Fulbreech gasped but did not scream. Thasha rushed forward to pull the blade free, but Hercol stayed her with a hand. Too late. Removing the blade would only speed the Simjan’s death.
Of course the wound gushed all the same. Fulbreech tried and failed to lift his head. “I can’t feel a thing,” he croaked.
“But you are dying, all the same,” said Hercol.
“And your soul is damned,” said Jalantri.
“Who knows?” said Fulbreech, drooling blood now, and yet somehow still amused. Then his eyes found Thasha’s once more. Through hideous expulsions of bile and blood, he said, “You’ll… fight?”
“Fight Arunis?” said Thasha. “Of course we will.”
Suddenly Fulbreech screamed. He convulsed, his paralysis ending with his life. But through the torment his eyes blazed with sudden defiance. With a terrible effort, choking on his own fluids, he spat out a last word.
“What was that?” said Bolutu, starting forward. “Did you say Gurishal?”
Fulbreech nodded. Then he raised a hand, shaking as with palsy, and Thasha took it, and held it as he died.
No one else made a sound. When Fulbreech was still at last, Thasha turned and looked blankly at Hercol.
“You asked for the truth,” she said.
All of this had happened by the light from the pool alone. But the strange ooze was draining away, and the purple light was dying. “In a few minutes we’ll be blind again,” said Alyash, his voice shaking. “We need a plan, Stanapeth.”
“The plan has not changed,” said Hercol. “Come, let us be off.”
“But friends!” cried Bolutu, “didn’t you hear his last word? Gurishal! The River of Shadows touches death’s kingdom on Gurishal! Fulbreech has given us the key. Gurishal is where we can send the Nilstone out of Alifros forever.”
“And before he came here, Arunis did not know,” said Dastu. Thasha and Pazel turned to face him, and for a moment there was no hatred between them, only wonder and amazement.
“Gods,” said Pazel, “you must be right. He’s been doing everything he can to get the Shaggat there, with the Nilstone in hand. And yet it’s the one place in Alifros where we want the Stone to go.”
“He was being used,” said Dastu. “Arunis the sorcerer was being used.”
“No wonder he was furious,” said Thasha.
Ibjen looked up at her, blinking back his tears. “Fulbreech may have helped you in the end,” he said, “but he betrayed you a moment before. He was calling out to Arunis, trying to get his attention, to tell him we stood by this pool. He started the moment you declared you could not heal him, Thashiziq. The voices told me: ‘Come away, come away, you’re doomed, you’re in the sorcerer’s trap.’ ”
“You did well to kill him,” said Neda. “Don’t weep; there is no shame in your act.”
Ibjen shook his head. “It’s not because of my oath,” he said. “It’s because I waited, hoping one of you would do it for me. That is worse. That is meaner.”
Hercol looked up: the darkness was descending like a black fog. “No more delay,” he said. “We must get away from here, away from those bats, before we try again with the torch.”
The elder Turach gazed at him heavily. “And then?” he said.
“Then we backtrack to the trail we were marking,” said Hercol, “and resume the search.”
“Resume!” laughed Alyash. “Begin it, you mean! Only this time we’ve got piss-all to go by. Stanapeth, it’s over. You can fool yourself that you might find a needle in a haystack-no, in a blary barn-if you’ve got a lodestone to drag around through the hay. But our lodestone was a cheat.”
“We must find the place where the River of Shadows breaks the surface,” said Hercol. “What else would you counsel?”
“To follow our own trail back to the vine, that’s what,” cried Alyash. “And the vine to blessed daylight.”
Several of the soldiers, human and dlomic alike, nodded approvingly. Hercol looked at them in alarm. “You know that to concede the Nilstone to Arunis means death to us all,” he said. “Surely Fulbreech made that clear once again?”
“Let’s just start walking,” pleaded Big Skip.
A furtive movement caught Thasha’s eye: Jalantri was squeezing Neda’s hand in his. She pulled away. Jalantri whispered something in Mzithrini that unsettled her even more. But before he finished there came a loud pop, like a child’s toy cannon, and Jalantri howled in pain.
Something black and amorphous had struck the back of his head. He stumbled, groping at it. The thing slipped through his fingers again and again, and yet one end of it seemed embedded in his skin. At last he ripped it away, leaving a coin-sized wound.
Pop. Pop. Thasha felt a blow to her arm, and a sharp stab. An identical creature was there, wriggling, burrowing into her flesh. “Leeches!” cried Dastu, as another struck his leg. “But they’re coming like cannon-shot!”
Pop. Pop. Pop. “The globe mushrooms!” said Ensyl, pointing. “They’re bursting out of them! Great Mother, there could be thousands.”
All at once the air was thick with the foul, biting creatures. Thasha felt them strike her again, in the shoulder, in the neck. “Out of here!” bellowed Hercol. “Get beyond the globes, beyond that ridge we descended! But then stop and regroup, for the love of Rin!”
Humans and dlomu were bolting in all directions. Neeps tripped over Fulbreech; Jalantri, his chest thick with leeches, shouted for Neda as he ran. Alyash was waving his pistol, of all things. Then Pazel slipped in the slime from the pool, and cried out as his wounded leg was wrenched. Thasha dived for him, grabbed his arm and dragged him, leeches and all, out through the fern-fungi, and under the fallen tree, and then “Cover your eyes!”
— right up the slope, the wall of exploding fungi, and on among the towering trees until she was sure nothing else was striking them.
Twenty feet from the pool, and it was nearly pitch black. “Tear them off, Pazel!” she shouted.
“I am! I am!”
Gods, but they hurt. Eight, nine of them-and another in the small of her back. She was still trying to get a grip on it when she felt Pazel’s fingers. He groped, squeezed, ripped: the leech was gone, along with a barbed mouthful of her skin. Then a match flared in the blackness, somewhere off to their left. It died, and Alyash bellowed in rage. Another match glowed, and this time Alyash managed to light the torch. “Here, here, to me!” he bellowed. “You heard Stanapeth! Regroup!”
Thasha and Pazel stumbled toward him. Others, by the sound of it, were doing the same. Then Alyash screamed as a flickering, flapping darkness took his arm. The torchlight disappeared. Thasha caught the stink of burning flesh.
“The bats!” cried Alyash. “They attacked the torch! Devils in the flesh, they’re suicidal!”
“Light it again! Light it again!”
“Ain’t but half a dozen matches left-”
Another flared: Thasha saw Alyash’s crazed eyes by its light-and then sudden motion, and darkness. “Damn the mucking things!” cried the bosun. “It’s impossible! They dive on the flame!”
“Strike no more matches,” came Hercol’s voice, suddenly. “We must get farther from their roosting-place; there are simply too many here. Do not run, do not separate! But tell me you’re here! Turachs! Where are you?”
“Here!” shouted the younger of the soldiers. “Undrabust is with me. We’re all right, we’re just-”
“Vispek!” shouted Hercol. “Jalantri! Neda Ygrael!”
Only Neda answered him-and from a surprising distance. Thasha heard Pazel’s frightened gasp. “Neda!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Over here! Hurry, hurry!”
This time there was no answer at all. The bats flowed about them like water. Nothing was visible save the fading glow from the pool.
Footsteps crashed nearer, and then Neeps and the younger Turach found them, their blind hands groping. From farther off, the dlomic warriors shouted, drawing nearer.
“But the sfvantskors!” cried Pazel. “I can’t hear their voices anymore!”
“Forget them,” said Alyash. “They ran the wrong way.”
Furious, Pazel turned in the direction of Alyash’s voice. “She’s my Gods-damned sister!” he shouted.