The jungle was no longer the haunt of darkness and hidden violence it had been when Dennis first stumbled into its trees and clutching thorns. No one could live in a world in which there was no peace or safety... and for Dennis, peace was now just beyond the firelight, in the shadows that told him of home and family.
The fire muttered reassuring phrases to the back of his drowsy mind...
CHAPTER 17
The cry that woke Dennis the third time was wordless and terrible.
He leaped to his feet. The Wizard Serdic lay face-up on the pole. The fire had fallen to ash and a shimmer everywhere but beneath the corpse's hips—where fat had bubbled out to burn with yellow flames and a soapy odor.
"Now you've done it, boy," said the corpse. It freed its wrists by twisting them against the withie which bound them to the pole, then hunched its knees forward and untied its ankles.
"I'm coming for you, boy," said the Wizard Serdic, dead a month and wrapped in a miasma of decay and smoldering flesh. He crabbed his legs sideways and stood up, still impaled on the spit.
Dennis screamed and ran into the night.
The jungle had tricked him, enticed him from his duties and lulled him to sleep. Now it was all clawing thorns and saw-edged leaves again.
Dennis would have thrown himself willingly into a hedge of spears if it were the only way to escape from the corpse. His last view of Serdic was a memory of white terror: the wizard with his arms lifted, pulling out the pole that impaled him, hand over hand.
Trees battered the youth as he clubbed himself on their trunks and fallen branches. His forearms stung from cuts and scratches, but the pounding the rest of his body took during his wild careen through the night was a red, dull ache with no end and no location.
That red pulse became the whole universe for him, replacing hope and the memory of Serdic. It was so omnipresent that when Dennis' eyes told him that there was a glow which silhouetted the dark thickets, the information merged with pain and was lost until his feet tripped on the threshold.
Then he stumbled into the cabin he had fled a lifetime before.
Dennis would have gotten up and run further, but his body failed him at last. His hands and feet scrabbled briefly on the floor of smooth hardwood puncheons, but they could raise his torso only for a moment before he flopped down again.
He wasn't crying; he had no tears left.
For minutes, Dennis lay on the floor with his breath sobbing in and out while his muscles recovered themselves enough to hurt individually.
The fireplace held a bed of glowing coals. Their light seemed brighter than it had earlier, when the cabinet opened and Dennis ran from Serdic the first time... but time lacked the reality it had when this terrible night began.
The cabinet still stood in the corner, open and empty. The cabin's front door stirred vaguely in a breeze that made Dennis shiver.
The youth got up, moving like a man who'd lived with pain for decades. A cramp suddenly knotted the big muscles of his right thigh. The flesh contorted, taking away Dennis' breath with the fresh agony and almost throwing him to the floor again.
Almost. With his eyes slitted, he hopped on his good leg until he caught the edge of the door and supported half his weight on it until the fiery throbbing subsided. He slammed the heavy door; barred it; and, as an afterthought, tweaked in the latchstring that still hung out through the hole above the lintel.
The feathery pelt was gone. He'd probably lost it in the jungle when he bolted out the door.
That didn't matter. Dennis had slept with frogs in a pool of rainwater. The warm puncheons were a more attractive choice now than the bed that in the shadows across the room.
Dennis curled up in front of the fire, cradling his head on his crossed arms. He could feel the aches draining from him. His muscles relaxed, giving up the tautness which had doubled the pain of his injuries. He was logy with fatigue, drifting into a slumber as deep as the realm of the sea hag...
"What will you give me for your lodging, boy?" demanded the Wizard Serdic from outside the cabin.
Dennis roused. He felt as though his skin were covered with needles which pricked him every time he moved. His ears buzzed so loudly that for a moment he thought he must be dreaming, because he couldn't hear any real sound over the roar of blood and exhaustion.
"What will you give me, boy?" the voice demanded.
Dennis stepped to the door. He didn't feel his scrapes and bruises, but pulses of heat rose until they expanded away from the top of his head as he moved.
He lifted the bar and pulled the door open. The corpse stared at him with eyes lighted orange by reflected firelight.
Dennis had been frightened too badly and for too long to have any fear remaining.
"Come in, wizard," he said, moving his arm in a welcoming gesture. He would have bowed if he'd been sure that he wouldn't fall over if he tried.