Roil by Trent Jamieson Page A

that. This isn ’ t good.
    He raised one hand as though to point, or perhaps to ward something off. He couldn’t remember, so he lowered it again, turning in a shaky circle as he tried to clear his head. What was he doing here?
    The cold stream tugged at his knees, slowly pulling him down; knees, thighs, groin and belly.
    The Quarg Hound that had tumbled down after David yelped and pushed away from him towards the edge of the stream, convulsing so savagely David could hear its back cracking. David watched it die, the Hound’s shuddering limbs folding up, and it sank into the water dragged down and away by the current. He knew he should be afraid, but he just couldn’t manage it.
    “David!” Cadell shouted from above.
    David’s vision narrowed to splotches of light and dark and pain. He tried to focus on Cadell’s voice but couldn’t, his head pounded as though a hundred hammers were trying to beat their way out. The pain dimmed, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
    He blinked.
    “I’m here,” David yelled. Or tried to because no sound escaped the torpid cage of his lips.
    His voice failed him, followed by his legs. David fell forward, a numb and silent weight; his head slipped under the water and cold darkness found him.
    Lassiter was laughing, and David’s parents were egging him on.
    “David! David, wake up.” Someone shook him. “You must wake up.”
    “I–” David said, coughing up more water. He stopped at last, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm and whispering, “Are they gone?”
    Above the stream, from behind the thick shield of lantana, came two rough growls. Cadell jerked his head in the direction of the sound. A Quarg Hound tumbled out of the dark, shrieking as it struck the water. Cadell walked over to it, gripped its shuddering head and snapped its neck. He looked back at David, and winced. “Now, you must try and stand.”
    David struggled to his feet and stumbled, falling forward, the cold had seeped into his muscles turning them stiff and sore and clumsy. His nose ran. His knees were raw. And his head, what had happened to his head? “I seem to be having difficulty.”
    Cadell nodded, pulling David up again and letting him lean on his shoulder, one arm reaching around David’s back and gripping his right arm so tightly that it hurt; numbed only a little by the chill radiating from Cadell’s fingertips.
    “I’m just so tired.” David tried to pull away, but he couldn’t manage it.
    Cadell nodded. “Of course you are, so we’ll just keep going. This water is colder than it ought to be. What say we follow it to its source? I suspect what we find there might help us.” A shadow of a grin passed across his face. “I thought this place was familiar.”
    Even with Cadell’s aid, each step was a challenge. When he closed his eyes, the whole world would spin and tumble in too many directions, and yet, several times he found himself almost falling asleep. This was worse, because Lassiter waited behind his eyelids, or his father, both mocking corpses, already beginning to rot, things rotted fast in the rain and the heat. David batted at spiders, the memory of their webs.
    Everything had become so fractured and dreamlike that he took some comfort in the increasingly believable hypothesis that he was in fact asleep, his head lolling against the window of the train or better yet, in bed; his parents still alive.
    “Don’t do that!” Cadell shouted, shaking him hard. “You must stay awake.”
    “Absolutely,” David said, vomiting explosively into the river. “Nothing easier. Where did you say we’re going?”
    Cadell patted his back gently, though his grip on David’s arm did not loosen.
    “Too hard to explain while you’re so addled, but we’ve not far to go, then you can rest, I promise.”
    Cadell’s not far to go turned out to be quite the opposite. They walked for nearly two hours, harried by the remaining duet of Quarg Hounds. Cadell chattered constantly,