The Outcast (Summoner #4)(58)

“It’s not going to be you going down there,” Edmund said, crossing his arms. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ll look like more of a threat,” Alice rebutted, taking a step away from Edmund. “It’s better if a woman goes in, holding the baby as if it were her own. There are plenty of mothers down there. They won’t hurt me.”

“Right,” Edmund said, rolling his eyes.

Alice handed the baby to Elaine and took a stick from the ground, then scratched two rough circles into the soil.

“I’ll curve around from our position”—she tapped the smaller circle and drew a curved line around to the larger one—“and enter the camp from the east, where there are fewer orcs. I can leave it on the ground and run into the jungle before they even see me.”

“See, if leaving it on the ground is even an option, why not just leave it on the edge of the camp,” Rotter argued, taking the scrying stone from Elaine and pointing at the forested border of the village. “They’ll find it eventually.”

“Where a wild animal can get to it?” Alice snapped. “It has to be inside the village itself.”

Rotter sighed and rubbed his beard.

“Wait. Who is that?” Arcturus asked.

He was looking into the scrying crystal, where a much larger orc had emerged from one of the huts. He was an adult male, and looked entirely different from all the orcs Arcturus had seen before. His body had been painted pitch black with soot, and the pattern of what appeared to be bones had been smeared over the top of it in a white paste. An outline of a white skull had been drawn starkly against his features, and his head had been shaved completely bald to complement the effect.

Other than his body paint, he wore no more than a loincloth, and carried a gnarled staff in his hand. As he walked among the villagers and crouched to warm his hands by the fire, the others shied away from him. The women of the village sent their children scurrying inside, and some of the younger females slunk fearfully into the forest.

The orc seemed unperturbed by his effect on the tribe, instead taking a hunk of meat from a nearby elder’s hand and gnawing at it as he stared into the flames.

“Damn, what if I run into the ones that are leaving?” Alice muttered, staring down the hill at the smoke, as if she could see the females hiding beneath.

“You’re not going,” Edmund hissed. “Can’t you get that through your head?”

Arcturus could not tear his eyes away from the painted orc, for the beast was doing something strange. Though he could not hear the words, the giant was rocking back and forth, muttering something in what he imagined must be the alien, guttural language of the orcs.

Then he saw it, small though it was in the image upon the crystal. A gremlin had limped out of the same hut the painted orc had emerged from, its bat-wing ears drooping with pain as it scurried toward its master. On its back, Arcturus could see the source of its agony—a bloody mark, carved deep into its very flesh, of a pentacle.

Now the others were looking down at the crystal in Rotter’s hand. Alice gasped in horror at the sight of the maimed creature, and they watched on as it hobbled its way back to its master.

The white orc lifted the gremlin by its head with a large hand, the fingers encompassing its head as easily as a human might grasp an apple. It hung limply in his grip for a moment. Then, as blue light began to glow from the orc’s hand, it wriggled frantically.

Arcturus could almost hear the sizzle of its flesh as the mana burned down the gremlin’s back in a jagged blue line, until it reached the incisions, suffusing the pentacle until it blazed with the same glow.

White light began to swirl from above the carved symbol, knitting together into flesh and bone.

“It’s summoning something … this is a shaman!” Alice uttered.

But this was different from when Arcturus summoned Sacharissa. The white light swirled endlessly, growing larger and larger, building up a giant figure beside the flames of the fire.

“What … what is that?” Edmund gasped.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the demon materialized.

It was enormous. As large as two orcs and twice as wide, it appeared as a giant, bipedal elephant, with great flapping ears, a powerful trunk and serrated tusks as long as a man was tall.

Finished with the gremlin, the orc took one look at the twitching, burned body, then tossed it derisively into the fire’s flames.

“It’s … a Phantaur,” Alice whispered. “I’ve only ever read about those; it’s never been seen in the flesh. This is one of the most powerful demons in existence.”

“Well, you’re definitely not going down there now,” Edmund said. “That thing could step on you and barely notice.”

“Nobody has to go down there,” Arcturus said.

He looked at Sacharissa, who had been sitting patiently in the shade of a shrub, her tongue lolling out as she panted in the heat.

“Sacharissa will take the baby. She’s fast enough to get in and out quickly, and if we’re lucky they’ll think she was some kind of wildcat, maybe a panther.”

Edmund stared at Arcturus, then clapped him on the back.

“That’s the best damned idea I’ve heard all day,” he laughed. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s a great plan,” Alice said. “With one minor difference. Reynard will go. He’s faster and more mature than your Canid—plus he’s larger.”