Chapter 7

Late in the day, Skrch rose over the edge of her nest carrying a dead boar in each claw. She dropped them with a relieved oof not far inside the entrance. Her krrrrahk had helpfully cleared a space, saving themselves the trouble of clearing out bloodied grasses later.

Five of the fledglings converged on the food at once. Lrfk sat close to the cave mouth, stretching her blue-black wings. She had strange feathers, sleek and tight to her bones, unsuitable for the soaring raptor flight common to her kind.

"Aren't you hungry, Lrfk?" Skrch said.

"No, I caught a vulture earlier," Lrfk said.

"You can get sick eating those," Skrch said. "I thought I told you that."

"Yes, Mother. I washed it before I killed it."

Skrch tried without success to picture this, but Lrfk was the only one of her daughters she'd never caught telling a lie. Besides, closer examination revealed that Lrfk had somehow placed the little beaked skull in her mane, like a truly disturbing tiara. It was stark white. Lrfk was very clean.

"All… right…" Skrch said, staring at the skull. "Just don't do it any more. There ought to be plenty of other birds you could catch."

"Yes, Mother," Lrfk said.

Skrch turned to watch her daughters eat. She counted them two or three times to make sure everyone was there, then looked carefully at each one to make sure no one was sick. Not that there's much I could do if they were.

"I have to go back and find Dev Blackstare," she said. "She's probably at the watering hole by now. I gave her good directions. Be good girls while I'm gone, and don't kill anything that can talk unless it's trying to kill you. Jhha?"

"Jhha, Mother," everyone said.

"Mother," Lrfk said. Skrch turned to look down at her daughter's pale and serious face, startling against her dark feathers.

"Yes, Lrfk."

"I won't be here much longer," Lrfk said.

She said it quite calmly, but for some reason a chill ran up her mother's spine.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure. I'll be sure and tell you when I find out," Lrfk said.

"That's good," Skrch said, other words failing her. "Don't… Go anywhere while I'm not here, all right?"

"No, of course not," Lrfk said. "You'd better go find your Orc," she added reassuringly. It was very easy to forget she was only six, an adolescent as harpies counted it.

"Jhha," Skrch said. She swept her wing around her smallest child and embraced her carefully. Then she turned and sprang into the dying heat of the afternoon.

---

Death changes people. The death that changes you most may be your own.

Viri Starwater crept through the uneven terrain southeast of the camp, following Felwyn Smallfinger. She moved around the little necromancer, sometimes to one side or the other, and sometimes ahead or behind. She knew with an absolute certainty that she would remember every step she took, every sound she heard, everything she saw.

But all that Viri Starwater saw was not visible to the eye.

She felt the bones in the earth beneath her where a red dragon had fallen a long time ago. She felt the Orc bones inside the dragon, though they were even older. In the air she saw the shapes of flying things, evaporated by fire or by magic so that not even ashes were left. Without looking at the necromancer, she saw Felwyn's left eye as it watched sleeplessly in all directions.

By the time she was a thousand years old, Huntress Starwater could track any living thing, anywhere. Now Viri could find any dead thing in existence. If the corpse was larger than a rabbit, its dim shape showed through any amount of dirt or stone. The dead were everywhere. She could shove their lambent outlines to the periphery of her attention, but it took an effort.

The restless dead she could not ignore. They glowed with fervent unlife, an awful little galaxy of their own. Even with her back to the camp, Viri could easily sense the faint green radiance of the abominations and the ghouls. The single banshee glowed brighter, distant kinship now become closer than any Elf would wish.

And then there was the center, the cold bright star around which Viri's dark new universe revolved.

Viri Starwater had become the very thing she had spent the last years of her life fighting against. In the face of such a contradiction, some Undeads have destroyed themselves at once. Some have lost their minds. And some have yielded to the slow erosion of time as they slowly lost their ability to deny their condition.

Viri did not veer into complete insanity in her first months of unlife only because she could navigate back to that single brilliant core. To say that she loved would not be fully correct. Those who breathe do not love the air.

"We are nearing the road," Viri said now, her own voice cold and distant in her ears.

"There is a well beside the way," Felwyn said. Her brown robe swished around her small feet as she moved. She was some eight inches shorter than the Elf. "One of the shades told me."

"You carry water," Huntress Starwater said. She had not missed the skin bottle hanging from Felwyn's belt.

"Yes," said the Human. "I'm seeking something else. You'll keep watch, won't you? You'll hear anyone coming before we can see them."

"Yes," Viri said.

If she listened closely, she could hear Felwyn's heart beating, steady and even. The sound struck an odd discord with the other things that surrounded them. Life is local. Death is everywhere.

They came to the well a few minutes later, a circle of stone rising out of the earth. Viri stood by the road and listened as Felwyn began to gather a few scant weeds from around its base. Every so often the girl reached up to adjust the deer's skull she wore over her brown hair.

Vir Starwater watched Felwyn from the corner of her eye. The skin of the necromancer's left hand was pale and ridged, scarred from a burn that should have killed her. The left side of her face was marked as well, puckered up around her new eye.

"Someone is coming," Viri said eventually. She heard wings beating in the distance.

"Who?" Felwyn said. She tucked a last strand of brownish green into a satchel and stood up.

"Something large, and winged," Viri said. She listened again. "And another with four paws, very quiet. Both alive."

"All right," Felwyn said. She moved back from the path, toward one of the two palms that shaded the well.

"That will not hide you," Viri said. She did not take her eyes from the sky. "Anything that goes on all fours in the Barrens will smell us both. My decay is arrested, but I may still be mistaken for carrion. You cannot be."

"Then we'll wait," Felwyn said. She came to stand beside Viri, closer than most Humans would care to be to an Undead. The girl hung the satchel over her shoulder, wrapped both hands around the shaft of her staff, and stood still.

It was nearly evening. Even so, it was difficult to see all the way to the eastern horizon, even for one whose eyes could not be hurt by the sun.

Viri gradually recognized the silhouette as it came toward them, pinions sweeping the dry air.

"A harpy," she said. "A very large one. Perhaps a queen."

She would once have felt suspicion, disgust, perhaps even fear (though Huntress Starwater had feared few things). She was beyond those things now. Once the worst has happened, nothing else has much effect.

"And the other one?" Felwyn said.

Viri stared, without squinting or flinching.

"An Orc on a wolf," she said.

"Chasing the harpy?" Felwyn said.

"I do not think so," Viri said.

The pair drew closer. Felwyn leaned past the Elf and looked. She squinted, but only with her right eye. Something red flashed in the blue depth of the other one.

"Then he was right," Felwyn said, as if to herself.

This remark did not seem addressed to Viri, so she did not respond. She drew a glaive instead, hiding it beneath her cloak.

"You won't need it," Felwyn said as she straightened.

Viri Starwater judged this unworthy of reply.

The wolf pulled up a few yards from them a couple of minutes later. The harpy hovered low beside the rider, the sun gleaming on her red plumage. The Orc growled something.

"She doesn't speak Common," the harpy said, in a pure high voice. "She said she'd rather not fight, and can we get a drink. I'd say yes if I were you, by the way. She's already grouchy."

"We're not looking for trouble," Felwyn said.

The harpy extended her talons and spread her tail feathers. A moment later, she stood on the ground.

"Then do you mind?" Skrch said.

Felwyn moved a polite couple of yards from the well. Viri moved with her, without turning her back to the new arrivals.

Dev Blackstare dismounted and filled a skin bottle at the well. After she filled the bottle, she drank from her cupped hand. Then she stood beside the wolf as it drank, and as Skrch stooped awkwardly over the water.

She never took her eyes from Viri Starwater, or her hand from the butt of her scimitar.

"Talons aren't as good at hands, when it comes to drinking," Skrch said, rising with water dripping down her chin. "No palm to speak of."

The Viri Starwater who had once hated the race of harpies recognized that a departure from some essential pattern was at work. The new Viri only watched, and waited to see whether the strangers would attack or not.

The Orc spoke again.

"Dev says is that a Human skull?" Skrch said, turning to look at Felwyn again.

"The one on my head is a deer," Felwyn said. "The one on the staff…"