If the giant had not been the one who pulled the vital organs out of its torso, he might have forgotten that Agis and the others were inside. The noble was using the Way to make the bear walk, roar, and even twitch its ears. Tithian was using his magic to hide the death wound beneath the beast’s leg, as well as the slit they had opened in its belly so Fylo could clean it.
“Fylo come back with bear,” the giant announced. “Ready to change heads.”
An indistinct shape stirred in front of the gate, then stepped forward. The giant quickly recognized the form as that of a female Saram. Save for an ocher breechcloth, she was entirely naked, with a willowy build and pebbled skin that had changed color to camouflage her against the gate’s veneer of yellowed bone. The sight of her lithe beauty stirred a primal desire in Fylo-though the sensation filled him with melancholy loneliness rather than excitement or hope. He knew better than to think such a woman might share her heart with an ugly half-breed like him.
The woman stopped less than a pace away from Fylo. She had the wedge-shaped head of a chameleon, entirely covered by small, rough scales and with a broad flange of skin flaring out from the base of her jaw. Conical eyes bulged from the sides of her head, each moving independently and covered by a thick lid that left only a narrow peephole exposed at the tip. Ridges of serrated bone lined the inside of her crescent-shaped mouth, and from the tip of her snout sprouted a wicked-looking horn of gray bone.
“We weren’t expecting you, Fylo.” As she spoke, a club-shaped tongue flickered from between her lips.
“Why?” demanded Fylo, watching her for any sign that might suggest she was secretly laughing at him. “Brita think stupid Fylo can’t find way back?”
Brita fixed both her peepholes on the giant. “No,” she said. “But it’s not often a convert brings his animal-brother to Castle Feral so quickly.” The woman began to circle him, taking care not to step within paw’s reach of the bear. “Especially not when it’s a beast like this.”
Fylo felt a cold lump forming in his stomach. Agis had taken great pains to explain that he would be killed if someone discovered three men hiding inside his bear, but the giant knew his friend was sorely mistaken-the beastheads, more brutal than the noble could imagine, would not settle for mere death. Despite the danger, the half-breed did not even consider abandoning Agis’s plan. When the Saram had taken him in, a warm, secure feeling had come over him. For the first time in his life, others had looked at him as something other than an unwelcome outcast. The possibility that his acceptance by the Saram had been a cruel joke was his deepest fear. Now that Tithian had suggested the possibility, he could not ignore it, any more than he could have ignored a lirr gnawing on his ankle.
“Nothing wrong with bear,” Fylo snorted, twisting his head to the side so he could look at her. “Brita just jealous.”
This drew a scornful sneer from the lithe sentry. “You might want to be clumsy and rank,” she mocked. “But I don’t.”
Fylo frowned. “What you mean?”
“When you cross Sa’ram’s Bridge, you’ll change more than your head,” she said. “You’ll take the spirit of your animal-brother into yourself. From that moment forward, his nature will be yours.”
Brita stepped back and waved a hand down her body. Her skin color changed from pale yellow to dark blue, her long tresses darkened to obsidian black, and her beauty became dark and sultry rather than lithe.
“From my chameleon sister, I inherited the ability to change appearances,” Brita said. She pointed at Fylo’s bear, then snickered, “You, on the other hand, will be ungainly and smelly.”
“Fylo be strong and fierce!”
Ignoring the outburst, Brita stepped over to the bear. “He doesn’t look very fierce to me,” she said. “In fact, he seems kind of languid.”
“What languid?” Fylo asked, knitting his brow.
“Sleepy, like he was drugged,” she said, focusing one of her conical eyes on the giant. “You didn’t happen to slip the bud of damask cactus into his last meal, did you?”
“Bear not drugged,” the giant growled. “Fylo not know about poisons.”
“But he’s so docile. Hardly what you expect from a ferocious bear.” She leaned over to peer into the beast’s eyes, and both her eyes darted to the dust-crusted slash on its nose. “What happened to his nose?” she asked, running her finger over the wound.
Fylo shifted his eyes away and ran a finger through his scraggly beard. When he could not immediately think of an explanation, he began to feel agitated and suspicious. “Why Brita ask questions?” he demanded.
“I’m the sentry. That’s my job,” she replied, keeping her attention fixed on the bear. “Why does that bother you?”
“Brita not want Fylo to be beasthead!” the half-breed exclaimed.
“Not if he doesn’t deserve it,” said Brita, her voice spiteful and domineering. “Which he won’t, if he can’t remember that we call ourselves Saram-not beastheads! Now, what happened to your animal-brother’s nose?”
Her threat humbled Fylo. “Bear go to Knosto to eat Joorsh and their sheep,” he lied, forcing himself to calm down. “Get full and fall asleep. Wake up with knife cutting nose.”
Brita flapped the flange at the base of her neck. “You expect me to believe a story like that?” she spat.
Suddenly, the bear opened its mouth and roared as loudly as Fylo had ever heard it roar in life. It bared its mighty fangs and stepped toward Brita, taking the half-breed so by surprise that he did not move to stop the beast as it followed Brita to the gate.
“Don’t let it attack!” Brita screamed, grabbing a long lance propped against the wall.
“Bear!” Fylo yelled. As he stomped after the beast, he could not keep from chuckling, for he was imagining how embarrassed the woman would be if she knew she was running from a dead bear. “Leave Brita alone!” he said, grabbing it by a plate of shoulder armor.
Brita leveled her spear at the beast’s eyes. “You can’t take that thing inside!” she hissed. “You can’t control it!”
A hooting laugh, as loud as it was mocking, rolled over the top of the gate. “If Fylo didn’t have control over his bear, you’d be dead by now-isn’t that so, Brita?” The voice sounded as deep as the Sea of Silt, but there was also a haunting, melodic tone to it. “Now stand aside and let our friends enter Castle Feral.”
Brita folded her neck flange over her shoulders and turned her eyes toward the ground. “Yes, my bawan,” she said, stepping aside and graciously waving the half-breed forward.
As the huge gates ground open, Fylo looked toward the top of the wall. The giant saw Nal’s owlish head peering down at him. The bawan’s face consisted of a circular mask of gray feathers, with a pair of huge golden eyes and a black, wickedly hooked beak at the center. His pointed ears resembled nothing quite so much as a pair of feathery horns, which he could turn at various angles according to what he wished to hear.
When the gates were at last fully spread, Nal waved Fylo inside. “Enter, my friend,” he called. “Your return comes much before we expected it, but you are no less welcome.”
The half-breed obeyed, stooping over to avoid banging his forehead on the gate’s crossbeam. At the same time, he heard Nal’s voice echoing inside his mind as the bawan used the Way to address the bear. And will you grace us with your presence as well, my beastly friend?
The question caused Fylo to stumble and fall, though his stomach was so knotted in alarm that he hardly noticed. The bear was just an animal, and, even when it had been alive, it had not understood giant language. The half-breed did not doubt that Nal realized this as well as he did, for the bawan was the smartest giant he had ever met. Why, then, had Nal addressed it in the Trade Tongue?
The bear came up behind the giant and sniffed at him with its nose, then tried to turn him over with its paw. Taking the gesture for a hint from Agis, the half-breed stood. He found himself in a small courtyard, flanked by a pair of lion-headed Saram armed with spiked clubs and dressed in loincloths of tanned hide. Behind the guards rose walls as high as the cliffs that ringed the rest of the peninsula. Fylo felt as though he were standing in the bottom of a deep pit. The only route out of the cul-de-sac was a path that traversed a granite cliff directly ahead. The trail ran through a deep trench that had been carved into the escarpment. At the top of the furrow rested a stone ball, as large as a Balican schooner, that could be rolled down the path to seal the gate tight.