Bloodfire Quest (29 page)

Stoon was not happy. The Federation warship had come out on top in the encounter with the Elven vessel, but as a consequence of the damage inflicted, the latter had gone into a steep dive and disappeared into the depths of Drey Wood, lost beneath a tangle of tree limbs and clouds of mist that obscured the entire forest. To make matters worse, the Federation ship had lost her steering capabilities and so much sail that it had barely managed to land for repairs. Spars, radian draws, and parse tubes alike were smashed and severed and exploded in such numbers that it would take hours, if not days, to put things right.

Realizing that by then they would lose track of the survivors of the crash—if there were any—he made up his mind to go after them on foot. Unfortunately, that meant he would have to release the mutants in the hold, because he certainly wasn’t about to go mucking around in the forest alone. He lacked the necessary skills for that sort of work, and he imagined the Elf who served as Aphenglow’s protector was much better trained in it than he was. Plus, he was not about to wager that any of them were dead, the crash notwithstanding, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way that they were alive and well and enraged enough at what had been done to them to want to make an example of him.

So he would have to use the creatures Edinja had provided. As much as he hated the monsters, he might as well make use of them in the way in which Edinja had intended. He would make up a story later about what had happened—how he had tried to capture the girl and her companions alive but been unable to do so; how the mutants had overreacted to the threat; how he had been lucky to escape with his life. Edinja would have her doubts, but there would be nothing she could do about it at that point.

“Captain,” he announced, once repairs were under way, “I am taking those things in the hold out for a walk. We’ll hunt for the Elves on foot. Stay with the ship. Wait for me. I’ll find you when it’s over.”

He could see the relief in the other’s face and smiled to himself as he started down the ladder into the hold. No pretense of courage in that one. No danger that he would step outside the lines. The captain would be here when he returned.

Belowdecks, submerged in gloom and the dank smells of old wood and stale air, the assassin moved over to the cage. The animals inside were already stirring, hulking forms just visible as they rose from their crouching positions to face him. Their features were blunted and empty of expression, but their eyes watched him carefully. Huge, muscular creatures, any one of them could snap him in two with barely an effort. A part of him was terrified of them, even given his unmatched proficiency at killing. But Edinja had assured him they would do whatever he asked, and she wouldn’t have sent him all this way just to have him killed. So he pushed back his fear, closed off his doubts, and kept his face as blank and fixed as theirs.

He came up to them and stopped. “I’m letting you out. You are to hunt for three Elves—a man and two women. They are out in the surrounding forest somewhere. I will point you in what I think is the right direction. Then you will search. When you find them, I want you to kill them. No hesitation, no stopping to think about it, no mistakes. Kill them. Do you understand me?”

They grunted, one after the other, an indication that they did. Good enough.

He unlocked the cage door, opened it, and stepped back. They lumbered through the opening, stretching their huge arms and hunching their shoulders. They looked about warily, and then faced him, waiting.

“Come outside,” he ordered them, satisfied.

They climbed the ladder and emerged onto the warship deck. Gloom and mist surrounded them, and they could barely see beyond the ship’s railings to the closest of the trees. The captain and crew had moved well away to the stern. Several of the men held blades at the ready. Two of the crew were even manning one of the fire launchers. Stoon shook his head in disgust. What fools. They would be dead before they could bring any of those to bear, should the creatures with him wish it.

He gave the captain a farewell wave and walked to the rope ladder that had been thrown over the side, with the beasts trailing after him. Down the ladder they went, and when they were on the ground, Stoon chose his direction as best he could recall it from when he had seen the Elven airship spiral downward. By then, the Federation ship had herself been sideslipping, so he couldn’t be sure. He hoped his hunters were equipped with good instincts and sharp senses; he hoped they were the hunters Edinja had promised.

But there was only one way to find out.

“Hunt them,” he ordered, pointing west into the mist and trees.

The creatures stood where they were for a moment, sniffing the air, casting about like dogs before a hunt. They did not look at one another. They did not look at him.

Then one caught a scent that intrigued it and began to move away, the others following.

Stoon, fingering the blades strapped to his waist and legs and body to reassure himself he was ready for whatever would happen next, went after them.

With Cymrian gone, Aphenglow went back to work on her sister’s wounds. She used a fresh infusion of magic to try to wake Arling, but the other’s body resisted such intrusion and refused to respond to the effort—a clear indication that whatever was still wrong was serious. She backed away from her efforts, once again doing a slow, careful examination of her sister’s back and sides where all the damage from the metal shards appeared to be the worst. But everywhere she looked she found the same thing—all of the splinters had been extracted, and blood from the wounds was barely seeping into the bandages.

Aphen sat back. It must have been the impact of her fall. She must have suffered broken ribs or worse. But without obvious bruising or evidence of broken bones, she needed sharper eyes than her own to see inside her sister’s body.

Different eyes.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. Time was slipping away. For Arling. For Cymrian. For all of them.

Then she made the call for help, a deep-throated cry that reverberated through the forest silence. She made it three times and sat back to wait, eyes on the misty dark.

The owl, when it came, was small and nondescript, its colors unremarkable, its presence nonthreatening as it landed on her shoulder and perched there, perfectly still. A bore owl, not well known outside the Westland, and even there seldom seen. She did not look at it, did not acknowledge its presence. Instead she called up the magic she needed to bond with it, to make it her familiar, and when she was done the owl’s eyes were her own, her vision so sharply enhanced that she could see as it did.

Like the owl’s, her eyes stayed open and steady as she began a new search for her sister’s injuries. But now she was seeing so much better than before. Every scratch, every pore, every tiny hair was visible—the ridges on the surface of Arling’s skin, the tiny scars, the shadow of her bones, the minuscule places where wounds had split the skin but had already closed over. And inside her sister’s body the pulsing of veins and capillaries, the slow rise and fall of her lungs, the soft beating of her heart—Aphenglow could see it all.

She searched with owl eyes and Elf fingers, an excruciatingly slow process given the urgency she felt. Where was the damage? Where was the thing that was stealing away her sister’s life?

She found it when she was working her way up her sister’s left side. There, beneath her arm, barely visible even to Aphen’s owl eyes, was a pinprick from which nothing protruded and no blood flowed. Dirt and sweat had obscured it so thoroughly that it was virtually indistinguishable from the skin surrounding it. But when Aphen pulled back the skin from either side of the wound, she saw the sharp glint of metal. She held her finger to its tip without moving it in any direction and sent her magic down its long, slender length to discover that it was nestled against her sister’s ribs and breastbone and buried inside her heart.

She had missed finding it before, thinking it only a part of Arling’s bones. She had rushed herself; she had worked too fast. And it had nearly cost Arling her life.

Aphen sat back, terrified. Six inches of jagged metal, driven into her sister’s heart. She had to extract it at once, but she could do nothing that would cause it to go deeper or cut further. It had penetrated far enough and done such damage already that it was close to ending Arling’s life. It would take only a single mistake to finish the job it had started.

From somewhere not all that far away, she heard the sounds of a struggle and then a howl of anguish.

Faster! She had to work faster!

But that was exactly the wrong thing to do, of course. That was the mistake she had made before. She had to do exactly the opposite. She had to take her time.

Her owl eyes fixed and steady, her fingers splayed to either side of the wound so as to pull back the skin, Aphenglow Elessedil reached downward into the wound with her magic, wrapped its strands around the length of the metal shard, softened the edges and the razor-sharp spurs, and began to pull it out. She had only heard of the procedure; she had never done it herself and never seen it done. The Ard Rhys, it was rumored, had twice performed this form of extraction—but only once successfully. It was immensely difficult. Her invisible grip on the sliver of metal slipped repeatedly. More times than she cared to remember later, it twisted free entirely.

Her face felt hot and damp, and the effort of keeping her eyes open and fixed caused her to experience an ache that threatened to flatten her. But she held firm, stayed steady, and continued her task.

She heard Arling groan. She felt her start to move.
No!
She stopped what she was doing, waited without breathing, without doing anything but willing her sister to sleep.

After a few mind-numbing seconds, Arling did. Aphen went back to work at once. She was close, so close.

In the distance, another howl. This one was much worse, chilling and raw.

Then the sliver came free, and as it did so she heard Arling give a long, soft sigh. She let the metal shard drop and used her magic to close the wound so that healing could begin. She bent to her sister, feeling for her pulse, listening for her breath.

Both were smooth and even again. She was resting quietly, asleep but no longer threatened.

Aphen removed her tattered cloak and laid it across her sister’s body. Then she was on her feet, racing into the trees.

Stoon loped through the forest, working hard to keep pace with the animals ahead of him. The mutants were moving swiftly now, the scent they were following clearly growing stronger as their prey grew nearer. For such large creatures, they were surprisingly agile and silent, bounding ahead like great cats at the hunt. Even as disgusted as he was by what they were, and as contemptuous as he felt of their reduced state, Stoon could admire their athletic skills and feral instincts.

Maybe they would be as good as Edinja had promised. Maybe they would put an end to the Elves and to this foolish and pointless pursuit.

The mist was thickening, swirling close to the ground, wrapping about the tree trunks and filtering through the gloom in tendrils. The way was sufficiently obscured that Stoon had to work hard to keep up. If he fell here, he would lose the mutants completely by the time he regained his footing. So while haste was important, caution was equally so.

Fortunately, the beasts ahead seemed to sense this and reduced their speed just enough to allow him to keep up. The thought of it irritated him—that such creatures would condescend to him—but he managed to soothe his discomfort by assuring himself that the end result would make up for it. A few minutes more and it would all be over, and he would—

A cry of rage and dismay reverberated through the silence of the mists and brought him up short, his nerve endings instantly jagged and raw. What had happened? Had his creatures brought the Elves to bay? He dropped into a crouch, searching the surrounding haze. One thing he knew: Someone or something was dead. He waited for a further indication of the source, but no other sounds reached him. He had lost sight of all three creatures, and he couldn’t hear them now, either. The gloom muffled and enfolded everything more than a few feet away, a swirling soup creating phantasms and wraiths that appeared and vanished in the blink of an eye. Stoon wasn’t used to such conditions, and didn’t like to hunt when the weather was a factor.

He rose and started ahead once more. He wouldn’t find out anything by staying put. He kept his pace deliberately slow. Since he could no longer see the mutants, there was no point in stumbling ahead blindly and finding himself unexpectedly in the middle of a dangerous situation. After only a few yards, he found evidence of his creatures’ passing—crushed grasses and heavy footprints in the damp earth. The mutants had thrown aside caution and were charging ahead wildly. Something had happened to change the nature of their hunt, and Stoon didn’t like what that meant.

He kept listening, waiting for a sound that would give him a direction in which to go. But everything remained silent, expectant.

He found the first mutant a hundred yards farther on, its body sprawled amid a cluster of hardwoods, decapitated. Its head lay twenty feet from its body, cleanly severed at the neck. From the placement of head and body and the look of the wound, the mutant had never even seen its attacker, and the force of the blow that had killed it must have been very great indeed. A quick survey of the area gave Stoon no clue as to who or what might have done this, or why the mutant had failed to realize the danger until it was too late.

Stoon hesitated once more. If he were up against a hunter this proficient, he might want to wait until he saw how the other two mutants fared. But then he risked losing contact with the hunt.

So he set off anew, following a trail of matted grasses and vague footprints, doing his best to stay alert for any indication of the danger he was up against. He moved more cautiously than before, stopping often to listen, calling on his vast experience to avoid detection, staying hidden within the mist. He had his favorite knife out—a long slender blade forged of carbon-infused steel rendered hard enough by fire and hammer to penetrate armor. It was the killing weapon he used most frequently, the blade he knew he could depend upon to stop anything.

Whatever he was up against, he assured himself, it wouldn’t be the equal of this blade and his skill at using it.

Even so, he remained uneasy. He still didn’t know what was out there, and he wasn’t used to that. As an assassin, he always made it a point to know his victims before he hunted them, to familiarize himself with their personal habits and to learn what to expect from them. None of that was possible here, and even the terrain in which he found himself was unfamiliar. Everything was working against him. He was seldom required to defend himself, but he thought it entirely probable that he would have to do so here.

Cymrian was crouched in the deep shadows of fog and trees when the mutants shouldered into view, big and menacing and dangerous beyond anything the Elven Hunter had ever encountered. He didn’t know what they were, but he knew at once he was no match for them in a straight-up fight. These were not creatures he could subdue or trick as he might other foes. They would have to be killed and killed quickly. His only hope was to isolate and eliminate them one by one.

He waited as they passed him, moving ahead into the trees, each separated from the others by perhaps ten or twelve feet as they hunted. They had his scent, but they didn’t yet know where he was; he could tell by the way they were hunting. When they were out of sight again, he left his hiding place and went after them. He followed at a safe distance, letting them stay well ahead. They were aggressive predators, but they did not have the look of forest creatures, and this was his country, not theirs.

When one of them fell slightly behind the others, he moved up on it swiftly. He had his short sword out, and he was on top of it before it knew he was there. With both hands locked around the handle, he swung the blade in a quick, hard arc. The creature’s head flew off and the rest of it collapsed in a heap. Cymrian was already moving, darting back into the gloom. But one of the others caught a glimpse of him and howled with rage.

The Elven Hunter fled, leaping and bounding through the scrub and deadwood, and still only barely managed to escape. His hunters were much quicker than they looked, and soon enough he could hear the sound of their ragged breathing. But he darted between the trunks of trees that were grown so close together that his much larger pursuers had to go around to get through. By then Cymrian was lost again in the concealment of the gloom.

He did not slow. The mutants were hunting him, and would track him until they caught him.

He angled away from where he had left Aphen and Arling, working his way through the trees while seeking a place to set an ambush. He had to find something quickly, because he suspected his hunters were much stronger and their endurance greater. He did not think for a moment that anything would turn them aside or draw their attention away from him. They would keep coming until he was dead.

He wondered about the origin of the things. He didn’t give a second thought to the possibility that they were creatures native to the region; the Elves would have encountered something this big and dangerous before now. Most likely they had come from the Federation warship, which suggested strongly they must have been brought along for the express purpose of hunting Aphen and Arling and had only focused on him when he attacked them. But who would want to do this? Who would be desperate enough to go to this much trouble to hunt down a pair of young women? Probably the same people who were behind the earlier attacks in Arborlon. Were they seeking to steal the blue Elfstones, or was there something more involved?

Without slowing, he vaulted into a tree whose branches were sufficiently low hanging that he could swing himself quickly into the cover of the foliage. He climbed from there—a rapid ascent that took him well into the forest canopy—and then he leapt to a second tree and from there to a third, their branches all closely linked. When he reached the third tree, he settled back to wait.

The mutants charged past moments later, still following his scent. But in their efforts to overtake him quickly, they were past his hiding place before they realized they had lost him. By then, he was back on the ground and coming on them from behind, a pair of long knives drawn. He heard them thrashing about just ahead, then suddenly they went silent.

Instantly he froze in place. There was no sound from ahead—or from any other direction.

They were waiting on him, he thought. They had realized what he was about and set an ambush. He hesitated, undecided. Going forward risked becoming trapped between them. Waiting risked losing any advantage he had gained.

He was still debating when he heard fresh sounds at his back—a slow creeping approach by someone coming up from behind.

No longer certain what was happening, he eased backward into the heavy brush, squirmed into a shallow depression amid the grasses, and settled down to wait.

Stoon was almost into the clearing before he sensed the other’s presence. It wasn’t smell or sound or movement that alerted him; it was instinct. He could
feel
the other—a kind of tingling of his nerve ends, warning him that someone was lying in wait. He stopped where he was and dropped into a crouch, making himself as small as he could manage and going completely still, wondering if it was too late, if he had been seen, if he was already a dead man. In this cat-and-mouse game, had he become the mouse?

But moments passed and nothing happened. So he began the process of discovering where his adversary was hiding. There was no question as to who it was. It was one of those his creatures were hunting—probably the women’s protector, the one with all the hunting and tracking skills, who was hiding just ahead of him. He tried to imagine what sort of cover the other would choose, how he would go about concealing himself, and what he was attempting to accomplish. He wondered, as well, where the remaining two mutants had gone. Surely they weren’t dead. If they were, he should turn around and get out of there as swiftly and silently as he could manage.

He put his senses to work, trying to gain some scrap of information, some clue as to what was happening.

Nothing.

He stayed where he was. Moving ahead now was suicide. If his adversary didn’t already know he was there—something he highly doubted—he would certainly know the moment Stoon moved even a few paces toward the break in the trees. This hunt had become a waiting game, and no one was better at waiting than Stoon. The advantage would go his way so long as he kept still and didn’t panic. If the Elf tried to move at this juncture, Stoon would hear him and know where he was. And that would be the end of this standoff.

But everything remained quiet. Suddenly there was a change in the light just off to his left—a slight drift of darkness in the dim haze light that appeared and faded in less than a second. It might have been the mist, but Stoon didn’t think so. He tightened his grip on his knife, which he held down by his side, ready for use. He shifted his eyes ever so slightly toward the change, holding the rest of his body perfectly still as he did so. There it was again, that small darkening. Its source came from somewhere back in the trees—a slight shading that, once again, might have been nothing more than the movement of the mist.

Stoon tensed for the expected attack, knife ready to slash upward and then cut down, eviscerating whatever came at him. He would have to be quick. He would have to be …

A second movement caught his eye, this one coming from the other side. It wasn’t a change in the light this time, but a movement of the brush that was windless and otherwise still. Something
else
was back there, and he was caught between them.

He stayed frozen in place a moment longer, trying to judge whether it was best to ease farther backward or bolt forward toward freedom and fresh cover. He chose the latter, pressing himself even closer to the ground as he scooted slowly, silently back into the trees, eyes shifting left and right, trying to see everywhere at once.

But again, nothing revealed itself, and no sounds broke the stillness. He felt the heat of his anger rising in response to his frustration. He was going to put an end to this nonsense. He was finished with all of them—mutants and Elves alike—and they would all be dead and buried before he was done with this business and on his way back to Arishaig and his old life.

He was almost to the thickest of the shadows that clustered behind him when a sudden hush, a stilling of the air, made him pause.

Something was about to happen.

Cymrian was flattened against the earth, ready to spring up and attack, when everything abruptly went quiet. His hunters had sensed his presence. He waited several minutes to make certain they had quit advancing, and when there were still no further noises or hints of movement, he decided not to wait any longer. Staying low to the ground, he began to inch his way backward into the trees, having already chosen a position that would be difficult for a pursuer to reach without becoming exposed. He assumed this would not be something his hunters would want to risk, so he kept retreating until he was completely layered in shadow, the mist so thick that it hung directly over him in an impenetrable blanket. He could see nothing of what was out there, but was content to rely on his other senses as he waited to see what would happen.