Hyden looked up at the starlit sky and watched Talon circle down and land by Phen. He was thinking of the day Loudin the hunter had died in the Giant Mountains. Through Talon’s vision he’d watched Mikahl cut the hind legs and tail off of the hellcat that killed their friend. That was also the day Hyden found his magic. He’d healed a mother wolf that had broken her pelvic bone in a fall. Weeks later her two pups led Hyden from the dying tree in Dahg Mahn’s trials to the door of the old wizard’s tower. Trying to keep Loudin’s memory from ruining his mood, he turned to Phen.
“Teach me a new spell-that scrying spell.” His chest swelled as he continued. “I’ve learned the light spell, the flaming finger, and the jolting grasp.” He leaned closer and whispered, “I’m going to get Oarly with that one soon.”
Brady laughed at them.
“I’ve almost mastered the vanishing object,” Hyden said, “but half the time I can’t make the item reappear.” He gave Phen a serious look. “Where in all the hells do things go anyway?”
“Another dimension, I think,” Phen said. “Work on that one until you have it mastered both ways before we start another.”
“Aye,” Hyden nodded reluctantly then picked up a small sea shell to practice with.
“I’ll be over here,” Brady said. He looked more than a little nervous as he crept over to the far side of the fire with the others. Already he had seen Hyden make one of Oarly’s old boots go away never to be seen again. He didn’t want to be next.
Morning brought with it a sense of excitement. Hyden was glad for the men Captain Trant sent with Deck Master Biggs. They loaded up all the packs, ropes, and digging tools they could carry. Brady took the lead with his machete. Hyden followed with the elven longbow Vaegon had given him held at the ready. Phen was next, carrying a long steel dagger that he’d gotten in his dealings with the juju wizard who’d sent them into the Serpent’s Eye. The three deckhands were next. They were too weighted down to carry a weapon in hand, but each dangled a well-kept short sword at the hip. Oarly and Master Biggs took up the rear; Oarly, with his wide, double bladed axe slung over his shoulder, Master Biggs with a heavy crossbow wound and ready to fire.
The passage through the humid undergrowth was far slower than Hyden expected. Brady had to hack and slash every foot of their path. Birds, and other things, cackled and cawed from everywhere. Undergrowth shook violently as large creatures fled their intrusion. Clouds of yellow flies swarmed around their heads, and sweat poured from their bodies by the bucketful.
“This is not as fun as it sounded like it was going to be,” observed Phen.
“Aye,” half of the group said in unison, but nobody laughed.
Hyden didn’t have it quite as bad as the others, at least not when Talon was perched on his shoulder. The presence of the hawkling seemed to deter the pesky flies. Phen noticed this, and with a piece of dried meat devilishly lured the bird to his shoulder for a while. Behind them, the sound of Oarly’s labored breathing, and his constant grumbling competed with the buzz and hum of the insects. A persistent cry, shrill and angry, resounded from somewhere above. Whatever it was kept shaking the tree limbs, but was never seen.
Around midday they came across a clearing that had been formed by a fallen tree. They stopped and rested, eating a meal of dried beef, sliced cheese, and sea biscuits. All of them drank plenty of water, enough that Hyden began to worry if they carried enough. They didn’t stop very long. The persistant yellow flies seemed to like them even more when they were still. A few grueling hours later the flies suddenly went away. Phen was the first to say something about the welcome relief.
“Oarly must have shit,” he called to Hyden and Brady ahead of him.
“What?” Hyden chuckled back over his shoulder.
“The flies have gone,” Phen giggled. “Oarly must have shit his britches again and fogged them away.”
“I heard that,” the dwarf said behind them. “It’s more likely that your foul breath grounded them.”
Phen, and a couple of the seamen laughed, but they were all startled to silence when Brady shushed them.
“Can you hear that?” Brady whispered at Hyden.
A deep buzzing sound was resonating up ahead of them. It sounded like a swarm of something far larger than the yellow flies. Talon leapt from Hyden’s shoulder and flew ahead. All eyes watched Hyden’s concentrated expression, searching for a hint of alarm or fear.
Hyden saw the same thick jungle flora ahead of them: huge heart-shaped leaves, long dangling vines, and clusters of bright blue flowers that grew out of patches of thorny brambles. Talon followed the sound, fluttering from branch to branch as he went, taking it all in. Subtle alarms were going off in the hawkling’s mind, the instinctual warnings that all creatures seem to have built into their consciousness, but so far curiosity was dominant. Hyden felt the alarms too, like tiny voices saying, “Not good. Fly away. Go around.” The hawkling ignored them bravely, and eased forward as Hyden bade. Then from a stone’s throw away they saw the source of the sound. Talon perched on a limb and froze in place just long enough for Hyden to see what it was. Then he fled back to the group, as quickly as he could fly through the dense jungle.
It was a nest of hornets, Hyden saw in that moment. Not ordinary flower-buzzing bugs, but huge red hornets the size of cucumbers, with finger-long venomous stingers sticking out of them. The nest was the size of a pavilion tent, and thousands of the creatures buzzed here and there through the trees. The skeleton of something lay near the hive. Another hump of something even larger seemed to undulate with the wasps as they swarmed over, feeding on its flesh. Hyden hadn’t been able to make out any more. Talon’s instincts had thankfully taken over and forced him to fly away.
Trying not to alarm the others, Hyden pointed to the left of the line they had been traveling, and spoke in a near whisper. “Let’s go that way for a while,” he suggested. He ignored the barrage of hissed questions from the others. He didn’t want to tell them that no bow or sword would save them if those things set upon them. He doubted there was even a spell that might let them escape so many poisonous flying things. There was no other choice but to skirt well around the nest. Later, he might tell them exactly what he’d seen.
After a long while, he had Brady circle them back around toward their original course. He kept Talon ahead of them, searching for signs of anything that might be a danger.
“Look,” Phen exclaimed, pointing off into the trees. When Hyden saw it, his heart nearly stopped. A lime- green snake, as big around as a man, and easily thirty paces long, slithered away through the lower branches just beside their trail. When it was about a hundred strides away, it startled something in the undergrowth. Whatever it was growled fiercely and rattled shrubs and leaves as it darted away from the snake directly toward them. Phen stood open-mouthed and wide-eyed as a dark shadowy form bounded straight at him. He raised his dagger feebly when the cougar-like creature revealed itself. Teeth bared, it leapt at him. It was covered in quills like a porcupine, and Phen could do nothing as it pounced. Just before tooth and claw found Phen’s flesh, the creature sprouted two more quills, each with fletching on the ends. The alert seaman behind the boy booted him to the ground just in time to avoid disaster. Both Hyden and Deck Master Biggs had loosed arrows at the creature. In the leafy shrub where it crashed down, a wicked-looking spiked tail thrashed about a moment before stilling.
“Well theres be fresh smeat for sssupper,” Oarly said cheerily. The slur of his speech betrayed the fact that he had taken more than a sip or two of Biggs’s brandy during the day.
“It’s a blasted overgrown lyna,” one of the seamen said as he looked closer at the kill.
“Could be,” Master Biggs nodded.
“I’m not sure we want the smell of fresh meat close to us in this place,” said Hyden as he helped Phen to his feet.
“ ’Tis true, Hyden Hawk,” Oarly replied robustly. It was obvious that he had overcome his seasickness. “These Island creatures won’t be smelling fresh meat around this dwarf, lad. They’ll be a smelling scorched meat, from a raging fire, and they’ll fear the smell of it too.”
Hyden had to agree that the smell of scorched flesh and a huge fire would most likely dissuade anything from snooping too close to the camp. It would probably keep the bugs away too. The thought of the huge hornets swarming them in the dark made him shudder.
With speed, and precise skill, that seemed as out of place as it was surprising, Oarly beheaded, gutted, and skinned the creature. Within moments the feline thing was tied by its legs to a limb that the dwarf cleaved from a
