Bedtime Story (11 page)

She didn’t say hello when she entered the kitchen. “So how were things tonight?” she asked, leaning into the fridge to pull out a beer.

“Quiet,” I said.

She twisted off the cap and took a long swallow. I watched her throat move, her head tilted back. She was wearing a set of lavender scrubs, her hair messy, her face flushed.

“And how was work?”

“Freak show,” she said. “I’m glad it was only a half-shift. By the time I left we were already three hours backed up.” She shook her head. “Apparently there’s some really good heroin out there right now: we had three ODs before nine o’clock.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” She took another swallow of beer. “And how are you?”

I was surprised: she didn’t usually ask anymore. “I’m all right.”

She nodded. “How did the reading go?”

Her questions were unsettling.

“Fine,” I said guardedly.

“Even just for your sake,” she said, not meeting my eye, “you probably should have got him
The Lord of the Rings.”

And then it clicked: she was feeling sorry for me.

“I think it’ll be all right.”

She shrugged. “I’m just saying, he’s only eleven. He wanted something that he knew, something that he could talk about at school, you know?”

I let her talk, not arguing, not saying anything.

“I think—” She leaned against the counter, angled away from me. It looked like she had given this a lot of thought, like she had things she wanted to say. “A present like that, it’s nice, and it was very thoughtful, but it was more about you than it was about him, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t rise to the bait.

“Why didn’t you just buy him what
he
wanted?”

“He’s not ready for it yet.”

She looked at me as if she was expecting something more.

“I’m gonna go,” I said quietly, draining the sink.

“Chris—”

I stopped at the back door, my hand on the knob. “By the way,” I said, as if it had just occurred to me. “I caught him with his light on tonight.”

That galvanized her, and she glanced at the top of the fridge. “Where did you put his game?”

“He wasn’t playing it.” I tried to sound distracted, like it was unimportant. Setting her up.

“Then what—”

I turned the doorknob. “He was reading,” I said as I stepped outside. “His new book.” I closed the door and headed for the garage.

Time for my cigarette du jour.

“What should have been the easy part of our journey is now behind us,” Captain Bream said, dropping his fork onto the tin plate which, only moments before, had been heaped with his breakfast.

Dafyd, Loren and the captain were eating in the garrison captain’s private rooms, masses of eggs and meat and crunchy crusted bread. At first Dafyd had boggled at the amount of food, but he wolfed it down without another thought. The welt on his face burned every time he chewed.

“We’ll be travelling through territory held by the Berok now,” the captain continued. “The watchtowers, once our greatest strength, are now a liability. From them, the Berok can watch the entire valley, and what passes through it.”

Dafyd felt a sickening wave of fear settle into his stomach, and regretted eating so much.

The captain cocked his head toward Loren. “Magus, a map?” he said.

The old man moved his plate aside. Bream and Dafyd followed suit as the magus unrolled a battered scroll onto the table.

“We’re here,” the captain said, pointing.

Dafyd traced the road they had followed from Colcott on the coast along the river, to the unmarked area on the map at which the captain was pointing. The spot was ringed with the jagged shape of mountains, several peaks crested with crowns: the watchtowers.

“Our best course east is through this pass here. It’s a good road. Not busy. Miners, mostly, from the iron mines at Comaric.” He traced the road toward the mountains. “And this pass, Loren?”

The old man considered for a moment, then nodded. “That sounds like a prudent course.”

“I spoke to some of the men last night. There have been no sightings of the Berok, but with the attempt on your life yesterday …” His voice grew thoughtful. “We will need to proceed with utmost care.”

“To say the least,” Loren added, and the captain nodded grimly.

“Our destination is here,” he said, pointing at a spot nestled within the mountains. “A small village near the mine heads. We’ll stay there tonight, and from there”—he gestured at the map, sweeping his hand over the green expanse at the top of the sheet, only rarely broken by roads and even more rarely by towns—“we’re truly on our own.”

I
SET TO WORK
the next morning still thinking about Lazarus Took, and
To the Four Directions
. Castle intrigue? A quest? Sure, it was hoary old material, but he had hooked me again, just like he had when I was a kid.

I managed to push the thoughts to the back of my mind while I wrote, but after that I surrendered. I went back to LazarusTook.com and clicked through to the Biography page.

No mention of
To the Four Directions
. If it weren’t for the familiar style, I might have wondered if there was another Lazarus Took. Why wasn’t there any mention of the book here, or in any of the bibliographies I had found? I had certainly never heard of Alexander Press, but you would think that the webmaster of the official Lazarus Took website would have.

Well, nothing like going to the source.

I clicked on “Contact Us.”

I added the most significant lines as a postscript, hoping they would read as a casual afterthought:

I sent the message and leaned back in my chair.

That would do for the moment; if anyone was likely to know about
To the Four Directions
it would be someone at Took’s official website. If they even bothered to reply.

In the meantime, though, it was still early enough to read a bit of the book while David got ready for school. And then maybe have a wander downtown.

That sounded like the start of a good day.

Coming out of the garrison captain’s quarters, Dafyd was surprised to find the mustering area full not of soldiers, but of miners. It took him only a moment to see through the disguise, but the deception had worked. The men were in clothes tattered and greyed with age and dirt. They seemed broken down, moving with a slowness that Dafyd recognized from seeing men in the tavern who spent their days pulling nets from the sea, or cutting trees to build houses in Colcott town.

Even the horses seemed drab and dull, and Dafyd watched as one of the men picked up a handful of dirt and rubbed it into the shining coat of his mount.

“We’re ready,” Captain Bream said from behind Dafyd.

It was a slow day’s ride, and a long one. The captain sent the men out in three staggered parties. Dafyd, Loren and the captain rode out with the second. Dafyd was just barely able to see the first men ahead of them whenever the road straightened. The road to the pass was narrow, and the trees on either side pressed in on them. They kept the horses at an ambling pace.

“We’re just coming to the pass,” the captain told Dafyd after they had been riding for several hours. “Steady now.”

Looking up, Dafyd was dizzied by the sight of two sheer rock faces towering above him. Deep shadows swallowed the trail ahead.

He shifted uneasily in his saddle. He knew that up there, somewhere, was a watchtower, manned not by soldiers of the Crown but by Berok warriors. He could feel their savage eyes on the small crew of men, studying them. Would the disguises hold?

His neck prickled with the expectation that, at any moment, he might feel the sudden driving thrust of an arrow piercing his back, the cowardly enemy staying safe and unseen as they slaughtered the King’s Men.

He tried to focus on the motion of the horse beneath him. The dull sound of hoofs echoed up the stone walls. How easy it would be for the Berok to come at them from above, or behind. The knife tucked in his boot was faint comfort.

The sky narrowed to the thinnest of lines overhead. The sun had disappeared behind the walls of the pass. Tense to the point of snapping, the
men glanced warily around, twisting in their saddles at the slightest noise.

They rode through the half-light for hours. Dafyd wearied after being alert for so long to every noise, every shadow.

When the road widened again, a rush of relief passed through the group of men. It was as if they had all been holding their breath, and had all exhaled at once. The captain’s grim visage broke into a small smile.

Once through the pass, they gave the horses their heads. The trees were shorter here than they were along the coast. Hardier stock. The air was noticeably drier, and it burned Dafyd’s nose.

Once again, they did not break for a midday meal. The mine heads were a full day’s ride from the garrison, and their deliberate pace through the pass had slowed them. Dafyd was ravenous by the time they arrived at the mining camp, just before sunset.

It was a tiny, squalid place, not quite a village. There were several bunkhouses for the miners, a few scattered houses, a general store, and an inn. Huge piles of ore littered the ground at the foot of the mountains, and black smoke belched into the sky from behind a scrim of trees. The air was grey, and tasted of smoke.

The first company of King’s Men was waiting in the shade near the inn. Captain Bream handed his reins to one of them as he dismounted. He took off the miner’s shirt he had been wearing, revealing his uniform.

Dafyd climbed gingerly from the horse, trying to ignore the gnawing pain in his legs. He followed the captain into the cool dim of the inn’s common room. It was larger than his mother’s tavern, and every table and glass was already full. But where The Mermaid’s Rest would have been filled with the boisterous laughter and good cheer of men at their rest, this place was silent, the drinkers barely looking up. The room stank of spilled ale and old soup.

Captain Bream strode over to the fat man working behind the bar. “I’m looking for the innkeeper.”

The man looked at the captain the way one looks at something he’s stepped in. “You’ve found him,” he said.

Bream drew the folded letter of passage from within his uniform. “I come bearing a letter of mark from the King. My men and I require
lodging for the night, and board for our horses.” He unfolded the letter and laid it on the bar face up. Dafyd could see the King’s seal.

The innkeeper didn’t even look at it. “There’s no rooms tonight,” he said flatly.

Bream pushed the paper closer to him. “I have a letter of passage—”

“And I have no rooms,” the innkeeper said, leaning forward. “Would you have me put all these men out into the cold?” He pushed the letter back across the bar.

Bream’s jaw tightened. “By order of the King—”

“The King,” the innkeeper snorted. “The same King who refused to quarter soldiers here for the last year, even though we warned of the Berok encroaching? The King who would throw us to the wolves rather than send a company to protect his own iron? And now he wants me to put you up for the night as you pass through, before leaving us to the wolves again?”