Such was the way of the gods.
Soen peered around the edge of the stone.
The steep “V” of the gully opened just a few yards beyond onto the wide oval of a pool. The waters of the river cascaded down a rock face into the pool on the far side. Soen could see the tree line of the woods running just atop the crest of the rise at the other side of the pool.
Soen frowned. Qinsei and Phang seemed to be cutting this a bit close. The location was ideal for their ambush, but there were several other locations farther downstream that would have served just as well. His concerns, however, were drowned out almost at once by the arguing voices on the left side of the pool.
“. . just leave him here!” one of the manticores was saying. “If he’s so upset by these woods, then he doesn’t have to enter them!”
“We can’t leave him here,” the human male shouted. Drakis, Soen realized with a shiver. “The Iblisi are on our heels. The gods alone can conceive of what they would do to him!”
“All the more reason to leave him behind,” the manticore roared back. “If we toss them a morsel, then maybe the rest of us will have a chance. He’s not coming unless we hit him over the head with a rock, and he’s slowing us down more than that woman of yours.”
Five separate voices erupted at once, arguing among themselves by the side of the idyllic pool without a thought of the black eyes watching them from the shadows.
All too easy, Soen thought.
He frowned again.
It was too easy, he realized, and the hair at the back of his elongated skull stood on end. Something inside told him that there was something wrong with what he was seeing-that his eyes were being fooled in dangerous ways. It was a sense that he had, an unexplained inner knowledge that seldom failed him and that had saved his life more times than he cared to remember. It was never the danger you anticipated that bit you, he remembered, but always something you didn’t see coming and could not have anticipated.
He glanced across the river. Jukung was moving forward, a vicious smile curling his lips back from his sharp teeth. His eyes were on the prey, the predator about to spring.
His eyes were fixed on the prey.
Soen’s eyes shifted around him. The walls of the gully they were in. . the waters rushing past him. . the stones of the riverbank.
The Inquisitor’s black eyes widened.
The stones under the water formed a pattern. Nature had not placed them there, rather the hand of design, thought, and intention. It was subtle and would have escaped the most casual glance, but now his mind was fixed on it. His eyes followed it up the near side of the river where it wound purposefully into the placement of the stones and boulders just in front of him. It wove its pattern up the embankment, disappearing over its crest. It was formed of stones, pebbles, roots, and dirt, but it was unmistakable. He turned quickly, his eyes following its line beneath the waters of the river to where it emerged on the other side among the boulders where Jukung was carefully moving forward.
“No!” Soen whispered as loudly as he dared. “Jukung, stop!”
Whether the Assesia heard him or not, Jukung continued forward, intent on garnering his prize and honor to his name. The Matei staff shifted in his hands. Jukung stopped just short of the line and pointed toward the crest of the ridge on the other side of the pool.
Soen turned and gaped. Two robed figures-Qin and Phang-rose up along the crest on the far side of the pool and began moving toward the rock face, their own Matei staffs swinging unnaturally before them-as though they were marionettes whose strings were being badly pulled.
“NO!” Soen shouted, springing out from behind the boulder, running toward Jukung.
The bolters at the edge of the pool leaped back in alarm. The human woman screamed, her shrill voice echoing off the rocks of the cascade.
Jukung leaped toward his prey, his Matei staff thrust in front of him, its crystal flaring with power. “By the Will of the Emperor, I command you to. .”