Steel and Stone (16 page)

The spell-caster began to cry.

Recall that morning, Kai-lid. Recall it, Dreena
.

Against her will, the spell-caster remembered fleeing the castle with Lida. The servingwoman balked halfway down the escape tunnel, saying she had to go back for something and asking if Dreena wanted to leave her wedding pendant with the Meir in his coffin as a final gesture of love.

Memories from that hasty predawn exchange still haunted Kai-lid. Lida’s shadowed face, resolution and fright alternating in her features. The damp of the stones that walled the corridor. The musty smell of the earthen floor. The sound of water dripping. And over it all, the booming of the enemy’s drums, mimicking Dreena’s heart. She’d removed the pendant, kissed the broad green stone, and placed it in Lida’s hand. She half-guessed what her faithful friend had in mind, but she made no protest. Dreena told Lida to meet her in a cave beneath a copse of trees west of the castle. Then the servingwoman threw her arms around Dreena, kissed her, and whispered “My sister” before hurrying back through the corridor.

How many others will you let die to keep you safe, Dreena?

Kai-lid cried out, ran back into the cave, hid in the shadows, and sobbed. Finally, rustling and the scraping of clawed feet on stone told her Xanthar was just outside. His mind-speak was gentler.

I believe this dream you had, Kai-lid. But I believe it is a sign that only you can stop your father
. He paused. When Kai-lid didn’t answer, he added,
I will go with you
.

“You can’t,” Kai-lid whispered.

I won’t let you go alone
.

“And someone else will die for me, Xanthar?” she demanded bitterly.

I am sorry. I should not have said that. People make their own choices. Lida chose to stay at the castle. I choose to leave here with you
. A hint of humor found its way into the owl’s mind-speak.
I should add that I also choose to come back here, hale and hearty, to continue to inflict my curmudgeonly presence on my grandnestlings
.

Kai-lid sat on her cot until her shivering stopped. She drew on her sandals, then rose and closed the curtain to the cave, shutting out the owl.

What are you doing?
Xanthar asked.

“I have an idea.”

She sensed the owl’s question and replied before it quivered in her head. “The mercenaries. Perhaps I can persuade them to go with me. They’re trained.”

The owl hesitated before speaking.
It is a thought. You can find them by scrying?

“Perhaps. I’ll need quiet, Xanthar.”

She felt rather than heard the bird’s assent. A shadow fell across the curtain as Xanthar took up the guard there.

The bowl that the spell-caster reached for looked like an ordinary tureen on the outside—maple wood, polished until it gleamed. But the inside glittered with hammered gold. At the very center, another mark broke up the pattern of the hammering—the image of an edelweiss plant etched in the metal.

Now she leaned over, retrieved a purple silk shawl from a leather bag beneath the table, and pulled a cloisonné pitcher from a niche in the stone cave wall. The fluid that Kai-lid poured from it appeared to be ordinary water, but the liquid came from a nearby stream, a tributary that entered the White-rage River west of Haven. “A stream born at the periphery of Darken Wood itself,” Kai-lid murmured reverently.

She poured water into the tureen and watched the edelweiss motif waver, then return to sharpness when the water stilled. “With stillness comes clarity,” she intoned, ritual words that Janusz himself had taught her years ago. She motioned in the air with slender fingers and draped the shawl, the color of red grapes, over her head and the bowl. Her thumbs held down the edges of the shawl; her fingers continued to twitch as she wove the spell. She closed her eyes, concentrating.

“Klarwalder kerben. Annwalder kerben,”
she murmured.
“Katyroze warn, Emlryroze sersen
. Reveal, reveal.”

She opened her eyes, waiting. At first nothing happened. Then the water dimmed and stirred and changed, as if reflecting a bank of storm clouds; the same gray-blue shone in her eyes. She released the shawl; the sides collapsed around her head but formed a tent over the bowl. Her left hand retrieved from her pocket the tortoiseshell button she’d found in the doorway in Haven. “I seek the owner of this artifact,” she whispered. “
Wilcrag-meddow, jonthinandru
. Reveal.”

At the command, the water in the bowl cleared, showing no evidence of the golden edelweiss beneath its surface. It depicted a woodland scene. Kai-lid suppressed a cry of joy. There was the half-elf, leading a
chestnut gelding through the early-morning grayness, and behind him, Kitiara Uth Matar and the other mercenary on black horses. A yawning lad trailed, gnawing at a large roll. The small band was deep in conversation, although her scrying spell allowed Kai-lid only to see, not to overhear. She could see a frown crease the half-elf’s face as he pushed plants aside, poked at the soil, and, balanced on his haunches, elbows resting on his bent knees, hands dangling between, scrutinized the ground.

Kai-lid watched for some time, hoping to tell from the group’s surroundings exactly where they were. Not Darken Wood, of course, but definitely some temperate woodland. She saw maples, oaks, sycamores, and pines, and an undergrowth of maple saplings. Thick, low shrubbery told Kai-lid the travelers were near the edge of a forest, where sunlight had more of a chance of nourishing the plants near the ground.

Suddenly she saw the half-elf stiffen and lean over, his gaze fixed on something on the ground. His whole attitude changed from watchfulness to action. He moved from the trail to a place just off to the right. He poked at something on the ground—a footprint?—while the two other mercenaries waited on their horses and the squire chewed and swallowed. Then the half-elf pointed to his right, virtually in the opposite direction, back the way they’d come. The mercenaries sat up in their saddles, impatience apparent in their stance as the half-elf returned to his horse. The group wheeled around.

“They’re following something,” Kai-lid said. She watched a few moments longer, then nodded. “
Mortmegh, mortrhyan, merhet
. End it.”

The water once more was water, the bowl just a
bowl; the edelweiss shone as before at the bottom. She pushed the purple shawl back and felt its folds at the back of her neck. Kai-lid rested her temples on suddenly weak hands. Her black hair slipped forward like silk, and elation vied with weariness. Xanthar remained silent at the cave’s opening. He must know from the sounds that she had finished, but he also knew that scrying always exhausted her.

Finally she lifted her head from her arms and moved to open the curtain. A pair of worried orange eyes peered at her. “I found them,” she said quietly.

“I’ve been thinking. Perhaps we should let this be,” the owl interjected. He whetted his beak twice against the granite of the cave mouth. “After all, it
was
only a dream.”

“It was real,” Kai-lid began anew. “I saw the two mercenaries, the half-elf, and a boy. They’re tracking something.”

“Where?”

Kai-lid shrugged. “Near Haven, I’d guess. But north, south? … I’ll have to watch them, look for landmarks.” She was silent for a time, frowning. Then she spoke again, more tentatively now. “Do you think I can … persuade the four of them to take on such a quest?”

The owl cocked his head. “They are mercenaries, after all. You have no money. What can you offer them?”

“I don’t know … yet.” Kai-lid leaned against the doorway and gazed around the clearing—her clearing. For a few short months, it had afforded her a safety she hadn’t known before. Now she must leave it.

“They may recognize me,” she mused.

“As Dreena? You are disguised.”

“No, not as Dreena. When I realized what Lida had done, I took on most of her appearance to … to honor her memory and to leave Dreena behind forever. They may recognize Lida.”

The owl touched her shoulder gently with his beak, and Kai-lid intertwined the fingers of one hand in the soft feathers of his cream-colored breast. His voice came lightly to her mind.
You can adopt a new guise, of course
.

They moved apart, the mage shaking her head. “No. It may not be such a bad idea if they recognize Lida. I’ll think about it. First of all, I must discover where they are and where they’re going.” She turned back toward the cave, but the owl’s movement arrested her.

“Scrying tires you. Perhaps I can find them,” Xanthar said aloud, switching once more to regular human speech. The owl flexed his wings. Kai-lid closed her eyes against the grit and dust that suddenly swirled around the clearing before her cave. Then the owl settled down again. “Hop aboard,” he invited, spreading low one huge wing.

“I’ll get my things,” she said.

Chapter 9
On the Ettin’s Trail

“M
ORNING.
T
IME FOR BED.
”

“No. Lady soldier follows. Master says so.”

“Too bad. Res sleep days.”

“Not now!”

“Hunger. Food soon?”

“Maybe.”

“Soldiers follow?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Good,” Res announced. “Eat them.”

“No!” The ettin’s left head struggled to recall the word the Master had used. A long word, and so long ago—nearly an hour. The Master had forced the left head to repeat the word, and the warning, many
times. “Capture!” Lacua finally crowed now, remembering. “Not eat. Not, not, not.” Its watery eyes, shaped like a pig’s, squinted. The ettin’s left hand brandished a spiked club with each “not.”

The right head spat. Then Res brightened. “Are four,” he pressed. “Capture one, eat—” he hesitated over the impossible arithmetic—“eat rest?”

“Capture,” Lacua repeated. “Not eat. Not, not, not.”

“One? Only?”

Lacua argued the proposition with himself. The Master, whom he had spoken to through the Talking Stone just before dawn, had said to lure the lady soldier to the appointed mountain in Darken Wood, capture her, and wait. But Janusz had omitted rules about her companions. The lady was for capture, the mage had said. That meant … what? The others weren’t for capture? Or were?

Lacua pondered. The range of choices gave him a headache. But he finally decided. “Capture girl, eat one not-girl.” The two heads smiled, revealing rotten teeth. The ettin, its four beady eyes open for small game, continued north, careful to leave plenty of footprints as the Master had ordered.

*   *   *   *   *

Hours later, just as the sun passed its zenith, Tanis and his companions stood on the same spot, staring at the footprints—nearly three fingers deep, the right foot larger than the left—and then at the forbidding environs into which the prints were headed.

“Darken Wood,” Caven whispered. Tanis nodded, his gaze probing the underbrush.

There was no gentle transformation from one type
of forest to another here. Instead, it was as though the icy finger of an angered god had drawn a line among the trees. Those on one side remained normal in appearance, while the rest withered or twisted. A dank breeze flowed from the woods, prickling the hair at the back of the two men’s necks. Although a light wind moved the tattered leaves in the woods, no sound came to their ears.

Wode was fidgeting with his horse’s mane. “It’s the silence of the Abyss,” he said softly. Kitiara slugged him on the arm to silence him.

“Half-elf,” Mackid said, just above a whisper. “I’ll concede you this: I’ve never seen such an evil landscape in all my days on Ansalon.” Tanis nodded again, deep in thought.

Without another word, the companions dismounted and drew their swords; even Wode carried a small knife, which he seemed to draw some slight comfort from. Suddenly the teen-ager spoke again, his voice cracking. “The trees bleed!” He pointed a quivering hand at one of the pines.

The other three looked where the squire gestured. A strange look crossed Caven’s features. “By the gods, Wode, this is no time for jokes!” he exploded. He clenched his hands and started toward the teen-ager.