As she found another lock of the knoggelvi’s mane to detangle, she caught him giving her a look from the corner of her eye. There was irritation in it still, certainly, but his mouth was upturned, and not with the cavalier smirk he typically gave her. This was more like amusement, and even at her expense, she’d take it.
CHAPTER 14
KAREE ON, MAYK MARY, ADOOR TROOLY
The sun was hanging low in a cloudy sky by the time the pines gave way to flatter farmland. Damien eyed a low, stone fence, the first they’d seen cutting across the landscape, and then scanned the horizon where a hovel of a hut sat alone. Humans.
“We’re probably going to run into some people up ahead.” Amma’s voice was quiet and careful, yet it always startled him just a little. “And I really doubt they’ll have ever seen a knoggelvi or an imp before.”
Damien gave her a look, wondering for a moment if he had said what he’d been thinking aloud, and then tugged on his reins and dismounted. The air was thicker as a threatening breeze blew across the fields on either side of the road. It wouldn’t do to stop here, the cloaks The Brotherhood had given them would help but wouldn’t keep them from getting soaked in the downpour that was coming, and so he walked to the side of the road where he could look back and appraise the rest of them. Amma sat atop her knoggelvi, a strange, bright patch of blonde and misplaced cheeriness amongst the gloom that settled persistently around their mounts and the ugliness that was Kaz.
“Come here,” he commanded, gesturing to her.
She grumbled something about the difference between asking and telling as she scrambled down the side of the animal. He grinned at how she landed with little aplomb and then wiped the look off his face when she turned. Amma was hesitant to stand before him, though he had no idea why: she simply needed to be out of the way.
Damien turned his eyes to the knoggelvi. “Horses,” he said, and immediately the infernal beasts’ innate illusory magic took hold. Their rough skin began to shine as fur grew in, and though their size did not change, their skeletal limbs filled out with muscle, the red of their eyes muting to form dark irises, and sharpened teeth sliding back into much softer-looking muzzles.
“Oh, look at you, you’re beautiful!” Excitement churned itself in Amma’s voice as she went right back to the knoggelvi. So much for Damien’s order. She attempted to pet one of them, but it pulled away, a dark eye roving toward her and narrowing ruefully. “Well, their personalities haven’t changed,” she chirped, “but they’re very pretty now.”
Her knoggelvi snorted with clear disagreement, pawing at the dirt.
“Oh, yes, you are,” she teased back.
Then there was the sound of passing gas, loud and full-bellied, and the knoggelvi’s tail whipped hard at its backside. A noxious, black fume dispersed around its rump and with it the distant sound of clashing swords. Amma looked as though she might be sick, backing away and covering her face.
“The shadows still have to come out somewhere.” Damien tipped his head. “I suppose it can be explained away by some bad meat.”
“Um, I don’t think horses eat meat.”
“Well, bad whatever-horses-eat then.” Damien waved away the minor detail. “Kaz, you are strong enough to change now, yes?”
The imp propelled himself to the ground, gave his wings a stretch, rolled his knobby shoulders, and then his odd, little form twitched madly. His snout pulled in as did his ears, and his wings shriveled up and disintegrated away. Ruddy skin went tan as he fell forward onto four feet, and there was a terrible cracking as joints contorted. His already bulbous eyeballs mutated with a squishy snap and his tail curled up and fuzzed out until finally there was no longer an imp before them but a small dog.
At least, it should have been a dog, only it was much more like an over-sized rat. Short haired, and huge-eared, he stood very low to the ground with a thin, curling tail, a half-squashed muzzle, underbite intact, and eyes that looked in two different directions. Damien wondered if maybe Kaz had forgotten how earth-dwelling animals looked until he yapped, high-pitched and horrible, but clearly dog-like. And then ran right for Amma.
The woman shrieked and sprinted away despite Kaz’s dog form being a tiny, pathetic thing, but the imp was just as fast on four legs, nipping at her ankles as she rounded the knoggelvi-turned-horses who both kicked up dirt and snorted. As the chaos erupted before him, Damien could not, at first, fathom what was going on, but then recalled Amma’s story about the dog that had terrorized her as a child. Apparently, Kaz had also remembered.
She was still running, but changed course, bolting right toward Damien and ducking behind him. He felt her small hands press against his back, giving him the slightest shove, and she squeaked out, “Make it stop!”
Damien’s boot connected with the dog’s belly, scooping up under him and flinging him off. Kaz howled, flying through the air, and disappeared amongst the wheat of the nearest field with a far-off thump.
There was a sharp slap against Damien’s arm, and he pulled away to see Amma glaring up at him. “Damien!”
There she went, saying his name again. The first time it had been on her tongue, she’d been sobbing, but even then it felt too visceral, too intimate, and shortly after she had repeated it as a soft plea, and that had—well, fuck, it had done a number of things to him, none of which he cared to think on too long. Very few called him by his given name, but even now as she chastised him, it was like she were whispering it directly into his chest, making the muscles there tighten around her voice and hold it still so it couldn’t escape.
But shewaschastising him, and she’d just slapped him too, for darkness’s sake. Not hard, certainly, but no one was meant to be allowed to get away with striking a blood mage. And yet, all he seemed able to do was gesture to the field. “What? I made it stop.”
“That was Kaz, though! I thought you were going to, like, freeze him with magic or something, but you just kicked him!”
What was with her misplaced concern for that cretin? “Yes, of course I kicked him—he was being a little bastard, and to you specifically, I might add. So, you are very welcome, Amma.” He knew when he repeated her own name it carried none of the affection, false as it was, he felt when she spoke, but he did it all the same as if he could force some understanding onto her. The dismay on her face shifted to a quiet confusion, and her eyes darted down to the ground. Perhaps it had worked.
“Apologies, Master.” Kaz’s dog form came trotting out of the field. He sat at the road’s edge and scratched with his back leg at an ear that had returned to leathery, red skin. The ear grew back its tan fur and conical shape with a pop.
Another heavy gust blew down the road as the clouds rolled over themselves in the sky. Damien gave them all a last look, the faux horses still rattled, the realm’s ugliest dog, and a woman who was as flustered as she was belligerent. “Do you think the lot of you can cooperate so that we can get to town before dark, or would you like to sleep out in the rain?”
There was a grumbling that answered him back, eyes all turned down, and one long, low knoggelvi fart that echoed with thrumming bow strings and arrows aflame. He took it as concession, and they continued on.
A town so close to Tarfail Quag was bound to be small and backward, but this one, seemingly without a name, was smaller and backwarder than Damien expected. Cottages dotted the farmed fields at its outskirts, housing animals and people alike, and then the buildings were a bit sturdier, closer together, and though the smell wasn’t better, it was appropriate.
