The Nether Scroll - Lynn Abbey [6]
"Ansoain! Galimer! I live. Druhallen lives for you! Can you hear me?"
In the lengthening silence, he seized a piece of smoking wood and hurled it at the empty hilltop.
"Galimer. Galimer Longfingers!"
Dru heard a sound, spun around, and laid his good hand on the hilt of his knife.
Nothing. Not another peep or a twitch. Dru sighed. The east was brighter now. Soon, the ruins would stand revealed in all their horror and there'd be no need to bend low over each corpse with a mixture of hope and dread.
Though not a religious youth, and utterly unaware of the affiliations of the men and women whose lives he'd briefly shared, Druhallen paused beside each body. He recited, as best he could remember them, the prayers of peace and safe-passage his grandmother had taught him. He was chanting safe-passage for one of the carters when he heard a second sound. This time, as he spun around, Dru glimpsed movement near a smoldering wagon.
Leaving his prayer unfinished, he ran to the spot.
"Dru-? Druhallen, is that you?"
The voice, though weak, was unmistakable. Galimer Longfingers had survived!
Stretched face down in the dirt, Galimer's legs were pinned beneath charred planks from one of the stone-filled wagons. Fearing the worst, Dru put his shoulder against the wreckage and bulled it aside. Galimer's fine clothes were ruined, but-miraculously-he appeared unbloodied, unburnt. Dru cautiously rolled him onto his back.
"Tell me where it hurts, Gal-"
"All over. I tried-My mind went blank of everything except dust," he said sobbing, "and I couldn't get it cast. I panicked. I hid, Dru. I hid. When they lifted their fog and called off their minions, I just stayed here where I'd hidden myself. Even when they ransacked the wagons and set them ablaze, I couldn't make myself move. I should have died."
Druhallen closed his good hand over Galimer's. "It didn't matter. They had us beat from the first scent. At least you know what they did and said. I tangled with something undead and wound up out cold, two hundred paces away from everyone."
"At least you fought! You cast what you could and then you fought." Galimer pulled his hand away from Dru and covered his face. "I should have died."
"What's cut, stays cut," the carpenter's son advised. "If you hadn't hidden, you might well have died, and I'd be facing the road to Elversult with only a broken wrist for company."
Galimer expressed concern for his friend's injury, but Druhallen wasn't interested in sympathy.
"Can you stand? Walk? We need to find your mother. You said you saw them-"
"Heard them," Galimer corrected as he grabbed Dru's shoulder and sat himself up. "I didn't see anything."
"Kept your eyes closed, eh?" Dru laughed and stood.
"I got hit by something bright when it all started. Everything's been blurred since." He flailed for Dru's arm with an awkwardness that lent credence to his claim. "I heard them, and that's about it. I didn't recognize their language. They came a damn long way to steal that girl and her dowry."
Druhallen pitied the misbegotten girl, but cut was cut and his pity was worthless. He hoped she was dead. The dead didn't remember… usually.
Leaning on each other, the friends surveyed the killing ground. It was just as well that Galimer's eyes weren't working too well. He was spared what Dru saw all too clearly once the sun was up. Whatever had killed Ansoain had torn her apart like so much stale bread. He recognized her by pieces: bits of cloth and scalp, a bloody chunk of her hand with fingers and rings still attached.
Fighting nausea, Druhallen retrieved her rings. They were magically potent, not to mention intrinsically valuable. It was difficult, for many reasons, to understand why they'd been left behind.
"She'd want you to have them," he told Galimer as he pressed the metal bits into his friend's hand. "Now, let's get out of here. I can see a few of the horses. You be the hands, I'll be the eyes…"
Galimer balked. "Guide me to the hilltop. Maybe