He pictured the look in the eyes of the old man when he arrived and discovered Kirisin was gone. He imagined his rage. The image gave him immense satisfaction. He was sorry he wouldn’t be there to witness it.
When he was clear of the camp, screened now by the skeletal trees that grew along its borders, he straightened and began walking toward the hills beyond. He was smiling with satisfaction and relief, the tension draining away, as he walked from the trees and into the shelter of a deep ravine. He had gone a dozen steps down its narrow passageway when a winged shadow fell across his path.
“Leaving us so soon, boy?” a familiar voice asked quietly.
Kirisin froze, his heart in his throat. He could not make himself look up at the speaker, knowing what he would find.
“Did you think escape would be so easy?” the minder teased.
A second winged shadow appeared beside the first, and from the opposite side a third skrail dropped down into the ravine in front of him, effectively blocking any chance of flight. Kirisin looked up into the wizened countenance of the minder, unable to help himself.
“You wouldn’t want to miss your meeting with Findo Gask, would you?” The other’s voice was edged with expectation. “You won’t believe how much pain he can cause you. It will be interesting to discover how much of it you can withstand.”
Kirisin felt himself sag in defeat. There hadn’t ever been any real chance of escape. “My sister will save me,” he said softly. “Simralin will come for me.”
“No one will come for you; no one will save you.” The minder brushed the suggestion aside. “You are all alone in this, boy.”
The skrails beat their wings softly, and the familiar squawking ensued, a sound Kirisin knew with terrible certainty could only be laughter.
TWENTY
I N THE AFTERMATH of the battle with the skrails, Logan Tom wasn’t sure what had become of Kirisin. At first he thought the boy had fled into the darkness to seek sanctuary from the attack, and that was why Praxia was chasing after him. He hadn’t seen the skrails snatch the boy, his attention on the larger swarm circling overhead and the struggle taking place around the AV. But when Praxia came racing back clutching the small pouch with the Loden Elfstone, shouting at him that Kirisin was gone, he realized the truth of things.
Lost another one, he thought in frustration and dismay.
Praxia thrust the pouch at him like a weapon. “We can’t use this without Kirisin!” she snapped. “All of our people are trapped inside unless he frees them!”
For a moment he just stood there, seething. First it was the gypsy morph and now the Elven boy. The Lady had given him responsibility for both, and he had failed them equally. It was a bitter realization, especially since he had thought that after so many years of ceaseless, debilitating effort at stemming the subversion of children in the demon camps, he had finally been given a charge for which there was an end.
Protect the gypsy morph–the street kid Hawk–long enough to permit him to lead an exodus to a safehold that would provide them all with shelter against the destruction that was coming.
Protect Kirisin Belloruus, the Chosen of the Ellcrys, into whose hands had been placed the fate of an entire race of people.
Straightforward charges. He should have been able to fulfill them. Yet he had lost Hawk to the madness of the inhabitants of a compound and now he had lost Kirisin to a flock of demon–summoned skrails. While he had been lucky enough to have Hawk returned by an intervening magic, he could not rely on that happening with Kirisin.
More to the point, he had endured enough of personal failure.
“What are we going to do?” Praxia demanded. “Those things flew off with him! There’s no trail! We can’t possibly find him now!”
“Yes, we can,” he answered softly.
He told her to look after her companions, to bind their wounds and see to their needs. Two were dead, and the other two injured. She hesitated a moment, and then turned away to do as he had asked, muttering something about how he better be telling the truth.
“Watch my back!” he snapped at her.
Without bothering to see if she had heard him, he walked over to the Ventra and went back to work on the solar connectors. The AV was supposed to be virtually indestructible, yet something as small and unexpected as this shut it down. He shook his head. You couldn’t depend on machines to hold up, not anymore.
He had almost repaired the damage when the attack began, had been close enough to finishing that if he had been given just another half an hour, they would have escaped everything that had happened. He experienced a fresh wave of frustration thinking of this, but brushed it aside quickly so as not to disturb his concentration. Self–recrimination would not help. Anger would not help. Not yet. He would save all that for when he caught up to the skrails.
“Are you watching my back?” he called out again to Praxia.
She glanced at him from where she knelt by her injured companions, nodding her answer and saying nothing.
He should never have left Kirisin out in the open like that, he told himself. He should have kept him inside the Ventra where it would have been much more difficult for the skrails to get at him. He should have just locked the boy away. But would Kirisin have stood for it? He saw himself as a man, not a boy, and he would not have appreciated being treated as somehow less than the others. Besides, hindsight was twenty–twenty and all that. It was easy to second–guess himself now.
When he was finished with the repairs to the AV, he slipped behind the wheel, triggered the power key, and listened to the soft purr of the engine as it slowly revved up. Everything was working again. He gave it another minute, making sure, and then stepped back out and walked over to the Elves.
“When you’re able, start walking. Stay on this road. Follow it north to the river and wait for me there. Stay out of sight. If I don’t show by tomorrow, go in search of the camp where the children and their protectors are waiting. Find the boy Hawk. Tell him what has happened.”
“Ruslan and Que’rue can go,” Praxia replied. “I’m going with you.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re going to do what I told you to do.”
Her face hardened. “I don’t answer to you, no matter who or what you think you are.”
He nodded. “No, you don’t. But you do answer to Kirisin. He gave you the Loden Elfstone in trust. He gave it to you to hold and keep safe until his return. You can’t give up that trust. And you can’t come with me if you’re holding the Elfstone.”
She stared at him without saying anything for a moment. “You have to find him,” she said finally. “You have to bring him back or everything we’ve done is for nothing.”
He almost laughed. As if he needed reminding. “Stay on the road,” he repeated. “I’ll find him and then I’ll find you.”
He climbed into the Ventra, released the locking mechanisms on the wheels, and without looking back drove away into the night.
He WAS A DOZEN miles or so down the road, retracing the route they had taken after escaping the Cintra, before he allowed himself a moment to reflect on the hopelessness of what he was undertaking. He had perhaps another six hours of darkness before dawn broke, so he had some time to catch up to the skrails–which, while efficient and quick, were not built for endurance. Having flown all day to fight a difficult battle, they would have to land and rest before making the journey back to the demon that had dispatched them. In a best–case scenario, they would wait for the demon and its army to catch up to them.
That gave him a small window of time to track them down. But that was all he had going for him. He had little hope of finding much of anything hidden within the screen of gloom that cloaked the surrounding countryside. Unless the skrails were foolish enough to reveal their presence, he had no idea how he was going to find them. They would not be roosting on the roadway where he might stumble on them; they would be off in the heavy brush or up in the rocks in a place where they could protect themselves. They probably did not expect anyone to try to give chase, since they had left no trail to follow, but they were not stupid enough to chance discovery by being careless.