demanded Hogan. “You said there was no dark grove.”
A terrible fear lit her eyes. “Run,” she said. “It’s full of souls.”
Hunger had tried to devour Purity like he had all the others, but the thing at her neck fought him. It stunk of the men’s magic. As he tried to feel along its weave to untangle it, the word for what it was came to him; it surfaced from the murky waters of his mind like a giant fish. It was a king’s collar, something forged in the secret fires of the Kains that could prevent even a Divine from using magic. He marveled for a moment—how could Barg, a common butcher, know such things? He couldn’t, shouldn’t know such things. Unless Barg wasn’t the only man he’d eaten.
He looked more closely at the collar. If such a thing could harness a Divine, it might be able to harness a Mother.
That thought made him hold very still. The Mother had been sleeping and shut him out. She could not know about this. He could not wake her. Hunger kept his thoughts quiet.
The Mother was going to eat his family. He knew that. No matter what he did, she would eat them. Perhaps in the end, she would eat him as well. But this collar, this might bind her up tight. After all, humans had beaten the Mothers before. She said so herself.
Humans with magic.
Hunger looked at the Sleth woman. He’d need to plan very carefully. The Mother was strong. But perhaps this time the prey, with this slip of magic, might turn the tables and catch the predator.
Someone called out from behind him. He turned and saw two men—a Mokaddian with a sword and a Koramite with an axe. Stink rolled off both of them in waves. There was the Mother’s magic, but hers was always fresh and clean. This, this was something else.
Hunger recognized the Mokaddian but couldn’t put a name to him.
Then the Koramite struck him with his axe.
The force of that blow knocked Hunger back a step. Such power surprised him. But it didn’t matter. Hunger was a man of dirt, and he caught the Koramite by the throat and held him up. He could snap him like he had the other men above.
But there would be secrets in these two men. Plenty of secrets. Some of which might show him how to defeat the Mother. He should eat them. They weren’t human. They were Sleth. In fact, by all laws he should kill them. Eating them would not make him any more abominable than he already was. And it just might prevent the Mother from working her evil further.
Hunger tried to shuck the man, but he could not find a crack. It was like trying to use a spoon to peel the bark from a maple: all he could do was chip off small chunks.
He searched over the man’s body and snagged on the tiniest of gaps. He could feel the man’s fear. He could taste him.
Something flashed and Hunger lost his grip. The Koramite fell to the floor.
Hunger turned. The Mokaddian had joined the fray. The flash had been his blade, cutting clean through the wrist of the arm Hunger had been holding the Koramite with. The Mokaddian swung his blade again at Hunger’s neck, but the Mother had built him solidly there, and the blade simply lodged in the rock she’d used for his bones.
Hunger drew back the stump of his arm and swatted the Mokaddian to the other side of the room. He looked down at his hand on the floor and then at his stump. The dirt in his forearm had already begun to shift and form itself into a new ragged thing that looked not so much like a hand as it did the wild growth from a coppiced tree.
These two knew how to resist him. This meant he was going to have to kill them before he unraveled them. That was trickier than just taking them live. Trickier, but he could do it.
The Koramite backed up by the burning pile of straw. He held his useless axe ready. The Mokaddian knelt at the far wall, looking as if he were trying to regain his senses.
Hunger would take the Koramite first.
Then he felt the Mother stirring and all his attention turned to the collar. He had to hide it, had to busy himself with some other task. Otherwise, she would know.
She would know, she would know. She would command him to