Covered in mud, a lizard appeared on her right, its forked tongue flaring. Another came up behind it. And another. The creatures couldn’t climb the embankment, but apparently there was another way up.
“Gendrin!” she cried.
Instead of reaching for his axe and shield, Gendrin pulled a sort of flute from his shirt. He played, the notes driving and harsh. Danger pounded beneath Caelia’s skin. Her head throbbed in time to the beat. It was the sound of death waiting, coiled and ready to leap. She ached to run. Flee. But she was frozen in this useless body.
And the beasts . . . stopped. Their tongues flickered out, tasting the easy prey before them. Gendrin stepped toward them. The creatures took a step back. He took another step. The creatures turned and went back the way they had come.
Gendrin continued playing, driving them back. Caelia writhed, desperate to escape a terror that had no source. The moment he stopped playing, so did her fear.
Panting, she looked from him to his flute. “How—how did you do that?”
“Magic.”
She would have dismissed his statement as a joke. Except she’d seen it and felt its effect. “What are you?”
“An enchanter.” He bent down and lifted her over his shoulders like a lamb—arms on one side, legs on the other. Hooking one arm around her limbs, Gendrin picked up the torch. The forest blurred as he ran, her side jarring into his shoulders with each step.
She didn’t know what an enchanter was. But he had saved her at great risk.
“The beasts,” she choked out. “Will they follow?”
“Those aren’t the beasts.”
Everything in her stilled. “What do you mean?”
“Those are just gilgad.”
She swallowed her rising horror. “There’s something worse?”
“Quiet now.” He glanced furtively at the shadows closing in on them. “They will have heard your screams.”
Chapter Five
Venom
Gendrin’s words echoed through Caelia, They will have heard your screams.
The true beast. The one who stole girls from their beds at night. Never again to hear their screams, the old rhyme echoed through her head. The monster Caelia had sworn to kill. But when confronted with what she thought was the beast, she’d run.
She was a coward. A coward and a fool.
She could hear the river now, rushing and deep. Gasping for breath, Gendrin dropped the nearly spent torch. They’d reached the base of a tree that looked no different from any other. He set her down, her head lolling to the side opposite him. She couldn’t lift it.
Through brush, moonlight shone on water. Gendrin dug around for something. In a pack, maybe? His hand cradled the back of her head and lifted. Something smooth and cool parted her lips. Something like the medicine vials the apothecary used.
“Swallow,” he whispered. “It will counter the venom.”
Venom? Liquid trickled into her mouth, tasting so strong of pepper she nearly choked.
He pressed his hand over her mouth to keep her from spitting it out. “You have to swallow, Caelia.”
Fighting back a gag, she managed to work the muscles of her throat, the liquid flowing down. He reached into his pack and hauled out a rope.
“You had a rope!” she slurred, her mouth not working right. Why hadn’t he brought the blasted thing?
He tied it around her chest. “I didn’t know I would need it. I heard someone screaming for help and I ran.” There hadn’t been time for him to go back for it.
The weakness slid up her face, her jaw going slack, mouth hanging open. “What’s happening to me?”
He swung the pack on his back and tossed the rope over a sturdy bough. “Gilgad venom.”
The lizard that had bit her, causing wet blood to trickle down her leg. The gilgad had raked her with its teeth. “Am I going to die?”
“No,” he said simply. His steadiness soothed her. He left her, his steps shushing through thick, fallen leaves. “This is going to hurt.”
Unable to brace herself, she whimpered as the rope went suddenly taut, digging painfully into her ribs and armpits and making it hard to breathe. He hauled her up. Her feet dangled like a hanged man’s. The forest floor receded until her forehead smacked into the branch.
“Urmph!” Lights exploded behind her eyes.
He stopped. She couldn’t turn to look, but the rope tugged as if he were tying it. Moments later, he climbed up beside her.
“This is so much easier with a team,” he muttered.
Team? What was that supposed to mean? Instead of asking, she drooled. It was utterly humiliating.
Hands under her armpits, he pulled her up and shifted her over his shoulder. Her faced mashed against the pack on his back. She looked at the ground—far enough away that she would break something if she fell.
Ancestors, she wanted to curse or at the very least clutch him, but she was as helpless as that goat pegged beside the fire. As helpless as when the pains had ripped through her belly. As helpless as when she’d watched her son struggle to take his first and last breaths.
The muscles of Gendrin’s shoulders shifted beneath her. He pulled himself up onto a higher branch. He was climbing the tree. With her slung over his shoulder. A better way to die than falling into a gilgad nest, but dead was still dead.
He shifted, and a branch stabbed at her cheek before shuddering past her chin. She would bear the mark of that in the morning.
Finally, he stopped, the bough swaying beneath their combined weight. His arms fussed with something she couldn’t see. She was suddenly falling. Plunging to her death. She would have screamed and cinched her arms and legs around him, refusing to ever let go. But something caught her, cradled her. She could make out cloth beneath the bare skin of her hands. She swayed gently. It was like a hammock tied high in the trees.
You could have warned me, you fool man!
Gendrin let out a shaky breath. “All right. You’re safe now.”
He started undoing the rope around her chest. The knot didn’t want to give. He worked at it, fingers grazing her breasts. “Sorry,” he kept mumbling.
She wanted to bat his hands away and do it herself, but of course she couldn’t. Finally, he had the thing off her and she could breathe without pain. He shifted her legs inside the hammock and straightened them.
She could feel him looking down at her. “I have one blanket and one pod. I don’t want to freeze. So I’m climbing in with you.”
What? No you are not!
The pod vibrated, then his weight made it dip. If the thing broke, they would both spill to their deaths.
But it didn’t break. He swung his legs into it, so they were lying side by side, fetched up together like Widow Morin’s seven children squished into one bed. He wiggled and shifted her until they were both centered. Then he wiggled some more as he pulled a blanket over them, tucking the edges around her muddy dress.
When he was finally still, she lay, her cheek mashed up against his shoulder. She was exhausted, but too tightly wound to sleep. Judging by the sound of his breathing, he wasn’t sleeping either.
He tugged something out from inside his shirt. His pipes. The source of his magic. Fear reared again—she didn’t understand how his magic worked. Didn’t know how to fight its effects.