N
onnus had a fire of dried seaweed going. The pot over it bubbled merrily, though Sharina supposed the crabs being cooked weren't very cheerful about it.
Before Tegma it wouldn't have occurred to her to think about how a crab felt. She wondered if the Archai ate men.
The flames were clear and colored a dozen pastel shades by salts in the dried strands. Occasionally a nodule cracked with a puff of steam. Nonnus had to constantly feed the fire. For a moment Sharina doubted there'd be enough seaweed to finish cooking the meal, but she realized that meant doubting the hermit's judgment.
Nonnus was human; he could make mistakes. But she hadn't seen him make any mistake that mattered since they boarded the trireme together.
Except, perhaps, that he
had
boarded the trireme when he could have remained in prayerful contemplation near the hamlet.
“Shall Iâ” Sharina said. Nonnus jumped as though she'd stabbed.
“Oh, I'mâ” she blurted, then fell silent in embarrassment.
“Child,” the hermit said in equal embarrassment, “I've spent so much of my life alone that sometimes I forget that other folk are around now.”
He smiled slowly. “Feeding the fire, smelling the salt
smoke and crabs boiling ⦠It's like I was your age again, before other things happened.”
The smile vanished like hoarfrost in the sun. “Before I did the other things,” he added.
“I was thinking that I could call Asera and Meder down,” Sharina said. She spoke in the direction of the island's crest so that she didn't have to meet Nonnus' eyes for the moment. “I don't think they even carried food up the hill with them.”
The island was a featureless hump, visible against the sky only as an absence of stars. A twinkle could have meant Meder or the procurator had walked across the skyline, but the heavens weren't light enough to show anything as small as a human a quarter mile away.
“This isn't a hot fire,” the hermit said. “Give them another half hour or so.”
Sharina had circled the whole island without finding driftwood or any terrain different from the spot where they'd beached their vessel. She'd been doubtful when she returned to find the dugout's mast and spar festooned with seaweed drying for fuel, but it had worked just the way Nonnus said it would.
Occasionally as she'd walked Sharina could see Asera and Meder on the hilltop. The nobles hadn't managed to raise a shelter during daylight; if they wanted to come down to the shore again, there was room for them behind the windbreak. Nonnus had erected a tarpaulin on spikes like the ones that held the dugout.
“Besides,” Nonnus said, “I find the night more peaceful the way it is.”
He smiled and added, “Charity is one of the things I pray for, but there's a long list.”
“There's plenty of food on this island,” Sharina said. “Barnacles and crabs. And we can have a fire.”
She hadn't realized how glad she'd been to be on dry land until midway on her walk around the island. Of course she wanted to get to one of the major isles. She wanted even more to get home and to curl up in her own bed, letting the notion
that she was Count Niard's daughter vanish into fantasy like everything else that had happened since the trireme landed in Barca's Hamlet. But just for now, Sharina would like a few days when she had more space than a dugout's hull and her universe didn't rise and fall with the waves.
“Best we leave, child,” Nonnus said as he fed his fire. “This land doesn't hate us the way Tegma did, but it isn't a place we belong either. There'll be roads to walk on Sandrakkan; and houses to live in as well.”
Sharina looked up the hill, wondering how close she'd have to get to the nobles' camp for them to hear her offer of dinner. Climbing the channeled rock at night wouldn't be easy. If Asera and Meder wanted a meal they could see the fire burning, couldn't they?
There was light behind the hilltop.
For an instant Sharina thought her eyes were throwing flashes of their own the way they sometimes did when closed in the middle of the night. She opened her mouth to speak but held the words.
The night flickered again, rosy pink.
Sharina got up and ran to the dugout. “Child?” the hermit called behind her.
She knew where the wizard's chest of paraphernalia had been stored near the stern. She clambered over the cargo, pawing at the nets. The boat's belly was in darkness, but nothing else had the shape and feel of that metal-strapped case.
It wasn't where it had been. Meder hadn't brought it out; Sharina had watched to make sure. Asera must have carried the chest for him, concealed in the folds of her robe.
“Child?” Nonnus repeated.
Sharina pointed. “He's doing magic,” she said. As she spoke, a flare of red light bathed the darkened hillcrest.
“So he is,” the hermit said in a voice like a glacier. He lifted his javelin in his right hand and started up the hill. Sharina jumped to the ground to go with him.
A vast tremor shook the island.
G
arric had the shepherd's trick of keeping his head raised while walking uphill when the reflex is to look down at your feet. He scanned the crest ahead of them and the stark emptiness of their surroundings.
The ground was grit rather than gravel, apt to crumble out from underfoot when any weight was put on it. The slopes were steep, the sun fiercely hot, and the texture wrong because the reversed light and dark image tricked Garric's eyes into expecting something subtly different from what his feet touched. For all that he slid rarely, dabbed his hand down to hold himself only once, and never fell.
Tenoctris bounced like a pinecone being kicked by a circle of children. “Shall Iâ” Garric offered for the third or fourth time.
“Your task is to keep us alive when Strasedon appears,” the old woman snapped. “Trying to carry me and getting us both killed won't make the situation better.”
“Yes, mistress,” Garric said submissively.
He'd have traveled much faster if he hadn't had to suit his pace to Tenoctris, but he couldn't very well leave her behind. They knew where Liane had been; not necessarily where she was, and not certainly where the demon itself was. Garric couldn't locate Strasedon again if the demon wasn't waiting over the ridge.
The black sun would kill before long if Strasedon's claws did not.
“I never expected to be doing anything like this,” Tenoctris said, panting but surprisingly cheerful. “I don't mean that I didn't want to visit another plane myself: it's just that
I knew I didn't have the power to do anything of the sort. As well wish I could fly.”
She chuckled. “When Yole sank, the tower roof and I lifted into the air. I really did fly. And now I'm on a demon plane. Tenoctris the scholar, Tenoctris who read about wondrous explorations and the researches of other folk, who had the power to cleave time and space.”
The plateau up which the pointer of light had streaked was three-leveled; the hillsides between sloped at about one foot in four, maybe a little steeper. From below, the top of each next step looked like the top of the plateau itself. This time Garric thought that the edge above them was the real peak.
He walked at a slant. his left side to the higher ground. His left hand rested on the fold of his tunic, ready to snatch it away from the sword hilt for his right hand to grip.
“All those books that were my life,” Tenoctris mused. “Sunken for a thousand years. And here I am, doing whatâ”
Strasedon came over the crest twenty feet above Garric.
The demon walked like a man, but its legs were short and bowed while its arms were so long that the clawed fingers could almost brush the ground. The big toes carried particularly large hooked claws: Strasedon's right leg was still covered with Benlo's black crusted blood.
Strasedon held Liane around the waist in its left hand. The girl was alive. She gripped the demon's upper arm to take some of the weight off her abdomen while her feet dangled in the air.
When Liane saw Garric her face froze. She didn't call out.
Strasedon's skin was the dark translucent red of fine garnets. The creature's face was flat and noseless; the lower jaw rose and fell vertically instead of pivoting at the back. The upper and lower teeth slid past each other as close as scissor blades; the jagged points clicked softly as the demon advanced.
Garric drew his borrowed sword and felt King Carus fill his flesh the way a man shrugs into a tunic. He began to sidle left and away from the demon to gain the advantage of height
or at least parity. If Strasedon went for Tenoctris, so much the better: that would open the demon's back to Garric's leaping, slashing attack.
The part of Garric's mind that still
was
Garric felt horrified at the cold calculation that the old woman's danger was his own opportunity, And yetâCarrie had culled herds for the winter. A farmer who saved more animals than he could feed until spring lost all of them, not just the ones he should have slaughtered. If Tenoctris could distract the demon long enough for Garric's sword to thrust home, it might save both of them and Liane as well.
Strasedon tossed Liane to the side and shambled toward Garric. The creature called
“Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!”
as it advanced.
Laughing demonically himself, Garric lifted his point for a sweeping blow and charged. Dirt sprayed beneath his thrusting toes.
He cut. The swordblade glittered black in the still, dry air. Strasedon snatched at the weapon. The edge sheared off the thumb of the demon's three-fingered hand, but its touch deflected the stroke to glance off the side of Strasedon's hairless skull instead chopping into it squarely.
Raid's sword was good steel. The blade rang like a giant tuning fork in Garric's hand.
Garric leaped sidewaysâuphillâto avoid Strasedon's grasp. The soil gave way underfoot. He slashed sidearm at the demon. He was falling away and the blow lacked its full force.
The demon's blood was the color of fire. Droplets showered from the sword edge.
Strasedon gripped Garric's right forearm with its injured hand and reached for his throat with the other. Garric's left hand caught the demon's wrist. It was like trying to hold back an ox one-handed. Garric's muscles bulged. Strasedon's clawed fingers clenched and unclenched, but they didn't quite reach his flesh.
The demon bent toward Garric, its jaws sliding open wide
enough to shear off the youth's face. Garric half-thrust, half-twisted the swordpoint into the open mouth.
The demon's teeth clamped on the steel, holding the last three inches of the tip like a vise. Garric tried to work the blade deeper the inch or less it would take him to slash through the back of Strasedon's throat, but the jaws held as if the blade had been cast in rock.
Both of them put all their strength into their upper bodies and lost their footing, rolling down the slope together in a whirlwind of sand and rock. The demon was heavy even for its great size, but when it was on top Garric could always twist so that they went over again.
Garric arched his back and clamped his legs around Strasedon's waist. Not a moment too soon: the demon's right leg slashed upward, trying to duplicate the stroke that left Benlo and his guts spread across separate portions of the tomb floor. The talons raked Garric's back, shredding his tunic and tearing his skin, but the demon couldn't get the point of its great hook under the youth's rib cage.
They hit the floor of the valley. Garric's frame was so tensed that the shock didn't drive out his breath, but Strasedon was nonetheless on top of him. Garric tried to lever the demon sideways by using the point of his right shoulder for a fulcrum. He might as profitably have tried to move the mill at Barca's Hamlet.
Strasedon shuddered, then lurched upright so suddenly that Garric lost his death grip on the hilt of his sword. He sprawled on the ground; his back and hips felt cool from the coating of his own drying blood.
The demon spat the sword out. Its teeth had left deep gouges in the steel. Garric tried to get up; his muscles were liquid with exhaustion, unable to obey.
Strasedon turned its face to the red sky and screamed like all the winds of winter. The hilt of Benlo's iron athame projected from the base of the demon's skull.
Tenoctris rested on her hands and knees beside Strasedon where she'd fallen when the demon straightened. Liane stood
on the creature's other flank, holding a stone that all the strength of both her arms couldn't raise high enough to strike the demon now that it was upright.
Strasedon turned slowly. The black sun was paler and it seemed to Garric that the whole landscape was crumbling. He couldn't move; most likely what he saw was a fantasy as his brain dissociated from the intense pain.
The world was white light and he was falling. King Carus laughed triumphantly, and somewhere Garric saw the Hooded One clenching his fists in fury.