'No,' he grumbled. 'According to the rest of you, it seems I never have a better suggestion.'
Careful to stay within earshot of one another, they began to move, forming a line behind Mamakitty. Everyone periodically announced their presence to ensure that no one wandered off. In this manner they made progress, pausing only to eat, drink, and rest. But it was progress that, without any real means of orienting themselves, remained dubious at best.
'Light!' Cocoa's exclamation caught everyone off guard. 'I see light!'
Oskar kept moving until he bumped up against her. Whether out of excitement or indifference, she did not object to the contact. 'Where? I don't see anything.'
'You wouldn't, lover of carrion.' Judging from the sound of his voice, Cezer was standing slightly to the right and in front of him. 'It's directly ahead of us, right in our path.'
Taj strained to see. 'Is it the eyelid finally blinking back?'
'Use your bird brain,' Samm admonished his friend. 'The light is appearing in front of us. Unless we have become badly turned around, that means it's coming from the east. Since it emerged from the south and blinked its way northward, if the eyelid was retracting, then any first light we detect should appear to our north.'
'It's blue,' Mamakitty announced encouragingly. 'Naturally it would be blue.'
'That's strange.' Cezer had to squint, even cat-sharp vision needing a moment to readjust from the total darkness. 'There seem to be multiple sources.'
The pale blue phosphorescence advancing to meet them was not a consequence of any gargantuan blink. Instead, it revealed itself on a much more modest scale. It wiggled and writhed and was streaked with dark patches that did not glow. Though faint by comparison with daylight, or even the reflection of the moon, in the otherwise complete blackness it produced enough illumination to reveal the absence of eyes and the presence of teeth: short, ugly, serrated triangular teeth that lined the rim of a circular mouth equipped for gripping and sucking.
'Not negwens,' Oskar whispered unnecessarily, 'or vrorvels, or like anything else we've seen.'
The nearest of the blue worm-shapes suddenly lunged in his direction. He had barely enough time to draw his sword and swing wildly, striking the serpentine blueness just behind a gaping fist-size maw of a mouth. Phosphorescent blue liquid fountained from the gash. Some of it landed on Oskar's thighs and feet. It dripped down his legs, flickering as if blue fireflies had been glued to his clothing. Gradually it faded away to become one again with the darkness.
Wounded, the surprised worm had drawn back. As it did so, another and then another, each equally lambent, equally grotesque, emerged from the granular surface underlying the warm optic fluid, corkscrewing their way upward from below.
'It's another kind of parasite that lives in the Eye. But this one lives in the body of it, in the flesh. Or in whatever it is we're walking on that passes for flesh. Our presence must be drawing them out. They must emerge only in darkness, when the Eye is shut.' Having observed the attack on his companion, a tense Cezer had drawn his own weapon. 'By the look of those fangs, I'll bet it usually preys upon other parasites.'
'We're not parasites.' Watching the approach of the ghostly phosphorescent blue shapes, Oskar held his sword at the ready. The blade pulsed with fading blue light from the blood of whatever it was he had cut. 'Maybe they'll see that we're not their usual prey and leave us alone.'
'Oh, let's bet our lives on that assumption, shall we?' An apprehensive Taj held one of his knives loosely out in front of him. 'You march up to the nearest one, Oskar, and identify yourself. The rest of us will wait here so we can properly gauge its confused response.'
One of the huge worms raised its forward half out of the optic fluid and began swaying from side to side, examining them with sensory organs that were not eyes. When it dropped back down into the supportive liquid, a second worm promptly repeated the scrutiny. Mamakitty counted half a dozen of them, each bigger and thicker through the middle than Samm had been in his original body. Much bigger.
'We've killed negwen and other parasites.' Silhouetted against the wriggling inimical bluishness, she held her sword out in front of her. 'We can kill these as well.'
'Uh-huh,' Cezer murmured skeptically, 'sure we can.'
Cocoa whirled on him. 'Must you always be so cursed negative!'
'I'll be as negative as I please when it pleases me to be so,' he shot back.
Goosed by a mixture of fear and anger, her voice rose precipitately. 'Well, I'm sick of it! Stand and fight or shut up and run, but show some faith!'
His expression thoughtful, Oskar said sharply, 'Do that again.'
Taken aback, both curser and cursed glanced uncomprehendingly in his direction. 'Do what again?' Cocoa asked him.
'Jump up and down violently,' he told her. 'Yell if you want to also, but jump up and down.'
'Look here,' muttered the swordsman, 'she already curses me plenty. She doesn't need any encouragement from you.'
'And you,' Oskar replied calmly while keeping an eye on the advancing blue worms, 'do the same. Mamakitty, you too.'
The three cat-folk exchanged looks of bewilderment. 'We're missing something here, aren't we?' Cocoa finally asked the dog-man.
'When you were shouting your angriest at Cezer,' Oskar explained, 'your hair was flying all over the place. When cats do that, hair invariably goes everywhere. Don't you remember? A number of Master Evyndd's visitors had to do their business with him outside, on the front landing—because of you three.' Cezer eyed Cocoa uncomprehendingly, but a look of understanding was beginning to dawn on Mamakitty's face.
'That's right!' Taj chirped. 'Oskar's right. I once heard a visitor say that there was nothing in the world so irritating and upsetting as cat hair.' He waved his hands at the verbal combatants. 'Jump up and down, like Oskar says. Move around, shake your heads, fluff your fur—what's left of it.'
Though still uncertain, Mamakitty and Cocoa complied as best they could; running their hands through their long locks and shaking their heads. Reluctantly, Cezer joined them.
'A fine state of affairs for a first-rate swordsman: reduced to fighting with curls.' Head bent forward, he pushed his fingers through his blue-gold locks again and again. In the phosphorescence cast by the worms, Oskar could see individual strands flying from all three of his feline companions.
A second worm struck at his legs, and he used his sword to repel it. The circular fanged mouth recoiled, then advanced anew; searching for an opening, for a route around the sharp object that was obstructing its path, for a way to sink its tenacious teeth into the soft meat it sensed close at hand.
Then the mouth contracted violently, closing like a sphincter. Drawing back, the worm appeared to hesitate, hovering before the tense dog-man.
And then it sneezed.
It sneezed so violently it blew blue goo all over Oskar's legs and feet. It continued to sneeze until it lay twitching and convulsing in the water, vomiting blue froth. Watching it, Oskar felt a tickle in his nostrils himself. He fought it down, successfully. After all, he had been forced to coexist with three cats ever since he was a pup. But having seen the violent reaction and consequent misery suffered by some of the Master's more sensitive visitors, he found himself almost feeling sorry for the carnivorous worms.
Excitement lent energy to the travelers' efforts once they saw that the limited amount of cat fur was having an effect on their attackers. How it was affecting the creatures they did not know, nor did they particularly care. It need not make sense to be effective. As he brushed out his long hair, Cezer marveled at the results. He breathed cat hair every day, and it had never bothered him.
It was certainly disconcerting the worms. In their aqueous environment, Oskar mused, the poor creatures had probably never encountered anything half so irritating. One by one they twisted their murderous foreparts around, thrust them forward and down in a powerful burrowing motion, and sneezed their way back to the depths from which they had emerged. Blue coils vanished, vanquished by something as simple as the tiny strands that caught in their throats and tickled, and itched, and scratched, and prickled…
Oskar hurriedly took a long swallow of soothing water from the small bag he carried on his back.
Look!' Now it was Taj's turn to point: not because his vision had grown suddenly more acute than that of his companions, but because he happened to be gazing in the right direction when the phenomenon manifested itself.
