“That’s something, at least. So . . . I’m not that handy with a sword. I can deal with one of these guys. Maybe. You can handle the other seven?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “No problem.”
“Good. For a moment, I thought we were in trouble. Maybe if someone hadn’t broken my crossbow . . .”
“Maybe if someone hadn’t tried to murder me in my sleep . . .”
“You keep coming back to that one little slip of mine,” she said. “You really need to stop holding grudges, whiskers. They aren’t healthy.”
He found himself smiling as the daerils came for them. That smile vanished quickly. The splashing of clawed feet, the hoots, the swinging of swords.
They bunch up when they attack with so many together, Siris thought. There’s something to that. . . . I can see it, in my head. Forms with the sword . . .
He threw himself into the fray, Isa guarding his back. He slammed swords aside, used his shield like a bludgeon, roared in rage to try to intimidate the daerils. But they were careful. They forced him back, and he could barely defend himself. He did get one lucky jab in, sending a single monster to his knees, holding his stomach and coughing blood. The others closed in.
Yes . . . I can see it . . . like a fragment of a memory . . .
Siris fell still. That seemed to make some of the daerils wary, for they drew back. Others still rampaged toward him, fighting.
Isa fell. He could hear her grunt, could see new blood in the stream, could feel the splash of water against his legs as she collapsed.
The daerils closed on him.
He shut his eyes.
There.
His arms moved, raising the sword as if by their own volition. In his youth, he’d trained his body to follow the instincts of a soldier, performing practice attacks, jabs, and stances until they were second nature. He was familiar with fighting by instinct.
He just had no idea where these particular instincts came from.
He snapped his eyes open and spun in a complex sword kata, feet moving quietly in the water. He seemed to dance with the river itself. His blade struck seven times in rapid succession, each blow precise, each move exact. When he stopped, he held the Infinity Blade before him in a calm, two-handed grip. The river flowed at his feet.
Seven daerilic corpses floated away.
He took a deep breath, as if coming awake after a long sleep, then turned—absently noting his shield, which he’d dropped sometime during the process.
What had that been? The rhythm of the attacks seemed so familiar. The seven strikes had come as if this particular fight—with each daeril in its place—was something he’d practiced time and time again.
The Infinity Blade? he wondered. Did those reflexes come from the sword?
Isa.
He cursed, dropping the weapon, grabbing her from the nearby water. She had a gut wound, a bad one, and the chill water washed the blood from it. Her eyes were still open, still moving, but her skin was pale, her lips trembling.
“I didn’t . . .” she said, “. . . when I said you had to fight seven, I didn’t actually expect you to do it. . . .”
“Here,” Siris said, pulling the ring off his finger and shoving it onto hers. “Use the ring. Heal yourself.”
“I can’t . . .”
“You can. It’s easy. You can sense it. See? Use it. You don’t even have to worry about growing a beard.”
“How can you not know?” she whispered.
“Know what?”
“I can’t use this, Siris. It doesn’t work that way. It—”
“Oh my, oh my, oh my,” a voice said.
Siris looked up. The robed figure who had been cowering behind the rocks had un-cowered his way up the bank to inspect his saviors. His hood had fallen back, and there wasn’t a face in there.
Or . . . well, not a human face. Not even a living face. Two eyes like blue gemstones regarded him from their place set in a head carved from wood. There was no mouth, though the spindly thing spoke. “That is not good, not good, not good.”
“Can you help?” Siris asked desperately.
“Must I?”
“Yes!”
“Bring her over then, out of the water, out of the water. Yes, yes. Something metal, let us see, and thread I should imagine . . .”
Siris lifted Isa and splashed through the water to the bank, watered-down blood seeping out of the wound. He set her on the rocky bank as the creature—a golem of some sort—shucked its robe, revealing a puppetlike body of thin wood.
Bamboo, Siris thought. It’s made of bamboo.
“Yes, yes,” the golem said, inspecting the wound with thin fingers. “Your shield. I need your shield.”
Siris fetched it. What else could he do? It didn’t seem the time to ask questions. When he returned with the wet shield, the creature was absently reaching out to touch its fallen robe. Its hand, then arm, unraveled.
Siris froze. The creature’s body was turning to thread, the transformation running up its arm.
“Excellent, excellent,” the creature said, waving with the hand that was still wooden. “Bring it, please. Please, yes.”
Siris knelt, setting the shield beside Isa. She was still breathing, but had her eyes closed. She looked so pale.
The creature touched the shield with its wooden hand, and that hand fused to the steel, transforming and becoming metal. This transformation ran up its other arm, turning half of its body to metal.
Then the creature broke its arm free, splintering its entire body. The fracture was precise, and from the heap of metal emerged a smaller version of the creature, perhaps one foot tall, with one half of its body made of bunched up thread and the other half made of slender, silvery steel.
It walked up and prodded Isa’s wound with fingers that were now very fine, like needles. It cut away the clothing near the gash—its fingers were sharp on one side.
“Clean wound,” it said, the voice now much softer. “Cut very sharply. Good, but yes, much work to do. Must be quick! Lots of blood. Not good, not good.”
The creature pushed its way into the wound, burying its arms—one of silvery metal, the other a pile of thread that moved like muscles—into her abdomen. The creature began to hum, using one spindly finger like a needle, threading part of its own body through and beginning to sew on the wound.
“It’s going to be all right,” Siris said to Isa. I think. I hope.
“Too much of a coincidence,” she whispered.
“Hush,” he said. “Don’t—”
She opened her eyes. “It was following us. That thing, whatever it . . .” She grimaced in pain and took a few panting breaths. “It must have been followed us, Siris. That’s why it fell into the ambush. It didn’t catch that we’d split off to go the long way around.”
Siris looked at the creature, which was working quickly, humming to itself. In just a few minutes, it finished with its work on Isa’s innards and moved to sewing up her outer gash. Its fingers were a blur, and the stitches it made incredibly tight and small. It pulled the final stitch tight, then tied it off and snipped.
Isa was unconscious by then, but still breathing. Siris felt helpless. Why had she refused to use the healing ring? He slipped it from her finger. Perhaps she’d just been addled by the wound, the fight. If she came to . . . when she came to . . . then she could use it.
“Thank you, creature,” he said.
“Hmmm. I obey, as instructed.” The creature inspected its handiwork, then fell backward.
Siris started as the creature melded into the rock behind it, its body transforming to match the stone. A second later, a larger version of it—five feet tall now—ripped free of the ground, now made of river rocks and mud. He could still see its former body where it had melded into the large stone at the thing’s chest.
It opened gemstone eyes in a vaguely head-shaped stone on its shoulders, and when it stepped, rocks ground against one another. It picked up the robe.
“What are you?
” Siris asked.
“TEL,” the creature said. “Transubstantive Entity, Lower-class.”
“And were you following me?”
“. . . Yes.”
“You serve one of the Deathless, don’t you?”
Another pause. “I do.”
“Which one?”
“I have been commanded not to respond to that question,” TEL said happily. “Oh my. This is probably not a good place to be having a dialogue. I do believe that other bands of Q.I.P.-mutants may inhabit the area.”
Siris looked down at the unconscious Isa. Moving her didn’t seem to be a good idea, but remaining in this place—where the sounds of battle might have drawn attention—was a worse one. Siris moved to pick her up.
“If I may suggest,” TEL said, “with a substance of stone, I am quite well equipped to carry large burdens without growing fatigued. If you would command me . . . ?”
“Uh, pick her up.”