“I’m not saying that.” The other’s brows knitted fiercely. “I just think we ought to be careful.”
She nodded, knowing better than to dismiss Tiger Ty’s suspicion out of hand. “Triss?”
The Captain of the Home Guard was tugging at the bindings on his broken arm. The sling had come off yesterday before the attack, and all that remained was a pair of narrow splints laced about his forearm.
He did not glance up as he tightened a loosening knot. “I think Tiger Ty is right. It doesn’t hurt to be careful.”
She folded her arms. “All right. Assign someone to keep an eye on him.” She turned to Tiger Ty. “I have something important I want you to do. I want you to pick up where Tib left off. Take Spirit and fly east. See if you can find the free-born and lead them here, just in case they’re having trouble reaching us. It may take you several days, and you’ll have to track them without much help from us. I don’t have any idea where to tell you to start, but if there are five thousand of them they shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Tiger Ty frowned anew. “I don’t like leaving you. Send someone else.”
She shook her head. “No, it has to be you. I can trust you to make certain the search is successful. Don’t worry about me. Triss and the Home Guard will keep me safe. I’ll be fine.”
The gnarled Wing Rider shook his head. “I don’t like it, but I’ll go if you tell me to.”
On the chance that he might encounter Par or Coll Ohmsford or Walker Boh or even Morgan Leah in his travels, she gave him a brief description of each and a means by which he could be certain who they were. When she had finished, she gave him her hand and wished him well.
“Be careful, Wren of the Elves,” he cautioned gruffly, keeping her hand firmly tucked in his own for a moment. “The dangers of this world are not so different from Morrowindl’s.”
She smiled, nodded, and he was gone. She watched him gather a pack of stores and blankets together, strap them atop Spirit, board, and wing off into the gray. She stared skyward for a long time after he was lost from sight. The clouds were turning darker. It would be raining by nightfall.
We’ll need better shelter, she thought. We’ll need to move.
“Call Desidio over,” she ordered Triss.
A heavy enough rain would mire the whole of the grasslands on which the Federation camped. It was too much to hope for, but she couldn’t help herself.
Just give us a week, she begged, eyes fixed on the roiling gray. Just a week.
The first drop of rain splashed on her face.
The Elven vanguard assembled, packed up, and moved back into the heavy trees within Drey Wood, there to wait for the storm to pass. It began to rain more heavily as the day edged toward nightfall, and by dusk it was pouring. The Wing Riders had tethered their Rocs apart from the horses, and the men had stretched canvas sheets between trees to keep themselves and their stores dry. The patrols had come in, returned from everywhere but Arborlon, with word that nothing was approaching from any direction and there was no sign of any other Federation force.
They ate a hot meal, the smoke concealed by the downpour, and retired to sleep. Wren was preoccupied with dozens of possibilities of what might happen next and thought she would be awake for hours, but she fell asleep almost instantly, her last conscious thought of Triss and the two Home Guard who stood watch close by.
It was still raining when she awoke, as steady as before. The skies were clouded, and the earth was sodden and turning to mud It rained all that day and into the next. Scouts went forth to check on the Federation army’s progress and returned to advise that there was none. As Wren had hoped, the grasslands were soggy and treacherous, and the Southland army had pulled up its collective collar and was waiting out the storm. She remembered Tiger Ty’s admonition not to be fooled into thinking that the Federation was doing nothing simply because it was not moving, but the weather was so bad that the Wing Riders did not wish to fly arid there was little to discover while they were grounded.
Word arrived from Arborlon that the main body of the Elven army was still several days from being ready to begin its march south. Wren ground her teeth in frustration. The weather wasn’t helping the Elves either.
She spent some of her time with Tib, curious to know more about him, wondering if there was any basis for Tiger Ty’s suspicions. Tib was open and cheerful, except when Gloon was mentioned. Encouraged by her attention, he was eager to talk about himself. He told her he had grown up in Varfleet, subsequently lost his parents to the Federation prisons, had been recruited by the free-born to help in the Resistance, and had lived with the outlaws ever since. He carried messages mostly, able to pass almost anywhere because he looked as if he wasn’t a danger to anyone. He laughed about that, and made Wren laugh, too. He said he had traveled north once or twice to the outlaw strongholds in the Dragon’s Teeth, but hadn’t gone there to live because he was too valuable in the cities. He spoke glowingly of the free-born cause and of the need to free the Borderlands from Federation rule. He did not speak of the Shadowen or indicate that he knew anything about them. She listened carefully to everything he said and heard nothing that suggested Tib was anything other than what he claimed.
She asked Triss to speak with the boy as well so that he might decide. Triss did, and his opinion was the same as her own. Tib Arne seemed to be who and what he claimed. Wren was persuaded. After that, she let the matter drop.
The rain ended on the third day, disappearing at midmorning as clouds dispersed and skies cleared into bright sunlight. Water dripped off leaves and puddled in hollows, and the air turned steamy and damp. Desidio sent riders back to the plains, and Erring Rift dispatched a pair of Wing Riders south. The Elves moved out of the deep forest to the edge of the grasslands and settled down to wait.
The scouts and the Wing Riders returned at midday with varying reports. The Elven Hunters had found nothing, but the Wing Riders reported that the Federation camp was being struck, and the army was preparing to move. As it was already midday, it was uncertain as to what this meant since the army could not hope to progress more than a few miles before dusk. Wren listened to all the reports, had them repeated a second time, thought the matter through, then summoned Erring Rift.
“I want to go up for a look,” she advised him. “Can you choose someone to take me?”
The black-bearded Rift laughed. “And have to face Tiger Ty if something goes wrong? Not a chance! I’ll take you myself, my queen. That way if anything bad happens at least I won’t be around to answer for it!”
She told Triss what she was about, declined his offer to accompany her, and moved to where Rift was strapping himself onto Grayl. Tib caught up with her, wide-eyed and anxious, and asked if he might go as well. She laughed and told him no, but spurred by his mix of eagerness and disappointment promised that he might go another time.
Minutes later she was winging her way southward atop Grayl, peering down at the damp canopy of the forests below and the windswept carpet of the grasslands east. Mist rose off the land in steamy waves, and the air shimmered like bright cloth. Grayl sped quickly down the forest line past the Pykon until they were within sight of the Federation army. Rift guided the Roc close against the backdrop of trees and mountains, keeping between the Southlanders and the glare of the midafternoon sun.
Wren peered down at the sprawling camp. The report had been right. The army was mobilizing, packing up goods, forming up columns of men, and preparing to move out. Some soldiers were already under way, the lead-most divisions, and they were heading north. Whatever else the Elf attack might have done, it had not discouraged the army’s original purpose. The march to Arborlon was under way once more.
Grayl swept past, and as Rift was about to swing the giant Roc back again, Wren caught his arm and gestured for them to continue on. She was not sure what she was looking for, only that she wanted to be certain she wasn’t missing anything. Were there riders coming up from the Southland cities, reports being exchanged, reinforce
ments being sent? Tiger TV’s warning whispered in her ear.
They flew on, following the muddy ribbon of the Mermidon where it flowed south out of the Pykon along the plains before turning east above the Shroudslip toward Kern. The grasslands stretched away south and east, empty and green and sweltering in the summer heat. The wind blew across her face, whipping at her eyes until they teared. Erring Rift hunched forward, hands resting on Grayl’s neck, as steady as stone, guiding by touch.
Ahead, the Mermidon swung sharply east, narrowed, and then widened again as it disappeared into the grasslands. The river was sluggish and swollen by the rains, clogged with debris from the mountains and woodlands, churning its way steadily on through its worn channel.
On the river’s far bank a glint of sunlight reflected off metal as something moved. Wren blinked, then touched Rift’s shoulder. The Wing Rider nodded. He had seen it, too. He slowed Grayl’s flight and guided the Roc closer to the concealment of the trees by the northern edge of the Irrybis.
Another glint of light flashed sharply, and Wren peered ahead carefully. There was something big down there. No, several somethings, she corrected. All of them moving, lumbering along like giant ants …
And then she got a good look at them, hunched down at the riverbank as they prepared to cross at a narrows, coming out of the Tirfing on their way north.
Creepers.
Eight of them.
She took a quick breath, seeing clearly now the armored bodies studded with spikes and cutting edges, the insect legs and mandibles, the mix of flesh and iron formed of the Shadowen magic.
She knew about Creepers.
Rift swung Grayl sharply back into the trees, away from the view of the things on the riverbank, away from the revealing sunlight. Wren glanced back over her shoulder to make certain she had not made a mistake. Creepers, come out of the Southland, sent to give aid to the Federation army that marched on Arborlon—it was the Shadowen answer to her disruption of the Federation army’s march. She remembered the history Garth had taught her as a child, a history that the people of the Four Lands had whispered rather than told for more than fifty years, tales of how the Dwarves had resisted the Federation advance into the Eastland until the Creepers had been sent to destroy them.
Creepers. Sent now, it seemed, to destroy the Elves.
A pit opened in the center of her stomach, chill and dark. Erring Rift was looking at her, waiting for her to tell him what to do. She pointed back the way they had come. Rift nodded and urged Grayl ahead. Wren stole a final look back and watched the Creepers disappear into the heat.
Gone for the moment, she thought darkly.
But what would the Elves do when they reappeared?
XIX
Walker Boh blinked.
It was a crystalline clear day, the kind of day in which the sunlight is so bright and the colors so brilliant that it almost hurts the eyes to look. The skies were empty of clouds from horizon to horizon, a deep blue void that stretched away forever. Out of that void and those skies blazed the sun at midday, a white-hot glare that could only be seen by squinting and quickly looking away again. It flooded down upon the Four Lands, bringing out the colors of late summer with startling clarity, even the dull browns of dried grasses and dusty earth, but especially the greens of the forests and grasslands, the blues of the rivers and lakes, and the iron grays and burnt coppers of the mountains and flats. The sun’s heat rose in waves in those quarters where winds did not cool, but even there everything seemed etched and defined with a craftsman’s precision, and there was the sense that even a sharp cry might shatter it all.
It was a day for living, where all the promises ever made might find fulfillment and all the hopes and dreams conceived might come to pass. It was a day for thinking about life, and thoughts of death seemed oddly out of place.
Walker’s smile was faint and bitter. He wished he could find a way to make such thoughts disappear.
He stood alone outside Paranor’s walls, just at their northwest corner beneath a configuration in the parapets that jutted out to form a shallow overhang, staring out across the sweep of the land. He had been there since sunrise, having slipped out through the north gates while the Four Horsemen were gathered at the west sounding their daily challenge. Almost six hours had passed, and the Shadowen hadn’t discovered him. He was cloaked once again in a spell of invisibility. The spell had worked before, he had argued to Cogline while laying out his plan. No reason it shouldn’t work again.
So far, it had.
Sunlight washed the walls of the Dragon’s Teeth, chasing even the most persistent of shadows, stripping clean the flat, barren surface of the rocks. He could see north above the treeline to the empty stretches of the Streleheim. He could see east to the Jannisson and south to the Kennon. Streams and ponds were a glimmering of blue through the trees that circled the Keep, and songbirds flew in brilliant bursts of color that surprised and delighted.
Walker Boh breathed deeply the midday air. Anything was possible on a day like this one. Anything.
He was dressed in loose-fitting gray robes cinched about his waist, the hood pulled down so that his black hair hung loose to his shoulders. He was bearded, but trimmed and combed. Nothing of this was visible, of course. To anyone passing, and particularly to the Shadowen, he was just another part of the wall. Rest and nourishment had restored his strength. The wounds he had suffered three days earlier were mostly healed, if not forgotten. He did not give thought to what had befallen him then except in passing. He was focused on what was to happen now, this day, this hour.
It was the tenth day of the Shadowen siege. It was the day he meant for that siege to end.
He glanced back over his shoulder along the castle wall as another of the Four Horsemen circled into view. It was Famine, edging around the turn that would take it along the north wall, skeletal frame hunched over its serpent mount, looking neither left nor right as it proceeded, lost in its own peculiar form of madness. Gray as ashes and ephemeral as smoke, it slouched along the pathway. It passed within several feet of Walker Boh and did not look up.
Today, the newest of the Druids thought to himself
He looked out again across the valley, thinking of other times and places, of the history that had preceded him, of all the Druids who had come to Paranor and made it their home. Once there had been hundreds, but they had all died save one when the Warlock Lord had trapped them there a thousand years ago. Bremen alone had survived to carry on, a solitary bearer of hope for the Races and wielder of the Druid magic. Then Bremen had passed away, and Allanon had come. Now Allanon was gone, and there was only Walker Boh.
The empty sleeve of his missing arm was drawn back and pinned against his body. He reached across to test the fitting, to touch experimentally his shoulder and the scarred flesh that ended only inches below. He could barely remember any more what it had been like to have two arms. It seemed odd to him that it should be so difficult. But much had happened to him in the weeks since his encounter with the Asphinx, and it might be argued that he could not be expected to remember anything of his old life, so completely had he changed. Even the anger and mistrust he had felt for the Druids had dissipated, useless now to one who had become their successor. The Druids he had despised belonged to the past. Gone, too, was the fury he had borne for the Grimpond, relegated to that same past. The Grimpond had tried its best to destroy him and failed. It would not have another chance. The Grimpond was a shadow in a shadowland. It could never come out, and Walker would never go back to see it. The past had carried away Pe Ell and the Stone King as well. Walker had found the strength to survive all of the enemies that had been set against him, and now they were memories that barely mattered in the scheme of his life’s present demands.
Walker breathed the air, closed his eyes, and drifted away into a place deep inside him. War was passing now, all sharp edges and spikes, glinting armored plates and black breathing holes. Walker ignored the Shadowen. Settling into the silence and the ca
lm that lay within, he played out once more what was to happen. Step by step, he went over the plan he had formed while he lay healing, taking himself through the events he would precipitate and the consequences he would control. There would be nothing left to chance this time. There would be no testing, no halfway measures, no quarter given. He would succeed, or he would …
He almost smiled.
Or he would not.
He opened his eyes and glanced skyward. The midday was past now, edging on toward afternoon. But the light was not yet at its brightest and the heat not yet at its greatest, and so he would wait a little longer still. Light and heat would serve him better than it would the Shadowen, and that was why he was out there at midday. Before, he had thought to slip away in darkness. But darkness was the ally of the Horsemen, for they were creatures born of it and took their strength therefrom. Walker, with his Druid magic, would find his strength in brightness.
It was to be a testing of strengths, after all, that would determine who lived and died this day.
Strengths of all kinds.
He remembered his last conversation with Cogline. It was nearing dawn and he was preparing to go out. There was movement on the steps leading down through the gate towers to the entry court where he was positioned, and Cogline appeared. His stick-thin body slipped from the stairwall shadows in a soft flutter of robes and labored breathing. The seamed, whiskered face glanced at Walker briefly from beneath the edges of his frayed cowl, then looked away again. He approached and stopped, turning toward the door that led out.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Walker nodded. They had discussed it all—or as much of it as Walker was willing to discuss. There was nothing more to say.
The old man’s hands rested on the stone bulwarks that shielded and supported the iron-bound entry, so thin that they seemed almost transparent. “Let me come with you,” he said quietly.