The venom is not their only defence, however. I read about tarracks, back when I was studying poisons. They can stun their prey with some kind of energy charge, paralysing victims long enough to inject them. The naturalists don't quite know how it works, but they know its effects well enough. A big tarrack can knock out a full-grown man.
They're using the heat from the river to foil the spike-rays' thermal vision. The spike-rays know that they're here, through some other sense that I can't explain, but they can't quite find them. This is a nesting-ground. Sticky pods adhere to the crevices in the cliff-face, incubating the tarracks' young within. To even get to the river, we'll have to climb through.
Nereith looks down, his bald head trickling with sweat. 'I assume, knowing as I do of your unparalleled experience in these matters, that you accounted for the possibility of lethal wildlife?'
'I thought I'd send you in as decoy, then we sneak past while they're eating you,' I reply.
'Very enterprising. I wondered why you'd had me along.'
I stare at the river, trying to think my way round this, but I can't come up with anything. Then I pick up the heaviest rock I can find and heft it over the edge into the river. Two spike-rays swoop at it, reacting instinctively, alerted by the motion; at the last moment, they bank away, realising it's not prey.
The rock lands on one of the plates of solidified spume rock and cracks it a little. But the plate holds. We watch as the rock is slowly carried away from us.
'Think it'll take our weight?' I ask Nereith.
'I think so,' he replies. 'You two are lighter than I am. I should go last.'
I give him a look. 'Don't fancy being the decoy, then?'
'It was your idea,' he replies with a fang-mouthed grin.
I look over at Feyn, who has hunkered down next to us. 'I will go first,' he says to me. 'You are more heavy.'
'If ever you get to Bry Athka University, Feyn, remember this: never tell an Eskaran woman how heavy she is.'
Nereith guffaws, but Feyn only gives me a puzzled smile. He doesn't get it.
'I'll go first,' I tell him. He nods, and in those black, black eyes I get the impression that he understands something I don't. He has a curious way of making me feel like I'm always learning something he already knows, like he's seen right through me and he's waiting for me to catch up. Patient, indulgent. The longer I know him, the older he seems. He might have the body of a youth, but he has a calm wisdom belonging to someone three times his age.
I edge to the lip of the cliff.
'Wish me luck,' I say, seized by an inappropriate playfulness in the face of what's to come.
'Khaadu don't believe in luck,' says Nereith.
'What is ''luck''?' Feyn asks.
I shake my head. 'You two are useless.'
I start to climb. In ordinary circumstances, I'd be down this cliff in a couple of minutes, if that. It's an easy surface: solid handholds, an abundance of places to wedge my feet. I'm used to climbing sheer walls. This is simple.
But the tarracks tense up the moment I set foot on the cliff face. They stop their slow creeping. They know I'm here. So when I descend, I do so very deliberately. No sudden moves. If I alarm them, they'll go for me.
I climb sideways for a short while, to avoid a pod right below me. The tarracks move back, keeping their distance. They don't quite know how to deal with me yet. I can hear the clattering of the spike-rays overhead, calling to each other. They've noticed me too, and are similarly confused.
Shit, I hate this. I can't remember the last time I felt so helpless. All I can do is hope that either the spike-rays or the tarracks decide not to kill me. When I die, I want it to be my choice, or at least my fault. I can't stand this feeling of having no control, trusting my life to a bunch of animals.
The heat is becoming desperately uncomfortable. My back is slick, clothes clinging to me. Out of the corner of my eye I spot one of the tarracks quivering, doing minute and rapid press-ups. I'm no expert on animal body language, but I'm pretty sure that isn't good.
I want to be here even less than you want me here, I tell it silently. Leave me alone and I won't bother you.
The tarrack takes a few experimental steps closer and resumes quivering. Testing me.
'Back away!' Feyn says from above. 'This is his… his-' he fights for the word, and hits on the right one '-his territory.'
I begin moving to the side. It brings me dangerously close to another pair of tarracks who have positioned themselves between me and their pod. They start to become as agitated as the first, and my aggressor, emboldened, takes another few steps towards me.
'I'm going, you persistent little fucker!' I snap at it. The effect is negligible.
I keep climbing down. There's nothing else to be done. Maybe if it thinks I'm leaving its domain it'll-
Two of them come for me at once, as if at a signal. One from each side. I look down, desperate, but I daren't drop. Not onto that surface. The river glows forbiddingly beneath me.
'Stay still!' Nereith cries. Instinctively I press myself against the rock, and suddenly there's a blast of wind and something large thunders past my head. One of the tarracks is ripped up and away, trailing like an anchor from the tail of a spike-ray. The other one has stopped dead, about a span from my shoulder.
'Forgot about them, didn't you?' I murmur spitefully, dredging up a seam of defiance.
The remaining tarrack quivers next to me. I can smell it from here, dry and musky, and taste the metallic tinge in the air that surrounds it.
Something clicks and thumps down the cliff-face to my right. A large stone, dropped by Nereith. The tarracks all freeze again. He's trying to create a distraction.
My aggressor isn't buying it. Slowly, slowly, it creeps forward. I can't do a thing as the first of its armoured limbs presses onto my shoulder blade, and it walks three of its legs onto my back.
I fight down the urge to throw it off. The touch of the tarrack appals me. It's straddling the nape of my neck, supporting its weight with the three legs still gripping the rock. I gather in my increasing panic, begin my chants, slowing my heart, relaxing my muscles. Better play dead, or I'll be dead.
For a long, long time it stays there, unmoving, trying to decide what I am. I'm barely breathing. My chants cycle relentlessly in my head, but I find I can't concentrate on them. I'm thinking of a conversation I had with Jai, long ago, just after he'd failed the tests to become Cadre. I'm thinking I wish I'd done things differently, that I'd been stronger back then, said the right words. Maybe, if I had, I could have died in peace now, knowing that Jai was safe and happy. But I can't die with things as they are. And that makes the fear so much more bitter.
The tarrack moves, shifts its position so that it's over my head. One leg is still resting on me, ready to plunge if I should move. My eyes are squeezed shut. I can feel the weight of it, its underside pushing against my hair. Something's moving against my scalp, something underneath the body of the tarrack.
Mouthparts.
The realisation comes an instant before pain stabs through my skull, a white-hot blaze of heat. Wetness trickling onto my shoulders. It's bitten me.
And still I don't move. I might have reacted spasmodically if I weren't half-buried in a trance, but when someone trained in the chua-kin arts plays dead, you can stick a sword in their arm and they won't even twitch.
I wait for the second bite in dreadful anticipation. Sweat is running into the bite wound, mingling with the blood, stinging. The tarrack is still again.
Come on! Do it, if you're going to!
But it doesn't. Instead, it steps off me, moves away a little. I make no outward reaction, but inwardly I'm sobbing with relief. I suppose it doesn't like the way I taste.
'Orna! Are you hurt?' Nereith calls from above, as loud as he dares. But as he leans over the edge, he dislodges a small shower of pebbles, which bounce and scatter down the cliff face towards me. I see the tarrack tense, feel the air suddenly tauten and the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Then there is an almighty snap and my body bucks like I've been kicked, and the last thing I realise before I lose consciousness is that I'm going to fall, and I'm going to die.