Dennis had heard that hard, disdainful voice almost every day of his life. He couldn’t mistake it now.
But neither could he possibly be hearing it.
Dennis stretched his head over the edge of the branch, looking down and expecting to see nothing but tangled brush and darkness. The fire glittered at him, and the five upturned faces shocked the youth as bitterly as a slap in the mouth.
“Come down, Dennis,” said the corpse.
The lizardman holding the knotted end of the spit gave it a turn, rotating Serdic’s face downward again. The dead voice trailed off in the sputter of the flames.
Dennis climbed down from what he’d thought was his hiding place. His chest was so cold and stiff with fear that he felt his pulse only in his ears. The vines were slick with rainwater. The fire threw shadows upward, concealing rather than illuminating hand-holds.
Halfway down, Dennis slipped. He fell the remainder of the distance, banging and scraping the inside of his right knee on a gnarled hump of vines. The pain was sharp and so fierce that it turned his stomach for the moment.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t something that he was dreaming.
The lizardmen hissed in muted amusement; the one-eyed human giggled.
The corpse of the Wizard Serdic wore a smile that broadened. The spit creaked another quarter turn so that he faced the naked, shivering youth again.
“Here, boy,” said a lizardman wearing nothing but a belt through which were stuck at least a dozen knives—rusty, notch-bladed weapons whose wooden handles were cracking and wired clumsily onto the tangs. “Take the spit.”
Dennis stepped forward. His fear pulled him, because if he ran he would have to turn his back on these… men.
One of the lizardfolk was tall, taller than Dennis even if the youth stood straight instead of hunching over against his fear and pain and nakedness. That one rolled a human skull in his left hand, while his right palm rested on the brass hilt of a cutlass. His tongue forked between pointed teeth as he grinned.
Dennis put his hand out to the knotted end of the spit. The bark wasn’t as deeply ridged as that of the vines down which he’d just climbed. It felt as though he were stroking the scaled back of a lizard…
The human chuckled. “Go on, boy,” he said. “Turn it.”
“Don’t let me singe, boy,” said the grinning corpse. “It’ll be the worse for you if you let me singe.”
Dennis twisted at the pole. It was hard work: the knot didn’t give much leverage, and the corpse was a heavy weight to turn against the crude bearing surfaces of the forked sticks.
“That’s right, boy,” said one of the lizardmen. “Turn and turn until he thaws. And don’t let the fire go out.”
Laughing together in their varied voices, the four scarred outcasts walked back into the jungle the way they had come. The human had a limp.
Dennis watched their backs, feeling relief at their going—until Serdic repeated, “Don’t let me singe, boy!”
Dennis began to turn the spit. The corpse’s ankles were lashed to the pole nearest him; the cruel, glittering eyes stared past the mold-green feet as if they were a frame. Dennis turned his face toward the jungle and gave the spit another tug.
The warmth of the brushwood fire thawed the ice-block that was Dennis’ chest. He began to shudder.
None of this could be happening… but the fire hissed a muted lullaby, and its dull heat dried Dennis’ skin and reminded him of how tired he was. Watching the silent motion of shadows on the jungle growth, he could forget his circumstances, his fear—
Fat popped as it dripped onto the flames.
“You’ve burned me, boy!” snarled a voice as vicious and deadly as the expression on Serdic’s face when Dennis jerked his eyes and attention back to his duties.
“I’m sorry!” Dennis wheezed in terror as he turned the pole furiously. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
The wizard’s wrists were tied to the middle of the pole. The hands should have flopped loosely as the spit turned, but they were held in the rigidity of death. Tiny mushrooms had sprouted from the knuckles of the right hand, but they were shriveling in the fire’s heat.