Jarka Ruus

TWENTY–NINE

They trooped on for the remainder of the afternoon, fighting through scrub growth woods and a new stretch of swamp laced with mud holes and waterways, everything encased in mist and gloom and crosshatched with shadows. The light lasted for another three hours and then began to fail rapidly. Still, they slogged ahead, reduced to putting one foot in front of the other, simply to pushing on when it would have been much easier not to.

It was almost too dark to see when Khyber realized that the feel of the ground had changed and the air no longer smelled of damp and rot but of grasses and leaves. She stopped abruptly, causing Tagwen, who was walking behind her with his head down, to bump into her. Ahead, Pen heard the sudden oaths and quick apologies and turned around to see what was happening.

«We're out of the Slags," Khyber announced, still not quite believing it. «Look around. We're out.»

She insisted they stop for the night, so bone weary and mentally exhausted from the events of the past few days, so in need of sleep that she barely managed to find a patch of soft grass within a stand of oaks before she was asleep. Her last memory was of the sky, empty for the first time in days of mist and clouds, clear and bright with moon glow and stars.

She dreamed that night of her uncle, a shadowy figure who called to her in words she could not quite make out from a place she could not quite reach. She spent her dream trying and failing to get close enough to discover what he was saying. The dream world was shadowy and uneven in its feel, the landscape misty and changing. It was filled with dark creatures that hovered close to Ahren and her without ever quite coming into view. It was a place she did not want to be, and she was grateful when she woke the next morning to bright sunlight and blue sky.

Pen was already awake and returned from foraging for food, and it was the cooking fire he had built that brought her out of her dream. Somehow, the boy had snared a rabbit, which he was skinning, dug up some root vegetables, and picked several handfuls of berries. Added to the fresh stream water he had collected, it made the best meal Khyber could remember in years and gave her a welcome and much needed sense of renewal.

They set out shortly after, heading east and north into the hilly country that fronted the Charnals, determined to find Taupo Rough and the Troll Maturen, Kermadec. None of them had ever been in that part of the world or knew enough about it to be able to discern much more than the general direction they should take. Taupo Rough lay at the foot of the mountains somewhat north of the Slags. The best they could do was to use the pocket compass and head in that general direction, trusting that sooner or later they would come across someone to help them. The Rock Trolls were a tribal people and there was some animosity between tribes, but the Trolls were not at war with the other Races just then and there was no reason to think they posed a threat to travelers in their country. At least, that was what Khyber hoped.

She gave it some thought on setting out, but they had little choice in the matter and therefore little reason to dwell on the unpleasant possibilities if they were wrong. Tagwen seemed to think that whatever Rock Trolls they encountered would be of help once they heard Kermadec's name. Maybe that was so. Khyber was so grateful to be clear of the Slags that she was willing to risk almost anything. Even the simple fact of no longer being shrouded by the wetland's gloom and mist gave her a large measure of relief.

But it was more than that, of course. It was the leaving behind of the place in which Ahren Elessedil had died. It was the sense that maybe she could come to terms with his death if she could put time and distance between herself and its memory. She had persuaded herself to continue on without him, but accepting that he was really gone was much more difficult. Losing him had left her devastated. He had been more than an uncle to her; he had been the father she had lost when she was still a child. He had been her confidant and her best and most dependable friend. As compensation for her anguish, she told herself that he was still there, a spirit presence, and that he would look out for her in death even as he had in life. It was wishful thinking, but shades were real and sometimes they helped the living, and she needed to think it could happen there because she had serious doubts about herself. She did not believe that her meager talents with Druid magic were going to be enough to see them through the remainder of their journey, no matter what reassurances Ahren had offered her. Even her use of the Elfstones was suspect. She had managed to bring the magic to bear in the battle against Terek Molt, but that had been facilitated by her uncle's sacrifice. She still shivered at the memory of the Elfstone power coursing through her, vast and unchecked, and she did not know that she could make herself summon it again, even to defend herself. In truth, she did not know what she might do if she was threatened, and the uncertainty could prove as dangerous as the threat itself. It was one thing to talk as if she possessed both resolve and confidence, but it was something else again to demonstrate it. She wished she had a way of testing herself. But she didn't, and that was that.

They walked on through the morning, and she felt a little better for doing so. Time and distance helped to blunt her sadness if not her uncertainty. Given the nature of their journey thus far, she would take what she could get.

«Did you see him?» Pen asked her when they stopped at midday to drink from a stream and to eat what remained of the roots the boy had foraged that morning.

She stared at him. «See who?»

«The cat. It's tracking us.»

«The moor cat?»

Tagwen, sitting a little bit farther away, turned at once. His eyes were big and frightened. «Why would it be doing that? Is it hunting us?»

Pen shook his head. «I don't think so. But it is definitely following us. I saw it several times, back in the trees, trying to keep out of sight, following a course parallel to our own. I think it's just interested.»

«Interested?» the Dwarf croaked.

«You can't mistake that masked face," Pen went on, oblivious to the other's look of terror. He grinned suddenly at Khyber, a little boy about to share a secret. «I've decided to call it Bandit. It looks like one, doesn't it?»

Khyber didn't care what the moor cat looked like, nor did she care for the idea of it tracking them into the mountains. She had always thought moor cats pretty much stayed in the swamps and forests and clear of the higher elevations. She hoped theirs would lose interest as they climbed.

They trekked on through the remainder of the day, through hill country dotted with woods and crisscrossed by streams that pooled in lakes at the lower elevations, bright mirrors reflecting sunlight and clouds. The hours drifted away, and although they covered a fair amount of ground, they did not encounter any of the region's inhabitants. Darkness began to fall and the shadows of the trees to lengthen about them, and still they had not seen a single Troll.

«Is that moor cat still out there?» Khyber asked Pen at one point.

«Oh, sure," the boy answered at once. «Still watching us, sort of like a stray dog. Do you want me to call it over?»

They made camp in the lee of a forested bluff, finding shelter in a grove of pine by a stream that tumbled down out of the rocks. Behind them, the hill country they had trekked through all day sloped gently away through woods and grasslands until it disappeared into the twilight shadows. Although Pen made a valiant effort to catch something, he was unsuccessful; there was nothing to eat. They drank stream water and chewed strips of bark from a small fig tree.

«Don't worry," Pen reassured his companions. «I'll go hunting at sunrise. I'll catch something.

They sat back to watch the stars come out, listening to the silence fill with night sounds. No one spoke. Khyber felt an emptiness that extended from the darkness down into her heart. She could not put a name to it, but it was there nevertheless. After a moment, she rose and walked off into the trees, wanting to be alone in case she cried. She felt so unbearably sad that she could hardly manage to keep from breaking down. The feeling had come over her insidiously, as if to remind her of how badly things had gone for them and how desperate their circumstances were. She might argue that they were all right, that they would find their way, but it wasn't what she felt. What she felt was utter abandonment and complete hopelessness. No matter what they tried or where they went, things would never get any better for them. They would struggle, but in the end they would fail.

Away from her companions, unable to help herself, she sat down and cried, bursting into tears all at once. She wished she had never come on the journey. She wished she had never left home. Everything that had happened was because of her insistence on looking for a stupid tree that Pen thought he had been sent to find but might well have simply dreamed up. Uncle Ahren was dead because of her intractability and her foolish, selfish need to find a way out of her pointless life. Well, she had accomplished her goal. She could never go back to Arborlon, never go home again. Not after stealing the Elfstones. Not after letting her uncle die. She bore the burden of her guilt like a fifty–pound weight slung across her shoulders, and she had nowhere to set it down. She hated herself.

In the midst of her silent diatribe, she realized that someone was looking at her.

Or something.

Huge, lantern eyes peered at her from out of the blackness. It was the moor cat.

«Get out of here!» she snapped in fury, not stopping to think about what she was doing.

The eyes stayed where they were. She glared at them, hating that the cat was watching her, that it had seen her break down and cry, that it had caught her at her worst. For no reason that made any sense at all, she was embarrassed by it. Even if it was only an animal that had witnessed it, her behavior made her feel foolish. She took several deep breaths to steady herself and sat back. The cat wasn't going to move until it felt like it, so there wasn't much point in railing at it. She found herself wondering once again what it was doing there. Curiosity, Pen had thought. Could be. She kissed at it, whispered a few words of greeting, and gave it a wave. The cat stared without blinking or moving.

Then all at once, it was gone again. Like smoke caught in the wind, it simply disappeared. She waited a moment to be sure, then rose and walked back to where Pen and Tagwen were already asleep. The first watch was hers, it seemed. Just as well since she wasn't at all tired. She sat down next to them and wrapped her arms about her knees. It was chilly so high up, much more so than in the Slags. She wished she had a blanket. Maybe they could find supplies in the morning. There had to be a settlement somewhere close by.

With her legs drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees, she listened to the sounds of Pen and Tagwen breathing and stared out into the night.

* * *

Intending to wake one of her companions to share the watch, but failing to do so, she dozed off sometime after midnight. When she came awake again, it was with the sudden and frightening realization that things were not as they should be. It wasn't the silence or the darkness or even the sound of the wind rustling the leaves like old parchment. What caught her attention as her eyes snapped open and her head jerked up was the dark movement that crept like a stain across the forest earth in front of her. For a moment, she thought it was alive, and leapt to her feet, backing away instinctively. But then she recognized its flat, fragmented shape and realized it was a shadow cast from something passing overhead.

She looked up and saw the Skatelow.

She couldn't believe it at first, thinking that she must be mistaken, that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It wasn't possible that the Skatelow could be there, flying those skies, so many miles east of where it should be. But the shape was so distinctive that Khyber quickly accepted that it was her, come after them for a reason that was not immediately apparent. For come after them she had, the Elven girl reasoned, or she would not be here at all.

Particularly since she was flying straight toward them.

But there was something not quite right about her, a look to her that was foreign and vaguely frightening. She carried only her mainsail, its canvas billowed out in the rush of the wind, yet there were yards of rigging stretched bare and stark from decking to spars like spider webbing.

Khyber stared, transfixed, not yet fully awake and not yet come to terms with what she was seeing.

The Skatelow passed overhead and when she had gone a short distance beyond where the Elven girl stood watching, somewhere above the bluff east, she wheeled back and slid across the star–scattered firmament a second time, more slowly, as if searching.

Then, abruptly, she started to come down, making a slow and cautious descent toward the grasslands that lay just beyond the woods in which Khyber and her companions slept. As she did so, Khyber saw what she had missed before. Three ropes dangled in a ragged line from the yardarm, pulled taut by the weight of the bodies attached.

«Pen!» Khyber hissed, reaching down quickly to shake the boy awake, galvanized by sudden shock and a rush of fear.

Penderrin Ohmsford jerked upright at once, eyes darting in all directions at once. «What is it?»

Wordlessly, she hauled him to his feet and pointed, leaving Tagwen still stretched out and asleep at her feet. Together, they watched the Skatelow settle toward the grasslands, a ghost ship dark and ragged against the moonlit sky, the bodies at the ends of the ropes swaying like gourds from vines. The light caught those bodies clearly by then, illuminating them sufficiently for Khyber to identify Gar Hatch and his crewmen, faces empty, mouths hanging open, eyes wide and staring. There was a wizened, drawn cast to their features, as if the juices had been drained from them, leaving only skin and bones.

«What's happened?» Pen breathed.

Then his fingers tightened sharply about her arm, and he pointed. She saw it at once. Cinnaminson stood in the pilot box, a thin, frail figure against the skyline, her head lifted into the wind, her clothing whipping against her body, her arms hanging limply at her sides. One end of a chain was attached to a collar about her neck; the other was wound about the pilot box railing.

Khyber scanned the decks of the sloop from end to end, but no one else was visible. No one was sailing the airship, no one acting as Captain and crew, no one visible aboard save the three dead men and the chained girl.

Then Khyber saw something move across the billowing mainsail, high up in the rigging, a dark shadow caught in a swath of moonlight. The shadow skittered down the lines like a spider over its webbing, limbs outstretched and crooked as it swung from strand to strand. Nothing more of it was visible; its head and body were cloaked and hooded, its features hidden. It was there for just an instant, then gone, disappeared behind the sail and back into the shadows.

Khyber took a deep breath. It was the thing that had chased them through the streets of Anatcherae—the thing that had tried to kill Pen.

A shiver ran down Khyber's back when Cinnaminson turned her head slightly in their direction, as if seeing them as clearly as they saw her. In that instant, her features were clearly revealed, and such anguish and horror were mirrored there that Khyber went cold all the way to her bones. Then the Rover girl looked away again and pointed north. The thing that hung from the mainmast moved quickly in response, leaping through the rigging, changing the set of the sail, the tautness of the radian draws, and thereby the direction of the airship. The Skatelow began to lift away again, turning north in the direction Cinnaminson had pointed. The crooked–legged thing darted back across the moonlight, then fastened itself in place against the mast, hunching down like a huge lizard on a pole.

Seconds later, the airship disappeared behind the rise of the bluff, and the sky was empty again.

* * *

In the dark aftermath, Khyber exhaled sharply and exchanged a hurried look with Pen. Then she jumped in fright as Tagwen stood up suddenly next to her, rubbing at his bleary eyes. «What's wrong?» he asked.

«Don't do that again!» she snapped furiously, her hands shaking.

They told him what they had seen, pointing north at the empty sky. A look of disbelief crossed his rough features, and he shook his head, blinking away the last of his sleep. «Are you certain of this? You didn't dream it? It wasn't just the clouds?»

«It's tracking us," Pen answered, his voice dismal and lost–sounding. «It's killed Gar Hatch and his Rover cousins, and now it's using Cinnaminson to hunt us.»

«But how did it get aboard the Skatelow?»

No one could answer him. Khyber stared at the empty sky, trying to reason it through. Was there a connection between the creature and the Druids? Could it have gotten aboard the Skatelow while the Galaphile had the Rover airship in tow? That would mean Terek Molt had deliberately lied to them about sending the Skatelow safely on her way. But why do that? For that matter, why bother to put the creature aboard the Skatelow at all if the Druid intended to hunt Penderrin on his own anyway? Whatever the answer, someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to prevent the boy from attempting to rescue his aunt. So someone must think he had a very good chance of succeeding, even if the boy himself thought he had very little. It was an intriguing conclusion, and it gave her unexpected reason for hope. Pen was staring at her. «Do you think the Elfstones could be used against whatever's got Cinnaminson?»

She gave him a doubtful look. «We don't even know what it is, Pen. It might be human, and the Elfstones would be useless.» «It doesn't look it.» «Whatever it is, we're not going to fight it if we don't have to.» She motioned toward the bluff.

«Let's get out of here. We can stop and eat when it gets light. I don't want to chance it coming back again.» Pen stood his ground, his mouth a tight line. «Did you see the way she looked at us?»

Khyber hesitated. «What are you getting at?» «She saw us. She knew we were here. Yet she turned the ship the other way.» His voice was shaking. «She's being made to track us, Khyber. Maybe her life depends on whether or not that thing finds us. Yet she steered it away. She saved us.»

Tagwen shook his bearded head. «You don't know that, young Pen. You might be mistaken.» The boy looked quickly at Khyber for support. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized what he was about to ask. She had to stop him, even if it meant lying to him about what she had seen. But she could not bring herself to do that. That was the coward's way out. Ahren would not have lied in that situation. He would have told Pen the truth. «We can't do this," she said. «We have to!» he snapped. His face had an angry, almost furious look. «She saved us, Khyber!

Now we have to save her!» «What are you talking about?» Tagwen demanded. «Save who?» «She's not our concern," Khyber pressed. «Our concern is with your aunt, the Ard Rhys.» «Our concern is with whoever needs our help! What's wrong with you?» They faced each other in stony silence. Even Tagwen had gone quiet, looking quickly from one face to the other.

«We don't have any way of saving her," Khyber said finally. «We don't know anything about that creature, nothing about what it will take to overcome it. If we guess wrong, we'll all be dead.» Pen straightened and looked off to the north. «I'm going, whether you go with me or not. I'm not leaving her. I have to live with myself when this is over. I can't do that if something happens to her that I might have prevented.» He glanced back at her, the angry look become suddenly pleading. «She isn't the enemy, Khyber.»

«I know that.»

«Then help me.» She stared at him without answering.

«Khyber, I'm begging you.»

He wasn't asking Tagwen, he was asking her. With Ahren Elessedil dead, she'd become the unofficial leader. She was the one with the Elfstones and the magic. She was the one with the lore. She thought about the choices she had made on the journey and how badly many of them had turned out. If she made the wrong choice, it might cost all of them their lives. Pen's heart ruled his thinking; she had to remember to use her head.

She found herself wondering what Ahren would do in that situation but was unable to decide. The answer would have come quickly and easily for him. It would not do so for her.

She looked off into the trees and the night, into the shadows and darkness, searching for it in vain.