David Durham - The Sacred Band

He entered the next apartment down, a living space, chairs oddly arrayed in a circle, but with no table at its center. He found bedrooms and storage chambers, tiled rooms that must have been for bathing, balconies that looked out onto back gardens that were no longer gardens. They were overgrown enough that trees surged out of them and monkeys-several of whom Dariel startled as much as they startled him-climbed right from them to nest in shelter. How strange it was to walk into homes devoid of their intended inhabitants and yet so full of the signs of what had been.

Stepping out into the night again, Dariel noticed an arched gateway a little farther in. Framed by tall buildings on either side, he could not see where it led. He walked toward it, under the shadow of the archway, and through into a massive courtyard.

What must once have been a marvelous tapestry of paving stones stretched before him. There was a patterning in the colors, he could tell, but it was stained and scarred and faded. The stones were heaved up here and there by tree roots that had escaped their plots, sending out shoots that burst through to become new trees and creating a ragged patchwork. The space was so immense that Dariel could barely make out the opposing archway through the screen of trees. Buildings on either side hemmed the courtyard, reminding him of the upper terraces of the palace on Acacia. Only much, much larger.

Some of the trees were massive, bizarrely so, trunks thicker around than any he had ever seen, branches like scaffolding devoid of foliage but cluttered with… No, Dariel realized. The largest of the trees were not trees at all. They were sculptures, with branches that served as perches for batlike, hulking figures. Some sat atop the limbs. Some hung below them. Kwedeir. Kwedeir carved in stone or cast from bronze or some other metal. Dariel walked toward the nearest of these sculptures, into the stencil of shadow beneath it. Were they life-size? It did not seem possible, but Birke had said they were large enough that an Auldek could ride on their backs. These were certainly that.

“This place… Corinn would hate this place for so many reasons.”

One of the kwedeir turned its head toward Dariel. The prince froze mid-step. It thrust its snout forward and sniffed the air. The creature’s two black eyes pinned Dariel between them. It was not a statue at all, a fact which suddenly seemed absurdly obvious. It was furred and dark and so clearly alive, quite different from the stone family among which it perched.

Dariel let out a whispered curse.

The kwedeir leaped into the air. Its wings flared out, black against the night sky. It let out a cry that seemed to tear the skin from Dariel’s face. He turned and ran. At full sprint he just barely reached the arch before the kwedeir. He bolted straight through as the creature flapped above it.

He was halfway to the row of buildings he had just explored when a moon shadow swept down on him. He jumped to one side as the kwedeir landed on the ground just beside him. It was all flapping membranous wings and awkward limbs and a snapping, inhaling, fetid snout full of yellow teeth. Dariel backed from it, tripped, and then he scrabbled away on all fours for a moment.

The beast grunted and leaped into the air again. It came down just behind Dariel as he hurtled through the nearest open door. The prince stumbled into a chair and sprawled over a table, slid off it, and crashed onto the floor. The kwedeir beat its wings. It kicked at the decaying stone around the doorframe, part of which collapsed at its first blow. It folded its wings and squirmed forward, bursting through the stone with the wriggling force of its body.

Dariel fled further into the apartment. He heard the creature break through and scrabble behind him. He ran through the apartment and into a small courtyard. He darted across it, leaped through a back window, down a flight of stairs, and into a dim passageway. He could not hear the beast anymore, but he kept moving. Through alleys, splashing through ankle-deep muck, under a bridge, and into a small cubicle of a room, in which he stood jammed into a corner.

When his panting had quieted enough that he realized he could hear a rodent squeaking somewhere in the room, Dariel let himself relax. He touched the tips of his fingers to his nose, clipping them together as if they were scissors. “By Tinhadin’s nose,” he said, an expression he had not used since boyhood, appropriate now, for his knees felt weak as a child’s.

How quickly would a thing like that forget him? Short memories. They must have short memories, surely. It would be on to something else by now. And if it did appear again? Be ready for it. That’s all. Fight it. He had not even thought to draw his dagger against the kwedeir. He tugged it free now and stepped into the doorway’s frame.

He stood there for some time, his eyes scanning the sky and moving over the buildings rising around him. Nothing swept down from above. The sounds were all the same as before. He had just moved farther out into the lane, hoping to get his bearings, when something rounded a nearby corner and snapped to stillness, staring at him.

It was not the kwedeir, but when a growl started low in its throat and the hair along its ridgeline rose in an angry bristle, Dariel knew it might just as readily kill him. A hound. A lean, long-legged creature as tall as the hunting dogs at Calfa Ven. Its eyes shone the same color as its short tan hair. It crouched with its head stretched low to the ground, the muscles in its shoulders taut and bulging. It stepped forward. Once, and then again, muscles and joints smooth in action.

Dariel hunkered down, slashing the knife in warning.

The winged shadow swept in, blocking out the sky and freezing the hound with one paw upraised. The kwedeir hovered over it. The hound cocked its head, sensing it. Before it could react the kwedeir folded its wings and dropped. It slammed the hound to the ground and clamped its jaws around the canine’s head and neck. The hound struggled, but the kwedeir raked its hind claw down its back, ripping deep gouges. It pressed down, driving its weight through its hind legs. The hound began to yelp in short, frantic bursts. And then the kwedeir bit hard. The cracking of bone was audible, as was the squelch of fluids spraying through the creature’s jaws. It did not pause a moment, but flared its wings and surged upward. The dead hound swung sickeningly from its jaws as it labored up above the height of the buildings, over them, and out of sight.

Dariel did not move from where he stood framed in the doorway. He simply lowered himself to the stones and sat, panting just as heavily as if he had been running again. “Did that just happen?” He looked from side to side as if there might be a companion there to verify it for him. There was no one, of course, but that did not stop him from asking the question several more times as he gradually caught his breath.

As before, he realized he should move again because he heard squeaking somewhere in the room behind him. Or, not squeaking exactly… more like whimpering, snuffling. There was a pattern to it, as if rodents were making noise and then going silent. Calling and then listening. Come to think of it, the sounds were nothing like those of a mouse or other rodent.

Dariel rose and crept back into the room. There was a crate there he had hardly noticed before, turned on its side, its opening facing the wall. He approached it and stood silent beside it long enough to hear the whimpering again. With his dagger thrust before him, he caught the crate with his toe and pushed it to one side until he saw what lay huddled within.

Two pups. Big-eyed and cautious, staring at him. Innocence in rounded features and floppy ears and slightly trembling jaws.