Page 110 of Swordheart
They passed a dead rabbit by the side of the wagon road. It was mostly rags of fur and rib cage. One of the things lay over the top of it, like a thick glaze of ice on bone.
Halla twisted in the wagon seat to look behind them. She could not shake the feeling that the sky-swimmers were going to rise up as soon as she was no longer facing them and that she would turn and see a hundred panes of glass hanging in the air behind the wagon.
The sunlight warped a little as it passed through the sky-swimmers, focusing just a little, as if through a pane of glass. It left irregular spots of light on the road. When one of those lights passed over the back of Halla’s hand, she moved it, feeling ill.
Look at me not screaming,she thought dreamily.I am not screaming at all. I am not curled into a ball and crying. I am being very calm.
Skreek…skreek…skreek… The wheels creaked forward. The trees looked as if they had been caught in a sudden ice storm, with sheets of ice hanging from every branch.
We’re going to die. We are going to die a horrible and stupid death and Cousin Alver will get the house and my nieces will make bad marriages because they don’t have any money and probably one will end up with a man who spends two minutes in bed with her every fortnight, staring at the wall. And Zale will die and Brindle will die and Sarkis will lay in a sword covered in monsters and no one will find him for a thousand years and even the scholars at the library won’t be able to find the Weeping Lands again.
I’m going to die without ever telling Sarkis that I…what?
I want him? I love him?
DoI love him?
Halla had always found it easy to love. Love was a patient, exasperated emotion, and she knew it well. She had had so many relatives and she had loved them all, except possibly Alver. She loved Zale and Brindle and even slow Prettyfoot the ox because you could not help but love people who had lived through such stupid, terrible things with you.
What she felt for Sarkis was something wildly different, as if a branch had been grafted on a familiar tree and had grown a bizarre and unexpected fruit.
It would be incredibly stupid to turn to him right now and tell him that I was hopelessly in love with him.
The hollow way was growing together over the top of the road again. The sky-swimmers lay thick on the branches, the sunlight dancing off their bodies in a lovely, deadly shimmer.
It won’t be any less stupid if you shout that as you’re getting engulfed in predatory slime.
Do you really want to make the last seconds of your life unspeakably awkward?
Well, given that it’s me, if the last seconds of my lifearen’tunspeakably awkward, I’m probably doing something wrong…
Skreek…skreek…skreek…
One of the creatures moved in the trees, a slow, languid stretch, like a pane of glass rolling over in its sleep. All four of them stared at it, while the ox walked stolidly onward.
Skreek…skreek…skreek…
“They’re thinning out,” whispered Zale.
Brindle pointed.
The hollow way opened up again a few dozen yards ahead, but one of the swimmers hung partway down over the opening. It was tall enough for a human to pass under, but not the wagon.
Sarkis looked at Brindle. Brindle tapped the goad and nodded.
“Go through,” he whispered, helping Halla and Zale down. “Brindle, do you wish me to do it?”
“No, sword-man. An ox is a gnole’s responsibility.”
Sarkis scooted next to the gnole on the seat, clearly ready to throw himself over Brindle if the creature reacted.
Halla and Zale walked single file beneath the sky-swimmer. Halla’s heart was pounding so loudly that she thought she might faint. Viewed from the side, it was about two inches thick, and she could see soft variations in color, which might have been organs or markings or the gods only knew what. Every pebble under her foot seemed the size of her fist, ready to roll and pitch her forward, face-first, into the creature. She bent nearly double going under it, ready to crawl on her belly if it would keep the awful thing away.
Sunlight blazed on her face as she stepped free of the hollow way. Halla nearly went to her knees.
She and Zale collapsed against each other, staggering out of the shadows of the hollow. It was impossible to say who was holding the other one up, just that neither of them seemed able to stand alone. Halla could feel the priest’s body shaking, but that was fine because she was, too.
“I must write this all down,” whispered Zale forlornly. “I must write it down and tell the bishop that no one is to ever go into the Vagrant Hills, never ever…”
