He dared a glimpse with his good eye and the air rushed from his lungs in an involuntary cry. They were circling far above the clearing, at least thirty meters up. He could see his companions staring up at him. They looked like carved figurines no larger than his thumb, except they moved. It was an impossible sight. He closed his eye again and felt himself start to laugh out of sheer hysteria.
Problem? asked the raptor holding his shoulders.
Scared! he sent. Keep going! He felt a wild, reckless happiness bubble up inside him. He might die in the next few minutes, but he’d spend them doing something no one had ever done. He opened his eyes again, determined to take it all in. The trees were green, misshapen mushroom caps below him, and if he craned his neck to look forward, he saw a lowering sky with weeping clouds that had never looked so textured, so interesting. The waters of the swamp ahead reflected the multi-hued grays of the clouds, its hillocks and grasses adding features never found in the firmament above.
Over the swamp. Seek the snake-humans, he cast at the vultures, though it was less of a command and more of a request. Washes of wariness, fear, and disgust came back from the birds. They did not like the Naga. Nevertheless, they winged their way out over the waters, and he tried his best to look in every direction for movement that might suggest a troop of Naga returning home.
For a long time, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. The mire spread in all directions, and he quickly saw just how fruitless it would have been to track from the ground. To call the endless profusion of hillocks, waterlogged berms, and twisting waterways a maze would underestimate it. Great drooping willows left half the swamp in dappled shadows as the dangling mosses cascading from their branches tickled the surface of the waters. Everywhere there was movement. Seen from afar, the whole of the landscape looked as if it were breathing. Time and again some twitch of movement drew Kest’s eye only to show itself to be the swooping of a kingfisher on a luckless fish. Even more frustrating were the frequent undulations of the swamp’s overabundance of snakes. It was difficult to measure their length from such a height, but some of the water-borne reptiles were massive. When he saw their long bodies undulating through the murk his heart leapt, but always the body had a depressingly normal snake’s head instead of the torso of a human. The minutes ticked past, and he began to worry that his feckless, distractible carriers would bore of this sport and drop him in pursuit of more edible pastimes.
Found them, found them! squawked the bird clutching his shoulders. The wash of enthusiasm was followed immediately by a welter of fear and upset as the dim-witted bird recalled exactly what he had found and why that was bad.
Kest looked but saw nothing. Where? he cast back to the vulture. Can’t see!
He felt a surge of pity from his avian companions. Closer, sighed one of them, and they began to lose altitude.
Not too close, warned another. They dipped to within ten meters of the treetops, and through the gaps in the foliage Kest finally saw them: some fifty Naga warriors swimming in formation, packed close together, keeping to the shadows of the overhanging branches. They stirred the water far less than their full-snake brethren, and only their heads cleared the water. He never would have spotted them on his own.
“Where are they going?” he wondered aloud, looking down at the travelling Naga. It was all well and good to have found them, but to do his job properly, he needed to find their home. Back up, he requested, and the vultures were only too happy to comply. He caught visions at the edges of the birds’ thoughts of stinging darts rising from the Naga to kill other raptors, of nets and snares concealed around rotting meat left as bait. They had no desire to get too close to these predators.
With his unerring sense of direction Kest drew a mental line connecting the clearing where he had left his friends with the band of killers swimming below him. They were indeed swimming in a straight line, making only enough deviation to keep to the water. Ahead, he told the birds. Their home is ahead.
Don’t care, came the response. Getting tired. Kest frowned. The birds were not tired; they were scared. They didn’t want to know where the Naga nested. They were scavengers by nature, not hunters. Swooping down on a mouse was one thing, but seeking out a den of vipers was entirely another.
Just a little farther, he cajoled. Fly high. They’ll never see you. He sensed only reluctance from the birds. In a flash of inspiration, he cast out the challenge, I’ll see their nest before you do.
Bad eyes, slow mind! one of them jeered at him, and he knew they had taken the bait. Their wings beat harder at the air, and they rose even higher than before. The great trackless wilderness of the East spread before him.
They make weapons and wear leather, he thought. They cannot live always in the water. Their city will have to rise up from the swamp. There must be some marker of their existence. An entire race cannot snatch life from the jungle without leaving some trace. They have to build, they have to farm, they have to cook. That gave him an idea. He closed his good eye and carefully shifted one hand to flip his eye patch up from his ill-gotten compound eye. He relaxed his thoughts and let his heat vision dominate his senses. Water is cold, but
