Finally, Kest whispered, “Here he comes,” and reached out to pluck the salamander from the water. He placed it on his shoulder and assumed an attitude of listening. He stayed that way, in silence, and the seconds ticked by.
“Well?” Gamarron demanded, unable to keep his peace any longer. Kest waved him to silence, and he felt ashamed of his outburst.
Kest heaved a sigh. “Well. This won’t be easy.”
“Tell us, please,” Gamarron said, striving for calm.
“There are frequent patrols, and they’re very careful. Spikkt says one even saw him and came over to make sure he wasn’t anything dangerous.”
“Frequent,” prompted Renna. “How frequent?”
“I don’t know,” Kest replied. “He doesn’t think about time like we do. Every ten minutes? Five? Less? He can’t pay attention for much longer than that, and he kept running across a patrol while still looking out for the last one.” He grimaced, clearly not wanting to say it, but he admitted, “There are probably hundreds of warriors on patrol out there, and they’re on high alert.”
Renna sucked air through her teeth. “This is a bad time to be doing this. They’re likely watching for straggling enemies after the battle. Look, we know where they are now. We retreat and come back when they’re less wary. Rot and ruin, why even come back ourselves? We have plenty of money – let’s go hire five hundred mercenaries and let them sack the place for us! Then we come in at our leisure, sweep up the Shard, and head on our way. Trying to sneak in now is suicide.” The bony old woman set her jaw and nodded firmly, expecting the world to conform to her words as usual.
She’s not wrong. It would be wiser to wait for another time. But every scrap of Gamarron’s being cried out against it. The thought of turning his back on the Naga nest provoked such a swell of wrongness within him that his mind scrambled and went blank. Now. Now. We go now.
“No,” he said roughly. The others looked at him as if he were speaking demontongue, and he struggled to justify himself. “Do you think you five hundred mercenaries will be enough to defeat them? Five thousand couldn’t do it. The fewer of us there are, the better. This is no battle; this is thievery.”
“Fine,” Renna growled. “Even so, those patrols will be less wary a week from now, and there will likely be fewer. If the Shard has been here all this time, they won’t move it in the next few days.”
“We don’t know that,” muttered Gamarron, knowing her argument was good. “It must be now. It simply must. We will be careful and quiet.”
Renna shook her head, baffled and angry. “That island is a hornet hive that’s just been whacked, and now you want us to stick our hands in. It’s madness!”
Gamarron motioned to their younger companions. “If we leave now, how likely are these children to follow us back a second time? You would, but they have more sense. Guyrin, would you come back through the swamps a second time?”
“I’d rather let rats gnaw my genitals,” admitted the tubby little chaos wielder.
“You see?” Gamarron spread his hands. “Kest? Nira?”
The Beast Rider shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, but Nira held his gaze. “A few days ago, I’d have said yes. But I don’t trust you anymore.”
He shrugged at Renna, ignoring how Nira’s blunt words plucked at his bruised conscience. “If we come back without the girl, we could walk right up to the Chaos Shard and not be able to do anything but stare at it. We need her there. We go forward now.”
Renna spat in the water. “You’re making the wrong choice. But you’re no good to me dead, so I’d better come with you.” She shook her finger at him. “You will stand astride the world, King Gamarron, and you’ll listen to me as you do it. Don’t forget it.”
They set out from their little hillock of earth between patrols. The groupings of three Naga only seemed to comb the perimeter every fifteen minutes or so, which gave them plenty of time to crawl up the narrow beach – more muck than sand – and secret themselves in the deep shadows and clefts of the roots spreading out from the great trees.
Peeking past the outer perimeter of trees inland, Gamarron could see the great trunks spread in a regular pattern throughout the landmass. His heart sank. The island was bigger than he’d hoped, and there was no telling which tree held the Chaos Shard.
“What now?” whispered Kest.
“We have to search the trees,” he responded. He eyed the nearest opening to the tree in whose shadow he sheltered. It was large enough for him to squeeze into, and he wondered if the pathways inside the tree were of a similar size. The thought of sliding along his belly in an alien space was not comforting. “Stay here,” he whispered to the others. “Kest and I are going inside.”
No one seemed inclined to argue. He worried that the patrolling Naga might be able to see his friends’ body heat as they passed, but the trees were warm to the touch. Hopefully by staying close to the roots they could go unnoticed in the dark. He did not worry on his own account. Sodden and stinking though it was, his demonsilk robe would protect him from the darksight of the Naga. It was one of the reasons that his people had begun to cultivate the demon-infected spiders of the Black Isle in the first place: many of the demonkind were known to possess darksight,
