Ghostcountry's Wrath (29 page)

“The cave is sometimes occupied at night,” Tsistu informed them helpfully. “More than once I have seen an uktena come here.”

“There's only
one
uktena at a time,” Calvin called back.

“Only one
great
uktena. Who is to say he does not have offspring? For certainly there is more than one ulunsuti! Or perhaps it is the one you slew, passing time here before it returns to Galunlati. Doubtless it will remember you…. ”

Calvin slapped the rock wall with his bandaged hand, obviously having trouble restraining his anger in such an impossible situation. Sandy understood. She knew how he was about things like this: hating responsibility, yet constantly taking it on himself; willing to risk anything for a friend, but reluctant to suffer a friend to risk anything at all for him. And above all, hating to be manipulated, hating to have his options limited by things he could not control.

Okacha looked at him thoughtfully, then at them all. Sandy would not meet her eyes. “If anyone stays here, there's a good chance they'll die. If we all go…somebody may make it back.”

“But he only said an uktena
might
come here,” Sandy protested.

“And if it does, you'll die,” Calvin told her dully. “Trust me on that one!”

Brock had said nothing recently—surprisingly. Sandy turned to him.

“I think we
all
oughta go,” the boy mumbled, as if he had heard her thought. “'Kacha doesn't need a scale to change, but the rest of us do. So what I say is that since the main thing is that Cal gets through, he change first, but leave the scale behind when he goes. Then me and Sandy'll use it and follow—with the scale, of course.”

“And if somebody gets stuck and can't change back?” Calvin challenged.

Brock shrugged. “Bein' an animal beats bein' dead.” Sandy rolled her eyes but did not reply. The kid was right, dammit. There were only unpleasant options. To remain here was one kind of risk, to go on was another. “Four more cycles,” Tsistu called impatiently. Calvin looked at her, shrugged helplessly. “I don't see that we've got a choice.”

“You change first,” Brock repeated, “when you go through, and then when we shift back to human again, both. That way you've got the best chance of making it.”

“And you?” Calvin asked him icily. “What about you? And Sandy?”

“I've got a sister and a mom and some mates,” Brock replied. “But none of 'em cares about me as much as they do about somebody else. I'm
nobody's
number one, therefore I'm expendable.”

“Bullshit!” Calvin snapped. Then, more softly: “Sandy?”

Sandy felt a bolt of cold strike her heart. “I…don't want to go,” she said. “But you and Okacha kinda have to. And if you go—and leave your scale—Brock'll go—might anyway, given how small and quick he is. And if he goes…well, I don't want to be left behind here, uktena or no.”

Calvin vented a long exasperated breath. “Damned if we do and damned if we don't, huh?”

“I'm ready,” Okacha announced abruptly. “Anybody that wants clothes on the other side better shuck 'em here and put 'em in a pack. I'll carry one pack, 'cause I'm probably gonna be the strongest.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right,” Calvin conceded wearily, sitting to tug at his boots. “Which brings up the next problem: what shapes do we use?”

“It has to be something we've eaten, right?” Brock asked.

Calvin nodded. “And in some sense hunted, or at least chased—preferably something mammalian and of roughly your own size.”

“What're
you
goin' as?”

“I'd prefer a deer,” Calvin told him, already at work on his second boot. “They're fastest. But they can't go through an opening that low. The only other thing I can think of is to be another panther—I made it a point to eat some last year. That way I can also carry the other pack.”

Brock's brow wrinkled, while Sandy did quick inventory of what she'd eaten that might be useful. She'd hunted a bit, and tried lots of game, including venison. But she hadn't sampled any of the big predators. Which left…what?

“Rabbit,” Brock said. “That's all I've eaten that's small and quick—and I did shoot one once.”

“Sounds good,” Sandy agreed. “What do you think, Cal?”

“I think you should hurry,” Tsistu called. “Only three more times will the gate rise now.”

Calvin had finished stripping, and Brock was on his way. Sandy followed suit. As she reached for the zipper to her jeans, she saw Okacha plunge into the stream at their side. When she resurfaced an instant later, it was as a panther. A very sleek, very wet panther.

Brock was down to skivvies by then, and Calvin scooped up his and Okacha's clothes and stuffed them into one of the packs. Okacha took it in her teeth, growled once—and leapt toward the low arch of light.

“Two more times,” came Tsistu's voice.

Sandy was wearing only her long-tailed shirt now, having crammed everything else into the other pack. And she intended to retain it as long as she could. Calvin had removed the scale from his neck and was holding it in his palm. “You know how to do this, don't you?”

“
I
do,” Brock volunteered, snatching at it.

Calvin ignored him. “You cut yourself with it—it's very sharp, and I tend to just make a fist over it—and when you feel yourself start to bleed, you think very hard about the animal you'd like to be: what it would be like to have that shape. It hurts like hell. And for God's sake, whoever goes last, remember to bring the scale! Hold it in your mouth if you have to, but
bring
it.”

“Hurry!” From Tsistu.

Calvin grimaced again, closed his eyes, and folded his hand upon the scale. His lips twitched, and his brow furrowed, but Sandy could not bear to watch the change occur. Instead, she heard Brock's startled “Oh, gross!” and then the groans and grunts of whatever was happening to Calvin. Not until Brock muttered, “It's cool,” did she turn around again.

Calvin was gone, but in his stead a panther crouched. It blinked up at her, switched its tail nervously, then eased aside to slide the scale from under its left front paw.

“Go!” she told it, kicking at it in the direction of the gate. “We've no time to waste on chivalry.”

An instant only it paused, and that to retrieve the second pack, into which Sandy had reluctantly wadded her shirt, and then it too dived for the gate and was gone.

“Ladies first.” Brock laughed edgily, passing her the scale.

“Children first,” she countered.

“More folks depend on you than on me,” Brock told her solemnly. “Now do it! We don't have time to waste.”

“I—” But then she realized the truth of what he'd said. Wordlessly she took the scale, folded it in her hand, and closed her eyes.

Rabbit,
she thought desperately, even as she clenched her fist around the scale and felt the edges bite—an unexpected pain. She knew the warm gush of blood, and then a…drawing, rather as she had experienced when they'd empowered Alec's ulunsuti only two days before.

Rabbit,
she thought again, and tried to think the pain away, to focus only on rabbit: small, hunched over (and did she hunch over at that, or was it only her imagination?), furred, clawed—long ears (how must it be to feel them grow?), small mouth, small eyes, small…everything.

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…

And then all she thought of was how she was going to stand the pain, as her whole body warped and twisted and realigned.

And then it was over. When she opened her eyes again, it was to gaze at short range on Brock's bare ankle, and beyond it at the comfortably high arch of the gate. She was instantly afraid. That was a
human
here. Humans were the enemy, and this place was full of the odor of snakes and cats and other things that hunted. She had to escape—toward the light: that's where she had to go; toward that sliver of light that even now was growing lower.

Something moved under her paw as she leapt that way, something vitreous she slid out of her grip, even as the boy's hand swooped toward her. She moved quickly then—toward the light.

—Ran.

Faster, as the light brightened, and the gate began its slow decent. But…something was wrong! The air was too thick! It was like running in water—water she could breathe.

But behind was the snake-place and the boy and the smell of cats. Here was no odor save burning and something she only knew as death. All she had to hope for was light.

And with light ahead and growing brighter, she ran faster.

Chapter XVI: Beyond the Sky

Air!

Cold, sweet air!

Sandy couldn't believe how great it felt just to be able to breathe again. For a long time she simply lay where she was: sprawled on all fours on what looked like a mix of sand and gravel, and smelled like a million things besides. Her sides heaved, her half-starved lungs dragged in breath after blessed breath. Unfortunately, each inhalation also brought more scents—and they were but part of the stimuli that besieged her, that insisted she ought to
run,
that it was folly to lie thus exposed, that a thousand predators were waiting to—

No!
She was
human—human!
What
mattered
was regaining her own form, getting her bearings, and reconnecting with Cal—wherever he'd got off to. At present, half-dazed as she was, she wasn't certain.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to rest a
little
longer: rest, and pant, and drink in air that though cold and thin
was
air, not that…stuff back in the
gate. That
had felt at first like a very heavy dust storm—only the solid quotient had increased geometrically the further into it she'd pressed, eventually becoming so great she'd actually held her breath to
avoid
breathing because it choked her, even as the thick air slowed her, like in one of those bad dreams when she tried to run and couldn't. But then the resistance had waned, the dust had thinned—and she'd been able to lope along to end up here.

Here?

She raised her head from her paws and had just begun to peer around when a scuffling thump from behind startled her so much her rabbit reflexes made her hop half a dozen yards before she knew it. She turned warily, ears sifting the bitter wind in alarm.

Smell told her as soon as sight: it was another rab—

No,
she corrected, it was Brock! In bunny shape, true, but the boy himself. She
had
to think that way, had to remember what she really was. Steeling herself against instincts that demanded flight, she scurried back toward him.

He looked none the worse for wear, save for the heavy panting obvious along his snow-white flanks. And, thankfully, the thong that held the scale was looped around his neck, with the talisman itself clenched awkwardly between his chisellike teeth. She wondered how he'd run like that, breathed that way.

He blinked at her: ruby eyes full of fear. The scale dropped from his mouth as he twitched from within its tether. She nudged it with her nose, then scooted it between her front paws and pushed inward hard enough to slice her foot pads and bring forth blood. She stared at the red trickle dumbly, felt the rabbit-mind swoop back and threaten to overwhelm her. She fought it, closed her eyes, pressed harder—thought
Human, human, human…

Pain engulfed her, making her flinch and gasp and almost flip away the scale, but she held firm, tried to focus on it alone, as agony that was only slightly more tolerable now that it was familiar warped her body.

A gasp became a scream—and she was herself again—still crouched on all fours, but now blinking down at what looked suspiciously like a very alarmed farm-raised rabbit. Which was reasonable, given Brock's background; it was unlikely he'd have eaten much wild game, even if he had shot some. She swallowed hard, shivered—as much from shock as from the sudden cold—then blinked again as her senses realigned, with smell vanishing almost completely, and vision flooding her brain with sensations, chiefmost of which was that she was on a sandy shelf facing a smooth vertical cliff the color and texture of charcoal gray velvet, and that the prevailing light was dusky. A glance around showed her one of the packs a few yards away: right where it ought to be if something large had dropped it upon emerging from the gate. She retrieved it gratefully, hurried it open—

And then realization struck her so hard she had to sit down in the middle of struggling into her shirt.

Where was Calvin?

Where was Okacha?

And where was Tsistu?

“Christ, no!” she groaned aloud. “Don't tell me…”

A muffled crunch interrupted her, and she turned to see Brock-the-Bunny hopping toward her. He paused just inside the limit of her reach and wrinkled his nose. She picked him up, though it took all her will to keep from screaming—or retching—so awful did she suddenly feel to find herself alone here in this place. Even so, her gut spasmed, cramped. Nausea hovered near. She almost cried out. Something wet and red trickled onto her foot.
Great! That was all she needed!