Thirty-Six The Implings

THIRTY-SIX

The Implings

SAMUEL

M ist prickled across my skin as Grant and I crested the low mountains beyond the fort and, hopping a wall, picked our way down to the sea. We moved casually, speaking here and there and generally maintaining the appearance of friends escaping the city on a warm spring evening.

The fog, however, undercut our fa?ade. It shielded anything not within half a dozen paces, encapsulating us in our own, small world of last season's crushed grass and melting snow—the latter adding its own gentle mist to the greater miasma.

The hulking rise of the fort briefly came and went. Shaggy cattle watched us pass with squinty, furtive eyes, and once I swore I heard a child laugh.

Then the ground gave way in a crumble of sodden, half-thawed earth. I flung out an arm to stop Grant, who made a startled sound and slipped on muddy snow. His legs struck mine, and the two of us hit the ground in a graceless tumble.

I froze, fully expecting us to slide off the mountain in a deluge of earth and rock and clots of grass. But the ground was solid other than a gentle rustle of falling dirt.

"Damn." Grimacing, I smeared mud from my cheek and started to rise, staring over the cliff we had nearly wandered off.

"Wait!" Grant grabbed my arm, his eyes round as coins. We held our breaths, not daring even to breathe until the silence, the press of mist, began to ring in my ears.

A sound came from the fog. A thud. A brush. The shifting of feet.

I slipped a hand slowly inside my mud-smeared coat. Grant did the same, crouched low and ready to spring.

The fog swirled, and a great, hulking mass appeared. My mind transformed it into a hundred, twisted shapes—Otherborn beasts come to tear us limb from limb. I would have to remove my coin to fight them, then Hae would come, and all would be lost.

The mist abated, and a shaggy, long-horned cow considered us sedately.

I rasped out a breath, half laughing, half winded. "Saint."

"It may be premature to give thanks," Grant muttered, pushing himself upright. At his feet, his ghisting had manifested in its mangy-dog form, glowing a faint, dark indigo.

I followed the creature's gaze back to the cow. There, perched atop the cow's enormous, broad head, was an impling. The unholy mingling of an infant and a starved dog, it rode upon the beast's neck and held its horns, all the while watching us over its mount's windblown fur. It was naked, bones sticking out against pale, nearly necrotic flesh and contrasted by chubby, round belly and cheeks.

Had I been in the Other, or even attuned to it, the impling would have shone orange. But here, wholly in the human world, its glow was barely discernable. The last burn of a setting sun.

"Sam," Grant said, very low. "Now might be a good time to risk taking off that talisman."

"Hae will find us," I reminded him, equally low. My voice did not quaver, but my guts were watery. Could I take command of the impling without my contact to the Other? Or would my status as a Sooth be wholly irrelevant as it sliced our throats to ribbons and pried our eyes from our skulls?

Back atop the cow, the impling began to crawl forward, kneeling on the creature's head, its vaguely humanoid skull cocked to one side. The cow itself did not move, unperturbed.

"Either he finds us alive today or a cowherd finds our bodies tomorrow," Grant gritted out.

The impling leapt into the grass and began to crawl towards us. Grant pulled a knife. I reached for my sleeve, and the cow lowed in sudden distress.

Movement revealed a new source of subtle orange advancing from the left, more from the right. A dozen implings, crawling towards us like hungry, four-limbed spiders.

Grant's ghisting began to flit in front of us, a decidedly un-canine pattern to his steps. One of the implings shied away from him, but the others came on, crowding us back to the edge of the cliff.

I tore the handkerchief from my forearm, shoved it and the coin into my pocket, and dropped into the Other. I reeled at the suddenness of the shift, but my instincts were already in action, gathering my power and infusing it into my voice.

"Stop."

The implings, blazing orange reflections here in their natural home, paused. One was so close to Grant it might have reached out to claw his ankle with its long, thin claws.

"Back up."

Half the implings retreated. The others wavered, but one—the one who had ridden upon the cow—advanced another pointed step.

It met my gaze, its eyes pits of ochre matte sea-glass, and as it tilted its head I saw something about its throat. Tight. Bronze. Not a decoration.

A collar.

Impossible , one part of my mind declared.

Undeniable , the other concluded.

"Someone else is… controlling them," I murmured to Grant. I could feel my lips move in the human world, though my other senses were wholly occupied. I risked a glance at the horizon, searching for the other Sooth's dark-green mark. But Ostchen and the sea behind us were endless hazes of lights, all jumbled together and obscuring one another.

Dividing my mind as Olsa had taught me, I began to subconsciously search for Hart , Olsa, and Illya. I could not waste a single moment here.

Immediately the implings all surged forward. Grant made a strangled sound and our shoulders bumped together.

"Sam!" Grant protested.

I clapped the full force of my focus onto the implings. Some froze again. The remainder fully fled.

"Go back to your forests. Abandon your master," I told the last creatures, though I looked at the one with the collar. "I will try to take that off you, if you permit."

More implings trickled away, until only three remained. Two lingered nearby, clustering, waiting for the collared one.

It crawled forward and stood on its too-thin legs, distended stomach sagging.

Slowly, I crouched to meet it. The longer I was in the Other the more natural my movements felt, the easier it was to breath and sense and see . I felt gentle tugs in various directions, like sparrows plucking at my clothing. Visions and Knowings slipped closer, like penitents wringing their hands.

The impling approached until it was within arm's reach.

"Turn around," I said.

The creature sneered at me, revealing densely packed lines of teeth. Four densely packed lines of teeth, to be precise.

"Or leave," I told it. I felt calmer now, and my patience waned. "I will give you no other choice."

With a silent shriek, the little monster lunged. I shied back, throwing up a hand just in time to stop its claws from my face. Flesh parted. Skin and fabric tore.

My power billowed out. The creature fled, and I staggered back into my body to an assault of senses—cold and condensation, the sight of snow and mist and the first brush of green. Blood running down my arm, though no pain came yet. Grant's round eyes and his ghisting, swirling around us in a panic of sudden, avian wings.

Then, as if dragged by an invisible hook, I crashed back into the Other. I spun, searching for lights. Grant. His ghisting. Fleeing implings. One, lingering, hovering, clacking its long nails together in obvious distress.

A murky green light growing in the distance. A tug, no longer gentle. A fishhook around my ribs.

Inis Hae was not only tracking me. He was summoning me.

"The coin," I croaked. "Mr. Grant. Charles!"

I felt no fumbling in my pocket, just the coin when Grant pressed it into my hand. I awoke as if from fever, in flickering fits and starts and flashes of vision.

I braced on my knees and retched. Nothing came up, which left me feeling infinitely worse, and I was grateful for Grant's hand on my shoulder. One of my forearms felt hot, and when I squinted at it, I saw blood. So much blood.

"If you are finished," the highwayman said slowly. "There is one more impling."

I squinted through a tangled curtain of hair. One final creature, small and young, squatted on a patch of snow. It wrung its fingers, like I'd seen it doing in the Other.

"You can leave," I grunted to the little monster, though with the coin on my skin once again, my power over it should have been nullified.

I was not sure it was, however. I still felt nauseous and dizzy, trapped just on the edge of my own skin with the Other hovering close. Grant's ghisten light and the impling's innate glow seemed too strong in this human world, and a blur refused to leave the very edges of my vision.

The impling retreated a step, but seemed incapable of leaving.

An idea came to me, impulsive. "Wait. Go find the ship with the figurehead of a Hart. Then come find me again."

The creature shuddered, then launched itself past us—over the edge of the cliff and into the impenetrable fog. There was no splash, no screech, no distant impact. The creature simply vanished, and I was left unsure whether it remained in our world at all.

Perhaps it would obey. Perhaps it would not.

With its departure, the pain came stronger. I held up my arm to check the locations of the wounds—would it not be fitting if the monster had slit my wrists and I bled out here within moments?

Grant took the arm before I could get a good look and began to bind it tightly. In my free hand I clenched the coin tighter, though my awareness of the Other still did not fade. The visions that had clamored for attention before now strained—seeking a crack in my barriers.

For there truly was a crack now, one I could not close, no matter how hard the talisman dug into my skin.

"You need stitches," the highwayman said.

"We must be discreet," I warned him.

Grant rolled his eyes, but his exasperation was a veil, and a thin one at that. He was worried. "Shut your mouth and come along."