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“They are poison,” said Two Fingers. “This is very bad.”
“I have an idea.” Alain slipped off his armband and fastened it to his staff. “Light all the torches, one for each of you, and walk closely behind me. I’ll clear a path.”
So they went, he in the lead and Adica immediately behind him, then the hounds with Two Fingers right behind and Laoina—brave Laoina!—bringing up the rear. The snakes writhed away from the touch of the armband, and he shoved it among them mercilessly as he broke a path through their ranks. Slender tongues flickered, tasting the air. The hissing of the agitated snakes rose in volume to become like a flood’s roar. Behind, the others thrust and thrust again with the torches, cutting swathes of fire to keep the snakes away. Smoke hazed the cavern.
The boldest of their pursuers had been caught by the phoenix’s first attack. Falling, gut ripped open, he had succumbed to the snakes, dusky skin purpling everywhere and swelling most horribly from their poison. He was a difficult obstacle to cross, because he was already beginning to stink.
Not quickly enough the far tunnel opened before them. Alain shoved Adica past him, then slapped the hounds along after. Two Fingers almost swiped him with his torch as the man leaped past, Laoina at his heels, coughing as she took in a lungful of pitchy smoke. Alain backed after them, poking at the slithering mass, which had already swarmed over the corpse, hiding it.
“Watch out!” cried Laoina, behind him.
His heel hit a soft obstacle. He stumbled, tripped, and fell hard into the grotesque embrace of a mutilated corpse that half blocked the tunnel’s opening.
“Hei!” cried Laoina, stepping up next to him and thrusting her torch forward.
He groped for the haft of his staff, fallen over his knees. His other hand slipped on something cool and wet as he tried to push himself up.
A snake had found shelter in the opened chest cavity of the dead man. It curled free, out of the spume and blood, just as Alain set his hand in its way, trying to get purchase on the bloody ground.
Bit.
Unspeakable pain lanced up his stricken arm.
Laoina tossed the torch to land at Alain’s feet. Snakes writhed away from the flames as she jabbed with her spear, catching the snake midway down its length. With a furious oath, she flung it off the point and back into the darkness of the cavern.
Alain scrambled to his feet, grabbing his staff. They retreated hastily, brought up short at the narrow cleft, where their companions waited beside two more gruesomely-torn corpses.
“The snake has bitten him,” said Laoina curtly.
Two Fingers grabbed Alain’s hand at the wrist. An ugly red swelling had already begun to deform the hand. “For this I have no cure,” he said mournfully.
“Let me see.” Adica raised the bitten hand to her mouth, but Two Fingers grabbed her arm and yanked her away.
“Do not! In the mouth, it will kill. In the hand, maybe he can live. Quickly we must go. If the phoenix returns, then are we all dead.”
“Let’s go,” said Alain, biting hard at his lower lip. That small pain alone allowed him to stay standing. The pain had thrust all the way up to his head. Maybe he might split in half from the agony. But Two Fingers was right. Shaking so hard he could barely get his fingers to work, he untied the armband and shoved it up his injured arm. At once, strangely, the pain eased enough that he could think again. His little finger, below the bite, was beginning to puff up. “I will live.”
“Quick quick,” said Laoina, taking him at his word. Behind, they heard hissing, as though the eyeless snakes had come to investigate down the tunnel, guiding themselves along their trail with flicks of their forked tongues. One of the corpses was actually blocking the cleft. Laoina shoved it out of the way.
“Follow me,” said Two Fingers.
They doused two torches and by a single light retraced their original path. They found another dead Cursed One afloat in the underground pool, his arms and leg leaking blood in rivulets that flowed toward the culvert. It wasn’t easy to wade across that water, its clarity polluted by bits of flesh and innards drifting free of the cavity ripped into his stomach. All the pale fish and salamanders had vanished. Faint gold streaks made the walls glow, the sign of the phoenix’s passage.
The cold water eased the pain in Alain’s hand, although a second finger had begun to swell.
Two Fingers followed the phoenix’s trail down a tunnel that ran as straight as an arrow’s flight. One torch guttered out, and he lit the second, but even so they walked on and on until Alain’s feet began to hurt from the unrelenting stone. He could not bend three of his fingers, but decided it was simply better not to look at them. Adica tried to talk to him, but he shushed her, afraid she would let her fear for him delay them.
The second torch spent itself, and Two Fingers lit the third. On they went. Eventually, the rock floor gave way to grainy sand.
Alain stopped to take in a deep breath. “Salt water.” The sharp scent cleared his head. His headache eased. He could not close his hand. It felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size, but when he looked at it in the dim light, it didn’t look much different.
Two Fingers extinguished the torch. There remained light enough to see Two Fingers place the partially burned torch onto a stack of other torches, some fresh, some half spent, set into a niche carved into the sloping wall. They emerged then out of a narrow cave’s mouth onto a strand so long that, with dusk falling, Alain could see no end to it on either side. Heavy clouds engulfed the sky, an angry horizon marked by the receding storm. The wind stung his fingers, its touch like the bite of the snake all over again. Angry red stripes lanced up his forearm, to his elbow, but where they reached the skrolin armband they simply ceased, as though cut off.
“Let me see,” said Adica, more insistently now. He held out his arm. Where her fingers probed gingerly, pain flared. He looked away, unwilling to see the angry swelling turn white where she pressed on it, as if it were already dead and rotting.
Sorrow and Rage took off running down the beach, stretching their legs at last. Many tunnels studded the cliff face that backed the strand. A ship lay beached on the sand, drawn up out of tide’s reach: sleek curves and pale, gleaming wood.
Seeing him stare, Adica spoke as she continued to probe. In a way, her matter-of-fact voice took his mind off the pain and off the fear of what the snake’s poison might be working in him. “Only the Cursed Ones build such beautiful ships, as fair as the stars and strong enough to sail out of sight of land. In such ships, the Cursed Ones crossed the world ocean. They came from the west many generations ago, in the time of the ancient queens. Here in human lands they crafted a new empire built out of human bone and human blood.”
