The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (50 page)

In most, the process had already begun. Of twenty-five huts, only a few possessed intact roofs. Rowan approached one, peered into a door that was a mere open oval in the face of the hut.

Light in the back, a series of canted parallel slits at the level of Rowan’s waist, emitting pink-gold lines of sun. Useless as windows. Likely designed purely for ventilation.

Rowan set her pack on the ground outside and entered cautiously, uncertain of the state of the domed roof. She paused, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom.

A second door, leading into an adjacent hut, whose own street exit spilled a hazy oval of pink light on the floor. And across that hut, another internal door, visible as a mere darker shadow on the shadowed wall.

A sociable people, apparently. Rowan decided to like them.

She crossed into the second hut, paused before the access to the third.

Dark, there. Walls and roof had collapsed, reducing the room to a lightless and crumble-walled vestibule. But the previous occupant had been less fastidious than his neighbors. Something on the floor just inside—

She did not need eyes to identify it; touch told her immediately. She pulled it out, sat on the floor in the last spill of pink light.

A talisman.

But not like her own not like any of the other such objects in Janus’s room. A short column, flared at top and bottom. Its colors were blotched dark and light, its surface an etched network of tiny hexagons.

Her own talisman held magic, magic that affected demons— and so must this one. Someone with knowledge of demon magic had been here.

Janus. Or . . . one of Slado’s minions?

Or perhaps the wizard himself?

Outside, in the falling night, sounds were suddenly sharper, clearer: the
clack-clack
of a trawler, a chorus of whistle-spiders, hawkbug
chirr
, tanglebrush clatter, the wind, the sea.

No demon-voice. No human sounds.

She carried the new object out into the open and stood, gazing about at the shadowy dwellings.

So clean, so utterly empty. It would take time to collect every possession. If it had been demons that drove the people from their homes, surely they would have fled quickly, left something behind.

And where were the fire pits? Where were the chimneys? The grain stores, the pens for animals?

And had the people truly owned so little that each and every item could be carried away during their escape?

Or had they, in fact, any possessions at all?

Rowan took one blind step backward, another.

This was no village.

The steerswoman said, in a voice more breath than words, “I’m in a demon hive.”

But no demon-voice here. The whistle-spiders had ceased their farewell to the sun; the hawkbug had settled for the night. The trawler now kept silent vigil on its shoot lines.

Only the wind. Only the sea.

And night falling.

It occurred to Rowan that her own safest and most defensible shelter would be found in one of the abandoned hive chambers. But she could not bring herself to sleep here.

She returned to the shoreline and spent the night blanket-wrapped on a patch of dry ground, watching the stars in their arcing course above the great ocean.

At Site Three, she found a corpse.

33

T
he hawkbugs drew her to it. Rowan saw a dozen of them battling high in the air just past a grassy rise— vying for territory that each considered desirable, abundant with food, and worth the fight.

She found it at the top of the rise: a hive of flesh termites, a long white mound two feet high, five feet in length. In the Outskirts, she had seen many such hives, built on the corpses of goblins. But here it was easy to discern in the crusted white shape the angles of the four knees, the sprawl of four arms.

She listened: no sound of a living demon.

The flying scouts of the hive swarmed the air around the corpse. One lit on Rowan’s arm, and she suppressed the impulse to slap at it. She endured its bite, and it flew off at speed, hurrying to tell its hive that she was inedible.

Rowan gazed down into a little vale below, where a glittering stream meandered to the sea. Nearly a dozen white-shrouded forms lay scattered on the hillside. From intimate knowledge of the life cycle of flesh termites, Rowan knew that these demons had died less than six months previously.

At the bottom of the vale: clustered domes. No motion.

The steerswoman considered the view in silence, then set her pack on the ground, found the gloves stowed in the top, and pulled them on. Carrying only her sword in her right hand and Janus’s talisman in her left, she stepped sideways down the slope.

This demon colony was less deteriorated than the previous. From halfway down the rise, Rowan could see that the domed roofs remained complete; but there was no motion and no demon-voice, which she ought to have heard even from this distance.

She gave another termite nest wide berth as she passed, but was nipped by two of its scouts regardless. And now the air about her was clouded with insects; the termites had been joined by golden gnats, which Rowan also knew were harmless to humans. But they were interested in the moisture in her eyes; the steerswoman waved her sword hilt continually before her face.

Eight groups of five dens. It seemed an unnaturally large number. From her experience and studies, only small creatures tended to live in such large groups.

She came suddenly across another termite hive hidden in the blackgrass and barely prevented herself from stumbling into it. Five scouts immediately tested her; but the workers, disturbed by her proximity, did not wait for word. They crawled from the many exit holes to promenade for her benefit, little abdomens lifted in threatening display.

Rowan snorted laughter at them, inhaling gnats in the process. She spat, then coughed, then spat again.

More scouts lit on her arms; other hives were near enough to be interested. Rowan endured the bites, walked on, was tested again before she went five feet, increased her pace.

The air above the demon colony was thick with flying insects, filled with buzzing and the clacking and chirring of many insect battles. The steerswoman slowed her approach, less convinced of the simplicity of conducting an investigation.

Something moved between two dens; Rowan froze, then relaxed as a knee-high pincer-beetle wandered out. A hawkbug immediately dropped from the sky upon it. A struggle followed, which the beetle won.

From here she could see further into the colony. There were many white-shrouded demon corpses on the ground within and an astounding amount of activity on, around, and over them.

So many termite hives would attract slugsnakes, and harvesters, and trawlers; slugsnakes brought pincer-beetles, some of which could attain truly disturbing size; harvesters and trawlers brought hawkbugs.

Fool-you bugs would lure and ambush hawkbugs. Snip-lizards would burrow under the fool-yous to attack their undefended bellies. Goblins considered snip-lizards to be very tasty and could hear them underground for a remarkable distance.

And this was naming only the creatures whose sight or voice Rowan recognized. What else might be feasting in the colony? Some coastal equivalent of swarmers, perhaps, or even mud-lions, neither of which she cared to meet.

She found she had stopped, standing knee deep in blackgrass, in a cloud of golden gnats.

Investigation was impossible. She might never know what had killed so many demons.

The steerswoman turned back and left the dead colony behind.

Janus’s next food cache had been raided.

Rowan slipped out of her pack and stood surveying the wreckage. Less than a week old.

Only Inner Lands creatures would be interested in food of this kind. Humans, or the animals they brought with them: dogs, cats, possibly escaped pigs.

She picked up an oilcloth wrapper, smelled it: dried meat of some sort, probably venison. The smell was old, but the wrapper might just as easily have been dug from a garbage pit.

She searched. She found the garbage pit, undisturbed. Animals would have gone for the garbage pit, as well.

Rowan loaded her pack with as much unspoiled food as she could find and fit, to make a new cache further on.

It was time to increase her vigilance. She walked more cautiously now, keeping near the dunes, constantly scanning the beach ahead, smelling and tasting the air for a hint of woodsmoke, and listening. For human voices and for demon; she must be alert for both.

At least a demon could not sneak up upon her unawares. As she made her way along the slanted beach, her pack doubly heavy with the extra supplies, it came to her that demons must have no natural predators. Any such predator would find its prey far too easy to locate.

But surely there must be predators, she thought.

And she smiled to herself, stopping short only in her mind. The sea— demons were designed for the sea, but now walked on land. Perhaps they did so in a species-wide escape from some ocean-dwelling predator.

Rowan imagined a fish, hanging in the lightless deeps: huge, silent, intently listening— and hungry. She was surprised at how much pleasure the image gave her.

With supplies already in hand, Rowan put as many miles behind her as possible before stopping for the night.

A west wind rose, sending high clouds scudding. Lower clouds crept up from the south simultaneously, and sunset became a mere matter of increasing darkness.

Rowan moved off the beach and wound her way through the dunes, eventually finding a site on the back of one dune, open to the landscape to the north and east: a wide field of blue-leaf bushes, grown nearly to the size of trees; low hills, windswept bare on top; and at the horizon, the pale blue line of far mountains.

She made her camp simply, merely arranging her bedroll, and dined on cold food. So close to the wizard’s keep, she dared not announce her presence by lighting a fire— but her vantage might allow other people to announce theirs. She sat, her back against the slope, munching cheese and bread, doggedly chewing jerked beef, and watching the world darken before her.

Rain would come before dawn, she knew; but she waited for the last glimmer of light before setting up the canvas tarp that served her as rain fly. Then she sat late in its open end, watching for lights in the hills to the north, on the brushy fields, among the valleys.

None came.

She watched long. Still, none came.

Eventually, she resigned herself to sleep.

34

D
id she trust the talisman?

Rowan lay on the crest of the dune, in the blackgrass, peering out between the blades. On the beach below, five demons were crossing the sand, moving toward the water.

Did she trust the talisman?

They did not behave like a group; each seemed to ignore the others.

One strode into the sea, dropped to a horizontal position in the waves, then vanished from sight.

Did she trust it?

Another moved off to the left, down the beach. Rowan watched it out of sight. Three demons remained, standing in the sand, arms waving vaguely.

Presently, one retraced its previous route, back inland.

Did she?

One of the remaining pair shuffled its four feet, sending up sheets of sand, then abruptly dropped to a seat, knees high all around.

The last wandered desultorily away to the right, reaching down now and then to pick through bits of sea wrack.

Its route would bring it opposite Rowan’s position.

Did she trust the talisman?

She watched it walk: a nightmare creature, headless, faceless, with no recognizable front or back and armed with deadly, burning spray. The memory of its effect was very present in her mind.

Rowan was more than a hundred feet away. She was safe from the spray.

She wished she could place the talisman somewhere in the demon’s path and observe the monster’s behavior, but could not risk it. There were other demons near, many others, somewhere out of sight. She could hear them.

Site Four had announced itself well before she reached it. Quietly at first, and she had been a long time recognizing the sound. In Alemeth, she had only heard one demon’s voice at a time. It had not prepared her for this.

A mass of low notes at first but so blended as to seem one quiet, complex tone, rising and falling on the wind. Closer, the tones grew more steady; closer still, higher notes appeared, seeming to move above the others— an illusion of distance and obstacles, perhaps.

And here, this close, she felt the sound was almost a visible cloud hanging in the air above the still-unseen keep. She felt it ought to have color or pressure, so great, constant, and specific it was.

She did not yet know how many demons Slado kept here. More than had lived at Site Three, she was certain. It would take many more than forty demon-voices to create a sound that could be detected fully four miles away.