Endling #2 Page 7

  “Soon enough, scholars at the Academy won’t just be studying the end of your species, Byx.” Luca gave a short laugh. “They’ll have lots of extinct species to learn about. Think of all the eumonies! Oh, the revelry!”

  “That’s enough,” Gambler snapped. “Or we’ll be staging a funeral for you.”

  “Species come, species go,” said Luca. “No need to take offense. New ones replace the old. It’s the way of the world.”

  “But when humans are responsible, or someone else—” I began.

  “They’re just more efficient than nature,” Luca said.

  We fell silent. A cold wind rustled the snowblossoms. The sound should have been lovely. Instead, it was vaguely sinister.

  “Say, do you still carry that notebook I gave you?” Luca asked.

  I withdrew it from my pouch. I’d kept notes about my feelings and experiences in it, when time permitted and I could make ink from local plants.

  “You should write down everything you know about dairnes,” Luca said. “Culture. Lore. Music. Stories. All of it.”

  “Why?” I asked, already sure I knew what his answer would be.

  “For scholars.” Luca pointed an index finger at his chest. “People like me. Like I used to be. When you dairnes are finally extinct, there will be a record.”

  Gambler nudged me with his head. “Come on, Byx. Before I do something I won’t regret.”

  We left Luca there, sitting alone in that field of lovely, dangerous blossoms.

  16

  The Crimson Forest

  We reluctantly agreed to accept advice from Luca, and the Beragaz Ford turned out to be right where he’d said it would be. We reached it after two long days of walking. It was not a bridge, just a place where the water was shallow enough to cross.

  Renzo and Gambler searched the area for signs of soldiers but found only footprints. Many footprints, in fact, which made us think an army had crossed the area recently.

  The river, calm but frigid, came up to my neck at the deepest point. Khara went first, and Tobble rode Renzo’s shoulders. Gambler took some time to work up his nerve, then raced across in a comical way, as if he were trying to run on the surface of the river.

  The worst part was fighting the chill after we had become wet to the skin. Snow had begun to fall again, though thankfully there was no wind.

  “From here I estimate we’re only sixty or seventy leagues to the coast,” Luca said, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. “Some of the terrain is pretty rugged, though.”

  “Yes,” Renzo grumbled. “They already know. I told them so.”

  As we trudged on, we were cheered to see a brilliant crimson-leaved forest ahead. We hoped we might find some game to hunt and eat, along with grubs or herbs for Tobble. Bone-tired and chilled as we all were, a warm meal around a cheery, crackling fire was just what we needed. That, and a good night’s sleep, we felt certain, would get us back on track.

  “Once we’re under the trees, we will need to cover our tracks,” Khara said, nodding back at our footprints in the snow.

  “But surely new snow will cover old tracks,” I said.

  Renzo shook his head. “Not from an experienced tracker like, say, Khara.”

  Khara smiled slightly at his compliment. “New snow will fall evenly, and unless it is very deep indeed, it will merely make our tracks a bit less distinct.”

  Tobble glanced behind, swiveling his giant ears. “Why are we worried about tracks? Who’s following us?” he asked nervously.

  “No one, so far as I know,” Khara answered. She shot a meaningful look at Luca. “But you can’t be too careful.”

  I understood Khara’s feelings about Luca. She had made the decision to rescue him. She knew he was speaking the truth now. But she did not like him or trust him. I was certain she did not forgive him, and, for that matter, neither did I.

  It was hard, harboring so many different feelings about someone. Was this what growing up was going to be like? Would everything be this complicated and perplexing? Gray, instead of black and white? Would happiness always be tinged with sorrow? Anger with pity?

  I remembered the last time I’d seen Maia, my mother. We’d been watching butterbats float on the breeze. “I’m bored,” I’d complained. I wanted to have adventures, to see the world, to be brave.

  I’d been in such a hurry to grow up! My mother had looked at me and whispered, “No need to rush toward bravery. No rush at all.”

  I was finally beginning to see what she’d meant.

  We reached the edge of the forest after a long downhill march over broken ground. A narrow but fast-running stream cut straight along the forest wall, like an ineffectual barrier. We found a spot where both banks were high, and we leapt across easily (although Tobble held Renzo’s hand, just in case).

  I paused on the other side, testing the air with my nose. Gambler did the same, and we exchanged a worried glance.

  The scents were all wrong. Forests smell of green things growing and green things rotting. But this forest reeked of a different decay, at once cloyingly sweet and mixed with a sharp edge of ammonia.

  I looked up and saw a tracery of branches that was less angular than usual, more sinuous. The effect should have been graceful, a twining of arcs and bows and spirals. But there was no reassurance to be found in those branches. It was like looking at shoddy weaving, as if all the trees were part of some vast, neglected carpet.

  Renzo approached a smooth gray tree trunk and placed his hand on it. He drew back sharply. “It vibrates! Come feel.”

  I didn’t want to appear cowardly, so I stood beside him and laid my hand on what felt more like a garilan’s hide than actual bark. It was cold to the touch. But I sensed a slow, deep pulse, a beat like a giant’s heart.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Khara said. “Night is coming and we must either be through this forest or spend the night in it.”

  Her words definitely put some spring in my step: I did not wish to spend the night here. None of us did.

  “I keep looking for a fallen branch,” Renzo said. “I could use it to confuse our tracks. But I haven’t seen a single one.”

  “No ground cover, either,” Tobble agreed. “Though surely enough light reaches the ground here to grow a bush, or a thicket or two.”

  He was right. The earth was bare, just dirt and rock. The snow filtered down but melted on contact with the ground.

  Khara increased her pace, not in an alarming way, but subtly, as if hoping it would not be noticed. But the stink, the eeriness, and the pulsation—which now seemed to come from the ground itself—had lit outright fear in me. I felt the cold dread growing with each step, and I knew I was not alone: this was perhaps the longest Tobble had ever gone without speaking, and when I looked at him, I saw a frowning brow over eyes that darted in every direction.

  “Did you know this was here?” I asked Luca.

  He shook his head violently. “No. And if it were my decision, I’d turn around and leave.”

  I started to respond but stopped cold when I saw Gambler stiffen, ears on alert.

  “I hear something,” he said in a hushed voice, and then I heard it, too.

  17

  The Fall

  We all stopped and listened. My hearing is probably the most acute after Gambler’s, although Tobble has remarkable ears as well.

  “A soft sound?” I asked.

  “A slithery sound?” Tobble whispered.

  Gambler didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The sound was nearer and louder. He and I both yelled, “Run!”

  Darkness deepened until we could scarcely find a path. We ran, but not as fast as we would have liked. The trees were too close together, the light too pale. The slithery sound increased in volume until even Khara and Renzo could hear it. It was as if someone were right behind us, dragging a bag of wet stones over mud.

  The trees grew almost impenetrable. “We have to stand and fight!” Khara cried, unsheathing her sword.

  Renzo dre
w his knife and I did likewise. We stood, back to back, the six of us. Luca had no weapon, but his fists were balled and ready. Tobble, armed with only his Far-Near and his unpredictable temper, stood beside me.

  The sounds stopped.

  We stood there, listening, breathing in the acrid ammonia smell, surrounded by the eerie, bloodred canopy that felt less and less like a leafy arbor. But nothing came.

  Khara exhaled slowly. “Let’s move on,” she said at last.

  We did, clawing our way through the tightly knit branches. But immediately the unearthly slithering sounds returned.

  Stumble, claw, pant. Stumble, claw, pant.

  Fear is different when you are running. To flee is to acknowledge your own inability to fight back and win. It’s an admission of weakness, and weakness feeds fear like dry straw on a fire.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a sudden movement: something dark, with short wings and a long body. It flew directly at us, and Renzo reacted with incredible speed, slinging our purloined shield from his back and holding it up seconds before the creature would have struck him.

  The impact knocked him to the ground, but whatever the dark foe was, it flew past.

  “Keep moving, keep moving,” Khara urged, sword at the ready, searching the darkness for our unseen enemy.

  I took a step, stumbled, recovered, and took another step—into nothing.

  My left foot was on solid ground. My right foot was in air.

  I felt, more than saw, a wide, deep hole before me. It was easily one hundred feet across, a vast, yawning emptiness.

  “Aaah!” I cried, as I toppled forward helplessly.

  Renzo grabbed for me, but his hand slipped from my fur and I fell. I tumbled perhaps fifty feet before I remembered my glissaires. Spreading them wide, I caught the air and turned my fall into a swoop.

  But a dairne’s glissaires are not true wings. We cannot fly, only glide. And except in rare cases of very strong updrafts, we can only glide downward.

  On I plummeted, swooping, terrified my own speed would slam me into the walls and knock me unconscious, at which point I would presumably fall to my death.

  I arced in a tight curve, as above me the frantic cries of my friends grew fainter. I could keep spiraling down, or take a gamble and deliberately straighten out until I hit something.

  I chose the second path.

  I was rewarded with a crash into a dirt wall that buckled my elbows and collapsed my glissaires.

  I cried out again, or tried to, but I was choking on falling dirt. I scrabbled frantically, hands grabbing nothing but damp earth. Down I tumbled, battered by the wall, screaming and clutching at anything and everything.

  I landed hard, shockingly hard, all breath pounded out of me.

  My lungs straining, my mouth half-filled with soil, my heart lurching, I realized with a start that my left hand had hold of a protruding root. My right foot had, by some miracle, found a ledge.

  I looked up: starlight and an edge of moon.

  “Byx!” It was Tobble.

  I couldn’t see anyone. The lip of the hole had to be two hundred feet above me. What I could see, crowding the rim of the hole, were the outlines of those eerie trees.

  I heard Khara’s furious cry, followed by Renzo’s shouts and Gambler’s roar, and knew that battle had been joined above me.

  I had no wind to spare for shouting, and they had no time to spare for listening. My heart hammered, my blood raced, my brain was a screaming sound beyond reason. I could not hang on, not for long. And my friends were under attack.

  I had no choice but to trust to my glissaires and try to glide to the bottom, wherever that might be.

  I looked down and, for the first time, saw the hint of a floor. A faint reddish glow revealed the circular bottom, a perfect counterpart to the opening above. This hole I’d fallen into was too symmetrical, too neat, to be some random feature of geography, I realized.

  I glanced down again, as desperate grunts and cries from the battle above escalated.

  The red glow was brightening. I felt the first wave of warmth rise up, and for a giddy moment, I wondered if the updraft might be enough to carry me upward and out.

  That thought died the instant I looked up to judge my chances, for things were changing with dramatic speed. The trees that ringed the hole were moving. I saw swirling branches against the moon, branches that looked more and more like something horrifying.

  I blinked. Blinked again.

  The branches were turning into giant worms.

  Something dropped past me. I couldn’t see what it was, but it was followed by another. Then another.

  I heard Renzo shouting from above, “Look out!” But his cry was not for me.

  Suddenly, like a torrent released from a burst dam, there came a deluge of writhing worms. They fell inches from me as I pressed into the dirt wall, some as short as my arm, some as long as a spear and as thick as a sapling’s trunk.

  It was like standing behind a waterfall. A writhing, ammonia-stinking waterfall of worms.

  Cries of fear met my ears, and through gaps in the horrible rain, I saw Gambler carried over the edge by the flow. He fell, snarling and slashing.

  “Gambler!” I screamed.

  A moment later Khara, Renzo, and Dog fell together, helpless, covered in falling worms.

  “Noooo! Noooo!” I cried.

  I heard, rather than saw, Tobble. Somehow he’d held on against the tide, but now he, too, was falling, following the thinning cascade.

  Deep in the dairne mind there must be a department for calculating angles and odds, and that part of the brain seems to function all on its own. Instantly I pushed away from the wall faceup, twisted as Tobble fell past, and snatched at his braided tails.

  This required folding one glissaire, which of course sent me plunging and spinning, but I drew Tobble close. He had the good sense to grab hold so that I could spread both glissaires, lessening the speed of our fall.

  As best I could, I converted falling into a more horizontal movement, spiraling down and down as the last of the worms fell around us.

  Then, outlined against a rising moon, I saw Luca, still atop the edge of the hole.

  He had betrayed us.

  Again.

  A moment later, I knew that I would forever regret that ungenerous thought. For as Luca called down to us—“Byx! Khara!”—something hit him from behind.

  I had an impression of something in flight. Luca screamed. Tentacles whipped around him with inhuman speed.

  He cried out again. I heard the horrifying sound of bones crushing.

  And then I, too, screamed in horror, as Luca’s bloodied body dropped into the pit.

  18

  The Search Begins

  Hitting bottom was like landing in an endless pile of fish: disgusting, but—thankfully—cushioning. Worms flew as we plowed into them, and we came to a stop covered in the things. Some even split in two, apparently none the worse for wear.

  Though hideous, they did not seem to be venomous, like snakes, or even particularly interested in us. They writhed madly, as if intent on reaching the bottom of the worm layer to get at the glowing ground beneath.

  “Khara!” I cried. Standing on the shifting, slimy mass beneath my feet was difficult, but I struggled to stay erect long enough to be able to see my friends.

  Tobble wailed, “What is happening?”

  “Khara! Renzo! Gambler! Dog!” I yelled. Then, even more hopelessly: “Luca!”

  I saw something lying in a heap and moved toward it. Tobble grabbed my arm, holding me back. “No, Byx. You don’t want to see.”

  I had never heard Tobble sound so grim. And when I looked into his face, I knew that he had seen what he now wished to spare me.

  “Is he—”

  Tobble began to speak, but could not. He bent over and vomited onto a knot of worms beneath him.

  “Byx,” he finally managed to say, “I can’t breathe. I can’t . . . the worms! Byx, I’m so afraid!”<
br />
  “They don’t seem to want to hurt us,” I said, trying to reassure Tobble.

  He looked past me and froze. Moving his mouth as if to speak, he instead let out a strangled cry.

  I felt it before I turned to see it: a terramant. An insect so massive, so alien, that the carpet of worms seemed quaint by comparison.

  I tensed, preparing for the death that was about to come, trying as best I could to shield Tobble from the horrific insect.

  But the terramant seemed indifferent to Tobble and me. It walked past us on its six jointed legs, ignoring the squirming mass beneath, and headed to the lump Tobble wished me not to see.

  It lifted what was left of Luca and trotted away.

  “Look!” Tobble yelled, pointing.

  The terramant was heading briskly down a tunnel, the same way the millions of worms now seemed to be going.

  Beneath our feet, the worms raced to follow their brothers and sisters, and all at once I felt the lovely solidity of actual, worm-free ground.

  As suddenly as they’d appeared, all the worms were gone. “Khara!” I called. “Gambler! Renzo!”

  There was no sound but the dwindling, wet noise of the departing worms.

  “We have to follow,” I said.

  “But—” Tobble began. “But we’re small. And the worms, Byx. I can’t.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We are small. But we’d be smaller still if we didn’t go after our friends.”

  Tobble straightened his shoulders. He shook his head once, as if tossing off unpleasant thoughts. “I’m sorry. When we’re not at sea, wobbyks spend parts of our lives underground. We know what lurks here.”

  “No need to apologize, Tobble.”

  Tobble put his paws on his hips. “Lead on, my friend.”

  Lead? The word startled me. I’d never wanted to lead anyone or anything.

  It was one thing to make a brave noise about following our friends, and a very different thing to figure out how, exactly, we were going to do that.

  I tried my best to look resolute and confident, but of course, Tobble knew me too well.