Hand of the Hunter

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kadrigul's jaw came off in her hand. That was almost Jatara's undoing. As the last of the desiccated flesh and tendon gave way, the bottom half of the skull simply fell away, and in that moment, she almost let go. Almost…

She had found her brother's remains high in the mountains, near the edge of a frozen stream that ran at the foot of a forested height. Just looking at that hill had made her shrivel inside. Her newfound senses, so alive, had seemed to evaporate like droplets of water falling on hot iron when she neared that place. But she'd found her brother's corpse just the same. Scavengers had not touched it, but one look was all it took to confirm that flames had destroyed the body. Only dried remains of flesh and black, papery skin remained. All that she had left of her beloved brother.

Their people did not bury the dead. In the frozen wasteland of their home, the ground was hard as stone throughout the year. Those whose remains could be found-it was rare for one of the Frost Folk not to die a violent death; either given the gift of death in battle against their enemies or slain by one of the many beasts of their homeland-were given to the ice. But Kadrigul had died in fire.

Jatara took the skull and fled that place. She knew, as a fly trapped in a spider's web knows that the tremble of the silk is the oncoming spider, that to remain there with the moon growing fuller by the night would be her doom. She had to be far, far away before the moon rose full.

And so she went back to the one place where she'd last had a strong sense of her brother-the collection of crystal standing stones.

There, she waited and watched. For days and nights she waited, sustaining herself on whatever beasts and vermin she found. The stones were quiet in the daytime. They still had an awareness about them, but it was dulled, sleeping. Still, she kept a half-hearted watch, but mostly she spent days crouched in some deep shadow of rock, where she stared into the empty sockets of Kadrigul's skull. All she had left of her brother. Empty bone. It fueled her rage while the stones slept.

But at night, under the stars… Jatara the watcher felt watched. She could not determine who was watching or from where, but the stones seemed to draw her. Whether they had their own sort of cold, distant intelligence or were just a window through which some power looked, Jatara could not decide. But she knew that whatever they were, they would come to her eventually.

One moonless night when the stars shone bright as lamps over the peaks, a mist rose in the valley. Even had Jatara not seen that-it was far too cold for any natural mist-she would have known. She could feel the power building in the stones. Her natural sight saw nothing, for soon the entire field of stones was hidden in the murk. But Jatara had gained other senses, and her new eye could see things she had never imagined. And so she saw the power surge in the very center of standing stones, like the hot core of a live ember. It flashed, then died away. And then she heard them.

A band of hunters emerged from the tangle of giant crystals. Eladrin, all wearing enchantments like lords of the south wore their finest clothes to court. They led fierce little hunters, who rode on the backs of tundra tigers. Jatara had heard of such things, but never had she seen them with her own eyes.

The band headed into the high mountains. Jatara let them go, watching them long after lesser beings would have lost sight of them. She wasn't interested in them. But they had come out of the place where her brother had gone, very much alive. He'd emerged and been killed not long after. So these hunters… what might they be hunting? That interested her very much. And so she left her hiding place and found another one down in the valley. She would wait.

Kovannon watched the last of the uldra hunters disappear into the crystals, dragging their captives on the snow behind them. Tonight's hunt had done for an evening's entertainment. They had found a particularly foul-tempered troll skulking about and had their fun before finishing him off. The local hobgoblin tribes were growing harder and harder to find. Foul brutes that they were, they weren't entirely stupid and had learned to give the area a wide berth. Kovannon would have to begin hunting out of the other portals soon. But they had managed to track down a few half-starved stragglers. They hadn't known anything-had, in fact, babbled on and on about things for which Kovannon had no interest-but perhaps the queen could glean something from their minds.

Still…

Something wasn't right. Something beyond the melancholy mood that a poor hunt always put him in. It nagged at the raw edge of his mind, patting and pawing like a cat playing with a wounded bird.

His two other eladrin companions lingered with him.

"You feel it?" said Ulender, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

"Yes," Kovannon said.

"It's like…" Ulender didn't finish.

"I know."

Durel looked around, shuddered, and said, "Should I recall the Ujaiyen?"

Kovannon was about to answer when he heard it. Footsteps crunching through the snow. The others heard it as well, for they all turned to stare in the direction from which the sounds came.

The figure had apparently been lying on the ground under the snow, for fine white crystals still lay in clumps on its shoulders and head, and frosted the entire figure, making the bright starlight sparkle off its frame. There was no grace in the thing's gait, but it came on with a terrible willfulness, as if the movement of every muscle were carefully considered. Even Kovannon's sharp eyes could make out no distinct features under the covering of frost, but the thing's eyes gave back a light that did not come from the stars but from some inner fire.

Seeing that, he knew what they faced. He could feel it in his bones. Everyone in Kunin Gatar's realm knew of the thing that had invaded, killing many of their people and even managing to hurt the queen before she killed it. What approached them… it could not be the same one. Kunin Gatar had killed that one. But Kovannon knew that where you found one fly, more were soon to follow. If one of these things had been killed by their queen, then it seemed that one of its kin had come looking for revenge.

Kovannon heard the steel of Durel's sword sliding out of its scabbard and the first syllables of an incantation upon Ulender's lips.

"What is it?" said Durel.

Kovannon sidestepped to give them room to fight. "Durel," Kovannon said in their native tongue. "Ulender and I will hold it off. You go for help."

"What?" said Durel. "Whom shall I bring?"

"Everyone," said Ulender, and by the tone of his voice, Kovannon knew that the wizard knew what they were up against. "Bring everyone."

"Stop!" Kovannon called out. "Name yourself."

The thing kept coming, neither slowing nor increasing its pace.

Kovannon tried the same phrase once more in Damaran and Nar. The thing stopped a dozen paces away, its breath sending up a cloud. The heat from its body had melted all but the thickest snow, and, close as it was, Kovannon saw that the figure was not an "it" at all. A woman. A hard woman, obviously used to long treks and hard living, but there was no mistaking the feminine curves. Yet there was nothing womanlike in the way she moved. In fact, there was very little human in her posture.

She shook her head, as if shooing a fly, then fixed her right eye on Kovannon. He took an involuntary step back as if an adder had just struck at him.

"Name yourself," Kovannon said in Damaran.

She cocked her head, birdlike, and said, "Why?"

Durel still had not moved. Kovannon waved at him. "Durel, get moving!"

Durel began to sidestep away, though he kept his sword raised and his eyes on the woman.

The woman cocked her head the other way. "Give me what I want, and I will go away."

"Go away?" said Kovannon. "I'm afraid that choice is beyond you now. You come to the queen's threshold uninvited… for that, there are consequences."

"Queen?"

"Enough," said Ulender. "Durel, go! Now!"

"Very well," said the woman.

She lunged-startlingly fast, taking to the air in a single leap. Durel had been moving away, but slowly and carefully, unwilling to take his eyes off the danger. That caution killed him.

Durel saw the attack in time, sidestepping and bringing his blade around in a graceful flourish so that the woman impaled herself on the yard of steel when she hit the ground. Kovannon heard the sharp snap of the point piercing through hard muscle, going in just under her ribs and coming out dark and wet from her back.

The weight of her landing forced Durel back a step, but he kept his grip on the sword. Later, looking back, Kovannon wondered if Durel might have lived had he let it go, letting the momentum of her leap carry her away. But he didn't.

The woman reached out with both hands, wrapped one hand around the side of Durel's head, and gripped the back of his neck with the other. He had time to open his mouth and draw breath to scream, but that was all. She yanked him forward, bringing his face into her open mouth.

One clear, high scream, and then the scream itself drowned as the woman ripped away his jaw.

Ulender's incantation rose to a final shout, and lightning split the clear night sky-a blinding blue arc that struck the steel protruding from the woman's back, filled her body, and shot outward in a hundred smaller tongues of blue wisps of light. Her back spasmed into an arch and she fell back into the snow, pulling a writhing Durel down on top of her. Hitting the ground forced the sword partway out of her.

Even as the thunder from Ulender's lightning faded and the final echo died off the mountainside, Kovannon heard the woman growling. Not in pain. Not even in fury like an animal. But in pleasure, like a starving mongrel worrying the first bite of flesh off the bone.

Ulender's magic had stunned Durel as much as the woman-Kovannon prayed it might have knocked him unconscious. They might be able to get him through the portal and to healing in time. But no, his wet screams resumed, louder than ever, and his hands and feet hammered at the ground as he struggled to get free.

Kovannon heard Ulender beginning another spell.

"No!" he shouted. "You'll kill Durel!"

"He's dead already!" Ulender said.

Or as good as, Kovannon realized. Moving forward, he drew his own weapon. An axe, crafted especially for chopping bones, not wood, and bound in many spells by the finest smiths of Ellestharn.

The woman pushed herself to her feet. In one hand, she held Durel up by his scalp. He was still trembling, but the fight had gone out of him. With her other hand, she reached forward, grabbed the sword's hilt, and pulled it out of her.

"Stand back!" Ulender called, and began the final words that would release the spell.

Kovannon shuffled sideways through the snow.

The woman brought the sword around, almost nonchalantly, and cut Durel's head from his shoulders. A gout of blood shot up from the gap between his shoulders, spraying the woman, then the body hit the ground.

Ulender was pronouncing the last word of the spell when the woman took one step forward and hurled Durel's head at him. It struck Ulender in the chest, knocking him back. The gathered power of his magic sparked and fizzled out of his fingers, falling on the snow where it steamed.

She threw the sword next. It tumbled end over end one full revolution before burying itself in Ulender's gut. His eyes went wide and he sat heavily in the snow. He looked down at the steel protruding from his body, opened his mouth, and a stream of dark blood ran out over his chin.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" said the woman, and she turned her gaze on Kovannon.

He raised his axe and stood his ground.

"Tell me of this… queen," she said.

Kovannon just stared back at her.

"No?" said the woman. "Why? Aren't you afraid of what I will do to you if you don't tell me?"

Kovannon swallowed and then spoke the wholehearted truth. "I am more afraid of what she'll do to me if I do. Death at your hands would seem a relief by comparison."

The woman cocked her head, again reminding Kovannon of some strange bird. And not in many, many years had he felt more like a helpless worm.

"I believe you," said the woman. "If she is the type of queen you say, then she will understand this. Tell your queen that nothing this side of Toril is safe. Her people come out, I kill them. She comes herself, I kill her. These lands are closed to her and all her people. Unless she gives me what I want."

Kovannon could scarcely believe it. Tell your queen, she said. That meant she was going to let him live.

"What is it you want?" he said.

"Give me the girl, and I'll go away."