Then Bevn heard a second low grunt from behind him, and the pummelling of hooves on the earth.
The sow was coming. He was going to be sandwiched between the two of them. Bevn knew already how hard they were. He was going to be squashed like a grape between two rocks.
“Stop them! Stop them! Somebody help me! Help!” he cried out.
He couldn’t get free from the boar, he couldn’t get free from the boar—the tusk had pierced his clothing. He looked desperately over his shoulder. The sow was charging at him, her brutal tusks lowered, a snorting charging thundering beast. He was terrified.
Saladon was there, just behind the sow, coming in from the side. At the last moment he dropped his battleaxe and dived, but the sow reached him, her tusks slamming into his back. He was done for. All the breath was forced from his lungs. Something crunched inside his chest.
Suddenly, the weight at his back was gone. The sow blasted him with frustrated bellow, but she had begun to back away, walking awkwardly on her forelegs. Saladon had caught up the hind legs of the sow. He struggled with her weight, but the way he had tipped her body up gave him some control. The sow could not reach Saladon without falling over, and her neck was too short to use the tusks upon him.
Then the boar, its snout close to Bevn’s face, began to bellow as well.
Bevn looked up to see Gabrielle, at the rear end of the boar. Her expression was not kind.
“I’m hurt!” he cried out to her, gasping for breath. “I’m bleeding. I think something’s broken!”
“Let go of the pig, you idiot,” Gabrielle shouted. “Let go!”
He was too sore to care that she was ordering him around. He let go of the dirty tusk, and Gabrielle fought the thrashing boar on her own.
“Now get around the tusks and get the knife in it! Get in there!” Gabrielle commanded him.
Bevn groaned and rolled on the ground. She should be more sympathetic to him. He was injured. He couldn’t remember where the knife was—he must have dropped it somewhere on the ground.
“Get up, you weakling. Get up!”
He tried to rise. A sickening pain stabbed through his right calf. He breathed in short little gasps.
“I can’t!” he cried out. “My leg hurts. I think it’s—oh mother it can’t be! I think it’s broken!”
“I don’t care if you have to crawl on your belly, dandyhead!” shouted Gabrielle. “Help me finish this brute off. You started this, now end it. We can’t hold these beasts for long!”
Bevn staggered to his feet, crying out with the pain, but even so he managed to hobble away. It was amazing what he could do if he tried. He had to get away from the ironpigs. He had to get away!
“You come back here, you horrible boy!” Gabrielle demanded. “Come here!”
She was holding on to the back end of a wild and angry pig, and she couldn’t let it go. One of the piglets butted into her legs. Two more were harrying Saladon.
“You don’t command me!” he announced in a high voice. “The king is leaving.”
He hopped and stumbled away. The wizard should have warned him more thoroughly. Gabrielle should have been more humble. They were big enough to look after themselves. He lurched down the trail, moaning every time his right leg took too much of his weight. He had to get as far away as he could. They would find him later, he was sure, but he didn’t care. The wizard thought too much of himself, and if Gabrielle wanted the protection of the Kingsrim, she would have to beg for it.
The Kingsrim! His guts made a sickening lurch. He’d done it again, that’s why things had gone so wrong. It had fallen off, right at the beginning. He’d left it behind! Bevn turned, but he couldn’t see it anywhere.
A piglet got in under Gabrielle’s feet. She went down onto her knees, struggling to keep control of the boar she held. Saladon was trying to steer the sow closer to where his abandoned battleaxe lay, but the sow resisted. Why didn’t he use his magic?
There! The Kingsrim—it lay among the leaves, between the two struggling figures, where it could be trampled. The golden crown glinted. He watched with horror as first Gabrielle then the wizard were drawn against their will on the hind end of the angry pigs, stomping the leaves all around the crown.
They wouldn’t forget to bring it to him, would they?
What if one of them picked it up, and decided to keep it?
He started forward, but couldn’t bring himself to return to the melee.
Saladon dropped the sow’s legs, and ran. The ironpig didn’t waste any time in following him. Saladon ran straight for a big tree. If the wizard was intending to climb out of range of the wicked tusks he had chosen badly. The tree was broad at the base, and rose for twenty feet before spreading into branches. The bark looked gnarled and soft—it would most likely come away in chunks if he tried to scale it. But Saladon didn’t change his course, he ran as if he was going to dive into the tree. The sow thundered along behind him, narrowing the gap as her hooves tore at the roots. Bevn watched with morbid fascination.
The sow was about to impale Saladon against the trunk when something peculiar happened. The wizard was there one moment, and then he wasn’t. A booming clap sounded in the air.
Magic! He’d cast a magic spell! Bevn was delighted.
The sow, blind with rage, drove her full weight behind her tusks, but her target was gone. Only the bole of the tree blocked her path. With a surprised squeal and a thump, which shook the leaves overhead, she impaled her tusks deeply into the soft bark, and there she remained, her hind legs scrabbling at the roots, her forelegs splayed. No amount of heaving was going to get her free, not for a while, at least.
Gabrielle was struggling with the boar, trying to keep a hold on its hind legs, and wrestling with the brute to avoid his tusks. As Bevn watched, she lost her grip on one of the legs, and the boar found a better
footing. She clung onto the last foot at the ankle, but it was too awkward to grasp, and with a sudden cry she let go. The boar twisted, bellowed and turned on her.
With a quick fluid motion, she drew one of her knives from her hip, and plunged it downward into the boar’s blunt head. The knife bent, and Gabrielle cried out, cradling her hand against her body. The boar drove forward and she was forced to back away. She kicked out with the sole of her boot, a stamping kick which landed right between the boar’s squint eyes, but it just shook its head and continued its advance. She fended off its first lunge with her left hand, catching at the tusk before it could impale her. The boar drove her back, toward a tree, just as its mate had done to Saladon.
He was sure Gabrielle couldn’t perform Saladon’s vanishing trick. She was going to get skewered.
Bevn hobbled over to the Kingsrim, where it lay among the leaves.
She called out to him. “Bevn! Quickly! Get its legs! It’s going to pin me here.”
He ignored her and dusted off the crown. “Let’s see,” he said in a loud voice. “She tried to command me, she hasn’t made any effort to please me, she spurned me that night in Willower, made me look a fool before all those men. She doesn’t want to lie in the bed of a king. So be it. I think it is a good time to get rid of her, I don’t need her, do I?”
The ironpig would be occupied with mauling her for long enough to allow his escape, he was sure. It might even eat her. Who knew what these creatures of Oldenworld were capable of? The Kingsrim fitted snugly, despite being slightly bent. He could even hold his head upright, and look down his nose at the woman.
The ironpig had her trapped against the tree. She grasped for the tusks, but one-handed. Her right hand was still cradled against her chest. The boar thrashed its head, the tusk slipped in her grip. The boar braced itself, and with a ferocious heave of its head, broke completely free.
“Goodbye, Gabrielle,” Bevn called out. “You really should have been more willing to obey your king.”
Fifty paces, Saladon had said. He could get that far away before the boar was finished with her. The ironpig hooked her legs out from under her then, throwing her on her side. She caught a tusk again, but the beast had the advantage now, and she would not last long against it.
“You little bastard! You are not going to leave me here!”
She hadn’t learnt. Even when her own end was upon her, she was trying to tell him what he would and wouldn’t do. He would show her just how wrong she was. His back would be the last thing she would see.
He turned and walked straight into a heavy fist. The surprise blow lifted him off his feet and threw him far back before his bum hit the leaves. With horror he realised that the crown had been plucked from his head as well.
Black Saladon. The wizard stood there, crown in hand, his eyes blazing red, his face so dark and dangerous. He made a strange gesture in the air and Bevn felt terribly heavy. Saladon thrust his arm through the crown and moved so quickly Bevn’s eyes couldn’t quite follow him. He rolled over the ground in a blurring tumble, to where the battleaxe lay. Then he was at the tree, beside Gabrielle. His axe shrieked, and it tore through the air in a disturbing way that left a visible arc after it had passed. Saladon’s weapon passed through the ironpig behind its shoulders, cleaving the animal in two. The rear half of the pig flew away, smoking, and when it struck the ground it burst into blackened chunks.
Then a shockwave slammed into Bevn, leaving his head ringing.
Saladon leapt away, swinging his battleaxe. He fell upon the other ironpig, where it was still lodged in the tree trunk. He smote it with a double-handed overhead strike. The air split again upon the curved blade; the ironpig was divided. The ground heaved and opened along a narrow fissure. Chips of stone spat outward as a wave of force rippled through the earth. The grit stung Bevn’s face. He felt hollowed out. The immensity of Saladon’s power made him weak. The fury of those two blows awed him. The piglets scattered among the trees. Saladon let them go, slowly prising his weapon from the ground. Then he turned and his gaze found Bevn.
Bevn panicked. He still couldn’t move. The wizard was going to kill him, and keep the Kingsrim! He knew it! He didn’t expect any mercy from the wizard. Saladon came closer, with slow, steady steps. Bevn’s legs wouldn’t move. It was as if they were tied to the earth, but there was nothing tying them down, nothing but air. He began to cry.
“Put this on.” Saladon threw the Kingsrim toward Bevn’s feet as if it was a dirty old hat. As soon as it rolled against his leg, the strange bonds which had immobilised him fell away. Bevn was so relieved. He scooped up the crown and crammed it down upon his head at once.
He looked up at Saladon through a haze of tears. He didn’t understand what was happening.
“You are needed, because of that,” Saladon stated bluntly, pointing at the sky. “I’ll not have her turned into silverspawn just because you’re a witless runt, and you’re no use to me as a patch of fungus. You will wait here.”
High overhead, even more brilliant than the harsh yellow sun, was a ball of silver fire. It hurtled down toward them as if aimed at his heart. Bevn clutched onto the Kingsrim, and watched the imminent comet with quivering dread. It was huge; it grew with alarming speed as it neared them. It brought a rumble with it, which became a roll, then a roar, then a whip-shriek. He wet himself.
Saladon dragged Gabrielle nearer to Bevn. The howl of the comet was suddenly deafening. It hit them and everything exploded into silver. The ground was lit by brilliant white, a light so intense there were no shadows. He would have run, if there had been anywhere to run to, but Saladon’s iron grip on his wrist kept him pinned to the ground. It seemed that the safest place was where he was with the Kingsrim on his head. Saladon and Gabrielle were within the sphere of the crown’s influence, inside a curtain of silver particles that flared to gold before vanishing. Saladon was doing something to the magical essence as well, standing with his arms spread wide, pronouncing an unbroken chain of words in an ancient language.
The forest sizzled, the ground shook. A wave of ash and dust encircled their place in the forest, washing away through the trees, consuming everything in its path. The sound of destruction filled the air, as the vegetation issued tortured screeches, like wet logs on a roaring fire—a great hissing, splintering eruption of sound. Random trees burst into dazzling outlines as the wildfire touched their stems and raced through the life it found there. As the wildfire spread farther outward, its potency reduced and things remained standing, but they were warped, twisted, altered in place. Bevn saw a tree sprout roots all up its trunk, toppled over and run away. An area of underbrush writhed, bulged and spewed out a plague of fat locusts. Change rippled through the forest, until the wildfire had reached its limit.
Then, at last, all was quiet. It seemed as if the forest itself breathed a sigh of relief.
It was not over for Bevn. Saladon turned toward him, with Gabrielle at his side. Bevn lurched to his feet. His right leg was throbbing, but he would run, if he had to. Gabrielle leant heavily on the wizard’s shoulder for support. She was concentrating on the ground. Saladon, however, looked straight ahead. His gaze was steady, and more threatening than ever. Bevn began to regret what he had done. He regretted many things, but he wasn’t about to admit to any more than he absolutely had to.
“Is she—all right?” he asked, backing away on unsteady feet. He exaggerated his own limp. Maybe they would feel sorry for him and go easy on him.
“You shall have to ask her yourself,” said Saladon.
“Gabrielle?”
Her legs were a mess. Blood soaked from multiple wounds. Her right hand looked bad as well.
She looked up then, and he was caught by those dark eyes, so deeply mysterious. He had expected her to be spitting fury, but she was strangely calm. She smiled at him, a broad smile that made his heart turn in his chest. How did she do that? He knew he should be afraid of her, but she was smiling. He faltered, and didn’t bother to back away any more.
The Kingsrim had pacified her again. She was his subject. He was her king.
“I didn’t really mean—” he began, but he didn’t finish his sentence. Gabrielle’s eyes held a sudden glint. Her left fist came out of nowhere, straight into his jaw, as hard and straight as a charging ram. His head snapped back on his neck. He tasted blood and stars. He fell.
29. EYE SPY WITH MY LITTLE I
“Riddlers are measured by what they say;
spies by what they see.”—Zarost
When the bitterparrot found him, Zarost was far from the Hunters. It had been part of his plan to see how good the sha-lin was at tracking. If he couldn’t find Zarost in the forest, he would be no good at finding the Warlock. Here he was, in a sudden flurry of feathers and gaudy colours, complete with a flurried landing. Zaul tried again for the low branch he’d missed, gained a perch then wobbled around to face Zarost. Zarost suspected he’d passed by the saucer of ale before escaping.
The bitterparrot glared at him out of his black-lidded human eyes. “What ye belooking? Kraak! Ye gotta cheek comin innas Callum tent. I were happy til’ye came. Riches and rewards! Bribery, corrupt! Show see what ye haver paying.”
Twardy Zarost held out the chunk of salt. “This one’s for coming. Another for every day I need you.”
The parrot hopped along its branch, coming closer to Zarost. He extended one foot, but stepped away again.
“How a’long I spy with my little eye? How a’long ye pass me pay?”
“As long as I need to you to track for me. It might take you a day, it might take a week. Once I’m done, you’ll be free.”
“Free? Ye bemeaning na job. Na salt, noo drink anymore for Zaul. Rukukurruk! Roo!”
Twardy Zarost nodded. “I can’t promise you a future.’
“Ten, I take a ten blocks ’pon finishing. If I be quick, so good for me. Ye dinna like it, ye can go shunt a sheep.”
He pitied the bitterparrot. Zaul had no idea how easy the salt was for Twardy Zarost to acquire. No matter, it had value to the sha-lin. “Eight,” he said, knowing that if he did not haggle, the sha-lin would not trust him.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 50
