Kosar had to squint, and then he saw the movement, the gliding shadow closing rapidly. “Oh shit,” he said.
“Keep to me,” A’Meer said. “We attack together, score as many hits as quickly as we can. Damn, I can’t see a thing!”
“There’s more of them,” Kosar said, his heart sinking, his whole body sagging in defeat. He did not want to know what it was like to take a sword between the ribs, yet his mind was reaching ahead, imagining the next ten minutes. “There, look to the left. Two hundred steps away.”
“I see them.”
“We can’t fight them in the dark,” Kosar said. “We’d stand a much better chance if we could see them. Damn the clouds for hiding the moons tonight!”
“It can’t end like this!” A’Meer said. “It’s so pointless. ”
“You need light?” Hope said. The witch had crawled up between them and now she knelt, shrugged her shoulder bag off and delved inside. “Close your eyes for a second so that you can adapt. Perhaps it’ll blind them for a few moments, give us the first strike.”
Kosar saw the shadows gliding in across the ground, moving from cover to cover, hoods and cloaks making them all but shapeless… but there was no mistaking their intent. He obeyed the witch and closed his eyes.
His eyelids turned red as light burned in from outside. He heard something hissing like a huge snake and could not stop himself from looking. The light blinded him for a moment, and he brought up his free hand to shield his eyes, keeping his sword at the ready. Fire danced in the sky, balls of flame leaping left and right, seemingly bouncing from each other and then ricocheting elsewhere, dodging and lighting the landscape. Kosar gasped, mesmerized for a few seconds by the display, but then Hope clapped his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “It’s just chemicala.”
A’Meer was standing, facing the shapes that had been stunned into immobility by the sudden illumination. There were six of them, hoods hiding their faces but not their intent. Swords drawn, the Monks readied themselves for the attack. In the sparkling light their cloaks seemed redder, the heathers about their feet a brighter purple. Even the smell of the undergrowth seemed richer. Or perhaps this close to death, Kosar was seeing and sensing with a startling clarity.
A’Meer loosed an arrow into the first Monk, reached back, plucked a new shaft from her quiver, fired, reached, drew, fired. In five heartbeats she had put an arrow into each shape, and they barely moved.
“Passed right through,” Kosar said. There was no blood, no sign of any wounds. “The arrows went straight through.”
A’Meer paused, then drew and fired again at the first Monk. The arrow struck its face and exited behind its head, hood flapping as its feathered tail flicked it. The shaft struck a rock way behind it, snapping in two.
“So is this bad magic back so soon?” Hope said, aghast.
Trey stood beside them, his disc-sword unsheathed and glinting in the reflected light of Hope’s chemicala. “They’re not moving,” he whispered. The only sound was the hiss and spit of the fireballs.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Kosar said. He remembered the Monk in Trengborne, unhindered by the arrows sprouting from its head and body, driving forward with renewed ferocity each time it was struck.
A’Meer fired three more times at the first Monk, each arrow passing through the shape, none of them leaving any apparent wounds.
“Waiting for us to use all our arrows?” Hope said.
“Are they really there?”
“If not we’re all having the same nightmare.”
And then the Monks moved.
As one they slowly sank down to the ground, their legs parting and spreading as if melting into the cool soil. They kept their form as they slid down, and Kosar even saw the glint of their eyes as cloaks and hoods were plucked apart at the melting point. Whatever went to make up the Monks shimmered and undulated, flowing out from where the shrinking forms stood and covering the ground around them, glittering like a million eyes in the night.
Hope’s lights were fading.
“It can’t be,” the witch said, disbelief making her sound so young.
“What?” Kosar asked.
The shapes were almost completely gone, the hoods still red, eyes and red faces still there as they sank into the shifting ground. They looked liked six individual puddles, but each one moved a hundred ways at any one time, covering the grasses and stones but never stealing their shape, a coating rather than a covering. Once the Monks had gone, the stuff grew dark, and in the fading light of the floating fireballs they looked like splashes of shadow looking for a home.
“Mimics,” Hope said.
As if her utterance had galvanized them, the shapes drifted together, formed one mass and then moved quickly to the right, heading west, disappearing into the night.
Hope’s chemicala finally died and plunged them into a greater darkness than before. The four drew back to the horses and stood protectively around them, facing out, waiting for their eyes to adjust.
“What exactly did we just see?” Kosar said. He wanted a response from anyone, but his question was directed at Rafe. “Rafe, what was that?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said from his horse.
“Mimics,” Hope said again.
“They’re a legend,” A’Meer said, but the uncertainty in her voice was obvious.
“Of course they are!”
“I’ve never heard of them,” Kosar said. “I’ve traveled, but I’ve never seen or heard of anything like that.”
“Mimics!” Disbelief and delight vied for dominance in Hope’s voice. “I’ve heard of them a few times, even met an old woman who claimed to have seen them once, but I never believed I’d ever see them myself.”
“But you did believe that they existed?” A’Meer asked.
“I’m a witch,” Hope said. “I have a very open mind.”
“But why Monks?” Kosar asked.
“A warning.” The witch fell silent, perhaps realizing that the mimics’ appearance was not really a cause for celebration.
“They showed us six Monks, then they headed west,” A’Meer said. “If it’s a warning, I wonder how near they are?”
“And why would the mimics warn us?” Rafe asked.
“I think you should know that, boy,” Hope muttered. “It seems news of our journey and what we carry is reaching far beyond the human world.”
“Whatever and why ever, we should be moving, not standing around talking,” Kosar said. “If these things came to warn us, there must be good reason. Unless they’re a part of it. What if they’re with the Monks?”
“I’m sure they’re beyond petty allegiances,” Hope said. “They’re as far from us as we can imagine. Hive organisms. We probably just saw more mimics than there are people alive in Noreela now. They have their own reason for issuing such a stark warning, and that’s the magic that Rafe carries.”
“But they could just as easily be leading us to the Monks, not from them.”
“I’m sure they could have destroyed us themselves. I’ve heard stories.” Hope said no more, but the silence implied tales too gruesome for the telling.
“Well, let’s move,” A’Meer said. She took up the two horses’ reins and led them forward, walking straight toward where the mimics had manifested just moments before.
They followed. Kosar looked down at his feet, trying to see whether the ground had changed where those things had melted down into a moving carpet of life. Was the heather stripped to the stems or made richer? Was the soil denuded of goodness or enriched? But darkness hid the detail, and his feet were only shadows moving him ever onward.
AS THEY WALKEDTrey took a finger of fledge. It was very stale now, bitter and sickly, and he felt his mind swaying as it cast itself from his body. He kept walking, kept his eyes open, and he only had to move slightly to touch on Alishia.
Are you there? he thought. Are you still alive?
Still here, still alive, but I’m being filled! Her voice was very distant, and it sounded very young.
Alishia! Trey called in his mind.
She shouted back, but it was not any louder.
What’s happening? Trey asked. I’m all alone out here. I miss your company, and you sound strange, lost-