“Fight,” the voice urged. “Turn and FIGHT.”
Can’t, he thought back. No sword. Can’t kill her. Can’t fight. Kataria betrayed me. Left me. Can’t fight. No point. Run. Run.
“We don’t need her. We don’t need any of them. We can do this. With or without a sword.”
How?
A pain lanced his arms, shooting down into his wrists, draining the warmth from his palms and freezing the blood in his fingers. He looked at them, watched the fleshy hue of his hands slowly be replaced by something cold, something dark, something gray.
“I can save you.”
The color drained from his extremities, the gray crawled up his arms. His breath grew frantic and came out on cold, freezing puffs of air.
“I can make everything stop hurting.”
Icy talons sank into his skull, numbed thought, numbed action.
“Just. . stop. . fighting.”
He screamed. For the cold seeping through his body. For the voice snarling in his head as he shook it violently. Mostly, though, for the sound of feet-with-thumbs padding up behind him.
Panic was as good a remedy as denial; the voice slipped from his thoughts, if not from his body, as he continued to rush through the chasm. The sound of the greenshict behind him faded, but that meant nothing. She could be anywhere, in the kelp, in the coral, in the shadows, even right in front of him.
Actually, he thought as he skidded to a halt, probably not in front of me.
Another forest stretched out before him. A forest of pale, thin tendrils, hanging like unknotted nooses from the darkness high above. The jellylike creatures hovered serenely overhead, either oblivious or uncaring to the eerie curtains they had laid down beneath them.
Lenk happened to catch a hint of movement: a stray fish, something that had lost its way and found something much worse, hanging limply in the grasp of one of the tendrils. It coiled about the body and dragged it up into the shadows to be consumed, preserved in the creature’s bell-like body like a frog in a jar.
A crunch of sand behind him was all it took to break his hesitation and send him flying into the mess of tendrils. He was bigger than a fish, including them, he thought, and whatever they could do couldn’t be worse than what she could.
He thought that right up until he felt his flesh on fire.
They stung, bit, did something to him that he couldn’t see. But as he weaved his way frantically through the tendrils, he could feel the agony of tiny cuts nicking his arms, tiny venomous burns sizzling on his flesh. They conspired, grouped to attempt to overwhelm him.
Fear turned out to be a pretty good solution for that, as well.
The pain lingered, but only lingered. No fresh agonies visited him and when he looked up from his mad rush, he saw the tendrils behind him. And only the tendrils. They swayed with the same gentle impassiveness, as though he had never even run through them. Certainly, she hadn’t followed him.
Had she?
He squinted into the shadows, trying to see his pursuer. She hadn’t. She hadn’t even come to the edge of the tendril curtain. There was no kelp for her to climb, no way through except the way he had come.
Did she just give up?
Perhaps her ears were long enough to hear thoughts, for her retort came in the whine of steel and the shriek of air as a tomahawk came hurtling through the darkness straight at his head.
Fortunately, he felt the air erupt from his lungs before he could feel his head cloven from his shoulders as someone tackled him to the earth. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the sense not to look at his rescuer.
“You,” he hissed.
“Yeah,” Kataria replied. “Nice to see you, too.” She took quick stock of his wounds and stings. “What’s left of you, anyway,” she said, reaching out to touch his face.
“Don’t,” he said, batting her hand away. “Contact with shicts isn’t exactly working out for me today.”
“You can’t blame a shict for these. What did you expect you’d get, running through a bunch of jellyfish?
“Jelly. . fish?”
“The sailors back on the Riptide said their touch is dangerous and needs immediate treatment.” Her hands went for her belt. “Hold still a moment.”
His eyes went wide with alarm. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“The sailors also told me what the treatment was. Stop squirming.”
“No, you stop whatever you’re about to-”
“Look, I’m not going to-”
“There is absolutely no way I’m going to let you-”
“Damn it, Lenk, I am trying to help you, so would you just hold still so I can piss on you?”
“Get off, get off, get off, get off, get off!”
“Fine,” she said, hopping off before he could hurl her off and holding out a hand to him. “We shouldn’t stay here long, anyway. I don’t know why Inqalle isn’t following you, but it won’t last for long.”
Ignoring her hand, Lenk clambered to his feet. “You know her name?”
“All their names,” Kataria replied. “They’re shicts.”
“So are you.”
She affixed a glare upon him. “Don’t.”
“I won’t. I shouldn’t have. Any of it.” He glowered at her, saw the hilt in her grasp. “You have my sword?”
“I found it earlier. I’ve been trying to track you down since.” She held it out to him, snatching it back as he lashed out a hand for it. “What do you plan to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I was intending to kill the thing that’s trying to kill me, but I suppose I could just turn it on myself before you can say anything more stupid.”
She stepped back. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Like that,” Lenk grunted, reaching for the weapon again.
“It doesn’t need to be like that. They’re. . I can talk to them. I can reason with them. They think they’re protecting me, saving me from you. I just need to tell them that-”
“Liar. She consorts with them. Kill her.”
“No,” Lenk growled.
“I don’t know, maybe I can just say. .” Kataria said, searching for an answer in the darkness.
“Strike her down. Kill her now. Remove one less threat.”
“No.”
“It’s a misunderstanding. I can make them see. No one has to die here today-”
“KILL HER.”
“NO!”
He clutched his head, scratched at his skull, tried to pry out the icicles digging into his brain. His scream was violent, his howl wretched, the tears in his eyes frozen upon his cheeks.
“Traitor!” he screamed. “You left me to die! You led her to me!” Shrieking turned to snarling. “No, can’t do this. Not yet. Run. Hide. Don’t want to do this.” He choked on the voice coming out of his throat. “I can’t. . I can’t. . I can’t. .”
She did not move. She took no step forward, reached out with no gentle hand as he cowered beneath something she couldn’t see, covering his head from a gaze that wasn’t there. Nor did she run, resisting every instinct and shred of common sense that told her to.
She stared. She held back tears of her own.
“I didn’t betray you,” she said softly.
“You didn’t choose me, either,” he said.
“I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Neither can I,” he said. “Any of it.”
“Then. .”
He rose. He turned to face her. Halos of frost ringed his eyes, but he was impassive. His skin looked drained, colorless, as though all the life had seeped out of his body and into his eyes. And they, bright and vivid and full of something cold, held her captive as he approached her.