Tanequil (34 page)

She hauled herself to her feet and with some effort stumbled over to where he stood. “What's it to be, little Ulk Bog? A bargain or a good-bye? I don't really care anymore.”

He stared at her some more, his yellow eyes flicking left and right, up and down, scanning the whole of her face, but never settling on any one part. She could see a glimmer of doubt and fear mirrored there. But she could also see hope.

He nodded. “Very well, Grianne of the many promises. I will tell you, even though I think all Strakens lie.” He spit again and shook his head. “I know who you are and where you come from. I always did. I know because I was Catcher for Tael Riverine before Hobstull was. I would be Catcher still if the Straken Lord hadn't decided I had lost my skills. He was wrong, but there is no arguing with a Straken. So he replaced me. But not before he humiliated me in ways I will never discuss, so don't ask it of me.”

He swallowed hard. “He took me in when I was driven from my tribe for eating my young. He cared nothing for any of that, only for what I could do for him. He recognized my skills and offered me a place at Kraal Reach as his Catcher. He knew that I would accept, that I had to because I could not survive alone and unprotected in the world of the Jarka Ruus. He gave me what I needed, but then he took everything back when he cast me out. So I vowed that I would take everything from him in turn.”

His voice grew fierce. “The plans to bring you here have been in place for some time. Tael Riverine would swap you for his changeling creature, the Moric. Easy enough for a Straken of his power. I decided to disrupt his plans by getting to you first, which I did. I intended to take you away from him, to steal you out from under his nose. I intended to embarrass Hobstull and reveal him to the Straken Lord as a failure! Then I would produce you and regain my rightful place!”

He was breathing hard, his eyes become narrow slits, his throat working rapidly as he sought to gauge her reaction. She gave him nothing, listening blank-faced and empty-eyed, her talent as the Ilse Witch resurfacing from where she had kept it buried for twenty years.
So easy to call it up again,
she thought.
So easy to go back to being what I was.

“My plan failed when you refused to come with me,” Weka Dart continued. “Failed completely. I tried everything. But you were so insistent on going your own way! And I couldn't change your mind without giving myself away!” He shook his head. “So I let you go. I said,
If that is what she wants, then give it to her! See how well she does without you! Walk away from the Straken and nothing is lost!
I wasn't going to risk my life following after you when I knew what would happen. Hobstull was looking, and it was only a matter of time until he found you. He didn't know exactly where you would appear, only that you would. But I knew! I knew, because I have always been better able to read the signs of such things! I have always been the better Catcher!”

He spit the words out and flung himself away from the cell bars, dropping to the floor in a crouch, refusing to look at her. She watched him for a moment, her mind working through the choices his revelations had given her.

“Weka Dart,” she said.

He stayed where he was.

“Look at me.”

He refused, turned away, and hunched down.

“Look at me. Tell me what you see in my eyes.”

Finally, he turned just enough to glance over his shoulder and make momentary eye contact, then looked away again.

“I am not angry with you,” she said. “You did what I would have done if our positions had been reversed. In fact, once upon a time, when I was a different person living a different life, I did things much worse to others than what you have done to me.”

He looked back at her once more.

“I don't hate you,” she told him.

“You should.” His teeth clicked as his jaws snapped shut.

“My hate is reserved for others more deserving and less forthcoming about their efforts to see me dead and gone.” She gestured for him to come back. “Tell me the rest of what you know.”

He stayed where he was a moment longer, then sighed, rose, and came back to stand in front of her. “You don't hate me? If you were free, you wouldn't try to kill me?”

She shook her head. “I don't hate you. Even if I had the chance to do so, I wouldn't try to kill you. Now tell me the rest. Do you know the Straken Lord's plans?”

The Ulk Bog nodded. “I was here at Kraal Reach when he was making them.” He looked closely at her. “You still don't know what he intends? You haven't seen the way he looks at you?”

She went cold all the way to her bones, the little man's words conjuring up an image that froze her blood. “Tell me.”

“He has been testing you to see if you are a suitable vessel to bear his children. He wishes to mate with you.”

For the first time, she was really afraid. The demon was anathema to her. She could think of no worse fate than to be the mother of its children, the mother of demonkind, a bearer of monsters. She had never considered the possibility. She had never recognized that the Straken Lord had any interest in her beyond keeping her imprisoned and alive until its creature, the Moric, could do whatever it had been sent to do in her own world.

“This was the reason for bringing me here?” she managed to ask, working hard to keep her voice steady.

Weka Dart shook his head, his gimlet eyes glittering. “No. The idea must have occurred to him after you were his prisoner. His plans are much grander than that.”

“How much grander?”

The Ulk Bog leaned close. “He has been searching for a way to send the Moric into your world for some time. But for that to happen, it was necessary to find someone in your world willing to help. He found those people, and he used them as his tool. Whoever they were had no idea what the Straken Lord intended, but were only interested in disposing of you. That was what your betrayer knew—that using the magic would banish you to the world of the Jarka Ruus. That, and nothing more. Your betrayers knew nothing of the exchange, nothing of the way the magic really worked, nothing of the trade that was necessary to bring you here. The Straken Lord was careful to keep that secret hidden.”

As well it should have been,
she thought. But she wasn't sure that knowing a trade was required would have stopped whoever was desperate enough to send her into the Forbidding.

“But why was I brought here if not to mate with Tael Riverine?” she pressed.

“You miss the point, Straken!” Weka Dart snapped. “Bringing you here was never what mattered! What mattered was sending the Moric into your world!”

She shook her head. “Why?”

“So that it could destroy the barrier that keeps us locked away! So that it could free the Jarka Ruus!”

Now she understood. The Moric had been sent to complete the task that the Dagda Mor had failed to accomplish more than five hundred years earlier—to break down the walls of the prison behind which the dark things of Faerie had been shut since before the dawn of Man.

Her mind raced. To do that, it would have to destroy the Ellcrys, the magic-born Elven tree that had been created to ward the Forbidding. How would it manage that, when the tree was always so closely guarded?

More important, how could she stop it from happening?

“Does the Moric have a way to destroy the barrier?” she asked Weka Dart.

He shook his head. “It was to find one once it crossed over into your world. It is very talented and very smart. It will have done so by now.”

She ignored the fear that rushed through her at the thought that the Ulk Bog might be right. “Do you have a way to get me out of here?” she asked quickly.

On the landing above them, at the top of the stairway, a door opened and closed with a thud. Footsteps sounded on the stone steps, coming down.

“On the floor!” he hissed at her, and darted away.

She threw herself back down, sprawling in the same position in which he had found her, her heart pounding, her muscles tensed.
Don't move,
she told herself.
Don't do anything.

The steps approached her cell and came to a stop. A silence settled in like morning mist.

Eyes closed, body still, she waited.

 
T
WENTY-NINE
 

Pen Ohmsford's ascent from the ravine was an endless slog. Burdened with self-recrimination and despair, it was all he could do to place one foot in front of the other. He kept thinking he should go back, should attempt one final time to free Cinnaminson, make one more plea or take one last stand. But he knew it was pointless even to think about doing so. Nothing would change until he had some better means of succeeding. Yet he couldn't stop thinking about it. He couldn't stop himself from feeling that he should have done more.

Lead-footed, he climbed through the hazy darkness, working his way up the narrow switchback trail, ducking under vines and brushing past brambles and scrub, leaning on his staff for support, his thoughts scattered all over the place. His grip about the rune-carved handle of the darkwand helped to center him, a reassurance that he had accomplished something in the midst of all the failures. Lives had been lost and hopes blown away like dried leaves in a strong wind, and he blamed himself for most of it. He should have done better, he kept telling himself, even though he could not think what more he might have done or exactly what he might have changed. Hindsight suggested possibilities, but hindsight was deceptive, sifted through a filter of distance and reason. Things were never so easy as they seemed later. They were mostly wild and confused and emotionally charged. Hindsight pretended otherwise.

But knowing so didn't make him feel any better. Knowing so only made him work harder to find a reason to believe he had failed.

He took some comfort in the fact that he had gotten to Stridegate at all, that he had confronted the tanequil and found a way to communicate with it, that he had secured the limb he needed and shaped it into the darkwand. He had gotten much farther with his quest than he had ever believed he would. He had never spoken of it, but he had always thought in the back of his mind that what the King of the Silver River had sent him to do was impossible. He had always thought that he was the wrong choice, a boy with little experience and few skills, a boy asked to do something that most grown men would not even attempt. He did not know what had persuaded him to try. He guessed it was the expectations of those who had accompanied him. He guessed it was his own need to prove himself.

These and other equally troubling thoughts roiled through his brain as he climbed, working along the tunnels of his conscience like worms, probing and sifting for explanations that would satisfy them. He tried to lay them to rest, but he only managed to settle with a few. The rest continued on, digging away, finding fresh food in his doubts and fears and frustrations, growing and fattening and taking up all the space his emotional well-being would allow.

He rested at one point, dropping down on his haunches with his back against the wall of the ravine, feeling the cold and damp of the earth seep through his clothing and enter his body, too tired to care. He leaned on the darkwand for support as he lowered his head and cried soundlessly, unable to help himself. He was not the hero and adventurer he had envisioned himself to be. He was just a boy who wanted to go home.

But he knew that wasn't something that was going to happen anytime soon, and it wasn't helping him to think that it might, so he quit crying, stood up, and began climbing once more. Overhead, the daylight was beginning to fail, a graying of the sky that signaled the onset of twilight. He needed to reach the top of the ravine so that he could cross the bridge before it was dark. It never occurred to him that he would have any trouble doing so; the tanequil would let him pass unmolested. It had taken from him already what it wanted.

The slope broadened and the trail cut away from the bridge into a thicket of scrub and grasses that quickly melded into the beginnings of the island forest. The way forward grew more difficult and the light continued to dim steadily. He continued on, eyes forward as he resisted the urge to look back, knowing he would see nothing if he did, that she was too far away from him now. His memories of her were firmly etched in his mind, and that was as much as he could hope for.

He was thirsty and wished he had something to drink, but that would have to wait. He was hungry, too. He hadn't eaten anything since . . . He tried to remember and couldn't. More than a day, he thought. Much more. His stomach rumbled and his head felt light from the ascent, but there was no help for it.

He rested again, pausing in the dark concealment of a stand of saplings to let the dizziness pass, and it was then that he realized he wasn't alone. It happened all at once. A mix of things warned him of his danger—things not so much external as internal, a sensing through his magic that the world about him wasn't quite right. He stood listening to the silence, took notice of the way the light shifted with the passing of clouds west across the sunset, caught the feel of the wind through the trees. His awareness was born of those mundane, ordinary observations, though he couldn't explain why. Something was there that hadn't been there earlier. Something he knew.

Or someone.

He felt a chill creep up his spine as he waited, trying to decide what he should do. His instincts told him that he was in danger, but they did not yet tell him what that danger was. If he moved, he might give himself away. If he stayed where he was, he might be found out anyway.

Finally, unable to think of anything else to do, he started forward, very slowly, a few steps at a time. Then he stopped and waited again, listening. Nothing. He took a deep breath and exhaled silently. If something was there, it was probably deeper in. His better choice was to skirt the rim of the island, above the ravine, until he reached the bridge and could then cross.

It occurred to him suddenly that he might be sensing someone from his own party, Khyber perhaps, grown impatient with his delay. But he didn't think Khyber would elicit the sort of response he was having; he wouldn't be made so uneasy by her presence. His reaction was surprising in any case, given the nature of his magic. Usually, he required contact with animals or birds or plants for such sensations to happen. Yet his response hadn't been triggered by any of those. It was coming from somewhere else entirely.

Move,
he told himself silently, mouthing the word.

He started ahead, angling back toward the ravine. He could just make it out through the screen of the trees, the earth split wide and deep, a maw as black as night. An image formed, unbidden.
Cinnaminson.
He cast the troubling image aside angrily.
Move!

To his left, farther into the trees and away from the ravine, something shifted. He saw it out of the corner of his eye and froze instantly. Leaves and grasses shivered, and the air stilled. Twilight had fallen in a gray mantle that blended shadows into strange patterns that gave everything the look of being alive.

He was aware suddenly that he was silhouetted against the horizon, easily identifiable by any eye. He thought to drop flat, but movement of that sort would give him away instantly. He stayed where he was, a statue, waiting.

In the trees, there was fresh movement. He saw it clearly this time, shadows separating and taking shape, the outline of a cloaked figure revealing itself. The figure crept through the maze of dark trunks and layered shadows like an animal, crouched down and moving on all fours.

Spiderlike.

He recognized it from their previous encounters. It was the thing that had chased him when he fled the seaport of Anatcherae to cross the Lazareen. It was the monster that had killed Gar Hatch and his crew and taken Cinnaminson.

It had tracked him all the way.

His heart sank. It was moving away from him, which meant it did not yet know exactly where he was. But it would find him soon enough, and when it did, he would have to face it. He wasn't going to have any choice. He knew it with a certainty that defied argument. He might try to run, to reach the bridge and cross to where his companions waited, but he would never make it. Flight wasn't going to save him. Not from this.

His fingers tightened on the darkwand, and he wondered again if it might possess a magic that could save him.

Then he wondered if anything could.

 

 

Khyber Elessedil had walked for the better part of two hours, following the dark line of the ravine through the trees, searching without success for a way across. At times, the gap narrowed, but never enough to suggest that trying to jump it or bridge it with a tree was going to work. Unchanging in its look as it twisted and turned and disappeared into the horizon, it angled on ahead of her as she stopped to consider whether to continue.

She glanced west, where the sun was dropping toward the jagged peaks of the Klu. No more than an hour or two of daylight remained. She sighed in exasperation. She did not want to give up, but she did not want to get caught out there alone in the dark, either. She looked ahead once more, then reluctantly turned around and started back. There was no help for it. Tomorrow, if Pen and Cinnaminson hadn't reappeared, she would consider going the other way, following the ravine north.

Or perhaps she would simply cross the bridge and find them, her promise to wait notwithstanding.

Perhaps enough was enough.

She trooped back through the trees and grasses, muttering to herself and thinking that they had all been ill served in the venture, starting with the questionable decision by the King of the Silver River to entrust the rescue of the Ard Rhys to Pen. Not that she doubted Pen's courage, but he was only a boy, much younger even than she and totally lacking in skills or magic. That he was still alive at all after what had happened to them was something of a miracle. Look how many of their company had died instead, including the most talented and experienced of them all.

But it didn't do her any good to think that way—to suggest that in some way Ahren Elessedil had died without reason—and she put the matter aside. Her doubts and fears could not be placed at the feet of others. If she was worried or afraid, she would have to find another way of dealing with it.

She thought it odd how things had changed since she had left Emberen. There, her chief concern had been in determining how and when to reveal to Ahren her theft of the Elfstones so that he wouldn't take them back until she had learned to use them. Now that the Elfstones were hers to keep for as long as she chose, she wanted nothing more than to be able to give them back.

Thinking she might as well wish she could fly for all the good it would do her, she kicked at the earth as she walked. She was in until the end, which meant at least until Pen had returned to Paranor and gone into the Forbidding to find his aunt. Even then, she would not be free to go home again until Pen reappeared safely. Probably, she should go with him. After all, they only had the word of the King of the Silver River that she couldn't, and there was good reason to question anything the Faerie creature had told them.

The sun slid down into the peaks, coloring the horizon in the wake of its passing, leaving the depthless bowl of the sky dark with night's approach. She cast wary glances left and right as she walked, using her Druid skills to make certain she was not being tracked by anything unfriendly. The Urdas might have chosen to come around the walls at the front of the ruins in an effort to get at them from the sides.

It was because her senses were pricked and her magic deployed that she found Pen. It happened unexpectedly, when she was nearing the bridge, her attention focused mostly on her return to her companions. She caught a whiff of his presence and slowed at once, casting all about. He wasn't immediately visible, but she could tell that he was still on the far side of the ravine, back in the trees. He was moving slowly and cautiously, as if wary of something.

When he appeared at the ravine's edge, her impression was confirmed. He was advancing in a crouch through a thin screen of trees, stopping frequently to look back into the deeper part of the forest. Each time he did so, he cocked his head as if listening for something. Or
to
something. She couldn't tell.

She thought to call out to him, but she was afraid that if she did so, she would give him away to whatever he was trying to avoid. So she waited, tracking his movements. She noticed a dark staff he was carrying, something new. Was it the darkwand? A rush of expectation surged through her. It must be. He had found what he had come for and was heading back.

She wondered suddenly what had become of Cinnaminson. Pen would never leave her behind, at least not without good reason. Perhaps he was trying to lead whatever pursued him away from the Rover girl. That sounded right.

As he edged ahead, she went with him, keeping low in the scrub and grasses, aware that the darkness was deepening and her ability to see lessening. There was no sign of the moon, and there were few stars in a clouded sky. Soon she wouldn't be able to see him at all.

Then a black shape appeared out of the trees behind the boy, a cloaked and hooded form that she knew immediately. It was the monster from Anatcherae. It had tracked them all that way, and now it was over there with Pen and had him alone. Her scalp crawled, and she felt a moment of panic. All she wanted to do was to rush to his rescue.

But she couldn't reach him. No one could.

Her fingers fumbled wildly for the Elfstones, but even as they closed about the talismans, she hesitated. There was no reason to think their magic would work against the creature. And there was no time to test it. She needed something else, something more reliable.

Her mind raced in search of a solution as the black thing crept closer to her friend.

 

 

Pen was still trying to decide what to do, still frozen by fear and indecision, when he heard the voices. At first he was certain that his hearing was playing tricks on him, that he was imagining things, that the loss of Cinnaminson had affected his mind. He cocked his head in response, trying to understand why the wind would sound as it did and why it would do so now.