Rufo shook his head as well, wondering how this conversation had gotten so out of hand. It was difficult for him to bring things back under control while at the same time move beyond the pain that Danica's words brought him.
"If I had been scarred so," Danica pressed, "if I became ugly, as Histra has become, Cadderly would love me still. He would not seek a new queen."
Rufo's lips moved around the edges of words that did not seem sufficient. He steadied himself abruptly, straightened, and found a measure of dignity.
Then Histra barreled into him, and both flew sidelong, spinning and crashing into the wall. They bit and clawed each other, punched, kicked, anything at all to inflict pain.
Danica knew her moment of opportunity would be brief. She threw herself into a sitting position and gingerly, but as fast as she could, shifted her injured leg to the side of the bed. She stopped suddenly and went perfectly still, trying to concentrate on something minute that had caught her attention, trying to block out the continuing sounds of Rufo and Histra's struggling.
Danica's hand shot out to the side like a biting snake, fingers clenching about something she could not see, but could surely sense, an instant before the barbed tail could snap at her.
Druzil began thrashing immediately, caught £ast in the woman's strong grasp. He came back to visibility, for expending the magical energy now seemed foolish; Danica obviously knew where he was.
"You are still not quick enough," Danica said coldly.
Druzil started to respond, but Danica's other hand came across furiously, pounding right between his bulbous black eyes, and suddenly, for the imp, all the room was spinning.
Druzil hit the wall hard and slumped, muttering "bene tellemara" over and over. He understood what Rufo would have done to him, or would have tried to do, if his attack on Danica had been successful; in an odd way, Danica had probably saved him from banishment back to his own plane of existence. But Druzil's dedication was to the chaos curse, of which Kierkan Rufo was now the embodiment, and though Rufo would never see it, keeping this woman alive was a dangerous, dangerous thing.
Danica was off the bed by then, hopping for the door on her one good leg.
"You cannot hurt me!" Druzil rasped at her, and he came in a flurry, wings beating and tail snapping.
Danica kept her balance perfectly on her one good leg, and her hands worked to her call, spinning blocking circles in the air before her.
Druzil's tail snapped repeatedly, was parried several times, and then was caught again.
The imp growled and waggled his fingers in the air. Greenish bolts of energy erupted from their tips and shot out, stinging Danica.
"You cannot hurt me," Druzil taunted.
The imp could not keep up with the speed of Danica's next move. She jerked hard on the tail, spinning him about, then caught his wings, one in each hand, while still holding fast to the tail. Jerking and twisting, Danica tied the three ends, wing, wing, and tail, into a tight knot behind Druzil's back, and hurled the startled imp face first into the nearest wall.
"Probably knot," she agreed.
Druzil rolled about on the floor, muttering curses, not appreciating the pun, as Danica turned back for the door.
Kierkan Rufo stood before her, seeming amused at her handling of the imp. In the far corner, Histra knelt on her hands and knees, skin hanging loose to the floor, eyes downward, thoroughly beaten.
"Wonderful," Rufo congratulated, and he turned his gaze on Danica.
And Danica punched him again in the face.
Rufo turned back to her deliberately, expecting and accepting the next punch, and the third, and fourth, and the continuing barrage. Finally the vampire had enough, and with an unearthly roar that sent shivers along Dan-ica's spine, he swept his hand across in front of him, knocking Danica off balance momentarily, and caught her by an arm.
Danica knew how to easily defeat such a tenuous hold, except that no grip she had ever witnessed was as strong as the vampire's! She was caught and feared that her elbow would shatter under the strain.
She got her free hand up to block as Rufo's wide-arcing slap raced in, but his strength blew through the defense and snapped Danica's head viciously to the side. Dazed, Danica offered no resistance as Rufo hurled her back onto the bed, and then he was atop her, his strong fingers about her throat. Danica grabbed Rufo's forearm and twisted, but again to no avail.
Then Danica simply stopped struggling, sublimated her strong survival instinct and did nothing to remove Rufo's hand from her neck, did nothing to restore the flow of air into her lungs. At that moment, Danica hoped the vampire would kill her, thought death preferable to any other option. Then there was only blackness.
The trail was a winding way, sometimes looping back on itself through passable areas between towering pillars of stone. At times the view was panoramic and majestic; at others, the three companions felt almost as if they were walking along tight underground corridors.
As fate would have it, Cadderly did not see the plume of black smoke rising from the southern wing of the Edi-ficant Library, his view blocked by the last tall mountain before the place. If he had seen the smoke, the young priest would have sought the song of his god, his magic, and walked with the wind the rest of the way to the library. For, while Cadderly was pressing anyway, anxious to aid in the battle he thought Dorigen faced, he did not listen for Deneir's song, did not want to strain his energies, which had been so sorely taxed in his battle with Aballister and Castle Trinity.
Pikel and Ivan hopped along the trail behind Cadderly, oblivious to any problems at all - except that Ivan was weary of this whole journey and badly wanted to be home again in his familiar kitchen. Pikel still delighted in wearing Cadderly's wide-brimmed blue hat, thinking it brought out the rich green in his dyed and braided hair and beard.
Ivan just thought he looked stupid.
They moved in silence for a time, and at one point, Cadderly paused, thinking he heard a song. He cocked an ear to the wind; it sounded like Brother Chauntideer's midday offering. Cadderly looked around, gauging the distance still to go, and realized there was no way, even if the winds were perfect, that he could possibly hear Chaunticleer's song; the library was at least five miles away.
As he moved to keep up with the bouncing dwarves, Cadderly realized that the music he heard was not in his ears, but in his mind.
Chaunticleer was singing - it was definitely Chaunticleer's voice - and Cadderly was hearing it the way he heard the song of Deneir.
What could that mean?
It didn't occur to Cadderly that Chaunticleer's sweet song might be a ward against some terrible evil. He reasoned that his own mind was tuned purely to Deneir, and that Chaunticleer's offering, too, was in perfect harmony with the god.
To Cadderly, the song was a good thing. It didn't remain constant in his thoughts, but came often enough for the young priest to know that Brother Chaunticleer was going on and on, far longer than usual. Still, the young priest put no ominous connotations on that, simply figured that the man must be feeling extremely pious this day - or perhaps Chaunticleer wasn't really singing and Cadderly was just hearing the reverberations of that perfect offering.
"Are ye thinking of setting another camp?" the increasingly surly, yellow-bearded Ivan asked some time later, drawing Cadderly from the music and its unfathomable implications.
Cadderly looked at the rocky trail ahead and tried to remember exactly where he was.
"Five miles left to walk, at least," he replied, "through difficult terrain."
Ivan snorted. The Snowflakes, by his estimation, were not so difficult, not even with winter still holding fast with its last fingers. Ivan was from a place far to the north, wild Vaasa and the rugged Galena Mountains, where goblinoids were thicker than pebbles and the winter wind off the Great Glacier could freeze a man solid in minutes.
The dwarf took one last disgusted glance at Pikel, who chuckled in response, then stomped past Cadderly and took up the lead. "Tonight," Ivan explained. "We'll be walking through the front doors before the stars come clear!"
Cadderly sighed and watched Ivan take a fast-paced lead. Pikel was still chuckling when he came hopping past
"Give me that," Cadderly snapped, seeing the source of Ivan's ire. He plucked the hat from Pikel's head, brushed it off, and tapped it atop his own crown. Then he pulled from his pack the cooking pot, the impromptu helmet the green-bearded dwarf had fashioned for himself, and plopped it over Pikel's head.
Pikel's chuckle turned into a sorrowful "Oooo."
Some miles from the three, to the west and north, a scrambling noise in the boughs above brought Shay-leigh from her reverie. Angled in the hollow of a thick branch near the trunk of a wide elm, the elf, to an unknowing observer, would have appeared in an awkward and dangerous predicament. But a slight twist brought agile Shayleigh completely about, her back flat on the branch and her longbow somehow clear of the tangle, out and ready above her.
The elf's violet eyes narrowed as she considered the busy canopy, searching for the source of the noise. She wasn't too worried - the sun was still high above the western horizon - but she knew the sounds of the natural movements of all the area's animals, and recognized that whatever had come so noisily into the boughs of this tree had done so in wild flight.
A leaf danced suddenly, not so far above her. Back bent her bow.