“Children, get away from there!” Myrrima shouted.
Rhianna whirled. Myrrima had come up behind them, and though Rhianna had never seen her angry, her rage was palpable now.
Water wizards and flameweavers did not get along.
The children stood in shock for a moment, and the little ones were quickest to run to their mother, but the old flameweaver tapped Fallion’s chest with the bowl of his pipe. “This one, he not yours. You know that. He know it now, too.”
21
Sometimes I have looked into the heart of a peasant and found something so malign that it fills me with horror. But more often I have found something so beautiful that it causes me to weep for joy.
That evening after dinner as the children slept, Myrrima took her husband up on deck for a late-night stroll. The winds were light, the evening cool; stars burned down like living coals.
“I caught Fallion talking to that flameweaver today,” she said when they were alone. “I think he suspects what Fallion is.”
“Have you caught Fallion trying to shape flames, set fires?”
“No,” Myrrima said. “But we will soon enough. You saw how he burned away the clouds when we fought Asgaroth, summoning the light?”
“I saw,” Borenson said with an air of resignation. “We knew that this day would come.” He said the words, but he did not feel them. It seemed an irony that Fallion’s father had fought a bitter war against Raj Ahten and his flameweavers, only to have sired a flameweaver of his own.
“It’s a seductive power,” Myrrima said. “Those who use it learn to crave destruction. They yearn to consume.”
“Fallion is a good boy,” Borenson said. “He’ll fight those urges.”
Myrrima’s voice came ragged, “He’ll lose that fight. You know it, and his father knew it.”
Borenson gritted his teeth in determination. Unbidden, he thought of the curse that Asgaroth had laid on Fallion, predicting a future of war and bloodshed. Is that why Fallion was waking to his powers now?
Or was this part of Asgaroth’s plan, to push the boy, force those powers to waken before he was mature enough to handle them?
Borenson had never really known a flameweaver. Oh, he’d fought them in Raj Ahten’s army, and he’d seen a couple of folks demonstrate some small skill at bending flames at summer festivals, but he’d never known one intimately. He’d never tried to raise one.
Gaborn had warned him that this would happen, of course. He’d warned him long ago when he begged Borenson to become Fallion’s protector.
“Give him something to hold on to,” Gaborn had warned. “He won’t always need your sword to protect him. But he’ll need your love and your friendship to protect him from what he can become. He’ll need a father, someone to keep him connected to his humanity, and I won’t be there.”
Borenson stopped and rubbed his temples. Why did I let Gaborn talk me into this?
But he knew the answer. There were some jobs that were just impossible for common men, jobs that would cause them to falter or break. And some combination of stupidity, audacity, and the need to protect others forced Borenson to accept those jobs.
Wearily, he led Myrrima to their bed.
In her dream, Rhianna lay draped over the limb of an elm, the cold moss and bark pressing into her naked flesh. Her clothes were wet and clung to her like damp rags, and her crotch ached from where the strengi-saat had laid its eggs, the big female pressing her ovipositor between Rhianna’s legs, unmindful of the pain or the tearing or the blood or of Rhianna’s screams.
The rape was recent, and Rhianna still hoped for escape. She peered about in the predawn, the light just beginning to wash the stars from heaven, and her breath came in ragged bursts.
She could hear cries in the woods. The cries of other children, the snarling and growls of strengi-saats, like distant thunder.
As she listened, the cries rose all around. North, south, east, and west. She dared not move. Even if she tried to creep away, she knew that they would catch her.
Yet she had to try.
Trembling, almost too frightened to move, she swiveled her head and looked down. The ground was twenty feet below, and she could discern no easy path down, no way to go but to jump.
Better a fast death from a fall, she thought, than a slow one freezing.
With the barest of nudges, she leaned to one side, letting her body slide over the limb. As she began to fall, she twisted in the air, grasping the limb. For a moment she clung, her feet swinging in the air, until she let herself drop.
Wet leaves and detritus cushioned her fall, accompanied by the sound of twigs snapping under her weight, like the bones of mice.
Her legs couldn’t hold the weight, and she fell on her butt, then on her back. The jarring left her hurt, muscles strained to near the snapping point, and she wasn’t sure how fast she would be able to limp away.
Nothing is broken, she told herself hopefully. Nothing is broken.
She climbed to a sitting position, peered through the gloom. There were shadows under the trees. Not the kind of shadows that she was used to, but deeper shadows, ones that moved of their own accord.
The strengi-saats were drawing the light from the air, wrapping themselves in gloom, the way that darkling glories did in the netherworld.
Do they see me? she wondered.
She waited for a brief second, then leapt to her feet and raced to keep up with the rhythm of her skipping heart.
With an endowment of metabolism, she hoped that she could outdistance the monsters.
But had not gone thirty paces when a shadow enveloped her and something hit her from behind, sent her sprawling.
A strengi-saat had her. It held her beneath an immense paw, its claws digging lightly into her back, as it growled deep in its throat.
She heard words in her mind. More than a dream or her imagination. She heard words. “You cannot escape.”
Rhianna bolted upright, found herself in the hold of the ship, felt it gently rocking beneath her.
It had been more than a dream. It was a memory from her time with the strengi-saats, a memory that she knew she would never get free of.
The only thing that hadn’t been real was the strengi-saat’s voice. The creatures had never talked to her, never spoken in her mind.
She had a sudden worry that the creatures still hunted for her. She had escaped, but she worried that it was only for a time.
She wondered even if it was more than a dream. Could it have been a message? Were the strengi-saats capable of Sendings? Could they force messages upon her in her sleep?
She had no idea what the answer might be. Until a week ago, she’d never seen a strengi-saat.
Yet they showed a certain kind of cruel intelligence. They hunted cooperatively, and watched one another’s charges. They attacked only when it was safe.
