“They’re hunting me. With horses, the Duke said. And with strange creatures he wakened up, like people only not. Like lizards. Like frogs. And when they catch me, they’ll kill me.”
“Very probably. Which they will do if you insist on standing here talking. There’s worse than the Duke abroad. The Ogress is looking for Bryan, there. She wants to eat him.” This was perhaps the only thing I could have said to get her moving. Threats to herself paralyzed her. Threats to Bryan mobilized her. Ah, motherhood.
Nature is quite wonderful.
We went back the way I had come, back to the grilled courtyard. I found it by following the line of dwellers, who were still coming out of the hole in the cobbles, single file, seemingly in endless numbers.
One or two of them said “boo” at me as we went past, but I spat a spark at them and they let us be. I went over the wall, unbarred the gate, and let Sylbie in, barring the gate behind her. With any luck at all, the hunt would go by us. Sylbie sank to the floor, sagging there like a bundle of laundry. The baby seemed to have gone to sleep, and I fervently hoped he stayed that way.
I hung in the grill, watching the dwellers pop out of the hole, one after another like so many corks. Far off something screamed. Pombi, I think. There was an avalanche of laughter, dweller laughter, so they’d found some mischief to get up to.
Horns again. Hooves at the end of the street I was watching. I pulled a scarf to hide my face, leaving one eye to peer with.
There at the end of the street came a mounted man, the Duke of Betand, perhaps, or even the Merchant himself. And to either side walked big men in remnants of Gamesmen garb, Tragamors without their helms, with only arms telling what they were.
Elators. Armigers. Blind-eyed, marching as in sleep.
And scaly creatures out of nightmare, armed with whips. The whips were being dragged, slithering on the stones. It sounded like a convention of serpents. I dropped to the floor, crawled over beside Sylbie, and put my arms around her. Whatever else happened, I didn’t want her to yell.
I needn’t have worried. No one could have heard her if she had screamed her head off. The dwellers had discovered the hunter. The scaly creatures had discovered the dwellers. What had begun in black, mysterious silence under the swimming moon went on in a tumult of sound such as I had never heard and do not wish to hear again.
Laughter, screams, curses, whip cracks, snarls, shouts, horses neighing and screaming, hooves clattering on stone, growling, more mocking laughter, shrieks, howls, and all the time more dwellers popping out of the hole in the ground. Queynt had said they were not common. I think Queynt must have been mistaken.
None of which was helping us escape from Fangel.
I had hoped the dwellers would keep Valearn busy and the hunt would pass by. Neither had happened.
They all met in a general confusion, much of it outside the grill, and there was no possibility of getting through that mess. Moreover, the noise had wakened the baby.
So, I said to myself, on the verge of hysteria, why don’t we make it a really good mess? I fixed Sylbie with a hard, hypnotic eye and said, “Can I depend upon you to stay right here until I return for you?” She nodded fearfully and I took it (the more fool I) for agreement. “Don’t move,” I said. “I’ll be back shortly.” Up the wall once more, this time to perch upon the top, well above the melee below. The wall stretched for a long block toward the residence, and I ran along its top, unnoticed by any of the participants in the brouhaha. At the corner, two dwellers were strangling a lizard man, and I thanked them for the courtesy as I jumped off the wall and went past. The next street was fairly empty. A pombi was trying to play bakklewheep with two dwellers in the middle of the block, they evading him and he getting angrier about it by the minute. He was too busy to notice me.
Next block was the residence itself, still dark and silent. The great gong hung in its usual place, the striker beside it, and I put every measure of strength I had ever possessed into hitting it, not once or twice but three horrendous times.
Lights came on. Doors opened. People poured out, just as they had done on that morning we had arrived in Fangel. Food carts, guardsmen, populace, more of the lizard warriors, more of other kinds of things, too.
Though their responses were fairly limited by the crystals they had been given, the populace had not been prepared for lizard men or any of the other creatures that swarmed from the Merchant’s warehouses. They ran screaming through the streets, their voices betraying terror even as their words did honors to Betand, to Huldra, to Dedrina Dreadeye. They had no other words to scream with and were forbidden the safety of their houses by the tyranny of the gong.
Better than I had hoped, great mobs of them made for the gates. Of course. When the gong rang, the gates were always open. Good. Now back to Sylbie.
I ran openly in the street. There were so many creatures running, people and monsters both, that I was merely one of a throng that spread in every direction, like an anthill that had been overturned.
One block, two, down toward the grilled window ...
To stop, horrified. No. Furious. The gate into the little courtyard was open. Sylbie had unbarred the gate and left.
I found her two streets down, toward the gates.
Unfortunately, Valearn had found her first.
Valearn had the baby. Sylbie had Valearn by one leg. There were a dozen deep dwellers fastened onto Valearn at various points. Valearn was paying no attention. Her fangs
