Throwing back his head, Alar actually laughed. “No, top-walker, it is made from the essence of the nightwalkers, whose numbers are greater than their legs. Greater than the grains of sand!”
So the Holy Ones had a lot of legs, eh? Suddenly, Krysty recalled where she had seen blood almost the exact same color as this jinkaja.
“Millipedes,” she said in disgust. “It’s made from triple-cursed millipede blood.”
The crowd of masked people began to mutter at that, and more than one shifted their grip on a weapon.
“How dare the filthy top-walkers to defile the Holy Ones!” the tall Core member shouted. “Punishment!”
For a moment the world seemed to spin, and Ryan felt nauseous as if he had just emerged from a bad jump. As his vision cleared, he could see the others were also reeling slightly, Dean and Doc having both dropped their blasters onto the burning hot salt. Only Krysty seemed unaffected, but her hair was writhing like he had never seen before.
“Stop!” Alar shouted, and the word seemed to resonate in both mind and ears.
Instantly, the queasy feelings were gone as if they had never existed and Ryan pulled out the SIG-Sauer again, the handle slick with the sweat from his shaking hand. The damn Core was ruled by doomies of some sort! Muties with mental powers. Mildred sometimes argued that they weren’t actually muties, but the next step in evolution unlocked by the cataclysm of skydark.
“Silence, Kalr,” the leader demanded. “It is not for you to decide.”
“It is the law!” Kalr shouted. “All drink or they must die!”
Doc and Dean bent to recover their weapons, but the rest of the Core seemed to be paying no attention to the outlanders. The group was splitting apart into two groups of about the same size.
“The law says they must drink or leave,” Alar corrected sternly as he pressed the shaft of his spear. With a metallic sound, razor sharp blades snapped out along the entire length. The mirror-bright steel reflected the harsh sunlight like tortured rainbows. “And I have given my personal word they have until the next moon!”
“Useless! Pointless!” Kalr shot back, his own staff blossoming with similar razors. “They drink or die!”
“That is not what the law says.”
“Then the law is wrong!”
“You challenge the law!” Alar said in a flat tone, the crowd of beings behind the leader muttering angrily as more shafts snapped out blades.
Moving as carefully as if in a mine field, the companions were edging closer to their horses. This had every mark of a civil war, and those staffs could tear a norm apart with their razor teeth. On top of which a fight of doomies was something nobody wanted to be near.
“I challenge you!” Kalr shouted, throwing his staff into the ground.
A dry breeze blew over the rocks as Alar stared at the younger being, then with slow calculated care, the leader raised his staff high and also plunged it deep into the ground.
“Accepted!” he roared.
Now the rest of the Core moved away from the combatants, and the horses started nickering in fear. Without comment, the companions retreated from the two beings only seconds before the whole world seem to whirl once more, and the companions fell helpless to the ground, their minds exploding with visions of violent death and chaotic madness.
Chapter Four
Rockpoint was melting.
Holding a large duffel bag in both arms, Alexander Hawk struggled through the waist deep water. The man was wide with muscle, not fat, his features oddly flat as if there were a lot of Oriental or American Indian blood in his heritage, or just a touch of mutie. His long black hair was held back in a ponytail with a ornately tied length of rawhide, his boots were some kind of lizard skin and a brace of pistols rode protectively behind the buckle of his gun belt, the handles turned out for a fast draw. The blue head of a scorpion tattoo peeked from under his shirt, and the scars marring his body were too numerous to count.
Towering high above the ville was the water spout rising from the destroyed temple of the Scorpion God. Scowling at the sight, Hawk sloshed around a corner of a sagging building as he headed for the front gate. As the chief sec man of the ville, Hawk had known the water shortage was a lie concocted by Baron Gaza to control the ville’s population. They had to obey his every command, or else he cut off their water ration.