“Why’re we stoppin’, Surl?”
“I told you to shut up and follow orders!” Then, after a pause, “The Cairn’s just up there. I’m goin’ to check that the herd’s finished the meat. I’ll come back when I want you.”
Drolf’s huge hands gripped Abisina’s waist, and she was pressed against his chest in a strange mockery of a mother holding a baby.
As they waited, the blood rushed back into Abisina’s arms with a thousand pinpricks, and she realized that Surl, while cutting the vines that lashed her to Drolf, had also cut one of the bands that bound her arms. Overlapping vines still held her arms to her body, but there was enough slack to wiggle her aching arms and hands. As the feeling returned, she noticed that her right hand was coated in something sticky.
Blood?
Drolf took a few steps forward, peering into the trees for Surl, and the moon, just past full, washed over Abisina. She glanced at her hand and found not blood, but flecks of something white dotting her open palm.
Mushroom!
When she had pushed herself up after falling, she must have put her hand into the patch of them—and now, a few broken bits still clung to her.
There might be enough!
Death-like sleep, her mother had said. And if she didn’t wake up, well . . . Without hesitation, she bent her head and started licking her hand.
“Stop jigglin’, human!” Drolf grunted, tossing her against his arm. But Abisina didn’t stop: licking her palm and between her fingers, picking up pieces of dirt and leaves, and, she hoped desperately, some bits of mushroom.
Drolf tossed her again. “What’s wrong with you, human?” he cried, holding her before him.
“My—my nose,” Abisina stammered. “I was wiping the blood.”
“Let it bleed!” he said roughly, but then he took her weight in his right arm and wiped her nose with his left.
“What’re you doin’?” came Surl’s voice.
“Just—just givin’ the human a shake to stop her wigglin’!” Drolf demonstrated and Abisina’s teeth clattered together.
“Get over here!” yelled Surl. “They’re done with the meat. He wants to see her.”
As they trotted toward a hulking darkness split by a line of red light, Abisina willed something to happen inside her. But she felt only the emptiness of her belly, saw only the moon and stars clear against the velvet sky.
Surl stopped a few paces from the dark mass: a pile of huge rock slabs jumbled together in a mound many times taller than the wall around Vranille. Giant’s Cairn—it made sense now. A pile of rocks so big only a giant could have built it. The light glowed from a passageway into the center. Shouts and laughter rang out.
“Give me the human.” Surl pinned Abisina under her arm so tightly she could barely breathe. They entered the passage. Tall, sheer faces of rock towered above them, disappearing into the blackness. Abisina listened to every pore in her body, waiting for some sign of the poison working.
But there was nothing.
This is the end
, she thought.
It wasn’t enough mushroom.
The passage turned abruptly to the left, and the walls widened into a circular den, open at the top to show the distant sky. Around a blazing bonfire stood some thirty centaurs, most of them larger than either of Abisina’s captors, but with the same matted hair, their bodies streaked with mud, their tails knotted and burred. Many of them had scars on their faces and chests. Some had been in the herd that had passed Abisina while she hid in the tree. A few bled from fresh wounds and did nothing to staunch the blood. Despite the open roof, the room reeked of horseflesh, sweat, and manure.
On the opposite side of the fire stood the largest centaur Abisina had ever seen—two heads taller than any other, with a chest so wide the others looked scrawny by comparison. But instead of being muscular, his chest hung with fat—rolls falling over his horse hips, belly bulging. The hair on his body and head was dirty-white, his beard long and grimy, his eyes red-rimmed.
Icksyon.
In one motion, Surl swung Abisina up to show the gathering their prize. Though Abisina desperately wanted to close her eyes, they were locked on Icksyon’s mad ones.
“Ah, the human. You’re right, Surl. She’s
unusual
.” Icksyon’s voice caressed the word. “Bring her closer.” The centaurs moved back to let Surl pass.
As she changed hands, Abisina gave a fierce twist, but Icksyon’s grip closed around her waist even before Surl had let her go. He held her before him. Half crazed with fear, she beat and kicked at his chest, but her swats only made him raise his thick brow.
“You want something?” A slow smile pulled at his fleshy lips, and the room rumbled with laughter. “Maybe she wants to get down. What do you think, my friends?”
And he put her down. Abisina took a few running steps, but the legs and chest of another centaur barred her way. She spun around and ran in another direction only to be blocked by a pair of muddy legs. She knew it was useless but ran again, this time toward an opening between the flanks of a roan and a black, but they leapt together as she reached them, the rock walls echoing with laughter. She reeled back and rough hands seized her and lifted her into the air.
A centaur with a heavy black beard and blacker teeth leered down at her. “She’s a fighter, Lord Icksyon!” he shouted. “More fun than that last one! And much more fun than those babies they leave us outside their walls.”
“Send her back to me, Murklern. I want my prize.”
Murklern handed Abisina to the centaur next to him, who held her by the heels over the fire, her hair hanging just out of reach of the hungry flames. The laughter rose as she writhed away from the heat.
Not to be outdone, the next centaur held Abisina above his head, wagging his tongue at her, bringing new shouts of laughter.
The next pushed Abisina’s hair off her neck and bent his head as if to bite her.
But worse was the female right next to Icksyon who fondled Abisina’s bare feet before showing them to her master. “Look m’Lord. How’ll these add to your collection?”
Icksyon held something in his fist, which he shook like dice. “Let’s see, shall we?” he purred, and he opened his hand.
Several shriveled nuts lay in his palm. Abisina didn’t understand—until he held one of them up to her.
“Toes,” he whispered to her. “I can’t get enough. So
different
. And yours will add a new flavor to my collection—rich and brown.”
Suddenly, she saw toes everywhere—many of the centaurs wore necklaces of them, a few had them dangling from earlobes, Icksyon had a chain of them belted around his waist.
As Icksyon bent over her foot, teeth bared, Abisina went limp. She felt as if she were floating somewhere above the fire in the cool darkness. From this safe vantage, she looked down, heard the harsh laughter, saw but did not feel Icksyon biting her smallest toe.
It was the pain that pulled her back.
Not just her foot. Her entire body.
Icksyon lifted his head, her toe gripped in his bloody teeth, bringing cries of triumph from the watching centaurs. But Abisina gave no thought to them now. Something rippled under her skin like a fish swimming close to the surface. She groaned, and the fish rippled again. Pain seized her completely. On—no,
in
—her back, her belly, her calves, fingers pressed, prodded from the inside out, wading through muscle, burrowing into tissue, squeezing her heart into new rhythms. She tried to scream, but as she opened her mouth, the fingers scurried to pluck her vocal chords, probe her nose, clog her throat.
She struggled for air. Stuffed with earth, buried alive, her lungs filled slowly, and every breath pulled the earth deeper until it ran in her veins, damming her blood to a sluggish trickle. The heat followed. From the center of her chest, it spread to her shoulders and neck, down her arms to her fingertips. Her blood flowed again, carrying the heat to her hips, to her thighs, down her legs, and to her injured foot. Her body softened. Pleasant at first, the heat intensified. Her flaccid muscles continued to soften until they felt like liquid seeping away. As the heat increased, so did her fear. Her skin seemed to be melting from her face, her fingers dripping off her hands.
Fire danced on the screen of her closed eyelids. Her hair dissolved, her bones floated in pools. She would seep into the earth, leaving nothing but bone to mark her existence.
A figure stood in the flames, blurred by the shimmering heat, but growing clearer and larger.
The White Worm, his maw open in a triumphant laugh, the void of his gaze closing in on her, as his clawed arms reached for Abisina.
So this is death
, she thought, as the darkness enveloped her. But before the last pinprick of light died, hooves rushed toward her. The pinprick flared up and revealed, not the hideous Worm but a man, with skin like burnished copper and hair the color of a raven. He gestured to Abisina. “Come,” he said.
She had eaten enough mushroom.
“Human!” The hoarse whisper pulled Abisina out of the darkness. But she fought it. There was pain that way. And fear.
“Human!” It came again, nearer now, and Abisina heard a low groan.
Finally, right next to her: “Abisina.”
She opened her eyes.
Rock was inches from her face. Pain defined her body, acute at her ribs, her neck, her shoulders, and her thighs—searing on one of her feet. Her mouth was dry and swollen. She thought of her fingers, and a stab of pain answered. She thought of her feet. Another shock of pain with a strange emptiness at its center. She moved her head to see who had spoken her name, and a flood of agony threatened to knock her out again.
A familiar face hung next to hers. Dull light made it hard to see the features.
“Human, we have to go now. Can you move?”
It wanted something from her, this face, but what?
“Human, are you with me? Can you hear me? We have to go! Oh, the Earth! Can’t you hear me?”
Abisina closed her eyes. Let the face go away. She would stay here. Quiet. It was better than—somewhere else.
“Abisina!”
She opened her eyes again. But this time the face was gone. Light filled the space around her, painting the rocks with brilliance.
She tried to find the light’s source. And then she saw it—ribbons intertwining into one twisting strand—
my mother’s necklace.
Someone lifted her head, placed the thin chain over it. She could feel the weight against her chest.
Haret
. He was here, and now she heard the desperation in his voice. “We need to move somewhere safer!”
“Where are we?” she croaked through cracked lips.
“Giant’s Cairn. The centaurs are gone, but they’ll be back soon. We need to move. Now.”
The Cairn
.
Fear throttled her into action. She was wedged under a shelf of rock. Haret lay on his belly, his face next to hers. She lifted her shoulder to roll over and crawl toward him, but she hit the rock shelf above her hard. “No room,” she moaned.
A rustle, and Haret’s hands grasped her under the arms. She cried out as he began to pull her body over the rough rock.
“Can you help me at all, human?” he grunted near her ear.
Despite the sickening pain, Abisina bent her knees, managed to get her heels flat on the ground, and gave a push. The muscles in her legs cramped, her right foot throbbed in agony as her toes curled with the effort, but Haret murmured, “That’s it! Again, and I think I can pull you the rest of the way.”
Abisina couldn’t straighten her legs, but she pushed again, and Haret scrambled to his feet behind her. She still saw only rock above her, but now Haret’s pull had more power, and she found herself blinking up at a gray sky. Once her shoulders and chest cleared the rock, Haret pushed her to a sitting position, and she rested her head on the stone in front of her.
She was surrounded by rocks, some several times taller than she, others no bigger than her fist.
“Now, on your feet,” he said.
Abisina gritted her teeth and dragged her legs from under the rock. Grasping a small ledge higher up the stone face, she pulled herself to her feet, unsteady until Haret draped her arm over his shoulder. As she regained her balance, she glanced through a gap between two boulders and stifled a scream.
Below her, not fifty paces away, gaped the entrance to the Cairn.
“It’s right there! It’s right there!” she sobbed, gripping Haret’s shoulder.
“They’re gone now.” Haret tried to speak calmly. “But there’s only an hour of daylight left; they could come back at any moment.” He pulled her face around to his. “Human, pull yourself together. I’ll help you get down. There are trees—cover—not far from here, and I’ve found a small cave. You’ll be safe there.”
Abisina fought her rising terror. She gripped Haret’s shoulder harder; he felt solid beneath her hand. Looking down, she saw the pendant around her neck and her fear receded slightly. “I’m ready,” she said.
Haret set off, half-dragging Abisina as she hobbled over stones and between boulders. Her feet, bare except for a bandage around her right toes, got scraped and bruised. In a few paces, they came to a series of ledges leading down to the ground. Abisina had to jump from the last ledge, supported in part by Haret, daggers shooting up from her injured foot as she landed.