His reply was a gaping mouth and an expression both hurt and befuddled; somehow, he suspected that might not be enough to persuade either of them.
“You are unwise to make yourself deaf to the lorekeeper,” Greenhair spoke from the surf. “You are not so out of options that you cannot yet avoid bargaining with me. But every moment you waste, the longfaces draw closer to that which they seek, the earth groans as something claws at it from below and the sea goes silent. .”
She turned her distant gaze out to the waves, her voice a whisper that merged with the hiss of the surf. “It fears to speak, lest it interrupt. You cannot hear it, and I am grateful for that, but someone out there is singing a song that once filled blasphemous chorals. Someone out there is calling. And many, many are answering.
“Distrust me. Loathe me. Fill your head with images of my entrails on your hands. I do not blame you.” She turned to them again and her face was cold porcelain. “But you won’t forsake your companions. Not when fates rush to crush them. I have looked into your thoughts. I know it to be so.”
The glares didn’t dissipate. The tension didn’t, either. But the knife slipped back in its sheath and Asper turned her cold stare away. Denaos muttered and shoved the boy off of him.
“Well, so long as you already know all of that, we can skip the part where we pretend not to need your help.” He cast a sneer at her. “But, given that you can read thoughts, have a good look at this.”
He narrowed his eyes on her, bit his lower lip, assumed a look of such concentration that it appeared he might pull something. She stared back, blinked, and then recoiled, aghast. He offered an ugly smile in reply.
“Yeah,” he said with a black chuckle. “Just remember that.”
“So, how exactly do you plan to get us out?” Asper asked.
“The tide is stubborn, set in its ways. I can coax it back, but only for a short moment. Not nearly long enough to let your vessel slide out naturally.”
“So all our sliding will fall to the unnatural,” Denaos said. He reached out, clapped Dreadaeleon on the shoulder. “You’re up, boy.”
Dreadaeleon felt something shift inside him and his cheeks filled. Trying to hold back the look of disgust, he swallowed the bile back down.
“Right,” he gasped afterward, “just. . just let me. . you know.”
“What? Now?” Denaos asked, incredulous.
“Now what?” Asper asked, slightly less so.
“Nothing,” Dreadaeleon insisted.
“She might as well know,” Denaos said. “I mean, she’s going to.”
“Know what?” Asper asked.
“That he’s-”
“Did I not just stop you from killing the only woman that’s going to get us off this island?” the boy snarled, cutting him off. “Have I not proved my vast, vast, vast intelligence by stopping you from doing something exceedingly stupid yet again? Do you think you can find enough comfort in my almost terrifyingly expanded mind to trust me when I say it’s nothing?”
“Uh. . I suppose. . yes?” Denaos answered sheepishly.
“Fantastic. I’ll be back in a moment.”
A graceless exit, he knew as he tried to keep himself from bursting into a full sprint up the dune and behind a large rock. Yet it wasn’t half as graceless as spewing out a pile of vomit that may or may not start moving of its own accord once it hit the ground. And his hasty retreat would bring about far fewer difficult-to-answer questions, anyway.
Such as why so much as a hard slap could make him feel like his body was crumbling beneath itself.
He fought to keep himself from collapsing, bent at the waist, hands on his knees, heaving into the dirt.
One good push, old man, that’s all it’ll take. Just a quick heave, a splash of bile, wave goodbye as it goes off to find its destiny, then you’re fine. Well, you’re dying, yeah, but you’re still fine in the immediate sense. And it’s the right thing to do. Now the lizardmen are all nice and safe and you’re dying and you should have told her, oh my Gods, you should have said something, should have used them, but she was so. . so. .
Calm down. He smacked his lips, threw his esophagus into his throat. Just go with it. Out with the bad, worry about the rest later. Just so long as you don’t have to puke in front of two women at once. Once more now. Make it good.
He tried again, heaving and heaving, forcing himself to retch. Nothing came of it but a lot of hot air and a thick, panting sound.
A very thick panting sound. One that persisted long after he held his breath.
One that steadily grew louder.
With the instinctive knowledge that he was being watched, he looked up slowly. No eyes stared back at him. But if tongues could stare, the big, pink thing quivering between two rows of giant, sharp teeth certainly would be.
To look at it, the thing’s jaws seemed so terrifyingly huge as to have left no room for anything else, let alone eyes. A blunted, vaguely wolflike head squatted atop powerful shoulders from which long, muscular legs ending in curving claws dug into the sand. A long body ended in equally powerful haunches, a bushy tail slapping at the sand behind it as it stared at Dreadaeleon.
With its tongue.
The longface female, clad in black armor, her sword hefted up over her shoulder and staring at the boy with a morbid grin framed by white hair cropped cruelly short seemed almost a redundancy.
He took a step backward. The sand shifted under his feet.
The creature’s mouth closed, head tilted curiously to the side. Six knife-shaped ears, three to either side of its great, eyeless skull, snapped open like a twitching, furry fan. Its blind gaze followed him as he continued to backpedal, as he stumbled once, as he turned around and ran.
“ZAN QAI YUSH!”
The first thing he heard was the netherling barking a command.
The second thing he heard was the crunch of sand beneath giant claws.
After that, all that remained was the beast as its jaws gaped and it loosed loud, long peals of laughter.
He came flying over the dune and down the sands a moment later- tumbling, really, like a bird whose leather, boneless wings couldn’t lift it from the ground. Sputtering through sand and sick, he tried to shout a warning to his companions below as they cast confused stares up at him.
That didn’t matter, for a moment later, his panic came rampaging over the ridge.
The sikkhun was not any more graceful than the wizard had been as it came crashing onto the slope of the dune and sliding down in a frenzied, gibbering mess. Of course, Dreadaeleon thought as he reached his companions, grace probably didn’t count for a tremendous lot when nature compensated with teeth the size of fingers.
“Gods damn it,” Denaos spat, “why the hell couldn’t you have just held it?”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”
“How could you not?”
“Shut up and move!” Asper shouted.
The sikkhun came barreling forward with great, shrieking laughter as the companions scattered in every direction. Its head swung back and forth, ears wide and twitching as it tried to pick one, its grin as wide and toothsome as a child in a sweetshop, all but heedless of its rider jabbing her spurred boots into its flanks.
Only a swift, metal-handed blow to the back of the beast’s head caused it to settle on a target. Its ears curved like a bell, its head swiveled, and amongst the many cries of alarm, it picked out the loudest. With a giggle and a flurry of sand, it took off.