She was torn between the crackpot ramblings and the rational look in the man’s eyes. She decided to sit for just one more minute.
“The Eye and the Shadow may have been vanquished, or like the swirl of smoke that enwreathed all ere it passed, may have diffused into new form. Like the banal evil that accumulates in our time. But other eyes remain, many with places and powers that have not yet come into focus. I perhaps know something of these documents you possess, and I know also that their rediscovery, even after so long a time, will not go unnoticed.”
Now she was surprised. “But how could you know?”
“Quiet! You know so little, you will bring them here again just by your blundering questions! Be still and learn! Your grandfather was but an errand keeper picked at random. He was sent away with it, precisely because even he didn’t know where he was going. He was, however, a respecter of both ancient lore and secrets of his times. Thus he was entrusted with the last remnants of the tale. Perhaps only by chance, he came to play a role far beyond his natural destiny. Beyond that I can say little of his path, save that your presence here tells me much. Perhaps not enough, however. Tell me why you have come here.”
“I …” She paused to swallow; her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I want to know where he is, and whether some documents he left, sort of a missing account of a famous heroine, are authentic.”
“Authentic? You mean real? If it’s a tale, it has a truth of its own. We are all sent down paths and live in worlds that we can only know as ‘real’ by what our heart says. We can’t exist except by believing. What you mean by your question is, I fear, something more … base. Something smelling, perchance, of profit?”
He stopped and stared at Cadence. His insinuation made her even more uneasy than his lunatic ramblings.
“Perhaps you have these documents? Are they in your possession?”
Her guardian senses were up. She felt, could smell, the low-grade fear that was enveloping him.
He went on, “Time works against us. You must trust me this much. Go out of here now. Do not walk around. Come to the library at Columbia tomorrow at the second bell. It is my day house. Then I will tell you more. Nights of swift rain and lightening claws are no place to risk encounters with the creatures of this realm or any other. Now go!”
Cadence got up. She glanced briefly at the bartender. He nodded knowingly, and she walked out to face the hawk, the swooping wet wind.
The rain and whipping gale had gotten worse. Luckily — amazingly, she thought — a taxi still waited at the curb, its hazard lights blinking, its wheels resting hubcap-deep in water that threatened to flood the sidewalk. She ran to it, opened the door, and piled in.
With a lurch, the taxi took off. It surged into southbound traffic, heading for midtown. No questions, no hellos. She wondered if the driver even knew she was in the backseat. Through the scarred Lexan partition and the erratic light flickering across the smeared windshield, she could barely make out the figure hunched over the steering wheel.
“Hello!” she said, knocking on the partition. No response. The cab swerved left and right through the traffic as if, plausibly for New York City, the driver was hired fresh from a country without cars. Water cascaded on either side as the taxi boated and crashed through the overrunning street and deep-pooled potholes.
It slammed to a sideways stop at a red light at West Seventy-fifth Street. Cadence knocked again and the figure turned, fumbled with the partition, and slid the window open.
“Yes?” he said.
“Do you want to know where I’m going?”
“Yes.”
“Algonquin. Forty-fourth between Fifth and Sixth.”
“Yes.”
Approaching headlights played over him in flowing bands of light. His hair was cut down to the scalp, except for a low rough mohawk cresting over his head to a peak that accented the cross-strip of his opaque Wayfarers.
“I’m … Travis. Just relax now.” He looked to be in his mid-twenties, despite his creased features and mature demeanor. Military maybe, she thought. The problem was, the picture that stared back at her from the driver ID pocket was of a man who looked, if she had to take a wild guess, Ethiopian. She looked at the meter. He hadn’t turned it on. At West Fortieth Street the taxi finally had to stop. She didn’t say a word, just threw a twenty at the driver and jumped out.
The light turned green and the cab lurched forward, kicking and swerving like a whipped horse.
By the time she stumbled into her room at the Algonquin, the cold and wet had seeped down into her skin to unleash rounds of shivers. This wasn’t the first day she had expected. The cab ride, the loony people at the West End, the sudden change of weather, all foretold some fever settling over her body and her search.
She left her drenched clothes in a pile on the floor of the room, turned on the hot water in the tub, and poured in the entire mini-bottle of complimentary lavender bubble bath.
A froth of bubbles began to grow, and she went to the closet. There, behind the extra blanket and pillows on the top shelf, she had stashed the valise. She pulled it down and put it on the bed. She sorted through a few of the documents and stopped at a page filled with baroque Spencerian flourishes. With some concentrated effort, this was readable. She got in the tub and relaxed, holding the page above the bubbles as she read.
In a flash she sat up again, the bubbles splashing over the tub’s edge. She thought about the story gleaned from the scroll a few days ago. Days that now seemed distant and wasted in that vigil-land of grading papers, hanging out at the Forest, and waiting for the impending foreclosure sale. Her heart galloped as she read and heard the rising din of horns and hoof beats …
As the ancient warning horns blew, Ara cast a torch upon the signal fire outside the gate, drew her sword and leapt to the center of the lane. Turning to face the darkness out of the east, she felt vindicated. Just as she had at the foot of the Capturing Tree. The others had eaten too much, no doubt drunk too much, and fallen asleep in the inn. And now the Wraiths, or some group of them, had come to this crossroads hamlet.
Suddenly she heard them behind her. They had entered the village! She turned to see them approaching.
A black cyclone, a wall of shadow and thundering hoof beats came up the lane. Sparks ignited from the clash of iron shoes on cobblestones. Streaming manes emerged from the dust and she quickly backed away to the gate bars, holding her tiny sword in two-fisted defiance before her.
On they came, a torrent slashing at village folk who stumbled out from their homes as the great horns blared.
As clear as full moonlight, she saw a skeletal hand emerge from the blackness of the foremost Wraith, marveled at the radiant, jeweled ring heavy upon one finger, and saw a power of angry red light emerge from that hand to blast the gates asunder. She was thrown aside, tumbled and rolled, and only regained her feet to face the Wraiths as they swept past. “Halt!” she cried.
To her amazement, the last of the Wraiths suddenly reined his horse and turned to her. The horse’s nostrils poured plumes of smoky breath in the chill air. The Wraith spurred and came before her. He bent over, long robe flowing down, his face obscured in the shadow, and hissed, “A halfling-lass, is it?”
She tried to take a swipe with her sword, but her arm moved like honey in a Frighten January. She felt herself being lifted by some force, like a cold, grasping cloud all about her. The power drew her to the cowl beneath which hid something she did not want to see. She stared into that blackness as the bony hand slowly pulled back the shroud.