DragonKnight - Donita K. Paul [38]
Bardon handed him the sword and then continued with N’Rae, seeking the sanctuary of Granny Kye’s cabin.
The old emerlindian greeted them and took N’Rae in her arms, hugging the pale girl tightly before sitting her on the edge of the bunk bed.
She patted Bardon’s arm and nodded toward a shelf, where Jue Seeno sat at her small table, sipping from a cup. Even the minneken looked shaken.
“Mistress Seeno told me,” said Granny Kye. “What is the world coming to when one of those creatures ventures out by itself? It was an unnatural act, and you can be sure those two, Crim Cropper and Burner Stox, are behind it.”
N’Rae sobbed. Granny promptly sat down beside her and pulled her close. “There now, infant. We’re not likely to meet another of its kind once we get to the Northern Reach.”
The young emerlindian nodded and tried to speak, but only a garbled, throaty wail came out.
Granny continued to pat. The minneken squeaked.
“What was that?” asked Bardon as he moved closer to hear.
“Give her some tea.”
Bardon looked around and saw the kettle on a small iron stove. He went to pour the hot water on tea leaves already in the bottom of a mug, but he found the kettle needed to be centered on the hot plate and reheated. He searched the cabinet for a spoon and sugar. His hand rested on a glass jar filled with white crystals, but N’Rae’s voice stopped him before he lifted the container.
“It spoke to me.”
Granny Kye gasped. “The quiss?”
Bardon turned to see the young emerlindian nodding her head so forcefully her hair flung about her.
“What did it say, dear?” asked Granny Kye.
“It was miserable. So distraught. Not about dying. It wanted to die.”
Bardon crossed the room and knelt before N’Rae. He took both her hands in his and looked up at her tear-stained face. “Why was it here?”
“It was trying to get away—away from an evil man and an evil woman. The picture in its mind was of hundreds of quiss, herded into an underground cavern full of water, trapped in the dark, and taken one by one to some unknown place of terror. And always, the evil man and woman glaring. The man had knives. The woman laughed.”
13
DOWN THE GILPEN
Bardon hated to press, but she knew more. The haunted look in her eyes told him so. “Is that all you saw, N’Rae?”
She shook her head and took a deep breath. “It was young. In his mind, he referred to himself as one of the young ones. He hurt, and all the young ones born in the man’s laboratory were suffering.
“I saw them gasping and writhing in pain. I felt the pain. They had lungs that the old ones did not, and the lungs hurt.” N’Rae hugged herself, curling forward, and rocking as if she felt the agony of the quiss.
“I saw images of the gills of the young ones and flashes of gills on the old ones. They were so close to being the same, but the gills on the young ones gaped and became oozy.”
Her face twisted as she remembered, and she touched her neck as if she could feel thin slits that would allow her to breathe underwater.
“I saw young ones flailing about in the dark water, being pulled down by two malformed appendages. The old ones walked on land once every three years when those leg things grew rigid.” She shook her head. “The young ones could walk on land at any time, but the ‘legs’ hurt.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “And this quiss was ravenously hungry, always hungry, driven to find food even after it had just eaten. It ate so much that the surplus oozed out of its skin, and that hurt too.”
Bardon remembered the slimy dark trail on the deck and suppressed a shudder.
“Anything else, N’Rae?”
“The quiss had begun eating each other in the confines of the small cavern they were in. The man ordered them to be separated into smaller caves and vats of water. This quiss escaped while being transferred