“She said the herbs she finds here are more powerful,” Daine remarked when Numair patted her shoulder and moved to another seat, one not so close.
The badger settled across the fire from the two mortals. Broad Foot was there already, half tucked under a fallen log.
“Daine, what in the name of all the gods was going on at that bridge?” the badger demanded. “It looked as if you were dancing!”
The girl rubbed an aching temple and sipped her tea. She felt weak and watery, a bit like tea herself. “It’s these darkings.” She explained what had taken place, while the darking that had saved her arrows nodded vigorously. Somewhere it had acquired a faint streak of gold through its body, color that filled the tiny head that it fashioned for itself. “Seemingly they were fighting, or disagreeing,” the girl finished. “And then I saw Ozorne.” She bit her lip. “There was another time, when the tauros almost got me. A darking was in the water—was that you?” she asked. The gold-smeared blot nodded. “I saw Ozorne then, too, inside him.” She pointed to the darking.
“You never mentioned this,” Numair remarked, eyes glittering dangerously.
She stiffened. “I had other things to worry about! I thought maybe I saw Ozorne because the darkings are liquid, kind of, but they aren’t, are they?” Her gold-streaked companion shook its head.
“We need answers,” said Broad Foot. “Where is the spy—in your pouch still?”
The leather purse thumped at the girl’s belt, the creature inside trying to free itself. “Oh—and I’ve another one.”
“Another—?” asked Numair, his brows coming together in a frown.
“It dropped off the hurrok that cut my head. I think it deserted to our side.”
Broad Foot waddled over to Daine and cut a circle in the earth with a claw. Before he closed it, he told the gold-touched darking, “Inside, you.” The shadowy thing cowered away from him.
“It won’t hurt,” the badger said. “Getting answers in other ways takes too long.”
“But Ma tried that,” protested the girl. “She only got its name.”
“Because that was what she asked for,” Broad Foot replied. “We’re doing something else. Stop dawdling!” Flattening itself like an anxious dog, the gold-streaked darking trickled across the ground unwillingly. It hesitated outside the mark in the earth, then flowed into the circle. The duckmole looked up at the girl. “Where’s this new darking?”
Daine fished out the deserter. “Go with your friend.” She put it on the ground, and the darking rolled into the circle.
“Now the third,” said Broad Foot.
Quickly the girl upended her belt purse over the circle. Her captive fell out with a plop; Broad Foot closed the circle. The darking from the pouch surged against the line in the ground, and flattened as if it had met a wall of glass.
“Stand back,” ordered the duckmole. Opening his bill, he uttered a strange noise, half croak, half bark. Silver fire bloomed over the darkings, who shrank away from it. The glittering light stretched; deep within, a picture began to form.
There was Ozorne, streaked with soot, cuts on his face and chest, a clump of braids singed. At his throat he wore a black, glassy stone on a frayed cord. His lips moved as if he talked to himself. The view spread: The former Emperor Mage stood alone in a cave, a pool of water at his feet. Outside the entrance, snow fell in a thick veil.
An image formed in the water. It showed Daine as she read a book. Ozorne reached for her. When his outstretched wing touched the water, she disappeared. Though the image was soundless, they could see him shriek, baring sharp, silver teeth. Veins in his chest, neck, and face stood against his skin. He spun, and came to an abrupt halt, a look of sudden cleverness on his face.
His lips moved. A thick worm of gold-edged scarlet fire appeared before him.
“So he’d mastered Stormwing magic by winter,” murmured Numair. “Possibly even before the barriers between the realms collapsed.”
“This is months ago,” said the badger. “I remember this blizzard. We don’t have that many, even here in the colder climates—it was the first full moon after Midwinter, the Wolf Moon.”
Neatly, Ozorne cut his cheek on a razor-edged feather. The fiery worm flew to the cut, battening on it as a leech might. Ozorne spoke again. The tube fell away, turning into a bowl as it moved back. It brimmed with dark blood.
Lurching to the pool, Ozorne drank. When he straightened, his eyes were bright; he grinned. Returning to the magical bowl, he breathed a red-gold mist on its surface. It sank into the depths of the blood and swirled, making wavy patterns. Quickly the Stormwing cut both lips, flicking the blood drops into the bowl.
“For speaking,” guessed Numair, engrossed. “Blood also for life, and to bind the fruits of the working to him. He couldn’t have done it as a mortal, but here —”
“Here magical laws are what you make them,” Broad Foot said. “He seems to have learned that better than most who are born immortal.”
Numair raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that he learned that at all,” Ozorne’s one-time friend replied. “He merely wanted to do the thing, and so he forced it to happen. Subtlety has never been his strong suit.”
Again that delicate flick of a feather edge, this time across each ear. The blood went into the bowl. Closing both eyes, Ozorne raised the same wing feather. Even more carefully, he just nicked the skin of his eyelids, producing two scant drops to add to what he’d already gathered.
Slowly, he raised his wings, pointing at the cave’s ceiling. As he did, the liquid surged upward. Ozorne lowered his wings; the bulge remained. Twice more he repeated the motion; each time the liquid in the bowl rose higher. After the third raising, it formed a red-black column nearly eighteen inches tall.
Ozorne was sweating. Now he shouted; the bowl vanished. Its contents dropped, breaking into a myriad of blobs. Each turned black. The Stormwing’s face was mirrored in each newborn darking.
The vision dissolved. Only the trio of darkings remained.
“There you have it,” said the duckmole. He broke the circle to release the captives. “Your enemy made them to serve as his voice, eyes, and ears.”
Free, the darkings did not try to escape. Instead they created heads for themselves so that they could nod. Again Daine noticed that one still contained a streak of gold. Somehow, while in the circle, another had picked up a small leaf. This it wore on its head, like an absurd hat. She was nearly positive that the third—the plain, shivering one—was the darking that had dropped from the hurrok.
“So you are Ozorne’s spies,” she said.
The answer was a head shake, first on the gold one’s part, then on that of the one that bore a leaf. The third blot shrank lower to the ground, trembling.
“You showed Ozorne that we were at the bridge,” Numair reminded them.
Gold-streak pointed an accusatory tentacle at Leaf. “You’ll do it again when he summons you,” growled the badger.
The answer was emphatic head shakes from the gold-tinged and leaf-wearing blots. The third shrank against the other two.
“But he created you,” Numair said.
Gold-streak began to tremble.
“Don’t be afraid,” Daine said. “You needn’t—”
“I don’t think it’s fear,” interrupted Numair.
“It’s trying something new,” added the duckmole. “Wait.”
The streaked darking’s companions leaned against it to somehow give it strength. An image formed in Gold-streak’s depths, growing to cover its surface. There was the Stormwing Ozorne: He glared at a darking on the ground before him.
“Obey,” hissed Ozorne. Its victim began to shrill; the darkings with Daine and her friends shrilled, too, tiny voices rising and falling. When the image vanished, they stopped.
“He hurts you,” Daine said. “Is that why?”
Gold-streak showed a fresh image: a red-clad female giant—a blot’s-eye view of Daine—as she tugged an arrow shaft away from the onlooker’s v
ision. That picture blurred, to form a fresh image.
“Your leg, isn’t it?” asked Numair, grinning. “From the foot up?”
A large hand came into view, cheese in its fingers. It dropped the scrap and pulled away.
“You fed it.” The badger sighed. “Sometimes I think you’ll feed anything.”
“You were trying to warn me, in the pond?” asked Daine. The visions disappeared. The tinted darking nodded. “And on the bridge? Your friend here—Leaf, and you’re Gold-streak, and this little fellow—” She scratched her head, looking at the trembling creature— “you’ll be Jelly.”
The darking’s shivers slowed, though they didn’t stop. It rose a bit in the middle, no longer trying to merge with the ground.
“So on the bridge, Leaf was reporting to Ozorne. Gold-streak, you tried to put Leaf in the pouch to keep Ozorne from seeing where I was, but it was too late—Ozorne had already sent the hurroks. You hadn’t told Leaf not to do as Ozorne bids you.”
Both Gold-streak and Leaf nodded.
She looked at Jelly. “And you abandoned the hurrok when you saw I had Gold-streak?” A bump that might have been a head lifted in Jelly’s mass. Stiffly, it shook its new head.
“Or did Gold-streak call to you?” inquired the girl.
Jelly nodded.
The badger chuckled. “Ozorne mastered Stormwing magic,” he remarked, “but he created the darkings here.”
“Are you sure?” inquired Numair. “That cave may have been in the mortal realms.”
“He did it here,” Broad Foot said firmly. “We gods can always tell the difference.”
“Here, life is forbidden to remain a slave of its creator,” explained the badger. “It’s why so many children and servants of gods act against the interests of those who gave them life. The darkings are forming their own ideas and ways to communicate, and they’re getting names.”
“They’re his blood,” argued Numair. “Blood will bind anything. How can they refuse when he commands?”
“I don’t know, but they can.” Daine looked at the gold-tinted blot. “This morning I heard Ozorne say, ‘Number fourteen, report.’ I thought I dreamed it, but I didn’t. Gold-streak was still in my pack then, so Ozorne couldn’t see where we were. Gold-streak refused to tell him!”
Gold-streak nodded vigorously.
“That’s why Ozorne sent Leaf, because he couldn’t make you tell, and Jelly chose to be with you, not Ozorne.”
Both Leaf and Gold-streak nodded.
Daine picked up Jelly. “You were brave to jump off that hurrok,” she told it gently. “Why don’t you talk to Leaf and Gold-streak a bit, and hear what they have to say?” The darking nodded, then—abruptly—rubbed its head against her thumb before she put it down. The three came together in a shadowy pool. Daine realized that she was exhausted.
“We’d best turn in,” Numair said, eyes on her. “We’ve had a long day.”
“Doubtless tomorrow will be longer still.” The girl dug in her pack for her blanket.
“We will stand guard,” the badger said. “Broad Foot and I have things to discuss.”
Daine’s last awareness was of the badger and the duckmole rocking to and fro, their heads together as they conferred mind to mind.
Rattail, whom Daine was now sure spoke with the Dream King’s voice, awaited her when she fell asleep. Again she called the girl’s attention to the changing creature that was Uusoae, the Queen of Chaos, surrounded by the Great Gods who kept her captive. The fiery barrier between her and them blazed. Daine couldn’t see her under that bright light, but she could feel the creature’s changes, and wished very much that she could not.
Behind the Great Gods, multicolored liquid ran, not as puddles that spread and merged, but as a stream that whirled in a circle, seeming to flow both right and left at the same time. Watching it made the girl feel giddy. Suddenly columns leaped from the stream, rising and curving over the gods. If the columns met at the peak of the circle, the gods would be under a bowl of Chaos light, just as Uusoae was under a bowl of light.
White fire winked into existence at the backs of the gods. Instantly the columns turned to spinning drills, trying to bore their way through. The second barrier flickered.
“I hope you don’t expect me to get excited over all this,” Daine remarked, finding that she could speak for the first time. “Or that you mean the gods want my help.” Part of her quivered at speaking so lightly of the gods; she rudely stepped on that fright. “I can’t help the gods against Chaos—I have troubles of my own, back home. It’s not as if they came to our aid, when the barrier between us and them gave way at Midwinter.”
“Why in the name of Father Universe would they meddle in that?” demanded Rattail. “The barrier was made by human mages, who never asked permission to do it.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re showing me all this,” the girl told her stubbornly. “It’s like I’m being asked for help. Forget it. I’ve none to give.”
A paw cuffed her soundly on the ear, knocking her over. Suddenly she was pup-sized; Rattail towered over her as she had over her own wolf pups. “You cannot have been attending to the duckmole, then,” the wolf told her sternly. “Look there!” Planting her nose on Daine’s behind, she scooted the girl forward.
Before them was the image that Daine had just seen, with the columns of shifting light connecting over the heads of the gods. They spread to cover the outer barrier. Mouths, distorted with jagged, sharp, and weirdly angled teeth, opened throughout the cover of Chaos light, and sank within it.
Suddenly everything sagged inward; Daine felt the white-light barriers evaporate within her very bones. Shapes thrashed under the rippling, glimmering Chaos stuff as it fell inward. At the center was Uusoae, born from the muck that she commanded, her eyes—when she had them—shining with triumph. She opened a mouth with swords for teeth and sprouted a hundred arms. They lashed out, seizing animals and two-legger gods from seemingly empty air, carrying each to the Chaos queen’s jaws. She ate, and ate, and ate. Blood of all colors streamed over her chin and body and was soaked up, to add its colors to the muck in which she stood. The last two struggling figures she raised to her lips were Sarra and the badger.
With a gasp, Daine sat up, eyes open. Her curls and skin were dripping sweat. Sometime in the night she had thrown off the cover. It lay beneath her, dragged into folds and ridges. Her back and head ached.
“Numbers eleven, twenty-seven, fourteen, report!” That voice was Ozorne’s; the girl looked around for the darkings. “How dare you defy me!” The commands issued from Daine’s pack, where the blots had spent the night. “If you will not show what I wish—”
Crimson light shone through openings in the pack. The darkings keened, tiny voices shrill. He was hurting them! She yanked the flap open, furious; black tentacles streaked with red veins reached out to pull it shut again. The darkings wanted her to stay out. Rather than listen, she went to the pool to clean up. It took her longer than usual; she was trembling with rage, and dropped things. The sky in the east was just turning pink.
“Did you hear me?” Numair stood on the rise near their camp, wearing only his breeches, hair tousled. “It’s how our enemies seem to know every move!”
Daine rubbed her face with her hands. “I didn’t hear.”
“It’s the darkings. They’re the answer.”
She felt a powerful urge to yank him into the pond, just for being awake and chatty, let alone for having poked up the fire and set tea water on to boil. Mastering the urge—barely—the girl returned to her pack.
The darkings came out. She cuddled them, asking if they were all right. All three nodded, but Jelly quivered more than ever, and even Gold-streak and Leaf were trembly.
The badger waddled over to her. “Did you dream?”
Daine glared at him. “I dreamed, all right,” she said grimly. “Amazingly clear dreams, like all the ones I’ve been having here. Amazing and long, since I don’t remember sleeping much
!”
Numair scooped up the darkings. “It’s these little fellows,” he said. “Or ladies,” he added, squinting at them. “It’s impossible to tell if you have a sex.”
There was a splash; Broad Foot climbed out of the pool, a small fish in his bill. The resurrected fish god that had supplied his breakfast leaped from the water, splashing him. “What about the darkings?” he asked.
“They don’t just spy on us,” Numair said. “I thought Ozorne had created a number far in excess of his needs, if they were solely to keep an eye on Daine or me. Your kinfolk are with our leaders, aren’t they?” he asked the darkings. “The King, the Queen—”
“In the north,” Daine said, realizing what he meant. “I heard in a dream that the Scanrans got away clean. Somehow they knew the Yamani fleet was coming.”
“As I woke, I heard that yesterday the Seventh Riders tried to use a secret exit from Legann,” Numair added quietly. “The enemy was waiting. Three of the Riders are dead.”
Daine clenched her teeth. She had friends in the Seventh Riders. Their commander, Evin Larse, had pulled a roll from her ear the first time she’d eaten in the Rider mess. She looked a question at Numair.
“I don’t know who they were, magelet,” he said gently, smoothing a wet curl off her forehead. “No one mentioned names.”
She nodded, and made herself think about the immediate problem. “The darking spies tell Ozorne. And other darkings with his commanders pass it on,” she whispered. “That—dung-fouled, mold-eating—” She faced the badger, eyes blazing. “You could put an end to it!”
“The Great Gods don’t like the People’s gods to intervene in human affairs,” the badger replied. “We are to keep to the doings of our own children.”
“You’ve always said I mean as much as your own kits.” She knelt beside him. “Badger, please! I can’t help them at home whilst I’m here—but you can! Please!”
The badger fluffed out his fur, snorted, and stamped.
“What good is knowing that your friends have eavesdroppers?” asked Broad Foot. “The darkings are very good at hiding.”