“Should I gobble him up? Should I let the creeping thing have him? For it will have him, it is full of my venom.”
“Is all this magic yours?” Evander asked, hoping to kill some time by making conversation so he could come up with a plan. “I’ve seen it before, from someone else.”
“I live in the water and dance among the raindrops. All the plants and creatures and little crawling beasties of this place drink of the water, and so my venom lives in their skin and their glands.” The eyes had traveled upward as the crooked mouth spoke, but they snapped to Evander again. “But tell me, young man, who is it you know with such magic?”
“A friend,” he said.
“Then she must be a very sorrowful person, for this comes from the deepest pain, the keenest loss. It eats and eats and eats until it burns and burns and burns, and you are left to love only the darkness and the anguish. Now, why should I not kill you? I delight in it, the killing of men.”
Evander weighed his chances. There was no point in running from Bernice, and he wouldn’t beg for mercy.“I’m fleeing from Raska,” he said. “Do you know her?”
With a strangled cry, the spirit lurched away, breaking a thick bough and sending it crashing to the ground. “Not Raska! Why would you bring her to my home? I do not want her here—she could blight my blight and end my dark.”
“She wants me,” he said. “She will seek me endlessly, so let me find what I came to find and leave. Raska will not bother you anymore.”
The mad eyes rolled in their sockets, then disappeared. A lavender mist knotted on the forest floor, and the body of a woman materialized before him.
She was so tall, Evander’s head barely reached her waist. Tangled grape vines and mulberry leaves covered her head like thick hair. She wore a dress of lichen, moss, and mushrooms, a necklace made of sprouting acorns, and her lips were dyed with bayberry stain. She was formless and floating, wafting rather than walking.
Evander’s hand moved to his knife, but he stopped himself. How do you kill a woman made of smoke?
The trees crawled with creeping vines as Bernice crept closer, her bare feet silent on the pine needle carpet. Poisonous toadstools sprouted in her footsteps, and thorns writhed like snakes up her legs.“He is not from Allagesh,” she said. “There is blood on his hands.”
“Old blood. From long ago.”
“Ah, yes, yes, yes,” she said. “But blood cannot be unspilled, can it?”
His heart pounded like a drum.
“You have done terrible things in battle, and you will do terrible things again,” Bernice said, her voice reverent. “You will be lost, remade, and come undone. That which you love will be wrested from your grasp.”
A little emerald dragon scuttled out of Bernice’s hair and landed on the ground at Evander’s feet. It was no larger than a housecat, its scales shining like glazed pottery. Venom dripped from two needle fangs protruding past its jaws.
Evander sprang sideways as the dragon struck at his calf and caught it at the base of its head. Its tail wound around his wrist. He smiled at it and let his magic stutter through his arm. It was a frail enchantment, but the dragon was small. The creature’s body relaxed, its red ribbon tongue flicking in and out of its mouth.
“There now, little one,” Evander said tenderly. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
He set the dragon down, and it slithered away, looking abashed.
Bernice shrieked. “Your magic betrays you, son of a coward, blood of a wretch!”
A chilling, hollow laugh echoed above him. Then, as soft as a whisper, Bernice hummed, “Now die.”
And the ground fell away.
Chapter twenty-three
Evander
Roots and rocks snagged on Evander’s clothing as he slid down and down into a dark pit. He hit the bottom feet first, his feet slipped on the uneven ground, and he pitched sideways, his shoulder striking something cold and slick. Pain burst through his skull, and he bit down on a cry, then a swear.
Blasted bleeding head.
Crumbling walls rose around him, double his height. Tree roots dropped clods of soil onto his hair and shoulders. Quickly, Evander stood, feeling for a hand or foothold, but everything was loose and slippery, and his scrabbling attempt to climb to safety failed. Filthy, his fingernails packed with dirt, his palms bleeding, Evander braced and then ran, reaching for a tangle of roots. He launched himself upward, and the tips of his fingers brushed them before he fell, thudding onto his back.
The floor shifted.
With a bolt of terror, Evander realized he wasn’t lying on a floor at all, but smooth scales. Stifling a cry, he jumped to his feet and staggered against the crater wall. He was standing upon a giant green snake, its body as thick as an oak tree, its coils so long that it filled the pit.
