Vanity's Brood - Lisa Smedman [104]
Another contraction gripped her, bringing tears to her eyes. She clung to the tree next to her, but its bark suddenly became spongy and gave way. She tried to climb to her feet but could not. She simply didn't have the strength to rise.
"Ubtao," she whispered. "Help me, not for my sake, or even for…" she clutched her stomach as another contraction wrenched at it. Something tore between her legs; she felt warm blood running down them.
"For my children," she gasped,"but for all my people. Lend me… your power. Send me the weapons… I need… to stop…"
The marilith's voice boomed out over the jungle. "Sibyl!" it cried. "This way! Sseth lies here!"
Another wave of pain forced Karrell's eyes shut. As they closed, one of the trees adjacent to the crackling lump of lava burst into flame. From behind closed eyelids, she could see the flicker of the flames, but by then the pain inside her was too great for her to care. She groaned, panted, then groaned again, waiting for her children to be born.
0- -0 -O.Arvin, barely conscious, lay in a tangle of vines and broken branches. He had found the couatl feather at the last moment, slowing his fall just enough to avoid being killed-but not enough to avoid being injured. He was dimly aware that one leg was twisted uncomfortably beneath him, that his face and arms were scratched and bleeding, that there was more blood in his mouth and a ringing in his ears, but he couldn't summon up enough energy to care about it.
Something sticky dripped onto his face from a broken branch above his head, something that gummed his nostrils and lips and tasted faintly of acid. The air he breathed had a sickly sweet odor, like rotting fruit. The stench was worse than the sewers of Hlondeth.
He didn't care.
A swarm of tiny flies buzzed around him, landing and walking with sticky feet through the smears of blood and sap that covered his face, then rising again, buzzing around his ears and into his nostrils.
He didn't care.
Somewhere nearby, someone shouted Sibyl's name, a booming, demonic voice that brought back terrible memories.
His eyes flickered open.
He sat up, noticed that the couatl feather was still in his hand. As he stood, a streak of fire raced through the jungle toward him. He gasped, tried to activate the feather's magic, but before he could rise into the air the fire reached him. At the last moment it zigzagged around him, setting a tree a few paces away on fire, then continued on its way. He watched it go, his mouth hanging open in surprise. It was no ordinary fire, but one that scribed a neat line through the jungle, igniting only those trees and bushes in its path-magical flame that burned the vegetation it fed on to ash then continued to burn in empty air.
Arvin touched a hand to the flame. It was like touching an ill lusion: he felt no heat, no pain,
He shook his head, and blinked. Was he dreaming? Was it another of the nightmares Dendar had failed to consume?
"Sibyl!" the voice cried again-more strident. "This way!"
Glancing up, Arvin saw the gate the Circled Serpent had opened-a circle of bubbling lava, framing a patch of clean, starry sky.
It was no dream. He'd done it. He'd entered Smaragd.
A shape swept by overhead. Dark wings against a purple sky.
So had Sibyl.
A second line of fire rushed through the forest, crisscrossing the first. A heartbeat later, Sibyl swept past. She seemed to be following it. Craning his neck, Arvin watched as she flew away with ragged wing- beats, wheeling and twisting in the sky, pursuing what must have been a twisting, convoluted path.
"Sibyl!" the voice cried again from somewhere to his right. "Over here! Under the swords!"
The cry was followed by a whirring, crashing sound. It sounded as though the jungle was being hacked to pieces, as well as set on fire.