Bly the Seer had lived a long time. As a scryer, she'd spent decades hunched over her magic table, seen sights from around the world and beyond, but never, in all her visions, had she beheld a monster like this one. Trembling overtook her, and a low moan escaped her lips.
The monster scuffled to the black table and touched the midnight surface with a crooked claw. "My enemy was here. What does this do? It scries!" the fiend hissed, more to itself than to the trembling mage stretched across the table. "Show me!"
Shivering as if frozen, Bly pronounced the words that opened the vision. Bulging blue eyes watched the picture, and murmured, "The bright-haired one goes there. But far. Too far, too sunny, too open… But I have many enemies. You will find one. Polaris is its name. And another, a fat mage… Make magic!"
With a claw it severed the twine binding Bly. Numb with fear, the archwizard slipped off the table to the floor. Quickly the monster caught her hair and wrenched her upright, then banged her face on the table so blood spurted from her nose.
"Scry out my enemies!"
With no physical element, like the sage and the scent of the barbarian, and with Bly clumsy with fear, the scrying went badly, but finally the monster croaked, "Yes, yes! There is one I seek! I'll kill him, flay his flesh from his bones and suck the marrow! Yes, I go to kill, to avenge!"
Bly closed her eyes. She was banged up and near fainting, but if the monster left Suddenly her face was caught in obsidian claws that cut her cheeks and throat. She screamed, but claws strangled her. Helpless before the monster's crushing strength, Bly felt herself dragged into the air. Piercing, white-hot pain ripped through her hands and she swooned.
Slapping her face brought her around. Her hands felt afire. Glancing up, she saw the monster had bent open an iron hook that held herbs and-Scribe of the Doomed! — impaled her hands over the hook before crushing it shut! Writhing only ripped flesh and ground the bones, so she hung still. Her world was pain.
The monster rasped, "You aided my enemy, so you become one! All my enemies must die!"
Stepping back, the monster extended both craggy claws. Fire flickered from their tips and washed over the room. Herbs, books, papers, paint, walls, and Bly's gown all crackled with eldritch energy. And burned.
Bly screamed long and hard before smoke choked her. Then she fell limp, and never felt the flames around her legs. The monster disappeared, hissing of revenge. The black table went with it.
Chapter 8
Wind rushed in their faces until their cheeks were numb and their eyelids swollen. The breeze made them thirsty, and Sunbright was hungry, for Knucklebones hadn't let him eat before their aerial duel. The barbarian was cramped from sitting hunched in the wicker seat under tubes and wires, and he ached from crashing in the treetop. Yet there was one consolation to all this misery. Fatigue and battering had expunged his fear of flying. In the hours they'd banked and soared, Knucklebones had even let him steer. Later he'd even dozed off, exhausted, while Knucklebones wrestled the steering bars with one good and one lame arm.
Yet he jerked awake with a cry, making Knucklebones jump. "What's eating you?" she asked, irritated. "You're moony as a hammer-struck calf!"
The barbarian shook his bright-blond head. "Someone's after me, I think. Cursing my name, hounding my dreams. Evil, and mad, and angry."
"Not just imagination?" Knucklebones's voice was hoarse from shouting over the wind. Far below rolled plains with a glint of sea in the north. All were slanted with black shadows, for the sun was setting, ending the long summer day.
"It could be," Sunbright sighed. "When I'm tired, who's to know if I dream or hallucinate? Sorting truth from fancy is hard enough in this world, never mind the next."
"We'll have the world in our laps soon! We must land before the sun drops. We can't land in the dark."
Sunbright hadn't considered that even birds bedded before sundown. He squinted ahead. The Channel Mountains looked larger, tall as his hand. "Land east of the mountains," he advised. "Walking with them at our left hand, we'll find my tribe south of Scourge."
The thief banked east, until the flitter's nose slanted across the mountains. "We'll fly until I think it's too dangerous."
Sunbright felt a familiar looseness in his bowels. Launching, Knucklebones had pointed out, was simple as falling off a cliff. Landing was like diving headfirst into an eagle's nest without cracking any eggs. Sunbright called, "Let's get it over with. If we're hurt, we'll need daylight to patch up."
The small woman didn't argue, simply tipped the bar, and pointed them down. Sunbright gulped, and clamped down on his stomach.
The plains were glossy with summer grass. As they sank, antelope and bison and skulking wolves fanned out before them. Knucklebones slowed the flitter by hauling the wings back while pointing the tail down, though the landscape swept by alarmingly fast. Finally, at spitting height, the thief called, "Hang on!" and shoved the nose down.
Sunbright gritted his teeth as the land leaped up like a tiger. But the clever thief flopped the craft on its belly skids, and they slithered over grass for seeming miles. Sunbright yanked his knees to his chin, felt chaff and grass stalks snap and tickle.
Then it was still. Grass billowed all around, except for the flattened track behind. Knucklebones pried stiff hands off the bars, massaged her scarred forearms, and chuckled, "I could get to like this!"
"You can have it!" Sunbright grabbed bars and hauled himself out of the flying coffin. Unlashing their supplies, he hung his great sword Harvester of Blood across his back. His bow and arrows were lost, but he kept the empty quiver, and hung his food satchel and both blankets around his shoulders, ready to march.
Knucklebones tossed her rucksack over one shoulder. "Shouldn't we scavenge wires and such? You made snares last time," she said.
"I just want to get away," Sunbright began, "but you're right." With their knives they cut away loose wires, lengths of tubing, and fabric from the wings. They never knew what might prove handy.
Looking at the wrecked flitter, Knucklebones asked, "What will the coyotes think of this?"
"A bird skeleton picked clean," he mumbled, then faced north, where a sentence of death awaited. "Let's get this over with, too."
They walked where the evening shadows of the Channel Mountains touched the tall grass, and, gradually, darkness overtook them.
After three days' walk-the last across rock and shale-they breasted a low hill. Sea wind carried salt to their nostrils. Sunbright stopped dead. "That's them!" he cried. "But it can't be them!"
Knucklebones just stared. In the distance winked the Narrow Sea, a silver so bright it shone white. At its shore, and surrounding the toe of the last Channel Mountain, the peak called the Anchor, lay the villainous town whose name had become Scourge. Punished by hard winds off the sea, the town saw any steel mysteriously rust away within weeks. Since industry could not prosper, the town had fished until the fish thinned out. Good people left, the desolate stayed. Them, and plagues of rust monsters. The idle population turned to thieving and infighting, until Scourge gained its name as a place to avoid.
And here, on the outskirts, amidst sand and rocks, where no humans would venture, Sunbright found his tribe.
The camp was lumpy huts of piled stone, or caves cut into hillsides, or mere holes in the ground covered by rotting hides. The only wooden structure was the common house, a ring of rotted aspen trees dragged from the mountainside, the roof thatched crudely with brush. The disordered camp was rife with garbage, droppings, bones, ashes, and trash. The smoke of a few fires trickled into the brassy sky. At midday it was hot here on the rocks, as it would be cold by night. A few women trudged through camp with fagots or bundles of meager food. Men slept in the shade or lay with feet jutting from canted doorways. Dirty children crept at quiet games, or else turned over rocks, hunting salamanders and insects for food. Buzzards picked at garbage, unmolested.