The Farwalker's Quest (6 page)

Zeke's face cramped in reluctance. “Not this close to Namingfest. Not until after I pass.”

In a moment, he mused, “It might not be me. My dad told me that when the trees sound mixed up, several very different things could happen.”

“I thought trees knew the future beforehand,” she said.

Zeke wobbled his head, not quite disagreeing. “They can feel the earth's forces, and the Essence Storian talked about, too. So they pretty much know what will happen. Usually. But my dad says that if some action will change things a lot, the trees can be confusing. They're actually telling us all of the futures that could sprout from that seed, but we're not smart enough to understand all at once.”

“You think the telling dart is the seed,” Ariel guessed.

Zeke stared into his milk. “Don't get scared,” he said softly, “but if I understand the maple at all, I think the seed might be you.”

She giggled, certain he must be teasing. He did not join her laughter.

“I know one thing for sure, though,” he added. “You're going to get that dart back.”

Afraid to get her hopes up and desperate to lift his creepy mood, Ariel showed him her copy, swearing him to secrecy with her. His face brightened for the first time since the crow man had entered their classroom. He even seemed to believe her when she whispered about the symbols that had vanished and changed. But when she promised to make a second copy for him, he shook his head hard.

“No. Don't make another.”

She asked why. He repeated the rough shake of his head. “I don't know. Just don't.”

Ariel studied him. He'd always been dreamy and unpredictable; that's why she liked him. This gloomy outlook was odd, though.

“Does your arm hurt?” she asked.

He looked at his splint as if he'd forgotten about it. “It does, actually.”

“I'll walk you home, if you want.”

“That's okay.” He managed a smile. “You're a poke. I can run faster through the rain by myself.”

In a burst of generosity, Ariel extended her bone dart to Zeke. “I've got Storian's bead. Do you want this?”

He regarded the white stem. “Not to have,” he said slowly, “but I'll keep it for you for a while.” He slid the bone along his palm and forearm into his splint, where it vanished completely.

“You are acting so weird,” she said. “Are you sure you're all right?”

He nodded and finished his milk before heading back into the rattling storm.

Ariel had barely closed the door and moved near the fire when her mother raised her head from her sewing. She was finishing a new yellow skirt for Ariel to wear to Namingfest.

“Do you hear that?” Luna asked. “Is that the bell or just a ghost in the wind?”

Ariel's ears picked a clanging out of the roar. “It's the fire bell!”

Luna pushed aside her sewing and reached for her cloak. “Run across and make sure the neighbors have heard,” she ordered. “Then come straight back here. Tend the fire. I'll be back right away if I'm not needed.”

Wondering if Zeke might have rung the alarm, Ariel longed to dash to the square and find out. But the job her mother had given her might be important. She beat Luna through the door. Though the downpour had stopped, the wind battered Ariel sideways.

She banged on the door across the lane. It opened, but not by the hand of either Fisher who lived there. Ariel faced the crow man instead. She gasped. Out of his black flapping coat, he looked thinner and not quite so frightening—until he tilted his head like a bird watching an insect it would shortly snap up in its beak.

Jumping back, Ariel struggled to snatch a lungful of air from the wind.

“Yes?” he asked mildly.

Her breath returned. She remembered her errand. “The Fishers. Did they hear the bell?”

Burlingam Fisher stepped up behind the crow fellow, grabbing a storm coat and hat. “We have now. Rouse them next door, too, Ariel. It's hard to hear in this wind.”

Ariel threw a last look at the stranger and fled. The clanging bell followed. Her heart couldn't quite separate the alarm from the stranger.

After banging doors at the two nearest houses, Ariel ducked back home out of the gale. Antsy, she busied herself with finding a ribbon to hold her new bead. Her mother returned not long after she'd strung it.

“It's a good thing the Storian dismissed you,” said Ariel's mother, running her fingers through her wind-tangled hair. “His roof caught a spark.”

“Storian's house is afire?” Ariel cried. Most of the building was stone, of course. But Storian's house was larger than usual to make room for his students. Smaller homes like her own were lidded with slate, but Storian's roof had been thatched.

“He's not hurt,” Luna assured her. “The men will have the burning out soon. But someone could have been injured if students had been there and panicked.”

Staring at the fire in the hearth, Ariel imagined it over her head. The back of her neck crawled, and she couldn't resist the urge to look up. Their dark beams sat silent and firm.

“Wait. How'd it catch after all that rain?” she wondered.

“This wind, that's always the danger,” her mother replied. “Only bad thatch soaks through. A chimney spark must have blown up underneath.”

Silently Ariel knotted her ribbon around her neck. The glass bead fell at her throat. Fingering it, Ariel wondered what the Storian had been doing when flames began eating his roof.
Quite possibly he'd been bent over the telling dart. That idea led too quickly to the stranger across the lane. Were the newcomers helping to put out the fire?

Despite Luna's explanation, a darker question rumbled in Ariel's mind: had one of them started it?

Two things were on tongues in the morning: the fire and the Finders. The grim weather had blown away during the night, luring everyone outdoors to admire the blue sky and catch up on gossip. Once their trade became known, the strangers were offered more beds and meals than they could possibly use. Canberra Docks had gone a long time without a Finder to trade with, and the two men were kept busy. They located lost tools and fishing nets, wandering sheep, and the gold nugget that somebody's grandpa had hidden too deftly. The village needed a second well, too. Men dug where the Finders suggested and hit water before lunchtime. That prompted talk of a hunt for sea pearls. Their success was frightening for someone like Ariel, who had never seen a Finder at work—or who didn't want something found. Secretly, she feared that last night's fire might have been meant to scare Bellam Storian into turning over the telling dart.

His classes had been canceled until his roof could be fixed, so a troop of kids soon trailed the Finders, trying to spy the magic by which they worked. Ariel overheard someone using
their names. The bear man was Elbert. The other was Scarl. That name sounded enough like the cry of a crow, she decided, to suit him. None too eager to know more, she spent the afternoon in her mother's workroom, fidgeting over tomorrow's Namingfest and wondering how she'd be tested.

Every test, like every person, was different. Aptitude mattered most. Skills could come later, once apprenticeship started, but some trades took talent or strengths. Someone who got terribly seasick wouldn't be wise to sign on as a Fisher, for instance. Ariel knew the traits expected in a healer: caring, calm, a steady hand, a strong stomach, a good eye for useful plants. The most important was also the trickiest: a healer's intuition. Wishing she could have used Zeke's broken arm as her test, she sniffed her mother's herbal concoctions and tried to feel a response deep inside. She noticed only her stomach craving a snack. If she had the Healtouch intuition, however, the test should bring it out soon enough.

Her thoughts strayed back to the Finders. If the telling dart had been meant for either of them, the receiver's mark would have been some modified
of the Finder trade instead of a lightning bolt. The event the dart invited old Lightning Bolt to attend must be something quite special, too, since almost no one ventured much beyond his or her own village. Storian had told his students that people once traveled for fun, but the Blind War ended that.

The Blind War nearly ended people, in fact. Uncountable hordes had crawled the Earth beforehand, although Ariel found that hard to imagine. Perhaps a struggle for land caused the conflict; nobody now remembered or cared. Entire cities had been flattened. Corpses piled up without a clear victor. And then someone had created an even more terrible weapon. A
hideous twist on the past's wondrous knowledge of healing, this new weapon was meant not to kill, but to blind. If enemy forces couldn't see, they couldn't fight, no matter how great their numbers or reach.

The invention worked too well. Escaping control, the blindness ran rampant. Within a few days, or perhaps as long as a week, no eyes in the towns, in the wild, or beneath the wide ocean could see. With no warning and too little food or water easy at hand, nearly everyone died. Animals fared better than people. Yet the hardy—and those with hidden talents—survived. They began to adapt. Generations later, when the blinding disease had run its course and people began to see again, they'd lost the desire and the means to travel.

Ariel wondered what might lure travelers now. Maybe the dart announced some vast market or a dangerous contest with lavish prizes. More frightening, perhaps some mutual threat loomed, and every trade must send someone to meet and decide what to do. Unless the Storian had twisted the truth more than she thought, though, the time and place had been lost with the message inside. Even if they gained what they'd come for, the Finders would be disappointed.

With a twist of spiteful pleasure at that thought, Ariel decided to join her classmates as they snooped on the strangers. She had just risen to leave when her mother, who'd been out hanging laundry, stepped in through the doorway.

“Ariel.” A troubled look darkened Luna's face. “Come outside. You've been found.”

Ariel's first thought was that she'd never been lost. Then other meanings of her mother's words gripped her. She gulped and walked out to the Finders.

Both strangers waited outside the door. To Ariel's surprise,
Storian and Zeke stood there with them. A knot of gawkers hovered just down the lane.

“Ariel,” said Elbert, the big one. He put out his hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you.”

Ariel shot a glance at Zeke. His mouth remained a thin line.

Her mother tapped her shoulder, so Ariel shook Elbert's hand. It was meaty and warm, matching his face.

“I've given your telling dart to the Finders,” Storian told her, his gaze on the cobblestones. He added, “They were looking for it,” as if she hadn't known.

“Not exactly,” said Scarl. “We were looking for you.”

A chill ran down Ariel's back toward the stones under her boots.

“Zeke tried to take all the credit, but we were kids, too, long ago,” Elbert said.

Eyeing him, Ariel could imagine a towheaded bully. It was harder to see a child hidden in Scarl.

“I know you found it together,” Elbert continued, “but we figured that whoever turned it in was probably the one who had spotted it first.”

She nodded, her thoughts racing. Zeke never would have taken credit that wasn't properly his, so he must have been trying to protect her. But from what?

“You see, Ariel, here's what happened—” Elbert stopped, glancing around the lane. “Might we step in?” he asked Luna.

“Oh, of course.” She reached to open the door. “We just don't have much room.”

Indeed, the main room nearly overflowed when they'd all filed in. Elbert encouraged Luna and Ariel to take the stools by
the hearth. The men remained standing, with Zeke and Bellam hovering near the door.

“See, a Storian quite far away stumbled on a bunch of old telling darts,” Elbert began when they'd settled. “He decided to try an experiment. He sent them all out, directing them to the nearest person in each trade who could still understand them. He didn't send much of a message, though. He wanted only to see if the Essence that once drove them still worked, if they could still find their targets—and if anyone but Storians could indeed understand. The darts went out a few weeks ago; then he sent us to find the results.”

Ariel kept her eyes fixed on Elbert, though she wanted badly to check her Storian's face. What Elbert said matched rather poorly with what she'd heard yesterday. She knew Bellam had not told the whole truth, but she was certain he'd told more than this Finder.

Elbert pulled the dart from his pocket. She couldn't help but lean toward it, wishing to hold it again. He smiled.

“Unfortunately, the experiment has been a fat failure. The other darts all found someone—one stuck itself in the mast of an old Fisher's boat. But so far, no receiver has understood theirs or known what to do with it. Even other Storians like yours don't remember.”