Page 18 of Insidious Monsters
He had a point. Monstrous to me was normal to them and vice versa. “I’m sorry.”
He was silent for a long beat as if assessing the sincerity of my apology. Then he nodded curtly. “We prefer the other word your people use. What is it again…” He tapped his chin with a slender finger.
“Eldritch?”
“Yes, eldritch. You call us eldritch. Creatures that are strange and eerie.”
“How do you know that word?”
“You aren’t the first of your kind I’ve come across.”
“A rift walker?”
He answered my question with a smirk.
Tread carefully, August.
My pulse pounded because even though he looked young didn’t mean he was. He could be ancient.He could have met my mother. He might even know what happened to her.
Or he could be the one that killed her. Be smart about this.
Shit, he was right. I had to play this smart. I couldn’t tell him about my mother, not until I’d learned enough about him to be sure he wasn’t a threat.
“Have you met a rift walker before?” I kept my tone light and inquiring.
“I’ve met a few. Conversed with them, wiped their minds, and sent them on their way.” He said it matter-of-fact, as if messing with someone’s memories was no big deal.
“Are you planning on doing that to me?”
He won’t be able to. You have me.
Yeah, even if I forgot, Telarion would remember.
“Are you?” I prompted again.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “I need to know more about you. Do you hunt the eldritch?” He took a step forward and his beasts moved with him, tightening the perimeter around me.
I resisted the urge to back up.
Careful here, August.
“I track them and bring them home.”
He seemed to consider this. “You’re a tracker…I could use a tracker.” He placed his hands on his hips and sighed. “It is forbidden for a Cnaathreth to approach the rifts, which isn’t usually an issue, because the rifts all lie in Fer’bidn, home to sorrowlings, thornhowlers, and stonewings. Ravenous, flesh-eating creatures.” He sighed, and an expression of sadness came over him. “Our people do not cross the forest borders unless they have a death wish.”
Which explained why we’d never seen any people, but there was a gravestone by the rift and boot prints, so someonehadcome into Fer’bidn. And so had he at some point.
“But you have. You’ve spoken to rift walkers.”
“I have, in the past. Not in many decades, though. The rules were tightened. Approaching the rifts is now punishable by death.”
Decades. Maybe he wasn’t the person I was looking for. Or he could be lying.
“Except I fear that one of my men has broken the law.” He shook his head. “Foolhardy young man. Too inquisitive for his own good. I fear he’s taken advantage of the hibernation season and traversed through Fer’bidn to pass through a rift to satisfy his own curiosity.”
“Hibernation?”
“The diurnal inhabitants of Fer’bidn go underground this time of year.”
