He did not know whether he'd swallowed more leaves this time or this was a more potent aoratos, but its effects were still strong in him when he woke Rihwin. They made the baron reluctant to seek sleep at once. He was also curious to learn what the southerner would think of the plant.
"Pah!" Rihwin almost choked on the first mouthful, but choked it down. "A gourmet's delight it is not." He chewed more leaves. A few minutes passed. His breath began to whistle more quickly through his nostrils. His voice grew soft and dreamy. "How bright Tiwaz is, like polished silver!" After another moment: "Is that a ferret over there, Gerin?" He pointed into the darkness.
The baron felt his own mind reach out. "I think it is."
"Remarkable. And the ghosts-hear them wail!"
They talked idly for a while, trying with scant success to find some everday sensation comparable to that induced by the aoratos. " This is foolishness," Gerin said at last. "If there were half a dozen things like it, it would not be marvelous at all."
"Astutely reasoned," Rihwin answered, his tone mildly sarcastic. " From that, it would follow-" He paused in mid-sentenced, exclaimed, " The ghosts are gone!"
They were, fled away as suddenly and completely as if driven to shelter by the rising sun. The gloom outside the campfire's glow seemed somehow strange and flat. Surrounded by this great stillness, the cry of a hunting owl came shockingly loud.
Gerin's surprised senses were still groping for an explanation when Rihwin, now feeling the aoratos more strongly than did the baron, whispered, "I know why they fled. Look north."
Looking was not what was required, but Gerin understood. The blood froze in his veins as he sensed the approaching demon. Only the aoratos plant let him do so; without it, the flying monster would have stayed unseen, undetected, until it descended on the travelers like a hawk stooping on roosting fowl.
The huge demon drew swiftly nearer, like a stone hurled from a god's hand. Even with the aoratos, its shape was hard to define. Gerin was most reminded of the jellyfish that floated in the Greater Inner Sea, but the analogy was imperfect, for Balamung's sending-the baron had no doubt it was such-surveyed with three bright, pitiless eyes the landscape over which it sailed. For mouth it had a rasping sucker disk, set with hundreds of tiny curved teeth. The edges of its gross body blurred and wavered, like a stone seen through running water.
Still, while in this plane it had to be vulnerable to weapons, however fearsome its appearance. Though fear gripped him, Gerin strung his bow and set an arrow in it. His fingers worked more of themselves than under his conscious direction.
But the demon halted well out of bowshot. The baron's heart sank. He saw no way to lure it into range before it began a killing rush too swift to give him a good shot. Whistling tunelessly, Rihwin glanced from bow to demon.
The creature gave no sign of immediate attack. It seemed as uncertain as the men it faced. Words formed in the baron's mind: "How do you know of me? The man-thing who sent me forth promised easy meat, not warriors with weapons to hand."
For no reason Gerin understood, Rihwin was grinning. "Nor is that the only way in which your master deceived you," he said. He spoke softly to avoid waking Van and Elise, who could not sense the demon; it felt his ideas as he and Gerin perceived its.
"I name no man-thing master!" Its thought dinned in Gerin's head. More quietly, it asked, "And how else am I deceived?"
"Why, by thinking you can do us harm, when you cannot so much as touch us," Rihwin answered airily.
"How not?" the demon asked. Gerin was tempted to do the same. They had no protection against it, as it surely knew.
But Rihwin was not perturbed. "Consider," he said: "To reach us, you first must traverse half the distance, not so?"
"What of it?" the demon snarled.
"Then you will travel half the remaining interval, and then half of that, and half that, and so on forever. You may come as close as you like, but reach us you never will."
Gerin felt the demon muttering to itself as it pursued Rihwin's chain of logic. It did not seem very intelligent; relying on invisibility and ferocity, it had rarely needed much in the way of wits. At last it said, "You are wrong, man-thing, and my showing you this will be your death." Terrifyingly quick, it was twice as close as before. It halted for a moment. "Do you see?"
It halved the gap again, paused to show itself-and Gerin drove his arrow cleanly through its central eye.
It screamed like a woman broken on the rack and was gone, fleeing back to whatever plane Balamung had summoned it from. Gerin thought that agony-filled cry had to wake everything for miles, but only he and Rihwin seemed to hear it. Van and Elise slept on, and all was unchanged out in the darkness. No, not quite-the ghosts returned, their murmurs now far less fear-filled than before.
The baron picked up the denuded aoratos bush. He hefted it thoughtfully. "Thank the gods for this little plant," he said to Rihwin. "Without it, we'd've been nothing but appetizers for that devil."
"At the moment I am still too terrified to move, let alone think about anything so abstract as giving thanks. You have an unpleasant and powerful enemy, my fellow Fox."
"I've already told you that. Didn't you believe me before? As for fear, you handled yourself better than I did-I thought we were done for till you stalled the demon."
Rihwin shrugged. "That paradox always did intrigue me. I first heard a variation of it posed at the Collegium, purportedly to demonstrate that a longtooth could never catch its prey, even were the victim five times slower than it."
"It's logically perfect, but it can't be true. Where's the flaw?"
"I haven't the faintest idea, nor did my instructor. Your elucidation with the bow seemed as elegant as any."
Gerin tried to sleep. He was too keyed up to find rest quickly. He was still awake when Rihwin passed the watch to Van, and listened to his friend's sulfurous oaths at not having been waked to help fight the demon. Van was still grumbling complaints into his beard as his comrades at last gave in to slumber.
The next morning, Gerin let Elise drive for a while and tried to get more sleep in the back of the wagon. He knew Van had managed the trick on the way south. Now he wondered how. Every pothole was magnified tenfold when felt all along his body, and rumbling wheels and creaking axles did nothing to help his repose. Red-eyed and defeated, he came forward to take the reins again.
Traffic was light, for which he gave thanks. He wished Van had been able to buy a pair of Shanda horses instead of just the one. The shaggy little animal pulled magnificently. It seemed never to tire.
Its harnessmate the gray gelding was willing enough, but lacked the steppe beast's endurance. It exhaustedly hung its head at every rest stop. Gerin was afraid its wind would break if he pushed it much harder.
From the chariot Rihwin was sharing with him, Van pointed up the road at an approaching traveler and said, "Someone's coming in one awful hurry."
"Probably another whoreson of a courier," Gerin said. He reached for his bow nonetheless.
A courier it was, whipping his horses as if all the fiends of all the hells were after him. The beasts' scarlet, flaring nostrils and lathered sides said they had been used so for some time. "Way! Clear the way!" the courier shouted as he thundered past.
He was gone in the blink of an eye, but not before Gerin saw the long Trokme arrow lodged in the crown of his broad-brimmed hat. North of the Kirs, the blow had fallen.
Rihwin stared blankly at the dismayed looks his friends wore; like Gerin, Elise and Van had recognized that arrow for what it was. Elise hid her face in her hands and wept. When the baron put an arm around her, he almost steered the wagon into Rihwin's chariot.