The Farwalker's Quest Page 16

  “I can walk quicker now that I’ve rested,” she said. When he started to argue, she added, “And if I’m on your shoulders, and they’re closer than Zeke thinks, they’ll be able to see us from farther away.”

  “Good point. At least let me take your pack, then, stubborn.” He stuffed her meager bag into his own, and they set off. Ariel panted to keep up. She pretended not to see the Finder glancing sideways and slowing his pace.

  “The stone said something else, something odd,” Zeke volunteered, also huffing. “Maybe I didn’t understand right, but I think it said the men forgot with their hands and their feet.”

  “They for—? Oh.” Scarl’s strides faltered, then resumed.

  “You know what it means?”

  Scarl didn’t answer. Having grown used to his taciturn ways, Ariel and Zeke simply turned their attention to the novelties around them. Never having been in a desert before, they were constantly amazed at the snake tracks and beetles, the spiked plants and odd patterns they found in the sand. Sharing their discoveries helped them forget the sticky thirst in their mouths.

  Eventually, Scarl broke the silence. “Zeke doubted once that I was a Finder,” he said. “Do you remember?”

  They nodded.

  “I apprenticed for a while as a Storian.”

  “You did not!” The disbelief burst from Ariel before she could stop it. She couldn’t match her shadowy and usually silent protector to the only Storian she knew. Old Bellam was chatty and fond of tea at a hearth. Ariel doubted he could have killed a fish flopping on the sand. She’d seen Scarl kill a man.

  He laughed at her reaction. “I’m sure your doubt is no compliment. But it’s true.”

  “How old are you, Scarl?” Zeke wondered.

  Scarl hesitated, either adding or considering whether to answer. “Twenty-nine.”

  Zeke and Ariel exchanged a glance. More than twice their age sounded plenty old, but from Scarl’s closed, careworn face, both would have guessed older.

  “I’m sure your Storian taught you about the Blind War,” he said. “Did he tell you much about what happened after, once sight returned?”

  “Not really,” Ariel said, trying to remember.

  “Only how the trades grew,” Zeke added, “but that was mostly while everyone was still blind.”

  Scarl looked sidelong at them both. “We’ll pretend my name is Scarl Storian, then, as it once was. I will tell you a story. It concerns the men we might meet. And it concerns you, Ariel.”

  She met his eyes. He looked away first, to the horizon.

  “Imagine this,” he said, using the opening to so many stories. “The Blind War has ended, its causes forgotten. For the first time in many long years, babies are being born who can see! The generations before them never lost hope that sight would return, so they’d devised clever tests, and soon the young children who pass speak of stars in the sky, distant birds, rainbows—things their parents know only from stories but the youngsters sense through their eyes. Yet some of the things that they’re seeing confuse them: machines with mysterious purposes, devices their parents have heard of but no longer know how to use.”

  “They must have figured out a few things,” Zeke said.

  “More or less,” Scarl said. “But the telling darts are a rather sad example. They seemed to be nearly alive. If you held one just so, symbols appeared and would shift with your thoughts. All that was needed to send it was to think of the receiver and fling it into the air. The Essence seemed to take care of the rest. Yet the meanings of so many symbols were lost, the darts became more of a plaything than a tool.”

  “Or a way to summon a Healtouch,” Ariel said, remembering her mother’s story.

  “That’s a better use than most,” Scarl said. “And even things like the darts that worked for a while soon stopped, their power exhausted, or the knowledge and materials for repairing them lost. The Allcrafts didn’t have time to fuss with curiosities. They could barely keep up with the basic goods needed most to survive.”

  Zeke sighed wistfully. “All that great stuff lying around—flying houses and darts and fire in a jar. I would have tried harder to fix ’em.”

  “There was a reason they didn’t,” Scarl said. “They weren’t sure those wonders weren’t responsible, in some way, for the war. And once the babies who could see had grown up, they were terrified of repeating their forebears’ mistake. Life was so very much harder without sight. Nobody wanted to fall back into darkness, so few would risk meddling with anything left from the old age. What still worked, people busted. They collected up every device they could find and destroyed it.”

  “I wish they would have saved some of the bikes,” Ariel said wistfully. She’d always dreamed of coming across one overgrown in the woods. Bellam’s tales had inspired a longing in her, a wish to speed over the earth, hither and yon. Now, struck by this reminder, Ariel wondered if her interest in bikes had been an early hint of her Farwalker trade.

  “Some people wished more than that,” Scarl went on. “A few believed we could all learn a very hard lesson. They argued for keeping as much understanding and as many devices as we could recover. If we were careful, they thought, we could use what was left to make life better, without fighting over the marvels or turning them to foul purpose. Those people—mostly Storians—were outnumbered by the rest. We’ve been struggling to survive ever since.”

  Ariel said, “But that sounds like … like maybe you made a mistake while reciting in class, so you just gave up and stopped going to classes at all.”

  “This had much the same effect,” Scarl said. “It’s been called the Forgetting, and we don’t even know what we’ve lost.”

  They walked on in silence beneath the searing sun, contemplating legends of marvels and magic. At last, Ariel interrupted the lonely swishing their feet made in the sand.

  “Your story … you said it concerned me.”

  Scarl started. “I’d better finish it, I guess. Perhaps you see why I ended up as a Finder.” He glanced toward the horizon. His feet stopped. “We have trouble first, though.”

  Ariel followed his gaze. Five black blotches swam through the distant heat waves, first close together and then farther apart. Their motion gave them away as more than a mirage.

  Scarl dropped to his knees in the sand. “Sit down and hold still. I don’t want them to see you, if it’s not already too late. And don’t speak for a moment. I need to concentrate.” He dug in his pockets and pulled out a clear disk the width of a plum. Zeke murmured appreciatively. Ariel had seen it before only in glimpses, but she’d guessed what Scarl cradled now in his palm: a Finder’s glass.

  He tipped it to get the angle he wanted and then stared at it intently. A picture was supposed to appear inside it, Ariel thought. She watched the glass as closely as he did—and surely she imagined the red sparks that burst in its center.

  “Stop looking into it, Ariel,” Scarl said, without turning his head. “You’re interfering.”

  “I am?” A thrill of excitement gave way to the sense she’d been scolded. She gazed instead at the menacing blobs on the horizon. When she glimpsed a motion from the corner of her eye, she glanced back at Scarl. He’d dropped the glass back into his pocket.

  “There’s a big dead tree not far over that rise.” Scarl tilted his head toward it. “Since we’re not going to make the water hole in time, we’ll go there.” He gave a few curt instructions. Nervous enough to obey, Ariel hopped up to cling piggyback along with his pack. Since Scarl couldn’t carry them both, he draped one arm over Zeke’s shoulder, keeping the boy so close they sometimes tripped on each other. Thus the three of them might look from a distance like only one body.

  They jogged in the direction of the unseen dead tree. Jouncing, Ariel began to doubt Scarl’s finding. But at last they topped a dune with sun-bleached wooden bones jutting from the slope below. The dry winds had uprooted the skeleton and piled sand against its trunk. Scarl dropped Ariel near the snarl of roots.

 
He scooped at the sand along the trunk with his hands. “Dig yourselves in here like this, and cover back up as much as you can. Don’t choke on sand.”

  Zeke obeyed, using his splint like a hoe. Ariel waited while Scarl returned her pack and offered a water jar, half full, from his own.

  “Here’s what we’ve got left,” he said. “Try not to drink it all.”

  Her hands lifted to take it. Scarl didn’t let go.

  “Listen, and hear me,” he said. “I’m going to cover some tracks, and then I’m walking out to meet them. If it’s easy, I’ll be back soon and we’ll be on our way toward Hartwater again.” His tongue ran over his lips, which were chapped from the sun. “If it’s not easy, I may take longer. I might even bring them here and pretend to discover you—or betray you. Do you understand me? I will just be pretending, but it must be convincing. And you must be convincing as well.”

  “Should we act surprised?” Zeke had paused in his digging to listen.

  Scarl’s sinister grin set Ariel’s stomach aflutter. “I’ll try to work it so you are surprised,” he said. “I’ll give you as many clues as I can what I’ve told them. But the less you say, the better. Cower and wail and don’t fight too hard. If they’re looking for you, that’s what they’ll expect. If they’re not, we won’t have to do it.”

  Apprehensive, Ariel nodded. Scarl released the jar, but his fingertips rose to brush her scabbed cheek. The knife wound had begun to mend, but Zeke had told her it still looked bad.

  “Lying is another thing I can do pretty well,” Scarl said softly. “You may start to believe I really have betrayed you.”

  She gulped, but her dry throat refused to swallow her fear.

  “I won’t,” Zeke declared. Ariel looked over her shoulder at him, both grateful for his conviction and jealous of it.

  Scarl spun and ran three steps, then turned back.

  “One more thing. If I don’t return at all …” He peered up at the sun and swore before he continued. “If I’m not here by dawn, retrace our steps through the sand and try to find your way back to Tree-Singer Abbey. That will be your best hope.” He sprinted up the rise and vanished.

  “Do you really think he might leave us?” Ariel asked Zeke.

  He gave her an odd look. “I wish you could hear the stones rumbling to one another as we pass,” he said, digging again. “If he doesn’t come back, Ariel, it’ll be because he is dead.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  When she saw where Zeke was digging, Ariel moved closer to the splayed roots of the snag. “Scoot this way,” she said. “We’ll be hidden better.”

  He studied her chosen location and then joined her. Together they scooped out a nest, settled their backs against the tree, and drew sand over their legs. It would have been fun to be buried alive if the possibilities Scarl had posed hadn’t sounded so grim. As it was, the ground sucked at their limbs.

  “Have you heard Misha around lately?” Ariel whispered.

  Zeke shook his head. “I don’t think he likes all this sun. He likes dark places.”

  “Like dreams, I guess,” Ariel mused. “Maybe he went back to the abbey.”

  “Maybe.” Zeke looked doubtful.

  Silence swelled around them again. The sand and the sky spun out together, an emptiness that canceled everything else. Amid too many reminders of death, something stirred in a walled-off corner of Ariel’s mind. Gingerly she allowed herself to think of her lost mother: silky hair, work-strong hands, a quick embrace for her daughter. When pain seeped in, Ariel plied Zeke with questions to distract herself.

  “So are you going to be Ezekiel Stone-Singer now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess so. Does it sound crazy?”

  “Yes. I never heard of a Stone-Singer. Tree-singing is weird enough.”

  “It’s kinda the same and kinda different,” he said. “The stones are slower. More grumbly. And more … I hear them more in my bones. At home, I just assumed it was trees. Then when we slept in the abbey’s goat pen, I told you I heard ghosts, and I did hear Misha. But now I’m certain the rest were the stones of the abbey.”

  Ariel’s eyebrows jumped. “Rocks in buildings, too?”

  “Sure. They think it’s funny that we stack them up.”

  Ariel studied the grains of sand over her chest. She had enough trouble imagining a talk with a tree. Trees were like people—alive.

  “I know it sounds stupid,” Zeke said. “But every time I feel desperate, they help. When Scarl and Elbert were coming to take you prisoner again, the big stone slab over our heads said, ‘Let the men have her. Letting them win for an instant, a blink, is the fastest way to regain your balance.’ ”

  “Balance?”

  “Yeah. Balance is important for rocks. I figured it was good for us, too.”

  “It was, I guess,” Ariel said. “But when you were singing back there in the dark—no offense, but I thought you’d gone nuts.”

  “So did I, but I didn’t have a better idea. And it worked.”

  “All right, Stone-Singer,” she said. “I guess you’ll be the first.”

  Zeke’s grin faded fast. “And Scarl seems to think you’re the only. Farwalker, I mean.”

  “That sounds crazy, too,” she replied. “The only message I have to carry or share is the one on the dart, and I don’t know what it is.”

  Zeke wiggled one foot, causing a small earthquake in the sand. “The stones don’t know what it says, either, or they aren’t telling me, so I sure hope the Storian in Hartwater can. But the big boulders know who you are—who we all are. I can hear them mutter about us as we pass. They speak of a great weight teetering with no certainty which way it will fall.”

  So the earth itself gossiped about her. Ariel shivered. “Falling any direction sounds bad to me.”

  “You’re not a rock.”

  Glad for that much, Ariel watched night seep over the desert. A swollen moon took the sun’s place, and stars pricked around it as the air against her cheeks grew chill.

  Zeke asked for the water. They sipped carefully. Ariel’s eyes searched the shadowy line of the rise. Surely the Finder would appear again soon.

  “The sand is really just a million teeny rocks,” she observed. “Can you ask them where Scarl is or what’s happening?”

  “Too many voices,” Zeke said. “It’s like … I don’t know, ants in a pile, or drops in the ocean. They all speak in a roar. If I listen too hard it makes my head hurt.”

  A disturbance in the sand nearby caught Ariel’s eye. What looked like a very large but half-shriveled spider dug itself out and scuttled toward her.

  “Zeke! What is that?” She pointed out the yellowish creature with her chin. Its pincers made her think of a crab with no shell, but it had a sharp tail that hooked over its back.

  “I don’t know, but it’s ugly,” he replied. “It might bite.”

  “Stay still. Maybe it won’t notice us.”

  In fact, the scorpion skittered right onto their laps and paused there, weaving. Ariel held her breath, grateful for their blanket of sand. Luckily, the creature decided they weren’t interesting and hurried away into the dark.

  Still, it rattled Ariel’s nerves. What if another sand creature tunneling beneath them found a leg in the way? She squirmed. Sand cascaded off her.

  “What are you doing?” Zeke asked.

  “Feeling crawly,” she said.

  “Maybe we should try to sleep.” He closed his eyes.

  Ariel scoffed.

  If she hadn’t been scanning for things that might bite, she might not have noticed the dimple in the sand near her knee. She expected another creepy bug to emerge. Instead, the dimple began twirling, grains of sand spinning loose. The dent flipped inside out and rose in a tiny cyclone.

  Ariel turned to awaken Zeke and found his eyes open, staring.

  “Is it a baby tornado?” she asked. She’d heard that a bad storm could rotate the wind until it lifted boats right off the sea.

&
nbsp; Her question fueled the swirling. Sand whipped into the air. She clenched her eyes shut as grains scratched her face. Zeke exclaimed, spitting. Through a squint, Ariel saw the dust devil collapse. The whirling stopped. She’d pulled one hand free to wipe her face when Zeke touched the top of her head.

  She turned. Both of Zeke’s hands remained buried. Yet Ariel could feel fingers and a palm on her head.

  “Hey!” She craned her neck to peer up and back. Nothing blocked the light of the stars. “I feel this hand—Oh. Misha is here.”

  The sand around them dimpled as if poked with a stick. Ariel wondered why the ghost hadn’t made his usual handprints until she tried it herself. The sand was too coarse to hold any mark but a blob.

  “Maybe I will try to sleep,” she told Zeke. “I can talk to him in my dr—”

  A light glared into their faces.

  CHAPTER

  25

  The hands on Ariel in the next instant weren’t ghostly. They were rough, and they yanked her and Zeke from the sand. Startled, but mindful of Scarl’s instructions, she gasped and protested. It wasn’t hard to sound frightened. Her gaze bounced from shadow to shadow, searching for his face. Those nearest her, all unfamiliar, grinned like barracuda—all teeth and no warmth.

  When she spotted him at last, her insides went watery and nearly flushed from her body in an embarrassing way. A blindfold hid Scarl’s eyes. His hands were thrust behind his back as if they were tied, while a stranger gripped his collar. His plans must have gone wrong.

  “Zeke,” she wailed.

  The hand clamped on her arm shook her. “Shut up.”

  “Some Finder,” laughed the man holding Scarl. He was stubby, his features and hands almost comically large. He cuffed Scarl across the back of the head. Scarl stumbled forward under the blow. “They were right under your nose.”

  Ariel looked at her feet to hide any hope in her eyes. Scarl hadn’t told these five strangers the truth. That meant they still had a chance.