Furies of Calderon (57 page)

Tavi shook his head abruptly What was the matter with him? He had to be careful and get the Blessing of Night. The dark mushrooms had some kind of spiny thorns on their undersides, Kitai had said, which had pierced her hand once and left welts that lasted for months He glanced up and around him, but saw no Keepers. That could be an illusion, he knew. There could be a dozen within arm’s reach. But no matter how afraid he was, Tavi had to press on.

That was the history of his people, after all. The Alerans had never let fear or the odds of failure deter them from overcoming, prospering. Their oldest histories, his uncle had once told him, reached so far back into time that the hide and vellum and stone they had been scribed upon had worn away. They had come to Carna from, another place, a small hand of only a few thousand, and had found themselves pitched against an entire world. They had overcome the Icemen, the Children of the Sun and their stronghold in the Feverthorn Jungle, had repelled the Marat and the Canim over the centuries to claim the land of Alera as their own. They controlled the seas around their home, had walled out the Icemen in the north, overcome the Marat through sheer, savage fighting. With their furies and their fury-crafting, the Alerans dominated the world, and no other race or peoples could claim mastery over them
.

Tavi shuddered and blinked his eyes several times. He must have stood there, his hand extended toward the first of the mushrooms for nearly a full minute, not moving. What was the matter with him?

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled up more sharply as he reached for the nearest mushrooms. He hurried, breath rasping, picking one, then another, careful to put them into the pouch at his belt.

And then he thought he saw something in the great mound in front of him
move
.

Tavi jerked his eyes up to it, flinching, and felt an immediate, hot pain in the fingers of his hand. The thorns on the next mushroom had pierced him. He jerked his hand back, and droplets of his blood flashed out and arced through the air, sprinkling the glowing mound in front of him.

Tavi stared at the mound, the droplets of his blood on it. The surface of the glowing
croach
abruptly pulsed, bulged, and then rippled beneath the droplets of his blood, moving like the skin of some hideous, enormous creature and making Tavi’s own flesh crawl in response. He watched as the droplets of blood vanished into the mound, sinking into the surface of the
croach
like snowflakes into a still-melted pond.

And the shadowy shape within the mound abruptly shuddered. And moved. A slow unwinding of limbs, languid, liquid, as though from a sleeper that had, after an endless passing of seasons, finally awakened. It moved, and Tavi
felt
its movement, felt a vast, bewildering awareness that swept over him like the gaze of some ancient and horrible beast.

Terror flooded over Tavi, raw and
hot
rather than cold, terror that set his limbs on fire and burned any thought from his mind, save one: escape.

Tavi spun on his heel and, heedless of the danger in revealing himself, broke into a panicked sprint.

He would remember little of his run, later. One or two chirruping whistles, perhaps, echoed through the trees after him, but they were sparse, and he left them behind him, his steps light on the surface of the
croach,
terror lending him more speed than he would have credited to himself before that night.

He flicked one glance over his shoulder as he ran and saw something through the glowing trees, at the base of the monolith, the opening he’d fled through. He saw something tall, glistening—
alien.

It stood just within the central tree, just behind the doorway Tavi could not quite see it, but he could
feel
it in a way both horribly intimate and beyond simple description. The lower-pitched whistle that went out through the trees felt, to Tavi, like some sort of hideous, mocking laughter.

Tavi fled and did not look back again. He ran over the
croach
until his legs were burning and his limbs felt as though they would be ripped apart by the demands he placed on them. He almost didn’t see the strip of blanket that he had torn off and tied to a low tree branch before he left to mark his way back. He headed for it, and from that flag spotted the next, and the next, laying out his escape route back to the ropes at the base of the cliff.

Kitai nodded once, then stooped to the ground Tavi hesitated behind the girl, dancing in place as he looked back over his shoulder. “Hurry,” he panted. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

Kitai drew out the firestones smoothly, her expression cool, and struck them together. Sparks fell from the stones onto the oil-soaked blanket that lay on the
croach
before them Kitai watched the flames leap up, then moved quickly, reaching up to grab the end of the fishing line that Tavi had soaked in the icy water before he left.

She jerked the line toward her, hand over hand. The other end of the line looped up over one of the higher branches of the tree, up where living leaves grew above the grasp of the
croach
, and then fell back down to where it was tied at one corner of the oil-soaked blanket.

Kitai hauled the line in, and the blazing blanket rose up into the tree’s branches and snagged among the living leaves. Fire leapt up from the tree in a blaze, sudden and high, and once again, from the direction of the central spire, whistling shrieks rose up in a solid wall of terrifying sound—one underlaid, this time, by that deeper whistle, one that overrode the shrieks and continued over the silence Kitai stared at Tavi, her eyes suddenly wide. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Tavi said. “But, uh I think, uh I think I woke it up.”

They looked at one another once more and, in silent accord, turned together and fled toward the ropes a few yards away, toward the safety at the top of the cliffs. To either side of him, Tavi saw the Keepers flooding toward the fire through the trees, closing on them in a carpet of glowing eyes and knobby limbs and leathery shells.

Tavi had reached the ropes and Kitai was only a few paces behind when something dropped down from one of the
crouch
shrouded trees above them, something tall and slender and horribly fast. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a Keeper, because it reached out with one long limb and wrapped hard-looking, chitmous fingers around Kitai’s ankle, hauling her to the ground.

The girl let out a scream of sudden terror and twisted in that grip Tavi only saw what happened in bits and pieces. He remembered turning to see something that he thought was like some kind of hideous wasp, semitransparent wings fluttering in the glowing light of the
crouch
.

It bent over Kitai, weirdly humped shoulders flexing as its head whipped down, as mandibles sunk into her thigh Kitai let out a horrible scream and struck down at the thing’s head with her fists, once, twice. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and her body started jerking and twisting in helpless spasm, limbs flailing. She kept trying to scream, but the sound came out broken, irregular. The wasp-thing, covered in the glowing slime of the
croach
, lifted its head and let out a signal-whistle that echoed around the chasm like the tones of some vast bell. It shook blood from its mandibles, and Tavi caught a flash of multifaceted eyes, of some kind of yellowish fluid at the edges of Kitai’s wounds

“Valley-boy!” shouted a distant voice Tavi looked up to see Doroga, one hand on the rope, leaning far out over the cliff, and even from so far below, Tavi could see that his face was anguished. “Aleran! You cannot save her! Come up!”

Tavi looked back and forth between Doroga and the Marat girl on the ground, the horrible thing crouched over her twitching body. Terror rose through him, a horrible taste in his mouth, and he couldn’t see, couldn’t seem to focus his eyes. One hand tightened on the rope in helpless frustration.

Kitai had saved his life. She had trusted his plan to get them both out of the chasm alive. He was the only one who could help her Tavi let go of the rope.

He turned and ran, not toward the thing crouched over Kitai, but past it, around several glowing trees and to the one they had set on fire.

Keepers crowded in all around him. He could hear them coming through the forest toward him, shrieks and whistles resounding. Tavi leapt up to the lowest branches of the tree, hauling himself into them and started scrambling toward the top, toward the fire.

Halfway there, he hauled himself up and found himself face-to-face with a Keeper, which reared back from him in surprise, its mandibles clacking against its shell. Tavi didn’t have time to think. His hand flashed to where he’d put Fade’s wickedly curved knife at his belt.

He slashed it at the creature’s eyes. It scuttled back from him Tavi followed it, wriggling forward, thrusting the knife at the thing’s face. The Keeper let out a shriek and fell backward, out of the tree, its limbs flailing. It hit the ground twenty feet below with a crunch and a wet-sounding splat, and Tavi looked down to see it writhing on its back, legs flailing, its broken body trailing glowing fluids out onto the forest floor.

Tavi heard more Keepers coming. He hauled himself up higher into the tree, until he reached a branch bare of the
crouch
, slender and unable to support his weight. Farther out along the branch hung the burning blanket. Fire spread along it, toward the trunk of the tree.

Tavi hacked at the branch with the knife, the steel biting into the soft wood. Then he gripped the knife in his teeth and hauled at the branch with both hands. It swayed and then broke, peeling away from the tree Tavi scrambled down, trailing the long branch with its flaming leaves, the oil-soaked blanket, and when he had reached the forest floor, he ran toward Kitai.

The thing crouched over her saw him coming and turned toward him with a hiss, its mandibles spreading wide, along with its chitmous arms. Though its eyes glittered and reflected the light of the fire from a thousand facets, it had a horribly slime-covered, unfinished look to it, as though it hadn’t finished becoming whatever it was to be. Half-born, half-alive, the huge wasp-thing rattled its wings in a furious buzzing sound and whistled to the Keepers around them Tavi screamed and swung the branch in a broad, clumsy arc, fire trailing. The thing hissed and drew back from the flames, jerking its wings back sharply.

Tavi seized on the advantage, shoving forward with the branch and driving the hissing monstrosity back from Kitai’s still form. The girl lay, pale and silent, her eyes open but unmoving, her chest heaving in labored breaths. Tavi slipped an arm beneath her and, in a rush of terror, hauled her up onto his shoulder. He staggered beneath her weight, but grasped the branch and spun about, wildly swinging the blazing wood and leaves and blanket about him. The creature leapt lightly away from him, landing on the wall several yards down from the ropes, horrible eyes focused intently on him

Oh crows
, Tavi thought
It knows! It knows I’m going for the ropes!

If he didn’t move, he was finished. Even if the creature didn’t leap on him, he would shortly be drowning in Keepers. Even his terrified strength was beginning to fade, his body to burn under all the effort. He had to get Kitai to the ropes, at least. He could tie her foot and Doroga could haul her up. Doroga. Tavi looked up to the top of the cliff and saw Doroga’s pale form there, staring down at them. Then the Gargant headman shouted, “Courage, valley-boy!” and vanished back over the lip of the cliff. There was still a chance. Shoving the branch in front of him along the ground, he rushed toward the creature, which scuttled nimbly up the wall, a crab-like sideways motion.

Tavi looked above it, to an outcropping of rock. No good. He had to get it to move toward him, toward the ropes. Tavi ground his teeth in frustration on the blade of the knife. “Oh furies, Kitai, I hope this works.” Gracelessly, he dumped the girl onto the ground, then leapt toward and grabbed the nearest rope and started climbing. The creature let out a whistle and scuttled toward him. He knew that he did not have a chance of escaping it, or of fighting it, there on the ropes, but he took the knife from his teeth and swiped it at the thing. It paused, hesitating just out of his reach. Its horrible head tilted, as though assessing this new threat.

“Doroga!” Tavi screamed. “There it is, there it is!”

From above came a slow and tortured scream, bellowing in Doroga’s basso, filled with anger and defiance Tavi would never have believed that a man could lift a boulder that large. But Doroga appeared at the top of the cliff again, bearing a stone the size of a coffin over his head, arms and shoulders and thighs bulging with effort. He flexed the whole of his body, a ponderous motion, and the huge stone hurtled down toward the creature. Its head abruptly whirled on its neck, whipping around to face directly behind it. The creature moved, its wings buzzing, but it was not fast enough to wholly escape the plummeting stone. It flashed by Tavi, missing him by the breadth of a few fingers. The creature leapt away from the wall, but the stone crushed against it, sending it spinning out of the air to land on the ground many yards away. The stone itself hit the ground and shattered, chips of rock flying, glowing slime from within the
croach
hurled into the air as from a fountain. Hot pain flashed along Tavi’s leg, and he looked down to see his trousers cut by a flying piece of stone, blood on his leg. From above came Doroga’s defiant howl of triumph, a bellowing roar that shook the walls of the chasm. The creature let out another whistle, this one higher, filled with fury and, Tavi thought, with sudden fear. It staggered but could not rise and instead began dragging itself back into the trees, as the glowing eyes of dozens of Keepers began to appear behind it Tavi dropped the knife, slid down the rope, and ran to Kitai. He seized her and began dragging her back toward the ropes, grunting with effort but moving quickly, jerking her over the ground