“Reilly!” he hollered. “Soyuk!”
For an answer, another rustle, another slither. It was darker now, and as he turned toward the doorway, he saw that a thick net of greenery had replaced what they had hacked away a bare hour before. More alarmingly, some of the greenery bore splashes of white. He tried to kick off the vines clinging to him, but succeeded only in embedding the thorns deeper into his ankles. Feeling an edge of panic, he switched on the flashlight he’d brought along.
It seemed to attract the plants, as if they couldn’t tell the difference between the light and sun. First roots, then more tendrils dropped from the roof, opening leaves as they slid.
This shouldn’t be happening, Satok thought. This couldn’t be happening! The Petraseal should have impeded any new growth, reduced it to dust. Where he had painted so industriously, he now realized that the Petraseal was marbled with cracks, fine in places, broadening in others to allow the plants to burgeon forth. Even the swath he had just painted had opened to emit tendrils.
And all of them seemed to be sliding toward him. From its sheath on his belt, he took his machete and hacked himself free, running to the rear of the cave as fast as he could without tripping over the vines.
He found Reilly first, hanging upside down by his ankles, which were pinned to the upper part of the wall. The vines twined down his legs and wrapped his arms tightly to his sides. His machete lay useless on the floor. The end of the vineor maybe the first part to catch himhad wrapped around his neck five or six times, very tightly. Tender green shoots grew out of his mouth, nose, and ears.
Satok wasted no more time looking for Soyuk or Clancy. He didn’t even worry about why the Petraseal hadn’t worked. He jumped, hopped, and ran for the entrance, hacking and slicing.
He went at such a speed that he dropped his flashlight. That’s why he didn’t see the root looping down from the ceiling, to lash itself around his throat while another knocked him to the floor.
He didn’t scream for long as the stinging, snatching vines overwhelmed him. As the sound died in his throat, he seemed to hear from the cave a low grumbling hum. As oxygen was cut off from his brain and optic nerve and his sight failed, the light from the setting sun pierced the leaves, lighting the greenery in the cave’s entrance like the watchful eyes of a thousand gloating cats.
Marmion and her entourage had returned to Kilcoole, bringing with them Luka and an injured cat for the attention of Kilcoole’s fat witch doctor, leaving Rick O’Shay’s bird available to fly Torkel to Savoy to meet Satok.
Torkel was not actually rubbing his hands together with glee, but he felt like it. O’Shay had received a radio message that Matthew Luzon, his assistant, and an unspecified passenger had just cleared the coast at Harrison’s Fjord. Torkel considered Luzon his staunchest ally, and he quickly sent a message asking Matthew to meet him and the McGee’s Pass shanachie at Savoy.
”Hope they got that clear, Captain,’ O’Shay said, shaking his head. “Terrible amount of static lately.”
When they circled the Savoy settlement, Torkel thought nothing of the brambles growing some distance outside the town until he saw the gleam of metal beneath them. Even then he thought it was some piece of cast-off machinery a local had allowed the vines to overgrow.
When he inquired in the village for the shanachie, he was told that the man had been conferring with his fellow shanachies for days and yesterday had made a visit to the cave and had not yet returned.
“Important gentlemen such as yourself should be sittin’ and restin’ and havin’ a cuppa, and not go worryin’ after the shanachies. Sure they was all together and they’ll be after makin’ powerful decisions and discussions and such like out to the cave. I shouldn’t like to be the one to interrupt them.” This advice came from a middle-aged woman in raggedy clothes.
Why did Torkel get the feeling that there was something spurious about her rustic humility? Perhaps it was because he had lately had occasion to hear many Petaybeans speak. They seemed to use that broad colorful accent only when addressing company officials.