Beowulf's Children

There was pain. Pain in his back, his head, a great tearing, burning ache that threatened to consume all of his thoughts, all of his life. It was just too large, bigger than anything he had ever experienced in his life. More than all of his previous pains combined.

There was cold. Wet. There was water around him. Near him. Flowing over him.

Little Chaka awoke.

Is my back broken? It was a natural question, one that he couldn't answer at the moment. In his entire universe, nothing existed but agony. Such questions would come later—if there was a later.

His eyes wouldn't focus. All he got were patterns of shadow and light.

What was there to remember? What had happened?

He remembered...

He remembered.

Aaron. Oh, God. Aaron had shot him. Was that memory correct? And if it was, why wasn't he dead?

He struggled to move. What could move? He remembered a flash of light, the struggle to get his own gun up to the aim, Aaron's rifle coming up . .

.

No, he was thinking backward, now. From the last thing he remembered to the begi

Calm. Try to remember. Aaron shot him. And then--? And then Cadma

He had no hope of truly being alive... did he?

But he knew that he had been avenged. In fact, if Cadma

Chaka's eyes finally cleared.

He managed to catch the whimper in his throat before it escaped, but that didn't make his world a better a place to be.

There, in the water before him, was Cadma

He looked so like he always did, except his ta

He opened his eyes again, praying that it was a hallucination. It could be, couldn't it? It would change when he opened his eyes again, the way objects in a dream change if you look away and then look back again.

But Cadma

Chaka wept.

Blackness came for him.

He didn't know how long he was unconscious. He woke to a nightmare. He felt it moving through the water. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes.

It was there in the water with him.

A grendel. He felt the heat wash from its body, could hear its sinuous splashing. It looked as big as a house.

Coming to consciousness meant returning to the house of pain. Chaka yearned for death. This was the passage. This was crossing over into the other world, a world without pain. A world where Cadma

He heard the breathing, and then no breathing, just a hissing gurgle.

He opened his eyes. No grendel...

At first his astonishment surprised even him. What in the hell was going on? Then he saw the snorkel. It barely crested the surface of the water, Cadzie blue. The grendel herself was a shadow beneath the surface. Just barely beneath the surface. Watching him.

Even in the midst of nightmare, the biologist in Little Chaka was intrigued. This was the first grendel snorkel anyone had seen on the mainland. The water was so damned shallow. So why did the bitch even bother? She couldn't have been stalking him. She couldn't have had any reason to hide from him, God knew. So what in the world... ?

A splash in the water near her, and suddenly something flapped in her teeth. God. A samlon. Her head came up out of the water just a little, and he could see that the samlon's legs were too well formed. It was almost that time. Now that he became aware of it, he realized that the water was filled with these shapes. Dozens... hundreds of samlon.

Why didn't she just eat him? Was she saving him for her progeny? Was she a fat, overstuffed old bitch who wanted a special treat for her darl—

Sudden pain ignited in the right leg. With the dregs of his strength Chaka craned his neck, watched the head of something black and clawed emerge from the water, watched it wriggling as it savaged his thigh.

He thought that no fear remained in him. He was wrong.

Chaka tried to scream. Somehow, being devoured by a pack of infants was infinitely more frightening than a single grendel's fangs. This... nibbling would go on and on and on.

His shriek sounded like the cry of a child's doll.

The water thrashed, and suddenly the half-samlon was up in the air, in the mouth of the grendel, bitten in half—and spit out.

She looked at him again. What in the hell was this?

Three weirds. One dead, one fled, one dying.

The weird who had spared Old Grendel's life... what reward would Strongest One expect or accept? That one who would teach Old Grendel how to shape the magic that would hold the universe prisoner, to enslave God and God's daughters... that one lay dead in the water, its life's blood spreading through the lake, to summon Old Grendel's daughters.

The one who had killed Strongest One, that was Strongest One now. If Old Grendel could reach her as she fled... what would she do? Work out her rage on the weird who was the ruin of all her ambitions? Or force that one to serve her, teach her? It didn't matter. That one was beyond Old Grendel's reach.

The third lay helpless and wounded. In minutes it would be eaten by her own children. She had to make a decision, and quickly.

She looked up at the darkening sky. Felt the fat droplets splattering against her. The world was drowning, the Death Wind would have the land, and no time remained.

She turned her back to the man. She thrashed her tail, and carefully hooked it through the outer layer of skin, the loose, half-shed skin that all of the weirds seemed to like. The weird thrashed and fought and she thought for a moment: What to do?

Yes. She knew now.

She dove beneath the water, hauling the weird with her.

Rachael Moskowitz didn't turn as her husband entered Avalon Town's main mess hall and wrapped his arms around her waist. None of the First spoke. The news from the mainland, the word of sudden savage death, had hit them hard.

And now this: on the communal vidscreen. Geographic beamed them an image of the storm descending on Shangri-La. Camelot had been lashed by rain for almost a week, but that was only the fringe of the storm that would cross Shangri-La.

"How did she take it?" Rachael said. "How is Mary A

"Mickey told her, personally," he said softly, pressing his lips against her ear.

Rachael nodded. "That was probably best."

"He said she's all right. Just all right. Wants her children around her."

"Ruth," Rachael murmured. "God. We need to get through to Ruth."

Zack stiffened a little. Ruth had betrayed them. But... but she was their only child, and it was time to forget such things. "We'll patch through. The important thing is Robor, and Robor is safe at the mine. We can be sure of that. Cadma