The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (94 page)

She sagged in his arms. She
was
going
to suggest that perhaps Shem could take Peto to his father’s ranch
near Flax, and that maybe they could go as well, but if Shem heard
even on the southern edges of the world about the Shins—

“
But Mahrree?” Perrin cut
into her thoughts. “I have a plan, remember? It’ll fix a great many
things, and give Peto something to do!”

She pulled out of his embrace to see him . .
.

Well, the only way to describe his demeanor
was
nearly giddy
. And it wasn’t because of Cambozola’s hat,
which he’d taken off.

“
Since the soldiers aren’t
watching us anymore, it’s time to share with you what I’ve been
working on for the past weeks.”

He released her, rushed to the study and came
back with rolls of maps and pages of notes.

Mahrree watched in astonishment and thought
she even heard what could only be identified as a giggle escape as
he placed the stack of papers on the table. He unrolled a large
piece of paper that looked like a map and used the mugs from midday
meal to hold down the corners.

Mahrree’s breath caught when she realized
what she was seeing.

“
You
want to find
the ruins?
Terryp’s land
?” She ran her hand over a new large
map Perrin had made, complete with arrows, lines, potential paths,
camp locations, and question marks.

“
Yes, and beyond!” He
struggled to keep his voice low in his excitement. “And there
is
a beyond. I’m positive there’s no danger, no poison, no
undetectable gases that kill entire populations overnight.
There
never was!
Only land and vast amounts of it, just waiting to be
explored and settled. I’m sure it’s where we
began
, where
the Creator placed the first five hundred families. I want to find
the proof! Now, Mahrree, you know I’ve had old maps, but I must
confess I never showed you these.”

She watched breathlessly as he shifted some
of the papers and put others on top. The parchment of the three
maps he laid out before her seemed far older and thicker, with dark
patches and stains.

“
Some of these suggest
what’s beyond our borders. King Querul the First’s scouts made this
one, the oldest in my collection. Vast regions of land to the west,
right there, beyond the desert.”

Mahrree stared in wonder, not daring to touch
the parchment that was dated more than130 years ago.

“
Perrin,” she whispered in
awe, “how did you get—”

“
I took them from the old
garrison when the new one was being constructed. They were nearly
buried by dirt in the old storage room my father used. They were
probably destined for that fire Querul started, but were forgotten
about. If I had more time I would have dug some more.”

Mahrree alternated between holding her breath
and panting as he spoke.

“
There seemed to be a crate
buried there, too,” he continued, “but I felt rather guilty for
finding and taking these, so I left before anyone saw me. I never
had another chance to go back or investigate the crate. It’s
probably still there, in fact. I moved an old cabinet in front of
it to hide it, but now it’s buried along with all of my father’s
paperwork. I doubt anyone ever looked for these maps. I shouldn’t
have taken them, but I was twenty-two and I rationalized that no
one wanted them. I told you that I rescued them from a rubbish
heap, but . . . well, I
did
rescue them. Anyway, Mahrree . .
. Mahrree?”

She heard his voice but was too stunned by
all that he laid before her to.

He wanted to go. He wanted to find the
ruins.

He was saying her name.

She forced herself to stop staring at the
fantastic display and looked up at him.

He grinned with the enthusiasm of an
eleven-year-old. His dark eyes were so vibrant they lit up his
entire face. “Mahrree,” he said with a passion she had never heard
before. “You’ll
love
this one. I’ve been saving it for a
very long time. Well . . . now it’s time!”

He took one of the maps he hadn’t yet
unfurled and gently slid out a smaller map concealed inside it. The
parchment was brown on the edges and slightly crumbly.

“
What is this?” she
whispered as he carefully unrolled it. “And why have you never
shown it to me before?” She could already tell it was something
ancient and important and beautiful.

“
This, my darling wife, is
Terryp’s map.”

She gasped.

“
His
original
one.”

She stopped breathing.

She stopped moving.

Her heart may have stopped beating, but then
it began again with such pounding force she felt it in her
throat.

Right there, in front of her, with markings
and writings and notes and everything—Terryp’s own map!

Without meaning to, her hand hovered over
it.

“
Just don’t fondle it,” he
whispered in her ear. “I don’t think the old parchment likes to be
handled as a statue. So, Mahrree, tell me . . . what do you
think?”

She was thinking too many things at once. She
wanted to scream, to shout Terryp’s name, to leap up and down and
kiss her husband and kiss him again, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t
even blink. She didn’t want to miss any of it.

There, in ink still dark enough that Terryp
could have applied it yesterday, was a detailed map of a land
directly west of Sands.

She felt her knees grow weak as she began to
realize what was before her, what had been done . . .

“
Perrin!” she breathed. “It
was
you
! You . . . did it? You . . .” She heard a chair pull
up behind her.

“
You better sit down.
You’ve gone gray.”

She sat down, only to be closer to the map.
Gingerly, she tenderly fingered a corner of it.

Perrin sat next to her. “Happy
19
^th
Anniversary, a bit early.”

Mahrree let out a very reverent but very
excited whimper.

“
You . . .
you
made
the copy!”

He grinned and nodded, nearly exploding with
enthusiasm. “Several, actually.” He gestured to the rolls which had
hidden Terryp’s map. “When I made the map of Moorland, I realized I
could make
other
maps too. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you see
the first copy of Terryp’s map I sent to the Administrators which
they then sent back here for me to ‘authenticate’. Although I
disguised my writing, I was sure you would’ve recognized some of
the characters I made. I couldn’t let you know yet. I made the
extras,” he indicated the roll of additional maps, “to send out to
others should the Administrators declare the land still poisoned. I
fully intended to smuggle them out in the army messenger bags as I
did with the first one I sent, but now I don’t have that access
anymore so here they sit, waiting for me to come up with another
solution.”

She could barely breathe, until she burst out
with, “Why did you never tell me you had this before? It’s been in
our house?! All this time? Perrin,
TERRYP was in
MY
HOUSE!”

He put a finger on her lips and laughed
lightly. “Shh! I wanted to tell you,” he whispered, “but do you
remember our second anniversary?”

How could either of them forget the night she
told him she wanted two more children, and he turned into the rabid
dog of the Administrators? “Oh, yes. Most definitely.”

“
Do you remember how that
night I stayed up working on numbers and maps?”

“
Yes, I came down and . . .
wait a minute. You knew I knew?”

He smiled. “I know everything, Mahrree. This
was even on our table at the time. I’m sure you touched it, but you
didn’t realize it because it was too dark. That previous evening on
the blanket in our front garden I understood something about you
that Hogal had warned me about. I even wrote it down, and later
burned it so you and no one else would ever see it.”

Mahrree blinked at him. “What did Hogal say?
What did you write?”

“
That you are the most
dangerous woman in the world. Think back to your state of mind
then. What if you knew I had these maps?”

Mahrree threw her hands up in the air. “I
would have insisted we go . . . oh. Oh,
I see
.” She bit her
lip. “Hmm. Could have been a problem, huh?” Too many ideas ran
through her head of what she would have done had she known Terryp’s
map was in her home for all those years.

Until she remembered . . . “You and Hogal
really thought I was the most dangerous woman in the world?”

“
Absolutely. In fact, you
recently solidified your claim to the title. The truth
is
dangerous. Especially shouted in front thousands of
people.”

She looked back at the map. “Oh, Perrin—it’s
amazing! But I really think I could have kept quiet about it.”

His laughter startled her. “You? Keep
quiet?”

She bit her lip. “I guess the evidence to the
contrary
is
rather overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“
It doesn’t matter
anymore,” he grinned and kissed her. “Take a look and tell me where
you want to go first!”

She laughed a sigh. There, in amazing detail
on the small parchment, was all anyone could ever hope for. A
narrow passage of land between the desert and the mountain range
opened to a vast valley area. The distance to the valley was barely
two miles through the desert, easily traversed.

To the north was the same mountain range that
sat beyond them in Edge, and to the south was a large open plain
where remnants of a massive city, larger than Idumea, once existed.
Beyond it, to the west, south, and east where the desert ended were
vast fields, grasses, trees, rivers—everything a civilization could
need.

Mahrree’s eye was drawn to the north again.
The mountain range ended two-thirds of the way, leaving a large
opening in the northwest. Terryp had merely put a question mark
there. The land Terryp outlined was enormous, several times larger
than their world.

“
It seems Terryp didn’t
explore most of this land to the south,” Perrin gestured to the
map. “But according to this scale, it’s hundreds of miles, so no
surprise there. The dotted line around the perimeter of the ruins
is where he personally explored. The dashes further out are as far
as the scouts went. The rest of the map comes from the records made
at the carvings. The southern sea doesn’t even show up for another
three hundred miles. There’s no border to the west—no end in sight!
And right here,” Perrin said, pointing to the mountains in the
northeast where the question mark stood, “when I made the copy, I
put mountains all along the top.”

“
Why?” Mahrree asked, still
astonished her husband was the unknown copier she had wanted so
desperately to meet.

And Terryp’s map was in her home, all these
years.

Right under her nose was the truth and
evidence she had craved for all of her life. She just never knew
where to look.

“
Because I wanted the
expedition to discover it,” Perrin explained. “I knew they’d be
terrified to go out knowing the mountains actually
ended
somewhere. I hoped they’d be intrigued by the gap they’d find and
follow it. Instead they all turned and ran for home instead. Can
you imagine? Half of them were soldiers, and they were cowards!” He
shook his head in disgust.

“
So this is your plan?”
Mahrree whispered.

“
Yes! Mahrree, let me take
you away from Edge, from all the world! Let’s go prove that
Terryp’s land is safe. Then let’s go
beyond
it, to the
northwest. What happens where the mountains end? What a fantastic
adventure for Peto! We can
do
this!”

The ruins! Terryp! Her childhood hero, his
map underneath her fingers, his lands begging to be rediscovered.
She could do this for him. Prove what he wasn’t allowed to do. They
could do this together—

No. No!

No, they couldn’t.

Mahrree let out a small moan. Perrin’s face
was so hopeful that she dreaded what she had to say next.

“
Oh Perrin, we have a
grandbaby coming in just a moons’ time. That’s what we can do—be
grandparents. We can’t go now.”

“
I know, I know!” he
gripped her arm. “And that’s what I want too. But Mahrree, we can
do
both!
We don’t go until the baby’s born and Jaytsy’s
rested up, maybe early Weeding Season. I’ll need that long to
gather supplies and plan properly. Since the soldiers no longer
care about us, it’ll be easier. We can use Deck’s barn to hold
everything. There’s room in the rafters to hide it all, I’ve
already measured. We’ll secure a few horses and I’m sure Shem will
find a way to bring us Clark. Then we’ll vanish, like Yordin’s
grandparents. Maybe that’s what they did! We can take a packhorse
laden with paper and ink just for you to record everything. Peto
and I can scout the area while you sit at the ruins playing Terryp
and copying everything he did. You’ll have to learn to ride a
horse, but we can do that in the next few weeks.

“
Mahrree,” he said, his
face glowing with anticipation, “as much as I hate to leave Jaytsy
and Deckett, we can’t sit here and mope. We’ll be back before the
baby’s a year old. We can’t let Peto continue like this, Mahrree.
Think of the adventure! Think of everything we can bring back! We
can change the world!”

He was shaking her arms with so much zeal
that she wasn’t surprised later to see small bruises there. He
released her arms and rubbed them apologetically.