Luchare could almost feel the terrible rage of the Unclean adept, but in the end, as Jone apparently had known he would, he agreed.
Blessing her gently in an unknown tongue, the Elevener had also spoken to the kaw, and the creature had at once moved rapidly away down the trail, now carrying her alone on its saddle. Her last sight of her friend had been of the slim, brown-clad figure standing patiently, facing the gray devil and his horrid crew of attendant monsters. Then a curve of the jungle wall of green had hid them all from sight. At the remembrance of how Jone had saved her, Hiero could see that Luchare was close to tears.
“He must have been a very good man,” the priest said quietly. “I have met one of those wizards of the enemy myself, indeed a man so like your own description that it might have been the same foul being, were the distance not so great. And he almost slew, or worse yet, captured me. Had it not been for the fat, clever one there, with his head in your lap, he would have done so.” As he had hoped, the girl was distracted and forgot her sorrow in her interest. He gave her a brief sketch of his encounter with S’nerg, and when he was through, encouraged her to resume her own story.
The poor, faithful kaw had been the first casualty a few days later. She had slept in a great tree one night, and some prowling monster had fallen on the kaw as he stood underneath and killed him. In the morning she had descended, avoided the bloody remains on which scavengers were feeding, and fled on foot, in which direction she hardly knew.
Great beasts, many of them things she had never seen before, constantly snuffed on her trail, and she escaped death only by inches on more than one occasion. Several times she had thought of suicide, but some tough strain or other had forced her on. She still had her spear and knife and had managed to feed herself, though mostly by watching what the birds and small monkeys ate. This had hazards, though, and she had got very ill on two occasions.
Exhausted, her clothes in rags, and close to starvation, one day she had heard human voices. Stealing close to investigate, she had found herself looking at a camp of traders, swarthy, black-haired men, not unlike Hiero, she said, whose kaw-drawn wagon caravan was parked in a large clearing. Moreover, the clearing was athwart a broad trail, almost a dirt road, which entered one side of it and left by the other.
