"Is it the spirits?" Wenda whispered.
Ashyn shook her head. "I haven't heard any out here. I just-- I feel . . ."
"She's the Seeker," Wenda said to Ronan. "We ought to listen."
Ashyn suspected that carried little weight with him, but then the noise came again, closer now, and when Ashyn looked over--
She stifled a gasp. Ronan wheeled, sword up.
They could see a dark shape moving along the ground twenty paces away, too far for them to make out any more than that. Far enough that they should not have been able to see a mere snake. This looked as big as a man, a creature slithering across the rock.
"Move!" Ronan whispered, pushing them ahead. "Go!"
Twenty-seven
As they ran, Ashyn fumbled to get he
r dagger out of the sheath. She'd put it away to hug Wenda. Now she was so preoccupied with removing it that when Tova bounded over a small fissure, she didn't notice until she was already tripping.
Her hands shot out to stop herself, and they managed to touch down just in time to keep her from bashing her face into the lava rock. Except she wasn't touching rock. Her forearms rested on something soft. Tova, she thought . . . until she felt the hound yanking her cloak. That's when Wenda started to scream, and Ashyn looked down at her forearms, resting on green worsted wool. Beatrix's cloak. With Beatrix's plump body beneath it.
Ronan silenced the child as Ashyn crawled quickly toward Beatrix's head, her fingers ripping the older woman's cloak apart, her hands going to her heart. She felt wet fabric and thought it was blood. Then her fingers began to burn and, as she fell back, she saw Beatrix's own hands, covering her face and . . .
Bone. Ashyn saw bone. Skin, too--and flesh and bone. Her own fingers continued to burn, and she wiped them brusquely on her cloak as she moved up for a better look. Beatrix's hands were . . . damaged. Chunks of skin and flesh were missing, bone showing through. Her throat was the same. And beneath Beatrix's hands, Ashyn could see parts of the old woman's face. Holes in her . . .
She turned and emptied her stomach onto the sand. Ronan's hand closed on her shoulder, tugging her up. He didn't bend--he was holding the child's face against his tunic, hiding the sight from her.
"She's gone," he said as he pulled Ashyn up.
"But what . . . what could do that?"
"Fire, perhaps? She looks burned."
She doesn't smell burned.
Her stomach lurched again at the thought. Her fingers still stung and she rubbed them harder. Ronan whispered for Wenda to stay where she was, facing her away from Beatrix's body, then he caught Ashyn's hand and pulled it up into the moonlight. Her fingertips were red and raw.
"Did you touch her?" he asked.
"Just her cloak. It was wet. Her blood, I suppose, but . . ." There was no blood. Looking down now, she saw that. But she could also see damp patches all over Beatrix's cloak.
"Venom," Ronan whispered. He spat on her fingers and rubbed furiously.
She jerked her hand back. "It's worse if it breaks through the skin." Her voice sounded so calm. As if she were treating a stranger on a battlefield. "I need to wash it off."
"There's water at camp."
"I brought a healing bag, too. There might be something there."
This isn't calm. It's shock.
She looked again at Beatrix's maimed body, and it was like a smack, snapping her out of her stupor. She broke into a run heading for camp, Tova leaping in front to lead her down a clear path.
I'm all right, she thought as she ran. My fingers sting, but that's it.
Was that calm reason talking? Or shock? Either way, it kept the panic away. Whatever poison affected Beatrix had been horrific, but it seemed to have happened quickly. It must have, if she hadn't had time to scream.
Because it burned her throat. She couldn't scream. That doesn't mean she didn't--