Phoenix Rising (37 page)

The darker shadow resolved slowly to a cart, parked slightly to one side. But as they got closer . . .

“He’s pulled in funny,” Poplock said.

Tobimar slowed, stopped, Xavier following suit. The Skysand Prince looked for a few moments, trying to figure out what bothered him. “You’re right. The way he’s diagonal down there, he’d have a demon’s own time trying to get back out.” The three were quiet a moment, studying the cart ahead.

“I’m not hearing
anything
up there,” Poplock said. “No voices, no movement. No animals or insects, either.”

Tobimar drew his swords, heard Xavier’s two leaf-green blades whisper from their scabbards, and even saw Poplock checking his own little Steelthorn.

The Toad looked over at him. “Could be an accident. Might need help.”

“But it’s a classic highwayman gambit, too.”

“I’ll go check it out,” Xavier said. He closed his eyes and a moment later . . . just
faded
.

Tobimar couldn’t sense anything from where he
knew
Xavier still had to be. He and Poplock studied the ground carefully, but nothing moved, even the dust on the road.
It’s like he doesn’t
exist
when he does that.

Something’s wrong
. Tobimar trusted that sense, when he was able to feel it at all. This was not just an accident. He felt Poplock shift, turning so he faced backwards; if something tried to ambush them, he’d be able to give Tobimar warning.

A few minutes later Xavier rematerialized. His dark-tinted skin had a pale hue. “It’s . . . bad.”

The two followed Xavier up. A faintly metallic, nauseating smell with a somehow sweetish undertone touched their nostrils.

“Ugh,” said Poplock.

The cart had run off the side of the road and down a slight embankment; one wheel was broken on the lefthand side and the axle was bent, showing the effect of a high-speed collision with the granite outcropping on that side.

But it wasn’t collision that had beheaded the Sithigorn harness birds, or ripped the entrails out of the two women and one man lying broken on the ground.

“We
could
just move on,” Xavier suggested slowly, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“Perhaps
you
could.” Tobimar heard the iron-cold tone in his voice, the sound of his mother’s upbringing, of a Skysand of Skysand. “You have your own journey to complete and your own honor. But a Guild Adventurer?”

“Nope,” Poplock said. “We can’t pass this by. Part of what we’re Guilded
for
.”

“Good,” Xavier said, and managed a smile. “I didn’t want to leave it, either. Anyway, whatever did this might be farther down the road. Who knows what it was or where it went?”

“That,” Poplock said, “is something we’re going to find out. How good are you at tracking?”

“
Me?
” Xavier asked. “My master taught me a lot of cool tricks, but it was all in this underground dojo; I don’t know anything about tracking.”

“I know some,” Tobimar said. Khoros had required he be able to read some tracks, make his way through a mystery by the traces left behind. “Let’s see what we can do.”

Poplock dropped to the ground. Seeming unfazed by the stomach-turning odor, he moved to the bodies. “Cut through with a single sharp-bladed strike. Mostly vertical—cut from top to bottom.”

Tobimar nodded, studying the riding birds’ corpses.
Clean cut, too
. “More horizontal on the Sithigorns. But still it’s got a top to bottom slant.”

“Could be scythefeet, I guess.” The semi-reptilian, feathered creatures could deliver devastating, leaping blows with the large foot-claws.

“Hm . . . I’d say more doomlock spiders. Scythefeet have about eight-inch claws.”

“You’re right,” Poplock conceded, examining the bodies more closely. “This woman you could do that to with eight-inch blades, but those animals, you’d need at least a foot and a half.” He scuttled around the area, peering. “More than one something . . . two . . . no, I’m guessing at least four, maybe five. Ground’s awfully hard, mostly rock here with a little soil scattered here and there.”

Tobimar ran up the hill and back the direction they came, looking along the side of the road, trying to read the traces in the dust and mud on the road surface. “There’s marks along the side here. I think whatever it was tried an ambush from this side, drove them down this way so they’d run off the road.”

“Makes sense. What marks I see show the somethings came up around the crashed wagon on both sides. Guess they panicked the Sithigorns, then came up and killed everyone when the crash happened. Don’t see any sign of struggle, really, they didn’t get to fight. Then . . .” He bounced over, looked up. “Marks on the wagon. Went inside, came back out, left. Whatever it was probably wasn’t just predators.”

Xavier went in and confirmed. “Boxes and stuff were torn open here, but not like the bodies. Like you were looking for things you wanted.”

Tobimar followed the traces he could see . . . but the tracks seemed all muddled, and he had to at least momentarily admit defeat. “Poplock, can you get a direction for our culprits? I’m not clear, myself.”

The little Toad circled the camp three times, checking the faint scratchmarks, scuffs, indentations. “It’s really hard. Marks all over. They could have gone back to the road. I’ll have to widen the search.” Poplock bounced out farther and ran a long curve around the site.

A few minutes later he found something. “Thicker soil out in this area, and I’ve got marks heading out this way. Several of them. Not doomlocks, though.”

Tobimar nodded. “Already figured that; doomlocks are nasty, but not very bright, and don’t care about looting anything.”

“Bipedal, I think . . . hopping, too.” The three moved into the woods, the ground now rising into the higher reaches. “Hopping
long
distances. Some of my cousins could jump that far, but these aren’t Toad marks.”

Tobimar suddenly shivered.

“What is it?”

He felt his eyes shifting rapidly, searching shadows for movement that wasn’t there. An oppressive, heavy feeling settled over him. “I’m . . . not sure,” he said finally, hearing his own voice tense and nervous. “But I feel something . . . dark. Evil. We’re not dealing with anything ordinary.”

“Don’t sense anything myself . . . but you’ve got good instincts, I’ll bet.” They moved farther along. “Okay, now I’m wondering if my eyes are going. Was my count wrong? Just three here, now that I’ve got clearer marks. They’re hopping in a pretty organized group . . .”

“Hold on,” Xavier said, pointing.

The marks were on a tree trunk about nine feet up.
Oh, smart. Very smart.
Tobimar said, “Some of them are in the trees.”

Xavier frowned. “I dunno about you guys, but I’m not thinking of too many things that do most of their locomotion by hopping, and most of those would look stupid trying to climb up trees.”

Tobimar paused and looked down at Poplock. “He has a point. Your people hop, but they’re four-legged. These . . . things seem two-legged, and there aren’t very many . . . Hm. Iriistiik?”

Poplock studied the tracks again. “Could be.” The Toad sniffed at the tracks.
“Smells . . . funny. Like . . . like thunderstorms and heat, if that makes any sense.”

Tobimar felt a cold shock in his gut, remembering the most ancient tales, of storms from the quiet desert when no storms had been seen. “It . . . might.” He glanced over at Xavier, then at Poplock. “I think we should turn back.”

Xavier hadn’t missed the conversation. “What is—”

Dust and sand erupted from the ground, howled from the trees, blinding and stinging and sapping strength with blasting, oven-strong heat whose bone-dry savagery was doubly shocking in what had a moment before been a wet, warm rainforest. Tobimar lost track of his little Toad friend in the maelstrom, even as figures began to materialize from the haze. Xavier and he were coughing almost in unison, blinking eyes clear, trying to be on guard, but words in a rough, hissing language echoed out and the sand itself coalesced from the air onto both of them, weighing them down.
No! I can’t be caught like this . . . have to move . . .
But there were hundreds of pounds of sand clinging to them, and they collapsed under its weight, pinned to the ground.

The air cleared slowly, and the tallest figure gestured; the others moved forward, weapons at the ready, and he could see that he had been right.
Demons! The curse of the Skysand has followed me!
There were
mazakh
, too, the snake-demon hybrids being smart and deadly servants for many things of evil.
And other things, stick-figure skeletons on springing legs. They’re the ones surrounded by this sand-stuff.

The commanding figure was now close enough to see; it hovered in the air, its body trailing away in swirling dust that left nothing but dust behind it, shrubs and underbrush withered and crumbling in its wake. From that indistinct base rose the torso of a woman, armored in polished bone, with decorations of gems and mother-of-pearl inlaid across its surface. The face was that of a woman too, but something subtly
wrong
with the features, a little too long, too sharp and narrow, beautiful yet alien, and the eyes were blank, dark holes with red sparks dancing within. A mace dangled from her waist, just above the point where fading into dust began, but she had no weapon in hand.

“Lady Misuuma,” one of the
mazakh
said, “there are two youths.”

“I can see that,” the one named Misuuma answered, with just a hint of impatience that made the assemblage twitch backwards.

“Then which must we take?”

“The one with
his
eyes, of course.”

One of the demonic, skeletal things raised a hand, and the sand blew away from the heads of the youths before them. Lady Misuuma drifted forward, studying both of them; Tobimar tried not to show any reaction.

With the speed of the whipping wind, her hand grasped Tobimar’s chin with painful strength, forced his head up. Her dark-well eyes with crimson sparks bored into his, and she gave an alien, chilling smile.

“Ahh. We have found you at last. You have forced us to wait long, child. Not in Zarathanton is it wise to attempt an attack; nor, indeed, on a vessel of the Ancient Ones. But finally you have left the safety and journeyed here, and the trap has served its purpose.”

“
You
are the demons who follow my family.” It was not a question.

“As the Queen directs, so it is. And today another Seeker dies, as they always have.” She drew back her hand, and the fingers lengthened to claws.

I have to move!

But in the moment he gathered all his strength to try to break free, something else distracted the demons and their servants.

Next to Tobimar, the other figure bound in sand vanished . . . and the sand collapsed.

35

Ooo
, thought Poplock gleefully.
That’s my signal!

He had no idea how Xavier did what he did, but his
timing
was superb, and the little Toad knew exactly how to exploit timing. From the vantage point in a tree that he’d reached while everyone else was focused on the two eerily similar young men, he took careful aim and put a silver-coated needle right through the nearest
mazakh
’s eye.

The tiny, carefully inscribed runes etched on that needle exploded into ice and fire and the reptilian creature shrieked, clawing at its face. The others spun around, seeking the source of the attack, one returning fire with a quick incantation and a gesture.

Even before the gesture was completed, Poplock hurled himself from the tree.
Down down down got to get
DOWN!

Fire detonated against the tree, centered almost where he had been sitting, and the concussion knocked him another several feet. The impact wasn’t too bad—when you were as small as he was, falling actually wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it was to the big people. Much worse was the fact that three of the skeletal hopping things seemed to have caught sight of his desperate leap. They bounded towards him, sand howling outwards, blotting out sight, stinging his skin.

Nictitating membranes wiping furiously, Poplock dove between two rocks, but the wind howled louder and blasted him straight through and out the other side. There was another shout from behind and he thought it was Tobimar’s voice, but he couldn’t tell if it was the sort of shout that means you’re free, or about to die.
Gotta worry about
me
first, can’t help anyone if I’m skewered.

Two clawed, bone-white legs slammed down into the earth scant inches away.
This stuff doesn’t impede
their
vision!

He still had an advantage of size, and the thing being so close gave him an inspiration. With a bound of his own he was on the thing, scurrying up through its ribcage. The other demons hesitated, obviously not willing to chop their companion down; the one he was inside grabbed and snatched, trying to get him as he clambered swiftly upward.
Whups! Missed me! Ha, now I’m on your
spine!
Hard to scratch back here isn’t it? Hey, now, getting out a weapon is cheating. Back on the other side,
yipe
, look out, that was close, got to get farther up,
up
I said, stop running a sword through your own ribcage, it looks silly and you’re not hitting anything.

But now he was at the top, and skeletal hands hovered to pluck him off as soon as he was clear of the cage of bone. But he had no intention of actually emerging
yet.
Steelthorn was in his one hand now.
Okay, Khoros, let’s see if that blessing you put on was good enough!

He swung the slender blade, directly between the vertebrae, as he leapt up the last few inches. There was a flash of white light as Steelthorn struck, and the spinal column was not merely severed, but
cleaved
, as though Steelthorn had been a bastard blade wielded by a full-grown human warrior. The sand-bone demon collapsed in a heap, the animating spirit gone; Poplock bounced from the pile, heading for cover.

His victory enraged the other two demons, who
howled
, sending a blisteringly hot, achingly dry storm of sand after him. Instantly he felt slower, more sluggish, and in horror he saw the plants nearby collapsing, withering, going through hours of dehydration in seconds.
My will’s holding off some . . . but I’m a
Toad
, I can’t handle this for long!