The Tracker (20 page)

“Throw me the key!” Volos shouted. Arden got it out and threw it upwards. It vanished over the side of the path and dirt rained down as Volos scuffled after it. Then all was silent above.

He had left.
Dagad be merciful, he had taken the key, freed himself, and left Arden here.

Then it was west to the fishers. He wouldn’t trust anyone ever again but the animals that he could control. Arden flailed to reach a higher rock and haul himself up to the path. It pulled free under his fingers and fell down to the sword-weed. The one bearing his weight began to shift.

Metal clinked and Volos reappeared. Arden shouted in fear and relief. “It is giving way!”

Still their hands could not meet, and Volos dropped a cuff over the side. “Grab onto this and I will pull you.”

There had been a shore and river . . . dragons and a bug . . . how had they gotten from there to here? Arden swiped twice for the cuff and missed, but got hold of it the third time. The rock came loose and fell. All of Arden’s weight hung from the cuff, which bit into his fingers.

It was too much for the chain. A link snapped and the cuffs came apart.

Arden fell, Volos shouting as the change in weight yanked him off the path. Then they were plummeting down to the deadly thicket of sword-weed, which was going to gore them to death before the overload of toxin had a chance to kill them first. Arden couldn’t breathe. The wind was rushing into his face with such strength that he could push out no air. His leg struck against a rock, sending an agonizing shock wave through his body, and then he was spinning down and down and down . . .

There were no animals here to save them, and there was only one thing that Arden could do. He forced all of his power into the tracker’s mind.
You feel no pain.

“Arden, don’t!”

You feel no pain
. When they landed, Volos would not feel it as keenly.

Colors tumbled before Arden’s eyes and turned to blackness, a dragon screeched, the hissing of air disappeared, and he crumpled to earth. It was not as painful as he had anticipated, no sword-weed slicing up his flesh, and the burning in his lungs quenched as air resumed its normal flow.

He opened his eyes. He and Volos had fallen back to the shore where they had been originally, the wild men gone and the dragons now off their branch and hunting the bug. The cuffs were still around Volos’s wrists, and the key was in Arden’s pocket.

This was insanity, and Arden had had enough of it. Pulling out the key, he undid the lock, unsnapped the cuffs, and heaved them into the water. Shakily, Volos said, “Was that a dream of the mountain?”

“We could not have shared a dream.” Spying ochodi flowers growing in the shuffle beneath the dragons’ tree, Arden pulled off the thick leaves and crushed them in his fingers. Green sap oozed out and he daubed it into the raw skin on Volos’s wrists. “We will stop this chase now and go. I will take no more orders to find the princess.”

“The princess?”

“That is whom we have been hunting down, the king of Odri’s youngest daughter. Princess Briala is trying to escape an arranged marriage and the king wants her returned to the palace in Lighmoon. I won’t go one step further after her. She belongs to Havanath now.”

“Do you wish to belong to the Cascades?” Crushing a leaf in his fingers, Volos touched it to Arden’s arm where a dragon’s talon had cut in so hard as to make him bleed.

I would belong to you
, Arden thought. He sent his words into the tracker’s mind, too afraid to give them voice. Then a hand came to his cheek and rested there, and Volos kissed him. Heat rushed through Arden’s body at that gentle touch of lips to his, the smell of the ochodi sap sweet between them.

They parted at leisure. Volos tipped his forehead to rest against Arden’s and whispered, “You will never be lonely in the mountains. My mother will be your mother, my brothers your brothers, and we will fill a home with children underfoot and carved dragons and
happiness
, Arden. This does not have to be something you had long ago but lost forever. Just reach out and claim it with me.”

“Yes,” Arden said, and smiled to see Volos’s beautiful smile. The dragons returned from their hunt screeching just as a pleasant breeze blew over a strong scent of shuffle. Arden and Volos got hastily to their feet. They had no pack of supplies, but Arden still had his coin pouch swollen with money, and Volos had a little in addition to his dragon scales. It would see them to the Cascades.

The wild men were nowhere to be seen, nor were the bears, and the mountain path was gone. The animals were just as they should be. But as Arden and Volos went to the trees, they startled at sword-weed growing up between the trunks. It grew fast, going from seedling to full-grown in sheer seconds, and when they turned, it was flourishing behind them on the shore.

“A green-growth penchant,” Arden said. “This must be the man that she is traveling with! It is a spell.”

“It isn’t growing there,” Volos said, pointing to a pair of trees that had nothing between them but fallen leaves. “Hurry, before it sprouts!”

They ran to the trees and passed between them. Sword-weed was coming up everywhere on the other side. Again, there was only one place left to go and they bolted for it. The forest was being consumed, the sword-weed growing so high that it loomed over Arden’s head.

“Is this penchant pushing us away from her?” Arden panted.

“No, he is drawing us closer to her,” Volos said, ducking as sword-weed sprouted along a branch and swung down to his head. Then they could speak no more. The plant was growing even more quickly than before, thrusting up through the soil so that they could not backtrack and twining from tree trunk to tree trunk to create a narrow path that could not be eluded by any means.

When they stumbled into a campsite, they were greeted with the points of swords. That was it, two swords held by no one, but aimed to the chest. Arden held up his hands to show he had no weapon but the knife at his belt. Sucking in his chest as the sword inched forward, Volos addressed the empty air. “Neither of us came of our own accord on this search for you, and we are happy to go our own way and let you go yours.”

“Do you see her?” Arden whispered, for he saw nothing.

“I smell her,” Volos said. “She is holding out the sword to me, and her man to you.”

Then two people were standing there, their hands upon the hilts. It was Princess Briala, her hair pulled back into a braid and her cheeks stained with blood from anger. She was wearing a traveling gown to protect her clothing. The man was dressed as finely as any gentleman, but his face was pale and sweat beaded his brow. He looked tired and ill.

“
Penchant?
” Her voice heated, the princess said, “How is it my father managed to have us followed so swiftly? We never expected to see the messenger birds coming from the ferry captains. We left them only as a precaution.”

“The king used me,” Volos said. “I am a tracker from the Cascades. I can track anyone living or dead. But my employment was under duress, as was the penchant’s.”

The sword lowered from Arden’s chest and the man almost dropped it. The princess cried, “Sit down, Reth! Stop making images and spare your energy.”

“You’re an illusion penchant, not a green-growth,” Arden said in realization. The sword-weed was sinking back into the earth and vanishing.

“Yes,” wheezed the man. “Rethfello Ellonzie, Duke of Halaima of Havanath, great-nephew of the queen.” His trembling fingers went to his purse, which sagged limply from his belt. “I will give you every last coin I have-”

Arden shook his head and the princess flared at the challenge. “Save your words about duty for I will
not
be dragged back to marry Cathali all to placate my father’s business interests! Live in Isle Zayre and bear the children of that gambler and whoremonger and
slavetrader
! Accept whatever coin we have left or be run through.”

“Neither of these things needs to happen,” Volos said as the sword edged ever closer to him. She was so furious that she had not listened to what he had said about going their separate ways. “We share one thing in common, and that is not to be the bauble of a rich man. Let us leave. We only wish to go, Princess Bri-”

“You will not address me as such. I have abdicated my titles and I am only Briala now. How many came with you?” she demanded.

“Two soldiers and a squire,” Arden said as the duke took a seat on a fallen log heavily. “One soldier hurt his ankle very badly and returned to the tram-wood ferry with the squire. The second soldier is across the river believing a bear is after her.”

“No longer,” the duke said weakly. “Act in measure, dear Briala, not in fire. If these are captive men who wish only for their freedom, then I do not believe their intent is at cross-purposes to ours.”

She stared piercingly at Arden and Volos and then lifted away the sword. “Have they any idea of the identity of my companion?”

“None,” Arden said. “The soldiers talked about your Hav contacts but his name was not among them.” That was curious to Arden. “I do not know how he was overlooked. They were quite thorough.”

The duke’s posture had improved with the cessation of his skill. He wiped the sweat from his brow and said, “I am fiftieth in line to the Hav throne, an illusion penchant of no great strength, and I came to Odri to serve only as a language tutor for a year some time ago. That is why I was overlooked. I would be considered of no import, as I was of none then, and have only been named to Halaima in the interim with the death of my older sister.”

“
Arden!
” It was Keth, who was shouting from the other side of the river. Trees and bushes concealed the campsite and its inhabitants, and Arden could not see Keth in return.

“Is she coming over on a ferry?” Volos asked in worry.

“
Arden!
”

“There is none, and we never saw the captain who should be in this area,” Briala said. “He must be delivering passengers to some other port. We had to build a tram-wood for ourselves and we sank it when we got to this shore.”

“It practically sank itself,” the duke said in good humor. “We had to cut the horses free; it could not bear their weight.”

“You could pay us in an illusion, if you have the strength for one more,” Arden said quickly to the duke as Keth shouted again. “We do not want to be pursued for our skills. Put an illusion on that shore of us dead by some means for the soldier to see.”

“He does not have the strength,” Briala said.

“I can do that much for them as our gratitude,” the duke replied, a glimmer in his blue eyes. “It’s the quick images that take it out of me, not the mostly static ones. Come, fellow penchant, tracker. Let us see if we can’t conjure something together.” Nervous about how close the soldier was despite the river, Briala moved fast around the campsite to gather their belongings.

Leaving her behind, they slunk through the trees to the shore. Volos breathed in Keth’s scent and said, “She is walking this way along her side.”

“Then let us go around that bend and put you two there,” the duke said. This task was amusing him. They crept around tall rocks until they had a view of a sandy nook. Then two shapes appeared half-in and half-out of the water, Arden’s hand thrown out to the trees and the lower half of Volos’s body bobbing in the small waves. They were face down.

“Arden! Can you hear me?”

There were dragons in the trees, gray-and-blacks and battle golds, and a larger light gray on the ground. Arden called them over. They screeched and shrieked over the quiet river, Volos taking in more scent and nodding that the soldier was following the racket. Arden commanded the dragons to fly around over the bodies and fight, one or another dipping down to nip at the flesh and the others chasing it off to claim the corpses for their own.

“She’s watching,” Volos said, peering through a crack in the boulders. “Her hand is over her mouth in horror.”

FIRE
. The light gray dragon reeled back and blasted fire at the battle gold as it dove down. The flames missed it and engulfed the bodies instead. When it lifted, they were nothing but ash on the water.

“What is she doing now?” the duke asked.

“Retreating,” Volos said. “She can only track Briala if she has me, and now she does not. But she still knows you are going to Havanath.”

“But not where in Havanath, she has no immediate means of crossing the brother, and it is only four more days for us to reach Halaima. Since you will not take our money, we will invest the last in a fast horse and carriage when we get to Kado and make it two days. Then Briala will send a letter to the papers in every land announcing our marriage. Her father can do nothing then. No Isle Zayre prince will marry a woman who has given herself to another man.”

He inclined his head to them. “I would suggest you make haste from the forest. Should any other force come along to stop us, this will become a place of illusion once more.”

“We have no wish to linger,” Volos said with barely restrained excitement.

“A day’s journey from here will see you to the town of Amberg, should you need supplies for a longer journey to the Cascades. Just travel along the river and you will not miss it. Good travels to you, freemen.”