Catechist 02, Into The Thinking Kingdoms by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Epic, Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Fantastic fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780446521369
Published: 2011-08-10T22:53:51+00:00

XIII

Unmoving and silent in the middle of the deserted street, they stared at the phantasm. Despite its lack of a countenance, it conveyed the unmistakable impression of staring back. Ehomba leaned over slightly to whisper to the swaying, shaky enigma who called himself Knucker.

"Okay, you know everything. What is that?"

Lachrymose eyes fought to focus on the forbidding specter. As before, the drunkard did not hesitate. "A vohwn. Having no face of its own, it envies those that do." He tapped the side of his nose with his middle finger. "Be careful: It will try to take yours."

Simna drew his sword. "Well, he can't have this one. I need it." Behind him, Ahlitah tensed and hunted for an opening.

Pulling the sky-metal blade from the scabbard on his back, Ehomba closed ranks with his friend. "And I mine. Mirhanja would still recognize me if I returned home without a face, but how would she look deep into my eyes if they were taken away?" He held his sword out in front of him, the moonlight glinting off the sharply angled etchings in the singular steel.

The vohwn looked at the double display of sharp-edged weaponry, though what it looked with no one could say, and laughed from the vacancy where its mouth might have been had it enjoyed a mouth. It was a sly suspiration, a sound that played beguilingly around the outer ear without ever really intruding, yet they heard it anyway, a laugh that froze only random drops of blood within their veins.

A phantasmal hand, skeletal and blue, reached toward them. Simna ducked. Ehomba held his ground and swung. The sky-metal sword moaned as it cleaved air and wrist. Like an emancipated moth, the severed hand of the vohwn went drifting off into the night, possessed of a life of its own. The specter cried out elegiacally and drew back its arm. As the empty face stared down into the severed wrist, it promptly grew another hand.

The herdsman hissed at the swaying, unsteady Knucker. "How do we get around it?"

"Well," the drunk responded thoughtfully, "you could make a break to your left and cross the street, but then you'd run into the borboressbs."

Glancing in the indicated direction, Ehomba and Simna saw a dark slit of an alley give birth to a dozen or so pony-sized homunculi. They had cloven hooves and walked with a permanent crouch. Bright red skin was subdued somewhat by the feeble moonlight. Goatlike tails switched back and forth and bristle-black hair covered their bodies in isolated, unwholesome patches. Their faces were blunt and plump, distorted by mouths full of sharp snaggle teeth that ran from ear to ear. When they gaped, it looked as if their skulls were split horizontally in half. Each had a single horn of varying length growing from the center of its forehead, and they were armed with curving, scythelike short swords fashioned of metal as bloodred as their exposed flesh.

They had been gabbling in an unknown tongue until they caught sight of the travelers.

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