“Then let’s be about it,” Karnac ordered briskly, cutting him off.
“But remember-no fires, no naked flames on the plateau,” the balloon master added. “The hydrogen is flammable. If it lights, the whole thing will burn.”
“With us tied in the nets, too,” Doric whispered. Pia saw Kara exchange a look with Theodore and Castimir. Their doubt was clearly evident.
“It’s the only way,” Harold said. “The swamp to the west is impossible to navigate. To the north lies Canifis, and in the south a great number of ravenous lie in wait.”
“How is it supposed to work,” Theodore mumbled. His lips barely moved. Pia thought his face looked frozen.
He’s not the only one who thinks this is a stupid idea.
“Simple really… It’s all very simple,” Albertus said tiredly from the litter. “The gnome’s burner heats the air inside the balloon. This causes it to rise. The hydrogen gas is lighter than air. The combination of both will give the balloon enough buoyancy to float away on the winds.”
“And just how do we land?” Gideon asked incredulously.
“I would imagine that once we are across the river, the gnome will release the warm air gradually, and the balloon will sink.” Albertus looked as if he was adding figures in his mind. “How far… how far is the river from here?”
“I don’t think it can be more than thirty miles,” Despaard said.
“Then as long as the winds favour us, we won’t have to be aloft for long… not at all. Only a few hours perhaps,” Albertus whispered hopefully. “Indeed, it could work.”
“It will work,” the spirit woman said. “Some of us will live to see Misthalin.”
“We will travel south first,” Master Peregrim informed them. “Then we should catch a westerly wind that will carry us across the river and away from this dreadful place. But you are right, my old friend-only a few hours at most.”
“And you’ve done this before?” Kara asked hesitatingly.
Master Peregrim bit his lip.
“Yes,” he said. “Once. And that was by accident.”
“By the gods,” Doric swore. “He’ll have us in Kandarin.”
“Well, at least that’s over the river,” Castimir murmured.
But Pia could tell their unease was shared by many.
Pia shared in many of the tasks throughout the remainder of the day and through the night itself. It seemed to her that Karnac was deliberately keeping everyone busy, as if keeping them occupied would somehow allay their fears of the suicidal flight to come.
At one point, she found her way into the honeycombed interior of Hope Rock, sent to gather two crude quivers filled with equally crude arrows. As she made her way back to the plateau, she heard voices coming from the darkness from a passageway on her left, hidden around a corner. The first speaker she recognised immediately, for it was Vanstrom.
“We have no other way,” he said. “You know that.”
“I would sooner go back and face Drakan and this prince than attempt this flight. It is madness made real Vanstrom. You know it is.”
Pia stopped. She didn’t recognise the other voice.
“Yet the gnome has done it before,” Vanstrom persisted. “He came from the west. He can carry us out. All of us.” She heard him spit in the darkness. “But if you want to take your chances with the undying one, then go and do so-and go now, before you dishearten the others.”
“It is too late for that, Vanstrom,” the man said bitterly. “Tonight, I am going to confront Karnac once and for all. I should have done it when we first left Meiyerditch two years ago. He’s led us from one disaster to another!”
“Don’t be a fool, Hereward. If you do this, then none of us will escape.”
“Don’t touch me, Vanstrom.” Something hard and metallic scraped on leather.
A knife. He has pulled a knife on Vanstrom.
“You’re not one of us, Vanstrom. You never have been. Coming and going from Meiyerditch. Escaping from Canifis. That’s too many lucky breaks.”
Pia heard a scuffle, then Hereward cursed and Vanstrom gasped, but it was as if both sounds were curiously muted.
No! Vanstrom was fair and kind to me.
She shot around the corner into the narrow passageway. The quivers fell at her feet, the sound making a clattering echo in the hard stone walls of the place. She heard Hereward gasp and she saw him turn, the glint of a knife catching the torchlight above.
“Wh-” he began.
And then she was on him, her fingers like claws, her teeth biting and ripping on his arm. She felt him stagger under her weight as he punched her with his free hand and then she heard a noise like two stones smashing together.
Hereward’s body went limp beneath her, sinking to the ground as if he were a puppet without strings. Above him, Pia saw Vanstrom, outlined under the light. In his right hand he held a rock, a black stain upon it, his eyes wild.
“Pia. Get up. Move,” he said. “Get out. Get out. Now.”
She stood quickly, stumbling once. Her hand pressed against something soft and wet in the darkness beneath her and a nauseating smell rose up, making her gag.
“Get up and get out,” he repeated. “Go to our place. I will finish up here.”
“I was trying to help! He attack-”
“I know, but I can take care of myself. Now, go. Tell no one of this, and clean your hand before you leave here.”
“My hand?” She lifted it to the light and saw that it was stained in blood-and something else. Something else that looked like scrambled egg.
“I cracked his skull open, Pia. Now, go.”
Something in his voice and the look in his eyes made her grow cold. She took the quivers up in her arms and without knowing why, she ran-first to the subterranean well where she washed herself, and then up to the surface, to deposit her burden before Kara and Theodore, who were busy distributing the weapons they would take with them.
No one noticed her as she climbed the scaffolding back to the groove in the rock, they were all so busy below as the balloon gradually took shape. No longer was it a flat canvas with a loose net hanging at its base, but rather it looked like an upturned garlic bulb. Down each side of the balloon there hung a primitive rope ladder that led up to the top. The nets for the passengers were stitched to the balloon’s canvas near its bottom, a few yards hanging below it into empty space.
She watched it for a moment, and then when she was alone her thoughts turned to Hereward. She drew her knees up to her chin and thought of what she had done.
I am a murderess now, she thought frantically. I deserve to be hanged.
She didn’t know how long she sat like that, but when she looked up again the now familiar and still wondrous sight of the pink horizon was there.
“It will be dawn soon. Time for us to fly.”
Vanstrom. He stood over her.
“What did you do with-”
“It doesn’t matter. It is too late for anything to interfere now. Soon, we will leave this place, and all that we did here-all the ugly little things that we had to do to survive. They will be like nightmares. And nightmares cannot hurt us, can they, Pia?”
Vanstrom sat behind her, his strong arms around her shoulders, holding her.
Restraining her.
Frightening me.
“Can they, Pia?”
“No… no…”
Vanstrom pushed forward suddenly. And Pia panicked.
He means to kill me, too.
She twisted in his grasp. Her foot slid outward, toward the edge, her leg bent. The edge of the rock was right behind her, disappearing into a hundred-yard drop that ended in the shallows of the lagoon.
No chance.
Pia lost her balance.
“Please… no please…”
Vanstrom’s hand shot out. He seized her wrist and pulled her back.
“By the gods, girl, what do you think you are doing? Sit quiet and be still.”