The sorceress shrugged. “I will give it some thought.”
But she wouldn’t. Arling could tell from the way she said it. “Can I speak with the captain of the ship?”
Edinja Orle gave her a sympathetic look. “That might be rather difficult.”
She took the girl by her arm and steered her across the room to a table. Another of the creatures was fastened to it, bound by leather straps, limbs splayed across its metal surface, head pulled back, mouth open. A funnel had been forced down its throat, and it was gagging on the metal end lodged in its windpipe and quaking as if with a fever.
Beneath the table, a huge ginger moor cat, its colorings starkly beautiful, was gnawing on a piece of meat.
Edinja reached out and extracted the funnel. The creature did not look at her, its eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the table and the ceiling of the room. It had the look of a dead thing, as if any spark of what had made it human had been leached away.
Arling cringed, suddenly realizing who it was.
“Captain,” the sorceress said, “have you remembered yet what happened to this girl’s sister?” She waited a moment. “No? What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”
Then she looked over at Arling and began to laugh.
Eight
Oriantha sat with Tesla Dart atop a ridgeline perhaps a mile distant from the sprawling camp of the Straken Lord’s army. Sunset was approaching, the surrounding landscape stretching out its shadowy fingers from the east as the skies slowly darkened and the lighter gray of daytime slowly changed to twilight. She was weary and footsore, and she would have liked a bath. But there was no water for bathing and no respite for sore feet save rest and sleep. She wasn’t tired from the journey’s length so much as its circuity. Unwilling to trust to a straight line of travel that would have had them trailing along like obedient dogs, she had opted instead for brief forays around the army’s flanks and all the way forward to where Tael Riverine flew a dragon at its head, trying to discover where in the Forbidding they were going. Admittedly, she’d had help from Tesla, who scurried left and right with unbridled energy and seemingly endless fascination with the whole of the countryside and those passing through it. But even so, she refused to let the Ulk Bog bear the entire weight of this effort and so had inserted herself into the equation to shoulder an equal share of the burden.
Now, many hours later, she was ready to sit right where she was for as long as the light remained and then hopefully get some sleep. But it wasn’t a given that sleep would be permitted her—or, at least, any sort of useful sleep. Tesla Dart had dispatched the Chzyks—including the Ulk Bog’s favorite, Lada—a few minutes ago, sending a handful of the little creatures down into the enemy camp to see if they could pinpoint the location of the cage imprisoning Redden Ohmsford. If they were successful and if the conditions allowed for it, she would leave after midnight to attempt a rescue.
She was momentarily distracted as Tesla Dart leapt up and dashed off into the distance, weaving her way through clusters of rocks and clumps of thorny brush, a small wiry shadow in the disappearing light. Oriantha watched her until she was out of sight, wondering what had attracted Tesla’s attention this time and how she could manage to muster the effort to go look. The shape-shifter had spent some of that day asking Tesla about the Ulk Bog people, thinking to learn something about her in the process. But what information Tesla Dart was willing to share was dispensed in sudden, brief bursts that ended almost before they began and did little to provide any useful insights.
Mostly, it appeared, Ulk Bogs were like gophers or moles, living in burrows and eking out a living through foraging and thievery. Tesla’s uncle, Weka Dart, who had befriended and aided Grianne Ohmsford when she had been trapped within the Forbidding decades earlier, had been the Straken Lord’s Catcher once, but it was unclear what his niece had been doing beyond waiting for Grianne to come back into the land of the Jarka Ruus.
Although why Tesla would do this or even expect it to happen was baffling.
Not that it mattered. Weka Dart’s history was incidental to what was occurring, and Oriantha was nothing if not pragmatic. She had remained behind in the Forbidding when she had been given the chance to escape because she could not abide leaving Redden Ohmsford behind when there might be a chance to help him. She had lost her mother and thereby her reason for coming on this expedition. Going back now offered no resolution to her rootless life. If anything, it felt like a betrayal. Her mother wouldn’t have gone back; she would have kept going. Just as she had with Khyber Elessedil—right up until the very end. Could Oriantha do any less and still live with herself?
Of course, there was more to it. She wanted to free Redden Ohmsford—even though they had only just met and she had no real attachment to him—because she was fond of him and did honestly want to help.
But what she wanted most was revenge on Tael Riverine.
For her mother.
For the other members of the ill-fated company.
For the inhabitants of the Forbidding.
This creature—this so-called Straken Lord—had ruled the Jarka Ruus, the denizens of his world, for decades and perhaps centuries and had done nothing to help them. Tael Riverine’s sole achievement was to gain domination, and his sole objective was to procreate so that his line could continue to rule. She found it repugnant in both demonkind and humankind. There was no suggestion of advancement or enlightenment or useful purpose. There was only the promise of raw power exercised by one ruler so that it could be bequeathed to others.
A good part of her outrage was derived from her connection with the creatures imprisoned here. She was more of an outsider in her own world than she was in this one, and her sense of kinship with the Jarka Ruus was strong. Like her, they were different, and their differences set them apart. But in this world she was just one of many, and all of them very much in the same situation. In her world, she belonged to a tiny group of mutant creatures who were mistrusted and disliked and set apart from the much larger populations of Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes. There, she lived a life in the shadows, disguising the truth about herself.
It didn’t escape her that the creatures of the Forbidding lived the same sort of life here—the same sort of persecuted existence—that she lived in the outside world.
She might not be able to do anything about an entire world in which her fate was subject to the prejudices of the general population, but perhaps she could make a difference in a world in which a single individual’s removal could change everything.
She was toying with these thoughts as Tesla Dart reappeared from out of the increasing gloom, chattering away.
“Furies, dozens of them. Roaming the boulders and brush like vermin. Hate those Furies, I do. Mindless killers.” She gave a look over her shoulder as if to make sure the Furies weren’t following her. “Want to make sure. They could see us, come for us.”
“They won’t bother,” Oriantha told her. “They serve the Straken Lord for now.”
The Ulk Bog made a rude noise. “Serve themselves is what they do. All teeth and claws and no brains.” She gave a noticeable shiver. “Keep them far way, shape-shifter. You listen.”
Oriantha was listening, but she was not particularly worried. She could manage Furies if they found her. Shape-shifters were clever and resourceful. When you could become anything—even the air you breathed if it was dark and hazy enough—there wasn’t much that could harm you unless it got very close or caught you unawares.
Suddenly Tesla Dart squealed and leapt up excitedly. “Lada returns! Come, Lada! Come, Chzyk! Tell me all! Here to me, Lada!”
The lizard raced across the open ground and leapt into the Ulk Bog’s arms where the latter proceeded to pet and rub the little creature in fond welcome. Lada turned around and around, raising and lowering his scaly head and tail, and generally doing everything he could to make himself available for the other’s welcome attentions.