“Lady Circe,” said Dorina, “I say again: leaving on your own is a terrible idea.”

  “I’m on a deadline,” I said. “Staying in your inn, no matter how pleasant, is not in the cards.”

  She shook her head glumly. “There are other dangers in the forest besides the theranaq.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Stay out of the river. Particularly in the pools below the rapids or falls. That’s where you’ll find daktari.”

  “Daktari.” I mouthed the word. “And what are those, pray tell?”

  “They look like slippery pipes, about so thick—” she held her fingers and thumbs of both hands to form a rough circle at least two hand-widths in diameter and then spread her arms apart, “—and about so long. Head and body are one. Large mouth, strong teeth. They kill their prey by lying in wait and stunning them when they enter the water.”

  “How do they stun an animal?”

  “I do not know. I saw it happen once; one of my father’s hostands was drinking from a stream when it suddenly stiffened and fell into the water. The daktar pulled it in and drowned it.”

  “Great,” I said. “Carnivorous electric lampreys on steroids.”

  “Pardon?” She seemed taken aback by my words.

  “Sorry, translation problems. I use different words in my…country.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “More tea?”

  I leafed through the grimoire as I sipped my drink. I was determined to get the masking spell to work, but I could not make head or tail of the words or symbols. I rubbed my temple and considered. Without a frame of reference, I was lost. And there was no one here to show me the spell, unlike Elandra when she demonstrated the fireball.

  Suddenly I stiffened. I flipped towards the beginning of the book and found a description of the fireball. Following it were several pages describing the implementation of the spell.

  “Hah,” I said, “the Rosetta Stone.”

  I began to flip back and forth between the two spells.

  In an hour, I had the basis of the masking spell. I tried casting it on my teacup. The cup shimmered and faded, but its outline remained, glowing faintly blue. I grunted with frustration and stared at the remaining image, then flipped through the grimoire again.

  There were two spells, unimaginatively labeled ‘Bluesun’ and ‘Yellowsun’. I had cast the second on the cup.

  “Makes sense,” I mumbled. “Different incident frequency spectra. Different tunings.”

  I cast the first spell and watched the cup fade and then glow a yellow-orange color. “Bingo.”

  After a few minutes of fiddling, I managed to cast a double spell. This time the cup vanished.

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  When I left, the gate was closed and guarded by two nervous-looking villagers. Dorina pressed a package of food into my hands and held me close.

  “Please be careful,” she said. She turned to the watchmen. “Did Matand and his men leave yet?”

  “About a trek ago,” said one. “Had their bows, spears, and one was carrying a damn maul. Useless thing.” He spat on the ground.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for them,” I said.

  They swung the gate open, keeping a close eye on the surrounding forest. I stepped through the gap and followed the path around the edge of the stockade. Smoke from a cooking fire drifted through tree branches, and then the village disappeared as quickly as it had come into view the day before.

  The path climbed for a while until I could look down on the river below. The stream flowed sedately through the trees for much of its course, but from time to time would drop over a ledge or falls in a tumult of white foam. I strained to pick up anything moving in the pools below but only saw green and placid water. The path began to descend once more, and I felt a burning in my thighs from the effort of controlling my pace. My lower back began to ache, and I thought about taking a brief respite.

  On the path I saw the imprint of booted heels. They led onwards, and I followed them towards a lighter area in the forest. Ahead, the trail widened into a small clearing, ringed by a meadow full of multicoloured flowers. Petals caught the light of two suns, and dewdrops scattered the rays. I looked around to all sides, then entered the small glade.

  To the right I caught a glimpse of an indentation in the flowers, as if something had crushed the stems. I stepped over and saw a boot emerging from a clump of vegetation. I froze and raised a fireball. It sat unmoving in my hand, and I turned a full circle to check all around me before advancing.

  Matand lay on his back. His throat was torn, and blood had soaked his shirt and the surrounding earth. His belly had been opened, and his viscera lay in a heap around him. The liver had been eaten. I stepped back and vomited into a bush.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  I forced myself back up to my feet and raised a shield. My fireball had collapsed when I’d been sick. I twisted back and forth, looking for the theranaq. The clearing and forest were silent. Beyond Matand’s body I could now see two other corpses, ravaged and covered in blood. None of the weapons appeared to have been used.

  I made it another half a stad along the path before the cramps struck me. I gasped and leaned against a tree, then limped over to a rock face overlooking the trail. I put my back to it so I could watch the trail and hiked up my dress. There was a red stain on the front of my loincloth. I pulled it off and squatted, releasing a stream of blood and clots. I washed myself off with water from the canteen, placed a pad within the loincloth, and tightened its ties around my waist once more. The bulky arrangement rubbed against my thighs when I stood up. A breeze was blowing from behind me, carrying the scent of blood down the trail.

  “Well,” I said, “this isn’t good.”

  Ten minutes later, I passed another waterfall that plunged into a deep pool. The river below the chute split into two channels that encompassed a small island, covered in scrub and a bearing a couple of stubby trees. At some point a tree on the right bank had toppled and now bridged the gap between my shore and the island. I made my way slowly over to the base of the fallen tree, keeping an eye on the trail running along the bench above me.

  The noise of the forest suddenly hushed. I placed a hand on the trunk and was about to climb onto the tree when I caught a flash of color moving through the trees. I froze and crouched down.

  The crude drawing that I had seen in the inn did not do the theranaq justice. It appeared without warning at the top of the trail, terrible and magnificent. From the head to its clawed feet, it stood over two meters. The feathered crest was a brilliant orange in color, iridescent in the sunlight. The feathers down the spine were green and yellow, and terminated in a fan with black speckling. Two yellow eyes were positioned on either side of a powerful jaw and looked directly forward. A second, somewhat smaller theranaq emerged from the trees behind, and paused to raise its nose and sample the breeze.

  I cast a veil about myself without thinking. The theranaq moved slowly down the trail, picking up their talons in an exaggerated creeping motion. They were utterly silent.

  I stood up as slowly as possible. Neither creature seemed to notice my motion. I pulled myself onto the tree and grasped a branch that jutted upwards. I began to move bit by bit along the trunk towards the island.

  My foot dislodged a piece of bark that fluttered down to the surface of the stream. I stopped all movement and watched the theranaq. The leader turned its head and stared at the fragment, then looked up to where I stood on the tree. Then its head turned to look down the trail again, and it continued its stalk.

  I was over halfway to the island when the tie to my loincloth came undone. The fabric fell, dangling from my left hip, and the pad slid down my leg, bounced off the tree, and fell into the stream with a splash. Blood trickled down my thighs and dripped onto the bark at my feet.

  “Fuck,” I muttered in anger, “this shit never happens to Laura Croft.”

  The theranaq whirled and raced over to the bank. They stared down at the surface of the water. Their nostrils flared as they sampled the scent of my menses. Their gaze turned upwards to my tree. Below me the water bulged upwards as something passed just under the surface.

  I dropped my veil and pulled up a shield so it formed a barrier that stood upright with its base on the trunk. It was two paces in length, and I placed its plane at a 30-degree angle to the length of the tree. The shield was securely fastened to the wood with spikes. I began to retreat down the tree, heading toward the shore of the island.

  The theranaq both leapt onto the tree and crouched down, legs tensing. The larger one moved first, accelerating so quickly that it seemed to blur. Its claws dug into the wood, shedding pieces of bark like confetti. Its forearms— tipped with claws—spread out from the shoulders to stabilize its lunge. The second theranaq followed a moment later, hard on the heels of its mate. I stepped onto the island just as they impacted the shield in two closely spaced blows.

  I heard a squawk as both slid off the tree into space. They struck the surface of the water with two splashes, and then surfaced, looking like a pair of angry feathered cats. Yellow eyes glared at me as they paddled clumsily towards the shore. As they stood up in the shallows, I brought up a fireball and another shield.

  The theranaq froze. As I watched, I could see the large muscles of their lower legs spasming in an uncoordinated fashion. Without warning, they toppled into the water, one right after the other, and laid still. Their muzzles were under the surface, and apart from a few bubbles, I saw no motion.

  The pond just behind them bulged upwards and the surface of the water parted to reveal a nightmare mouth, ringed with an uncountable number of sharp teeth. Just as the maw was about to close on a hind leg, I sent a fireball into the opening. The entire upper body of the daktar reared out of the stream, twisting in agony. It thrashed about, trying to move away from the edge of the island, and then was still. It rolled on its back, exposing a paler underside. The theranaq were unmoving.

  I collapsed back on the sandy shore and took a shuddering breath. My teeth were chattering, and I bit back a scream. My hands dug into the ground, and I felt tears running down my face.

  “This has been a really shitty day,” I said.

  Half a trek later, when I was sure that the theranaq were dead, I fastened a spell-rope around each neck and pulled them up onto the shore using one of the stubby trees as an anchor. Their eyes were dull, lacking the golden color they had possessed during life. I pulled the parchment from my pack and looked again at the text.

  It seemed that proof of death had to be delivered to: ‘The nearest available Officer of the Crown’. Proof of death was listed as: ‘Possession of hind claws, or parts thereof’. Apparently, bureaucratic phrasing was a universal constant.

  I poked the hind limbs without enthusiasm. The skin was tough, and the structure seemed to be beyond my ability to sever with a kitchen knife. I cocked my head as I thought and then raised a small shield that I made as thin as possible. I positioned it vertically over the leg, just above the base of the claw. I raised another small shield that I placed below the leg at 90 degrees to the first. Then I brought down the initial construct in a single motion. It passed through the leg without any discernible resistance until it stopped at the second shield. The claw fell free, and I grunted in satisfaction. Once I had harvested the claws, I stripped the corpses of their feathers. I had no reason other than the fact that they were beautiful, and I’d be damned if I left without them. I packed the lot into my tarp and fastened the bulky bundle to the outside of my pack.

  When I was finished, I took stock of myself. I was dirty, sweaty, and my thighs and lower legs were streaked with blood. The loincloth was filthy, and the front of my dress was stained. I looked at the stream and shook my head. For all I knew, there were more daktari lurking in its depths. I pulled on my pack and wearily climbed back onto my makeshift bridge.

  A stad down the trail, I ran across a small stream that tumbled down the slope into the river. I stood under a small rivulet that cascaded off a ledge and stripped completely. The water was chill, and I shivered as I washed myself, then my clothes. When I had finished, I retied my damp loincloth and fished out another pad from the diminishing collection in my pack.

  “They’re quite straightforward,” I muttered, “You should have no problems at all.” I shoved a pad into the loincloth. “Yeah, right, Summer. Stupid uterus.”

  A couple of treks later I smelled smoke. By that time my clothes were merely damp, and I strapped on my breast band and pulled the dress over my head. Half a stad later I rounded a corner and saw the next village. Within the wall stood the wagons of the caravan.