Behind the Eyes of Dreamers (13 page)

The two spoke with Daro for a little while, then stood up and bowed. The hunter’s face was solemn as he watched them walk away. “They’re returning to their people,” he said. “We can sleep here tonight—it’ll be dark soon.”

“Did they see Josef?”

He shook his head. “He may still be near the lake, though. Those two haven’t been there, and they don’t seem too concerned with anything around them anyway. They’re in love, you see—they recently built their dwelling together. They asked me if we were the ghosts of anyone they had known.”

“Do you ever wish—” She paused. “Do you ever regret your change?”

Daro smiled a little. “Of course not. How can I regret that I didn’t age and die? What I miss is quite simple, really—the feeling that my life has some meaning to others besides myself. That couple has that—they know how short-lived their joy will be and how precarious their life is. Every moment of joy they can give to each other or to those they love is a victory.”

“Did you love someone before you went to the wall?”

A rasping sound came from his throat; he covered his face. She should not have asked that; it would only push him into silence again.

He lowered his arm, picked up a stick, and poked at the dying flames. “There was a girl,” he said softly. “We used to talk of going to the wall together, but I knew she’d never follow me. I questioned everything, and she used to chide me for it. We were to build a hut together, but I left my village to follow a visitor to the wall. I thought I’d be proving that what my people believed was wrong, that I’d win some sort of glory for myself by entering death’s realm and returning from it. I saw myself going back to the village in triumph, with a tale that would make my name live forever and a few baubles to demonstrate its truth.”

He took a breath. “The man guided me through the gate. Before I knew it, I was with him inside a flyer, soaring over the earth. My terror was so great I believed my soul had already left my body. I fainted and came to in a room of lights.”

“A biogenesis chamber,” she said, thinking of the one where she had been formed.

“I thought I was dead and that this place would be either my reward or my punishment. I slept while the minds and their machines labored over my body and implanted my link. The man who brought me out took me to his house. At first, I saw it as a paradise, where my every wish was granted and the gods who loved me spoke inside my head. It took me many years to understand what this new world actually was. By the time I was able to comprehend that I was still alive, I also knew that everyone I had ever loved in the Garden was dead. I’d been outside the wall too long and had become a kind of ghost, after all.”

She touched his arm; he did not pull away. “I went back to my village eventually,” he continued. “People who hadn’t been born when I left were already old. They told me a story about a young man who had dared to follow a ghost to the wall only to be captured by the specter. They also spoke of a young woman who mourned for him, prayed for his soul, then tried to follow him in the only way she could. Her people found her body by the river, where she had taken her own life.”

Orielna let out a small cry, horrified by the tale. Could someone love so much?

“Now you know why I belong here. I have this foolish dream, you see, of somehow atoning for what happened by persuading others to leave the Garden with me—not just one or two, but a group, a village, a community of people, brave ones who could accept the Net’s gifts and maybe seek to make something more of their lives. They’d have their loved ones with them always, and never see them die. They wouldn’t have to be as solitary as I am.”

“But you don’t have to be—”

“We’ve spoken enough.” The distant look returned to his eyes. “I’ll set up the tent and look for more wood.” He turned away as he opened his pack.

A shaft of light pierced the darkness. “Wake up,” a voice said inside her. Orielna was immediately alert; she clutched at her blanket, then sat up. Daro had called out to her through a channel, she realized, but the gray light outside the open tent flap seemed more like twilight than dawn.

Before she could reply, a dark shape hid the light; a hand reached in and seized her by the wrist. “Close your link,” Daro muttered. “Now!”

She closed all the channels, shrinking into herself. “What is it?”

“Josef may be near. I think he might have been following us. I saw the footprints in a patch of muddy ground when I went for wood.”

“How do you know they’re his?” she asked.

“They were made by boots. They aren’t yours, and I’m wearing moccasins, and the unchanged don’t have boots. There aren’t any hunters or visitors near us, either—the Net verified that.” He pulled her outside; she scrambled to her feet. “Until we know what he’s after, we can’t let him track us through his link.”

“But it’s closed,” she said. “He wouldn’t chance opening it now, and if he did, we’d know where he is.”

“He might risk it for an instant.” Daro pulled the stakes from the ground, then folded the tent and blanket quickly. “And consider this—there’s no one around who could reach us very soon. If we had to be rescued, it would take some time for a flyer to reach us from the wall. We have to make ourselves as invisible to him as possible.”

“But if you think we’re in danger, that’s more reason to stay linked to the Net. The minds can’t help us if we drop out now.”

“Listen to me!” He stood up, lifted the pack to his back, and attached the straps across his bare chest. “A lot could happen to us before help gets to us. We have to rely on ourselves now.” He took her by the arm. “Come.”

He had already thrown dirt on the fire. They hastened away from the clearing toward a wooded hill. Daro let go of her and took out his wand as they began to climb. When they were halfway up the hill, he halted and dropped the pack next to her.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “Keep your wand ready. Don’t shoot unless you have no choice—the beam will give you away. I’ll be back for you when I’m sure it’s safe.”

She nodded, too frightened to speak. He crept up the hill, keeping low, and was lost among the trees. Orielna crouched behind a shrub; something snarled in the distance. The wand shook in her hand; she swallowed hard. How long had Josef been tracking them? She gripped the wand tightly, ready to shoot.

She was stiff with tension when she saw a dark form descending the hill, and recognized Daro. He hurried toward her and picked up the pack. “Follow me,” he said softly, “but stay down.”

He climbed in a crouch, his wand out, looking like a large beetle with the hump of the pack on his back. Orielna kept low as she climbed after him. At the top of the hill, there was a gap among the sparse trees marked by a low wall made of tree trunks.

Daro helped her over the wall, then settled her in one corner. The space inside was small, the ground matted with dead leaves and pine needles. Daro moved around the space, staying low as he peered over the wall, then came back to her.

“We’re lucky we found this place,” he said. “I don’t think he’s near us now, but I can’t be sure—he could be anywhere below us. Still, he can’t reach us without being seen.”

She knelt and peered over the stacked tree trunks. Anyone approaching them would have to cross the small open space that divided the wall from the trees just below it. “What is this place?” she asked.

“It must have been a fortress of some kind. In a battle, high ground can give you an advantage.”

“The unchanged still fight?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’d think that, with their lives so short as it is, they wouldn’t rush to end them that way.” She rested a hand on the wall. Now that she was safe, at least temporarily, her earlier fears seemed groundless. “He may simply want to talk to us. He couldn’t mean to harm me.”

“Are you so certain? You know what he did to Kitte, and he’ll know you’re here to see that he atones for that.” He paused. “I should have known he was following us, I should have sensed it. You have to know when something might be tracking you here. I would have felt him watching us if I hadn’t been so distracted thinking about you.”

“I wasn’t aware that you were.”

“You should have left the Garden when you had the chance. I could have hunted him alone and been free of you.”

“Daro, we could ask for help now. It doesn’t matter if Josef learns where we are—we could hold out long enough for other hunters to reach us, and then—”

“No.”

“They could help us find him.”

“No!” He moved away from her. “I mean to find him myself now, and you’re so sure he’ll listen to you. He might not if you ask others to join the hunt.” He sighed. “You can still leave if you’re afraid. Touch the Net and summon a flyer—I’ll wait with you until it arrives. Go back to Aniya and leave Josef to me.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. She couldn’t tell what she feared more—returning to her sharer and admitting that she had given up the search, or leaving Daro alone to hunt the eidolon. Josef might not harm him as long as Daro was with her, but alone, Daro might not be safe. She wanted to say so, but would only anger him by implying that he could not look out for himself. “Aniya’s hoping I can reach him somehow, that he’ll return to her peaceably. I can’t let her down.”

“Of course not,” he said mockingly. “It might make it harder for you to return to being her reflection.”

“I know why you’re so anxious to find him. It’s a challenge to you now—you can’t bear the thought that your prey might escape. You’re embarrassed that he was able to trail you and that you didn’t—”

“Be silent.” His fingers dug into her shoulder painfully. “You and your sharer brought me into this, and I’ll see it settled. You’ll watch from this side—I’ll guard the other. I doubt he’ll come up here, if he’s still anywhere nearby, but we might as well be prepared.” He released her.

The Moon had risen; its green orb shimmered in the east. The tiny lights of the Hoop that ringed the Earth shone steadily. She thought of all the times she had gazed at the heavens with Aniya; how strange that the sky still looked much the same when so much inside her had changed. She gripped her wand and turned her attention to the hillside below.

Daro left the enclosure at dawn to scout the land below, then climbed back to her. “I saw his tracks,” he said. “He went south—I followed them for a bit. It’s odd—he didn’t conceal them and kept to softer ground where he was sure to leave a trail. I can’t believe he wouldn’t have learned something about covering his tracks from that unchanged girl, so he must expect us to follow them.”

Orielna frowned. “Maybe he was just trying to get away from us. He wouldn’t have been thinking of what tracks he was leaving if he was in a hurry.”

“The prints showed he was moving slowly. The girl might have shown him how to set a trap. I think he may want to lead us away from the lake, which is exactly why we should head there now.” A note of contempt had crept into his voice. “When he goes back, we could be waiting for him.”

“He might have moved from that region by now,” she said.

“But he has no reason to do so. He didn’t see Nedeeb and probably hasn’t guessed that we know he was sighted there. All he knows is that we’re out here searching for him. He’d expect us to follow the trail if we hadn’t known he was seen at the lake.”

She tried to imagine herself inside Josef’s mind; that had been so simple for her once. Maybe it had all become a game to him by now, with his mind as unbalanced as it was. “Then let’s go,” she said.

They descended the hill’s eastern slope; she kept her wand in her hand as she walked. Lack of sleep would not affect them for a while; even with closed links, the molecular systems implanted in their bodies would clear the physical residues of fatigue. Eventually, however, they would have to sleep; their minds required dreams to keep in balance.

At the bottom of the hill, the trees closed in around them. Birds chirped above them, then abruptly lapsed into silence. The darkness of the woods made her uneasy; her neck prickled.

Daro halted and said, “Don’t move.” She wondered why she could no longer hear the birds overhead. Daro suddenly pushed her to one side and aimed his wand toward the sky. A beam shot out from a bough, catching the hunter in the chest; he toppled forward slowly. Orielna raised her wand. A flash of light blinded her—

She was lying on her back, with something cold and sharp pressed against her throat. “Don’t open your link,” a familiar voice said. “I know it’s closed—I checked before. Told the Net I was going to meet you and give myself up after I had a chance to talk to you. I’m closed now, but don’t think you can call out for help. If I even suspect you are, you can suffer quite a lot before help reaches you.”

Orielna opened her eyes. Josef was kneeling over her, gripping her by the hair; he held up a knife in his other hand. “But you won’t try to touch the Net now, will you?” he said. “You don’t want to get hurt. You wouldn’t want your friend to suffer.”

“Daro,” she gasped. Her headache was fading; she sat up. The hunter lay on his stomach, his arms and legs bound with torn pieces of blanket. His face was turned toward her, eyes closed. Blood trickled from a wound in his head. “What have you done to him?”

“I hit him harder than I intended when he came to. He looked quite angry before I struck him. He’s still breathing.”