From Across the Clouded Range (35 page)

The beginning of a dream, he thought
and snapped his eyes open wide, but the image was still there. Far
away and very high was the silhouette of something moving. Its
shape was indefinite – he could only see it because of the stars it
blocked. He considered an owl or nighthawk, but it was far too
large to be a bird, at least twenty feet long given the number of
stars it blocked, and it had what looked like a serpentine body and
great bat wings that slowly beat up and down. A cloud, a trick of
the eyes, some kind of animal that he had never heard of, all of
those answers presented themselves, but none fit. The thing moved
too quickly and with too much motion to be a cloud. He certainly
would have heard of a creature that large. A trick of the eye was a
possibility, but it had been there for so long that it did not feel
right to him. A combination of all three, he decided in the end,
with a bit of dream thrown in.

It was the only reasonable
explanation, so he forced his eyes to the fire. It was building
now, its warmth washing over and comforting him. His eyes returned
a last time to the sky, but the shape was gone, so he forced
himself to forget the aberration. He felt his exhaustion building,
carrying him back to sleep. Still, his doubts remained, and the
beginning of his dream was of the kind of creatures discussed in
legends and children’s stories.

#

Dasen woke to the sensation of the
morning sun glinting through the trees and into his eyes. Despite
being just a few sparse inches above the horizon, it had heated his
blanket with surprising thoroughness, and he was wet with sweat. He
threw off the ratty covering, sat up, and stretched the sleep from
his muscles. They protested loudly but not as profoundly as the
previous morning. His injured knee was the only thing that appeared
to have gotten worse. It was stiff, aching, and swollen tight in
his pants. It fought his effort to stand, and he worried that there
might be permanent damage. He tried to work some of the stiffness
from the joint before remembering the higg bark he still carried.
He pulled the bark from the pocket of his pants and retrieved the
short knife from the ground near the fire. A long drink from the
bladder a minute later washed some of the bitterness
away.

He added a few sticks to the coals of
the fire and blew to get them smoldering. He congratulated himself
for thinking to add the logs when he woke in the night. The thin
sticks soon ignited, and he added a few stouter ones from his
diminishing pile. Seeing that the fire had recovered, he hobbled
toward the shelter. He hoped that Tethina was feeling stronger,
maybe even well enough to start their journey. Feeling his own
aches, he wondered again how they would cross the river. He did not
feel like he was in any shape to swim across that torrent,
especially if he had to support Tethina the entire way. But maybe
there would be food and real beds in the logging camp, maybe some
loggers who had not been in the village, maybe horses or a wagon to
carry them on their journey. It all sounded so tantalizing: wagon,
a soft bed, real food.

The thoughts of their journey so
entrapped him that Dasen did not notice the dark shape moving
through the trees. It circled the clearing through the shadows,
watching him wander about unaware. It just watched, as it had for a
long time, waiting for the perfect moment to make its presence
known, the moment its victim was feeling most secure but least able
to grasp the unbelievable. Only after dreams had been washed away
and the day’s plans were being formulated, only when the mind was
entrenched in reason did it step from the clearing and make its
unreasonable presence known.

The movement of something black caught
the corner of Dasen’s eye as the thing stepped from the trees. He
looked back expecting nothing and almost collapsed at the sight
before him. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was not still
asleep, but the image did not fade or turn into something
believable. It smiled at his confusion.

Dasen's first thought was that the
thing was some kind of small bear because its entire body was
covered with oily black fur, but the creature had the build,
clothing, and weapons of a man. It wore knee-high leather pants and
a simple vest covered with brown designs. In its furry, yet
otherwise human, hands, it carried a cruel curved sword with a
serrated blade and a long meat hook with three barbed prongs. The
creature’s bare feet ended in long toes with thick talons like
those of an eagle. But most frightful of all was its face. Its eyes
were black beads that were only visible through the night-black fur
because they caught the morning sun and reflected it off of their
glassy surfaces. It did not have a nose or ears that Dasen could
see but made up for those inadequacies with a gapping mouth that
looked like the thing’s round head had been torn in half and hinged
at the back. Framing that mouth, thin black lips stretched into an
impossibly broad smile, revealing rows of pin-like
teeth.

Dasen had no idea what this creature
could be. Nothing this horrible could exist in nature without
having made it into one of his books. It was too terrible even to
have come from a legend. He shook his head, trying to convince
himself that he must still be sleeping, but if so, it was a
resilient and very realistic dream.

His stupefaction seemed to entertain
the creature. It gave a hissing laugh as it circled the clearing
with a swinging gait that reminded Dasen of a snake slithering
through the grass. It closed until it came to a stop three paces
from him, standing between him and the slowly building fire. It
studied him with its glistening black eyes, its face expressionless
as if it were pondering a serious problem.

"I am glad that I have
found you, my pet,” the creature said.
It
spoke! It is intelligent! This is not an animal!
Dasen was aghast. The creature’s voice was a
harsh rasp that was slurred by the incredible size of its mouth.
“My name is Nathu’lanau of the Curava Deilei Tuhar’za.” The thing
bowed low after its introduction but never took its eyes from
Dasen’s. After that, it waited, but Dasen could not tell for
what.

“
Are you not going to
introduce yourself?” It waited again, but Dasen was paralyzed. “No?
How rude. Lucky then that I already know who you are. My master
said there will be a great reward for whoever finds you, and I have
always liked rewards.” The creature made a mocking strike with its
barbed hooks. Dasen jumped back reflexively, drawing a cackle from
the creature that made his skin crawl.

"Do not worry, my pet, I
won’t take you to him right away. What fun would that be for me?”
The thing laughed again then seemed to ponder something. “I think I
can spare a few days. Perhaps you were difficult to find. Perhaps
you ran. I’m sure my master will not notice a few days,
enough time for you to have screamed yourself out
of a voice
.” The creature’s voice became
harsh and slurred. “
I know ways to make
you feel things you did not even imagine possible. When I am done,
you will beg me to kill you
, but that
decision will be up to my master.” The voice returned to innocent,
and the thing shrugged. “Life cannot be all fun and
games."

The creature laughed again, and
between shudders, Dasen realized that there was something strange
about its words. They were not spoken in any language he had ever
heard, but he could understand them perfectly. It was as if the
language had been born inside him but never used. He could not hope
to explain. In all his reading, he had never even conceived of such
a thing, and it made the creature all the more
inexplicable.

Taken together, Dasen wanted nothing
more than to run, to run in any direction as fast as he could, to
just get away from this . . . thing, but he was frozen, unable to
think, unable to move, unable to look away from the beady black
eyes. He did not know what he would do even if he could act. His
only weapon was a tiny knife not much bigger than his thumb while
his opponent looked strong, fast, and sure with its grisly weapons.
He recovered enough of his senses to hold out his knife
defensively. The gesture earned a snicker from the
creature.

A motion that looked like sniffing
interrupted the laugh, though the creature had no nose that Dasen
could see. "I thought that I sensed another,” it chortled after a
few false sniffs. “I would guess that she is beautiful. I can feel
it about her. What a nice treat she will be. Perhaps she will be my
reward. She could become my toy, to do with as I please.” Dasen's
fear grew as he remembered Tethina. He felt sick at the prospect of
this thing getting to her as well.

“
Do you know the best
part, my pet?" The thing moved a step closer to him and smiled,
creating a huge crack in its face that seemed to wrap around the
whole of its head. Silver teeth glinted ominously from that smile.
"The best part is that you will watch, unable to help her. My
master will take you away, and you will know that you have left her
to suffer on at my leisure for as long as I find her
interesting."

The creature left Dasen with that
thought as it drew its weapons out in front of it and sauntered
toward him. Dasen circled away, searching for an escape, praying
for anything that would get him away from those teeth, those eyes,
and that coarse black fur. All of his life, he had been told that
no creation of nature could be truly evil. Animals, plants, the
weather were simply part of a divine order. Their actions were
controlled by that order in patterns too complex for humans to
understand, but those actions were neither good nor evil, they
simply were. Humans, it was taught, were different from those
agents of the Order because of freewill. Freewill allowed humans to
perform acts that were outside the Order’s divine plan, but doing
so only brought about discord and misery. That is why humans
required laws and study, to understand the Order and align
themselves to It. This creature, Dasen realized, stood in stark
contrast to that teaching. Its entire purpose was to destroy order,
to cleave it apart, and sow chaos in its wake. It was a force of
pure destruction more terrible than the most paranoid counselor had
ever conceived of in his wildest delusions, and it had landed
squarely on him.

Those devastating thoughts
were expelled from Dasen’s mind by a serrated sword racing toward
his gut. The creature brought the swing up short, but Dasen still
barely avoided the glistening blade that sought to tear him open.
The blow had not been meant to hit him, he realized. The creature
had said that its master – who or whatever that was – wanted him
alive.
It can’t kill me. It wants to
frighten me, to torture me
. The thought
did not provide Dasen with the slightest comfort.

The creature swung again,
striking lower toward his thighs. Dasen threw himself back but did
not expect the hooks that followed. They grazed across his chest
leaving two ragged tears that nearly doubled him over in pain. He
screamed. His hand went to the shallow gashes and came away red
with blood. The pain, the sight of the blood almost finished
him.
This is real
, he told himself.
This thing is
really trying to hurt me
. He felt
lightheaded. His knees wobbled.

"First blood, little one.” The
creature pulled Dasen from his shock. It smiled, seemed to find
pleasure from his pain. “How do my hooks feel?" It paused as if
expecting an answer then laughed when nothing came. "Do not worry.
They will hurt even more when they are buried deep in your flesh.
They will draw out quite a bit of that beautiful red blood that you
are so concerned about." The thing was so amused by its taunts that
it threw its head back, overcome with laughter.

He was not sure how he mustered the
courage, but Dasen did exactly what his every sense told him not
to. He ran straight at the creature, wrapped his arms around it,
and drove his shoulder into its chest. Stunned by the ferocity of
the attack, the creature did nothing to avoid it. Dasen hit it with
all the force he could muster and upended them both.

They landed hard. A loud hiss and the
acrid smell of burning hair rose a second later punctuated by a
scream from the creature. They had, by purest luck, landed on
Dasen’s fire. Taking advantage, Dasen drove the thing down onto the
coals and maneuvered to sink his knife into its chest.

Victory was within his reach. Dasen
brought the small knife around.

A terrible, ripping pain flooded him.
The creature dragged its hooks across his back. Dasen screamed and
reeled back as his skin was torn apart. Then, as his weight came
up, the creature opened its gaping maw and bit into his arm with
all of its might. It took his entire forearm into its mouth and
gnashed its teeth until blood ran down its face.

Dasen’s scream built to a howl.
Crippled by the most intense pain he had ever experienced, he
rolled off the creature, hoping only to escape the unbearable
agony. The creature loosened its jaw, pulled the hooks out of his
back, and pushed him to the side where he lay on his back writhing,
unable to do anything but roll on the ground clutching his mangled
limb. His entire arm felt like it was on fire. It pulsed with the
most excruciating, all-encompassing pain he had ever known. Blood
ran down his arm, over his hand, splattered onto his face and
chest, but he did not notice the life flowing from his ravaged
veins. He could not care about anything beyond the torment that
raged through every nerve in his arm and then through the remainder
of the body until he was convulsing in anguish.