“She won’t let us fly,” Fallion said. “She’ll send us with an escort.”
“ Let us fly?” Jaz asked. “Let us fly? I wouldn’t get on a graak for anything.”
“You would,” Fallion said, “to save your life.”
Humfrey darted under the bed and came back up with a wilted carrot. He threw it up on Fallion’s pack, and snarled, “Weapon. Weapon, Jaz.”
Fallion smiled at the ferrin’s sense of humor.
Jaz picked up the limp carrot and swished it in the air like a sword, and the ferrin cried in glee and thrust with his spear, engaging the human in mock combat.
Fallion glanced back at the fire and wondered about the strengi-saats. He didn’t always think quickly, but he thought long about things, and deeply.
When Borenson had cut Rhianna open, all that Fallion had seen were eggs-ghastly eggs with thin membranes of yellow skin, cast off from a hideous monster.
But what would the monster have seen? Her babes. Her love. And a strengi-saat would want to protect her young.
How far would she go to do it?
Fallion remembered a heroic tabby cat that he’d seen last spring, fighting off a pair of vicious dogs in an alley while she tried to carry her kitten to safety.
With a dawning sense of apprehension, Fallion got up and ran out into the hallway. Humfrey squeaked and followed. As Fallion raced out the tower door, along a wall-walk, he grabbed a torch from a sconce.
Sir Borenson and Fallion had left Rhianna in her room, to sleep off the effects of the drugs she’d taken. The healers had said that she needed rest.
Perhaps she’ll need more than that, Fallion thought. Perhaps she’ll need protection.
As he ran, Fallion tried to recall their retreat from the hills. The strengisaats had given chase, but had not attacked. Like mothers protecting their young, he thought, just trying to drive us off.
And now he realized that once they had driven off the men, they’d gone back to their children. In fact, Fallion realized now that as they had run, he had heard bell-like calls in the woods far behind them. At least one of the strengi-saats had remained to guard the young.
With rising apprehension Fallion redoubled his pace.
But when we first went up there, he wondered, why hadn’t the strengisaats stayed at the tree to guard their young? Most animals would have stayed to protect their offspring.
Then he recalled the cracking sound in the woods when he’d first found the bodies. It had been loud. Too loud for a creature that moved as silently as a strengi-saat.
The monsters had been trying to draw us away from their young, Fallion realized, the way that a peeweet will fly up and give her call to draw you from her nest. breathlessly, he raced to the lower levels of the keep, burst down the short hallway, and threw open the door to Rhianna’s room.
He found her lying quietly in bed, her face unnaturally pale, almost white, drained of blood by the healers’ opium. Someone had brushed the twigs and leaves from her hair, and washed her face, and Fallion felt astonished that he hadn’t noticed before that she was pretty, with flawless skin and a thin, dainty mouth.
The room was dark. There should have been a candle or two burning by the bed, but either the candles had gone out, or the healers had blown them out so that Rhianna could sleep more easily.
Yet as Fallion held his torch aloft, it seemed that its light grew wan, unable to penetrate the gloom. He felt a faint breeze tickle his right cheek, and glanced toward the window. Shards of glass showed where it had been broken, and other shards lay on the floor. Something had hit the window from the outside.
Humfrey came creeping into the room, hissed a warning. “Dead. Smell dead.”
Fallion inhaled deeply, caught a whiff of putrefaction. He could not see beyond the bars of the windows. It seemed that the gloom grew deeper there, so deep that even the torchlight could not penetrate it.
Humfrey hissed in terror and bolted out the door.
Fallion’s heart raced, and he held the torch aloft. He drew his dagger and held it before him. “I know you’re there,” he said weakly.
There came an answering growl, so soft, like the whisper of distant thunder rolling down from the hills. The torch sputtered and began to die.
Fallion saw the flames suddenly diminishing in size, fighting to stay lit. There was no wind to blow them out.
The strengi-saat is doing it, Fallion realized, sucking away light, the way that it had in the forest.
Fallion’s heart pounded, and he suddenly wished for light, wished for all of the light in the world. He leapt toward the window, hoping that like a bear or a wolf the monster would fear his fire. He thrust the torch through the bars, and suddenly it blazed, impossibly bright, like the flames in an ironmonger’s hearth.
The fire almost seemed to wrap around his arm.
And then he saw the strengi-saat-its enormous head and black eye right outside the window, so much larger than he’d expected.
Many creatures do not look like their young. Fallion had expected from the young that the monster would have soft black fur like a sable or a cat. But the thing that he saw was practically hairless. Its skin was dark and scabby, and though it had no ears, a large tympanum-black skin as tight as a drum-covered much of the head, right behind its eye. The eye itself was completely black, and Fallion saw no hint of a pupil in it. Instead, it looked dull and lifeless and reflected no light, not even the fire of his flaming torch.
If evil could come to life, Fallion thought, this is what it would look like.
“Yaaah!” Fallion shouted as he shoved the torch into the monster’s face.
The torch blazed as if it had just been dipped in oil, and the strengi-saat gave out a harsh cry-not the bell-like tolling that it had given on the hunt, but a shriek of terror. It opened its mouth wide as it did so, revealing long sharp teeth like yellowed ivory, and Fallion let go of the torch, sent it plunging into the monster’s jaws.
The torch blazed brighter and brighter, as if the beast’s breath had caught fire, and giddily Fallion realized that this creature feared fire for good reason: it seemed to catch fire almost at the very smell of smoke.
The strengi-saat leapt from the wall and Fallion saw it now in full as it dropped toward the road. The light shining through the membrane in its wings revealed ghastly veins.
Outside, a guardsman upon the walls gave a shout of alarm. Fallion saw the gleam of burnished armor as the man rushed along the wall, drawing a great bow to the full.
The monster glided from the window and hit the road, perhaps thirty yards out, and crouched for a moment, like a panther looking for a place to spring. It shook its mouth and the torch flew out, went rolling across the ground, growing dim as an ember.
To Fallion’s surprise, it seemed that the torch was almost gone, burnt to a stub, though a moment ago it had been as long as his arm.
Fallion feared that the beast would escape in the darkness.
But at that moment an arrow flashed past the torch and Fallion heard a resounding thwock as it struck the beast’s ribs. The wounded strengi-saat appeared only as a shadow now, a blackness against the night, as it leapt into the air. But Fallion heard the twang of arrows from three or four directions, and some shafts shattered against stone walls while others hit the beast.
He drew his head back from the window, wary of stray arrows, and heard triumphant shouts. “We got it!” “Damn it’s big!”
Fallion peered out. The ground was only two stories below and the monster had not gotten more than two hundred feet from him. The guards rushed to it with torches in hand. These were force soldiers, rich with endowments, and they ran with superhuman speed, converging on the beast as soon as it hit the ground, plunging swords into it.
It lay on the cobblestones, a looming shadow, and gave one final cry, a sound that began as a snarl as loud as thunder, and ended with a wail. The noise made Fallion’s heart quaver, and hairs rose on the back of his neck.
Then it succumbed, dropping as if its life had fled in that horrible cry.
Fallion peered out the window and drew a breath of astonishment. He had only seen the strengi-saats from a distance, shadows against the trees, and had thought them to be a little longer than his horse. But now he saw that the beast was four times the length of a tall man, and that it dwarfed him.
