The Sleeping Life

Chapter Twenty-One

"Sukata!" Kendall shouted it, so loud her throat hurt as she turned to face toward the entrance of the building, and up the hill to where all the Kellian had gone. "Sukata, HELP!"

Then she was running, shoulder-to-shoulder with Samarin, so that they almost jammed in doorway and then window. The drop was short, and the flowerbed beneath already mangled. Samarin had gotten ahead of her, but slowed as he hunted out direction. There was noise—the Pest seemed determined to trip over everything—and then Kendall saw something a good deal further out. Just a sliver of white off toward the edge of the circle, and she pelted toward it, wishing the moon was out, or she could enchant herself to see in the dark, or knew a single useful Sigillic.

Ahead, magic twisted, shifting from beyond her hearing to a strong knot of force. Kendall couldn’t guess at intent at all, felt it more as a shape, something stretching away from her, away from the figure directly ahead of her. And it was Rennyn, walking unhurriedly, and entirely alone. Casting? Had the damn-fool woman climbed out her own window and gone for a walk without a word to anyone, and not even wearing a coat? Kendall would kill her herself.

"What—?" A cry from Kendall’s right and behind her—Lieutenant Meniar, pounding into the chase from the direction of the stream. "Your Grace!"

"Stop her!" the Pest shouted. "She’s not awake!"

A tunnel. It felt like a tunnel. Kendall didn’t understand at all, but she wasn’t close enough to stop Rennyn from continuing her steady walk forward, and somehow each step seemed to take Herself dozens of feet: already she was once again no more than a smudge of white in the distance, and the tunnel was narrowing behind her, as if the roof was dropping down.

Fearing that she would bounce right off whatever it was, Kendall reached out, trying to push the roof back up. She couldn’t see it at all, could make no sense of what it even was, but she could grip it, a slippery nothingness, and somehow lighter even than necklaces and bowls and all the things she had practiced holding.

"Keep moving!"

Samarin grabbed her arm and hustled her forward, and Kendall tried to walk and hold the roof up at the same time and felt it sliding.

"Carry her!" Samarin somehow tucked himself beneath Kendall’s shoulder, and Lieutenant Meniar was on her other side. They lifted her like a doll and ran and Kendall let them because all her attention had to go to the tunnel, and it was rocks now, boulders, a mountain trying to close down on them.

"A travel casting," Lieutenant Meniar said, turning his head, and Kendall realised he was talking to someone in the tunnel behind them, more than one person, breathing harsh, though she couldn’t hear any footsteps. None of them were standing on anything, they were running on air and she’d lost track of the slip of white ahead, and the mountain narrowed down into a knife-hammer of pain behind her left eye, and she lost her hold. They fell.

Kendall shuddered, and rolled off a lump of person into a rustle of dry leaves. She clutched her head, glad for the velvet of darkness, but equally glad when a skitter of worked power became a glow of green light clinging to the ring Lieutenant Meniar wore. And she was intensely relieved to see Sukata. Sukata, Captain Faille and his mother, looking like they’d been running a week as they picked themselves up. And even that Tesin Asaka, all tangled up with the Pest. Kendall hadn’t been sure any of the Kellian would even hear her, let alone be able to reach them before the tunnel thing closed. Kellian could move lightning-fast, but they couldn’t keep it up over distance, though obviously they’d tried, and now could barely stand.

"Before everyone starts shuffling about," Samarin said, "try to mark the exact direction we were travelling."

Kendall had no idea, so didn’t bother to try, but she was not surprised at all when the Kellian immediately agreed on the same direction, and arranged an arrow using branches. Even as they did so, they were searching the blackness, trying to spot any hint of white, any trace of movement.

"How far ahead?" Captain Faille asked, and his voice told them all the things his shadowy face did not.

"I suspect miles. Probably more." Lieutenant Meniar sounded as apologetic as he was frustrated. "That was a major working, the kind of magic thought lost. And I didn’t even sense it forming."

Kendall was staring at the Pest, who had sat up only to curl forward, arms wrapped around his knees, looking straight-out terrified. As if he’d been captured by bandits and they were debating which bit to slice off first.

"How did you know?" she asked.

The Pest flinched, and couldn’t have looked guiltier if he tried.

"He knew she was gone," Kendall added, as everyone turned to stare at the Pest. "Shot out of his room squawking about music and ran after Rennyn."

"Similar to the incident with the thieves," Samarin said. "Are you some kind of dreaming oracle?"

The Pest’s mouth flapped uselessly, and he clutched at his throat.

"Hells." Lieutenant Meniar thrust a hand into his coat, and brought out his folded slate book. He flipped to a Sigillic already written out and began casting it.

"What’s wrong with him?" Tesin asked, putting a sympathetic hand to the Pest’s back.

"He is under enchantment," Captain Faille said, shifting as if in response to something he could see out in the dark forest. "Something to prevent him speaking on certain subjects—one of which appears to be how he knows what is happening while he sleeps."

The person who looked most surprised by this was the Pest himself, who stared at Captain Faille, but then looked marginally less despairing, even though he was starting to turn blue. Then Lieutenant Meniar finished casting his Sigillic, and the strangest popping noise came from the Pest’s mouth. He gulped a great, heaving breath.

"Good," Lieutenant Meniar said, smiling his relief. "We’re not going to ask how you know, Fallon, not at all. Only tell us what’s safe for you to talk about."

"The music!" the Pest gasped immediately. "The music the Duchess has been hearing. Her eyes were closed. It—"

He broke off again, hands already at his throat, and looked like he was trying to calm himself down, and not getting very far at all. Lieutenant Meniar, mouth set, began hurriedly writing out the Sigillic again, which didn’t do much for the Pest’s calm.

"You don’t have to speak," Sukata said. "We will not ask at all."

But the Pest couldn’t seem to believe her, or maybe what he believed made no difference, and it became a race between how quickly Lieutenant Meniar could write out a Sigillic against how fast a boy could turn blue. Until Samarin stepped up behind the Pest, and brought the hilt of his sword down in one quick, sharp blow.

Fallon crumpled, and Samarin bent over him, joined by Tesin, who said with quiet certainty: "He is breathing now."

"Whatever this Ban is, it’s likely to rely on his own awareness," Samarin explained. "Since he knows that we know he has a secret…"

He shrugged then glanced out into the darkness, before handing Captain Faille his sword. The Captain, with the briefest of nods, took it and walked away from the glow of Lieutenant Meniar’s light. The noises that followed were a reminder that they were in a famously dangerous forest, and obviously no longer the part of it made safe by a clutch of Kellian.

There wasn’t much that Kendall could see of their surroundings, but she had noticed a couple of differences. "The trees are nearly bare," she said. "And it’s colder. Is it—how long did we…"

"This would match the forest many days' travel north," Darian Faille said. "I do not believe it is later in the year."

Lieutenant Meniar finished writing his Sigillic, then flipped to the other side of the slate and began another. "If it’s a true recreation of Nameen’s Walk—Fals Nameen, one of the best-known of the Elder Mages—then it is said to allow the traveller to move miles in seconds, but to arrive hours later. So the subjective time of the traveller is very short, and the true travel time hours. I think this is the same night, but I can’t tell how much further ahead Her Grace might be."

"We have a direction," Darian Faille said.

"Yes. Nameen’s Walk was said to be entirely straightforward in that respect. But…" Lieutenant Meniar turned to Captain Faille as he walked back into the dim light. "If we are too far behind, then the slightest deviation of our own path would mean missing the destination entirely. And we have no way of knowing if we’re even past the halfway point."

"She was walking and we were running," Kendall said, before anyone could think to suggest they do anything but follow Rennyn as soon as possible, even though Kendall personally felt as if a thousand rocks were tied to her, dragging her down.

"Even halfway toward my primary mission is progress for me," Samarin added lightly, but had enough sense not to sound as if he was enjoying himself half as much as usual.

"I’ll set a ward," Lieutenant Meniar said, still writing. "And try to remember a directional Sigillic I read once, so we can keep to our course. Sukata, can you arrange a fire that won’t set the entire forest floor alight?"

Darian Faille, very indistinct at the edge of Lieutenant Meniar’s light, seemed to be breaking off part of a fallen branch to create a rough staff. "We will secure the area," she said, and led Captain Faille off.

Kendall sighed, took off her jacket and folded it into a pad to stick under the Pest’s head. She wouldn’t want to be out in a forest in her night-clothes, without even shoes. At least the week had been dry, though there was damp enough if you dug down into these layers of leaves.

"Won’t he just wake up and choke again?" she asked, turning to help Sukata and Tesin find rocks for a camp fire.

"Probably," Lieutenant Meniar said, tersely. "I’ll put a Sleep casting on him, for now. Her Grace and I have been trying to divine the enchantment for days now, but I don’t yet understand it well enough to try to unpick it."

And didn’t want to try without Rennyn, he did not add, any more than any of them were talking about Rennyn, who was also in her nightclothes somewhere, and all too probably with a monster who had made very clear what he wanted to do with her.

They’d gone and delivered her right to him.