Breschius surveyed the clearing and the surrounding woods anxiously. “I hope you told them to keep well away. I only ring the bell when it’s safe for her to come out.”
The breath of that sound floated on the breeze, lighter than the kiss of a butterfly’s wings on waiting lips. Liathano.
“That’s no bell.” Liath got her bow out and an arrow free. “Get in the wagon. I’ll run into the trees to draw it away.”
“Galla,” said Hanna. “I’ve heard them before.”
“It’s after me. Get in the wagon. I can kill it easily enough with a griffin feather, but if you are in the way, it will devour you.”
Breschius watched them, nervous but uncomprehending. “It’s getting dark. An archer is blinded by night.”
“Not dark yet for me. Go, Hanna!”
Hanna grabbed Breschius’ wrist and tugged him after. “Get inside, Sorgatani!”
Liath ran out of the enclosure, then ducked into the trees, seeking open ground. Better to have met it in the clearing, but she could not control its movements there, where the wagon lay. As she jogged along, leggings rattling against underbrush, she felt its presence veer after her, heard the change of direction in its bell voice as it shifted its course. There was only one.
Twilight turned to gray. The last of the day’s cloudy light sifted down through the canopy, which here consisted mostly of bare branches and the occasional pine or lonely spruce, densely and darkly green. She saw a lightening beyond the trees, ahead of her, and dashed into a meadow cut by a trickling creek. She splashed through the water—it was no more than ankle-deep—and waded through knee-high grass until she reached a central place in the clearing. After turning, she listened; seeking, she examined the forest. The wind shifted, hiding the galla’s iron tang and muting its deep voice.
From the trees behind her a warbler droned its chiff-chaff call, answered by the chatter of a magpie. She squinted, wondering, marveling. There was hope still, if the birds had returned to build their nests.
She heard the sound more as a breath released, too late. She spun. An arrow bit into her thigh. Stumbling backward, she grabbed the haft of the arrow and to her amazement it came free, slipped right out of her flesh all bloody. Blood spilled down her leggings and around the curve of her knee.
Ai, God, it stung, worse than the arrow that had pinned her to the corpse of a horse. She staggered, fell, but caught herself on a hand.
Liathano. The galla’s voice rang in her heart like the pulse of her blood; it breathed with her as it closed in.
She fumbled for her bow, dropped in the grass, but the pain spreading from the wound in her thigh boiled so hot that it burned her flesh from the inside out.
This is what it feels like to be eaten alive by fire.
Still kneeling, she fought to keep herself braced up on that hand. If she fell, she died. Grass tickled her face as she swayed. Her entire leg had gone to fire, and the fire sped into her chest until she could not breathe, only burn.
When the shadows slid free of the forest and came running up to her, she understood at last. They were men with the faces of animals. The Ashioi had come. She had been poisoned.
Liathano.
To her right, the towering blackness that marked the galla’s mortal body swept out of the trees. The smell of the forge washed over her, blinding her. She fumbled with her right hand—the left was ash—and found the cutting feathers of the griffin-fletched arrow. Pain cut her fingers. She felt her balance going, her body toppling sidelong as the toxin roared into her mind, searing everything before it, even that lingering sour-leek taste from the porridge.
She tried to speak but had no voice.
Cat Mask leaned over her. “What creature have you called down on us?”
Shifting the arrow a finger’s length got him to look down at it. “Kill it,” she whispered. “With—griffin—feather.”
A fox face loomed over her. “This is the one we seek! You’ve killed her!”
“Stand back! Let me aim!”
Liathano.
Dead anyway, she thought bitterly as her vision clouded, hazed over by a veil of darkness. The galla will devour me. Ai, God, Sanglant. The baby, the precious blessing. The flames devoured her, and she fell.
I couldn’t even warn Hanna.
A spark flew. In a shower of light, the galla snapped out of existence. And so did she.
4