The backs of Melisande’s ears tingled numbly.
“I thought you said coyotes don’t generally harm people, especially full-grown ones.”
“They don’t,” said the Invoker. “I do not believe they killed her. Strange—even the foresters who travel the holy forest of Gwynwood south of here would never broach these lands. I wonder what a woman was doing here, in this place that has been sacrosanct from the beginning of history.”
“Oh, no,” Melisande whispered. “Oh, no.” The Invoker lowered his chin and stared at her. “I—I forgot something Rhapsody told me to convey to you.”
“What is that?” Melisande fought back tears. “She said I was to tell you that the foresters should comb the woods for a lost Firbolg midwife named Krinsel, and should they come upon her, they were to accord her both respect and safe passage back to the guarded caravan to Ylorc. But I—I forgot, in all the commotion.” She began to tremble so violently that Gavin reached quickly up and pulled her down from the mare, who was starting to dance impatiently in place. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly, or at least an approximation of an attempt at comfort. “You’ve told me now. We’ll keep watch for her on the way to the dragon’s lair.”
“But what if the foresters who set out first came upon Krinsel and killed her, not knowing she was supposed to be left unharmed?” Melisande persisted.
“Foresters are trained to accompany and guard wanderers, not kill them, unless they are threatened,” the Invoker said. “Had they found a Bolg woman, lost in the woods, they would have reported it to me, and taken her back to the Circle. And they would not have left a body for carrion in any case; it’s against Filidic practice. She would have been burned. I don’t know what happened to this woman, if she in fact is your lost Bolg midwife, but I do know that whether you had told me at the outset or not, it would not have dissuaded Fate if she was to meet it. Stop looking for reasons to be worried, Lady Melisande Navarne. You will have more than enough of them when we get within a few miles of the dragon’s cave. Now come; there’s a thicket up ahead where we can pass the night in safety and a semblance of calm, if not peace.” The little girl nodded, and allowed the forester to lead her away from the fairy pond, the dark waters of which reflected back the racing clouds passing in front of the shimmering moon.
44
By the time Rath reached the glen the back of his throat was burning with the caustic taste of acidic blood. Cautiously he slipped through the shadows, following the buzzing in his throat and sinuses, the sensation of needles running through his veins. Rath fought down the racial hatred that was causing his teeth to clench and his heart to pound furiously, concentrating instead on the demonic whisper of the name, hovering on the wind just beyond his sight. Each step, measured against ten of his heartbeats, brought him closer. Rath focused on being quiet. After such a long journey, so many centuries of pursuit, it would be cataclysmic to lose the beast at this moment, when it was almost within his grasp.
His night-sensitive eyes could see something now, at the outskirts of his vision, something tethered to the end of the gossamer thread of sound that glittered evilly in the moon- light, hanging amid the branches like a strand of spider silk, evanescent and deadly. Even the threat of what it led to could not prevent Rath from hesitating for a moment, enraptured by the beguiling beauty of it, the visualization of kirai, this fiber of undying connection between the wind of his heritage and the black fire of the F’dor.
A few more steps, he thought. Slowly.
A millennium of experience had trained him to never anticipate the host of the demon he was seeking. He had found F’dor clinging to any number of different types of men, women, and children. Rath had no fear of whatever form the monster took; he had watched dispassionately as the heads of toddlers in which the beasts had hidden exploded at the end of the Thrall ritual, because Rath understood the consequences of being swayed. Still, his curiosity got the better of him. He closed his eyes and tasted the wind on his tongue. Hrarfa.
The name resounded in his sinuses, clear as a bell. His heart, and that of the demon’s host, beat in perfect syn-chronicity. Assured again that he had found his quarry, Rath opened his eyes and moved silently closer to the glen. In the moonlight a woman was standing, her back to him, her long hair glistening in rivers of dark silver. She was stretching lazily in the moonglow, her hands running over her shoulders and through her hair in a slow, sensual dance, as if to gather the power of the heavenly light into herself. Rath inhaled; in what few tales were known about the hosts this demon had chosen, Hrarfa had rarely allowed herself to be seen in female form, the one closest to her formless spirit’s own. He took it as a fortuitous sign that she was about to die appropriately.
Portia smiled. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, in the pale light of the waxing moon. Nothing but shadows moved in the dark glade, but still she sensed a presence. The wind was high, and it caressed her human form like a lover, whispering over her skin with evanescent kisses, then moved on to tousle her hair.
The nascent fire in her poisonous spirit crackled with delight, both in the erotic sensation of wind on her skin and in the knowledge that her trap had been successfully sprung. Unlike her kin, many of whom saw the human form as a distasteful necessity for survival in the upworld, she had found the carnal delights of being encased in flesh to be a wonder that she both enjoyed and craved. There was a joy in the domination of a host, the pursuit and eventual capture of a new body, a pleasure in the eviction of its original owner through an exquisite painful devouring that left her aroused, alive in a way like no other. And there was solidity, a comforting sense of being still and real, so unlike the natural insecurity of being that was each F’dor’s bane. She had always been a bit of a risk taker, more daring than her fellow escapees of the Vault. Many of the Unspoken, as the dragons had called her kind, had discovered patience, a trait not naturally occurring in the children of dark fire, when they made their way upworld and away from their eternal prison. They had been able to build up empires slowly over the ages, trading hosts as cautiously as humans traded pieces in chess, biding their time, growing stronger in the material world, in the hope that the power they were gaining would enable them to at last find the rib of an Earthchild or some other way to free their fellows.
But she was different. She had found an intoxicating excitement in the lure, the switch, the deception of drawing unsuspecting humans to her, studying their ways, their traits, the very patterns in which they drew breath, then catching them unawares and ravaging their souls, taking their bodies for her own.
She had taken the form of a young Liringlas Skysinger once, several millennia ago and half a world away, and had learned some of the science of names, had made good use of what she had gleaned from him before she discarded his useless corpse in favor of one more interesting. She knew, as a result, how to bend her vibrations, alter the signature that her human form conveyed, until it could be almost anything that she wanted it to be. She also learned the intricacies of male lust, something she had used to her advantage on both sides of the bed. Eventually that led to her conquest of a First Generation Cymrian girl in Manosse, whose body was not subject to the ravages of time or age-related illness, seemingly immortal like the rest of the refugees from the Island of Serendair. She had liked the girl’s name—Portia—because it was very close in sound to her own, and the additional power the young woman’s lithe form and beauty gave her in enchanting foolish men through wanton sexuality. Finally, there was. an irony in subsuming a Cymrian—like the F’dor, they were a race of exiles with endless time to brood about being driven from their homeland. It was a perfect fit. Thus, trading hosts was almost never necessary anymore. But occasionally one came along that proved irresistible.