The Gorgons Gaze # 2 (Companions Quartet) (28 page)

“Connie!” Col almost flung himself after her as he watched his friend fall backward toward the trees, her arms and legs thrashing helplessly in the air.

But then something strange seemed to be happening to her: her descent was slowed, she became wrapped in a blue mist, and swirled this way and that like an autumn leaf carried on the breeze. She disappeared from view into the trees.

We must land!
Col shouted urgently.

Skylark turned and prepared to descend. But before he had got far, a blue-black pegasus burst out of the trees and came charging toward them, nostrils flaring and his fiery eyes blazing at them with hatred. His wings swept great gusts of air down onto the branches below, driving flurries of brown leaves up into the sky as if they had been struck
by a tornado.

You think you have been so clever, boy
, Kullervo sneered at Col, his detested voice ringing through Col’s mind as he forced entry again, trespassing on the bond between pegasus and rider. Col crumpled forward onto Skylark’s neck, disabled by an intense pain in his temples.
You forget—I know you too well to be caught by any trick of yours
.

But this time, Col was not alone: Skylark, too, could hear the voice and whinnied angrily.

Boy? He is no boy of yours!
Skylark declared, stamping out the voice that had infiltrated his bond with Col.

Die then, if you will, horseboy!
Kullervo screamed as he quit Col’s mind, his counterfeit presence no match for the real thing.
There is no universal to save you now!

His mind emptied of Kullervo’s polluting presence and his pain receding, Col turned in his seat to see the pegasus striding through the air toward them, his ebony hooves raised to strike, flecks of foam flying from his open mouth. Col knew then that Kullervo would not rest until both he and Skylark were dead. But having passed through so much anxiety today, brought face to face with the worst, Col was now beyond fear. He and Skylark had trained for just such an extremity. It was time to test if they had learned their lesson well.

Thessalonian roll!
he commanded and Skylark swerved hard to the right.

Once he had carried her safely to the ground, Kullervo abandoned Connie at the foot of the tree. He was burning with anger, eager to return to punish the pegasus and rider; so he called on the stone sprites hiding in the roots of the tree to keep Connie there for him. His task would not take long; he would be back to deal with her, he had told them. On his call, gray fungal growths extruded from the soil, dividing and curling into shapes like the emaciated hands of a corpse. Driven by an unerring instinct for warm flesh, they gripped her ankles, pinching spitefully, anchoring her to the spot. Before Connie managed to raise her shield, she caught a glimpse of the cold nature of the creature that held her, sensing how it spent its days gnawing insatiably through the inner chambers of the earth. It hated warm blood and flesh, and with its touch tried to freeze her to be like itself.

Caught unprepared, Connie found the cold had crept to her ankles before she realized. It was like standing in a pool of iced water, numbing all sensation. Grappling for her shield, she repelled the attack forcefully, driving the cold back into the earth, so that frosted particles now glistened on the mossy stones under her feet. The inner assault beaten, and desperate to return to help her friends, Connie reached down to pry herself free, only to have her hand grasped by a third fist thrust out of the flinty soil.

This was how Mack found her when he crashed his way through the trees, having left his horse back among the
beeches. He had been following the trail of tattered scarlet cloth left by Skylark, but he got more than he bargained for.

“What the hell!” he exclaimed, staring with horror at Connie, the stone hands, and the spread-eagled gorgon. “What’s been going on here?”

“Don’t come any nearer,” Connie shouted. “There are stone sprites everywhere in the roots of this tree.”

He halted in the very act of running to her side.

“How can I free you?” he asked, looking desperately around for inspiration.

“Don’t worry about me—worry about Col and Skylark. They’re fighting Kullervo up there!”

Further words were interrupted by someone else stumbling into the space at the foot of the tree. Connie looked around to see a woman sprinting across to the fallen gorgon, but the woman hesitated upon seeing them.

It was Cassandra.

17
Stone Sprites

“Y
ou evil snake!” Mack shouted at his ex-wife. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done!” He took a step toward her, but she was undaunted, her sole aim to reach her fallen companion. She dodged past him and ran toward the trunk. Mack lurched after her.

“Don’t!” Connie yelled, but it was too late. A crop of stony fingers burst through the soil like the spears of winter wheat, grasping the ankles of both Cassandra and Mack.

“Let go!” Cassandra screamed at them. “I’m on your side!” But stone sprites did not listen to humans who were not their companions; they hated pounding feet and the heat of human touch and did not care for “sides.”

“Get off!” yelled Mack, trying to fight the fingers which had gripped his shoes. “What are they doing?” he asked,
now panic-stricken as he felt their cold creep up his body. He turned to Connie, his eyes wide with alarm. Cassandra moaned.

“It’s their touch—they are trying to make you as cold as they are. They only like corpses, not living bodies.” Connie did not want to explain that she could hold the sprites off with her shield for herself but was unable to aid them at this distance.

Mack, infuriated by his powerlessness, turned to the only object present on which he could vent his anger. “You…you traitor! Don’t you know that your precious Kullervo is trying to kill our son up there!” He jerked his head to the sky above, but the screen of leaves hid all that was happening from them.

His words were like a slap in the face for Cassandra. She stopped trying to reach out to the gorgon and now stared frantically up. “No! It can’t be true! He promised he wouldn’t hurt my young!”

“Ha! You believed the promises of that shape-shifting liar! You’re even dumber than you look, Cassie. Aargh!” Mack’s last cry had nothing to do with her but the cold that had crept to his waist, pinching his stomach in its grip.

“If I’m so dumb, why are you also standing here being turned to ice? Not such a big man now, are you?” Though Cassandra was suffering, she seemed to derive vindictive pleasure from the fact that Mack was enduring the same pain.

“Will you both shut up!” Connie shouted, driven to distraction by the bickering pair. Her back was aching as the stone sprite pulled on her wrist to bend her closer to the ground. “You’re both about to die if I can’t think of a way to help you—and I can’t think if you’re both arguing with each other. So just be quiet!”

They whirled around to look at her in surprise, torn from their private feuding by her blunt words.

“These things kill?” Mack asked hesitantly.

Connie nodded curtly, biting her bottom lip as she tried to remember something from her reading that would help. But she had learned so little, barely scratched the surface of what she needed to know as a universal. If only she had been allowed to continue her training properly!

Cassandra had fallen very quiet. “I want you to understand, Mack, I never wanted Colin to get hurt,” she muttered, barely audibly.

“What?”

“I had to save the gorgon; Kullervo was the only one who’d help us. What good was the Society wringing its hands when she was about to be crushed?” Cassandra stopped. A horse screamed overhead. “What was that?”

“Skylark!” shrieked Connie, feeling the pegasus’s pain as if it were her own. Frantically, she redoubled her efforts to free herself.

“Skylark?” echoed Cassandra. “It’s true then? They’re fighting him up there?”

“Of course, it’s true. Kullervo likes killing—that’s all he likes. It looks to me as if you’ve got to decide if your loyalty lies with her,” Mack nodded stiffly at the gorgon, “or with our boy.”

“I…I can’t choose,” whispered Cassandra, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

Mack sighed, but with difficulty as the cold had now reached his lungs and he was struggling to breathe.

“Perhaps you won’t have time to choose. But it looks as if your gorgon will pull through,” he said in a hoarse whisper. A snake-lock was beginning to stir.

“That’s good,” Cassandra said huskily. “She’s the last of her kind. I did it for her.”

“I know.”

Cassandra looked over at Mack with new respect. “You knew?”

“Sure, I did. But that doesn’t mean I think you were right.”

Connie had not been listening to this exchange but had sunk deep into the earth to plead with the stone sprites. They had recognized her, but refused to relent. Instead they gnawed at the edge of her shield, attempting to lure her to join them.

Darkness, silence, emptiness—these are what we offer you!
they called to her.

Chilled by their words and their hunger for oblivion, Connie gave up in disgust. She groped her way to the
surface, reaching out to the tree roots to guide her back. The living energy of the oak flowed through her like a healing spring. She heard the wood sprite in her mind again.

Companion, you are sad
.

Yes, these people will die—will be felled—unless I can help them
, she told it. Connie opened her eyes to hear the leaves whispering overhead and to see the lower branches swaying. The tree itself was disturbed by the evil taking place in its shelter.

That must not be
, the leaves whispered.

Connie felt something move at her feet. Fearing to see yet more stone fingers reaching out to grip her, she looked down. A root was breaking through the earth and slowly sliding toward the hand that grasped her wrist. It was like watching the film of the growth of many seasons, sped up so that it happens in a few moments. Two more earthy tendrils were winding toward the fingers clasped around her legs. The roots twisted around the hands, seeking out minute cracks in their surface. Once any weakness was found, the tendrils burrowed in and began to split the stone apart. She could feel the rock creaking as it resisted the pressure of the tree, but suddenly, the hands cracked apart with an explosion that sent clouds of dust into the air. She was free!

Connie leapt away from the ground where stone sprites lurked and then looked back to see how the other captives
were faring. Tree roots had just freed Mack, and he was now pulling Cassandra clear as the last hand holding her was destroyed. Clouds of choking dust floated on the breeze, leaving them all covered in a thin film of the white grit, as if they had been fighting each other with flour.

“Right,” Mack gasped, taking deep breaths into his starved lungs. “What are we going to do to save Col?”

Connie reached out in thought for a moment, trying to sense what was happening above them. She could feel Kullervo’s hate spilling out across the skies like a dark miasma. The pursuit was still on.

“We need a weapon to use against him,” she said. “Kullervo’s still hunting them.”

“You defeated him last time,” Mack said looking at her with new-found respect. “Simple—you can do whatever you did then again.”

“I can’t—not unless he turns his anger on me and at the moment it’s directed at Col and Skylark. I have no power of my own; I can only use the power of others.”

Silence fell. The three of them turned to the gorgon.