His corpse lay wherever he looked. Draped across a rock, hanging from the vines of trees, slumped beneath the dying nightmaw’s claw…
The beast trembled once more, then amazingly it lifted its gruesome head and let out a last screech. Not as loud as those that normally sounded in the night, but bone-chilling and horrid. Dusk stepped back despite himself, and Sak chirped nervously.
Other nightmaw screeches rose in the night, distant. That sound… he had been trained to recognize that sound as the sound of death.
“We’re going,” he said, stalking across the ground and pulling Vathi away from the dying beast, which had lowered its head and fallen silent.
“Dusk?” She did not resist as he pulled her away.
One of the other nightmaws sounded again in the night. Was it closer? Oh, Patji, please, Dusk thought. No. Not this.
He pulled her faster, reaching for his machete at his side, but it was not there. He had thrown it. He took out the one he had gathered from his fallen rival, then dragged her out of the clearing, back into the jungle, moving quickly. He could no longer worry about brushing against deathants.
A greater danger was coming.
The calls of death came again.
“Are those getting closer?” Vathi asked.
Dusk did not answer. It was a question, but he did not know the answer. At least his hearing was recovering. He released her hand, moving more quickly, almost at a trot—faster than he ever wanted to go through the jungle, day or night.
“Dusk!” Vathi hissed. “Will they come? To the call of the dying one? Is that something they do?”
“How should I know? I have never known one of them to be killed before.” He saw the tube, again carried over her shoulder, lit by the light of the lantern she carried.
That gave him pause, though his instincts screamed at him to keep moving and he felt a fool. “Your weapon,” he said. “You can use it again?”
“Yes,” she said. “Once more.”
“Once more?”
A half dozen screeches sounded in the night.
“Yes,” she replied. “I only brought three spears and enough powder for three shots. I tried firing one at the shadow. It didn’t do much.”
He spoke no further, ignoring his wounded arm—the bandage was in need of changing—and towing her through the jungle. The calls came again and again. Agitated. How did one escape nightmaws? His Aviar clung to him, a bird on each shoulder. He had to leap over his corpse as they traversed a gulch and came up the other side.
How do you escape them? he thought, remembering his uncle’s training. You don’t draw their attention in the first place!
They were fast. Kokerlii would hide his mind, but if they picked up his trail at the dead one…
Water. He stopped in the night, turning right, then left. Where would he find a stream? Patji was an island. Fresh water came from rainfall, mostly. The largest lake… the only one… was up the wedge. Toward the peak. Along the eastern side, the island rose to some heights with cliffs on all sides. Rainfall collected there, in Patji’s Eye. The river was his tears.
It was a dangerous place to go with Vathi in tow. Their path had skirted the slope up the heights, heading across the island toward the northern beach. They were close…
Those screeches behind spurred him on. Patji would just have to forgive him for what came next. Dusk seized Vathi’s hand and towed her in a more eastern direction. She did not complain, though she did keep looking over her shoulder.
The screeches grew closer.
He ran. He ran as he had never expected to do on Patji, wild and reckless. Leaping over troughs, around fallen logs coated in moss. Through the dark underbrush, scaring away meekers and startling Aviar slumbering in the branches above. It was foolish. It was crazy. But did it matter? Somehow, he knew those other things would not claim him. The kings of Patji hunted him; lesser dangers would not dare steal from their betters.
Vathi followed with difficulty. Those skirts were trouble, but she caught up to him each time Dusk had to occasionally stop and cut their way through underbrush. Urgent, frantic. He expected her to keep up, and she did. A piece of him—buried deep beneath the terror—was impressed. This woman would have made a fantastic trapper. Instead she would probably destroy all trappers.
He froze as screeches sounded behind, so close. Vathi gasped, and Dusk turned back to his work. Not far to go. He hacked through a dense patch of undergrowth and ran on, sweat streaming down the sides of his face. Jostling light came from Vathi’s lantern behind; the scene before him was one of horrific shadows dancing on the jungle’s boughs, leaves, ferns, and rocks.
This is your fault, Patji, he thought with an unexpected fury. The screeches seemed almost on top of him. Was that breaking brush he could hear behind? We are your priests, and yet you hate us! You hate all.
Dusk broke from the jungle and out onto the banks of the river. Small by mainland standards, but it would do. He led Vathi right into it, splashing into the cold waters.
He turned upstream. What else could he do? Downstream would lead closer to those sounds, the calls of death.
Of the Dusk, he thought. Of the Dusk.
The waters came only to their calves, bitter cold. The coldest water on the island, though he did not know why. They slipped and scrambled as they ran, best they could, upriver. They passed through some narrows, with lichen-covered rock walls on either side twice as tall as a man, then burst out into the basin.
A place men did not go. A place he had visited only once. A cool emerald lake rested here, sequestered.
Dusk towed Vathi to the side, out of the river, toward some brush. Perhaps she would not see. He huddled down with her, raising a finger to his lips, then turned down the light of the lantern she still held. Nightmaws could not see well, but perhaps the dim light would help. In more ways than one.
They waited there, on the shore of the small lake, hoping that the water had washed away their scent—hoping the nightmaws would grow confused or distracted. For one thing about this place was that the basin had steep walls, and there was no way out other than the river. If the nightmaws came up it, Dusk and Vathi would be trapped.
Screeches sounded. The creatures had reached the river. Dusk waited in near darkness, and so squeezed his eyes shut. He prayed to Patji, whom he loved, whom he hated.
Vathi gasped softly. “What… ?”
So she had seen. Of course she had. She was a seeker, a learner. A questioner.
Why must men ask so many questions?
“Dusk! There are Aviar here, in these branches! Hundreds of them.” She spoke in a hushed, frightened tone. Even as they awaited death itself, she saw and could not help speaking. “Have you seen them? What is this place?” She hesitated. “So many juveniles. Barely able to fly…”
“They come here,” he whispered. “Every bird from every island. In their youth, they must come here.”
He opened his eyes, looking up. He had turned down the lantern, but it was still bright enough to see them roosting there. Some stirred at the light and the sound. They stirred more as the nightmaws screeched below.
Sak chirped on his shoulder, terrified. Kokerlii, for once, had nothing to say.
“Every bird from every island…” Vathi said, putting it together. “They all come here, to this place. Are you certain?”
“Yes.” It was a thing that trappers knew. You could not capture a bird before it had visited Patji.