You have demonstrated your prowess.” Retrieving his pouch, he opened it and found Tcheruke the Vivisectionist’s vial of Stolen Repose intact. He pulled the cork and applied the oily contents to his naked body.
“What do you do?” The juveniles, perched on the rim of the nest, watched bright-eyed.
“I prepare a new game. I shall run to and fro, you will try to take me down. But it will not be so easy, this time. Observe, I anoint my flesh with an oleaginous substance, allowing me to slide from your grasp as terces slip through the fingers of a profligate. You will not hold me.”
“Yes we will, yes we will!”
“Prove it.”
They flung themselves at him. Farnol jigged and dodged with vigor, eluding them for a time, but presently found himself prone, the nestlings perched on his back.
“We have won again!” A razor nip underscored the announcement.
Four or five nips followed, and a happy gabble arose among the pelgrane.
“The meat is sweet!”
“The new sauce is to my liking!”
“The sauce is tasty and delicious!”
He felt their avid tongues upon him; another bite or two, and then the animated voices slowed and slurred as the Stolen Repose took effect. The nestlings fell silent. One by one, they slumped to the floor and slept.
Farnol stood up, mind racing. He tossed his shoes and pouch from nest. Turning to the nearest infant, he stooped, strained, and succeeded in slinging the limp creature over his shoulder. Thus encumbered, he climbed the nest wall, tumbled the pelgrane out onto the rocky shelf, and jumped down, landing safely. His belongings still littered the shelf. Locating his sword, he drew the blade, and, with a sense of simple satisfaction, sliced off the slumbering infant’s head.
The skull had not yet acquired the firmness of maturity. A few blows of a rock sufficed to smash it open. Investigation of the wreckage proved distasteful, but rewarding. At the base of the brain he discovered the headstone that he sought; an object no larger than a pea, hard as a pebble, pied blue and ocher, dusted with wandering motes of black glow. He wiped the headstone clean and placed it in his pouch, then dressed himself with all haste, for instinct warned him that Mother’s return was imminent.
Quitting the ledge, he hurried away across the stony slopes, making for the shelter of the High Boscage. He took great care to skirt the numerous nests dotting the region, and as he went, he frequently looked to the sky. The thickets appeared immeasurably distant. Centuries seemed to elapse before he slipped into the welcoming gloom beneath the aged trees. From that shaded refuge, he cast another glance skyward, and now spied a winged form swooping low over the nest on the ledge.
Mother had come home to her abbreviated brood.
She alighted. Some moments of silence ensued. Then a scream rang forth, perhaps the most terrible cry ever to echo among those bluffs; an elemental blast of grief and ultimate rage. Farnol of Karzh cringed at the sound. Without conscious thought, he pressed the Chameleon Mask to his face, froze into immobility, and blended with his surroundings.
The scream resounded far and wide, carrying passionate promises along the River Derna. Its last reverberations died away, and its author took to the air, sailing in widening circles characteristic of a methodical hunt.
For some moments, Farnol stood petrified. Eventually, a sense of purpose heightened by inner heat set him in motion again. He looked up into an empty purpling sky. For now, Mother was nowhere in evidence. He removed the mask. Its tingle was maddening and its benefits belonged solely to a stationary wearer. He walked on beneath the concealing boughs.
The forest was quiet and dim, the path clear and firm, but his way was far from easy. Internal disruptions had become impossible to ignore. The toxic heat burned along every nerve, insolently proclaiming its own advance. It worsened by the day, in accordance with Uncle Dhruzen’s predictions.
Some distraction from poisonous progress was furnished by hunger, for the provisions donated by Tcheruke the Vivisectionist had been lost, and the High Boscage offered little refreshment. More compelling yet was the distraction afforded by the dark figure periodically glimpsed patrolling the skies overhead. The broad wings, globular abdomen, and hatchet profile were unmistakable. Mother continued the hunt.
He pushed on at his best speed across a stretch of woodland entirely unfamiliar; he must have been carried high above it upon the occasion of his previous passage. Here, the tree trunks were curved like bows and crowned with tufts of long, transparent, membranous leaves. Rich growths of black renullta blanketed the ground, nourished by the tears of the Puling Jinnarool. The branches of the Puling Jinnarool supported a population of iridescent, large-headed insects with the sweet voices of grieving women. The air trembled with whispering plaints and reproaches.
Driven by hunger, Farnol plucked an insect from a branch and examined it closely. The creature possessed an exaggerated hammer head graced with feathery antennae, bulging purple eyes, and a meager tripartite body sheathed in chitin. Its appearance was not appetizing, but his need was great.
As if it divined his intent, the captive insect lifted its melodious voice in mournfully unintelligible plea. Its companions took up the cry, and a sorrowing, faintly accusing chorus arose, accompanied by a vast, urgent fluttering of countless wings. The trees and bushes quivered. The tiny voices harmonized. The uproar drew the attention of a dark figure wheeling above upon outstretched wing.
A rush of displaced air, a swift shadow, and Mother descended. There was time only to grab for the Chameleon Mask, to clap it across his face, and then she was there.
Farnol lay motionless under the trees. The ground was wet and black beneath him, springy with renullta and glinting with fallen leaves. Presumably, his own form appeared equally black, springy, and glinting. Before him, Mother paced the grove, long head turning from side to side, red eyes stabbing everywhere. He dared not gaze directly upon her lest she sense the pressure of his regard, and therefore kept his eyes low, watching her feet pass back and forth. Her burning glances discovered nothing, and the fervent vociferation of the insects was evidently incomprehensible. Thrice, she paused to sort odors, but the fragrance of the Puling Jinnarool masked all, and she clashed her fangs in frustration. A bitter hoot escaped her, and she took wing.
Farnol lay still for some minutes following her departure. When he judged the sky thoroughly clear, he rose and went his way. As he walked, he scanned the sky, and for an hour or more spied nothing untoward. Then she was back, skimming low over the trees, so close that he caught the wink of a jeweled ornament upon her crest; so close that she might easily have glimpsed motion. Perhaps she had done so, for she glided in tightening loops above his hiding place, passing close over his head half a dozen times before veering off with a petulant hitch of her wing.
Mother disappeared into the sun, and Farnol’s trek resumed. For hours, he advanced slowly, his progress retarded by hunger, thirst, and internal conflagration. Around midday, he paused to feed upon handfuls of pearly fungi ripped from a fallen tree. Thereafter, the fire in his belly seemed to intensify, perhaps stoked by inedible fare.
An hour later, he reached a gap in the High Boscage; a broad, bare swath of ground, devoid of vegetation, black with the ancient marks of some forgotten disaster. At its center rose a polished dome, its walls a gleaming black touched with the polychrome highlights of a soap bubble. Prudence would ordinarily have dictated discretion. Today, hunger drove him.
A quick glance skyward detected no threat. Stepping forth from the shelter of the trees, Farnol made for the dome at a smart pace. He had not covered more than half the distance before a black form materialized overhead. No time for the mask; Mother had spied him. Down she came like a well-aimed cannonball.
The buffet of a leathern wing slammed him to the ground. Mother alighted beside him.
“Now, monstrous infanticide, my vengeance finds you!” the pelgrane declared.
“Not so, omnivorous hag!” Farnol dodged the stab of a lethal beak. Drawing his sword, he thrust, and a spot of blood splotched the other’s breast. She fell back with a plangent cry. Springing to his feet, he fled for the dome. Mother followed.
He reached the glinting structure. A barely visible seam in its otherwise flawless surface suggested a doorway, upon which he pounded hard. A rounded entry presented itself, and he slid through. Behind him rose a scream of furious frustration, sharply diminished as the door closed.
Farnol blinked. He stood in utter darkness and bitter cold. Sheathing his sword, he stood listening, but heard
