“Melino begged me to free him,” the Princess said. “I do not beg you, warrior.”
“Will you help Lucinus loose the Worms of the Earth if I free you?” Corylus said. It wasn’t a real question, and anyway, he’d already decided that he wasn’t going to leave the Princess to be tortured, by Melino, or by anybody else, but certainly not by Melino.
“I do not know Lucinus,” the Princess said. She shuddered and her eyes closed, but she continued, “And I would not loose the Worms. We Singiri were happy on the Earth when we lived here. We would not destroy the Earth now, though we are in another place.”
“Good,” said Corylus. He tried to force the lampstand between the band of light and the bronze bedstead to which it clamped the lizardwoman. He planned to lever them apart—and when that failed, as he expected it would, try something else.
When the clawed iron foot touched the shackle, light spurted like a rainbow from a dolphin’s blowhole. The gyre vanished, and the stump of the iron leg glowed a red close to orange.
The Princess gave a high-pitched cry. Her leg lashed out violently, but Corylus wasn’t sure whether the movement was intended or a spasm.
He thrust the lampstand into the other leg shackle, this time creating a spray of white sparks as well as the rainbow mist. One of the floor tiles cracked at the touch of the blazing iron.
The Princess hissed like water pouring on a stove. Her lower legs were swollen, but her knees flexed and Corylus didn’t see permanent damage. A little longer, though …
“Close your eyes,” he ordered. “I don’t know where—no, wait.”
A piece of brocade covered the seat of Melino’s wicker chair. Corylus ripped it off and laid it on the lizardwoman’s face, covering her eyes. Only then did he poke the lampstand under the bedstead and raise it into the bond holding her right wrist. There was an even greater gush of sparks this time, but none of the iron flew or bounced upward.
Half-rising on the bedstead, the Princess grasped the brocade herself and held it between the remaining gyre and her face. “Quickly,” she whispered, “for I am—”
Corylus thrust, freeing her in a snarl of fire that devoured the remainder of the iron. He laid the paired shafts on the floor.
“I am very weak,” the Princess said. She would have fallen backward if Corylus hadn’t managed to get his arm behind her. “I am weak, and I might have died; but you saved me, warrior. You saved me.”
“Where do you want to go?” Corylus said. Burning iron had seared the air to an acid dryness that ate at his throat. “You can’t stay here.”
“Can you take me to my people?” she said. She sat up with her own strength, allowing Corylus to step back. “If they have come for me, they will be able to take me back to our home.”
“I think so,” said Corylus. He looked for garments and found a robe of Melino’s. It would do to get the Princess past the guards. After that it wouldn’t be hard to get her to Veturius’ compound. “Ah—but your fellows are in a cage.”
The Princess got carefully to her feet. Corylus was ready to catch her if she toppled, but she managed to stand upright by herself and slowly relax. “They are bound as I was?” she said.
“No, it’s an iron cage,” said Corylus. “With a padlock, a lock that has to be turned with a key through a hole in the side.”
The Princess burst into hissing laughter. “Oh, my!” she said. “Iron bars and a lock with a hole in it? I think they will be all right.”
She sobered and patted Corylus on the shoulder, though she winced as her arm straightened. “You are a warrior,” she said. “Those who have come for me will be warriors also … but did you notice if one of them was older than the other three?”
“Yes,” said Corylus. Nobody likes to be laughed at—and he didn’t see the joke in what he’d said—but the Princess obviously wished him well. “One certainly was older.”
“That will be Tassk,” she said, “as I might have known. Tassk will not find a lock difficult, my friend; and he can speak your language and many languages, though the younger warriors with him probably cannot.”
“Put this robe on and I’ll find you a hat,” said Corylus. “And I’ll take you to your friends.”
He didn’t know what he would do after he turned the Princess over to her fellows.
But it’s like a long march,
he thought.
One step at a time.
* * *
H
EDIA STAGGERED AS HER FOOT
plunged ankle deep in the loam. She braced herself against a tree trunk. Its green bark was smooth to the eye but felt like sharkskin to her palms.
Melino stepped out of the air beside her. He paid no attention to her. Instead, he clenched his left fist and said, “Open!”
The demon expanded from the ring; she was the same rosy hue as before. She seemed to be more solid than she had been on the other side of the mirror.
Hedia couldn’t see the mirror from this side, not even as a shimmer against the forest background. She, Melino, and the demon were in a glade of waist-high grass through which grew strange trees like the one that had kept Hedia from falling.
“Which direction, demon?” Melino said. The demon pointed slightly to the right of the direction the magician was facing.
Hedia looked upward, then stepped back from the tree trunk to get a better view. Even so she couldn’t see the branches except as wobbling silhouettes far above, still thrusting skyward. And there was something else.…
“The sooner we finish this, the better,” Melino said. He started in the direction the demon had pointed.
“Wait!” Hedia said. “What’s that? Just above the joint in the trunk?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the magician. “Come along.”
“I said
wait,
” Hedia repeated. A rounded brown lump the size of a bear bulged from the trunk. She might have thought it was plant gall of some kind had she not seen the six golden legs that clamped the body to the tree.
“It is an animal drinking the sap of the plant,” the demon said. She was looking at Hedia. “It is no danger to you unless it should fall, and its beak is sunk so deep into the stem that it probably cannot fall.”
“It doesn’t
matter,
” Melino repeated. “Please come on. Delay may … anything may happen!”
Hedia realized that the magician was nervous, frightened even. The air was dead still, but shadows quivered when branches wobbled high above.
“Go on, then,” she said harshly. She was nervous also, though thus far the island appeared strange but not frightening.
They set off through the forest. The demon led. She appeared to walk in normal fashion, but her legs passed through the high grass without making the blades move.
Hedia grimaced. She hadn’t been sure about what to expect from Melino’s invitation, but she’d been confident that it wouldn’t be a dinner party. She had worn the heavy sandals in the knowledge that they would be preferable to fashionable footgear in anything
except
fashionable venues, but that was only one of many questions.
For example, she’d dressed in a knee-length tunic so that if she had to run it wouldn’t tangle her legs as a longer garment might do. She hadn’t thought about grass-blades sharp enough to tear her calves, though.
Perhaps I should have worn breeches like a Gaul,
she thought. The image of herself as a northern rustic restored her mood and brought a smile to her lips.
They passed under a field of flowers a foot in diameter, dangling upside down from the canopy at the end of long vines. A few of the giant blooms were white, but most of them were pastels: blue, yellow, violet, and pink. There was even a green one, though the petals were hard to see against the forest background.
Hedia glanced at the branch from which the flowers hung. It seemed to span a pair of trees hundreds of feet apart, growing to both like a living bridge. On its underside was a pale green shape that she ignored as a leaf until it moved.
The triangular head turned toward her, and a pair of fanged forelegs lifted slightly. She was looking at a praying mantis. She saw them occasionally in the garden, but this one was over six feet long.
“Melino!” Hedia said. “Look up on the branch!”
The magician glanced upward. “We’d best get on,” he said, resuming his course.
The demon looked up as she walked. “It is following us,” she said without emotion.
The mantis kept pace above them to where the branch joined one of the trunks as they were passing by beneath. Hedia had forced herself not to look up, pretending that she needed to watch her footing, but she cocked her head now.
The mantis started down the trunk, walking head downward like a squirrel. Its four hind legs stepped one at a time, causing the long body to rock side to side as it proceeded. It moved deliberately, but it was clearly as fast as Hedia and her companions.
They walked on, passing a band of trees whose paired fronds stuck out at arm’s length to either side. The demon drifted through them while Melino brushed them aside.
Hedia followed the magician. She disliked the touch of the fronds on her forearms; she wondered if they would raise welts the way nettles did.
She was becoming increasingly irritated with Melino’s short answers and refusal to volunteer information. She started to ask him a question, then grinned and said instead, “Demon? How were you trapped in the ring where Melino holds you?”
They were walking through shorter foliage again, green clubs that unrolled upward as they grew. The tallest came to mid-thigh or perhaps a little higher.
Melino glanced over his shoulder and smiled. He didn’t speak.
“The ruby protects me,” the demon said. “It is not a trap; it is my refuge. The magician Zabulon drew me from the fires of the Underworld, then created this refuge in return for the help that I gave him.”
“But you’re helping—” Hedia’s tongue froze on the word “Melino.” Instead she continued, “You’re helping us against Zabulon, though he protected you?”
“Zabulon is dead,” said the demon. She didn’t turn to look at Hedia during the conversation.
“The demon does as my spells constrain her to do,” Melino said in a tone of satisfaction. “She has no soul and no feelings of gratitude.”
The demon now turned her head. “Zabulon is dead,” she repeated. Her eyes were unfathomable, but they were not empty. Hedia saw something in them, though she couldn’t identify the emotion.
To the left ahead, a series of heavily veined dark green leaves grew from the ground. Each was the size of a ten-man squad tent, stretched out to dry.
On the underside of the nearest was a caterpillar marked green, yellow, and white in thin rings. It was three feet long and as thick as Hedia’s thigh. It browsed the leaf in a short arc between two veins, backing in a ripple to devour another section when it had finished the one previous.
They passed the leaves. Hedia glanced over her shoulder to see if the mantis would pluck the caterpillar for its dinner. Instead the beast continued to stalk after them, coming slightly closer with each step of its four legs.
The demon reached a wall of vegetation shaped like so many six-foot sword blades. Each leaf had a green core and bright yellow edges. Instead of passing through, the demon stopped and turned around.
“Beyond is the cave,” she said. “I cannot help you get closer.”
Hedia pushed up to the yellow-green barrier, primarily so that she wasn’t the closest of them to the following mantis. It crossed her mind that Melino might have brought her to throw into the jaws of danger and allow him to get on with his own business.
Her smile was tiny and humorless. If he tried that, he would learn that Hedia kept a small dagger in her sash. Its silver mountings were chased with delicate scenes of cupids farming, but the double-edged blade was as sharp as glass. It had already let out one magician’s life.
The mantis was within twenty feet of them. It paused, its forelegs pumping minusculely in the air. It was about to act.
The ground beyond the wall of leaves was barren in a semicircle fifty feet in all directions from the cave in the outcrop beyond. The distant portion of the slanting rock was covered with plants ranging from patches of lichen to thick curtains of foliage from overhanging trees, but the portion near the cave was as bare as an iron pot.
If the mantis charges, I’m running for the cave no—
“Nodens take the creature!” Melino shouted. He thrust his left arm toward the mantis with his fist clenched.
The demon said, “Strike.” Her voice showed a total lack of emotion, just as every other time Hedia had heard her speak.
A red flash from the ring lighted the insect and turned the surrounding foliage momentary shades of purple. The mantis scrambled forward like a bull in the arena. Melino stepped to the side, pulling Hedia with him.
Spurning clods and tearing shreds from the vegetation, the mantis plunged blindly toward the cave. It was barely its own length into the clearing when a dog the size of a pony charged from the cave, barking with all three heads. They slammed into one another.
The dog’s jaws clamped onto the insect’s right foreleg, its thin neck, and the middle leg on its left side. Choked growls and the crunch of chitin replaced the chorus of barking.
A thin chain—too thin to hold the monstrous dog, Hedia would have guessed, but from its shimmer it was orichalc—tethered the middle neck to a stake at the mouth of the cave. The rush stretched it as straight as a ship’s mast.
The mantis slashed fiercely with its forelegs, but the toothed edges had no effect on the dog’s iron gray fur. The insect’s head came off and bounced across the dirt, the jaws still snapping.
All the limbs quickly separated from the mantis body, but the dog’s jaws continued to worry what was left. The heads pulled against one another, ripping chunks of flesh apart and hurling them considerable distances. The sound was chilling, even to ears that were familiar with the carnage of the amphitheater.
Smaller bits spattered Hedia; then a ten-pound gobbet, shiny with clear ichor, landed at her feet. She could see muscle fibers in the white flesh, but she had no idea which part of the victim it had been.
She felt unexpected kinship with the mantis, though until a moment before it had been only a dangerous threat.
If I’d run into the clearing, that would be me.