Straken (18 page)

W
hen the rune-carved length of the darkwand began to glow, Pen could sense a shift in place and time almost immediately. It was an odd feeling, a suggestion of movement that felt like a small tremor in the earth coupled with a subtle progression of light toward dark. He knew immediately that the magic was in play and the darkwand was responding to his silent plea for help. There was nothing earthshaking about it, nothing overtly dramatic or astounding, just a hint of things being altered.

He had time to glance once at Khyber, who faced the opening where the doors to the Ard Rhys’s sleeping chamber had stood before she collapsed them, her body rigid with concentration, her arms lifted and her fingers extended to meet whatever challenge might appear. He regretted abandoning her to so many enemies—hated himself for it, after everything she had done for him—but there was no time or way to act on it. She had accepted the consequences of her fate by agreeing to bring him there, knowing what must happen. What he could do best for her was what he could do best for them both: cross over into the Forbidding, find the Ard Rhys, and bring her back into the Four Lands.

It happened quickly after that. The runes caught fire beneath his fingers and the staff turned bright with their glow. Then the glow
was all around him, enveloping him, shutting him away from his surroundings. The room and Khyber disappeared. He closed his eyes, hands tightening on the staff, praying that he would be strong enough to do what was needed.

A giant fist clutched his body, and all the air disappeared from his lungs. He gasped in response, trying to breathe, fighting to keep from choking.

Then he was standing in a twilit clearing of wintry grasses and barren earth surrounded by sparse woods and a deeply clouded sky. Paranor was gone. The world of the Four Lands was gone. Nothing he was looking at reminded him of home. Except, perhaps, for the bleaker places he had visited, like the Slags or the Klu. He stared blankly for a moment, making the comparisons, measuring the differences in his head, looking slowly about as he did so.

What struck him first was how dark things were. It didn’t seem to be nightfall, but the sun was nowhere to be seen, the brightness of the overcast sky like a pale reflection off clouded waters. The trees and grasses were washed of color, their greens muted and dulled. He peered into the distance. There wasn’t much to see, the woods fading into shifting walls of mist; the sky and earth coming together miles away in a grayish haze; the mountains stark and barren; the woods skeletal and empty looking. He could not imagine what lived there. He had the feeling that whatever did spent most of the time hunkered down and watchful.

He had a feeling that here you were either pursuer or pursued, hunter or prey.

I hate this world already
, he thought.

He was grasping the darkwand so tightly that his hands hurt. He loosened his grip on the staff and forced himself to take a few deep breaths to stay calm. He had made the crossing; the magic of the staff had done its job, bringing him out of the Four Lands and into the Forbidding. He could scarcely believe it, and in truth he might not have if everything did not look and feel exactly right for what the Forbidding should be. Despite the oppressiveness of his surroundings, he felt an odd sense of relief, as if the hardest part of the task given him by the King of the Silver River
were finished. But he knew that wasn’t so, that the hardest part lay ahead. He had accomplished much since he had left Patch Run. He had crossed half the Four Lands to find the darkwand and bring it back to Paranor. He had endured hardships and privations of a sort few survived. He had escaped his enemies time and again.

But just staying alive in this dark place would take all the strength he had and then some.

He finished scanning his surroundings, found nothing useful, stood for a moment longer, and then sat down to gather his thoughts. He wondered briefly about his parents. There was no way for them to know what had happened to him unless Khyber managed to reach them. At least they were free of Paranor and the Druids. They would not be tricked again by Shadea a’Ru and her minions. He was still bothered by the fact that the King of the Silver River had failed to warn them, as he had promised he would. Unless they had ignored that warning, of course, and had determined to help him no matter what the risk. His mother would think like that. His mother would brave anything for him.

As would any of his friends and companions on this journey, he thought. As all of them had. He found himself missing them desperately—steady Tagwen, brave Kermadec, resourceful Khyber, and even the truculent Atalan. But most of all he missed Cinnaminson. Just thinking of her made him ache in a way nothing else ever had. He tried to picture her as he remembered her best—free and alive, smiling at him on the decks of the
Skatelow
, reaching out to take his hand. He tried not to think of where she was and what had become of her. But he couldn’t quite manage it.

He compressed his lips in a tight line and forced himself to think instead of other things. He was alone for the moment, at least until he found his aunt, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He hoped the others were all right, that they had found ways to escape their predicaments, but wondering if they had was just another dead end in his thinking.

What he must think about was finding his aunt, the Ard Rhys, and bringing her home safe.

He started as sudden heat flooded through his palms. The runes of the darkwand were glowing, turning the staff warm. He got to his feet quickly and looked around, wondering if the staff were warning him of hidden danger. But he sensed nothing. He stared down at the staff once more, but the runes had dimmed and the wood gone cool.

He frowned in confusion. Something had triggered the reaction, but what was it? He looked around. Nothing.

He looked back at the staff. Was it something inside him? Was the staff responding to him? He knew already that they were connected, sufficiently so that he had been able to find it when it was taken away by Traunt Rowan and had known instinctively how to trigger its magic when crossing from his world into this one.

The staff responded to his needs. Was it doing so here? Was it responding to his need to find Grianne Ohmsford?

Experimenting, he turned his thoughts to his aunt, asking himself where she was and how he could find her. At once, the runes turned fiery, pulsating beneath his hands, enveloping the entire staff in a red glow.

He grinned. Now he knew what the staff could do. But he still didn’t know how to make practical use of it.

The grayness of the day was fading rapidly toward night, the sky darkening and shadows beginning to drape the world below. Pen glanced around, thinking that he did not want to be caught out in the open once night arrived. He needed to find shelter, but first he needed to determine which way he should go.

To do that, he needed to figure out how to use the darkwand.

He looked at it again, turning his thoughts away from his quest, watching the brightness of the runes fade. Maybe if he asked it to show him where his aunt was, it would do so. If he thought about a direction to take in the same way he thought about looking for her, perhaps the runes would show him something.

He gave it a try. He thought about his aunt, about his need to find her, watched the runes brighten anew, then started thinking about directions he might take, projecting himself going first one way and then another.

Nothing happened. The runes stayed bright, but did not respond in any way to his silent questions.

He shook his head in disgust. So much for that approach. Still, there had to be a way.

He decided to try something else. Keeping his thoughts focused on his aunt, he started walking toward the last of the light, a direction he assumed might be west, but the runes dimmed almost at once. He stopped and turned around to walk the other way, toward the encroaching darkness, which would be east. Again, the runes darkened. At least he was getting a clear response, he thought.

He turned south, toward the mountains that were closest to where he stood. Instantly, the runes turned fiery.

He felt a surge of elation. He would go that way.

He started walking, the staff held before him in both hands like a compass, the runes glowing brightly, providing him with both light and reassurance. All around, the shadows thickened and the world began to change. What had been indistinct before began to lose all shape and form, until most of what he could see was distinguished by little more than changes in color and brightness. He could still make out the peaks ahead of him, but little else. He would have to find shelter soon.

He was further persuaded of that when he noticed movement in the shadows, movement that hadn’t been there earlier. He caught only glimpses of it, sudden dartings, like the scurrying of small furry animals except that there were no small furry animals living within the Forbidding—at least, not ones that were likely to be friendly. In any case, he didn’t think he wanted to find out. Other than the darkwand, all he carried for protection was a long knife he had taken from one of the guards. But he didn’t think it would prove much of a weapon against the things that lived in the Forbidding—especially after dark.

He trudged on, keeping as much to the open as he could manage, following the dictates of the staff while keeping close watch on his surroundings. Once, something massive flew overhead, a great winged creature that, had it fallen on him, would have crushed him instantly. He froze when he saw it, distant and indistinct, and he did not move again until he was certain it was gone.

He saw other things, too. He saw catlike creatures leaping through the dead-limbed trees and lizard-things that slithered along
the earth through the grasses and scrub. He started to hear hissing and snarling, the sounds of hunters at work. Once a shriek momentarily brought his heart to his throat. In the silence that followed, he could hear the rasp of his own frightened breathing.

I am alone here
, he kept thinking.
I am alone, and I have no idea what lives here or how to defend myself
.

He swallowed hard.
I wish I weren’t so afraid
.

Darkness was almost complete by then, and he had reached the lower slopes of the mountains that blocked the way forward. Clusters of boulders formed huge barriers that rose before him like sentries to challenge his passage. The bare limbs of trees rose against the sky like the finger bones of giants long dead. He saw that a trail led upward through the maze to a pass that in turn opened toward the mountains, to the land beyond. But the way forward was long and arduous. And with the fall of darkness, he would not get far before he couldn’t see at all.

So he moved into the center of the tree trunks and boulder piles, found a shelter in the rocks where he was protected on three sides, and settled in. He quit thinking about his aunt, turned his thoughts away from his search, and watched the light of the runes fade. He had nothing to eat or drink, so he tried not to think about how hungry and thirsty he was. Beyond his shelter, the world was ink black, devoid of light from moon or stars, empty of sky. But there were sounds everywhere, sharp and piercing, low and rumbling, sudden and slow to build and die. There were sounds of every sort, but none of them familiar and none pleasant.

Pen wedged himself into one corner of his shelter, clasped his arms about the darkwand, and took out the long knife and placed it against his chest. He sat staring out into the darkness for a long time before he fell asleep.

W
hen he woke, the dragon was staring at him. He didn’t realize it was there at first. He woke slowly and lethargically, still half asleep as he opened his eyes to look around. He didn’t know where he was. He was stretched out on the hard ground, his bones aching and his muscles sore. The world was dark and hazy; there was no
sunshine, no bright color, and no welcoming warmth or birdsong to encourage his rising. The new day was cloaked in sullen stillness and a deep gray wash that made him want to go back to sleep.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again as his head cleared and he remembered that he was inside the Forbidding. He glanced down. The long knife was still in his hand, his fingers stiff from gripping it. The darkwand was clutched to his chest, its runes pulsating softly, come alive with the day.

He stared at the staff doubtfully. Why was it glowing? He couldn’t remember thinking about his search for his aunt or anything that would have made it brighten.

Then his attention was drawn to a huge cluster of mottled boulders settled squarely in front of him. He didn’t remember those boulders being there the night before and wasn’t sure how he could have missed seeing them, even in the dark. It was like having a wall materialize out of nowhere, a great massive barrier that somehow didn’t seem to quite belong.

He stared at them in confusion.

A window-size eye blinked, a lazy lowering and lifting of a scaly lid.

Pen caught his breath and held it. The cluster of rocks began to assume shape and take on definition. Limbs studded with spikes crooked awkwardly at the joints to end in claws that were each the size of his leg. Scales larger than blankets layered a body that would dwarf a small cottage. Bony ridges ran in parallel lines down a broad back and long, reticulated tail. A triangular head was tucked between its forelegs, encrusted snout and brow thick with armor and blunt horns.

“Shades,” he whispered.

He had never seen a dragon, of course. No one in his lifetime had ever seen a dragon. Most types were extinct. Those that weren’t were consigned to the Forbidding, like the one before him, or so deeply and thoroughly entrenched in mountain caverns and wilderness forests that no human had ever ventured in far enough to encounter them. But he knew what dragons were and what they looked like, and the creature facing him was clearly a dragon.

It was easily the biggest living creature that Pen had ever seen. It was bigger than he had imagined anything could be. Fascinated in spite of himself, he stared at it. He wondered what it was doing there. He wondered why it hadn’t eaten him.