He continued to stare at the sunless sky. Absently, he created a small, buzzing mosquito with a three-pronged proboscis. With his other hand, he made a long-tongued iguana that dropped to the floor and immediately began circling under the mosquito. Chainer made a black owl with four orange eyes and a face on both sides of its skull, then a large, hissing cobra. The owl settled on the window sill and scanned the room as well as the courtyard outside. The snake coiled around Chainer's chair leg and spread its hood.
"Three," Chainer said aloud as the mosquito buzzed over his left arm, looking for a place to feed. "Two. One. Go."
The iguana's tongue snatched the mosquito out of the air. The owl suddenly swooped down and sank its claws into the iguana, and the cobra struck the owl before it could escape with its kill.
Chainer split his attention between the sky, which was at last starting to lighten, and the cobra, who was waiting patiently for the owl to stop convulsing. As the snake dislocated its jaw to enjoy a meal of bug, lizard, and bird, Chainer wiggled his metal fingers and the entire tableau disappeared.
Soon he would be in Krosan, and they all would discover just who sat at the top of the forest's food chain. And then he would return to Cabal City and teach both the Order and the Mer Empire a similar lesson.
*****
It took Kamahl and Chainer two uneventful days of steady hiking to walk from the city gates to the edge of the Krosan Forest. They made their first camp about five hundred yards inside the forest's border, with another day's hike before the ritual hunt would truly begin.
"Hey, Chainer!" Kamahl called. "There's vermin over here. Are you hunting vermin?"
"What kind of vermin? Where?"
"Up there," Kamahl pointed into the trees. "It's about a foot long, with a big, fuzzy tail."
Chainer thought it over. "You mean a squirrel?"
"Yeah."
The black chain shot up into the tree above Kamahl. The dead rodent fell to the ground with a tiny thud, its back broken. Chainer nimbly pounced on his kill and scooped it up.
"In answer to your question," Chainer said, "no, I'm not hunting vermin. But squirrel aren't vermin. This one, in fact, is going to be dinner."
Kamahl scowled. "If it gnaws things and twitches its nose, it's vermin. And if you don't cook that right now it's going to stink."
Chainer put the dead squirrel in his satchel. He folded his arms and stared at Kamahl.
"What?" the barbarian said.
"You want fresh-killed meat," Chainer said, "you can kill it yourself."
Kamahl opened his mouth to swear at Chainer when the ground beneath them shook. From a hundred yards or so to their right came the sound of splintering wood.
"That sounds bigger than vermin." Chainer slapped Kamahl's shoulder. "Look alive, this is what we came here for." He started running through the woods toward the sound. Kamahl followed him,
"What do I do?" he called. Chainer was lighter and quicker through the thick brush, and Kamahl was falling behind.
"Just back me up," Chainer called. He slowed his pace. "I'll try to… do my thing. You make sure nothing sneaks up behind me. If I freeze up, snap me out of it. If the thing takes a bite out of me, kill it."
Kamahl nodded. They came to the edge of a clearing, and he drew his sword. Chainer was already down on one knee, peering out into the sheltered glade. A huge, elephantine creature rumbled along, seemingly lost and out of its element. When it came upon a large enough tree, it reared up and came down hard with all of its weight, snapping the tree off at the base and crushing the loose trunk into a mass of dirt and splinters.
"It's a gargadon," Chainer whispered. "A young male."
Kamahl shook his head. "It can't be a gargadon this close to the edge of the woods. They need more open space and a different kind of tree to eat."
"All I know is," Chainer said, "I'm getting a gargadon." He unhooked the censer from his vest.
"Tell me you aren't going to use that thing out here."
"Shhhh. It's important." As he spoke, he loaded and lit the censer. "Just back me up, okay? You ready?"
"Always."
Chainer stepped out into the glade. The gargadon was thirty yards upwind with its back to Chainer, so he was able to get close before it smelled his smoke.
When it turned and trumpeted, Chainer finally realized how truly big it was. A single leg was taller and wider than Chainer's whole body. It pawed the ground with one of those legs and trumpeted again, and the ground shook. It wasn't afraid of Chainer in the least, but it was going to warn him to keep clear.
This was the moment that Chainer had been dreading. He knew that he was supposed to master the creature, but it was too big for him to fight, and he knew he wasn't supposed to create any help. Kamahl might be able to blow a hole in its head with one of his axes, but that did nothing for Chainer's shikar.
He had brought his own dementia monsters to heel with a tight collar and a magical slap on the nose. How was he supposed to collar and slap something that could crush him and not notice? Chainer needed an answer soon because the gargadon was clearly not happy to share its space.
"What's wrong?" Kamahl called. "Why aren't you zapping it?
Chainer continued to spin his censer and stare directly into the gargadon's huge eyes. "Zapping it with what?"
"I don't know. It's your ritual."
"I'm getting an idea now. Just shut up and support me." The gargadon pawed the ground again and stomped gently with both front feet. Chainer was shaken almost to his knees, but he thought he might have the answer.
His dementia monsters were only alive in his mind, and Chainer's mind was his place of power. As long as he controlled his fear, he was the ultimate lord and master of his own dementia space. The gargadon had its own life outside of Chainer's, however, and it didn't know that he was its master. It needed to be shown that fact, it needed to be taught. The best way for Chainer to teach that lesson and gain the kind of control he needed was to take the gargadon out of this world and transplant it into his own.
The gargadon was preparing to charge. "Kamahl," Chainer said. "I need a big explosion, behind the gargadon. Drive it toward me."
"Say when."
Chainer felt a shudder start in the base of his spine and work all the way up to his skull. When his vision cleared, he was standing on a field of black sand under a hole in the sky, facing the exact same gargadon he was facing in Krosan. It had become so easy to take that first step, and Chainer silently cursed the fact that Skel-lum was not beside him to see this.
"When," he said. Kamahl let the axe fly, and the lowest-hanging branches of the tree behind the gargadon erupted into flames and thunder. The massive creature was far too heavy to spring, but it reared and charged. It bore down on Chainer, who continued to spin his censer in its widest arc yet, his eyes focused beyond the canopy overhead.
The gargadon charged into range of Chainer's censer. On its next revolution the smoking cage made contact with the gargadon's massive head, and there was a flash of black light and an implosion so strong it sucked the leaves off the trees nearby.
"Fiers's teeth!" Kamahl ran to Chainer's side. "What just happened? That thing was going to crush you like a bug, but it… ran into you."
Chainer kept his back to Kamahl and stared at his own smoking hands. The censer lay in the tall grass, the stalks around it smoldering. "If it ran into me, I'd be a smear." Chainer's voice sounded odd to his own ears, deeper and more hollow, as if he were speaking through a tube.
"No," Kamahl said. "I mean it ran into you, like a sword goes into a scabbard. It was bigger than you, but then you were bigger than it, and… Fiers's teeth."
Chainer had turned in the middle of Kamahl's sentence, and his friend immediately stopped talking. "What's wrong?" Chainer asked in his hollow voice.
"Your eyes," Kamahl said. "They're black." "Everybody's eyes are black, you-"
Kamahl held his sword horizontally in front of Chainer's face, so Chainer could see his own eyes refl
ected in the flat of the blade. "Your eyes are black, Chainer. Empty holes." Chainer stared at his reflection while he ran a finger around his eyebrows and cheekbones. His eyes were deep, solid black, like the void of a bottomless pit. Chainer laughed, and the sound was more pleasant arid musical than he had ever noticed before.
"I just swallowed a gargadon whole." Chainer tore his gaze away from the blade and looked at Kamahl. "It could take a while to digest."
Kamahl sheathed his sword. "I don't like it. Is this going to happen every time you catch something?"
Chainer held his metal hand in front of his face, concentrated, and slowly curled the hand into a fist. When he looked up again, his eyes were normal.
"Not if I learn to control it." Chainer lowered his hand and looked around the empty glen, breathing deeply and evenly. Kamahl nudged him.
"You okay?"
"I feel great." Chainer took one last deep breath, then nudged Kamahl back. "Come on. If there's gargadons here, imagine what we're going to find in the really deep woods."
"I can't," Kamahl said. "That's sort of what worries me."
*****
The second day of hunting started with scorpions in their bedrolls. Chainer took his into dementia space, and Kamahl crushed his beneath a heavy boot. The further they went into the Krosan forest, the more creatures they encountered. The more creatures they encountered, the more they captured.
Chainer picked up a coal-bellied razorback near a rocky ridge, and then killed a second for its meat. Kamahl cooked his share immediately. In a marshy riverbed, Chainer took on a huge snapping turtle, a small, blue, poisonous frog, and a six-foot freshwater alligator. A deadfall yielded a sharp-clawed badger, a three-foot beetle that emitted clouds of choking spray, and a two-hundred-pound wildcat. But it was the snakes that interested Chainer most.
This section of Otaria was thick with both venom hunters and constrictors-from the small but lethal jade adder to the medium-sized razorback rattler to the enormous rock python that could swallow a man whole. Chainer's face lit up every time he saw one, and he abandoned less interesting prey the moment he spotted a forked tongue. When Kamahl asked him about it, Chainer said he admired their speed and their grace, their aim and their muscular control. He felt some kind of kinship for the sleek reptiles, and Kamahl had seen Chainer fight often enough to know that it wasn't just a flight of fancy. Like the snakes, Chainer often waited until his prey was within range, then struck so quickly that the contest was over before his victim realized it had begun.
Chainer took one of each type of snake into dementia space. The rest he killed and shared with Kamahl. Kamahl wasn't sure what his friend was doing with the half-dozen rattles he had taken from his kills, but he seemed almost reverent about preserving them in his satchel, so Kamahl left him to it. There was much he didn't understand about this trip, but at least Chainer wasn't so intensely morose anymore.
The Cabalist was sitting against a fallen tree, counting the rattles in his collection. Kamahl sniffed the air, and for the fiftieth time felt that something was going wrong. "We're not very deep in, are we?"
"No," Chainer continued to count, transferring the rattles from his hand to a neat line he had arranged on the ground beside him. "Don't you think it's odd that we're seeing so many creatures this far out?"
"It's odd," Chainer agreed, "but not remarkable." "But there are tribes in the forest," Kamahl said. "Druids and Nantuko. We should have seen more of them and less of the things we've been hunting."
"Maybe they heard we were coming and fled," Chainer said. He began to put his rattles back into his satchel.
"That gargadon wasn't fleeing. It was milling around, lost, as if it had just been put there."
Chainer cinched up his satchel. "So?" "So who put it there? And why?"
Chainer stood up. "You're never happy, are you? Either there are too many creatures or not enough. Things are either too close to the edge of the woods or too far in. Don't get all anxious on me now, Kamahl. We'll start seeing the really big stuff soon, and I'll need you at your best."
"I'm always at my best," Kamahl said. "And when you say big, do you mean bigger than a gargadon?"
"I mean bigger than a wildcat or a crocodile. Centaurs and wurms. Maybe even a pack of monkeys." The eager look in Chainer's eye did nothing to address Kamahl's concerns. "I still say this feels wrong. It feels like a trap." "It feels like a trap because you barbarians are constantly pouncing on each other. If I got jumped every time I went to the privy, I'd see traps everywhere, too." He threw a handful of dirt on the embers of their campfire. "Come on. We've got one more day to get to the heart of Krosan. If we don't see any leaf-eaters or dirt-farmers by then, we'll ask the First about it when we get back."
*****
Later that afternoon, they heard more rumbling in the distance, as another elephantine creature stomped through the forest.
"Could be another gargadon," Chainer said. "Which we already have. Even if we were able to kill this one, we don't have time to butcher and eat it."
"So we're letting it go?"
"Hells no. Not until I see what it is." Chainer smelled something familiar, and his heart began to quicken. Kuberr, he thought, smile on me now. They jogged for a while, until they came across the thing's tracks in the loose dirt and mulch that covered the forest floor. The prints were deep, but narrow, as if the creature were walking on the balls of its feet. There were extra tracks scattered alongside the regularly spaced ones where the creature had either gone down on all fours like a bear or propelled itself forward with its arms like an ape. Chainer followed the tracks as he ran, scanning ahead to make sure of his footing and behind to make sure Kamahl was keeping up. From around a thick copse of trees in the distance, Chainer heard a terrifying but familiar roar that made the blood pound in his ears.
"It's a grendelkin," Chainer said. He stood still, staring at the copse of trees. As Kamahl came up behind him, Chainer said, "This one's for Skellum. Ready?"
Before Kamahl could answer, the rampant grendelkin burst through the trees. It was even bigger than the one Chainer had seen in the alley outside Roup's, and this one's legs were whole and healthy. With a tree in each massive paw, the grendelkin spied Chainer and Kamahl and roared a challenge. It threw one tree at them, then another, missing by a wide margin but impressing them nonetheless. It thumped its chest and then the ground.
Chainer handed the loaded censer to Kamahl, and with a snap of his fingers, the barbarian ignited it. He tossed it back to Chainer, who lashed a chain into it as it flew. He immediately began spinning it around his head, spreading Dragon's Blood smoke all around them. Kamahl readied a throwing axe.
Then a strong gust of wind blew out of the copse, carrying a wave of greenish-yellow pollen. Chainer was breathing shallow and was partially protected by the smoke from his censer, but Kamahl took in a huge lungful of the pollen and immediately doubled over in a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
"Kamahl! Are you okay?"
The barbarian waved Chainer off and dropped the rest of the way down to the ground, trying to evade the pollen. With his face half-buried in mulch, Kamahl coughed the pollen out and tried to suck clear forest air in.
Chainer hesitated. He didn't want to leave Kamahl in the dirt, and he didn't want to face the grendelkin without support. The huge monster took a step forward and casually snapped the top off another tree. It used the tree as a crude club, and it shambled forward, slamming into the ground and other trees with each step.
"Poison," Kamahl choked. His eyes were wet, but he had stopped coughing and was struggling back to his feet. "There aren't any poisonous plants in this part of Krosan, Chainer. We're being set up."
Thirty yards behind the pair, a long, legless wurm slithered onto their tracks. It opened its square reptilian head and hissed, displaying the foulest and most jagged set of dragon's teeth Chainer had ever seen. A huge, burly centaur with spotted markings and a crude wooden club trotted out from behind the grendelkin, and a crimson night
tiger growled from the trees above, its brilliant red hide almost glowing under its black stripes.
"All they've done," Chainer said, "is line themselves up for us." From above, a screaming wolf- monkey dove at Chainer. It became fouled in the censer chain, tearing it out of Chainer's grasp as the monkey itself sprang away with the chain tangled around its leg. Chainer sent a sharpened weight screaming after the retreating monkey but missed by a hair's breadth. The dementist glared at the mandrill with awful fire in his eyes.
"You're mine," he said darkly. "You are all mine." He kept his eyes locked on the monkey as he bent to retrieve the censer. A long vine whipped out of a nearby tree and wrapped itself around Chainer's wrist, and he felt an uncomfortable tingle. Moss was growing across his human hand, spreading outward from the vine. Chainer slashed his wrist loose with his dagger and scraped off the moss before it could spread any farther. The dagger took off the top layers of skin along with the moss.
"This is spellcraft." Kamahl was on his feet, standing behind Chainer. He had drawn his sword and stood with a weapon ready in each hand, his eyes darting from the copse to the wurm to the centaur to the tiger.
"Druid magic?"
Kamahl nodded. "Someone's pulling their strings." He blocked another lashing vine with the flat of his blade and chopped the offending tendril off with his axe.
"That copse of trees seems to be the center of it." Chainer flexed his bleeding hand, testing it. "Somebody's setting its pets on us. Kamahl, I want those monkeys and the grendelkin. The rest can burn, for all I care." He smiled at Kamahl and picked up his still-smoking censer. "You ready for some burning?"
Kamahl coughed the last of the pollen out of his lungs and spit. "Right now, I'd torch all of Krosan just to clear a pathway out of here." His eyes kept traveling back to the centaur. Chainer thought his friend looked disturbed, distracted by something other than the pollen or the attack vines or the platoon of wild beasts that had gathered to kill them.
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