Fear can be a powerful spur to the mind. I suddenly grasped what should always have been obvious. We were not that far from the crossroads plaza and the black guidepost there. The symbols carved on the guidepost columns did not merely indicate where the adjacent roads led; they also indicated where the signposts could transport one. Anywhere there was a column, one could be transported to the next column. From the ancient city to any marked location was no more than a step away. All three of them could be but steps away from me right now.
No. There is only the one, and he is not even close to us. Use your nose, if not your brain, Nighteyes scathingly reassured me. Shall I kill him for you? he offered casually.
Please. But be careful of yourself.
Nighteyes snorted softly in disdain. He is fatter far than that wild pig I killed. He puffs and sweats just to walk down the trail. Lie still, little brother, while I get rid of him. Silent as death, the wolf moved off through the forest.
I crouched an eternity, waiting to hear something, a snarl, a scream, the noises of someone running through the brush. There was nothing. I flared my nostrils but could catch no trace of the elusive scent. Suddenly I could no longer stand to crouch and wait. I surged to my feet and followed the wolf, as silently lethal as he. Before, when we had been hunting, I had not paid much attention to where we had gone. Now I perceived that we had approached closer to the Skill road than I had suspected; that our campsite was not that far from it at all.
Like a strain of distant music, I was suddenly aware of their Skilling. I halted where I stood and stood still. I willed my mind to stillness, and let their Skill brush my senses while I made no response.
I’m close. Burl, breathless with both excitement and fear. I sensed him poised and waiting. I feel him, he draws near. A pause. Oh, I like not this place. I like it not at all.
Be calm. A touch is all it will take. Touch him as I showed you, and his walls will come down. Will spoke, master to apprentice.
And if he has a knife?
He won’t have time to use it. Believe me. No man’s walls can stand before that touch, I promise you. All you need do is touch him. I will come through you and do the rest.
Why me? Why not you or Carrod?
Would you really rather have Carrod’s task? Besides, you are the one who had the Bastard in your power and was stupid enough to try to hold him in a cage. Go and complete the task you should have finished long ago. Or would you care to feel our king’s wrath again?
I felt Burl shiver. And I trembled, too, for I felt him. Regal. The thoughts were Will’s, but somehow, somewhere, Regal heard them, too. I wondered if Burl knew as plainly as I did that no matter whether he killed the Bastard or not, Regal would enjoy giving him pain again. That the memory of torturing him was so pleasurable a one that Regal could no longer think of him at all without being reminded of how completely it had satiated him. Briefly.
I was glad I was not Burl.
There! That was the Bastard! Find him!
I should have died then, by all rights. Will had found me, had found my careless thought floating in the air. My brief sympathy for Burl was all it had taken. He bayed on my trail like a hound. I have him!
There was a moment of poised tension. My heart hammered against my ribs as I sent the Wit questing out all around me. Nothing bigger than a mouse was close by. I found Nighteyes down the hill from me, moving with swift stealth. Yet Burl had said he drew near to me. Had he found a way to shield himself from my Wit-sense? The thought made my knees weak.
Somewhere far down the hill, I heard the crash of a body through brush and a man’s shout. The wolf was on him, I thought.
No, brother, not I.
I could scarcely understand the wolf’s thought. I reeled with a Skillimpact, yet could feel no source for it. My senses contradicted each other, as if I plunged into water and felt it as sand. With no clear idea of what I did, I began a shambling run down the hill.
This is not him! Will, in great anger and agitation. What is this? Who is this?
A pause of consternation. It’s that freak thing, the Fool! Then vast anger. Where is the Bastard? Burl, you clumsy moron! You have betrayed us all to him.
But it was not I, but Nighteyes who charged down on Burl. Even at my distance, I could hear his snarls. In the dark woods below, a wolf launched himself at Burl, and the Skill-shriek he sent up at the sight of those ravening jaws coming toward his face was such that Will was distracted. In that instant, I slammed up my walls, and raced to join my wolf in the physical attack on Burl.
I was doomed to disappointment. They were much farther away than I had thought them. I never even got a glimpse of Burl, save through the wolf’s eyes. Fat and clumsy as the wolf might think Burl, he proved an excellent runner when the wolf was at his heels. Even so, Nighteyes would have pulled him down if he had had any farther to go than he did. At his first spring, Nighteyes got only his cloak as Burl spun. His second attack tore legging and flesh, but Burl fled as if uninjured. Nighteyes saw him reach the edge of the black flagged plaza and race up to the column, one hand outstretched pleadingly. His palm slapped the shining stone, and Burl suddenly vanished into the column. The wolf braced his legs to halt, his feet skittering on the slick stone. He cowered back from the standing stone as if Burl had leaped into a blazing bonfire. He halted a handspan from it, snarling furiously, not only in anger but in savage fear. All this I knew, although I was a hillside away, running and stumbling in the dark.
Suddenly there was a wave of Skill. It made no physical manifestation, yet the impact flung me to the ground and drove the breath out of me. It left me dazed, ears ringing, helplessly open to anyone who might wish to possess me. I lay there, sick and stunned. Perhaps that was what saved me, that at that moment I felt absolutely no trace of Skill within myself.
But I heard the others. There was no sense to their Skilling, only awestruck fear. Then they faded in the distance, as if the Skill river itself washed them away. I almost went reaching after them, in my amazement at what I sensed. They seemed to have been shattered to fragments. Their dwindling bewilderment washed against me. I closed my eyes.
Then I heard Kettle’s voice frantically calling my name. Panic stained her voice.
Nighteyes!
I’m already on my way. Catch up! the wolf told me grimly. I did as I was told.
I was scratched and dirty and one trouser leg was torn at the knee when I reached the yurt. Kettle was standing outside it, waiting for me. The fire had been built up as a beacon. At the sight of her the pounding of my heart lessened somewhat. I had half-believed that they were being attacked. “What’s wrong?” I demanded as I charged up to her.
“The Fool,” she said, and added, “We heard an outcry and raced outside. Then I heard the wolf snarling. We went toward the sound and found the Fool.” She shook her head. “I am not sure what has happened to him.”
I started to push past her into the tent, but she caught me by the arm. She was surprisingly strong for an old woman. She halted me to face her. “You were attacked?” she demanded.
“In a way.” Briefly I told her what had happened. Her eyes widened as I spoke of that Skill-wave.