the blackened earth and illuminated the silver spike as the demon reached up and fingered its tip.
‘So loud,’ it whispered, ‘the sky is . . . so loud.’ Waterfalls of black bile leaked out from between its serrated teeth, stained the ground. ‘It hurts . . .’ Quietly, it looked up to the sky. ‘Mother . . . how come it hurts?’
Kataria watched it collapse, the sword hilt proud in the sunlight, and a thought struck her.
That should not have happened . . .
It was when she blinked and felt her eyes squish that another thought rose.
I can’t breathe.
As though it had seemed a foreign concept until that moment, she began to rake at her face, pulling mucus off in great sheets. The slime seemed to resent this, trying to seep further inside her each time she clawed. Her lungs were ready to burst, heart ready to explode, mind ready to turn to stone and drag her head to the ground.
And still she raked.
Boots crunched. She felt a shadow descend upon her.
‘Lenk,’ she gurgled, choked, ‘help.’
He stood above her, unmoving, shadowed by the blend of smoke and sunlight.
‘Lenk,’ she said again, voice straining to get out through the ooze.
He twitched, knelt down beside her.
She opened her mouth to plead again, but found herself breathless. Blood froze in her veins, breath forgotten as her jaw went slack. She gasped; the ooze found its door into her body and flooded in. Her next breath was the last she took before she felt herself slip away, but even through the darkness of her eyes, she could still see him.
Lenk, skin as grey as a drowned corpse, eyes blue and burning, bereft of pupils.
Seventeen
BURY YOUR FRIENDS DEEP
‘Is it working?’
Asper could feel Lenk’s eyes with such intensity they threatened to crack her skull. His stare darted between the priestess, sweating and pumping knotted hands over her patient’s chest, and the shict, who lay breathless upon the ground.
Asper kept her actual thoughts to herself; it just seemed in poor taste to tell him his concern over his dying companion was slightly irritating.
‘I don’t know yet.’ She pressed a pair of fingers against Kataria’s throat. ‘This sort of thing works on drowning victims, but only if we get to them quickly.’ No pulse; she kept her head low to conceal her frown. ‘Really, I just have no idea if it works on drowning by demons.’
‘Well, try—’
‘Oh, is that what I’m supposed to be doing?’ she snarled over her shoulder at him. ‘I’m not putting hands on her chest for your enjoyment, you know. Back away, moron!’
He nodded weakly, backing away. Such readiness to obey distressed her. It was exceedingly unlike the young man to so willingly bow out of such a situation. Then again, she considered, it was exceedingly unlike him to express any interest in death. Yet he seemed to be dying with the shict, moping about her soon-to-be-corpse like a dog around its dying master.
Asper forbore to tell him this.
She was sorely tempted to tell him to stop staring at her, though. His eyes bored into the back of her skull, drilling into two well-worn spots in her head where other, weary stares had rested. Gazes from mothers with fevered children, fathers with raped daughters had left the first scratches upon her scalp. Soldiers with wounded comrades and sons with ailing elders had bored even deeper.
Lenk’s stare, however, went well beyond her skin. He peered past hair, flesh, blood and bone into the deepest recesses of her mind. He saw her, she felt, and all the workings of her brain.
He knew she couldn’t save this one.
NO! she shrieked at herself inside her own head. Don’t think like that. You can do this. These hands have healed before, countless people. These hands . . .
Her gaze was drawn to her left hand, resting limply upon the shict’s abdomen. It twitched suddenly, temptingly. You could end it all, you know, her thoughts drifted, just a bit of pressure, like you did to the frogman. Then, poof! All over! She won’t have to suffer any more . . .
‘No, no, no, NO!’
She ignored the concerned stares cast her way, ignored her hand, ignored everything but the placid expression upon Kataria’s face and the stillness of her heart.
‘I can do this,’ she muttered, beginning chest compressions anew, ‘I can do this, I can do this.’ She found solace in the repetition, so much that she barely noticed the tear forming at the corner of her eye. ‘Please, Talanas, let