Lyrec (17 page)

Malchavik looked at the clubs and torches he priest’s party carried. He laughed in the priest’s face. “Is the incineration of so many innocents a scheme of the church these days? Did Voed come down and tell you to kill us in our sleep?” He took another step toward the priest. “That sounds like the work of men to me, unless the gods have become dastards.”

“You blaspheme! Take care with your words,” warned Varenukha.

“I will use far worse things than words before morning.” He faced his people. More of them had arrived. He looked through their minds, found no knowledge of his daughter‘s whereabouts. No one had seen her. No one had saved her. Tears rimmed his eyes, but he denied the urge to give up. Some of the village still lived. People had survived. He reached out to those nearest. They clasped his hands, their own trembling, he gripped them hard, imparting his resolve physically as he did mentally. They in turn reached out to others who linked hands with them and then to others still, until the entire group had become one closed chain.

The five from Trufege didn’t know what the linking of hands meant—what they knew of Kobachs was founded on lies and legends that rarely contained more than a kernel of truth—but the priest could sense this was not in his favor. He grabbed a torch from one of his dumbfounded villagers. He raised the torch, intending to fling it at the Kobachs blocking the bridge, hoping to create a panic situation in which he could escape. Even if he had to throw the four others with him to the witches, he would escape.

The torch sputtered and died.

Varenukha lowered and then dropped it. He said, “Quick, into the water!” and took one step toward the rail himself.

Suddenly he could not breathe and his legs would not obey him. He heard his men begin to cough and choke. The furthest man back stumbled away and tried to make for the end of the bridge. Varenukha saw him jerk rigid. The body snapped like a dry stick
 
and fell to the ground. It flopped there, gasping like some dying fish. Varenukha felt as much as heard a pop in his nose. Warm blood trickled down his lip. He clawed at his throat, grabbed the flesh beneath his chin and tried to pull his throat open.

From far away came a strange animal cry. The pressure on Varenukha’s throat relaxed and he collapsed in the center of the bridge.

“Look there,” shouted one of the Kobach sentries, who had broken the chain to point. They all stared up at the sky. Varenukha tilted his head to see what they were looking at. The strange animal ululation was repeated and then answered from further off. A swift, winged shadow plunged into one of the burning buildings; but the Kobachs were watching something above that. He saw a second huge shape descending toward a burning house at the edge of Ukobachia.
 
“How’s it possible?” someone asked. No one could answer. Varenukha forgot the ebbing pain in his throat.

The firelight clearly defined it. The thing had bulging eyes and great leathery wings. Its arms were short, the legs long and tightly muscled, ending in splayed talons. Varenukha could not believe what he saw. It was a shape out of legend, a mythical nightmare. Someone named it even as the word took form in his mind: “Krykwyre.” The monster entered the flames as the first one had done. A third emerged from the clouds beyond the village, visible only as a shiny speck. It circled the river briefly. It didn’t dive for a building, but hovered. In another moment they knew why. Uttering its shrill cry, the krykwyre dove toward the bridge.

“Run!” The other Kobachs released hands and scattered back to the road. They turned from their vanquished town, vanished into the valley forest—all but Malchavik. The krykwyre scared him as much as any of them, but he no longer cared if he died this night. He was going to take revenge for his daughter’s death.

The priest was getting to his knees as fast as he could and trying to crab his way to the side of the bridge. The way was open now. Those guarding the far side had run away, too.

Malchavik lowered his head, formed his anger and misery into a weapon.

An invisible hand grabbed the priest and dragged him down in the center of the bridge. Varenukha looked up and saw the one Kobach who had not fled. “What are you doing?” he cried. “It’s coming for us!” The monster screeched, and Varenukha screamed out at the same time, as if in answer. His back arched and his tongue rimmed his mouth. His wide eyes stared helplessly at the monster swooping nearer with every beat of its wings. He could make out the details in its shape now. He tried to reach out to the old man, to plead. The Kobach came near, but the pain did not subside. It only grew worse.

Sweat ran down Malchavik’s face. His skin was ashen from the effort. He was aging years with every moment, but he would not stop now. Bending down, he reached out, placed one hand on each of the priest’s legs below the knee. The pain in Varenukha’s upper body stopped abruptly. But in the same instant a new searing agony made him buck and writhe. His hand swiped vainly at the Kobach. The air blackened, thickened. Then the pain ceased.

Malchavik released his hold and limped, wheezing, as quickly as he could to the railing. With a last ragged look back at the priest, he said, “For…my daughter,” then pulled himself under the top rail and dropped into the river.

Varenukha tried to sit, but could not make his feet move or brace him.

The monster extended its legs as it swooped.

Varenukha rolled onto his side, then flipped himself up into a sitting position. He grabbed hold of his thigh to hold himself up. He felt along his legs. They were like eels. The bones between his knee and ankle had melted! He could not stand. He looked for help, but all of his men lay dead or dying on the bridge, killed by the Kobachs’ power. The monster shrieked as it struck. Varenukha glanced up, then threw himself flat. Black talons slashed the air above him. He dug his hands into the dirt and pulled himself toward the railing.

The krykwyre circled above him again.

Varenukha clawed at the railing, fingers shredding with splinters that he hardly felt as he strained and caught hold of an upright, slapped his other hand around it, hauling himself toward escape in the safety of the water as enormous wings reverberated like the heartbeat of the night. He did not have to look back to see the greenish gray scales, the yellow globular eyes with pin-prick pupils and the talons clicking in angry anticipation; he knew it was there and pulled all the harder for it.

With one arm under the railing, he was caught.

He screamed and tugged madly, glancing wildly back to find no talons, but his robes caught on a broken board. He whined and ripped it free, and then turned to slip beneath the rail. He saw his reflection staring up at him from the dark security of the river, and he threw himself forward to join it, even as the talons of the diving krykwyre punctured his sides and split him open in an instant like the tail of a shellfish.

*****

The icy river shocked Malchavik to alertness, granting him strength through fear. The current propelled him along and down. He let it carry him, and, when it slackened, he kicked his way to the surface. He came up not far from the bank, and he swam there as fast as he could. Reaching the shallows, he staggered onto the bank and collapsed. His body quaked with each deep-drawn gasp. He lay there forever.

The bridge and the land rising to meet it blocked his view of the dying village, but the hidden flames illuminated great crowning chimneys of smoke that reached into the clouds. And as if smoke could condense and ascend with sentience, the gray-green krykwyres rose out of it. They each carried a blackened, sometimes burning, corpse.

Malchavik stood cautiously. He stumbled up the bank until he could see the entire scene. He could not believe what he beheld. They had been portrayed in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of illuminated stories and tapestries across the land; he had even once witnessed a festival in Dolgellum in which a celebrant had come dressed as one. He recalled his mother’s words from when he was a child: “They wait outside to claim your body and take your soul to Mordus, who owns you in death, for they will eat you when they catch you. Now, go to sleep.”

He laughed at the memory, which started him coughing. It was impossible that these things were real—monsters hidden for all these many years in the Grymwyre Mountains? Impossible. And yet…

He stared at his burning village. Then something else caught his attention and he glanced into the sky. The dark cloud that had settled over the valley was spinning like an inverted whirlpool. It reflected none of the firelight, was in fact so dark that he had not seen it before. He strained his eyes—it seemed that far down in that swirling hole lay a tiny ball of fire, larger than a star, but not so big or bright as a moon.

Malchavik ducked back down and considered what he had seen. His disbelief was gone—this was something beyond anything he understood. He needed to talk with others of his kind; he had to go after them. That meant he had to cross the bridge again. He edged along the bank until he reached the corner of the first plank, then raised his head to ensure that no scaled horror lurked about there—and stared straight into the face of death.
 

Varenukha’s eyes looked past him and beyond life itself. His dark tongue dangled from his mouth, licking the boards. The head had been ripped from the body and the body had disappeared. A great dark smear across the boards showed where it had been. Malchavik looked down the length of the bridge and saw that all the other bodies had vanished, too. The bridge was empty. Using the railing for support, he climbed up.

The krykwyres had lifted the corpses of Ukobachia out of the flames, up into the sky, but had not carried them away. Upon the quay, Malchavik saw bodies stacked, placed there by the monsters. Among the smoldering corpses a bright white figure walked. A total of four krykwyres—the last just settling on the quay with another corpse—towered over the figure, but were apparently under its direction. They all stood back from it. A soft purling sound came to Malchavik. The white figure grew incandescent. Around it, slowly, one by one, the bodies rose into the air and sped toward the hole in the center of the cloud. They tumbled faster and faster, whirling around the outside of the vast whirlpool before shooting into its center one after the other. Malchavik unconsciously stood up, realizing that one of those bodies had to be Pavra. What would happen to her? Why was she being taken away? He took a step across the bridge, then saw what he was doing and stopped. He could hardly go chasing down to the quay. No. Pavra was dead. What he had to do now was get to his people and perform the proper ritual so that her soul was protected. So that all their souls were protected. The white creature out there on the quay could take only her body. It would never own the soul of his little child with the flower on her head…
 

He hugged the rail and began to cry.

His world had come apart. Death had invaded it. Death from the skies. He raised his head. Was he witnessing the presence of a god? Could the figure on the quay be Mordus himself? Malchavik wiped his eyes and looked again down the river.

The quay was empty. The figure had gone.

Malchavik trembled. Had the priest been telling the truth? Their village had been destroyed by the gods? If so, why? They were peaceful people. The stories of their attempts to equate themselves with the gods were all fabrications of outsiders; surely omnipotent Voed knew better. But what if that
had
been Mordus. Well, suppose it had? That could as easily stand in their favor. The krykwyre had come to slay the priest for his execrable act. No one else had been slain by them that he’d seen. Only the bodies of the dead had been delivered up. Yes, yes, he did remember tales from the early days when his grandfather and father had been warriors, tales from soldiers who claimed to have lain near death on a battlefield and actually seen the dark god come to collect those who were now part of his domain.
 
But the story went that the god
touched
them, leaving the bodies and leading away the souls. The
dark
god.
 

He was no philosopher. He needed help with the contradictions. He also needed warmth. His teeth were chattering.

Most of the village had burned down to rubble. Small fires flickered across the stretch of land. Nothing of him was left there. He turned and started away toward the woods, rubbing his arms to keep warm. His legs ached, trying to cramp, and he shuffled so that he didn’t have to bend them too much. Soon he would have no energy left.

The path was hard to follow in the utter darkness beneath the trees. Malchavik could not go very far. He collapsed against a tree and, after resting a moment, closed his eyes and called out silently to those who had gone before him. From far ahead he received a dim reply. They answered him with energy, the strength to continue. They would wait for him.

He pushed off and continued along the trail. It paralleled the river, leading in and out of the foothills. An hour later he entered the outskirts of Boreshum Forest. The trail he followed eventually led him across the South Road to Dolgellum. He knew precisely where he was then. Not four steys south, King Dekür had been slain. He thought about that as he went along, wondering if perhaps the same cloud had opened up and swallowed the princess Lewyn.

On the opposite side of the South Road, Malchavik paused to contact his people again. The answer was much stronger now, but they entreated him to hurry.

The forest swallowed him again as he hobbled off toward the rendezvous.

*****

Within minutes of Malchavik’s passing, a dozen horses kicked up the dust of the South Road. In the dark forest not one of the Atlarman soldiers saw the tracks that many feet had made across the road only an hour before. They rode in tight formation, Faubus in the lead. Their eyes were wide, searching the depths on either side for Voed knew what horrors; finding none, they imagined their own.

Faubus had deployed one group some distance back to make a camp and prepare for a search of Boreshum beginning at first light. Between the camp and the mountains lay foothills where Kobach farms lay. Faubus noted that each one was dark and apparently serene. Neither he nor his men had an inkling of what awaited them ahead.