Terrified, he fled up the ladder.
Chapter 11. SOME SUMMATIONS
"Auk ? Have you forgotten me?"
He had thought himself utterly alone on the windswept Pilgrims' Way, trudging back to Limna. Twice before he had stopped to rest, sitting on white stones to scan the skylands. Auk was frequently outdoors and alone nightside, and it was something he enjoyed doing when he had the time: tracing the silver threads of rivers from which he would never drink, and exploring mentally the innumerable unknown cities in which the pickings were (as he liked to imagine) considerably better. Despite Chenille's insistence, he had not believed that she would actually remain in Scylla's shrine all night; but he had never supposed that she might overtake him. He pictured her as she had been when they reached it, footsore and exhausted, her face shining with sweat, her raspberry curls a mass of sodden tangles, her voluptuous body drooping like a bouquet on a grave. Yet he felt sure it had been her voice that had sounded behind him. "Chenille!" he called. "Is that you?"
"No."
He rose, nonplussed, and shouted, "Chenille?"
The syllables of her name echoed from the rocks.
"I won't wait for you, Chenille."
Much nearer: "Then I'll wail for you at the next stone. "
The faint pattering might have been rain; he glanced up at the cloudless sky again. The sound grew louder-running feet on the Pilgrims' Way behind him. As his eyes had traced the rivers, they followed its winding path across the barren, jutting cliff.
The clear skylight revealed her almost at once, nearer than he had supposed, her skirt hiked to her thighs and her arms and legs pumping. Abruptly she vanished in the shadow of a beetling rock, only to emerge like a stone from a sling and shoot toward him. For an. instant he felt that she was running faster and faster with every stride, and would never slow or stop, or even stop gaining speed. Gaping, he stood aside.
She passed like a whirlwind, mouth wide, teeth gleaming, eyes starting from their sockets. A moment more and she was lost among stunted trees.
He drew his needler, checked the breech and pushed off the safety, and advanced cautiously, the needler in his hand ready to fire. The moaning wind brought the sound of tearing cloth, and her hoarse respirations.
"Chenille?"
Again, there was no reply.
"Chenille, I'm sorry."
He felt that some monstrous beast awaited him among the shadows; and although he called himself a fool, he could not free himself from the presentiment.
"I'm sorry," he repeated. "It was a rotten thing to do. I should have stayed there with you."
Half a chain farther, and the shadows closed about him. The beast still waited, nearer now. He mopped his sweating face with his bandanna; and as he wadded it into his pocket, he caught sight another, quite naked, sitting on one of the white stones in a patch of skylight. Her black dress and pale undergarments were heaped at her feet, and her tongue lolled from her mouth so far that she appeared to lick her breasts.
He halted, tightening his grip on the needler. She stood and strode toward him. He backed into deeper shadow and leveled the needler; she passed him without a word, stalking through the leafless spinney straight to the edge of the cliff. For a second or two she paused there, her arms above her head.
She dove, and after what seemed too long an interval he heard the faint splash.
He was halfway to the edge before he pushed the safety back up and restored the needler to his waistband. Heights held no fear for him; still, he knew fear as he stood at the brink of the cliff and stared down, a hundred cubits or more, into the skylit water.
She was not there. Wind-driven combers charged at the tumbled rocks like a herd of white-maned horses, but she was not among them.
"Chenille?"
He was about to turn away when her head burst through from a wave. "I'll meet you, " she called, "there." An arm that for an instant seemed but one of many pointed down the rocky beach toward the scattered lights of Limna. "Arms?" The question was Oreb's, and had come from a clump of straggling bushes to Auk's right.
He sighed, glad of any company and ashamed to be glad. "Yeah. Too many arms." He mopped his sweating face again. "No, that's gammon. It was like in a mirror, see? Chenille held her arms up out of the water, and it reflected 'em so it looked like there was more underneath, that's all. You find Patera?"
"Shrine eat."
"Sure. Come over and I'll give you a lift to Limna."
"Like bird?"
"I guess. I won't hurt you if that's what you mean, but you're Patera's, and I'm going to give you back to him if we ever find him."
Oreb fluttered up from the bushes to a landing on Auk's shoulder. "Girl like? Now like?""Chenille? Sure." Auk paused. "You're right. That's not her, is it?"
"No, no!"
"Yeah, right." Auk nodded to himself. "It's some kind of devil that only looks like Chenille. Shag, I don't know whether it likes birds or not. If I had to guess, I'd say it probably likes 'em for breakfast and lunch, but maybe it'd like something a little more solid for dinner. Anyhow, we'll dodge it if we can."
Worn out though he was, it seemed to him that his lagging feet flew over the next hill and all the rest, when he would have preferred that entire months be consumed in climbing and descending each. An hour passed in weary walking seemed less than a minute to him; and though Oreb kept him company on his shoulder, he had seldom felt so alone.
"I've found it!" Chenille's voice sounded practically at his ear; he jumped and Oreb squawked. "Can you swim? Are you carrying valuables that would be damaged by water?"
"A little," Auk admitted. He had stopped in his tracks to look for her; it was difficult to keep his hand away from his needler. When he spoke again, he was afraid that he might stammer. "Yeah, I am. Couple things."
"Then we must have a boat." Like mist from the lake, she rose between him and the rocky beach-he had been looking in the wrong direction. "You don't comprehend the littlest part of this, do you? I'm Scylla." It was, to Auk's mind, an assertion of such preeminent significance that no being of which he could conceive would have the audacity to make it falsely. He fell to his knees and mumbled a prayer.
"It's 'lovely Scylla,' " his deity told him, " 'wonderful of waters', not 'woman of the water.' If you must mouth that nonsense, do it correctly."
"Yes, Scylla."
She caught him by the hair. "Straighten up! And stop whining. You're a burglar and a thug, so you may be useful. But only if you do precisely as I direct." For a moment she glared at him, her eyes burning into his. "You still don't understand. Where can we find a boat? Around that village, I suppose. Do you know?"
Standing, he was a head taller than she, and felt that he ought to cower. "There's boats there for rent, lovely Scylla. I've got some money." "Don't try to make me laugh. It will do you no good, I warn you. Follow me."
"Yes, Scylla."
"I don't care for birds." She did not trouble to look back at Oreb as she spoke. "They belonged to Daddy, and now to Moipe and ones like that to little Hierax. I don't even like having my people named for them. You know I'm oldest?"
"Yes, I sure do, lovely Scylla." Auk's voice had been an octave too high; he cleared his throat and made an effort to regain his self-possession. "That's the way Patera Pike always told it at the palaestra."
"Pike?" She glanced back at him. "That's good. Is he particularly devoted to me?"
"Yes, lovely Scylla. Or anyhow he was. He's dead."
"It doesn't matter."