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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Druadaen drew one of the arrows he’d saved from his encounter with the two wyrdwards—or just as likely, sorcerers—on the road to Pakobsid. He removed the wax tip cover; the point had a viscous shine that told him the poison was still active. He still detested the mere idea of using it, but as it had been every other time, it was likely to mean his life if he didn’t.

And of all those times, his present situation was worse—much worse. He’d already spent half the day running from his pursuers: a good effort, but not enough. There were still a dozen of them and they had been gaining steadily. For the last hour, he’d pushed to reach the hillock upon which he now stood, believing it was what the owl had been circling. But either ground mists or the haze of exhaustion had tricked his eyes; there was a longer, lower ridge half a mile further on, directly in line with the hill. From Druadaen’s perspective, the two had appeared to be a single terrain feature until he got within a mile. The moment he discovered his error was also the moment he knew he was doomed; he simply didn’t have enough stamina left to reach it, not before the abominations caught up with him.

He turned to survey them as they trotted, loped, waddled, even scuttled toward him. Now within four hundred yards, he was able to confirm what earlier glimpses had suggested; that the largest of them was the same fish-eyed ogre he’d left for dead in the cave. Yet here it was, its mouth now a torn and blood cruciform, its heavy tentacle thrashing in eagerness, fury, or both. Happily, all the other notably large ones had dropped far behind or given up.

The remaining abominations were mostly smaller, several of the swiftest appearing more like insects with only four appendages. Their torsos were low to the ground as they scurried forward on all fours, their flat backs below the reversed knee joints of their legs—all of which were furnished with hands rather than feet.

Two hours earlier, one of them had sprinted ahead of the rest, closing through the intervening half mile in about three minutes. Druadaen had drawn his still-inert sword, planted it point first in the loam, unshouldered his bow and waited until the monstrosity had closed to fifty yards. He’d missed, primarily because he was still drawing ragged breaths. Encouraged by the apparent harmlessness of its adversary, the water-strider man cackled and charged.

Druadaen drew to the ear and released a broad hunting point at less than thirty yards. It sank a quarter of its length into the creature, which flailed backward, kicking and screaming. After dispatching it with his sword, Druadaen started running again but kept an eye on the others’ reactions to their still-flailing fellow. Once the rest of the abominations passed the wounded one, two of the smallest furtively broke from the rear and set about devouring it. Chilling, but potentially useful information.

After that, the chase had slowed. The others never drew too far ahead of the large one which, while in no way swift, seemed inexhaustible. Whether its endurance was innate or a product of vengeful rage, it had the same effect on the pursuit; it was slower, but the outcome was no less certain.

Druadaen laid the poisoned arrows out before him, then several of the philters that might prove useful, and drew his sword. He was disappointed to see that the blade was not reacting to his imminent demise. He glanced at the bracer-velene; no reaction there, either.

Some friends you turned out to be, he thought as he chose his targets. The key was the big one. If that one fell dead—or appeared to be—it might give the survivors pause. But as much as he wanted to start on the tentacled monster, Druadaen couldn’t afford to; the greater the range, the more likely he might miss, and his only hope was to hit it with almost all but one of his poisoned arrows. He’d spend that shaft in an attempt to immobilize one at longer range and thereby draw in any other abominations that succumbed to their cannibalistic appetites. Only then would he attempt to feather his fish-eyed nemesis. And after that, he could only empty his quiver until they were on him, and then resort to his sword.

At two hundred yards, he drew a field point to his ear and let fly at one of the roughly man-sized abominations. It barely flinched when the shaft missed its head by a foot. Druadaen chose a heavier hunting point, drew again, adjusted and let the shaft fly. Low, it thudded into the creature’s thigh, eliciting a high-pitched howl as it stumbled and fell. Now that he had an almost stationary target, Druadaen was willing to risk one poisoned shaft. He nocked it carefully, ignored the approach of the others, and loosed it.

The arrow should have missed; an errant breeze gusted it slightly to the left—but in so doing, it intersected and caught the abomination’s flailing arm as it tried to swing back up to its feet. It howled again, then grew quiet and motionless, as if puzzled—just before it fell its length. Several of the smaller ones tentatively approached… but then backed off when the closest took a few tentative sniffs and swerved away. Druadaen sighed: most natural creatures cannot detect poison that has only been in a body for a few moments, but these obviously could.

So: he had to face all of them at once. Best start putting the tainted shafts into the big one before the rest close with me and…

He flinched as a rush of wind went past his left ear. By the time he recovered, the cause—the owl—was already a receding blur. It had almost brushed his shoulder with its wing. What now? You’ve returned to claw my eyes out?

And for a moment, it looked as if it might. But the owl’s rapid return was not a prelude to attack; instead, it turned three tight circles about Druadaen’s head. Then it leveled off and flew back in the direction from which it had come: straight toward the long ridge behind him. Druadaen stared after it for a moment he could not spare—and realized he didn’t have enough time to think: only act.

He hastily stripped the wax guard from another of his poisoned arrows, aimed at the body of the fish-eyed ogre—now barely a hundred yards away—and loosed it. He thumbed the cork off a philter, swallowed its contents, scooped up the other arrows, and somehow managed to resist the impulse to see if his arrow had hit and if the poison was at least slowing his enemy. Instead, he focused on the one thing that still mattered:

Running. To the low ridge. As fast as he could.


The philter—a natural compound derived from animal humours—gave him the rush of energy it promised. It also made his senses almost painfully keen, but none of that mattered now as he raced over the crest of the ridge and discovered—

A tangle of scrub and bushes, sheltered in a bowl formed by the back-curving ends of the ridge.

No S’Dyxoi in sight. Not even the owl.

Nothing.

Gritting his teeth, Druadaen plunged down the slope, determined to use his briefly increased vitality to hide and fight as he’d intended before retreating. As he pushed hastily into a likely thicket, he could hardly think through his rising fury at having trusted the owl, only to have it betray him in that last moment. Except…

Why would even the most cruel S’Dyxoi waste all the mantic crafting and planning just to bring me here to die? It didn’t make any sense.

Which means you’re mistaking why it’s been done.

As if summoned by that thought, the bushes and scrub around him began to hum.

The abominations topped the rise, following his tracks down into the bowl, the big one standing on the crest, its head turning slightly so that both its eyes could survey what lay below.

The hum around Druadaen became a buzz and the smaller bushes were shaking.

The abominations stopped, glanced around at the sound, one spotting Druadaen as it did. The creature raised a finger in his direction—

—Just as the buzz became a shrill storm of angry insects, erupting out of the bushes as if, against their impulses, they had been held there in readiness until this exact moment.

Druadaen was stunned—but just as swiftly, refocused. They are not attacking me, only the abominations. Rising from the thicket into the unfolding opportunity before him, Druadaen stripped the wax tips off all the remaining poisoned shafts and began loosing them in rapid sequence at the fish-eyed ogre less than fifty yards away.

He didn’t stop to see their effects. He knew one missed, flying just above its wholly human shoulder and over the crest. But the others feathered its belly, even as the rest of its broad body accumulated a thick coat of biting, stinging insects. It had charged after the first arrow hit, then paused as an angry cloud of wasps and hornets swarmed toward it. A moment later, it stumbled, shaking its head as if trying to clear it.

Arrows kept humming into its sizable flank until Druadaen reached into his quiver and discovered it was empty. Now thoroughly coated by a crawling mass of insects, the abomination slumped to the ground—and three wolves lunged out of the bushes, fangs bared and seeking its throat. Its outline now lost behind their flashing bodies, its limbs continued to flail blindly as it sent up cries of distress that were part the roar of a bull and part the squeal of a pig.

The rest of the brush was alive with separate combats as other wolves and even a bear rushed from where they’d been hiding to attack the scattered abominations…

Wait: a bear? On the plains?

Druadaen turned toward the open neck of the bowl and was unsurprised—but greatly relieved—to see Aleasha rise from the bushes there, the two largest wolves flanking her, their eyes roving, alert to threat and hard with menace. She exchanged a quick smile with Druadaen, to which he added a long, grateful nod before cross-drawing his swords and scanning for the place where his blades were needed the most.

A quick glance was not enough to make that determination, because the animals’ actions were mostly in response to the abominations’ own. Those few that turned and fled back toward the crest of the ridge were ignored. Those that stood their ground uncertainly were threatened, then charged. If they followed the others over the ridge, they too were ignored. But those that stood their ground or sprinted forward to finish their pursuit of Druadaen—or, perhaps, just kill anything they came across—drew the full attention of Aleasha’s companions.

Each struggle was distinct, but they all followed a similar pattern. The most aggressive abominations attracted a dense swarm of insects that attacked or buzzed about their heads. Once distracted, two or more wolves sped out of the bush, lunging at and baiting it until one’s flashing teeth found their intended mark: the tendon behind the heel. With the enemy hamstrung, hobbling, and unsteady, Druadaen expected the wolves to leap in to finish it off. But instead, they nipped and snapped at it until one of the bears—a second had emerged—rushed into the melee and set about mauling the abomination.

This rarely lasted more than a few seconds. When the abomination was no longer capable of resisting, the bear wandered off to look for a new foe, and the wolves returned to crush the crippled monster’s windpipe. All in all, the process was both terribly swift and chillingly efficient.

Only the second largest of the abominations—a large hairless female with serrated pincers instead of hands—had been able to brush off the attacks, largely because she seemed immune, or at least insensate, to the cloud of insects in which she moved and fought. As Druadaen watched, one of her claws flashed at an overly bold wolf and opened a foot-long gash along its flank. He started toward that combat—

—but was stopped by a hand on his arm. Aleasha was just behind him. She shook her head. “No. My friends might misunderstand.”

Druadaen glanced back toward the wounded wolf, saw a bear closing in to take its place. “But the animals follow you. As if you were one of them. Their own leader.”

She nodded. “Because I smell so to them and act as they expect. But they are still what they are. They are not soldiers, obeying every order with a salute. If I urged them to do something which is not already in their nature, they would be confused. Maybe doubt whether I really am their leader.”

Druadaen nodded slowly. “Sadly, I never even considered that.”

Her reply was wry. “I am glad you said so; I dislike having to tell people that they have been foolish.” Her puckish expression became a grin—despite the savage work being completed not twenty yards from where they stood.

She noticed his glances toward the last keening, shrieking abomination; the bear’s paws and jaws were busy upon its much-rent body. “You feel pity for them? For the monsters?”

“I am… not unmoved by their suffering.”

She glanced sideways at him. “Taaakh! Fellow-feeling is not the way of nature when lives are in the balance. You would do well to rid yourself of sentiment, when it comes to them.” She flinched when the bear narrowly squirmed away from the dying creature’s death blow; a prehensile stinger had whipped out of its abdomen just before it went limp. “The ones who kept attacking even when their own destruction was assured? They have no feelings for others of their kind, or even for themselves, really.”

“And the ones who ran?”

She shrugged. “They have enough self-feeling to flee. Some may have feelings for something other than themselves. But most just fear death more than they revel in savagery.” She rose, scanned the brush and the concave slopes that hemmed it in. “If these abominations were not so unreachable, or so dangerous to the world, I would not be so hasty to slay them.” The only sound in the brush was the whimpering of the wounded wolf. “Nor would I ask my friends or companions to fight them. I do not risk their lives more readily than my own. Often less readily. But this fight concerns us all.” She nodded for him to walk with her to where the wolves were gathering around the one that had fallen.

“You believe the abominations are a threat to the whole world?” Druadaen asked.

She nodded. “I am certain of it. They are an affront to the order of all things.” She shrugged. “Except for a very few, they live their whole lives as if they were rabid. Their only impulses are to feed and to kill… and not always in that order.”

Aleasha’s animals parted so that she might kneel next to the wolf. It was a female: light-framed and small-boned. “The wound is grave,” she said over her shoulder as she ran a slow hand from the midpoint of its muzzle to the back of its head, smoothing the fur as it licked her hand.

“Can it—can she be saved?” Druadaen asked, trying to remember that when he was with Aleasha, wolves were allies rather than adversaries.

Aleasha shook her head. “Not in time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she cannot move yet, and we cannot wait.”

Druadaen assessed the animal; it was no bigger than a medium-sized dog. “If you can carry some of my kit, I will bear her across my shoulders. How far have we to go?”

Aleasha turned to stare at him; several of the animals did the same. “Too far. And you already reek of long exhaustion.” She sniffed at him. “You might fall over yourself, if you did not have a humour of urgency running in your veins.” She smiled. “But your offer is kind and speaks well of you.” She turned back to the wolf, soothing it with one hand, as the other scooped a mixture of herbs and half-dried leaves from her shoulder sack. “It is ever thus when one fights for survival. Just like us, some part of them”—she nodded around the circle of patient animal eyes and blood-wet muzzles—“must die to save others of their kind.” She crumbled the leaves beneath the wounded wolf’s nose. “That is the one kind of human war I understand: to slay an invader before they can destroy your home and your family.”

The wolf’s eyelids sagged; its breathing became relaxed. Aleasha nodded at it, her eyes gleaming. “I take no pride in killing abominations, and I mourn every friend I lose. But even this gentle creature”—she jutted her chin at the drowsy wolf—“would kill the runt of her own litter if that was the only way for her to save the rest. We do what we must and mourn those we cannot preserve.” She frowned. “Although some creatures are more important to preserve than others.”

Druadaen shook his head. “In what way?”

“When we flee this place, take note of the dead insects. You will find no bees. Only wasps and hornets.” Druadaen nodded to signify his understanding, but she wagged a finger at it. “No, it is not just that bees are the midwives of new flowers. It is because they are cooperative creatures, and also because most do not attack unless provoked. They even share their honey.”

Druadaen smiled. “It is true that I have never heard of a ‘wasp-keeper.’”

Aleasha tried to smile. “And you never will—which is my point. My arts arise from seeking and creating affinity between living things, regardless of how simple or complex they may be. So, the less capable a species is of affinity”—she shrugged—“the less it matters to the living world if some die. They are necessary to the weave of all things, but inasmuch as the only object of their awareness is their own survival, it is enough that they continue to breed and be present.”

“Do all who exercise the, uh, nativist arts share this feeling?”

“To a greater or lesser degree, yes.” She drew a small obsidian knife—its napped, midnight blade gleamed—and nodded for the animals to withdraw. She moved it closer to the slumbering wolf’s neck.

“Will it wake?” Druadaen asked.

Aleasha’s voice was thick. “Yes, but it will be over in a moment.”

“It can be over faster than that. Here.” He held out a sachet. “It is Sarmese. Given to a large creature in small amounts, it induces sleep.” He glanced at the wolf. “In a creature so small, it will not awaken.”

Aleasha turned, her eyes grateful behind the tears that almost hid them. She nodded, took the sachet, eased the wolf’s jaws slightly wider, poured the white powder onto its tongue.

After a few moments, it released a small sigh, then a much greater one, then was still.

Aleasha rose, wiped her eyes, and nodded at Druadaen. “Thank you. That was a kindness. For both of us.” She sighed, and she turned a small shiver into an intentional shake of her upper body, as if dispelling a chill. When she looked up, her cheeks were streaked but her eyes were clear. “Let us go collect what you left on the farther hill and be gone.”


Druadaen soberly attempted to be happy about how much less his kit would chafe his shoulders, because that was the only happy result of the past two days. He’d consumed almost all his food, had emptied his waterskin as completely as his quiver, and had abandoned other implements in order to improve his speed and endurance while being chased.

However, in his haste to retreat to the ridge, two vials had rolled from the rock where he’d laid them at the ready, and they were too valuable to abandon. Aleasha strolled alongside as he searched for them.

Vials in the weeds like needles in the haystack…

He stopped and straightened. “This must amuse you.”

“No,” she answered. Her tone suggested it was trying her patience, instead. “Why do you say so?”

“Because here I am looking for two glass ampules I dropped on a few square yards of grassland, but you were able to find me on a whole continent!” He responded to her smile with one of his own. “How did you do it?”

“How did I find you? Why, because I am ‘magic’!” she laughed, adding exaggerated emphasis to the quaint term. When he crossed his arms and let his smile become “patient,” she added, “My friends told me.”

“Your frie—?”

The owl swooped over his shoulder to land on hers. “Yes,” she answered almost coyly, “my many, many friends.”

“Many friends?” He glanced at the owl, saw her smile widening at his confusion, and then saw her many, many, many friends in his memories.

Birds overhead when he trudged north to Pakobsid. Gulls overhead when he sailed to Sarma and then out again. All the way to the western end of the Straight Sea with Lorgan, and then north along the coast of the Broken Lands. Always there, even when there were no scraps of food to be had nor fish to catch. And then, from the charred remains of the trading station, past the ruins, and finally…

He glanced at the owl. “And finally, one guided me here.” Druadaen shook his head, chuckling. “I should have surmised.”

“Why?”

“Because I have seen it done on my own world. And because it makes such simple sense that I never conceived of it.” He waved a desultory hand at the sky as he returned to his search, asking, “Where can one go where a flock of birds is not commonplace? And even if one knows such tracking is possible, how can one live in suspicion of every bird, wondering if they are the eyes of a distant wyldwyrd?”

“Yes,” she answered through a faint laugh, “but I suspect there is another reason you did not think of it.”

“Perhaps because I am stupid as well as unobservant?”

“No,” she answered seriously, “because from what I saw of your travels, you could not trust those around you. Even on that strange ship, I doubt you told them your true origins.”

He nodded solemnly but thought: So, you can see through their eyes, but not hear through their ears? Or perhaps because they do not understand speech, because it is just scattered sounds, you hear it that way, too? He smiled as he discovered the simplest explanation of all: Or maybe it would have been just a bit too obvious if a bird followed me into every room and compartment.

“You are amused at not being able to trust others on your journey?”

“No,” he answered, resuming his search, “but I do not understand how it kept me from speculating that you were watching me!”

“Do you not?” She sounded even more serious than before. “When we have no one to help or stand with us—when safety, maybe survival, rests in our hands alone—we focus on little else. Imagining that we have unseen friends is a pointless, even dangerous, daydream.” She smiled. “Particularly if we allow ourselves to think that they are ‘magically’ watching over us.”

He smiled, but gibed, “Well, if you were watching, then why have the owl fetch me from leagues away? Couldn’t you just come closer?”

She seemed more proficient at poking fun than recognizing when the same was done to her. Smiling through a frown, she very patiently explained, “Because that was the fastest way for us to meet. I, too, had to travel to this place. Which I selected because I knew of the ground hornets in the bowl.” Seeing that her explanation was only widening his smile, she risked teasing him back. “You could at least have come the last half mile on your own! Instead, you made me send the owl again!”

Druadaen made sure his drollery was exaggerated. “Yes, I thought about that. But there were complications. About a dozen of them. Perhaps you didn’t notice.”

She looked as though she was about to chuckle, but managed not to. Instead, she put her hands on her hips and huffed, “Just as you didn’t notice where you put these precious compounds of yours. Have you lost them entirely?”

Druadaen straightened, holding one in either hand. “Apparently not. So now I know how you found me, but I still don’t know why you did it.”

“And you’re not going to, not standing here! We could be watched ourselves. Besides, we need to find a place to rest before we follow the trail left by the supragants.”

“What? Why?”

“To find out where they were going, of course! Must I think of everything? Now, enough: why do you keep distracting me with your foolish questions and even more foolish talk?” She grinned, enjoying the game of blaming her loquacity on him.

“Yes, my apologies; I’m sorry to be such a bother,” he smiled back.

“Well, you should be! Now we must hurry, unless you wish to end up as another morsel for whichever scavenger—or predator—first smells the aftermath of a battle.”


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