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couldn t hear what he was saying. They passed their thoughts privately,
leaving Rekkathav in the dark. When they finished, though, Aril turned to
Rekkathav and said, You will follow them. Stay out of their way, and out of
their sight. You will find out what happened to my Beithan assassin, and you
will bring me a report of the trio s success. Here is your gate-ring. Guard it
well; your duty is to return to me with news. He handed a tiny ring to
Rekkathav the ring would expand when commanded to, but would stay very tiny to
guard its stability in the meantime. Go in native form, Aril added.
Rekkathav took the ring, bowed his acquiescence, and wished fervently that he
were dead. He willed himself to human form soft, bipedal, vulnerable, weak and
stared through the holed center of the ring until the Master s gate felt him
calling it and came to him. He slipped the ring on his finger then, and the
ring expanded to engulf all of him.
He raced through the tunnel of green fire; through the Infinite Song his
people, scattered after the death of their world, had sung of and yearned for;
and for a moment he felt guilty. He had what his people had yearned for. And
he was or would eventually be one of the people drinking all the life out of
it.
But he d never seen his own world; it had been dead long before a recruiter
for the Night Watch had discovered his talents with magic and his total lack
of moral compass and had suggested he consider a new career. He d left off
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going to meeting every third day to sing of the world of sand and sea, of
beaches that never ended, of great surfs and the Bountiful Tide Pool.
Rekkathav had gone in search of power. And look at him. Assistant to none
other than the Master of the Night Watch.
Disposable assistant.
Sent to spy on a trio of keth eliminators and a Beithan assassin.
He and his tender human flesh and his severe shortage of legs stumbled out of
the gate into a cypress swamp full of tea-brown water and cottonmouth snakes,
and he discovered that sitting in a big sandbox singing  O, Hail, Bountiful
Tide Pool, Thanks for Fishes Tender might not have been such a bad thing
after all. It had been boring. He d thought being bored was a bad thing& once.
CHAPTER 7
Cat Creek, North Carolina
THE SENTINELS Were still looking at him with that expression of awe and
yearning in their eyes, the name Thor shaped on their lips, when the gate
opened into Cat Creek.
Heyr felt it snap wide; at the same instant, the Sentinel sitting in the
mirror-gate yelped and toppled out onto the floor, blasted by flaring green
fire and a push of dark energy that twisted Heyr s gut. A line of darkness
edged the flare of energy in the mirror-gate. The shape of that energy slid
along Heyr s nerves dark and ugly and insatiably hungry. The gate had opened
somewhere on the periphery of Cat Creek, close to town, but not in it. Like
Heyr, this trouble made no secret of its arrival. He knew the shape and the
signature of the things that had made that gate, and he was torn between
disbelief and genuine fear. They d come in south of town, he thought. They d
come for Lauren, and for anything that stood between her and them.
 Something big, the man thrown from the mirror said.  Something bad.
But Heyr knew the Sentinel wouldn t have the experience to know how big, or
how bad. Heyr did. The keth had arrived in Cat Creek.
Mjollnir, his mighty war hammer, knew the keth and sang a warning on his hip,
humming blood and death and destruction to the dark gods, hungry to fly again
against the wasting of worlds. Mjollnir remembered the keth from other places,
other times, from fair fields and tall cities in worlds that were now airless
cinders, lost to the life they had once harbored.
Heyr knew the keth, too. They were first feeders, moving into virgin worlds
and planting the first crops of death and destruction and shaping the energy
of their target worlds, carving channels and beds for the river of poisoned
energy that flowed from upworld. They were a long way from their chosen
hunting grounds here. So they d been sent.
Keth were worse even than the rrôn. Hot blood ran through rrôn veins, and
mortal rrôn were different from rrôn dark gods. Mortal rrôn hated the rrôn
dark gods. But the keth were cold not by the magic of their resurrection
rings, but by their very natures. Insectile. Passionless. Mortal keth were
different from the keth dark gods only in that they were easier to get rid of.
Marginally. Heyr had loathed the keth on every world where he d stood against
them. Bloodless, relentless, free from both anger and hope, and incapable of
comprehending grief or fear or loss, they knew only that they had goals, and
that they would let nothing stand between them and those goals. Heyr would
rather fight a swarm of rrôn alone than a single keth.
Three of them moved toward town, walking along a side road. He tried to
imagine what Cat Creek s farmers and teachers and schoolkids would do if they
saw keth, but then he realized it didn t matter. Any who came within reach of
the keth would die the monsters would suck the life from chance-met humans
with a touch, then move on. The keth were in no hurry. Why should they be?
They had no reason to think any on this world could stand against them. He d
been in seclusion for years, having given up hope. Any other true immortals
who remained in spite of the pain and Heyr knew only of Loki, who had no
choice had done the same. The keth dark gods had every reason to believe the
road between them and Lauren lay clear.
They were following the trail of living magic, probably in the same fashion
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that Heyr had.
Heyr said,  The keth are here. Three of them. They ve come to destroy Lauren
and stop what she s trying to do, and we have to stop them.
Eric stared at him.  They ve come to stop Lauren. Lauren, who has been
sneaking behind our backs causing God only knows what sort of problem in the
worldchain. Lauren, who is working with her dead-and-magically-revived sister.
Lauren, whose parents were traitors, and who is supposed to be our gateweaver
but who now looks like she may very well be a traitor, too. She s the one
we re supposed to throw ourselves on this grenade for? Why? More
importantly& how? We re not warriors, and the keth are gods. Magic works for
them here.
Heyr said,  It works for me here, too and for you as well, if I give you
gifts. I wish I had the time to give you all of them&  He stared at Eric,
thinking, Yes, he might do. Maybe some of these others, as well. Maybe,
depending how they fought, and he d know that in far too little time. The
little bit of hope that Lauren had stirred expanded. If any of these survived [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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