The Scarab Path

Twenty-Two

They were still trying to roust a second land-fish for the hunt when Che saw it, glimmering amid the foliage on the far side of the river as though it was a ragged cloth caught amongst the leaves.

No! she thought, but that part of her, the part inside that was helplessly anchored to him, was already responding. 'Take the boat across,' she heard herself say. She was pointing right towards the shuddering blur that only she could see. 'Take it there.'

She heard Manny say, 'That's more like it,' and knew that they were also heading for where the hunt was. I'm doing it again. It's the Fir-eaters all over again. Only this time it was two bewildered academics she was dragging into danger alongside her. Can I not just turn my back?

She could not. It was not even love, now. She was cursed. Her life, her understandings, had been taken from her. Chasing this ghost was the only way she might ever get them back. And what am I willing to pay for that, at the expense of others?

The ghost was gone but she had seen it, felt it. It would come back to her. Whatever it wanted, it wanted here. The Mantis crew tacked their boat to what passed for a riverbank, barely more than stands of reeds and ferns jutting from the winding water. Manny put an arrow to his bow and tried to look heroic, while Praeda huddled as low as she could manage in the boat, trying to look bored. Che stared into the shadow-maze of the delta and searched for Achaeos.

Something was moving out there, she saw. There were quick flashes of rush-boats speeding, she heard shrill whistles and, across the river, Amnon's boat turned and began heading towards them.

'I think …' she started, and then a land-fish burst through the reeds not ten feet ahead of their boat, careering over a mudbank and into the river. Che toppled back into the bottom of the boat, on to Praeda, as she heard the distinct twang of Manny's bowstring releasing the arrow.

'Manny!' she shouted. 'Tell me you didn't shoot it!' She levered herself up, saw the land-fish now rearing and plunging past Amnon's boat, being herded by the smaller punts of the Mantids. Manny stood at the prow of their own vessel with the bow in one hand, mouth open.

'No,' he said. 'I just … it startled me. I shot the river, I'm afraid.' He turned a sheepish smile on her, but just then one of the Mantis crew gave a warning shout, pointing.

There had been a line attached to Manny's arrow, and it was pulling taut, unspooling from the bottom of the boat and whipping into the water faster than Che could watch. She met Manny's uncertain gaze.

'You shot something more than the river,' she said, but then the line went suddenly slack. Manny gave a great sigh of relief.

'Well, whatever it is-' he started, before Praeda cut him off.

'Whatever it is, it's stopped moving away. It's coming back, you fool.'

The Mantis crew had snatched up short-hafted spears, as Che stared at the murky waters of the Jamail. What have we woken?

It struck them from the opposite side of the boat, the narrow wooden hull almost kicked over by the force. One of the Mantids took to the air; the other crouched at the stern, holding the boat with one hand, and spear raised high. For a second there was nothing but churning water, then segmented arms began hooking on to one side of the boat and the creature was doing its best to climb in with them. Che saw a rounded carapace break the water, and below it a small head with fist-sized faceted eyes the colour of fresh blood and a beak like a shortsword. Manny's arrow jutted from the joint between the creature's head and body. The barbed arms scrabbled at the wooden hull, and then made a great effort to climb. Surging out of the water, it was twice the size of a man.

The boat tipped towards it, and then flipped over entirely. Che felt her wings flare automatically, dragging her up to hover inches above the river. The Mantids knelt stabbing at the insect as it continued to try and haul itself onto the boat, mindlessly seeking an enemy it could not understand. Then Amnon's boat was in the water alongside them, and he had brought company.

The second land-fish was not yet dispatched but Amnon had come to their aid even though the maddened creature was tethered to his craft. He reached down and grabbed Praeda's thrashing arm, dragging her, one-handed, up into his boat. His crew had set their spears against the enraged fish that was attacking them from the other side, while the smaller boats speeding past it loosed arrows to distract its attention. Che saw Manny floundering, first pawing at the capsized boat, then clinging to one of the water-insect's legs as it hung from the upturned vessel, more frightened of the water itself than of the things that lived in it. She tried to get closer to him, but Amnon was already there, the land-fish drawn away from him for the moment. Bracing himself, he caught hold of Manny's robe, pulling upwards with all his strength until he had tugged the fat man halfway out of the water. Praeda appeared beside him, grabbing for handfuls of Manny, too, and then a Mantis joined in on the other side. The real help came from the marauding insect, which finally claimed the keel of the capsized boat as its own, and pulled Manny up with it. For a second he hung there, dripping and shivering, still clinging to the creature, and then Amnon's boat closed the last foot of distance and they tipped him into it. The insect turned to stare at them, flexing its beak, then Amnon leant forward and grasped the arrow's shaft. For a second neither moved, and then the creature went for him, driving itself forward from the overturned hull. Amnon jerked back just as the lunging insect struck the side of his boat, shoving it away, then the creature vanished into the depths of the river. Amnon's hand now held the offending arrow, which he brandished aloft like a trophy.

Cheerwell.

She turned, still hovering ponderously over the water, and spotted him. He shuddered and stained the air, like paint running, an anguished grey form within the trees.

Here, Beetle girl, here!

No! she told it, but she knew she could not deny its summons. Just tell me what you want! What can I do?

Power. Strength, replied that harsh voice, the same commanding tones that had dragged her from her bedroll by the oasis. There is power here. I need it.

Achaeos … I cannot live like this. But she lumbered into the treeline, wings a labouring blur, chasing that fleeting, smearing image. Achaeos, I would free you if I could.

We would be rid of each other, returned that deathless voice, and it pierced her sharply. She fell from the air, landing thigh-deep in murky water.

'Don't say that,' she demanded of the delta and its myriad denizens. 'Please, Achaeos …'

Come! was the order it delivered and she felt it tugging at her mind with all its insubstantial fury.

'Is it …?' She choked over the words. 'Is it so bad to be with me?'

Agony. I am pierced and pierced. For a moment the encroaching green all around her became the twisted corpse of the Darakyon, and she shuddered away from it. The ghost, its hook fastened in her mind, was still dragging at her, just strongly enough for her to feel. He was throwing all his might — all that death had left him — into drawing her somewhere, some place he had sensed.

'I'm coming!' she told him, and she floundered her way forward, heedless of monster fish or insects, determined finally to shed this burden, to set him free — and so to free herself.

'Give me your alcohol,' Thalric ordered. He had snapped the arrowhead off, although with so much wrenching that Osgan had briefly passed out. Now the stricken man was conscious again, pasty-faced and sweating.

'Don't know what you're talking about,' Osgan responded faintly out of the corner of his mouth, past the cloth bit that Thalric had given him to clench his teeth against.

'You've come out here with something to drink. Hand it over,' Thalric demanded. He was acutely aware of the target his back provided but he knew he had to fix this sooner rather than later. He had a feeling that Khanaphir medicine would be as primitive as the rest of their culture.

Osgan's good hand made a feeble gesture towards the pockets of his coat, and Thalric delved into them, ripping them open one after another until he found the bottle. He uncapped it and let the clear liquid drip onto the graze running down Osgan's ribs. Osgan hissed and twitched at the sting of it and, with that distraction, Thalric yanked the arrow from his arm.

Osgan's scream sounded even through the cloth gag. He fought so hard Thalric had to kneel on his chest, dragging the arm out straight to douse both sides of the wound with burning spirits. Strips torn from Osgan's much-abused coat were all the bandaging he could muster.

'Five minutes,' Thalric decided. 'Then we move.' He left Osgan sobbing quietly and went to see what attention their noise had brought. They were deep inside a stand of canes, as defensible a spot as he had come across. Now, dropping low, he crawled cautiously forward. The marshlands of the delta did odd things with sound: the foggy air deadened and distorted it. The assassins would most likely be unsure precisely where the sound had come from, unable to follow it up.

How many? He guessed at four dead and reckoned at least a pair of them must be left. Two teams of three felt logical, and he had sent such men out on Rekef errands enough to trust his own judgement. This is not just some Tyrshaani malcontent. Somebody with power in the Empire wanted Thalric dead very much indeed. And then what? Kill the Regent and then what? Is my death the trigger for some uprising? Has a conspiracy eluded General Brugan? It was information he had to get back to Capitas, along with news of his own continued survival. Assuming that news is still current by the time I get a chance …

Again the thought came to him: leave Osgan to the mercies of the swamp. If there were only two killers left, there was enough cover between here and the river to evade them. Assuming I still know which way the river lies.

There had been no movement visible out there. The assassins were elsewhere, or they were close by and waiting patiently. There was no way to tell.

'Osgan,' he said, as loud as he dared, 'time to move.'

The quartermaster was now sitting up, looking as though he had died and come back to life. Thalric's uncharitable thought was that, without the wound, he'd have just assumed the man was suffering after a night's heavy drinking.

'Move where?' Osgan managed to ask, and he was clearly doing his best. Old military instincts were struggling to make themselves felt.

'Away,' Thalric replied. There was only one clear entrance to the stand of tall canes they were hiding in: one clear exit, too, therefore. Any killers that were watching could not help but appreciate that. 'We're going out the back way,' Thalric decided.

'What back way?'

'Have you the strength to use your sting?'

Osgan closed his eyes. The Wasp Art that had taken the Empire so far was tiring to use: it lived off the body's own strength. He nodded wearily.

Thalric levelled one hand towards the canes behind Osgan, and the quartermaster hauled himself round and did likewise. Worms of light now flickered and crawled across Thalric's open palm.

He unleashed the golden fire, putting a hand up to guard his eyes from splinters as the searing fire of his Art shattered the canes apart. Something inside them was flammable, the pith exploding like a volley of snapbows. He and Osgan turned their faces away as a score of canes combusted together, flinging fragments and splinters across them.

'Move,' Thalric urged, and he was already pressing through the gap that had been scorched between the canes. He lurched forward, across an open patch of water, ducking into the reeds on the other side. Laboured splashing behind him told him that Osgan was trying to keep up. He turned, tugging at the man's good shoulder, just as an arrow cut across the water, clipping the ripples they had left. Thalric loosed his sting instantly, guessing at the archer's hiding place, then they were stumbling and staggering through the mud, the waist-deep water, burrowing ever deeper into the delta as the foliage around them grew taller and thicker, stilt-rooted trees and gigantic horsetails making a half-drowned forest out of the Marsh.

'Thalric …' Osgan's voice, hoarse with effort, came from behind him,

'Just keep moving.'

'Thalric — water's getting deeper.'

He did not stop, still plunging on, dragging himself forward in sudden bursts, then letting Osgan catch up. The man was right, though. Surely if they were heading into denser plantlife they must be reaching the river banks, the shallows. Then it came to him just where they were. This is a delta … the tide … Of course the water level would be rising. The tide was coming in, and that was why all the trees around them were on stilts. Soon their spidery roots would be submerged. Worse, the rising levels would not hinder their Skater-kinden pursuers, but it would drag Thalric and Osgan to a standstill. Can Osgan swim? Not with only one arm, was the answer to that. Time was running out.

Thalric came to rest, dragging Osgan down beside him. They were in the shadow of some tall ferns, as hidden as he could make them. As they crouched, the water came to their chests. We cannot just run. We need a plan. Osgan was breathing heavily, sucking at the air in great gasps. There was little more flight left in him. The wound and the heat and the man's habitual dissipation were killing him.

'I'm sorry I brought you to this,' Thalric said quietly.

Osgan lacked the breath to respond, just shaking his head in a denial that could have meant anything. He grasped at Thalric's arm abruptly, pointing something out.

Assassins, was Thalric's first thought. He hunched forward, putting a hand out ready to sting. Osgan continued pointing, jabbing a finger urgently. Thalric tried to follow the direction of it, seeing only more green, more ferns and rushes and canes, and …

There was a regularity to some of it, a distinctiveness to the angles. Something leapt inside him. Ahead of them was something that was not grown naturally, but built. But what? Where in the wastes are we? The question was swiftly followed by, It doesn't matter. We have no other compass point. Thalric lurched up, slinging an arm around Osgan to haul the man to his feet.

'Go,' he urged, and cast himself off into the water, his wings surging instinctively to half-carry him, with Osgan a weight at the end of his arm. It was all too slow, he realized at once. They were too exposed. He gave his wings their full rein, ignoring Osgan's protest as his unwounded arm was almost wrenched out of its socket. Between the trees, Thalric spotted crude huts, barely more than platforms raised above the water and roofed with leaves. He saw movement too, spreading out to either side of them. They had been noticed.

'Khanaphes!' Thalric shouted out. 'Khanaphes!' hoping it would be enough to save them.

An arrow danced past him from behind, a hurried shot surely. He did not turn, continued towing Osgan through the water, knowing only from the man's curses that he was still alive. He had a brief glimpse of a silvery-skinned Mantis woman with bowstring drawn back, the arrow loosed instantly. There was no sound from behind, but from her very expression Thalric knew she had found her target.

He dragged Osgan on to a mud bank. They were sprawled at the edge of the village, no more than a cluster of spindly shacks gathered about a mound of higher ground cleared of vegetation. Knowing that nothing he could do now would matter, Thalric collapsed onto his back, feeling his muscles burn in protest. Osgan was wheezing and choking beside him, shuddering like a dying thing, but somehow still alive. He had sprouted no new arrows since, and Thalric could only hope that the assassins had not survived their clash with the Marsh's own killers.

He sensed movement nearby and pushed himself up on to his elbow. The Mantis-kinden were approaching, arrows nocked to their bows and spears levelled. These Marsh people were smaller than the Lowlander kinden that Thalric was familiar with, but they had the same poise, the same angular grace. Their faces had the same insular hostility, too. He held up a closed fist to them. 'We are friends — we are guests of the city of Khanaphes.'

They had formed a ragged horseshoe around the two Wasps, leaving open the path leading to the village. One of them, a woman looking older than the rest, jabbed her head in that direction, and Thalric let out a great sigh and struggled to his knees.

'Come on,' he told Osgan, but the man would not move.

'Can't …' he whined. 'No further …'

Two of the Mantids were there instantly, catching him by the arms and lifting him up, ignoring his screams as the sudden movement tore at his wound. Thalric pushed one of them aside, moving to catch Osgan. Then he was very still.

Osgan swayed, still supported by one of the Mantids, almost clinging to him. His injured arm was held tight to his chest, the bindings newly bloody. Thalric felt the tiny pinpoint of sharp pain that had come to rest under his jaw, assuming at first it was a spearhead, then knowing it for an arrow-point. He took a good moment, in lieu of any fatal attempt at action, to study their rescuers.

These were not the shaven-headed servants who had been poling the fishing boats up and down the river to Amnon's tune. They were not clad as Khanaphir menials, merely a little hide and chitin and fish-scale to cover their modesty. Their long hair was pale, bound back with rings of bone and amber.

'We are not your enemies,' Thalric said carefully. In his mind the sands of the archer's strength were running out. She must soon either take the arrow away, or loose it. 'We mean you no harm. Return us to Khanaphes and you shall be rewarded.'

Osgan gave a bark of pain, dragged without warning towards the village. Thalric twitched, poised on the point of the arrow and knowing that there were enough of them to make an end of him whichever way he turned. Without warning the archer took a step away, the point still unwavering. Thalric followed Osgan's halting progress, conscious that every arrowhead and spear was aimed at him. Ahead, Osgan gave out a horrified cry.

The mound of earth that the village was strung around was not empty, not quite. They had erected something there, that Thalric had not registered before, his first glance letting the crude canework merge into the struts and poles of the surrounding village. He blinked, trying to identify what it was. Osgan was struggling now, shrieking for them to let him go, but three of them continued propelling him towards it effortlessly.

It's a statue, Thalric realized, a statue reworked to the locals' resources. Just as they had not a coin's-worth of metal in their possession, even their weapons being made of bone and wood, so there was no stone to their statue, just a lattice of canes lashed together into a shape that seemed abstract at first. Until he stood directly before it, and the shifting angles and planes of it suddenly made a picture.

It was a mantis, an openwork sketch of a mantis rendered in three dimensions, its killing arms raised high above them. The chamber of its body was large enough to fit a man, and Thalric knew this because the bones of the last occupant were still inside, buzzing with flies and dripping with a few lingering maggots. Osgan was still kicking vainly and crying out, and Thalric knew that somehow this thing, this idol, had become Tisamon in his mind, that what he was fighting against was more within his own head than outside it.

'What is this?' Thalric demanded, his throat suddenly dry. 'Do you kill the guests of the city so close to its walls?' The Khanaphes card was the only one he had to play, but he had put it on the table three times now without eliciting any interest. Now, at last, an old Mantis woman stepped between him and the idol. Uncomfortably close, she rested one forearm on his shoulder, so he felt her fighting spines dig slightly into his neck.

'You are ignorant,' she said, and it took him a moment to unpick her accent. 'You are from far away and know nothing.'

'I know that they will send people to look for me — that my absence will stir the city up, and my own people as well.'

'Do not threaten us on our sacred ground,' she warned him, voice still soft but the spines jabbing him briefly. 'The city shall not come here, and you were hunted here by other foreign hands. There shall be no search to find your bones. We have made our pact with the Masters: any that cross this far are ours. It is our right.'

Another bloody thing the locals could have told us: that their tame servants have murderous relatives just a short walk away!

'I will fight,' Thalric said. His understanding of even the Lowlander Mantis-kinden was limited, so he had little to work with. 'Let me fight for our freedom. Choose your best, if you will.'

The old woman smirked. 'Your death shall not be at our hands, foreigner. Your blood shall be drunk by the earth, and by the avatar. Your comrade first, though. We must shed his blood while he still has it.'

They were opening up the wicker casing of the effigy. Osgan had collapsed, all his limbs drawn in, shuddering and lost to his own terrors. And perhaps that's a mercy. Thalric made a sudden lunge back from the woman, feeling the barbs of her arm gash his flesh. He tried to put a hand out towards her, with some wild idea of holding her hostage, but someone struck him with a spear-shaft behind his knees as another glanced from the back of his head. He joined Osgan on the ground, reeling. Around them, the Mantis-kinden had begun a soft humming, barely audible save that they were all doing it, a slow tune, but a gradually building one.

'Osgan,' Thalric said, hunching closer. 'Osgan, snap out of it!'

The former quartermaster gave a great gasp, staring upwards at the latticed idol above them. 'We're going to die,' he said.

'Then die like an Imperial Wasp soldier, not like a Flykinden coward!' Thalric spat at him.

'You don't understand,' Osgan said hollowly. 'You didn't see.'

Thalric opened his mouth to make some harsh comment, but the Mantids had stopped humming.

Someone else had entered the clearing.

As she walked into the village, Che barely saw the Mantis-kinden. The guttering, flickering grey fire of Achaeos was all that was worthy of her attention. Then her mind broadened to include the wicker idol and her mind was briefly racked with memories and images, some that she owned and some that were alien to her. This is the thing that Tynisa would never speak of. She saw it with Inapt eyes, and she saw it running with death, quivering with a thousand years of adoration and sacrifice. It spoke of skulls to her, it leered blood, so that she flinched back from it even as the ghost surged forward.

Then she saw the Mantids, brought into sharp focus as their leader pointed towards her. It was a Mantis woman standing before the idol, and Che did not notice the two Wasp prisoners before her, only that old woman silhouetted before the empty effigy's power.

'The land has been generous to us today!' the old Mantis cried out. 'Take her and bring her here!'

A dozen of the Mantis-kinden were instantly in motion, falling on Che with expressionless faces, with hungry eyes. She raised her hands to ward them off, and the old woman suddenly screamed.

Inches from laying hands on her, they stopped. She saw their reserve crack, surprise and shock taking hold, expressions not native to Mantis faces. They were looking back to see their leader on her knees, covering her face. Before her was Achaeos's blurred ghost.

The Mantis warriors could not see it, Che realized, but their leader could. Despite everything she had been through, the revelation hit her like a hammer blow. Che dropped to her own knees, staring at the old woman. The Mantis leader — priestess? the unfamiliar word came into her mind — was scrabbling at the muddy, bone-littered ground in front of the idol, trying to claw some distance between herself and the shuddering grey stain in the air. Her eyes were wide.

Give me your power.

Che heard the imperious command, and she thought of the old saying, Servants of the Green, Masters of the Grey, and how the Moth-kinden had always commanded, and the Mantids obeyed.

The old woman was well clear of the idol now, and the ghost flowed into its vacant frame, its trailing edges boiling and dissolving into the surrounding air.

'Che?' said someone, and she blinked down from the supernatural to the mundane to see Thalric and his comrade staring up at her.

What can he think? But she was too far removed from any world that Thalric might know. He would only see the Mantis-kinden backing off from her as though she was on fire, as though she was sacred. She held out a hand to him, and somewhere in the gesture it turned from an offer of help to a plea for it. She felt the world swimming, her eyes drawn relentlessly back to the ghost of Achaeos hanging within the idol as though it was caught on the bars.

Thalric and Osgan were crawling towards her, trying to avoid notice. The Mantids had no time for them any more. They watched only their leader and she watched Achaeos.

Within the prison of the idol, the grey smudge waxed and grew, forming shapes — hands, features. Che waited for him, waited to recognize those blank eyes, the sharp features. I set you free, she thought. Please, be free.

It was not working. The ghost billowed and surged within the prison of the canes, but she could see that this was not enough. She heard that same harsh voice again, this time almost spitting the words. Is this all? How many years and how many deaths have led to this? Has all your duty and reverence and labour been to give birth only to this nothing?

The old woman wailed, hiding her head, and if there were words there, Che could not catch them. The other Mantis-kinden were slipping away into the trees and the water, as if unwilling to witness the torment of their leader.

You wretched wasters of power! the ghost continued. You traitors to your past! There is nothing here, nothing! Betrayers of your kinden and your heritage! There was no trace in that raging voice of the man she had once known, and Che thought, He is going mad, tied to me, tied to this world. I do not know him any more.

The tirade continued, showing no sign that it might ever stop, and Che wanted to rush forward, to shout into the face of the idol that he should stop it, that it was doing no good — but she managed one step only. The sheer fury that rippled through the ghost's substance was too much for her. She had not known that he was capable of it. Perhaps it had taken death to bring it out of him.

'Che, we have to go,' said Thalric, sounding distant, and she knew from his tone that this was not the first time he had said it. He was barely audible over the ghost's rantings, but of course he could hear none of that. Only Che herself and the Mantis woman could. But I am not the only one, and I am not insane, and this is real. Something in her, some echo of her past, wailed that this was all impossible, but she found in herself an acceptance that the world was made of these things, that the world worked by such means. It was clear to her now, in the way that the workings of a crossbow or a lock would never again be.

'We must go,' she agreed, and turned to find Thalric holding up his friend, who was pale and shaking. He met Che's eyes: two harrowed gazes, each with its load of untranslatable grief. Then she too put an arm around Osgan, keeping clear of the crude bandages, and the two of them helped guide him off into the swamp towards the river. The going was hard enough to limit any further words until the boats found them and they became separated once again.