James Enge - This Crooked Way

Unfortunately, half a dozen of the Virgin Sisters heard this remark, and turned suddenly back toward Thend and the patch of shadow. They plunged their palp-clusters in the shafts of their armblades and drew them, running straight at Thend and the werewolf.

Thend stood straight and hefted his rather awkward weapon. If he'd only had a moment to free some of his kin, the odds would have been better. But he would do what he could, and hoped the werewolf would fight with him. He hoped that right up to the moment he heard the rustle of the werewolf's feet as it ran away uphill through the deep grass. Then he had no hope at all.

The Lost One stepped between the Virgin Sisters and Thend.

His motions were stiff and awkward: it was as if all flexibility were gone from those boneless limbs. He was not armed; Thend had no idea what he intended to do. But his presence obviously shocked and appalled the Virgin Sisters: they stopped short and stared at him, turning their heads to look at him with one eye, then another, then a third.

The Lost One gripped his carapace around the neck hole in three places. His boneless arms strained and the carapace ripped apart as if it were rotting from within.

Something, something white and milky-looking dripped down off his inner torso. Thend had never seen a Khroi without his shell before, but somehow the lost Khroi looked wrong, unbalanced, as if part of him were eaten away …

Eaten away. That fluid: some of it was moving upward, not dripping down. As he watched in increasing horror, as the Lost One fell to the ground and ceased moving, Thend realized the white "fluid" was made of very small particular elements, each one with many legs, eight tiny little legs.

"No!" Thend screamed. "You get out of him!"

He ran over and started stomping on the spiderfolk who had grown in and fed upon his friend, his horde-mate, the Lost One. He was weeping and cursing as he did: the Lost One was obviously dead, had been dead since before Thend had seen him. The spiderfolk had seeded him with eggs and had left them to grow and grow within him. There was no point, but he kept on stomping anyway until he remembered the Virgin Sisters.

They stood some way off. Each one was staring at him intently with a single eye. Long moments passed. They sheathed their armblades and walked away. Trembling, not sure what had just happened, Thend turned back to the patch of shadows that concealed his family.

"Death and justice," his mother's voice hissed out of the empty air. "Get away from here, Thend, before they come back!"

"I don't think they're coming back," he said, his voice (and his legs) a little wobbly. "Keep talking so I can find you."

So his mother told him he was a deranged maniac who ought not to be allowed loose and that she hadn't raised her children to be bug food, and would he please go away now, and he followed her voice to find the stake she was bound to. He found the ropes by feel and slashed them with the edge of the armblade. Once freed she stopped protesting but took the armblade from him and set about freeing the others: apparently she could still see them within this strange patch of shadow Morlock had made. The most terrible moment came when Stador's body slumped to the earth, half out of the zone of shadow, and Thend saw that his face was slack and lifeless, the wreath of sacrificial flowers falling from his head. He was dead, unmistakably dead. The others emerged, tearing the wreaths from their heads, alive but bleeding.

No, Fasra wasn't bleeding. He had saved at least one of his family, at least one, if they could get away.

Meanwhile the Khroic horde was swarming about the base of the cliff, just below where the illusion-prisoners were. Someone was bound to look back here sooner or later. So Thend's heart fell when his mother stooped down to pick up Stador's dead body.

"Leave him," Roble said, his voice harsh with the horror of what he was saying. "He's dead."

Naeli looked up, her dark eyes blazing. "With those things in him? No!"

Thend knew exactly what she meant. The eggs would hatch; the hatchlings would eat their way through Stador's dead flesh, the way the spiderfolk had eaten the Lost One. If they brought the corpse away they could burn it or something, deny their enemies a future from Stador's death. He grabbed Stador's legs. Roble muttered under his breath and helped him and so did Bann, weeping silently. Together they hustled the corpse up the slope toward the crest. If they could only make it that far, Thend thought, they would be safe. He didn't know why he felt that way, but he did.

But they didn't make it that far. Suddenly there was a roaring that drowned out even the chaos of Khroic voices, and the sky was filled with a fiery light that made the bonfires look dim. The guile of dragons had come. Now the dragons would hunt them down, just like before. There was no escape. There never had been a chance of it, just a false hope. He stumbled and nearly fell as he continued to run, burdened by Stador's dead body. He noted without understanding that they were casting no shadows on the ground, that they were moving within a patch of shadow. Then he did understand.

The others were now muttering with despair, echoing his own, and Roble was saying, "If we have to die, I'd rather try to fight-"

"Listen, I don't think they can see us," Thend said hurriedly. "It's something Morlock is doing."

"I saw us on the cliff," Fasra said quietly, in a dim lost way that made Thend want to weep; he wasn't sure why.

Shockingly, Roble snickered. "That sneaky bastard," he said. "How did you get away from the dragons, Thend? Another one of Morlock's tricks?"

Thend remembered the mutilated blue dragon, its red eyes fading as its corpse cooled in the moonlight. "Sort of," he said. "Tell you later."

"They're killing them," Fasra said, in that same vague oh-look-at-that tone. "They're killing all of them. Us, too."

They were at the crest, but they turned then to see what she was talking about.

The Khroi and the dragons were fighting. Many of the Khroi were already dead, and one of the dragons lay smoldering between the bonfires. Several dragons were smashing the base of the cliff with their tails, burying the illusion-prisoners in shattered stone.

"Why?" gasped Naeli.

Thend thought he knew. Another one of Morlock's tricks, indeed: why else had he put up images of himself, of Thend, of the Lost Khroi and the werewolf? They were the dragons' prizes, but Morlock had made it look as if the horde had stolen them from the guile. He must have known how the fiercely greedy dragons would react….

Then the cliff gave way and the mountainside fell into the narrow valley, nearly filling it. The shock blew Thend and his family off their feet, and when they arose they saw that the horde had been completely destroyed. Several of the dragons had been caught in the collapse and struggled feebly in the smoking rubble, but their former compatriots left them there and flew away: north, west, south, east, alone.

Choking from the dust, they hauled Stador's corpse over the crest of the (now very shallow) valley and put him down not far from Morlock.

The crooked man was returning from his vision, the werewolf standing over him. His sword was dark, and presently he opened his eyes. He sheathed his sword and struggled to his feet.

The werewolf, backing away, snarled at him.

"Probably," Morlock replied. "I thank you, though."

The werewolf disappeared into the moonlit, dust-choked night.

"He thinks he's safer travelling alone," Morlock remarked. "Poor old Stador," he said, his eyes falling on the dead body. "It was a grim death."

"Maybe you can think of a better one for the rest of us," Naeli whispered. "Except for Fasra and Thend. Take care of them, please."

"I'm not a deviser of comfortable deaths," Morlock rasped. "If Thend helps me, we can cut those eggs from you before they hatch. The Khroi aren't like the spiderfolk; there may only be three or four eggs in each of you. It will hurt worse than death, and then you may die anyway …"