Part Two
THE TORTOISE
15. Heresies
Aristas showed him kindness and taught him of the true gods, the Three Brothers, and they became fast friends. When the ship on which they were both prisoners sank during a storm in Lake Strivothos, the Orphan helped Aristas to reach safety.
The village looked as though it had been abandoned at least a year earlier, but as Theron the Pilgrimer soon learned, that was not entirely true.
It stood by itself in a bend of the river he had been following because the roads were faint and overgrown here, as though they hadn’t been used in a very long time. Perhaps a few dozen people had once lived in the small settlement but they were clearly long gone: brambles had grown up the sides of the houses, most of which were only collections of cut branches and mud daubing. The grasses had moved in across the paths and animal trails that had once led to the village’s main road, so that the ramshackle cottages seemed to have grown directly out of the ground without human intervention, like mushrooms.
The weather had been gray and oppressive all day, with spatters of rain, but it was the horizon that worried Theron. The wind was rising—already the trees were beginning to bend—and in the north clouds had piled up in purple-black mounds, ready to roll down across the hills and drench the valley through which they had been traveling since they crossed the Southmarch border two days earlier.
“Boy,” he said to Lorgan, “go and see if any of these huts would shelter us. It’s been raining, so if you find one with a dry floor that should do for us.”
The boy looked to his hooded master, but the man with the bandaged hands was sitting on a stump, taking the opportunity to rest. Theron thought it nearly a miracle that a fellow so weak and unwell could walk so far each day, but something was clearly driving the bandaged stranger to reach Southmarch—not that Theron thought for a moment they would get anywhere near that far. In fact, the increasing strangeness and emptiness of these lands had nearly convinced him that their journey would have to come to an end in one of the towns along the coast of Brenn’s Bay, which they should reach in another few days. If he truly wanted to enter a castle at war, Theron’s odd companion would have to manage that himself.
“Go on, then,” Theron said to the boy. “Find us a place to shelter.”
Lorgan still hesitated. “What are those lumpy things under the eaves?”
Theron squinted at the nearest of the deserted houses. “That? Wasps’ nests, perhaps, but I see no wasps, do you? In any case, if you don’t poke at them they’ll do you no harm—that is well known. Now go and turn up something dry enough to give us shelter.”
The child went forward on tiptoe, which irritated Theron. It was bad enough traveling through such empty, godsforsaken territories with the disturbing evidence of human desertion all around; the boy skulking as if some terrible beast or ogre might step out of the trees at any moment only made things worse. Now Theron was feeling unsettled, too. “For the love of the oracles, would you get on with it?”
Lorgan leaned into the nearest house without touching anything, as though the very wood might be poisonous. He straightened up quickly and shook his head, then went on to the next, stopping only to peer anxiously up at the odd, grayish shapes hanging like curds beneath the eaves on either side of the open doorway. Again the boy did his best to avoid any contact with the house itself, and again he quickly withdrew, shaking his head.
“Muddy,” Lorgan said quietly, but with an air of defiance, as though Theron seemed about to argue, which he wasn’t—the pilgrimer was only weary and hoping they could stop here for the day and build a proper fire to chase the damp cold out of his bones. All he had to do was deliver this hooded fool to someplace as near Southmarch as possible, then take his money and go home. Never again would he have to spend a night in the rainy woods. Never again would he have to hear the sound of a wolf howling and wonder whether he dared to sleep or not. He had an entire sack full of the madman’s money, enough to buy livestock and a fine manor house in south Summerfield along the Brennish border. In fact, with all that gold he could maybe purchase a magistracy—or even a minor title! Theron, Baron of the Stefanian Hills—that was worth a little discomfort, surely… !
His musings were interrupted by a sudden shriek from the boy, who danced back from the door of one of the houses waving his hands, and then to Theron’s utter astonishment began to rise into the air. The pilgrim-master had only an instant to stare, then he felt a sudden sting on his own cheek, another at the back of his head, a third on his arm.
Wasps ... ! was his confused thought—confused because he knew even as he reeled back, flailing his arms and trying to drive the invisible creatures away, that no wasps in the gods’ creation had the power to jerk a boy several handbreadths into the air. After that he scarcely had any time to think of anything.
Something wrapped around his arm as he tried to drive the stinging insects away. Could it be spiders that had attacked them? But the strands were tougher than any cobweb Theron had ever felt. As he snapped one, he felt another wrap around him, then another and another. Still, there was no sign of whatever had attacked him except more stings blossoming painfully on his legs and arms. Theron roared in pain, trying desperately to break free from whatever was binding him. He could hear the boy screeching only a short distance away, and it encouraged him to fight harder. He managed to break through several of the clinging strands long enough to stumble out into the middle of the clearing, away from any of the houses. His employer, the hooded pilgrim, was nowhere to be seen. Theron swiped at his own stinging, aching face and wasted a moment cursing the fellow’s cowardice. Something came off in his hand as he rubbed at himself. He looked down to see, not a dying insect, but a tiny arrow or an even tinier spear, its sharp tip still bloodied, lying broken in his palm.
Theron looked up in wonderment and saw the eaves beneath the nearest house boiling with tiny manlike creatures. The boy had managed to snap the cords that had caught him and had fallen to the ground, but from his shrieking and writhing he was still clearly badly beset. Theron could not even curse now—his superstitious terror was too great. He hesitated for a moment, knowing that this might be his only chance to run and make his own escape from the demonic little creatures that were even now swarming by the dozens down tiny ropes, climbing over the boy to wind him with heavier cords and bind him for good. Only the gods could guess what they would do with the poor child when they had him… !
Theron glimpsed the depths of his own cowardice but could not go there, could not leave the boy to such a fate. Shouting, he ran barehanded toward Lorgan and tried to pick him up. Tiny men stabbed at his hands as he rolled the boy over, flinging many of them off and crushing others. An attack of sudden pinpricks up and down his neck and the side of his face made Theron shriek in pain. As he slapped at the wounds, several of the invisible strands wrapped around him, binding his hand to the side of his head so that the sudden imbalance made him wobble and then fall across the boy. For a moment, as he lay helpless in the grass, he could see the tiny men come leaping through the undergrowth toward him, little horrors with grotesque faces like festival masks, squealing and buzzing in a tongue almost too high-pitched to hear. Then they were on him, dozens at first, then hundreds. He tried to swat them away as they swarmed over him, but he had only one hand free, and a moment later they had wrapped his other wrist with their bindings as well. Lorgan whimpered and squirmed helplessly beneath him.