“Who are you?”
Through a haze of pain, he heard the words and faintly registered that a young woman had entered the hut and was speaking to him. She was standing over him, head cocked, long black hair hanging down and tanned hands reaching toward him.
He shook his head and edged backward, keeping his distance and hoping she would follow him into the shadows. He wanted to get her away from the entrance, where she might be seen and where someone might see her talking.
“Who are you?” she repeated. “Are you with Nura Bint-Drax?”
Dhamon cursed as the trembling started, the muscles in his legs and arms jumping, his toes and fingers twitching uncontrollably.
“Are you all right?” The young woman followed him, tentatively. She glanced over her shoulder at the hut’s entrance, then looked at Dhamon again. “Who are you? Can you understand me? Are you with Nura Bint-Drax?”
Dhamon fell to his side, legs curling up, chest heaving, fingers still clamped tight around the sword’s pommel. He tried to say something, but his throat was instantly dry, and all he could make was a gagging sound. It was hard enough just to breathe and to keep a hold of the sword. She was saying something else to him, but his heart pounded so hard he could barely hear her. She seemed insistent on knowing who he was.
“Are you ill?” She moved closer and brushed her hand against his forehead, pulling it back instantly as if she’d touched a hot coal.
“A bad fever. Who are you? How is it you have a weapon?” he dimly understood. “You’re very sick.”
From somewhere outside the hut the horn continued to blow, and just beyond the entrance he heard the pounding of feet. The jolts of icy cold started radiating from the scale now, warring with the heat and sending him to the brink of unconsciousness. This time he fought desperately to stay awake.
“What are you doing in here?” the girl persisted. She said something else, but most of it was lost amid the hammering in his head. “You are not with Nura Bint-Drax, are you? You are not supposed to be here.” She raised her voice. “Can you hear me? Hear me?”
He opened his mouth, attempting again to speak to her, but only a moan escaped. He shook his head.
“I will get help for you.” She was speaking louder still, and indeed he heard her clearly. “I will go to the spawn and…”
No! his mind screamed. He couldn’t be found out! Not helpless as he was. The spawn would kill him. Dhamon meant to reach out to the girl, grab her arm and pull her close, tell her to stay here and to be quiet, tell her that Maldred would rescue her and the other servants. When the episode with the scale stopped, he would question her. But first she must be quiet and cooperate, and he must gain some relief from the pain. He needed to hold her close and keep her from alerting anyone. He saw a flash of silver. Only a small part of his mind registered that it was his sword and that he was reaching for her with the wrong hand. Stop, he told himself. Too late. The blade had already sliced through the air and plunged into the girl.
A horrified look spread over her face as a line of blood grew across her stomach. She dropped to her knees and opened her mouth to scream. Only a pathetic gurgle and flecks of red came out. She pitched forward, falling across Dhamon. He felt her legs twitch once, then she was still. Got to get out of here! he told himself. Move! He rolled her off him and found the strength to get to his knees. He tried not to feel pity for her. She was simply a casualty, someone who ventured into the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d only been trying to help. And now her blood coated him. He crawled to the back of the hut, not feeling his knees move across the earth. The fiery jolts raced through his body, interspersed with jabs of intense cold. Fumbling around the back wall, he tried to find the way out. There!
“There!”
Had he heard something?
“There! A trespasser! A thief!”
The words were in the common tongue, spoken by a human, and Dhamon looked over his shoulder to see a man, hardly more than a boy, standing inside the hut’s entrance. He was gesturing madly at Dhamon, then at the girl’s corpse. Behind him towered a spawn, claws outstretched and lips curled back in a snarl.
Dhamon stopped fumbling with the reed flap and raised the sword. He tried to stand facing the spawn, but he couldn’t get off his knees. He lifted the sword above his head. The tip struck the wall of the hut behind him and became ensnared for an instant.
Dhamon’s chest grew tighter as the pain increased, and he fought for air. The spawn took a step closer and then another.
Swing! Swing at the beast!
His fingers were numb, and his body was so racked with pain from the scale on his leg that he couldn’t obey the commands of his brain. Claws closed around Dhamon’s hand, tugging the sword from it. The spawn’s free claw grabbed at Dhamon’s hair, pulling him forward as if he weighed no more than a rag doll, dragging him across the hut floor and out the doorway. Dhamon registered the sunlight streaming down, the intense afternoon heat of Sable’s swamp adding to the warmth that coursed through him. He felt himself being pulled across the snakes that carpeted the ground. Several of them bit him, adding to the heat. After a moment more all he saw and felt was a cool, welcoming darkness.
Chapter Ten
Nura Bint-Drax
Maldred brushed aside a fern leaf, peering into the village. He didn’t see Dhamon, but he could tell something was going on. Three spawn stood guard at the pen—one snarling in its odd language, the other two looking toward a large snakeskin-covered hut outside which a half-dozen human servants were gathered.
“Snakes,” he muttered, scanning the village. “The ground is crawling with vipers.”
The horn sounded again. It was blown by a tall, reed-thin human who stood on what appeared to be the remains of a well. The peals were not the long, mournful notes Maldred had heard before. These were sharp and short.
Near the pen, Maldred spotted more movement and caught a glimpse of the sivak Dhamon had described as being chained to the tree. Maldred circled until he was practically behind the pen and could get a better look at the draconian. Varek quietly followed him. The draconian was clearly nervous, pawing at the ground and backing toward the trunk.
“I see Riki,” Varek whispered. “In the pen. She looks terrible. We’ve got to get her out and—”
Maldred drew a finger to his lips.
The horn stopped, its noise replaced by a cacophony of shouts—words so rushed and overlapping that Maldred couldn’t make them out. Added to the human voices were the sibilant utterances of spawn. He reached for the two-handed sword on his back, the blade hissing against its latticed sheath as he drew it.
“I don’t see Dhamon,” Maldred whispered. “Can’t hear anything but the damned shouting.”
“Nura Bint-Drax!” someone in the village yelled above the din. “Nura comes! Nura! Nura! Nura!”
The odd name was repeated over and over until it became a chant voiced by all the humans and spawn.
The sivak pressed itself against the trunk. At first Maldred thought it was cowering like a frightened animal, but there was something different on its face, an almost-human expression. Contempt? Revulsion?
The chanting continued, growing louder still. Suddenly it was cut through by a high-pitched woman’s cry. “Praise Nura! Bow to Nura Bint-Drax!”
“Maldred!” Varek tugged the big thief’s tunic.
“Shh!”
“Maldred! Someone’s coming behind us. I hear…” Varek’s words trailed off, and the young man slumped to the ground, a long needlelike barb protruding from his neck. Maldred whirled in time to spot a spawn with a reed tube in its mouth. Before he could move, a barb struck him, too.