Servant of the Dragon (39 page)

The ghoul hit the ground at Sharina's side, hopped backwards with its arms flailing—she jumped away but wasn't quick enough to avoid a claw-slash on her left calf—and finally flopped on its back and continued to thrash. Each of its four limbs jerked in a different rhythm.

Its jaws opened, displaying interlocking canines as long as Sharina's little finger. The tongue and lining of the ghoul's mouth were white, streaked with blue veins. It said,
"Kuk kuk kuk
," and stopped. The long body arched in a convulsion that made it wheeze. The limbs drummed briefly; then the ghoul went flaccid.

Sharina let out her breath. Her hands were trembling so badly that after two failures to sheathe the Pewle knife, she continued to hold the weapon as she examined the scratch on her leg. It normally wouldn't have been serious, but given the condition of the ghoul's claws she'd better clean it immediately.

She looked up at her companion. She said, "That was good work, Dalar."

"I am pleased to have been of service to my mistress," the bird said. A tone of crowing delight colored the neutral simplicity of the words. He added, "The creature was new to me."

"And me," said Sharina. "I want to rub this cut clean with a dock leaf and then see if we can find some spiderwebs to pack it with. Nonnus—"

A ghoul called in the middle distance. Another responded from farther away. Before that cry ended, at least a dozen more of the creatures were giving tongue. All of them seemed to be south of where Sharina and Dalar stood, but some sounded very close.

"Or again, the cut can wait," Sharina said. Together they began jogging northward out of the ruins.

* * *

Elfin sang somewhere nearby, though not so close that Cashel could make out the words. That was just as well, he guessed.

He thumbed the last of the pine nuts into his left palm, then dropped the stripped cone on the ground beside him. He rose to his feet, chewing the little nuts. Cashel didn't know if he'd be able to get used to them as a steady diet—they had an aftertaste of turpentine, though he didn't notice it when each mouthful was going down—but for keeping him fed here in the Underworld they were fine.

"The woods here seem really quiet," he said to the ring. "Except for Elfin, I mean. Is it always like this?"

"The other inhabitants on this level are afraid of you," Krias said. "They're still here, never fear. They'll come out when you're gone."

"Ah," said Cashel, nodding. "But you mean they're afraid of
you
."

"It's all the same, sheep-boy," the ring said.

"No," said Cashel, "it's not."

He smiled at the ring to show he wasn't angry or anything. He wasn't going to leave stand a false statement that touched him, though.

Cashel stretched and gave a quick spin of his staff. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the singing and called, "Hey Elfin! Come here if you like. I won't hurt you."

The music stopped, then resumed. It wasn't coming closer.

"He didn't, you know, attack me the way the rest of his people did," Cashel explained to the ring. Not that he had to answer to Krias for the company he kept. "And he sure can play and sing, can't he?"

"The rest of
his
people?" Krias said. The little demon cackled with laughter. "
You're
Elfin's people, sheep-boy. The People stole him from his cradle as an infant. Didn't you listen to
what
he was singing?"

"Well," Cashel said. "Songs don't really mean anything, Krias. Granny Brisa used to sing about her love across the sea or the gray-eyed lad who loved her, all sorts of things like that. Nobody'd loved
her
since her husband died back before I was born."

The ring demon gave a sigh that wasn't as theatrical as his usual. "Well, that's not what the People sing about," he said. "They made that song when they killed the nurse and stole Elfin—not that his name was Elfin, of course. And they've got a thousand more songs like it, every one of them true."

"Duzi!" Cashel said in amazement. "Why, that's terrible!"

Krias cackled. "They weren't singing when we last saw them, were they?" he added gleefully.

Cashel made a trumpet of his hands, leaning the staff in the crook of his right elbow, and bellowed, "Elfin! Come to me! I'll take you back home as soon as I'm done with my business here!"

The boy didn't even pause in his singing. It was awful to think that those words were real.

"Well, maybe he'll catch up with us later," Cashel said. "And anyway, we'll be coming back this way, won't we?"

"I'm a magic ring," Krias snapped, "not a fortune-telling ring. I don't have the slightest idea what you'll be doing, sheep-boy, except that it'll be stupid."

"Well, we may as well move on," Cashel said. He couldn't help smiling at the ring's fussiness.

"You know?" he added. "Back in the borough boys poke straws into an anthill and watch the ants run around in circles. I guess it doesn't hurt anybody, and sometimes it's pretty funny to watch."

Krias spluttered like a kettle on the boil. Cashel continued to grin as he walked on.

Cashel had been seeing a rocky hill ahead every time the trees overhead were thin. He stepped through a copse of beeches—almost beeches, anyway; the leaves were the right saw-edged shape but they were way too big for adult trees—and saw it rising right there, a stone's throw away.

He'd seen it before, or near enough. "This is the same place where I met Landure," he said. "Did we just go around in a circle, Master Krias?"

"Look at the portal, sheep-boy," the ring said. "Does
that
look like where we came through before? No! Because this is the gateway to the second level."

"Yeah, I see it now," Cashel said, walking around the spur of rock that pretty well hid the opening from the angle they'd approached. The door was wood, not bronze, true enough.

He didn't bother telling Krias he hadn't seen the door at first. The demon already knew that, and excuses weren't worth much even when they were better than, "I didn't see what was in plain sight."

It was a big, heavy door, all oak and fastened with trenails instead of iron. The workmen had been more interested in weight than craftsmanship. The staves weren't dovetailed, so despite how thick they were Cashel could see light through the cracks.

The light was a sickly green. Well, it'd be a change from the red he'd been walking under since he came through the bronze door. Neither one was a color Cashel much cared for.

"So I go on through this?" Cashel said to the ring.

"How do I know what you do?" Krias snarled. "You're free to wander like a fuzzy animal with just
about
enough sense to wake up in the morning. You don't have to ride on some boob's finger like I do!"

"Master Krias," Cashel said, "you're not going to get me mad, so you may as well stop trying. Besides, I guess you want Landure alive again the same as I do. Now, is this door on the way to find Landure's new body?"

"Yeah, this door and another one like it, if you get that far," the demon said. "That's
if
, remember."

He sounded peeved—well, he always did, except when he'd been talking about things Cashel wished hadn't happened, even to the People—but he was a little more subdued than usual too. It couldn't be a lot of fun being cooped up in a little ring the way Krias was.

"Thanks," Cashel said as he gripped the handle, a horizontal pole long enough for three men to hold at the same time. When Cashel pulled, the panel creaked and groaned instead of opening.

Cashel was beginning to think that it was barred on the other side when he thought to lift as well as pull. That worked and he backed up, holding the panel off the ground. It was too heavy and saggy for its hinge pegs. For all its size, it wasn't made any better than a stable door.

The terrain through the open doorway was pretty much like what Cashel had seen when he opened the bronze door earlier. The vegetation, though, was like nothing he'd ever come across.

Just inside grew something more like a young willow than anything else familiar, but it didn't look much like a willow. Its limbs were snaky like a weeping willow's, but they didn't have any leaves at all that Cashel could see. It hadn't lost them for winter, either: the breeze coming up from below was warm and wet, like a summer noon in the marshes.

Cashel hefted his quarterstaff and sighed. "Do the People live down here too, Master Krias?" he asked.

"Them?" said the ring demon. "No, not them, but there's worse things, sheep-boy. Much worse!"

"Well, let's hope we stay clear of them," Cashel said mildly. He stepped through the doorway.

"You're not going to close it?" Krias said. "What's the matter—are you so worn out already that you don't think you can move the door again?"

"No, I'm all right," said Cashel, stroking the smooth hickory. He wished Garric could be here with him, but the quarterstaff itself was a friend from home. "I just thought I'd leave it in case Elfin wants to come with us anyway. I don't think he could open the door if I was to close it."

Krias sneered. "Somehow I doubt that you're quite up to Elfin's cultural standards," he said.

"Still, he might be getting lonely," Cashel said. He walked into the vast green-lit cavern. As with the place he was leaving, there wasn't anything overhead that looked like a cave's roof. He might have been standing under an open sky.

The trees on the slopes below quivered gently, like a barley field in an autumn breeze. It didn't look like the trees were all blowing in the same direction, though. Each one shook to a little different rhythm.

"That's funny," Cashel said. He was about to ask the ring about what he saw. As his mouth opened he heard in his mind the string of insults that'd be all he got from that quarter. Instead, Cashel stepped over to examine the little not-willow. The sapling's trunk was about three-finger's breadth across and as supple as a bamboo fishing pole. The bark was smooth.

"You'll be sor-ree!" Krias piped.

The tree's long, whippy limbs wrapped around Cashel. It was like being caught in a net.

"Call on me!" Krias said. "Call on me, sheep-boy!"

Cashel let go of his quarterstaff; it wasn't going to help him now. The treelimbs squirmed over him like so many snakes.

He tried to pull back, not seriously but to test what would happen. Limbs interwove themselves between Cashel and safety, forming a barrier of living wickerwork. He grinned, because that was what he'd expected. The tree didn't meet many wrestlers, he guessed.

"Are you a lunatic?" Krias shrilled. "Use my name!"

Cashel hunched down and stepped toward the tree. He gripped it low around the trunk, the same way he'd have gone for the ankles of an opponent who'd fallen for his initial feint.

No man living had ever broken free once Cashel had got his grip on him. He slowly straightened his flexed knees, letting his leg muscles do the work. As he did so, he leaned back slightly, putting tension on the trunk.

For some moments the branches pulled at Cashel—hard, hard enough to leave welts where they wrapped his arms and torso. The tree didn't know
anything
about a fight. Everything it did was just helping its opponent!

Cashel's teeth were bared and his gasping breaths blew spit from his lower lip, but he could feel the roots start to give. The tree must have known what wa about to happen. Its branches stopped tugging and instead lashed at Cashel like a drover with a stubborn mule.

Cashel tucked his face into his left armpit to save his eyes, and for the rest—well, whip-cuts weren't going to change anything. Not when he could see the taproot pulling up from the soil, fat and yellow and covered with little broken tendrils twisting like earthworms cut with a shovel.

The tree made a sound. It wasn't a scream, really; it was more like the rattle of a pot at a roiling boil. The limbs stopped whipping Cashel and the trunk went as limp in his hands as the tongue of a dead sheep.

Cashel let go of the tree and straightened slowly, breathing in gasps. His head was swimming and he knew he had to be careful not to fall straight down the side of the bluff. "Oh!" he said.

"And what do you think you proved by that?" Krias said, sounding more puzzled than petulant.

"I didn't prove anything," Cashel said. "The tree started a fight and I finished one."

He stretched his arms out carefully and looked himself over. He hadn't pulled any muscles, but he stung all over and he was bleeding in a few places from the tree slashing at him. He hoped there'd be water in the valley below so he could wash off.

Cashel didn't know what he was going to do for clothing, though. The tree had torn off the right sleeve of his tunic, and he'd split the back all the way down to his belt when he flexed to pull out the root. He wished Ilna was here to mend it.

Truth to tell, he wished any of his friends were here. Well, he'd be back with them soon enough. First Sharina, then they'd rejoin the others.

"
I
could have taken care of the problem a lot easier, you know," Krias said.

Cashel picked up his staff and twirled it, being careful to keep it clear of the bluff behind him. "I won't always have you around," Cashel said. "Anyway, I'd rather scotch my own snakes."

He chuckled. "Or trees."

Cashel leaned over the slope, picking a route. It shouldn't be any worse than the first climb was. He braced his staff a long step down.

"Sheep-boy?" said the ring.

"Umm?" said Cashel.

"You could eat the root of that tree you killed," Krias said. "It's supposed to be tasty, even. If you're the sort of lower life form that needs solid food."

"Ah," said Cashel. He straightened and drew his belt knife. "Thank you, Master Krias. Those pine nuts were starting to get old."

Cashel whittled just below the line of the bark. Somewhere back of him, still on the other side of the open door, he heard Elfin singing.