Straken (49 page)

“I might not come with you after all,” he said suddenly. “I might stay here. Your world sounds boring. It sounds as if there is nothing to do. I might be better off staying right where I am.”

She stared at him. “I thought you said you couldn’t do that. I thought you said Tael Riverine would kill you if you stayed.”

“He might take me back, now that Hobstull is dead.” Weka Dart’s voice was small and contemplative. “He will need a new Catcher.”

“No!” she said at once. “The Straken Lord will have you killed, Weka Dart! He will find out what you have done and that will be the end of you!”

“He might not. He might think me too valuable now.”

She wanted to shake him so hard his teeth rattled. “If this is a threat meant to get back at me for telling you the truth, for telling you what I thought you had a right to know, then it is a poor one! Don’t be such a fool! You cannot talk about going back to Tael Riverine! Going back is suicide!”

“Or maybe I will go west, where I said I wanted to go when we met.” He shrugged. “Maybe I will go to Huka Flats and find a place where I will be accepted.”

She didn’t know what to say. She wanted him to quit talking the way he was. She wanted to tell him that they would find a way to get him out of the Forbidding. She wanted him to wait until they knew for sure what was going to happen when they used the darkwand. But Weka Dart was already sifting his expectations in his mind, rethinking his life and his plans for the future, accepting better than she, perhaps, the realities.

“Don’t decide anything tonight,” she said to him. “Wait until we have a chance to test the staff. Will you do that?”

He was silent for a long time. “I will sleep on it, Straken Queen. I will give it the thought it deserves.”

“I wouldn’t ask for more than that,” she said.

“I would be a good Catcher for you. Is there was anything to catch over there? Or to protect you from? There must be something.”

“There are enemies,” she assured him. “There are always enemies.”

She watched him lie down and curl into a ball. “I will keep you safe from your enemies,” he said softly. “I will protect you.”

“I know.”

She sat staring out into the night, her thoughts dark and threatening, pushing back her weariness. She should be able to do more for him than what she believed she could. She should be able to help him. But she didn’t know where to start. She didn’t know how to do what was needed. She felt weak and impotent.

“I will be there for you,” he whispered.

Then he said nothing more.

S
he awoke with the dawn, the silvery tinge of its breaking a faint blush on the eastern horizon. The sky was overcast and the clouds thick and roiling across the Pashanon. A storm was building to the southwest, and there was a screen of rain where it swept eastward out of Huka Flats.

She looked around. Pen was sound asleep at her side, the darkwand cradled in his arms. Weka Dart was nowhere to be found. She took a moment to scan the countryside, but didn’t see him. Apparently, he had left early to scout the pass.

She roused Pen, and after eating the remainder of the roots Weka Dart had provided for their evening meal, they set off. She felt an urgency about doing so, a need to reach their destination quickly. She was aware of how fragile she was. Still unhealed from her experiences at the hands of Tael Riverine, her strength came mostly from the knowledge that she was close to being free of him for good. If she could escape the Forbidding, as well, she might recover herself. If she could put enough distance between herself and what had been done to her, she might be able to shore up her uncertain psyche. The memories would never leave her but, perhaps, she could take the edge off them. She was holding herself together mostly through cobbled-together bits and pieces of determination, stubbornness, and pride. She was still Ard Rhys, but to become anything like whole again, she must regain her hold on the position as well as the title.

She looked around with haunted eyes. The oppressiveness of the world of the Jarka Ruus closed about her. Another day in the Forbidding,
and she could not say for certain that she would not give way to the madness that had threatened to claim her ever since her arrival. Time was growing increasingly short for her. She could listen to the sound of its passing in the beating of her heart.

They climbed steadily into the pass, frequently looking back over their shoulders to the plains, which were disappearing in the sweep of the storm. But there appeared to be no pursuit and no indication of anything dangerous coming their way.

And there was still no sign of Weka Dart.

It was nearing midday when they gained the forested heights of the Dragon Line and began to head west, toward the place where they had entered the Forbidding. The day had gone very dark as the storm clouds continued to roll eastward. The wind had picked up, and the first sprinkles of rain blew into their faces. Not wanting to be caught in the storm, they pressed on. Grianne chose their path; her sense of where she was stronger now. The boy walked silently beside her, the staff covered and out of sight.

In the distance, thunder rumbled in long, rolling peals and lightning flashed on the plains.

Then, quite unexpectedly, they emerged from the trees into a clearing, and Grianne recognized it as the place they had been searching for. She took Pen’s arm and nodded to him without speaking. The boy grinned, a disarming response that made her smile, as well. It was almost over.

She looked around for Weka Dart, but still he wasn’t there.

Pen saw the look on her face. “Where is he, Aunt Grianne? I thought he would be waiting for us.”

She took a long moment to study the trees, to peer through the gloom not only of the day but also of her own realization of what had happened.

“He isn’t coming,” she said.

The boy stared at her. “Why wouldn’t he come? Doesn’t he want to get out of here?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure he knows. I think he’s afraid. Of failing to get out, if the darkwand won’t take him. Of getting out and finding it isn’t what he expects. Maybe something else altogether.”

Penderrin looked away. “I wouldn’t stay here if I were him. I would take the chance that there might be something better.”

She took a deep breath. She could use her magic to try to find the Ulk Bog. He might be close still, waiting to see if they would look for him. He might be testing her. But she knew in her heart that he wasn’t, that he was far away, that he had put her behind him. She would be someone he had known and helped, someone he could brag about. But she would be only a memory.

Would he try to go back to Tael Riverine and become his Catcher once more? Would he take the chance that the Straken Lord either did not know of his participation in her escape or would forgive him for it? With the Ulk Bog, it was impossible to tell.

Weka Dart
.

She spoke his name in her mind, conjuring up images of him that she thought she would carry with her to the grave.

“We have to go,” she told Pen abruptly. “We can’t wait on him. Use the staff.”

The boy brought out the darkwand and set it butt-downward against the earth, his hands wrapped around its carved surface. The runes were glowing softly, pulsing bright red in the darkness of the midday storm.

“Place your hands with mine,” he said.

She started to do so, and then stopped. “Pen, listen to me. They will be waiting for us when we come through—Shadea a’Ru and those who have allied themselves with her. They will have figured out where you went and be prepared for the possibility that you might get back again and bring me with you. They will know where to look for us. They will attack the moment they see us. They will try to put an end to both of us. So I want you to be ready. I want you to get behind me and stay there until you have a chance to get clear. Any chance. As soon as you see one, you are to take it. Don’t wait for me. Don’t even think about me. Just run and keep running. Do you understand?”

He nodded, but looked uncertain.

She put her hands on his shoulders. “You showed great courage in coming here to save me. I don’t know anyone else who could have done what you did, except perhaps your father. I owe it to him to do for you what you have done for me. I want you safe and sound when this business is finished, Penderrin. Tell me you will do as I have asked.”

He nodded again, more firmly this time. “I will, Aunt Grianne.”

She took her hands from his shoulders. “Are you ready?”

He took a deep breath. “I am.”

“Then let’s go home.”

She wrapped her hands on the staff and held tight.

T
he transition happened quickly. The runes began to glow more intensely, gaining strength from her touch. Grianne blinked against the sudden brightness, and then felt a kind of shifting in the space she occupied. The grayness of the Forbidding grew slowly darker, as if the storm had caught up to them and they were about to be engulfed. All that took place in seconds, barely giving her time enough to register what was transpiring. She glanced over at Pen, who held on to the darkwand from the other side, his eyes closed.

But she did not close hers. She wanted to see what was going to happen to her.

Even so, she did not. The runes suddenly burst into fiery brightness, and it appeared as if the staff itself was aflame. It was all she could do to keep holding on to it, to persuade herself that the fire was an illusion. The glow grew steadily, cocooning her away, shutting off her surroundings, from the world of the Jarka Ruus, from everything but the staff and herself and Pen.

Then everything was gone, and she was fighting for air as a massive fist closed about her body, crushing her, squeezing the air from her lungs with relentless pressure. She fought back against it, struggling to breathe, to stay alive.
Something has gone wrong
, she thought in desperation.
Something isn’t right
.

Then the light dimmed, the runes darkened, and she was standing once more in the familiar surroundings of her sleeping chamber, returned safe and whole to Paranor. She still had a death grip on the staff, but the runes had gone dark.

She exhaled sharply in relief.

In the next instant, the triagenel collapsed about her.

She knew what it was immediately. She had caught a glimpse of the magic’s glow in the few seconds it took for her passage out of the Forbidding to become complete, but had failed to recognize its significance until it was too late. The glow disappeared as the triagenel dropped into place, becoming an invisible presence that hemmed her in on all sides, an unbreakable cage.

“Don’t move, Penderrin,” she said to him.

He stood across from her, still smiling happily at having escaped the Forbidding. The smile faded slowly, and he looked around in surprise.

“We’re caught in a triagenel,” she informed him. A quick sweep of her hand illuminated the strands of their prison. “I told you they would be waiting. But I didn’t foresee this.”

“What is it?”

“A very powerful form of magic. It takes three magic users to create it, a combination of their skills to bring it to life.”

But the glow was not uniform, she saw. In some places it was very nearly dark. In a properly constructed triagenel, the magic should be equally distributed. “There’s something wrong here,” she murmured. “See?”

She pointed at a couple of the weaker spots, at the obvious darknesses, and as she did so the door to the concealed passageway on the far side of the chamber swung inward and her brother’s face appeared in the opening. “Grianne?”

“Bek!” she exclaimed in shock. “How in the world …?”

“Listen to me,” he interrupted, cutting her short. “I’ve used the wishsong to weaken several of the triagenel’s strands. I think you can break free, if you try.”

“Close the door!” she said.

He did so, and she pushed Pen down on the floor and stood over him. “Cover your head. Don’t look up until I tell you.”

She would not have much time. Shadea and the others would be
coming. Perhaps they were already just outside. She would have to hurry. She was afraid of the wishsong after what had happened inside the Forbidding, but she had no other choice. She was going to have to use it anyway when she faced Shadea.