Kosar heaved the gate away and ran after the tumbler. Something screeched up ahead. It was not A’Meer’s voice, and it sounded too strong to belong to the injured Red Monk.
“A’Meer!” he screamed, trying to shout above the grind and rattle of the tumbler. “It’s coming!”
He reached the square in time to see the tumbler roll across its first victim. A Red Monk, just emerging into the square from an alley a few buildings along, became instantly impaled on its hide. The Monk screamed, and the tumbler paused to roll back, forward, and back again, working barbs through its victim until they held it firm. The Monk shouted again, hacking at itself, determined to cut itself free even if that meant evisceration.
A’Meer was where Kosar had left her, hobbling in a circle around the other mad Monk, launching throwing knives at its face and chest. The thing was hardly moving now, though it still stood and roared and spat blood at her, perhaps its final effective weapon.
The tumbler rolled in a small circle, still crushing down the Monk it had trapped… and then it paused.
“A’Meer, run!”
The tumbler accelerated across the square. It hit the wounded Monk a heartbeat later, smashing it down into the dust in a rain of blood, continuing on until it struck the wall to one side of the park gates. It pulled back and rolled again, crushing into the wall, pressing its prey deeper onto and into itself.
A’Meer had hobbled to a doorway, and she glanced across at Kosar. He waved her over but she seemed to be waiting, holding back, watching the tumbler. It rolled away again, trundling across the square. She hopped down from the doorway and retrieved Kosar’s sword from where it was ground into the bloody dust. Then she started backing away from the tumbler, moving from door to door, following a woman who had been watching the battle as she too tried to slip away.
Kosar met A’Meer at the corner of the square.
“A’Meer!” he said. “Mage shit, A’Meer, I thought you’d be dead.”
“It was only a splash,” she said. “Only a…” Her white skin had grown livid as blood pooled beneath its surface. Veins stood proud on her forehead and cheeks, her eyes were flowered with bursting vessels and her nose leaked blood, but still she held out the sword to him. “It was my father’s.”
“We have to get away from here,” Kosar said. He took the sword and sheathed it. Blood-caked dust fell from the scabbard. “The other Monks are heading this way. Most of Pavisse must have heard.” He quickly unwrapped the sodden strips of cloth from his fingers and discarded them, fearful that some of the Monk’s blood may have splashed there. He felt fine so far. No burning in his veins. No hint of death approaching, at least not from within.
“Rafe?”
“The witch took him through the park. She said she’d tell us where to find them.”
A’Meer’s eyelids were fluttering, and when she coughed she brought up blood. “She may have slayer antidote,” she whispered. “Hey, done two Monks now. Getting good at this.”
The tumbler was roaming the square, rebounding from walls and the park gates, pausing every now and then when one of the Monks cried out. It would rest on them, shifting position like a dog making a comfortable place to lie, and then roll on. Its movements were slower and more ponderous, as if it was sated for now. It left bloody prints on the ground, and soon it looked as if a hundred battles had been fought there, not just one.
Kosar bent down and let A’Meer fall across his right shoulder. She was heavier than she looked-perhaps because she still carried much of her weaponry, even though she’d left a good portion of it in the Monk-but Kosar headed off quickly, fear driving him on, thumping his heart and pounding his legs as he ran. He bore right and they passed from street to alley to courtyard, heading across the hidden districts to the other side of the park. Many people watched them pass, and a few pointed and nudged their neighbors. There they are, fighting a red demon, I tell you! Amazing that even one of them survived.
Kosar knew that they had to leave Pavisse. There was no point in searching for Rafe Baburn now; the witch had taken him away, and for whatever reasons she coveted him, she wanted to keep him safe. She would take him out of town and head north or east, away from Pavisse and Trengborne. If Hope kept her promise she would get a message to them somehow, although Kosar had no notion of how she would achieve this. If they could escape Pavisse, if they were not caught by Monks or militia, if A’Meer did not die and leave him floundering through this on his own… they were still back at the beginning. Rafe was as distant now as he had been before they left A’Meer’s home.
Everything depended on Hope.
RAFE RAN. ITfelt as though they had been running forever. Out of the square and away from the thief and the warrior woman, through the streets with the panicking hordes, Hope pulling him into an open doorway when the crowds ahead of them parted around a rushing figure clad in red. It swung its sword from side to side as if hacking its way through a jungle. Most people moved aside in time; a few did not. Rafe thought of Trengborne again, and his parents, and Hope need not have placed her hand over his mouth to keep him silent.
Although the witch was old it was Rafe who tired first. The last couple of days had been exhausting, physically and mentally, and the voices were bringing him down. The incessant whispering in his mind, as if there were things scheming in there that were apart from him, presences that used him as a channel to their own ends. He knew that this was wrong-there was nothing inside but him, his own wounded soul-and yet that frightened him more. It frightened him because it meant that perhaps the witch was right.
The voices spoke in images, like a dream trying to make itself known, and although some of the smells and sounds and tastes they gave him were familiar, combined they were an enigma. Perhaps they marked him out and made him special. But as yet they were doing little to really help.
Upon reaching the outskirts of the town they slowed to a fast walk. Hope paused at a stall now and then-bought some food, bartered for some warm clothing-but they never stopped for long. Because there were more of those things after them, those things that kept coming when they were shot and stabbed and beaten and knocked down, and even after they’d been bitten by a slayer spider they kept coming…
At the edge of Pavisse, beyond the final rough human encampment at a place where nothing ahead of them was man-made, Hope stopped at last. She looked at Rafe and smiled, and her tattoos smiled as well.
“It’s dangerous out there,” she said, nodding the way they had to go. “People don’t travel that much anymore, and mostly for good reason. Things are changing. I’ve heard lots of gossip and myth, son, but if even a small part of it is true… well, it’s dangerous out there.”
“Worse than back in the town?”
She looked at him for a long time, so long that he thought something had happened to her. Maybe she’d fallen into some witchy sleep. But she was merely looking, and in her eyes he saw wonder.
“You know those things were coming for you, don’t you, Rafe?”
“I suppose I do.”
“And you know why. I’ve told you why.”
He did not want to answer that, but he found himself nodding. The voices, he thought. Because the land talks to me. It talks, and the Red Monks think that the Mages will hear.
“I have to keep you safe,” she said.
“What about the thief?”
“The thief and his Shantasi? Well, I did give my word. And I suppose we could always do with someone who knows how to use a sword. Don’t worry, I’ll get word to them, if they’re still alive. Which I doubt.”
“How will you do that?”
The witch stared across the plains at the horizon shivering in heat haze. “First, you have to help me find a skull raven.”