belly and cackling like a lunatic.
Jask decided it was best not to say anything further. He was angry at Tedesco for taking the whole affair so lightly, but he did not want to lose his temper.
Two-thirds of the way up the stairs, Tedesco turned and said, “What did you imagine that beast was?”
“Their god,” Jask said, without hesitation.
“Jesus?”
“Yes.”
“I thought as much!” the bruin roared. He started up the stairs again, chuckling in a more restrained manner now.
Jask thought his companion's behavior was juvenile, though he did not say so. He did not feel like complaining about anything after such a narrow escape from the pagan god.
17
An hour before noon on the sixteenth day after they had departed from the meadow, Jask and Tedesco encountered three espers who had been waiting for them for more than a week. Climbing the major footpath through the Ashtokoman Hills, which marked the end of the Chen Valley Blight, only an hour or two from civilized lands, they rounded a bend and saw the brightly painted gypsy wagon, the horse grazing peacefully by the side of the road, and the three strangers who had anticipated their arrival.
Welcome, the trio radiated in unison. We mean to be friends.
In the thirteen days since they had killed the giant crab, Jask and Tedesco had come across many unusual creatures, many a dangerous surprise. They had fought off, three different times, marauding bands of man-sized lizards that could walk on their hind feet for short distances in imitation of mutated human beings; one of these impersonators had nearly gotten close enough to gut Tedesco with its razor-edged claws before they understood that it was not an intelligent being, but a vicious predator. They were fortunate to escape the ubiquitous arms of a quick-flowing ameboid creature fully as large as a house, which trapped them in the shattered walls and blind alleyways of a crumbling village where no one had lived since the Last War. At night they were set upon repeatedly by perambulating plants that could spin webs of entrapment as cleverly as any spider. But neither of them could have been more surprised when the three mutated human espers approached them along the dusty footpath, smiling.
We came to warn you, they 'pathed.
“Of what?” Tedesco inquired.
News of your escape from the Highlands of Caul was radioed across the Blight to the Pures of Potest-Amon Enclave. You were not expected to survive the journey. But on the off chance that you might, patrols were established on the higher hills, just outside the Blight. Pures wait for you, assisted in their vigil by other men who fear espers as much as their so-holy brothers.
“Who are you three?” Jask asked. He supposed they were trustworthy, because they were as much outcasts as he and Tedesco, yet he did not want to give his allegiance too easily.
Each of the strangers 'pathed something about itself. Indeed, in only a few seconds, Jask found that he had absorbed as much about them as he might have gotten from a three- or four-hour conversation.
They were:
• a five-foot-tall, hard-muscled wolf-man named Chaney, whose long skull tapered to a narrow mouth crammed full of teeth even sharper than Tedesco's; his nostrils were black, the flesh inside them red, so that it looked as if he were about to breathe fire; his eyes were black, with very little whites to them; his ears were tufted with gray hair while the remainder of his pelt was dark brown and black; he went naked, as Tedesco did, finding no use for more warmth or modesty than his natural cloak provided; he had been a traveling musician since his childhood, a profession that afforded him excellent protection when his extrasensory perception began to develop, for itinerant entertainers were a breed apart — being able to move with all their worldly possessions in the space of minutes if they should somehow be found out as espers, staying too short a time in any town to risk being discovered by neighbors — and were expected to be at least a little peculiar, a prejudice of town-locked folk that permitted them to pass off their esp powers as something else the few times they were accidentally used in public; he was a year on the run now, cursed with his expanded awareness, twice discovered but never apprehended, a canny man who could fight hard but preferred to rely on guile and cunning whenever possible;
• his wife, a wolf-woman named Kiera, as tall as Chaney but more slender, a double row of black teats along her belly, her tail less flamboyant than his; she, too, could walk on two feet like a woman had been meant to, or she could drop to all fours and, despite her five somewhat stubby fingers, make twice the time she could standing upright; she had been Chaney's wife when the power first came to him, but she had not reported him to the authorities, because she loved him enough to want him even as an esper; later, six months ago now, her own telepathic abilities had begun to blossom; her father had been a gypsy sign painter and after his death had left her the wagon, tools and talent he had used; she had met Chaney in a small town called Higgerpel on the slopes of the Star-Reaching Pondersals, where they had fallen in love and married some nine years ago;
• Melopina, who looked very much like a Pure girl, with but a few unnatural refinements that must have come from the genetic engineers and their Artificial Wombs many generations ago; she was a few inches past five feet tall, with legs that Jask would have once considered too curvacious but now found more enticing than the straight and spindly legs of Pure women; her hips were somewhat wider than a Pure woman's hips, while her behind was round rather than flat; her waist was admirably tiny, her breasts not large but apparently well-shaped; her face was small and, like the rest of her body, colored a very subtle blue-green that gave one the impression he was viewing her through a layer of water; her lips were generous, her teeth broad and white; her nose was small and tip-tilted, her eyes twice as large as a human's eyes should be, the irises almost as enormous as Chaney's, but colored a bright green; her hair was midnight black and fell in rich masses over her slender shoulders; the divisions between her fingers were spanned with delicate blue, translucent webs for half their length, while similar webs bunched between her splayed toes; on both sides of her slim neck, beginning at her ears and running downward to her shoulders, much larger weblike growths lay in graceful folds, like air-blown silks; these adornments were fully four inches wide, six of them growing parallel and close together on each side of her neck; they rippled prettily in the slight breeze that came down from the mountains beyond; Melopina was seventeen and had acquired her esp powers only three months ago; her parents had rejected her, turned her in to the authorities, who had imprisoned her prior to a ritual burning to cleanse the town of her evil; she was a disciple of the Devils from the Stars, they knew, and was of the same blood that had once spurned and perhaps destroyed mankind; fortunately for Melopina, Chaney and Kiera happened to be performing in her village, Sustenpetal, when she was put in chains; they rescued her and fled from the town with her in the dead of a spring night.
It would seem, then, Tedesco 'pathed, that you must have come to the same conclusion we've reached. Espers must band together, work for each other, in order to survive.
Of course, Chaney said.
Not only will we then survive, but we will no longer be lonely, either, Kiera 'pathed.
We are seeking the Black Presence, Tedesco said. We have maps of three possible locations at which it may be hiding. Will you throw your lot in with us for these journeys?
No word of this has reached here, Chaney 'pathed, his full tail sweeping rapidly back and forth as the notion of the trek excited him.
No one knew it but us, Tedesco explained.
A shielded mental conversation, between Chaney and Kiera, passed in a second, like a ball of fuzz at the edge of the others' range of perception. In a moment the wolf-man said, Count both of us in.
Melopina said, Is the Presence real? I thought it was a myth.
It's real enough, Tedesco said. I've got proof in books.
The girl grinned delightedly. Then I'm with you. She took a few quick steps forward and took hold of Jask's hand in both of her smaller hands, looked at him and 'pathed, Did you really come all the way across the Blight, with all the horrors in it?
“Yes,” Jask said.
