“Don’t stand still—it will find you— keep moving— ”
Choking, she turned and ran, her bare feet dragging through the sand. She headed for the water, a few yards away. When she looked back she saw the Redeemer gingerly creeping down the steps, head weaving back and forth, long scarlet tongues trailing from its mouth. She turned away and continued toward the water, clutching her side where it ached from running. Her mouth was dry and sour; she stopped to cup her hands in the foaming water around her ankles. When she brought it to her mouth it tasted bitter and warm as bile, and she spat it out again.
“ Reive …”
The dwarf’s voice sounded even fainter now. Wiping her mouth she turned, saw that he had straggled back across the beach, heading for the foot of the steps.
“Rudyard. No. ”
She ran toward him, though it felt as though the sand sucked at her feet with each step. Once she tripped and slashed her thigh on a broken shell. She saw what he meant to do: put himself between her and the Redeemer, lure it to him and give her time to escape. When the dwarf saw her running toward him he shouted frantically, waving her back; but Reive could think of nothing now, she was like a kite cut loose in the wind. The thought of being alone on that strand terrified her; the sight of the waves crashing behind her, that inky stain on the horizon spreading beneath the sky: all of it numbed her so that she could scarcely move. She wanted only to feel something solid against her skin, metal or carven stone or glass, anything but this awful shifting world. She thought she would rather die than endure this horror, but then she saw Rudyard Planck.
He had reached the base of the steps, and stood there forlornly, nursing his bleeding wrist. On the steps above him, perhaps two thirds of the way down, the Redeemer swept its head back and forth. The suckers streaming from its mouth whistled through the air, and its wail had deepened to a low, questioning moan.
The dwarf looked up, craning his neck. When he saw how near the creature was he cried out and fell backward, catching himself on the edge of a step. As Reive raced up beside him she glanced aside and saw the blood spilled across the sand, a broken line that ended at the dwarf’s feet.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he gasped. She smacked him when he tried to fight her off, grabbed him—he was heavier than she’d thought—and pulled him onto her back.
“Hang on,” she said, coughing, bent nearly to the ground. The Redeemer’s cloying scent filled her nostrils like perfumed water and she could see its shadow slicing through the brightness behind her as she tottered toward the waves. Rudyard yelled something in her ear but she couldn’t hear him. She had some vague notion that if she could only reach the water, they could somehow find safety.
Her back ached beneath the dwarf’s weight and her feet slipped on the wet sand, so that over and over she fell, struggled back up, and stumbled forward a few more steps. Looking behind her, she saw the Redeemer stopped at the bottom of the stairs where Rudyard had been, its long suckers touching the steps and sand and then plying questioningly at the air. At the top of the broad steps, within the shadow of the Lahatiel Gate, she could just make out whitish shapes, like teeth in a great dark mouth. The figures of those waiting inside, she realized. They were pressing forward, the oriels must have been removed or else extended to allow the crowd to move farther out, until they nearly crossed into the light. Above the city clouds whipped in gray and white streams, reflected in the domes’ smooth glassy surface; but the sky immediately above Reive was dark green. Funnels of sand churned up the steps, the wind made a steady keen whining in her ears, drowning out nearly every other sound. All this she knew in one quick flash; then she was staggering on again, the dwarf clinging to her fiercely as he gasped, “Down—let me down! ” while behind them the Redeemer shambled across the sand, moaning softly to itself.
They were at the edge of the beach now. It looked solid enough, with just a few inches of foam sluicing across the sand, and then angry blue-black water like molten glass. Reive paused, shifting so that the dwarf could clamber a few inches higher on her shoulders. The wind was so strong it seemed to suck the very breath from her mouth, and she turned sideways to gulp in deep shuddering gasps. For a moment she knew nothing but an overwhelming happiness, to be still and have her lungs full of air again, and to have spray and not sand pelting her cheeks. Then: “Reive—the waves, be careful!”
Something kicked her stomach and she went flying. The dwarf tumbled into the surf. Head over heels she rolled, shrieking in pain as her arm was wrenched, then gagging as water filled her mouth and nose and eyes. She was catapulted headfirst into the sand; something slammed against her side and she felt as though her head were being torn from her shoulders. Then just as suddenly it all stopped. She was sitting up, covered with sand and sea wrack, water streaming across her lap while the wind howled in her ears. Not five feet in front of her the Redeemer crouched over the body of the dwarf.
“No!”
It seemed not to hear her scream, but then she flung herself at it, coughing and weeping as she battered its sides and kicked at its hind legs. The creature raised its head, the long tendrils whipping through the air until they found her. She felt something slash across her scalp, a fiery burning on one cheek. But she had distracted it; as she stumbled backward into the water it followed her. A wave bore Rudyard Planck’s body a few feet inward onto the sand, then swept it out to sea once more.
Another wave knocked her down, though this time she saw it coming from the corner of her eye and she flung herself against the sand, so that it passed over her. A moment later she surfaced, gagging and shaking water from her eyes. Her shift clung to her like seaweed. A few feet to the right the Redeemer reared above her, its long neck swaying as though confused. Reive crouched on her hands and knees, coughing and weeping. She started to crawl away from it, but the waves came on and again she went under, and again surfaced, choking.
There was a roaring everywhere, as of some immense machine bearing down upon the strand. And now rain began to fall—it must be rain, great sheets of water pounding against the ocean and striking her slantwise on the chest. Reive tottered to her feet, swaying as she tried to keep her balance. She was so exhausted that she couldn’t walk. The wind was so strong it nearly beat her back into the surf; she bent against it and took a few shambling sideways steps toward the shore. She could just make out a small form creeping across the sand, nearly lost beneath clouds of spray and whirling foam.
Even as Reive inched toward shore, the Redeemer followed her, but more slowly. It seemed confused: the wind tore at its searching tendrils so that it shrieked as in pain, and its blind head arched back and forth, back and forth, as it sought to find Reive in the fray. And still it wept, an endless moan of hunger and frustration, and crept closer to the struggling gynander.
And then, from somewhere in the furious sea behind her came an answering echo to that cry. Startled, the Redeemer fell silent. The challenging roar came again. Reive turned, too stupefied to flee, trying to shield her eyes from the driving rain. Another wave knocked her so that she stumbled back a step. When she got her balance she squinted until she could see a dark form in the distance, cutting through the water like a piece of the blackened horizon cast adrift. As she watched she heard another roar, and the figure churned closer.
The Redeemer answered it, its wail louder this time and more angry. The wind threw back a sobbing moan. The Redeemer’s head pointed out to sea, twitching on its snakelike neck as though sensing something there. As Reive watched it began to walk into the water, the waves breasting against it until it was swimming, its powerful back legs kicking and its tail trailing straight behind it.