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.He had turned the Ice River into the crater as the chief had demanded, and in doing so he had ripped the chief's world apart.Frothi could not stand against him in this moment.Frothi screamed in rage like a big cat.Reaching under his tunic, he came out with the black bone flute.He flung it at Corylus' face.Corylus caught it in his left hand.Frothi ran—not toward anything, simply away.His gait was shambling and graceless, like that of a wounded bear.He must not be looking where he's going, Corylus thought.Then, He must be blind.He's running straight toward the lava.But that didn't matter now, because Corylus had the flute which Odd had ordered him to get.Odd—Odd's Vengeance—hadn't said what to do with the instrument when he got it, but to that question didn't require deep thought.Regretfully, Corylus dropped the hornbeam staff.The flute was a section of thigh bone, though he couldn't guess at the animal it came from.It had been cut to something less than its full length, but one knuckle—what had been the knee joint, not the hip—remained.It was drilled through to the core from which the marrow had been sucked.Corylus found the length of hollow reed behind his left ear, where the nymph Canina had tucked a lock of her auburn hair.He fitted the reed into the hole drilled for it, then lifted the flute to his lips.He'd never played a flute; it was an art favored by specialists who generally doubled as male prostitutes, not the sort of thing a good-looking youth in an army camp wanted to be found studying.He'd never even played a Pan-pipe of reeds stopped with wax, a different and much simpler instrument.What was he supposed to do—"Here, silly boy," said Canina, suddenly at his side."Goodness, darling, you're handsome but you're quite helpless, aren't you?"Despite the situation, Corylus felt a shock of outrage.His mouth opened to snap, "In my family, we hired flute girls!" The absurdity of his reaction struck him as so funny that he almost started to giggle, which would have been equally inappropriate.And there was nothing to say anyway.The tawny-haired nymph seemed to reach not around but into him.With his fingers on three of the stops he put the reed to his mouth and blew.Corylus didn't understand what his lips or his dancing fingers were doing, nor did he hear the music.He was watching himself and the whole scene from above as though he were an equal of the fire-god who roared and blazed from the pit of the volcano.The flute song rang across the landscape.The demons marched relentlessly, leaving bubbling rock behind them for their fellows clambering from the pit to follow.Their blight spread in all directions.A yellow brimstone haze hung over the devastation.The cairn of black rocks on the bank of the Ice River ruptured.More earthshocks, Corylus thought, but the stones he had placed with such difficulty were bursting from inside.The corpse got up, smiled at the stranger who had buried him, and stepped from the scattered tomb."I was lucky in who found me," Odd's body said.He was beside Corylus, facing the lava.There had been no motion, just there and then here."Or perhaps someone picked you to find me.I would thank that One, if I knew who to name."Corylus lowered the flute."Vengeance?" he said."No, I'm Odd," the other said."Back again."He stood as Corylus had buried him: bootless, capless, and wearing a wry smile.Corylus liked him instinctively, but nobody who understood Odd's smile could doubt that he would be a bad enemy.Frothi already knew that: he was stumbling to certain death rather than face the man whom his brother's vengeance had sent to him.And as for the wizard Nemastes.Nemastes knelt, chanting over the ivory head.He held his arms out before him with the palms raised in bar.Lava hissed and spat as it rolled north, closer each moment to the wizard and the tribe praying behind him.Nemastes shouted a word that glanced off Corylus' consciousness; his mind could not grasp the shape of its syllables.The ancient shaman stepped out of the talisman.When Botrug appeared, the silk curtain fell again.Corylus saw the lava as squat sizzling demons whom Botrug threw back with a word and a gesture.The shaman gave a gurgling laugh.The demons rose to their feet and started forward again.Spots of blue as hard as congealed starlight formed in the air behind Nemastes, arrayed in a semicircle.In a further moment they swelled to become the Twelve, Nemastes' siblings.They looked at him with the murderous greed of cats eyeing a caged lark.Nemastes glanced over his shoulder, then faced the fire-god and his minions again as though the Twelve were of no concern to him.Their faces were death's heads.and they began to dance."I'll take the flute," Odd said, giving Corylus a hard grin.He held out his hand."Not that you haven't done a good job, my friend.""Right," said Corylus, glad to get rid of it.He didn't like the feel of the instrument.Just as he understood things when handling things made of wood, he got blurred impressions from this length of thigh bone.He wasn't sure he'd have been willing to blow it had it not been for the reed mouthpiece.He picked up the staff and immediately felt better.The nymph of the hornbeam watched him with gray eyes, stern but comforting."Here," said Odd, offering the reed to Corylus.He'd replaced it with one of his own."You may need this later.You never can tell."His grin could have been etched on a diamond."Now, friend, get my people out of the way as you started to.There isn't a lot of time, even now that I've returned."Odd put his lips to the mouthpiece and began to play, his fingers lifting and lowering on the stops.They moved like the legs of dancing men; they moved like the Twelve, dancing to exert their power over the renegade sibling who had robbed and betrayed them.Willows still lined the channel which they had cracked in the rock; they quivered.As one they lifted their roots from the turf.In graceful undulations they began marching eastward.They moved no faster than sheep, but they were sheep headed for the byre in the evening with udders aching to be milked.Slender trees waved branches in farewell toward Corylus.Frothi had finally seen where he was running.Fire-demons were closing in on three sides of him.He drew his pick and chopped at one, apparently trying to cut his way through.The deer antler flared white at the demon's touch.Several demons—or billows of molten rock? It didn't matter—converged on Frothi.Though neither the flames nor the brief scream surprised Corylus, the gush of steam made him queasy.But he had a task now.He strode forward, grasping Gram and Todinn by the collars and lifting their heads to gape at him."Run, you fools!" Corylus shouted [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]