“That seems reasonable,” Professor Torgeson said briskly. “Who else, Mr. Morris? We don’t want too many people, or we’ll move too slowly.”
“Pierre, if he’ll come,” Wash said. “And if Mr. Macleod can spare us a marksman who’s willing to come, I think that will do.”
“Wash, you —” Mr. Macleod shook his head. “All right, I can’t stop you. I suppose the only questions left are, what do you need and how soon do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning, for leaving,” Wash said. “I don’t much fancy spending the night outside walls when there’s wildlife about that laughs at the travel protections. As to what we need, I was hoping you’d have some suggestions.”
The two of them walked off, deep in discussion. Professor Torgeson looked at Lan. “Mr. Rothmer —”
“Yes, I’m sure I want to do this,” Lan broke in. “Just … I’m sure, all right?”
“I was going to ask about your experience with the mirror bugs,” the professor said mildly. “Mr. Anderson indicated that whatever interfered with his spells was similar to an abrupt blow, but the accounts I’ve heard of the mirror bugs sounded more like a slow draining.”
“Oh,” Lan said. “I — well, the mirror bugs were small. One at a time, or spread out the way they normally were, they didn’t absorb enough magic for anyone to notice.” He went on describing what had happened at the Little Fog settlement, with the professor asking pointed questions every so often, and I could see some of the stiffness fade out of his shoulders.
He didn’t expect it to be so easy to get included in the hunt for the medusa creature, I thought. I couldn’t figure out why, though, much less why he’d been so keen to go in the first place. He was up to something, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it once I figured out what it was.
The news that there was a hunting party being sent out got most of the settlement folks calmed down. There was still some quiet talk of leaving, but it had more the sound of planning for the worst than panic. Some of them even laughed a little at Greasy Pierre’s posturing when he agreed to help hunt for the creature.
I didn’t sleep too well that night. Growing up in Mill City, and later on working with the professors and coming out to survey the plants around the settlements, had given me a powerful respect for the wildlife of the West, and there was a sight of difference between running afoul of a cloud of mirror bugs or even coming across a pride of saber cats, and going out looking for trouble. But I couldn’t let Lan go alone.
We left early the next morning. There were six of us: Wash, Professor Torgeson, Greasy Pierre, a settlement man named Sven Grimsrud, Lan, and me. It had been over a day and a half since the Anderson brothers and Pierre had their run-in with the medusa creature at the ford, and we didn’t know how close it might be if it had followed them, so Wash and Pierre and Mr. Grimsrud had their rifles ready.
After some arguing, we’d settled it that we would ride a lot farther apart than folks usually did when they traveled out in settlement country. The idea was to make sure the medusa thing couldn’t catch us all at once, the way it had with the Andersons’ packhorses.
We had two sets of travel protection spells going, one that was mostly to detect anything alive that stretched out as far as Professor Torgeson could stretch it, and one that doubled up the standard traveling spell with one to keep off magic that was as close in and as strong as Lan could make it. I was paying extra-close attention to my Aphrikan world-sensing, and I was pretty sure Wash was, too.
Greasy Pierre had the job of backtracking the route he and the Andersons had taken. It wasn’t hard; even I could sense the residue of the speed-travel spell he’d used to get them all safely back to the settlement. Wash rode next in line, then the professor, Lan, and me, with Mr. Grimsrud bringing up the rear.
We rode for about three hours, then stopped for a break. You’d think that just riding along keeping a sharp lookout wouldn’t be much harder than the normal kind of riding through settlement country, but it was. I was glad to dismount for a minute or two.
Two hours later, Professor Torgeson signaled for a stop and motioned everyone to come close enough to hear. “There’s a … blank area over that way,” she said, pointing at a slight angle to the direction we’d been traveling. “No animals, hardly any birds.”
“This is suspicious,” Pierre said solemnly.
“Is it moving?” Mr. Grimsrud asked.
Professor Torgeson looked irritated. “There are animals everywhere else, and they are moving. Up that way, there is none.”
“How large is the quiet area?” Wash asked.
“About ten degrees at the far edge of the spell,” the professor replied. “We’re about a mile and a half away, as best I can estimate. It doesn’t exactly have sharp edges.”
“We’ll head in that direction,” Wash said. “Let us know when we’re close, or if anything changes, Professor.”
We rode a lot more cautiously after that. Wash took us north and around, hoping to come up behind the critter, if that was what it was that had caused what the professor’s spell had detected. I was a bit annoyed because even with my Aphrikan world-sensing, all I could tell was that the animals nearby were more nervous than usual. It wasn’t until we were nearly right up to the quiet area that I felt anything different.
Right about then, Wash stopped and signaled everyone to dismount. He and Pierre had a quick talk in low voices, and then Wash took the lead. The forest was dead quiet, except when a breeze rustled the trees. It was even spookier than the grub-killed forests farther south; those at least had birds and mice and ground squirrels coming back. Everyone tried to make as little noise as possible. Even the horses moved carefully.
Suddenly, Pierre let off a low whistle. Even though I knew it was a signal to Wash, the unexpected noise made me jump. He and Wash examined the ground, and Pierre pointed. We started off again, angling more toward the north. When we got up to where Wash and Pierre had been, I looked down and saw a paw print — four long, thin, triangular toes stretched out from a squared-off pad. I moved my horse around so it didn’t step on it.
A short while later, we found the first petrified animal — a rabbit, caught in mid-leap. Wash had us spread out even farther, for safety. And the farther apart we got, the more nervous I felt.
We didn’t know how the petrification magic worked, really. Mr. Macleod had said that Mr. Anderson’s leg had still been part flesh on the inside, and I couldn’t help wondering whether the horses and the animals that turned to stone had been, too. The ones we’d found at Daybat Creek had been stone through and through, but they were old. Maybe the magic had changed. Or maybe it didn’t work all at once; maybe it turned things to stone slowly, from the outside in. I wondered what that would be like. Would it hurt? Would you feel the stone creeping slowly inward, knowing what was happening, or did the magic just kill things and then turn them to stone? It hadn’t killed Mr. Anderson, quite. I shuddered, and decided not to think about it anymore.
We followed the tracks for a long way, until Pierre signaled again. “Not far now,” he said.
Wash nodded. “I think —” He broke off, raising his head like a deer scenting a saber cat on the wind. I felt it, too — a ripple right at the edge of my world-sensing, from the direction we’d come. Wash muttered something I figured it was just as well I hadn’t heard clearly. “It’s cut back toward the track we made coming in. At this rate, we’ll circle each other for hours.”
Mr. Grimsrud gave Wash a puzzled look, but he didn’t ask how Wash could know such a thing.
“It likes horses,” Lan said. “We could use ours for bait.”
Pierre and Mr. Grimsrud looked at him as if he was clean out of his wits, but Wash thought on it for a minute, then nodded. “It’s worth a try. If we lose them, we’re still close enough to walk back to the settlement. Professor, you can drop your detecting spell for now and grab a gun. Miss Eff—” He paused, scanning the woods. “You have your rifle? Good. Take yourself back there behind those boulders, and keep an eye out. Don’t make a sound, and if you think something’s coming, shoot first and ask questions later.” He pointed out positions for everyone else, then turned to Lan. “Mr. Rothmer —”