The Carnelian Throne by Janet Morris Page B

right, then to the left. Then, with a growl and a bound, it dashed him to the grass, raking his torso with its hind talons. He did not even feel the creature’s grip go slack as it collapsed on top of him, nor its huge heart pumping out a final jet of blood that spilled over his face, into his ears, and from there trickled down upon the sedge grass.

III. Of Whelts and Wehrs and Imca-Sorr-Aat
    I crouched in the sand, gulping great chunks of air out of the moonless night. I had brought us into time-space a trifle high, and we had fallen a short distance to land in a tangle. I was not displeased—dragging the both of them, the cahndor a deadweight, and Sereth so much heavier that it seemed as if I attempted to pull the whole congruence plane out with me onto the sand of the bayshore—I counted myself fortunate to have emerged at all. That I had brought them both through on my power alone was near miraculous. But desperation is an inspiring instructor, and a propitiously timed obviation of space had seemed our only alternative to an eventual death atop a mountain of suicidally ferocious animals.
    Chayin’s voice, cursing monotonously in his native tongue, was the first sound I heard over my own pumping lungs. Then, as I struggled to my feet and brushed the sand away, I saw Sereth.
    He stood at the water’s edge, facing out to sea. Chayin, hunkered down nearby, stared straight at the sand between his feet, still excoriating in Parset.
    It was not until I saw the severed hand, badly chewed and bearing a ring about one swollen finger, that I understood. Then I cursed myself for a fool and joined Sereth where he stood looking out at the empty sea.
    “Do you think you miscalculated? Are we at the right point in space, but the wrong one in time?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the water, voice so soft it might have been the lapping of an articulate wave against the shore.
    “I am afraid,” said I, “that you overestimate me. I hardly calculate.”
    “Estri...” Even softer.
    “No, then. I do not think so, There is no moon. What chance there is that I might have accidentally landed us here on another moonless night during which a severed hand wearing a Parset ring exactly like Neshub’s found its way to the shore—that chance is far less than the obvious: the ship is gone, and Chayin has lost at least one of his crew.”
    He did not acknowledge me, and after a time I said that perhaps the crew had mutinied, killed Neshub, and cast off for Menetph, far across the sea.
    In answer, he took my arm and pointed, and I saw what nestled against the jetty’s rocks, and looked away. I had no desire to closely examine those misshapen hulks and shattered timbers.
    I shook his hand off and retreated up the beach, until—I found a spot free from growths and shadows, where I could not be stealthed upon.
    “Come away from there,” I cautioned Sereth, who had not moved. “The wehrs ...” And the speaking of that word reminded me of Deilcrit. I saw him as I had last seen him, prostrate, while the ptaiss ... I covered my eyes with my palms, but it did not help.
    “Estri,” said Chayin in my ear, “do you think you could return us to Port Astrin?”
    I nodded. “It is no harder than was returning here. There is no distance, just the procedure’s of entry and exit, and a choosing, in that cold place.” I shivered, recollecting the shriveling agony of the procession of matter through the congruences. “But give me some time. And let the sun be risen. Then I will be stronger.”
    A shadow fell that was not material, and I looked up to see Sereth, all the heavens’ fury in his crossed arms and forward-jutting hips. “So, we must simply stay alive until sunrising. With one sword and two knives between us. Then we will meekly turn our backs on fifty dead men, a gutted vessel, the criminals we came to this land seeking, and slink home by the aegis of Estri’s skills, to sit and chitter and get fat and lazy ruling our various