Fish Heads "Rhantys wrote, 'Far larger than a man is the Ettyn, a murderous ogre with thick clawed hands like a mole who makes his home in the earth.' It is known that during the second war against the Qar ettins undermined the defensive walls of Northmarch castle, which led to the defeat and destruction of that city, now lost behind the Shadowline." -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" FOR A LONG TIME after she had caught hold of the piling Qinnitan could do no more than cling to it while the breakers dragged her up and down against the pier's armor of barnacles. The salt water made her dozens of scratches and cuts burn like fire, but she had strength enough only to hang on and try to catch her breath. When Pigeon's arms began to slip from her neck she nearly let go of the slimy wooden pier to hold onto him, but she was terrified the current would drag them both away under the dock and she wouldn't be strong enough to find another safe haven.
"Wake up!" She choked and spat green water. "Pigeon! Hang on to my neck!"
The boy made a guttural noise of exhaustion and renewed his grip as well as he could. She had been fortunate her foot had touched him when she had first risen to the surface after plunging off the ship, and fortunate again that a piece of flaming mast had missed them when it hit the water a few moments later, just as she surfaced with the boy.
Another wave, small compared to open ocean but still far beyond her power to resist, flung Qinnitan against the piling again. When she opened her eyes several new cuts crisscrossed her arm, a net made of little streaks of red that disappeared as another wave splashed across them.
People were shouting and thumping across the planks above her head and the smoke of the burning ship was beginning to creep along the water. It was hopeless to stay here, only a matter of time until she lost her grip or the smoke overwhelmed her again. She was already rasping at every breath like a cart with a broken wheel. She had never been so exhausted in all her life.
There. A crude ladder of some kind hung down to the water on the far side of the dock. She hoped it was a ladder, anyway-it was a hundred yards away and her eyes were stinging from seawater and blood. She thanked Nushash and the Hive that she had spent lots of time in the deep bathing pool at the Seclusion and had learned how to swim a little. Still, she couldn't swim that far with one arm.
"You must stay on my back and hold on no matter what," she told Pigeon. "Can you hear me? " She waited until she heard him grunt. "Don't let go, even if I go under the water for a moment."
As she pushed away from the pillar, aiming for the distant ladder, the boy wrapped his arms around her neck. She couldn't breathe, and she floundered until she managed to yank his arms down so they were across her collarbone. Qinnitan had gone four or five strokes and was beginning to find a rhythm that allowed her to keep Pigeon mostly on her back when she saw the first triangular fin cut the water in front of her. A moment later she saw a second. Her limbs seemed to grow cold and heavy.
Sea-wolves. Not the thick bodied, axhead sharks of the Xixian canals but something sleeker and longer, pale gray and as slender as a knife blade. For a moment she paddled in place, afraid to go forward and afraid to go back, but the fins were moving away from her instead of toward her. Qinnitan prayed that they were after some other quarry.
Within moments of the disappearance of the first two she saw several more moving in wide loops as though not so sure of their destination as the first pair. Bodies in the water, Qinnitan realized with a horrible pang, sailors from the Xixian ship, wounded and dead-men she had killed by setting the ship on fire.
She couldn't think about any of it, not about the sailors and soldiers, not about the sharks. Pigeon was clinging to her back and his arms were tightening around her neck again as he began to understand why she had stopped swimming. In another moment terror might steal away his resolve-he might let go or even begin to fight her. She had heard sailors on her voyage to Hierosol talk about the hopelessness of struggling with a frightened, drowning man. She began to swim again, as quickly as she could.
Something rough as tree bark brushed against her leg as a pale shape slipped past her. She gasped and swallowed some water, but the fin was moving away. It was only a small shark, not half her length. She thrashed forward, but she felt as though the strength was leaking out of her like grain from a burst sack. Where was that ladder? Qinnitan did not even know which direction she had been swimming. The planks were gone from above her head so she must be out from beneath the pier, but where was she?
Pigeon was sliding from her back again. She caught him with one hand, but it all seemed pointless, remote. They sank into the water and green darkness was all around. She clutched the child as tightly as she could and kicked hard with her last strength, but they barely seemed to move upward. At last, just when she felt she could hold her breath no longer her face broke the surface for an instant, but even the air she gulped did not bring life back to her legs and arms. She slipped back under, exhausted.
Something grabbed Qinnitan by the hair, yanking so hard and so unexpectedly that she opened her mouth and swallowed water again. A moment later light burst all around her and she felt her body strike or be struck by something heavy. A shark. A shark must have her. The end… but where was Pigeon…?
The weight of the boy fell on top of her. She was lying on something hard. A moment later Pigeon rolled away, coughing and gasping, but Qinnitan couldn't see anything except the watery mess she was vomiting up onto the planks of the pier.
Out of the water. They were out of the water.
Her stomach convulsed again but nothing more came out. She coughed and spat. A hand thumped her on the back and a little more water trickled out onto the wet boards. She was dimly aware of the smell of smoke and of people shouting and running not far away, but no one was near them except their rescuer. She reached out blindly until she found Pigeon. His skinny sides were heaving as he brought up his own bellyful of seawater but he was breathing. He was safe. She had saved him. Qinnitan let herself collapse onto her side. She could see a little of the sky now, gray-black with smoke, and the dim shape of their savior, the sun behind him so that he was only a dark shadow looming over them like a mountain, a benevolent god who had reached down a mighty hand and plucked them back into life. She tried to thank him, but she could force no words out of her burning, salt-scoured throat, so instead she lifted up her hand to touch his arm.
He knocked her hand aside. "Stupid little bitch." It was only after a moment that she realized he had spoken Xixian, her own language. Qinnitan threw up her hand to block the sunlight, dazzling even through the smoke.
Their rescuer was the nameless man, the autarch's stone-faced servant, but he was not stone-faced now: his features were twisted into a look of almost deranged fury.
"Do you see this?" He grabbed Pigeon's wrist and slammed the boy's hand down near Qinnitan's face so hard that although he was barely sensible, Pigeon still gasped in pain. The nameless man slapped the boy so hard that Pigeon's eyes fluttered open, then slowly widened in horror as he saw who had him. "Watch!"
In a single movement as swift as a serpent's strike the man pulled a long, broad knife out of his waistband and snapped it down on the boy's hand with a meaty thok like the sound of her mother cutting fish heads on the family table. Blood sprayed in Qinnitan's face, and the tips of three of Pigeon's fingers bounced away. The boy shrieked, a wordless noise so horrid that Qinnitan screamed too, helpless and disbelieving.
"Next time it will be his whole hand-and his nose!" The nameless man slapped Qinnitan so hard that she thought he had broken her jaw. As Pigeon rolled on the planks, gurgling and clutching his ruined hand, red wetness drizzling onto the dock, their captor pulled a cloth from his pocket and tied it roughly but tightly around Pigeon's fingers to slow the bleeding.
"Now get up, you little dung flies, and no more noise or playing up from either of you." He jerked Qinnitan onto her feet, then kicked at the whimpering Pigeon until the child staggered upright, his face gray with pain. "Because of you two, we have to find another boat."
"I never expected to be king."
Pinimmon Vash stiffened in surprise and fright at these words. He hadn't thought to hear anyone talking at all, let alone making such a unique declaration.
It was Olin's voice, of course-but to whom could the northern king possibly be speaking? The autarch was still in bed in his cabin, yet the foreigner was speaking as though to Sulepis himself. Vash's skin went cold: if he had failed to note and plan for the autarch's movements correctly then many of the things the paramount minister did each day (and especially what he was doing this very moment) were little more than elaborate forms of suicide.
Terror swept through Vash like a sudden fever. He scrambled back from the hole he had selected for eavesdropping, looking wildly from side to side although he was clearly the only person in the small locker. Fool! he chided himself-what was happening on the other side of the spyhole was all that mattered. Was Olin Eddon really talking to Sulepis? How could Vash have miscalculated? Only moments ago he had delivered the parchment bearing his morning report to the autarch's cabin and had been informed by the body slaves that the Golden One was still asleep.
He could hear Olin again. "It was not that I was unsuited for it, or afraid of the responsibility," the northerner was saying, " just that I did not imagine it would happen. My father Ustin was as healthy as a bull, my brother Lorick, the heir, was only two years older than me, and I had always been sickly, prone to fevers and to long, bedridden weeks. The physicians told my father and mother I would likely not survive to see twenty years. It was a weakness of the blood, they said-one to which many of my line had been prey… had been…"
Olin hesitated for so long that at last Vash moved back to the spyhole again to try to make sense of things. The discovery of this locker had been fortuitous-it was much less exposed than his previous eavesdropping spot-but it was hard on his old bones to force himself into the narrow space, and it would be almost impossible to get out of it quickly if he heard someone coming. Still, he had decided it would be worth it, especially if it helped him understand what the autarch was planning. Those who let Sulepis surprise them seldom lived long-or happily.
But if I was wrong and Sulepis finds me here, this locker will be no more than an upright coffin.
Vash still could see nothing from his angle, including to whom if anyone the northerner spoke, so he took his eye away and put his ear against the hole instead. He would bring a dark cloth next time to cover the inside of the hole-if he lived. That would make it less likely anyone would notice his presence.
"In any case," King Olin at last continued, "my illness and the health of my father and brother made it unlikely I would ever sit the throne. Instead of just tilting and hunting and other active sports, my youth was also spent with books, in the company of historians and philosophers. Not that there is anything wrong with learning to defend yourself! I made sure my own children would at least be able to acquit themselves well in a fight."
Who was he talking to? Surely the autarch would never stay silent so long. Could it be Panhyssir, the high priest? Vash felt a fizz of helpless jealousy at the thought. Or perhaps it was the antipolemarch Dumin Hauyuz, the commander of the soldiers aboard and the highest ranking military man in the autarch's party. It had to be one of them-certainly the king of a foreign nation would not speak so openly to anyone else.
Or had his captivity simply driven the man mad-was Olin talking to himself?
"Many people were wrong, of course," the northerner said. "My illness has not shortened my life-at least not so far. My father did live a long time, but collapsed in apoplexy when he heard that my brother Lorick had fallen from his horse while hunting and was not expected to survive. My father did not regain his senses, but he did not die, either. As it turned out, neither of those strong men would die easily.
"It was a black time for my mother and little better for me. My father had never had as much time for me as for Lorick, but that was as it should have been, because my brother was being prepared to rule-who could have guessed the gods had such tricks in mind? But my father had been kind to me in his way, and now I had to watch them both clinging to life, unable to pull themselves out of the half-death in which they were immersed.
"My father died first. There was a party in court-led by the Tollys, the most powerful family after ours-who wanted to crown Lorick even as he lay senseless and dying, and then Lindon Tolly would rule in his name. My youngest brother Hardis was already married to one of the Tolly women, so they wished only to keep me off the throne long enough to find some way to put Hardis on in my place when Lorick at last succumbed to his injury. We had just enough allies in the court to resist this, but only barely. Southmarch lived in stalemate for almost a year.
"Hardis was young and easily led, and maybe even jealous of his older brothers, but I do not believe he understood that Lindon's plans to put him on the throne would have required my death. Hardis was no fool, but I'm sure it was easier for him not to wonder why the Tollys made so much of him. Or perhaps he simply felt sure, as everyone else had all my life, that I would not live to manhood.
"As it happened, I outlived them all. My poor brother Hardis died ten years ago of a fever after having spent his life more or less a prisoner of the Tollys, although he always pretended he was happy in Summerfield Court and had no wish to see his old home. Poor Hardis.
"Back in the year of succession, Lorick died at last and the puppet show ended, but not without several times almost tearing the kingdom apart. I was crowned and the Tollys had to be content with keeping what power they had.
"Curse my foolishness! I should have routed them out like a hive of wasps. I saw the danger of your country to Eion long before any of my fellow monarchs, starting with this autarch's cruel father, but I did not see the dangers in my own house."
There, thought Vash, relieved but still bewildered, and took his first full breath in some time. Clearly the man wasn't speaking to Sulepis himself-but what else could he be doing? Had the autarch given Olin a secretary? Was the foreign king dictating a letter to his family?
The northerner's voice rose. "And that is what I hate even more than the Tollys' treachery-my own stupidity. I left enemies behind me when I departed and then, even worse, I allowed myself to be tricked and imprisoned by that swine Hesper of Jellon. All of this may have cost our family the throne we have held for centuries, but it has cost me far more than that… it cost me my oldest son, my brave Kendrick, and perhaps my other two children as well." His voice became halting. "Ah, sweet Zoria and all her oracles-may the gods rain curses down on those who helped me to betray myself and my kingdom!"
For long moments after that Olin did not speak, but even without seeing the man Vash could tell he had only fallen silent, not gone away.
"I tried to prepare all my children to rule so that they would not find themselves surprised and unready as I had been, should the gods decide to set any one of them on the throne. And I loved them all, as a father should, even if I perhaps did not love them all equally.
"They were the last thing I had of my wife Meriel. She suffered greatly giving birth to the twins and did not recover, becoming weaker and weaker until she passed a month later. It tore my heart out of my breast. I banished the physician who attended her even though it was not his fault, but I could not bear to see the man's face when my dear wife was dead. She had been the one thing that made me think perhaps my own poisoned blood could be saved. When Kendrick was born, so fat and fit and laughing, it seemed that her sweetness had undone the sour strain of my lineage.
"I was a fool.
"She was lovely, of course, my Meriel, but not simply because her skin was milky and her lips were red, as the bards would have it. There were many other women in the March Kingdoms that might have been called more beautiful, and it would take a poet, which I am not, to tell you what exactly it was that made her so fair, but it was something in her eyes. All her life, until the moment those eyes last closed upon this world, she had the look of a child. Not innocent, not foolish or simple, but straight-straight as an arrow's flight. She looked out at the world without judging, or at least without hurrying to judgement. She could not flatter but she was always kind. She did not lie, but neither did she speak rash truth when it would bring pain for no reason…"
Again Olin paused. For the first time Vash was listening with real interest: the foreigner spoke well, as a king should. Some of the autarchs Vash had served had liked poetry, but none of them had spoken it or written it with any facility. In his younger years, the paramount minister himself had occasionally written a few lines, but no one had ever seen them.
"In fact," Olin continued, "Meriel was what I often thought a goddess might be like, if that goddess was kindhearted, for she was not above the pain of others. Ah, that she should have been taken from the world instead of me, with my tainted heritage and my doting self-regard! When she died the castle put on mourning and would not take it off, every servant and every courtier. That is true. They had to be told by the priests after a year had passed to doff their mourning clothes, that to mourn beyond the official time was to insult the gods! Can you imagine? We all loved her. The worst thing that ever happened to my children, far worse than us losing the throne or even Kendrick's death, was that they did not know their mother, the sweetest woman who ever lived. I thought I did not deserve her-I could not believe that she could be mine.
"She was not, of course. The gods reminded me of that… as they are wont to do."
Olin laughed then, a sound so painful that even Vash (who had heard the shrieking, pleading ends of dozens of men's lives, many of those executed at his own orders) had to fight the urge to stop his ears with his hands.
"I do not know what I mean to say," the king began again at last. "I started out to tell about my family. It has been nearly a year since I have seen them. Kendrick is dead, likely at the hands of the Tollys, but perhaps killed by some other. My brave son-he wanted only to do what was right. He would grow so angry when others broke the rules, even his younger brother and sister! They would play at hide-and-seek with him, then hide somewhere they had promised not to go and laugh at him when he found out. He could never make himself play the way they did, but instead would try to convince them that when the rules were broken the game was spoiled. Kendrick would have been a fine king-with my other son as his chancellor, perhaps, to remind him not to trust others to obey the rules just because Kendrick himself did. Because Barrick, if he still lives, may the gods protect him, lives in a very different world.
"Barrick was always troubled, always querulous, but after the first time the affliction struck-my affliction, passed down to him like the waters of a fouled river-he ceased to trust in the goodness of Fate entirely. And who could blame him? When he was young the sickness took the same course as it did in me. He would fall to the floor in fits of rage, choking, trembling, scarcely able to breathe, and struggle so that two strong men were needed to check him even though he was but a child. I grieved, of course, that I had brought this curse into his life, but I felt I could teach him how I had survived, the way I locked myself away when I felt the fits coming upon me. But then his sickness changed and found a different path.
"In Barrick, it became something that no longer made him rage and flail like a madman, but instead which slowly poisoned him on the inside. His view of the world became darker and darker, as when an eclipsing moon divides the earth from the sun. In my foolishness I thought at first that when his outward fits stopped it meant that he was getting better-that he was somehow fighting off the curse that had so polluted my life. I was wrong, but by the time I understood that, he had crawled so far into the shadows that I could no longer reach him. He was witty, clever, yet so crippled by my own poisoned blood that I think only his love for his sister kept him alive.
"For he did love her, and Briony loved him. They were twins-did I say that?-and their hearts beat as one from the moment they came into the world, born in the same hour. Perhaps that had something to do with their mother's death. Ah, gods, I no longer know! It has been so long, yet the pain feels as fresh as when I cut myself with my shaving blade yester morning.
"And here is another shameful confession-I loved Briony most of all. No, let me say love, not loved-please, may the gods grant that she lives! I loved Kendrick's honor and kindness and his dutiful nature, and I loved him because he was my firstborn. I love Barrick despite all the pain I gave him and he gave me… but I love Briony with such comfort and certainty that I cannot express it. She contains all that is best in me, and much of what was excellent in her mother. To think that such a powerful love should have failed her so completely-that I should have failed all of them so utterly…"
Again the northern king fell silent. When he spoke again his voice was quite different, somber and almost without feeling.
"I have bored you long enough. I thank you for indulging me. I think I will go and walk up and down the decks of my prison a little while and listen to the gulls."
The paramount minister of Xis heard Olin move, followed by his guards, the footsteps slowly growing fainter. After he was gone, no one else moved or spoke. Had he been talking to the guards, or to empty air after all, addressing only the cloudy spring sky? Vash slid himself out of the pantry as carefully as his stiff old bones would permit and hobbled down the stairs to the deck, then climbed back up to where Olin had been. The king had indeed left-Vash could see the top of his head at the far end of the ship, where he leaned on the rail under the wary eye of several soldiers-and there was no sign of the autarch or Panhyssir or Dumin Hauyuz or any other rational being. The only soul on the deck was the halfwit scotarch Prusus lolling in his chair, hands and head jerking, a thread of spittle dangling from his chin. For a moment Prusus the Cripple seemed to look back at him, but as Vash walked toward him the scotarch's stare rolled vacantly, as though the paramount minister had suddenly disappeared from his view.
Pinimmon Vash stopped in front of the quivering shape and looked the scotarch up and down, thinking… wondering…
The world has slipped its mooring, Vash thought. Yes, the world I knew has drifted out of familiar waters. Where it goes now, only gods and madmen can guess.
"Something is following us," Barrick whispered.
"Aye." When the raven spoke quietly he was hard to understand, all rasp and whistle. He fluttered down onto a stone and clung to the mossy surface, then lowered his head between his shoulders and fluffed himself bigger. "Silkins," he croaked. "Saw them when us flew over trees. Five nor six, us guesses."
"Let them come." He feared them, but Barrick also felt strangely sure he had not come so far and survived so much to die at the hands of these spindly thread-covered monstrosities. He felt strong-weirdly so, as though something powerful bubbled inside him like the foam on a mug of beer. It almost made him want to laugh out loud.
"Let them? Kill us both, they will-or worset, take us back to they hanging nests and put they grubs in our bellies." The raven flapped up into a tree branch several paces ahead. "Seen it happen to Followers, I have. Not even dead when the younglings hatch…"
"They won't do it to me. I won't let them."
The black bird shuddered and puffed up his feathers again. "Did you take a bump to the head when you climbed so long on that dire hill? Not at all the same since then, you."
Barrick couldn't help smiling. It was true, although he wasn't certain why. He did feel different-stronger, more certain… better. Even the constant dull ache in his crippled left arm, a pain that had plagued him for most of his life, was now gone: the only discomfort was an occasional prickle of the skin, as though he had slept on it.
Barrick held the torch near his forearm. The scars the Sleepers had made were all but gone, only three white stripes remaining that looked years old, although it had been no more than a day or two since he had descended from Cursed Hill. Even his hand, the loathsome crab-claw he had always tried to hide, now looked scarcely different from his other hand. What magic had those blind things done to him? It seemed they had brought him only good, but a nagging memory reminded him that they had spoken of a price…
Barrick tripped on a root and stumbled badly before regaining his balance. The ground was slippery from the mist that cloaked the twilight forest. A healthy arm wouldn't keep him from falling and hitting his head.
"Surely us must find a place to be safe, Master," Skurn said in a wheedling voice. "To rest. Tired, you are, and tired makes mistakes, as our old mam always said."
Barrick looked around. He had been walking for what seemed most of a day, following the raven's recollection of the best route toward the city of Sleep and its fearful inhabitants, the ones Skurn called Night Men. It wouldn't hurt to stop and rest, especially if a group of silkins were following. He could roast the roots he had dug that morning, which would at least make them seem a little more like actual food: he had discovered several things that grew here which he could eat and keep down, but cooking them definitely helped.
"Very well," he said. "Find me a place with a rock I can put at my back."
"Wise you are, so wise. Us will find a helpsome spot." The raven flapped heavily up through the canopy of trees and out of Barrick's sight.
The thing was, Barrick reflected as he chewed, roasting these pale, soggy roots made them taste more like food, but it didn't make them taste like good food.
"Couldn't you find us an egg or something? " he asked. "A bird's egg? " He had learned that it was important to be specific.
The raven turned toward him, the legs of some crawler he had pulled from under a log still wriggling in his beak. He tipped back his head to gulp it down, then shot Barrick a look of reproach.
"Hasn't Skurn looked and looked? Didn't us offer you the best us found, not even keeping none back for ourself?"
The "best" had been a large, soft grub the size of Barrick's thumb, pale and waxy as a candle and leaking greenish fluid where Skurn's beak had crimped it too fiercely. He had thanked the raven for his generosity and given it back.
"Never mind. These roots are fine." He laid three more pieces of wood that had been drying on the flames, then began to sharpen the head of his broken spear with a round stone. He could not get over the strange pleasure of having two arms that did not hurt.
"Tell me another tale," Barrick said after a while. "What happened to Crooked after he threw the gods into his grandmother's lands?"
"Great-grandmother's," the raven said, looking around as though something else toothsome might be crawling by. "It were his great-grandmother, Emptiness. She taught Crooked all her tricks of coming and going."
Find Crooked's Hall, the Sleepers had told him. Crooked's Hall, Crooked's roads, Crooked's doorway-did they actually expect Barrick to travel as the gods traveled? "So what happened? Did he become the king of the gods?" But Crooked, who until now had always been Kupilas as far as Barrick knew, was just a minor god, wasn't he? The Book of the Trigon talked of Kupilas only as the clever patron of blacksmiths and engineers. And physicians, he remembered. Chaven had a statue of him in his house. "What happened after he killed Kernios?"
"Is us a Night Man, full of secrets?" the bird said with a touch of indignation. "Do us know all the Firstborn know? Anyroad, Crooked didn't kill nobody-he threw the Earthlord and them others into the place where they sleeps forever."
"But what happened to Kupilas? To Crooked? What happened to him?"
Skurn shrugged, a motion where he lifted his feathers in a ruff around his neck and wiggled his head. "Don't know. Him were hurt bad by Earthlord's spear. Dying, some say. Don't know any more of the story, us. Mam never told it."
And Barrick had to be content with that.
He was half asleep and drifting when he felt something poking at his hand, something sharp and hard. A beak.
"Hist!" The raven crouched beside him, spotted feathers all a-prickle so that he looked more hedgehog than bird. "I hear somewhat…"
Barrick sat up straight but stayed silent, listening. He gradually became aware that something sharp was poking into the back of his neck, and this time it wasn't Skurn. He swatted at it but could not dislodge the painful thing from his skin. An instant later something else dropped down from the branches and caught the meat of his right arm-a thorny branch, bent like a hook, on the end of a strand of pale silk.
Before he had time to think several more strands came whipping down from the shadows above him. A few only flailed past him and then snapped away, but two more caught in his ragged clothes and pulled tight, like the thorny barbs already snagged in his neck and arm. Small, sharp pains bloomed all over him.
"They come, Master!" Skurn shrieked, flapping up into the air just as another barb shot out and swung through the spot where he had been. "Silkins!"
Now Barrick could see them, thin gray-white shapes scuttling through the upper branches above his head, casting down their weighted, thorn-hooked barbs to entangle him. He tried to reach into his belt for his broken spear but one of the creatures yanked on a silk strand hooked in his arm to keep him from reaching the weapon. Barrick grabbed the silk and pulled back hard until it slackened and he could grab the spearhead. He leaned out with his left hand and swept it up to cut through the strand imprisoning his arm, saying a silent prayer of thanks he had sharpened the edge. It took longer to work loose the thorny branch in his neck, and when he brought his hand away his fingers were smeared with blood.
Two of the maggoty things came tumbling out of the trees, silent as ghosts in the twilight, swinging their silks like horse-trappers as the dark wet spots of their eyes gleamed with reflected twilight. Barrick ducked under a flailing silk rope and felt the barbed hooks catch and tear at his scalp. He tore them loose from his head just as the creature leaped forward. Its strange, boneless limbs folded around him, and although it weighed little, the force was still enough to knock him off his feet. He fell and rolled, the silkin clinging to him until they both tumbled to a stop, Barrick's right arm pinned beneath his own body. A strand whipped around his neck and pulled tight. For a moment, with only his useless left arm free, he knew he would die.
But his left arm wasn't useless any longer. He reached up and caught the strange, slippery-but-sticky thing on his back and dug in his fingers. The strand around his neck tightened for a moment, but then he had tugged the thing loose and dragged it down onto the muddy forest floor.
I'm strong! He could have shouted it-he could feel it in him like a joyful flame. Strong!
Barrick was not able to get a solid grip on his attacker but as it rose up into a crouch he lunged forward and shoved the creature backward into the campfire even as another pale, half-human figure leaped down onto his back.
A horrible, whistling shriek went up from the one that had stumbled into the fire. The burning silkin staggered out of the firepit, pale yellow flames running up its legs and torso, the blackness beneath its mummifying threads beginning to ooze and bubble as the fire took it. Within a few heartbeats it was blazing like a torch, filling the twilight with shrilling screams so high in pitch that Barrick could hardly hear them.
The way to survival suddenly seemed clear. He leaped toward the fire, dragging the second silkin with him, and grabbed a burning piece of wood. With the broken spear in one hand and the flaming brand in the other he turned on the silkin clinging to his ankles and shoved the fire into the creature's featureless face until it sizzled and bubbled. Piping in agony, it pulled free of him and leaped away, blindly tearing at its own head before striking a tree trunk. It lay twitching for a moment, then crawled away into the undergrowth, rolling and lopsided as a drunkard.
Barrick grabbed the spearhead tight and beat his hand upon his breast. "Come on, then!" he shouted at the ghostly shapes still swarming in the trees above. "Come and get me!"
Two more jumped down, then a third. Skurn came out of nowhere and snatched with his talons at the one nearest Barrick, which gave him a moment to swipe the torch against it. He narrowly missed singeing the bird, who flapped up again, cawing in alarm. The silkin's wrappings did not catch, but Barrick stabbed at it again with his blade and spilled its black ooze, then turned and shoved the flame up against the next one even as it lurched forward. For long moments he could not tell how many of the silkins surrounded him, or how he was faring, but he could smell the ghastly, salty stink of the things as they burned. He began to laugh as he slashed with spearhead and torch, striking at everything that moved. From the corner of his eye he saw Skurn beating his way up into the air, looking for safety. Barrick only laughed louder.
An hour might have passed, or only moments-Barrick couldn't tell. The last moving silkin was at his feet, trying to hold in its slow-dripping innards where Barrick had slashed its belly wide open. In a fever of gleeful rage Barrick dropped his spear and grabbed at the creature's head, his fingers compressing the silk-wrapped ball as if it were a rotten melon. He pulled it upright, then shoved the torch into its gaping, sticky eye.
"Die, you filthy thing!" He held it down with his foot until it was burning too hot to stand over it. Three more of the creatures lay motionless and oozing at his feet, and nothing else moved in the trees.
Barrick lifted his hands before him, staring. He had known he would win-he had known it! What a marvel it was to have two strong arms, to be like anyone else! He kicked the smoldering corpse of the silkin and turned his back on it.
I have been given a gift. And what have I paid for it? Nothing.
He no longer felt any pain. Even the old miseries and the old losses-his sister, his stolen father, his murdered brother-troubled him no more; he had hardly thought of them in days. Just as the pain of his arm had gone, all his painful feelings had vanished, too.
When Skurn at last found the courage to come down again from the trees, Barrick was still laughing quietly.
Because I am whole for the first time, he thought. The real Barrick Eddon, at last.