She sighed inwardly. She was significantly improved since her injuries on Syrring Rise, if not yet entirely whole. She had healed well enough under the care of Larkin Quill, but it was not her physical health that had suffered the most damage. Emotionally, she was a wreck. Especially after Larkin’s death at the hands of that monster, that demon–spawn. She might hide it from those around her, but she knew the truth of things. She could feel the upheaval working about inside. Doubts and fears roiled, and her mind was awash with growing uncertainties about her ability to carry on.
She was a Knight of the Word, but she was human, too. The one didn’t supplant the other. You carried your past life with you into the job; you didn’t shed that life like an old skin. You remained the person you started out as, even if you wielded killing magic and projected an invincible aura. Your past was your heritage and the foundation on which you were built. You couldn’t start over. You could only repair and move on.
What that meant in practical terms was that she wasn’t sure of herself anymore. She had lost a significant piece of self–confidence.
“Helen!” she called out, suddenly impatient with the wait.
Helen turned, said something to the men and women with whom she was speaking, and walked over to Angel. “What is it?” she asked at once, seeing something of what was coming in Angel’s eyes.
“We’ve lost another two children. A boy and his sister, ages seven and eight. They disappeared sometime during the night. No one is sure when. It wasn’t noticed until they woke the other children in the group, counted heads, and came up short.”
Helen shook her head vigorously. “They may have wandered off, Angel. We can’t be sure. Can we?” “We can be sure. You know so.”
The other woman said nothing for a moment. “I suppose I do. How many does that make?”
“Eight. In a little more than forty–eight hours. It’s taking them in pairs. I don’t know how, but it’s finding a way to get to them. We’ve doubled the guards, ringed the sleeping areas, the privies, the food storage, everywhere I can think of. Nothing seems to stop it. It comes in and goes out whenever and wherever it wants. No one sees it. Something that big, and no one even sees it.”
She folded her arms and stepped close. “We know what it is. I know, anyway. It’s that thing, Helen.
That monster. It’s tracked the boy Hawk and his bunch back to us, and now it’s feeding on our children.”
Helen winced. “I know. I know what it’s doing.”
“What’s so maddening is that I don’t know why!” Angel’s voice was fierce and guttural. “I thought it was tracking me at first, that the old man had sent it to take the place of the one I killed on Syrring Rise. I thought it was trying to finish the job that it started at Larkin Quill’s. But then it went after Hawk and the children traveling with him. So now I don’t know what to think.”
Helen nodded. “Hawk believes it’s after him, that because he’s been sent to lead the rest of us to safety this thing has been sent to kill him. He says he saw it in the creature’s eyes when it found them in the mountains. But if that’s so, why isn’t it trying to get at him? Why is it killing these other children? It seems to be killing them just for sport! It’s preying on them like some animal.”
Angel looked away, troubled. Her hands gripped her black staff. “I saw it, Helen. Like Hawk. I was as close to it as I am to you. I looked into its eyes. I saw what was there. Doesn’t matter that it stands on its hind legs and cloaks itself in human form–it is an animal. An animal like nothing I’ve ever seen. A black thing out of some pit …”
She couldn’t finish. She wheeled back. “I have to go out there and find it and kill it,” she said, her face twisted in fury.
Helen took hold of her arm and held on firmly. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Angel.”
“You’re afraid for me?”
“I’m afraid for the rest of us. If we lose you, who do we have to protect us? We need your magic, your experience and skill. We need your heart. ” She brushed at her short–cropped blond hair and shook her head. “There aren’t enough of us to do what is needed. We have weapons, we have transport, and we have food and water and maps. We have our determination, and that is not to be underestimated. But we are not Knights of the Word, and we are no match for the demon and his army if they catch up to us. We can’t afford to risk losing you. Losing you would leave us terribly vulnerable.”
“You won’t lose me,” Angel answered, slipping free her arm. “Besides, you have Hawk. He has magic.”
Helen nodded. “Very powerful magic, at that. But he’s a boy, Angel. He’s still a child himself. He lacks experience. His magic is an unknown, even to him. He can do things with it, but it isn’t a weapon he can use to defend others in the same way your staff is. It’s a whole unexplored country!” She paused. “Bottom line? He isn’t you.”
Angel saw the reason embedded in the other woman’s words. It was more than just her magic. A Knight of the Word gave power to those she protected simply by virtue of her presence among them. There was belief in her. Her absence would leave a void that no one else could fill.
“Lo siento. Estoy cansada.” She took Helen’s hand in her own and squeezed gently. “I’m not thinking clearly. I know that.”
“We’re all under a terrible strain,” Helen agreed. “We know we have to do something, but we can’t afford to act out of haste, either.”
“No tenemos mucho tiempo, ” Angel answered. “It’s all slipping away from us, Helen. The longer we stay here, the worse things are likely to get. We need to start moving. We need this boy to take all of us to where we are supposed to go. If he can really do that.”
Helen nodded. She hugged herself and exhaled sharply. The way her eyes fixed on Angel, it felt as if she were reaching deep inside for something to hold on to. “I think he can,” she finally said. “I really do. Even if I can’t explain it.” She shook her head against whatever doubts she was experiencing. “But he says we can’t leave yet. He says we have to wait. He won’t say why.”
Angel’s lips tightened into a thin line of impatience. “I’ll talk with him about it.”
Helen looked uncertain. “Angel, I don’t know …”
“I won’t do anything but ask him for a reason. I just want to know that he has one, that he’s sure about this.”
Helen nodded. “Remember, he knows about the children, too.”
“I’ll remember.” She hesitated. “Better send out search parties to look for those kids.”
“I will, of course. You know that. Not that it will make any difference. We haven’t found a single trace of any of the others. We won’t find anything of these two, either.”
She turned and started walking back to join the men and women with whom she had been speaking before Angel’s interruption.
“It doesn’t hurt to look,” Angel called after her.
Helen glanced back over her shoulder. “Everything hurts,” she said.
The WHITE-HOT ORB OF THE MIDDAY SUN was suspended overhead, the air so thick with its heat that the landscape shimmered as if formed of water. The countryside was burned brown and dry, and even the presence of the river flowing beneath the bluffs on which the refugee camp had been settled did nothing to temper its effect. Hawk stood at the top of the bluff and looked out across the broad expanse of the gorge to where the mountains south formed a black mass against the hazy blue sky.
He was waiting, and the waiting was painful. Not because he didn’t know how to wait, but because he didn’t know what he was waiting for.
Sometimes he wondered how he had come to this. He accepted that what he had believed to be true about himself for so many years was a lie. The King of the Silver River could call it anything he liked, but it was still a lie. His memories were layered with people and places that had never existed and events that had never happened. None of it was real. He accepted that he was a creature formed of magic, not of Faerie or humankind, but of some mix of the two. He even accepted that he was meant to be leader and guide to all these children and their caregivers and to others who would join them on their way to the place in which they would find safety from the end times.