The prisoners were led into the bowl. Their eyes went wide at the sight of the carnage, and their steps faltered, but the Nar pulled them on. At the sight of the creature standing amid the charnel and more of his fellows looking down upon them, two dropped to their knees and screamed for mercy. The others tried to run.
"Be still!" Argalath shouted. He raised one arm, and the sleeve of his robe fell back. The mottled blue patches of skin along his arm and head began to glow. His reputation among the Creel was well known, and the prisoners stopped. "Hear me," Argalath continued. "You men are condemned to death for crimes against Lord Guric. But your lord is not without mercy. Among his people of the west, his gods of justice allow trial by combat. This man"-Argalath pointed to the creature, still standing motionless several feet from the prisoners-"is Lord Guric's champion. Kill him and prove your innocence. Stay alive, and you will leave here free men."
Argalath stepped away and called to one of the Nar. The man untied the prisoners and removed the collars from their necks, then he and the other Nar stepped back. The prisoners still looked scared, but they were warriors. The thought of leaving this place had enlivened them, and the promise of a fight seemed to have given them strength. But as they rubbed blood back into their arms, every one of them kept looking at the torn body parts all around them. Guric knew such a sight would have completely unmanned one of his own knights.
"Argalath?" said Guric. "You said this… experiment was a success."
"Yes, my lord."
"Then whose are the body parts?" He pointed at the carnage in the bowl. "And why are they… in pieces?"
Argalath shrugged. "The end result was a success. But I fear it took… several attempts."
"Criminals all?"
"Of course."
Guric didn't believe it. But he realized that he no longer cared. They were Nar after all, and Creel-the lowest of a low people. If killing a few of them brought Valia back, he would lose no sleep over it.
Two of the acolytes stepped to the edge of the bowl. They had long wedges of sharp steel that Guric supposed were some sort of swords, though they seemed to him more like cleavers. The Nar tossed the blades down to the prisoners. They picked them up, dropped into defensive crouches, and surrounded the creature.
The man directly in front screamed and charged, while the man behind him came in quietly, but just as quick.
The creature didn't move. Didn't even flinch.
The Creel prisoners knew their business. The one charging head-on brought his blade around in an arc and buried it in the flesh between the creature's neck and right shoulder. Guric heard bone snap, but the creature did not fall, barely even stumbled at the blow. The man coming in from behind showed less skill, but put much more strength into his blow, aiming for the creature's back.
The creature moved at last, with a quickness beyond anything human. He turned to the man behind him. The one in front still had hold of his blade and was dragged along, apparently so surprised that he didn't think to let go. The second man's blade fell, but the creature's arm shot up and caught the man's wrists. The creature squeezed, and even over the man's screams Guric heard bones crumbling. The first man still hadn't let go.
The creature brought the second man around, smashing him into his companion. Both went down. The creature stepped over the second man's discarded sword and reached up to grab the handle of the blade still embedded in his shoulder. As the blade came free, the men at his feet screamed and scrambled in different directions.
Swinging the blade sideways, more like a paddle than a blade, the creature swatted the nearest man onto his back. The prisoner raised his arms to ward off the next strike, but the creature threw the blade aside-with such strength that one of the Nar acolytes standing on the rim had to jump out of the way-and leaped on the man. It reminded Guric of the time he'd seen one of the local tundra tigers take down a swiftstag.
Guric looked away, but he could still hear the man screaming as if he were being flayed.
"Forgive me, my lord," said Argalath, "but you should see this."
Guric clamped his jaw shut, took a deep breath through his nose, and looked up. The man was quite dead, his head hanging limply from the remains of his savaged neck. The creature standing over him-still chewing, Guric noticed with a grimace-was black with blood from his face down to his waist. But even as Guric watched, the creature's grievous wound closed. A stunned silence had filled the room so that Guric was able to hear the broken bone snap back into place.
"You see," said Argalath, "the spirits inside are able to keep their bodies alive by feeding on living flesh. They can heal from the most savage wounds-though the greater the wound the more… um…"
"Food?"
"Very good, my lord. The more food required to repair the damage."
The four remaining prisoners-one of them now weaponless-were not fools. They saw the hopelessness of their cause. All it took was one to make the first move-turning and charging the rim in hopes of escape-and his fellows followed. Each chose a different spot to try to escape, but each met with the same fate. One of Argalath's monsters simply grabbed the man and tossed him back into the bowl.
Guric did not need to see the rest. He turned his back on his counselor and walked out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sun would be down soon. Kadrigul cursed his luck. After the fight with the tundra tigers and whatever those little monsters were-a fight in which he'd lost almost half his Nar-it had taken the survivors most of the day to regroup and find their mounts. He supposed it was a small blessing that those Creel who survived the fight had fled the scene. Had they seen what Soran had done in order to heal his wounds, Kadrigul never would have been able to rally them again. As it was, they'd crept back like beaten dogs, skittish and uncertain.
They'd followed Hweilan's trail yesterday, deeper and deeper into the mountains, until it was too dark to see. They made a cold camp where they stopped. Back at it at first light, and now with the day dying around them, they still hadn't found her.
Not long after finding the trail yesterday, the two sets of tracks they'd been following had been overtaken by many others-tundra tigers, and the smaller, stranger tracks that even the Creel could not identify. It was obvious that Hweilan and whoever was with her had been captured. It went a long way to explaining why Soran could no longer sense the girl. If she had been killed…
But by whom?
The Creel were frightened to the point of breaking. They held these hills in a superstitious dread, and fighting the tigers and those little hunters had pushed their loyalty to its bounds. The only thing keeping them here now was that they were still more afraid of Soran and Kadrigul than whatever might be lurking in the hills.
If the girl had been killed, whoever had done it had left no trace of a body. Tigers might have eaten most of a dead body. They might even have broken the bones to get at the marrow, but they would have left the bones. There would have been signs. And Soran and Kadrigul had found none.
The sun slipped behind the mountains as their company left the treeline. They were in a high, rocky country now, walking in mountain twilight, sometimes passing beside deep ravines or under high cliffs. The thick snowfall made following their quarry easy, but it also hid rocks and cracks in the ground. They could not run the horses for fear of breaking a leg.
Their company skirted the edge of a bare, snow-covered hill, the heights of the Giantspires looming beyond. The Creel snaked out in a long line behind him, every man leading his horse. Soran was just ahead, dragging his mount behind him. He'd taken the lead early that morning, and Kadrigul let him have it. The Creel seemed more than eager to put as much distance between themselves and Soran as Kadrigul would allow.