Blood ran down his upper arms from his shoulders, each gouge throbbing as if a nail had been dragged through his flesh. He cleaned the caitsthe’s blood off his knife, very carefully, then scanned the air for the wrythen, the floor for Tobry. There was no sign of either.
Rix sheathed the knife but kept the sword out and, using his free hand, groped along the piled rubble. ‘Tobe, where are you?’
He had always taken Tobry for granted, had not realised how much he mattered to him or relied on him. His mocking, believe-in-nothing friend could not be dead. ‘Tobe, speak to me. I need you.’
He could not be far away. They had been side by side before they jumped, but if Tobry was under two feet of rubble there would be no helping him.
‘Tobe, if you’re conscious, I need light badly.’
The irony did not escape Rix, but his phobia about the uncanny had to take a back seat now. He was moving along the face of the rock fall when he realised that he could no longer hear the squelch of intestines. He couldn’t hear anything from the place where the caitsthe had fallen. Had it healed itself already?
A faint bluish glow lit the tunnel from behind. Tobry had come through; he was alive! But as Rix spun around, his smile died. The wrythen was hovering a yard above the ground on the other side of the rubble, blocking his retreat. Even if by some miracle he beat the caitsthe, he must next face an opponent he had no means of fighting.
Out of nowhere, the caitsthe launched itself head-first at his groin and there wasn’t time to raise the sword. Rix jammed its tip against the floor and wriggled the blade from side to side, pathetically trying to protect himself with the narrow blade.
The caitsthe’s jaws snapped, trying to close around him, but the blade cut across its mouth. It yelped, withdrew, then dived at him. Rix braced himself and jerked the edge of the blade into its path.
It twisted its head out of the way, losing only an ear, but momentum drove it hard onto the blade, which sliced a hand-span deep down the side of its neck and through its inner shoulder. The arm went limp but the caitsthe’s other hand came curling around behind Rix to wrench his feet from under him.
He lost his grip on the sword, then landed so hard on the rubble that he went numb from the waist down. The caitsthe was snapping and snarling, blood pouring from the terrible wound in its shoulder. It attempted a lunge to finish him off but the sword blade was caught on bone and the lunge only drove it deeper. Nothing else could have saved him.
It lurched backwards, reaching across with its good arm to pull the sword free, then jerked away as though the hilt had burnt it. The enchantment was the only thing protecting Rix now.
Yellow-brown fluid squirted from glands behind the caitsthe’s ears onto the wound; froth foamed up to cover it. The creature’s eyes glazed and it made several uncoordinated snapping motions with its teeth.
Rix’s numbness was fading but the smell of the glandular fluid made his nose drip and his stomach heave. As he tried to get up, the strength drained from him; the warmth fled from his body and was replaced with ice. His limbs might have been weighed down with rubble — he could barely move them. What was the caitsthe doing to him?
A convulsive blow sent the sword clattering across the rubble. Rix managed to rise to his hands and knees, though there were pins and needles in his feet and his shoulders had an unpleasant, jelly-like quality. The caitsthe was temporarily incapacitated as it shifted the tissues and bone to heal itself. Was it drawing on his strength for that purpose? Could it do such a thing?
It let out a groan; its free hand skimmed its stomach and it winced. Rix’s knife gouge was no longer visible but its belly bulged like a melon above its livers and the sweat running down its front was steaming there. What if the twin livers were involved in shapeshifting or healing? Were they painful because they had been so overworked, forced to heal by shifting again and again?
He groped behind him for a chunk of rock, then flung it at the bulge. The caitsthe screamed and convulsed, flinging its arms up and out repeatedly like a grotesque mechanical toy.
The cold and the weakness eased suddenly. Rix staggered forwards, fumbling for his knife, knowing that this was his last chance to finish the beast but not sure his legs would hold him up. If he had guessed wrong about the caitsthe it would tear his head off.
He swayed on his feet, the icy numbness creeping up his bones again. Should he try to cut the twin livers out? Rix wasn’t sure he was up to it. The caitsthe struck at him feebly. A feint intended to draw him in? He had to take the risk.
It struck again, at his head this time. Rix ducked but it was too much for his shaky knees, which collapsed under him. He landed on his kneecaps, scrabbled forwards and hacked upwards with the knife.
His aim was true and the caitsthe’s severed gonads went flying across the tunnel. It screamed shrilly, clutched at its groin and every gland on its body squirted pungent fluids, fogging the air around it. It let out an echoing howl, the same cry it had made when it had first changed to man-form, and its dim outline began shifting again, turning back to the huge cat that was its natural form. Was shifting a quick way of healing itself?
Rix crawled across to his sword and, using it as a crutch, forced himself to his feet. He had never fought anything this tough before. He swayed back and forth, trying to will strength into his limbs for the next battle. His last. He could not take on a healed caitsthe and win, not now that he was being drained again. So cold; so very cold. He tried to lift the sword but his arm had the weight of an iron ingot. How was the caitsthe doing that?
Mother will be furious, he thought oddly. My death is going to ruin all her plans. It would also leave House Ricinus vulnerable and its people unprotected, and Rix regretted that far more. Why hadn’t he given thought to his responsibilities before he came up here?
He realised that he had been standing still for minutes, watching the outline through the yellow fog. Now it dispersed, revealing the caitsthe still in man-form save for the tufted ears and furry tail — the shifting had not gone to completion. He could feel heat radiating off it. The shifter was as hot as he was cold, far hotter than any live creature should be. It seemed thinner and its formerly taut skin was baggy, as though it had burnt a lot of weight in a short time.
Its glands dribbled, though not enough to form the fog. Again it howled and tried to shift to cat-form but the howl died away in a frustrated yelp. After another series of dribbles it snapped weakly at its injured shoulder and in the direction of its groin. Steam hissed from its mouth, ending in a series of puffs like smoke rings. Its head lolled.
‘Kirikay, Kirikay,’ it gasped, reaching out towards the wrythen. The caitsthe tried to stand up, made it halfway then crashed to the floor and did not move.
Rix suspected another trick, though this did not look like one. The creature’s body seemed to shrink as it cooled, the skin sagging like a deflated balloon, and its limbs had the limpness of death. Could it be dead? If it was, how had he done it without cutting out its livers?
Rix felt the draining again, the creeping cold and heaviness of his arms and legs, but this time instinct prompted him to look over his shoulder. The hovering wrythen had no feet, its lower legs terminating in stumps of shattered bone. His gaze travelled upwards and he saw that its right arm was extended towards him. A pale blue thread of light connected them. The draining had not come from the caitsthe at all.
The wrythen was attacking him with the one thing he had no defence against — magery. It made a swirling motion with one hand, as if snapping a length of string, and the blue thread broke.
All light in the cavern was extinguished.