“You would have noticed her,” Stryke persisted.
“Would we?” the first asked.
“This is weird,” Jup muttered.
The irritating exchange continued, with Stryke trying to get some sense out of the creatures and not knowing which one would answer next.
Finally his patience snapped and he bellowed, “ Look! It’s simple! Have you or have you not seen any other strangers today?”
The reply came from all of them sequentially, their smiles never wavering.
“Strangers…”
“… are…”
“… never…”
“… welcome…”
“… here.”
Then something startling happened. As one, they all unfolded a massive set of wings, hidden until now. The wings were pure white and seemed to be constituted of downy feathers.
“An angelic host,” Standeven whispered, awestruck.
Coilla looked at him, then noticed that Pepperdyne appeared nearly as beguiled. “What?” she said.
He tore his eyes from the sight. “They mean something to my race. Particularly to Unis and the like.”
“Good or bad?”
“Oh, good,” Standeven said. “The epitome of goodness, we’re told.”
“Well, I think you’ve been told wrong. Or these things are something different. Look again.”
The comely, benevolent faces of the winged beings were twisting into snarling, hate-filled grimaces. Their jaws dropped, revealing mouths full of razor-sharp incisors. Their eyes, soft and as blue as the sky an instant before, turned into inky black orbs set in scarlet. And as their faces turned nasty, so did they.
They shot into the air in unison, their powerful wings flapping mightily. For a moment they circled overhead, and the band saw that they had produced concealed weapons; gold-coloured maces studded with barbs. Then they dived.
The orcs with shields held them above their heads. They swiped at the tormenting creatures with their blades and axes, but couldn’t connect. Arrows were loosed and proved no match for the flyers’ agility. Again and again they swooped down, menacing the Wolverines with their maces.
Stryke knew that if the band didn’t find cover they were certain to lose the fight. He waited until the flying things were at their highest point preparatory to diving again. “ To the house!” he yelled. “ To the house!”
They made for the doors at full pelt, desperately trying to outrun creatures that were potentially much faster. Coilla and Pepperdyne, through some act of instinctive charity, grabbed Standeven’s arms from either side and dragged the wheezing human along. For all the band knew there were more of the things inside, but it was a chance they had to take. There was no other shelter.
Getting to the house a heartbeat ahead of the flyers they hurled themselves through. They flung their weight behind the doors and slammed them shut. There was the satisfying sound of at least one flying creature crashing into the woodwork on the other side.
Panting from the effort, and with Standeven fit to have a seizure, the band took a moment to catch their breath.
Recovering, they looked around. They were in a long, high, stone-clad corridor, with several doors on either side and a set of much larger ones at its end. The side doors led to windowless rooms or dead-end passages, so they made for the double doors. Kicking them open they found a spacious chamber, perhaps a banqueting room, wood panelled and hung with weighty candelabra. At its far end, and to the right, there was a further, wide corridor running off at an angle.
“Now what do we do?” Dallog wanted to know.
“I guess we start by seeing if there’s another way out,” Stryke replied.
“And if there ain’t?” Haskeer said.
“There will be. Or we’ll make one.”
“ Stryke,” Dynahla said, urgency in his voice.
“What is it?”
“I feel a presence.”
“Her?”
“Has to be.” The shape-changer pointed to the corridor. “That way.”
They rushed to it.
It was ill-lit, and long, but some way down it there was a crowd of figures. Jennesta was among them. She saw the band. Fiddling with the objects in her hands, she and her pack blinked out of existence.
Dynahla dug out the instrumentalities, and at a nod from Stryke, slapped them together.
The Wolverines materialised in a swamp, knee deep in warm, stinking water. Waist deep in the case of the dwarfs. The air was humid and uncomfortable. There were countless flies, causing the orcs to slap at their exposed flesh. Small, unidentified creatures zigzagged through the water. All about them was a green gloom, thanks to a canopy of vegetation high above their heads.
Haskeer smacked the side of his neck, crushing an insect. “This is not an improvement.”
“So where in damnations is Jennesta now?” Coilla complained.
“Yeah, there’s no trace of her,” Wheam said. “How come she isn’t right where we land every time?”
“We don’t always arrive in exactly the same place as someone else who’s made a transition,” Dynahla explained. “That’s partly down to me, because it’s hard to be accurate. But it’s mostly a function of the instrumentalities.”
“So she could be anywhere,” Coilla said.
Dynahla shook his head. “No. We always arrive within a certain radius. She’s here, and not far.” He looked around. “The question is where.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about the stars.”
“Serapheim was a good teacher. He taught me that-”
“Can we talk about this some other time?” Stryke interrupted.
“So where to, chief?” Jup said.
“There’s a patch of drier ground over there. That’s where we’ll start.”
They waded to it, and found it was the tail end of a much longer strip of land, muddy and tangled with roots, but preferable to the foul water. The band was glad to haul themselves onto it.
“ Now what?” Coilla wanted to know.
“We could follow this spit of land and see where it takes us,” Stryke said.
“Bit hit or miss, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He turned to Dynahla. “Can you feel anything?”
“What I’m getting is confused,” the fetch confessed. “It’s not clear enough to pinpoint her.”
Stryke sighed. “Great.”
“But there’s another way I might be able to help.”
“Do it, whatever it is.”
“All right. Here.” He took out the instrumentalities and handed them to him. “Best you take care of these until I get back.”
“Get back?”
“I’m going to use my shape-changing ability to scout the area. Any objections?”
“Er… no.”
“Then give me some room.”
The band stepped back.
Dynahla got down on the ground and stretched out. He began to change. His writhing body compressed and elongated simultaneously. The arms and legs drew in and disappeared. The flesh turned black as it redistributed itself and stretched into a long, cylindrical shape, a tapering tail at one end, a smooth, hairless head at the other. Shiny scales appeared along its whole length.
Seconds later an enormous water snake regarded them with unblinking, golden eyes, a forked tongue flicking
