The Familiars (16 page)

“We need to split up here,” said Aldwyn. “Skylar, fly ahead without us, and Gilbert and I will meet up with you where the ferry docks on the other side of the river.”

She nodded.

“I wish I could come with you,” said Tammy, stepping closer to Aldwyn, “but I don’t know what help I’d be. There’s probably not much use on a magical mission for a regular cat like me.”

Little did she know how alike they really were! Aldwyn promised himself that one day he would tell her the whole truth.

“Thank you. For everything,” he said.

Tammy nuzzled his neck, getting a few specks of gray soot on her nose.

“You should hurry,” Skylar said. “The last people are boarding the ferry.”

“Good luck,” Tammy called as Aldwyn and Gilbert stepped out onto the road.

The two moved swiftly along the path crowded with traders and their horses. Aldwyn led the way, while Gilbert tried to keep up behind him.

“Quit hopping,” said Aldwyn.

“Oops,” said the feathered frog, changing his bounce to a waddle. “I forgot.”

Gilbert was hardly the most convincing chicken. Not only were his movements highly questionable, but the feathers on his body kept making him sneeze.

To make matters worse, now a small gang of townsfolk was marching in their direction.

“The cat, over there!” a voice called out, but then the mob moved right past them.

“I saw it heading for the tavern,” continued the same voice as they turned the corner.

Aldwyn relaxed. Their disguises, as makeshift as they were, seemed to be serving their purpose.

But just as they had reached the ferry landing and pushed in between a crowd of driftfolk and
miners, Grimslade appeared again, led by the wolf’s nose. Aldwyn looked over his shoulder and saw that it was homing in on them, the snout breathing excitedly and tugging at its chain. Gilbert glanced back and saw Grimslade getting closer.

“It’s the bounty hunter,” he croaked nervously.

Up ahead, dockhands were beginning to close the railing on the back of the ferry.

“The rest of you will have to wait until the high sun crossing,” announced a dockhand to the remaining travelers.

“We need to get on that boat,” said Aldwyn. “Run!”

Aldwyn and Gilbert burst out from between the legs of one of the driftfolk and sprinted for the ferry. Behind them, Grimslade had stopped and was scanning his surroundings. The Olfax snout was sniffing wildly, a sure sign that what it was hunting had to be hiding somewhere nearby.

Aldwyn and Gilbert scurried beneath the guardrail and onto the ferry just as the dockhands finished untying the raft from the landing. Gilbert relaxed, convinced they were out of harm’s way.

“We made it,” he said.

“We’re not safe until the boat leaves,” replied Aldwyn.

A large juicy fly landed on Aldwyn’s back and Gilbert shot his tongue out, slurping it up.

“Gilbert, chickens don’t eat flies!”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

Anxiously, Aldwyn glanced back at Grimslade. And he was right to be anxious, because the bounty hunter had his eyes locked on the two of them. Clearly, Gilbert’s slip-up hadn’t escaped his notice. Then Aldwyn saw a trail of sooty gray paw prints in the sand leading to the ferry, and he knew that the game was up.

“Come on, come on,” said Aldwyn frantically even though he knew the dockhands couldn’t understand him. “Let’s go.”

Now Grimslade was running down the slope toward the water, his boots kicking up mud behind him. “Stop that ferry!” he shouted.

As the raft moved farther from the shore, Grimslade charged into the river. He pulled his crossbow from his shoulder and took aim at Aldwyn, firing off a steel-tipped bolt.

It whizzed across the surface of the water and embedded itself in the wooden side rail, missing Aldwyn by mere inches. The boat was picking up speed now, putting a safe distance between them and Grimslade, who was wading in deeper, but to no avail. When he was up to his chest in water, the bounty hunter stopped and simply stared at Aldwyn and Gilbert, silent and menacing.

Aldwyn exhaled, relieved to have narrowly escaped capture yet again. But he was certain this would not be the last time he would find himself the target of Grimslade’s deadly crossbow.

11

THE BRIDGE OF BETRAYAL

A
ldwyn and Gilbert sat on the edge of the raft, still disguised as a gray cat and a chicken. They stared down at the clear blue waters of the Ebs as the ferry glided toward the dock on the other side. The raft shook as a wave hit it, and Aldwyn realized he hadn’t felt seasick during any part of the voyage. He thought of what Jack had asked him during their bedtime conversation and couldn’t wait to tell his wizard companion that he’d be well suited to make many a long ocean journey with him into the Beyond.
Aldwyn hoped Marianne didn’t have a similar wish to travel the world, as Gilbert had appeared nauseated from the moment they had hit their first wave.

Two sturdy men carrying pickaxes, whose shoulders were as wide as wagon wheels, walked up to the side rail. One of them held the Wanted poster in his hand. His fingernails were crusted with silver ore.

“Animal fugitives?” he asked his fellow miner. “What do you suspect they did? Chewed up the royal slippers?”

The two let out a nasty laugh.

“The queen hasn’t been right in the head for months,” replied the one with the cracked boots, whose feet, Aldwyn couldn’t help but notice, smelled like spoiled bacon. “I heard she dismissed all the Council elders and replaced them with servants too fearful to question her.”

“As long as the mines keep hiring, it don’t matter to me.”

Aldwyn gave Gilbert a tug and pulled him to the other side of the raft, away from the scary-looking miners who would have grabbed them in
a heartbeat if they realized the prize that was sitting at their feet.

As the ferryman guided the boat through the shallows, Aldwyn observed how different it was on this side of the river. A green forest came down toward them, reaching all the way to the shore. Scribius had drawn this on the map and called it the Hinterwoods. The air felt different here, too, drier and filled with the smell of fallen pine needles. The Peaks of Kailasa towered behind the forest, appearing far closer than they actually were.

When the ferry reached the landing, one of the raftsmen leaped to the dock and tied the boat fast. Passengers began to disembark and unload their cargo, and Aldwyn and Gilbert darted off in the midst of the crowd. Surveying the port, Aldwyn didn’t see any sign of Skylar, but he did notice two buildings: one a small shop selling mining equipment, the other a place to dine and rest, with tables and hammocks inside. A red mud road led away from the river, carving a twisting path through the Hinterwoods to the mountains.

“Hey, over here,” they heard Skylar’s voice call
from a low-lying tree branch.

Aldwyn and Gilbert turned to see a black beak sticking out from behind the green leaves and hurried over. With Scribius’s map unfolded at her feet, Skylar was busy plotting their next move.

“We’ll follow the road here,” she said, gesturing to a bridge on the map. “This is the only way to cross the gorge that separates us from the Peaks of Kailasa.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” said Gilbert.

But Skylar continued, ignoring him. “Then we’ll have to make our own path to the Mountain Alchemist.” She looked up at them and stopped, trying to hold back a laugh. “I’m sorry, but have the two of you looked at yourselves recently?”

Aldwyn peered down to see he only had patches of gray left on his black-and-white fur. Gilbert fared no better: the carrot beak was hanging off his face at an odd angle, and patches of green skin were visible where feathers had once been stuck.

“It was a long trip,” said Aldwyn.

“Well, you won’t be needing disguises where we’re headed,” said Skylar. “Fortunately, few dare to brave the unknown horrors that lurk in the
heart of the mountains.”

“Fortunately?” asked Gilbert in a state of alarm. “What’s fortunate about that?”

“We should keep moving,” urged Aldwyn, glancing up at the peaks. “This looks like a steep climb.”

Aldwyn’s first concern was rescuing Jack and the other loyals, who were chained up in the dungeon of the Sunken Palace. But now he had Grimslade to worry about, too. He knew full well that the bounty hunter would be traveling on the next ferry across, if he wasn’t taking a different boat even sooner.

The sounds of men and horses had long faded into the distance as the familiars hiked up the red mud road toward the mountains. Aldwyn had brushed the remaining soot from his fur and Gilbert pulled every last chicken feather from his cornmeal-covered body, yelping every time he removed one.

“So, when you said ‘unknown horrors,’ what exactly did you mean?” Gilbert asked Skylar as he looked nervously to the eerily still woods on
either side of the road.

“Well, if I knew what they were, they wouldn’t be unknown, would they?”

Gilbert gulped.

The path was getting steeper now and the air thinner. The tree line of the Hinterwoods was behind them, and from this high vantage point, Aldwyn could see just how far he had come; leagues upon leagues of East Vastia spread out below them, all the way back to Bridgetower, which from here appeared to be just a dot on the Ebs. Aldwyn’s eyes slowly retraced their trail along the river back to the gray and green brush of the Weed Barrens. His leg muscles still ached from the tight grip of the octopot’s tentacles. Then his gaze shifted ever so slightly to the swamps of Daku, and he wondered if Gilbert’s father was watching them right now—or rather, he corrected himself, in the future. North of Daku, past the windswept fields, was the outpost town where Tammy had allowed him to feel like himself again. He certainly wouldn’t mind having another moonlit stroll with her at some point. Finally he glanced down to the river, where the
ferry was making another crossing. How quickly a journey could be made in one’s mind when the travels by foot took so long!

Gilbert, huffing and wheezing, found a spot to stop along the side of the road. He dug into his flower bud backpack of flies and maggots that his mother had given him. Although the meal itself seemed quite unappetizing to Aldwyn, the thought of a snack was tempting. He decided to search Jack’s pouch, hoping to find something to eat inside. Since Agdaleen had poked a hole through the top, Aldwyn had been extra careful to keep it upright. And sure enough, not a single item had spilled from it during their trek. He pawed through the steel marbles, ground glow worm, and clover to see what might be hiding beneath them. He discovered a whittled stick, a piece of chalk, and a small square of white taffy. Taffy was a sugary treat for a boy but a tooth-sticking, stomach-twisting bad idea for a cat. On a previous hungry day in Bridgetower, Aldwyn had made the mistake of scraping a gob of mint taffy off the bottom of a bench and eating it. For a week after, he had a sore belly and aching teeth.
He chose to leave the sweet alone, but before he tightened the strings of the pouch, he spied a folded-up piece of parchment. Aldwyn gently plucked it out with his teeth and flattened it with his paw. There on the page was a picture sketched in charcoal of Aldwyn sleeping by the fire in Kalstaff’s cottage. Jack must have drawn it while Aldwyn was dreaming that first evening in Stone Runlet. The words
My Familiar
were written above the drawing. This picture and those two simple words gave Aldwyn a warm tingling deep in his chest. This, he thought, is what it must feel like to be loved.

“We’re going to find them,” said Skylar. She put a comforting wing over his shoulder.

Aldwyn nodded before returning the parchment to the pouch.

After consulting Scribius’s map once more, Skylar flew forward, with Aldwyn and Gilbert following. It looked as if no human travelers had ventured this far for some time, given the lack of footprints. As they went further still, a chill wind began to cut across the slope, blowing through Aldwyn’s whiskers and making it difficult for
Skylar to fly. Then they saw four white hoofs coming down the mud road. The feet belonged to a bearded billy goat, who appeared before them. He had snow on his back and icicles dangling from the fur on his chin and eyebrows.

“Are you lost?” asked the billy goat. “I don’t see many who climb this high.”

“We’re heading for the Peaks,” explained Skylar.

“I’ve just returned from there. A month of prayer at the very top. Are you seeking spiritual guidance as well?”

“No,” replied Skylar. “We have more earthly matters to tend to.”

“Have you made this trip before?”

The familiars shook their heads.

“Well, I’d be careful if I were you. It’s winter up there. And a thunderstorm is already brewing. If you thought snow was bad, wait until it comes hand in hand with lightning.”

“We won’t be staying long,” said Aldwyn.

“Oh, and I hope you’re not planning on crossing the bridge together,” the goat said rather casually.

“It’s my understanding there’s no other way,” said Skylar.