And the leader added, “The Accursed Ones are hunting you.”
So much for his careful ruses.
Still, he had to test them. He pulled Cassandra’s hatpin from the inner seam of his knapsack were he’d carefully pinned it. The silver flashed in the sunlight, but did not lengthen into a sword.
The sight of the pin caused them to react with surprise. Senrid’s insides tightened when the leader said, “I recognize that artifact.”
“Cassandra Muria lent it to me,” Senrid stated, and again saw subtle signs of recognition when he spoke her name. Oh yes, she’d come from this area. Instinct urged him not to lie to these Knights. “She was a fellow prisoner down south at the Norsunder Base. When we were rescued, she said I could use it. She stayed in Sartor to recover.”
“And you are seeking these foreign children that the Norsundrians also seek?”
Since he’d gone this far, there was no point in holding anything back. “They’re not just foreigners, they’re from off-world. I know a way that they could close the Norsundrian access rift using this—” He held up the hatpin.
The young Knights looked to their leader as one’s horse whuffed. Another animal shifted its weight, hooves clopping on the hard ground.
The leader, a middle-aged man with thinning gray hair, had bowed his head. His scalp gleamed in the sun. Finally he looked up. “It is a worthy goal.”
There was no overt change in their expressions or manner, but Senrid sensed approval. They four rode the carefully bred white-coated horses famed here in the north. Having grown up around horses, Senrid appreciated how these animals were as well-behaved as their honey-colored cousins from the Nelkereth plains near Marloven Hess. Senrid felt their focus, too, another instinctive reaction that he didn’t quite know what to make of.
“You must proceed warily,” the leader said, as he fingered his short gray beard. Then his hand dropped to stroke his mount’s neck. “If you are a prince from a foreign land, you too are being sought. We will take you to our border.”
He nodded to one of the young ones, who extended a hand and pulled Senrid up behind him. Senrid barely had time to thrust the hatpin through his cuff before they took off across the field to the north.
Chapter Eighteen
Much as I’d like to believe otherwise, Senrid thought the next morning, this Siamis is not an idiot. If he thinks I’m after his secret rift, he’s going to sic an entire wing on me.
He’d learned that asking questions made him a target. So he’d have to do his listening covertly.
If he could find a hint of civilization.
After a day or two of walking through denser oak-and-fir forestland, he began to wish that learning woodcraft had been one of the ‘safe’ subjects. He’d picked up a few basic rules during his brief acquaintanceship with Leander Tlennen-Hess, but not enough: he knew that a good tracker would easily find him.
Add to that the need for food. He still carried his knapsack, in hopes that he’d enter some area within Lois magic’s reach again. He had no idea where they lived outside of Sartor.
He tried to content himself with water, for there was very little wild fruit in this forest. Lots of berries, and an astonishing variety of nuts, but he didn’t dare eat any that he did not recognize.
It was also frustrating to have the wrong weapons. He was excellent with a bow, and could throw a knife with deadly accuracy—both skills he could secretly practice on his own, without his uncle knowing. He’d also gotten lessons in contact fighting from Commander Keriam. He was very good at that, too, though he had no illusions about his ability to take on trained adults.
But his uncle had forbidden anyone on pain of death to teach Senrid sword fighting, and here he was, his only weapon this hatpin. It was foolish to keep it buried in the knapsack where it would take precious time to get it free. He kept it in the cuff of his shirt, against the inside of his wrist.
Then began the long trudge northward in search of a road. Twice he came across paths, but when one wandered off to the west he abandoned it; another ended at a riverbank. By the time he found a relatively safe place in which to cross the river, he’d lost the path—if there even was one on the north side.
Nightfall comes fast in deep forest.
In a vile mood Senrid wrapped himself up in his cloak, picked a mossy spot under a huge tree, and tried to sleep.
His dreams were even more vile: revisits to his days in Norsunder’s Base.
I have time for this one now, Detlev said, and laughed.
The laughter shrieked on, and on, harsh, high, insane . . . and Senrid woke up in a clammy sweat to find a chipmunk sitting on his chest, chattering away. The idea of Detlev sounding like a chipmunk made laughter bubble inside Senrid’s chest, but it popped. The memory of those direct gray eyes with their little flecks of green was much too vivid, the atmosphere too tense.
Senrid had dismissed all the foolishness about the eleventh hour as lighter hyperbole . . . but now he wondered what time it was.
He rose on his elbows and blinked. Moonlight shone in the little creature’s round, dark eyes, and Senrid could have sworn he saw not just fear but urgency.
“Are you warning me?” he addressed the chipmunk—and then he felt stupid for talking to a woodland animal.
It stopped chattering, its head alert, as though listening. For a moment it sat like that, utterly still, then flick! It was gone, with only a faint rustle of leaves indicating its direction.
“Any enemy of yours is probably an enemy of mine,” Senrid muttered under his breath.
He swung to his feet, reached for the nearest branch, and pulled himself into a tree. The urge to take action—fast—drove him upward until he perched precariously on a not-very-sturdy branch.
He reached for another, and froze at the slow thud of horse hooves.
Flaring torchlight sent reddish shards of light up into the trees. Branch shadows flickered like skeletal fingers. Senrid closed his eyes against vertigo. He felt very exposed, and hugged himself against the frail top-branches of his tree.
The horse hooves neared. He heard the creak of saddles, and animal and human breathing. Torchlight glowed steadily on his eyelids. He opened his eyes, and looked down. They had stopped right below.
He gritted his teeth. It couldn’t be coincidence, it couldn’t—
No. It wasn’t coincidence, it was rank stupidity.
He had left his pack on the ground.
Why not just leave a signpost? he thought bitterly, furious with himself.
“Come down from the tree,” a voice commanded—in Marloven.
He waited, looking around desperately for some hope of escape, some miracle. Would they think he’d left? No. He looked down. Reddish torchlight lapped up to his shin.
“Now.”
He started down as slowly as he could, still looking about for some—any—way out, no matter how desperate. Lie? They probably wouldn’t give him the chance to open his mouth.
As he felt with his foot for another branch, his mind careened, making random observations: moths dancing about in mesmerizing circles, gold-lit above the torches, and there, lower, in one of the Norsundrians’ hands, the cold-fire gleam of torchlight on the edge of a drawn blade.
Blade?
He remembered the hatpin—still stuck in his cuff. Catching hold of the last branch, he swung back and forth, assessing position of the enemy. The Norsundrians were efficiently circled around him, close enough to easily stop a target on foot if he tried to dart between their horses.
So he dropped, and clamped his hand on his cuff. He did not expect to win this battle, but he would not go back meekly.
He pulled the hatpin free. A flash of bright blue-silver light sparked and made him blink, and the found a glowing white blade in his hand, its hilt perfectly fitted to his palm.
“Hah!”
The dark figures retreated a pace or two; he swung the blade, and light streamed, brighter than their torches, coruscating in every drop of dew
on leaf or blade of grass. The Norsundrian horses sidled, plunging, and the ring widened.
When the brilliance began to fade, two green glows remained, close to the ground, just beyond the Norsundrians’ horses.
The green things shifted—a sinuous silhouette swarmed under horses’ legs. From behind the Norsundrians came a deep growl, and from another direction the hideous, shrieking yowl of a big predator cat.
More feline shapes burst from the bushes, growling, claws raking. The horses circled, desperate to get away, and the circle broke as the Norsundrians fought to control their mounts and to strike the cats.
Senrid felt a flat, triangular head butt against the back of his knees. A muzzle worried at his legs insistently.
Surprised, he lifted a leg—and found himself seated on a muscular back.
He barely had time to grab the sides of the strong cat-neck before he was in motion, a flowing run that made balance difficult. He bent his knees, trying to keep his ankles up as the great cat ran silently through the trees. The sword shimmered down to a hatpin, which he jabbed in his cuff.
The run lasted a long time, during which he crouched awkwardly on the animal’s back, half lying to keep from dragging his toes on the ground.
When the cat stopped he slid off, stunned and grateful, but before he could figure out if he should speak (and what would he say?) the cat had vanished.
He stepped forward—and almost tripped. He reached down, and his hand felt the familiar strap of his knapsack, damp from the cat’s teeth.
“Amazing,” he said softly, and started walking.
Sleep was a lost hope after that episode.
Blue moonlight gave him just enough light to make out the shapes of trees, rocks, and shrubs. The oak had given way slowly to pine forest, tall, whispering, tangy of scent. When he emerged on a hilltop clearing, he saw dark mountaintops etched against the slowly purpling sky: the Fereledria, the mysterious mountains that girdled the land masses on the world.
His direction sense adjusted itself, placing him much farther north than he would have gone, had he been left on his own. By now he was certain that none of the strange things that had been happening to him were chance. He looked up thinking, if I’ve been put here, straight north is where I should go. He’d given up planning. Either he’d find his off-worlders, or he wouldn’t. His strategy had narrowed to staying out of Norsunder’s hands, and moving as fast as he could.
It took a day to wind his way along the forested hills, each one higher and rockier than the last. By nightfall he was in the mountains.
He camped under a sheared rock, and at dawn drank from a trickling fall nearby. Then up the narrow animal trail that he’d been following.
The path leading upward was steep, sometimes treacherous. Senrid rejoiced in every narrowing, every fall of rock or tricky turn, because each of them lessened the chances of a fast mounted patrol hunting him down.
As he climbed, the air turned cool in the shadows, and he pulled his cloak from his knapsack. When he reached the first snows, hunger made him lightheaded, and at first he thought it also made him weak, for the knapsack felt heavy.
He was ready to fling the thing away and walk free, but when he unslung it the weight seemed to shift.
He opened it, and found wen-cakes, cheese, and bread. Loi magic? He remembered Linet talking about some other magic race. Geres, wasn’t that it? He sat down on a rock and ate until he was stuffed. After a time the light-headedness faded.
He’d always been taught to distrust the elusive and powerful indigenous races. He knew there was tremendous power in the world, available to humans and non humans. What he did not believe in was any power the lighters claimed was Good or True. There were only factions.
When he was done eating, he pictured hot coffee with cream—and when he reached in, there was a warm green-weave flagon. Drinking that, he continued up the mountainside with considerably more energy.
That night a freezing wind scoured down from the peaks, but his cloak had also regained its warming virtue. He holed up in the lee of a great, color-striated rock, and slept deeply.
Next morning, he found himself on one of the peaks. Though he was still wedged against a rock, surrounded by mountains, the details were different. He eyed the unfamiliar peaks, and suspected that somehow he was farther into the mountains than he had any right to be. So this, too, was true: time and distances were relative in the Fereladria—just as they were in Norsunder.
He began walking, his feet crunching through pristine snow.
At about noon he saw that he was no longer alone.
Four figures loitered along the white-boundaried path in the middle distance. Four kid-sized figures.
Of course they would be the off-worlders—right here, on his trail, though weeks of desolate mountain trails surrounded him.
Surprise lasted a heartbeat. Wariness lingered. He’d been chivvied here. In his experience, that only happened when you were of use to someone.
He squashed down the defensive anger and surveyed the off-worlder kids, who appeared to be three girls and a boy. As Linet had said, they were more or less his age. Two of the girls had identical pointed chins and long brown braids: twins. The other girl didn’t look like them at all, with her round pale face and blond hair. The boy was stocky and swarthy.
The four stopped talking, and eyed the first newcomer they’d seen since the Guardian sent them on their mission. He was alone, a boy about their own age.
“Uh oh,” Peridot said in English, instantly wary. She held out a hand to halt her twin. “That sure doesn’t look like any girl.”
Gloriel muttered, “The Guardian did say we were supposed to look for a girl, didn’t she? I didn’t dream that, right? Right?”
Nobody answered as the five surveyed each other.
“Who are you?” Peridot demanded, arms crossed.
“Someone looking for off-worlders,” Senrid said.
“That’s us,” said Frederic, the stocky boy. “Who are you?”
“You don’t look like any Lee-air-uh Something Something,” Deirdre said. “So who are you?”
“Senrid,” he supplied, waiting interestedly for a reaction.
“He’s got to be the other kid,” Gloriel exclaimed. “We did it!” She threw her arms wide, accidentally klonking her twin in the arm, and promptly got poked back by Peridot.
Senrid said, “Did someone tell you about me?”
“Well, not you. Kids. Watch for kids, the Guardian said, when we got blasted here to this world,” Gloriel said earnestly, as her sister continued to glare warily.
Deirdre, the quietest one, said, “She would have sent us somewhere safe, but we all want to find the friends we made before, so we’re traveling south. But while we do, we’ve been watching for this girl, named Liere, who seems to have disappeared, and everybody seems to be looking for her.”
“Everybody on both sides,” Frederic said.
“I just came from the south,” Senrid said slowly. “There are hundreds of Norsundrians all over the place. If that girl is there, which I doubt, there’s no chance you’ll find her first.”
“I thought this was stupid,” Peridot muttered in English. She didn’t know that Senrid understood it via the Universal Language Spell. “Let’s go find Dtheldevor, and take sail again. We can fight Norsunder with Dtheldevor, can’t we?” Her tone turned pleading.
Senrid said, “If you really want to help, you should go north to where the rift is being established.”
“North? We just spent an eternity coming south!” Peridot wailed.
“Well, won’t a reverse of our direction fake out the bad guys?” Frederic pointed out.
Gloriel sidled a look at her twin. “Yes, and anyway we agreed to help out, so we may’s well shut our flaps, go along, and like it. I mean, isn’t a trip back and forth better than being stuck at school breathing smog and memorizing spelling words?”
As all three off-worlders agreed with a vehemence that made Senrid curious abou
t Earth, she added, “I’m Gloriel Warren. Pleased to meet you, and so on and so on.”
“I’m Senrid Montredaun-An. Most delighted, and so on.”
“I’m Deirdre Weiss, gladda yadda yadda,” said the blond girl, with a rare, quick smile.
“Yadda,” Senrid said graciously.
“And I’m Peridot, also yadda.” Peridot flourished her hands about grandly.
“So on.” Senrid bowed.
“And I’m Frederic. Yadda, so on, and et cetera.” Frederic bowed, waving his arms even more than Peridot.
“Most et ceteraed,” Senrid replied, pronouncing the foreign words correctly.
The off-worlders grinned.
“Wow, wouldn’t the grownups have a fit if they heard that,” Peridot stated in a rather smug tone—as if she’d gotten away with something.
“Nevertheless, we carried it off most skillfully,” Frederic drawled, his snub nose in the air. Then he said in his normal voice, “Why d’ya think the Guardian had us come all this way if we just have to go back again?”
“Because of the girl,” Peridot exclaimed impatiently. “Don’t forget the other kid in need of help.”
Senrid said, “There wasn’t any wandering kid down south. Just me.”
“Then we missed whoever it was,” Gloriel said, her brow puckered. “I hope she’s okay.”
Frederic said, “So . . . should we go back?”
Peridot groaned, but her companions ignored her in a way that suggested to Senrid that it had become habit.
Gloriel picked at the split ends on one of her scraggly braids as she frowned around at the mountains. Senrid turned his own gaze northward. Going that was would increase the danger, especially if the Norsundrians managed to pick up his trail once they left the Fereledria.
Pick up his trail? Why bother, he thought. Whatever Lilith the Lighter was up to, he knew Detlev had to be prowling around somewhere out there, in between trying to get the rifts established.
That meant Senrid had to be fast, and sneaky. All right. He knew how to be fast—and sneaky.
“Well, kiddies,” Gloriel said, “let’s beat the bushes back north.”