There was warmth on her face when she opened her eyes again; a patch of sun lay across her cheek, having found entrance between two overhead branches. It required determination and will for her to pull herself up and allow the cloak to fall away. For a single moment of surprise and confusion, she thought that for all their talk the other two had obeyed her and gone their own way, for there was no one in sight. Then the evidence of the saddles to one side, their bags lying beside them, was proof that they had not left. Near her was a broad leaf on which rested two long white roots so recently washed free of earth that stray drops of water lay upon them. Beside them a water bottle sat upright.
She recognized the roots as ones Alon dug now and then. Eaten raw, they were crisp and slightly biting to the tongue but palatable. So she ate and drank, finding that she was near famished, and then wobbled to her feet, leaning back against the trunk of the tree under which she had lain. There was a swishing in the brush as Alon pushed through, his face lighting as he saw her.
He came across the small open space into which they had edged their camp to catch one of her hands, holding it in both of his.
“Tirtha, it is well with you?” His eyes sought hers and satisfaction grew in his expression. “You slept—ah, how you slept.”
She looked at the sun and suddenly felt guilty. “How long?”
“It is midday. But it does not matter. In fact, the Swordmaster said that it was a good thing. For he thought us best here until those others are well into the wood. Wind Warrior has gone to settle on one of the trees at the edge of it and watch what they do, look for any guards that may be on the prowl there. Swordmaster is hunting—he put down snares and caught two meadow hens. Also he believes that we dare light a fire if we keep it under cover here.”
Alon made a small face. “I do not like raw hare; this is better.” He loosed his hold on her and briskly set to work with the bundle of sticks he had dropped when he first sighted her, laying them with care, choosing only the driest, those least liable to give forth smoke.
When the Falconer returned, he had two plump birds swinging from his belt. Also he told her he had found a small side dell in which the ponies and the Torgian had been put on picket lines and were grazing well.
“We are a day late,” she said, as he plucked the birds skillfully and impaled them on sticks, to be set to broil at the pocket of fire Alon tended.
“Time not wasted,” he reassured her. “It is best to have those well ahead. We shall take the trail tonight. I would not cross the open in the day. And there may be something of a storm later to give us cover.” To her eyes, he seemed his old self, impersonal and intent on what he conceived his duties. She was well content to have it so. Her own shell of independence seemed to her at this moment a cloak she did not want to discard.
12
The night was moonless, cloaked by clouds from which fell a drizzle, searching out every opening in their clothing. Tirtha had insisted on mounting the Torgian, bringing Alon with her under what protection her cloak could afford. They kept as much as they could to ways that trees overhung, giving them whatever shelter possible. Wind Warrior reported at dusk that those they trailed had taken to the woods and that they had left no sentry or spy behind.
The three still had no assurance that they were not seen, or sensed, and what lay ahead might not lead to an ambush. Thus they moved slowly, the Falconer as scout. He fell quickly into a pattern that Tirtha was sure he had long ago often followed.
It must have been well past the mid-hour of the night when they at last approached the bush-veiled entrance into the old wood road. In this dark the forest was even more overpowering with its thick shadows, and for the past hour or so, Tirtha had kept doubly alert, striving to pick up any sense of being under observation, such as she had known when her vision had laid open this passage. She dared not, of course, probe too deeply, lest she rouse that which might, so far, have been unaware of their coming. It could well be an entity able to detect a farseer.
The boy in her hold had ridden passively enough, making no sound, during those hours when they had traveled so slowly and cautiously toward their goal. But as the Falconer headed his pony into that near-masked opening of the forest road, Alon stirred, his voice came as a whisper, hardly more than a breath.
“This is a place that lives…” He spoke as one who did not quite understand or, if knowing, could not find proper words to make plain his warning.
Tirtha bent her head so that her lips could not be far from Alon’s nearest ear:
“Are we watched?” Her whisper was as low as she could make it.
“I… I think not… not yet,” he returned.
Her own eyes swept from one side of the trail to the other, seeking that wisp of thing that had entwined itself among the trees during her vision of this place. That, she was certain, had been of the Dark, also of a nature far removed from a common existence with those who called themselves human. Let that come upon them in its own place and—she disciplined her thoughts, refused to allow fear to rise the higher.
Ahead, the Falconer was hardly to be seen. His bird had joined him at the wood’s edge to ride now on the saddle perch. However, if Tirtha could not follow them directly with her own sight, it appeared that her present mount had no difficulty in keeping up with the lead pony, just as her own mare crowded in behind. The three beasts drew as close as they might in such a narrow way without being urged.
There was a glimmer of pallid, faint light on her right. Tirtha’s heart beat faster for a succession of thumps until she located the source as one of those stones that marked the road they must travel, as her vision had shown her. She did not like that glow; it carried some of the pallid obscenity of the night fires given off by certain fungi she had seen—loathsome, evil-smelling growths, by tradition nourished by the bodies of unburied dead.
At least the rain was partially kept from them by the overhanging branches of the trees, so she could push back the hood of her cloak, affording her a clearer sight of the way. Then Alon moved in her hold. His hand closed about one of her arms tightly, before his grasp relaxed a trifle. She took that as a warning.
Yes!
What she had thought to face ever since they had headed into this shadowed forest was coming. As yet perhaps it had no more than vaguely sensed them, or maybe it was only making sentry rounds. But Tirtha’s skin crawled as she felt the deadly cold spreading before it. Like that monstrous thing which had sought mindlessly to get at her and the Falconer back in the mountains, so was this not of her world. The impact of it was like an open-handed blow.
Whether the Falconer had picked it up also, she could not tell. Yet here the trail widened out a fraction so that the Torgian, without her urging, matched pace with the pony. Thus she dared to loose part of her hold on Alon and put out her hand in turn to touch the man’s arm.
He did not return her touch. Still Tirtha sensed, as she had never done before, that he realized what message she would send to alert him and that he was already aware of the prowler. They might still retreat, get out of this place overwhelmed by the shadow. Yet that would solve nothing, for the geas held fast for her, and this was the only road to what she sought.
Their mounts plodded ahead. There were more of those glimmering stones, some set sentry wise along the trail, others to be glimpsed back in the woods. Tirtha, tense in the saddle, sought with what skill was hers to pick up the skulker in that place of utter blackness.