"I know I do not have to concern myself with your success," he said.
She grinned, and when she spoke the stench of the grave issued from her mouth.
"Faraday condemns herself," she said. "She does not even want to succeed."
"I cannot understand her preoccupation with self-sacrifice," Qeteb said, "but I am mightily grateful for it."
Then, without further ado, he, too, vanished.
Chapter 61
For the Love of a Bear Cub
They again sat their mounts — Qeteb his beast of blackness, DragonStar his stallion of drifting stars —
but now atop Cauldron Keep itself.
They were uncomfortably close, and both Qeteb's beast and the Star Stallion constantly shifted slightly to keep the maximum possible distance between them.
"Well," said Qeteb from behind his visor, "at least we have a good view."
And he pointed. "Look."
Goldman and Dare Wing stood by an outcrop of rocks. Behind the rocks stretched the remains of the Silent Woman Woods: tall spikes of blackened timber with occasional spars of charred branches jutting out like the battered rigging of a storm-damaged ship. A path wound through the trees, leading back into the unknown depths of the dead Woods.
DareWing stood straight and tall, his black wings folded tightly against his back. He wore only a white linen tunic and sandals.
He carried no weapon, and his face was expressionless.
Goldman, on the other hand, was clearly excited, impatient for the fun to begin. He shifted from leg to leg, as he also shifted a heavy staff from hand to hand.
Incongruously for a Master of the Guilds, he was dressed as a woodsman.
The lizard was nowhere to be seen.
DareWing and Goldman waited.
Qeteb and DragonStar waited.
Hours passed, and Goldman grew ever more restless.
"Where are they?" he asked Dare Wing.
"Soon," DareWing said.
"How do you know?"
"I can smell them," DareWing said.
Goldman opened his mouth to say something further, but closed it as he saw two mangy hunting hounds emerge from behind one of the blackened trees.
They looked like deformed Alaunt. Pale ivory in colour, and with the lean but muscular long-legged shape of the Alaunt, both hounds had running sores covering their pelts, and foulness oozing from eyes and mouths.
The hounds grinned, and one, Barzula, said: "What temptation do you have for us, then?
What choice?"
"We have a hunt," DareWing said softly.
"A hunt!" Mot bayed, and half laughed, half growled. "How appropriate that we took this form, then!"
DareWing did not reply to that. The Demons had known of the nature of the challenge, and had picked their forms to suit.
Goldman indicated the dead forest behind him with his staff. "A bear and her cub haunt these woods, making it unsafe for —"
"For who?" Barzula asked, his canine mouth grinning slyly.
"For any who would walk beneath the trees," Goldman said. "Will you track her down for us?"
"We like to hunt," Mot said, and both hounds giggled. "We will do as you ask."
And without further ado, the two corrupted hounds pushed their way past Goldman and Barzula, and loped into the skeletal trees.
They tracked for hours. Many times the hounds bayed in excitement as they picked up the great bear's scent, and as many times their tails and ears drooped after a few minutes of following the trail, only to have it fade into non-existence. Goldman and DareWing followed behind, silent, watchful, patient.
In the late afternoon the hounds became frustrated, snapping and snarling at every shadow, every trick of the wind. They savaged tree trunks, tearing great gouges into the dead wood, and dug furious, futile holes in the drifting dirt, defecating quickly into them before moving on to find something else to destroy and corrupt.
They had almost forgotten the bear.
