Extinction

Ryld shivered as he walked through the forest. Night was falling, and with it came a chill in the air. His piwafwiwas still damp from the rain of the night before, and a full day of steady walking hadn't been enough to dry it. Overhead, above the branches of the treesthat crowded Ryld close on every side, the cloud cover was breaking up. The sky was a mottled grayish purple, the color of an old bruise.

The air around him darkened as the last of the sunlight faded, but after a time, Ryld noticed it was getting brighter again. His dark-vision was giving way to the pale gray light that filled the surface world at dusk and dawn - even though the dawn was still a long way off. Confused, Ryld paused, and looked up through the lacework of branches.

The full moon was rising.

As it peeked above the treetops, filling the air around him with a silvery light, Ryld was suddenly no longer cold. A flush warmed his cheeks, and he felt his blood quicken. The hairs on his arms stood erect, as if he had just shivered, yet at the same time he felt hot with fever.

"Lolth protect me," he whispered in a strangled voice, glancing down nervously at the bite mark on his wrist. "That bratdid infect me."

The moonlight continued to grow brighter, and with it, Ryld's anxiety rose. Flashes of red swam before his eyes, and his pulse pounded in his ears. Already he could feel his control slipping. His clothing felt tight, constricting, heavy. He pulled it away from his throat, barely able to contain the urge to tear it from his body. He looked wildly at the forest that surrounded him, wanting to plunge into it and run and run and run. . . .

Struggling to maintain control, he plunged a hand into the breast pocket of hispiwafwi and pulled out the sprig of belladonna that Yarno's grandfather had given him. It had dull green leaves and a single, bell-shaped flower. Ryld ripped off a leaf, stuffed it into his mouth, and chewed. A bitter taste filled his mouth, and his tongue went dry. He followed it with another leaf, then another, then the flower . . . then he threw the bare twig away.

He waited.

The urge he'd felt a moment before - the urge to tear off his clothing and run away into the woods - disappeared. Ryld felt light-headed. He tried to take a step, stumbled, and nearly fell. At the last moment he grabbed a tree for balance. All the while, the forest was becoming brighter, the moonlight flooding his vision. Something was wrong with his eyes.

Pulling his short sword clumsily from its sheath, he stared into its polished surface and saw that his pupils had dilated to the point where the red of the iris had all but vanished. Grimacing, he lowered his sword, stood a moment, then remembered he hadn't sheathed it. He tried to shove the short sword into its sheath but missed, in-stead shoving it point-first into the ground as he stumbled. Unable to catch himself again, he fell flat out onto the soggy ground beside it. Above him, the trees seemed to have turned to pale gray shadows, wavering back and forth as though they were under water.

Lying there, watching the forest spiral in circles above him, Ryld wondered if he was going to die. The belladonna had halted his trans-formation into a werewolf, but at what cost? His heart was pounding at an alarming rate, and his skin felt dry and hot. He tried to wet his lips, but even that effort was too much for him. All he could do was lie on the forest floor, inhaling the smell of wet earth and rotting leaf with each halting breath.

His breath. That was the one thing he still could control.

Ryld cast his mind back to his training at Melee-Magthere. One of the tests initiates had been required to pass involved maintaining concentration in times of physical duress. The initiates had been instructed to strip off their clothing, sit cross-legged on the floor of the practice hall with their eyes closed, and focus on their breath-ing. At the time, Ryld thought the test was designed to teach them to ignore the cold of the stone floor - but he was wrong. One of the masters strolled between the rows of meditating pupils, dropping centipedes onto their skin. The insects were each as long as a finger and bit immediately when they landed, injecting a venom that raced like fire through the students' veins. Those initiates who cried out or gasped were given a sharp rap on the head. If they cried out a second time they were hit harder. A third, and they were told to leave Melee-Magthere and never return.

Ryld had been dimly aware of the student behind him gasping a third time and listened with only a portion of his mind as he was or-dered to leave. He heard the choked sob he made as he obeyed. Ryld forced his mind deeper into meditation, at the same time bracing himself for what he knew was coming next. When the centipede fell onto his thigh, he didn't flinch. As the centipede bit into his flesh like the stab of a fire-heated skewer, he told himself to remain calm, to breathe in through his left nostril, out through his right, in through his left nostril, out through his right. . .

Then the centipede scurried across his groin, its hundreds of legs tickling, its head moving from side to side as if it was look-ing for a second spot to bite. In the space between two heartbeats, Ryld nearly forgot how to breathe. He felt his heart begin to race, while instinct screamed at him to leap to his feet, to brush the foul insect away.

Then he remembered his life before Melee-Magthere - his life in the Stenchstreets, and the time, years before, when the nobles had come on their hunt. He was only six years old then, but he remem-bered lying there, blistered from the fireball that had left corpses strewn all around him. In order to survive, he'd been forced to lie utterly still, to play dead while the hunters claimed their trophies: teeth, ears, and occasionally an entire head. Ryld had learned then to control his breathing, to make it shallow and slow, inaudible above the sawing of blades through flesh. Thankfully, they did not deem any parts of a small, scrawny boy worth taking.

Remembering that trial, he found the strength to ignore the tickle of the centipede and its second painful bite.

When the ordeal was over, the masters nodded, silently acknowl-edging the fortitude of Ryld and the other five students who had passed the test. Ryld had been almost unable to walk for an entire tenday afterward.

Lying in the forest, riding the waves of the war between the belladonna and the disease, Ryld used what he'd learned that day. Focusing on his breathing, on the drawing in of air, the slow filling of his lungs, and the slow exhalation that followed, he slowed his racing pulse. He drove the heat from his skin, imagining it flowing from him with each breath. Slowly, his body returned to normal, and he shivered.

His eyes, however, continued to see the fantastic images the bel-ladonna had limned on the world. The trees remained grayish-white against a sky studded with impossibly bright stars. The moon, trail-ing brighter stars in its wake, hurt to even glance at. Wavering shad-ows danced in the forest. One of those shadows stepped out from the others and coalesced into the form of a woman.

"Halisstra . . ." Ryld breathed, then he saw that he was mistaken.

The woman was a drow but was not Halisstra Melarn. She was naked, her white hair hanging well past her hips. As she moved closer to Ryld, his fevered eyes saw that her skin was covered in evening dew. Drops of it covered her body, sparkling in the moonlight like stars against the sky-black of her skin.

She stood before him a moment, staring down with eyes that re-flected the light like twin crescent moons. Then she touched the hilt of the sword he'd accidentally speared into the earth. Slender fin-gers traced a lazy circle around the leather-wrapped hilt. To Ryld's eyes the fingers looked as if they were dancing. Her lips parted, but insteadof speech Ryld heard the notes of a flute. Its tune was some-how both welcoming and harsh at the same time, as if the flautist was of two minds about what tune to play and was able to play both at once. All the while, the woman stared deeply into Ryld's eyes, as if she was trying to see into his soul. Her hand closed around the hilt of the sword.

Something crackled in the forest. Startled, the woman looked up, just as a small black wolf burst from the underbrush. Teeth bared, snarling, it leaped for her chest. When it struck, the woman exploded into a million motes of starlight. The wolf continued its leap as if she had never been there. Watchingit disappear into the forest once more, Ryld confirmed his earlier thought. It was all just an hallucination. The woman, the wolf. . . neither were truly there.

Something warm and moist nuzzled his ear. It was a nose. Then a warm, furry body lay down next to him. A tongue licked his cheek, and dark eyes stared into his.

Ryld didn't move and didn't speak. Instead he continued to con-centrate on his breathing, forcing the last of the belladonna's poison from his body with each slow breath.

Eventually, he fell into Reverie.

When he became aware of his surroundings once more, it was daylight. He heard a crackling noise and smelled roasting meat, and rolled over to see Yarno squatting beside a small fire. The boy was holding a stick on which had been impaled the body of a small, four-legged animal. It had been gutted and neatly skewered, but Ryld could identify it by the tail. It was a rat. Yarno lifted the stick from the flames.

"You'll need strength," he said. "Eat."

Ryld sat up, shaking away the last of his lethargy. Rising to his feet, he moved his shoulders, his arms, his fingers. All were in work-ing order; the poison was gone from his body. He squatted and ac-cepted the rat.

"Thank you," he said. "I haven't eaten rat since I was a child."

Yarno studied him through narrowed eyes. Ryld realized the boy was trying to decide if he was being mocked. Ryld smiled and bit into the fire-seared meat, chewing it with gusto.

Yarno flicked back the lock of black hair that hung across his forehead and smiled.

"It's good, isn't it?" asked the boy.

"It is indeed," Ryld answered, wiping grease from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

Yarno stood and scuffed soil over the fire with a dirty foot, turn-ing his back to the fire and scraping the ground like a dog.

"Grandfather is feeling better now," he told Ryld.

"My masters taught me well," Ryld answered. "That - and I've had lots of practice binding wounds." He eyed the smudges of dirt that covered Yarno's pale, naked body, then added, "The first thing you need to do with a wound is clean it with hot water, as I did for your grandfather. Then bind it in a clean, boiled cloth. Remember that - it could save your life someday."

"I'll remember," the boy said.

Ryld wrinkled his nose, doubting it. Yarno seemed to attract dirt like agutter attracted night soil. And he had fleas - as Ryld found out to his disgust a moment later when he felt the needle-sharp twinge of one of the vermin biting his chest. His memory of the werewolf sleeping beside him must have been accurate. How much else of the past night had also been real - and how much hallucination?

Ryld rose to his feet and glanced around at the forest floor. Aside from the paw prints of a small wolf and the footprints of a barefoot boy, he could see no other tracks.

"Yarno," he asked, "when you found me last night, was there a woman standing next to me?"

Yarno shrugged.

"What did you leap at?"

Yarno stared at the ground.

"I don't remember," he answered finally, shrugging again. "I never do."

Ryld nodded, understanding. Driven into a frenzy by the light of the full moon, the boy hadn't been in control of his actions - or his mind. Strange, then, that he had sought Ryld out and protected him - his bloodlust should have caused him to tear Ryld's throat out, instead. Perhaps the stench of belladonna had driven him back - but why then did Ryld remember the boy lying beside him, keeping him warm throughout the night?

He drew his short sword from the ground, cleaned the mud from its tip, then re-sheathed it.

"Which way is the temple?" Ryld asked.

Yarno pointed, then met Ryld's eye in what the weapons mas-ter would have taken as a challenge, had the boy been a trained swordsman.

"What will you do when you reach it?" Yarno asked.

"Rescue Halisstra," Ryld said. His eyes narrowed, and he added, "If she's still alive."

"And if she isn't?" Yarno asked. "Will you kill the priestesses to avenge her death?"

Ryld considered that for a moment, then smiled grimly.

"As many as I can, before I'm slain myself," he said.

"Good," Yarno said.

The boy's head lifted as if he'd heard something. He stared in the direction in which he'd just pointed.

Ryld, too, could hear it; the blare of a dozen or more hunting horns, muffled by distance, coming from the direction of the temple.

"I'd better get back," Yarno said, eyes wide with fear. "Grand-father needs me."

The boy shifted into wolf form and fled into the forest.

Ryld turned, and hurried the other way - toward the sound. As he wove his way between the trees, roughly shouldering branches aside in his haste, a single thought echoed in his mind.

Halisstra had confessed to the murder of one of the temple priest-esses - and was almost certain to be punished for her crime. Was it Halisstra who was being hunted?