But within moments she began to scream in terror and fight the guard, breaking free, and then she scrambled into the door of the inn.
In the end, only five children made it back safely.
When it was done, the assassin graaks flapped heavily out toward the woods, and Chancellor Waggit gazed down into the fields to the north.
Asgaroth sat straight in his saddle, gave a nod of satisfaction.
Now the siege begins in earnest, Waggit thought. For certainly Asgaroth believed that if any of the princes were alive, they had just been driven to ground at the castle.
But Asgaroth waved his men forward. Dozens of them swept over the fields, into the woods east of the castle, and Waggit was left to marvel.
Asgaroth had suspected that it was a ruse. Perhaps he had even known that it was a ruse.
Yet he had let his graaks murder innocent children anyway.
What kind of man would do that? Waggit wondered.
Waggit had studied much in the House of Understanding. He had read histories of ancient lords, befouled and evil, and in time had begun to understand a little of how they thought, how they gained power.
But no one could ever really understand them. No sane man would want to.
Now that he had finished terrorizing the castle, Asgaroth left a contingent of warriors to beat back any attempt that Waggit’s troops might make to sally forth while he went to search for the princes in earnest.
9
The art of raising a child comes in knowing when to hold his hand, and when to let it go. Once he learns to trust you, he is ready to learn to trust himself.
At the snarl of the strengi-saat, Rhianna rose up on her elbow, edged to the open flap, and peered out over Hadissa’s shoulder: the stars shone down through a thin haze that clung to the river. Starlight gleamed on the water, upon the slick round stones along the bank, and upon the glossy leaves of grass and vines along the shore.
Rhianna wished fiercely that there was more of a fog. Myrrima had promised them one, but Rhianna could see plainly through the thin haze.
Enormous pine trees crowded the banks along the steep sides of a hill; beneath them, all was shadows.
The strengi-saats will be on us before we ever see them, Rhianna thought.
And then there was a hiss in the trees, pine boughs brushing against one another, as something huge leapt from a large branch, and Rhianna clearly saw a shadow glide across the water ahead, only twenty feet in the air, and land among the rounded boulders at the edge of the river.
Rhianna dared not cry out, for fear that she would attract the monster’s attention. Besides, she was sure that Borenson and the others could see it.
The strengi-saat dropped silently to the ground and merely crouched in the shadows on the riverbank. It sniffed the air and peered about, searching for prey, and then cocked its head to the side, listening.
It can’t hear us, Rhianna thought, even though her heart beat so loudly that it thundered in her ears. It can’t see us, either.
But she knew from her time among the strengi-saats that they had powerful eyes, and seemed to travel well even in total darkness.
So why doesn’t it see us now?
The fog, Rhianna realized.
Myrrima had anointed Rhianna’s eyes, promising that she would be able to see through the mist. Could it be that the strengi-saat really was blinded by the haze that crept along the river?
If that was true, then Myrrima was a wizardess, and suddenly Rhianna knew that it was true and some white-hot part of her soul burned with a desire to be like the stately woman.
Rhianna glistened with sweat. It was as if her body was trying to reject the opium that the healer had given her, so that it purged the drug from every pore. She licked her upper lip and found that it tasted bitter from opium and from the acids in her body.
She felt that surely the strengi-saat would hear them or smell them. But the beast just held still as the boat glided swiftly downriver toward it, and for their part, as the boat drifted slowly and began to spin, the adults on the boat remained still, like frightened rabbits that hold and hold right until the time when you reach down into the tall grass and snatch them up.
Water lapped softly at the sides of the boat, but the river here was swift; it burbled among the rocks and hissed through the canyon. Perhaps the small sounds of their passage were masked by the larger waves lapping the shore.
Rhianna’s gut ached from her wound. As they neared the strengi-saat, the terror that she felt of the monster, the fear that it would violate her again and try to fill her with its children, was overwhelming. She bit down, clenching her jaw, afraid that if she did not, the beast would hear her teeth chatter, or that she would let out a scream, and she realized that her hand was clenching her dirk so hard that it ached.
And suddenly, there was a movement from the boat. Hadissa, the dark-skinned little man from Indhopal, silently rose to his feet, cocked an arm, and let something fly. A dagger flashed end over end, and lodged into the head of the monster, striking deep into its tympanum with a solid thunk.
The strengi-saat gave a startled cry, almost a whine, and leapt forward, lunging into water up to its chest. There its head sank beneath the waves, and it thrashed about, kicking with its back legs.
Without warning, a second shadow dropped from the woods, arced toward the spot, and landed without a sound on the riverbank.
It cocked its head, then lunged out over the water, not a dozen feet in the air.
As it neared the boat, Hadissa made a fantastic leap, launching himself at the monster. He had numerous endowments of brawn and grace, and he seemed almost to fly up into the air to meet the beast.
His scimitar sang from its sheath, and the strengi-saat gave a bark of astonishment.
At the last instant, it must have seen its foe. It raised a claw.
With a vicious swipe of the sword, Hadissa struck. There was a crack of metal as his sword shattered against the strengi-saat’s bony claw.
The strengi-saat dropped, crashing onto the boat, which rocked wildly. The children cried out in terror, fearing that they would capsize. The beast raised its head and snarled, a deep roar, as Myrrima spun and swung a pole, cracking it over the monster’s head.
Rhianna heard a thump and a splash as Hadissa hit first the side of the boat, then water.
There were thuds on the boat planks as Borenson rushed to attack, but in that instant, the strengi-saat’s nostrils flared and it lunged toward the opening in the boxes, its mouth wide, as if to take Rhianna in its teeth.
But Rhianna had a secret of her own. When she was a child of five, her father’s men had been sent to hunt her. In an effort to disguise her, Rhianna’s mother had given her a single endowment of metabolism, taken from a whippet.
Thus, over the years, Rhianna had aged at double speed. Though she had only been born nine years ago, she looked like a girl of thirteen-and she could move with blinding speed.
In stark terror, Rhianna twisted away from the strengi-saat, and the pain of the stitches in her belly flared as she swung her dirk, burying it up to the finger guard into the monster’s tympanum.
Rhianna’s mother had once told her that if you ever needed to stab something, that you should never settle
