Fistanadantilus Reborn

CHAPTER 30

First Bakukal, Reapember

374 AC

Danyal awakened with a strong feeling that it was late afternoon. The air beyond the rocky niche was still, and he heard cicadas chirping, the steady droning of plump, lazy flies. It was Reapember, he recalled, though the temperature-and the hot, stuffy smell of the air-seemed more suggestive of midsummer than early fall.

He saw that Mirabeth, too, was awake. Her brown eyes were staring at him as he stretched and slowly brought himself back to full awareness of their surroundings. Foryth and Emilo still slept, leaning together against the opposite wall of their little niche in the rock wall.

"I've been thinking we should go out and have a look around… before dark, I mean," the kendermaid whispered.

Danyal nodded; her suggestion was the same thing that he himself had decided. As quietly as possible they slipped between the cliff and the thornbush, crouching as they looked into the woods to the right and left.

The scent of lush pine was pure and overwhelming, seeming to deny the existence of anything dangerous. But Danyal wasn't in any mood to take chances. Still moving with care, he crept forward, under the branches of a thick pine. Fortunately underbrush was scarce and the going was relatively easy. The forest floor was a that of brown needles broken from numerous branches. Some of the trees, like the one he currently used for shelter, were massive, while others were mere saplings.

He had the feeling that any one of them could have concealed a dangerous enemy.

Mirabeth crept forward to join him, and for several minutes they lay on their bellies, silent and intent, watching the woods for anything out of the ordinary. Abruptly the kendermaid nudged Danyal, almost causing him to gasp in alarm until he saw that she was smiling.

Following her pointing finger, he saw a doe and a fawn grazing a mere stone's throw away.

The two watchers kept completely still, scarcely breathing, as the pair of deer pulled at the tufts of grass that, in places, poked through the carpet of dried pine needles. Shadows dappled the rich brown coat of the doe, while the speckles on the fawn's back and flanks seemed to sparkle like diamonds as the creature cavorted through patches of sunlight. Alternately tense and playful, the young deer moved around its mother with upraised ears and stiltlike, unsteady legs.

For long minutes the animals moved slowly across Dan's and Mirabeth's fields of vision, and the lad took heart from the knowledge that the shy creatures would certainly have taken flight if any threat was lurking nearby. Finally the deer wandered away, lost behind the screening trunks of the woods, and the two wanderers rose to their feet.

"I tried to mask our path through the meadow beyond these woods," Danyal explained. "Let's take a look and make sure we don't have anyone on our trail."

Mirabeth nodded and moved away with lithe grace. With a flash of guilt, Danyal watched her from behind, thinking she was very pretty. She moves like a girl, he realized-a human girl-though she could have been sixty or seventy years old, for all he knew.

When she turned to see if he was following, he blushed furiously, even more so when he saw her shy smile and suspected that she knew he had been watching her. Lowering his eyes, he concentrated on following through the woods without making a lot of noise.

Taking a circuitous route away from their shelter, Dan and Mirabeth dropped into a rock-bedded ravine. The gully scored a straight path through the woods, angling generally toward the large meadow where the lad had created the false trail. Following the natural trench for several minutes, they finally saw the brightness of full daylight through the trees. It was easy to scramble out of the ravine, using roots and vines for handholds. At the top, they wriggled forward until they were concealed beneath a pine tree at the very edge of the forest.

"There!" Mirabeth's warning was a barely audible breath of air.

Danyal saw them at the same time: six scruffy figures, moving through the meadow along the trail that the four companions had left the previous night.

"I wonder where the others are." Again Mirabeth spoke in a hushed voice.

Indeed, though the men were too far away to see their faces, Danyal knew that two of the bandits were missing from this group. From the matted hair and beards that he saw, he guessed that one of those absent was Kelryn Darewind.

"They're coming up to the place where I hid the trail," he whispered, his stomach churning into his throat as the men reached the edge of the woods. Only when they turned toward the stream did he allow himself to relax, realizing as he exhaled that he was trembling.

"It worked," he breathed, his sense of elation sublime, but tempered by knowledge of the nearness of danger. "They're following the false path I made!"

He heard shouts in tones of disgust as the bandits came to the edge of the water, though he couldn't hear exactly what they were saying.

"It sounds like they've been that way before," Mira-beth deduced. "Looks like they've been double-checking the trail-and that's where they lost it."

Dan realized she was right. "They must have backtracked once they lost the trail in the stream." But how persistent would they be in looking for the concealed trail? Would they keep searching? And where were the other two men?

Several of the bandits were engaged in a heated argument, pointing both upstream and down, while another of the fellows seemed ready to start back to the woods.

"We've got to get back to the cave and wake Foryth and Emilo if they're still sleeping," Dan urged. "It's time to get out of here!"

Moving as quickly as they dared while still preserving some semblance of silence, the two backtracked to the ravine. They leapt down to land on a patch of smooth moss and then broke into a full sprint, following the gully toward its terminus near their makeshift shelter.

"This is where we climbed in," Danyal said, pointing to the shelf of rock that rose as the left wall of the ravine. "It didn't seem so high when we jumped down."

"We can climb it," Mirabeth assured him. "There's plenty of handholds."

Danyal agreed.

"Don't start coming up until I'm all the way to the top. You shouldn't be beneath me, in case I slip!" the kender-maid called over her shoulder.

She kicked her foot into a crack in the stone wall and reached upward to find a pair of handholds. Pulling herself off the ground, she ascended smoothly and soon neared the top of the rocky face.

Watching nervously, Danyal saw her foot slip momentarily from its perch. He tensed, ready to catch her, trying to anticipate how she would fall, but the nimble maid maintained her balance easily. In another moment she disappeared over the rim of the top.

A split second later Mirabeth's scream of shrill terror split the woods, sending birds cawing into the air and filling Danyal with unspeakable panic.

"What is it?" Frantically the lad threw himself at the rock wall, scrambling up a short distance and then, slipping in his haste, tumbling back to sprawl on the ravine floor. He looked up and felt the hope drain from his body.

Kelryn Darewind stood there, and in his arms, he held the squirming figure of Mirabeth. His hand was clasped over her mouth as she stared, wide-eyed with terror, at Danyal Thwait.

"Well, there you are, my young friend." The bandit lord was cool, even dispassionate, and that aloofness brought Dan's hatred burning through every other emotion. But he could only stare in impotent fury as Kelryn continued. "It seems you must have wandered off in the night. It's really quite a relief to find you again."

Trembling, Danyal stared bitterly upward, knowing that even if he clawed his way up the cliff, it would be a simple matter for the bandit lord to kick him loose when he neared the top.

"I think I'll take this little prize with me to Loreloch!" taunted Kelryn Darewind.

Only then did another figure saunter into view, as Zack joined his captain. The knifeman fixed Danyal with a cackling glare, his one eye flashing wickedly.

"Run!" screamed Mirabeth, suddenly twisting her mouth free from Kelryn's hand. "He's going to kill you!"

Danyal couldn't make his feet move. He cried aloud as the false priest clapped a rough hand over the kender-maid's mouth. Only when Kelryn nodded forcefully at Zack did the youth perceive the imminent threat and break into flight.

He heard the clump of something heavy landing on the ground behind him and didn't need to look back to know that Zack had leapt into the ravine. The bandit's thudding footsteps were loud and clumsy as he pounded after Dan, and the boy couldn't suppress a sob of terror as he felt that menacing presence closing in. He sprinted as fast as he could, dashing around corners in the winding ravine, desperately seeking some place that might let him scramble upward to safety.

And knowing that he left Mirabeth in Kelryn Dare-wind's merciless hands somewhere far behind him.

Zack uttered a bark of cruel laughter, and Dan knew from the sound that the man was only a few steps behind. Eyes blurring, the lad thought of Mirabeth, horrified at the prospect of her captivity among the merciless bandits. Strangely, that fear seemed much more real and more terrifying than the prospect of his own imminent death. He fought back another sob, his grief rising from the fact that he was so utterly unable to come to Mirabeth's aid.

When he attempted to leap over a rock that blocked the ravine bottom, Danyal's strength and agility came up a fraction of an inch short. His foot caught at the top of the boulder, and he tumbled headlong, landing heavily on a patch of sand. He rolled hard into the steep wall of the gully and looked up to see Zack's villainous face leering down at him.

"Well, laddie-looks like I get to wet my blade again after all!"

Danyal clawed to either side, trying to find a rock or a stick, anything he could use as a weapon. But his hands couldn't do more than scratch at the smooth, hard-packed sand.

Zack threw back his head and laughed-the last sound he ever made. A heavy piece of granite, jagged with a multitude of sharp edges, plummeted from above, striking the knife-wielding bandit in the middle of the forehead. Zack's head snapped back like a cracking whip, and he toppled like a stone statue. Danyal vaguely heard the thump as the man's head smashed onto the rocky ground.

Only then did he look up, squinting against the sky to see Foryth Teel leaning over the lip of the ravine. The historian dusted off his hands and shook his head in agitation, clearly distressed.

"Did you throw that?" Danyal asked, looking once more at the piece of granite that had smashed Zack's skull.

"I'm afraid-tsk, that is, yes, I did," Foryth admitted sadly. He sighed, as if he had just committed a grave act of injustice. "I just don't seem to be able to keep from getting myself involved. Er, is he dead?"

Danyal stepped over to Zack's still form, hesitantly taking a moment to look closely at the expressionless face, the blank and sightless eyes. Finally he nudged the bandit's knee with his toe, drawing no response.

"Yes, he is." He was about to turn away when he saw the big knife, the keen edge shining like quicksilver in the sunlight. The weapon lay in the stones where Zack had dropped it, and Danyal impulsively reached down and picked it up. The hilt was smooth and comfortable in his hand, and the blade was well balanced and clearly lethal.

At the thought of killing, an urgent thought grabbed him. "What about Mirabeth?" he shouted. "We've got to help her!"

"I'll meet you up ahead!" Foryth called back.

Danyal was already racing back along the ravine floor. When he reached the spot where the kendermaid had ascended, he stuffed the knife into his belt and climbed as quickly as he could, drawing himself onto the rim of the precipice as Foryth came huffing up to him.

"They went that way," the historian said, pointing into the woods.

Danyal was about to start along the trail when he caught sight of something unnatural on the forest floor.

It was a wedge of tan wax, and when he picked it up he clearly saw the resemblance.

"It's the tip of a false ear-a pointed ear!" he exclaimed, his mind churning.

"Do you think-that is, could Mirabeth have lost it?" Foryth asked.

"Yes!" Picturing the kendermaid with the twin to knots, the pointed ears, and the webbing of age lines around her mouth and eyes, Danyal's mind whirled with questions. "Why would she wear something like this-a fake tip for her ear?"

The answer was obvious in his own mind, but just in case any doubt remained, Emilo Haversack came into view, trotting from the direction of their cave. He saw the ear, looked into the questioning faces of Foryth and Danyal, and nodded in understanding.

"I remember now," the kender confirmed. "Mirabeth is really a human."