The Farwalker's Quest Page 22

  Trying to recall exactly what Pres may have overhead, Ariel took a chance. “We can find our way home.” She told herself it was only a half lie because she hoped it was true—even if home was not where she expected to go first. “It’ll just be easier if you’ll help.”

  “Perhaps I can arrange for someone to go with you partway,” Pres mused.

  “We’d rather go by ourselves than with a stranger,” Ariel argued.

  “You’re as stubborn as your friend Scarl, aren’t you?” Pres sighed. “As I might expect.”

  They worked out a plan. After Pres left them to sleep, Ariel and Zeke only lay back and gazed at the ceiling. His toes, warm against her calf, seemed to say all that was needed between them. This night in a real bed would be the last for a long time to come.

  CHAPTER

  31

  Scarl believed it the next morning when Zeke and Ariel told him Pres had chores for them to do in trade for their bed. Their deception was sealed after Zeke mentioned that he’d tried again with the stones.

  “ ‘Don’t roll before rain falls,’ they said.” He glanced up at the cloudless blue sky to hide his discomfort in meeting Scarl’s eyes. Zeke had more trouble with untruths than Ariel did.

  Relief lit Mirayna’s smile. Scarl had told her about Zeke’s unusual trade.

  “Really? Wait for bad weather?” The Finder rubbed his jaw. His gaze wandered back to his love. In a distant voice, he added, “I had thought … but perhaps just as well.”

  His distraction eased their departure. Afraid Mirayna’s loaned skirt would hinder her too much, Ariel located the clothes she and Zeke had arrived in and spirited them out of the house. She also made certain she had her bone needle, which the Allcraft hadn’t yet copied. Shortly, the two runaways returned to meet Pres, who had blankets and a pack of food ready. At least a full day would pass before Scarl even knew they were gone, and Pres promised to insist that he stay near Mirayna thereafter.

  “That boy may be a Finder, but he hasn’t found the one thing he’s looked for most,” the woman said with a sigh. “Some lost magic that would keep that girl in the world, since this old Healtouch hasn’t been able to save her.”

  Mindful of the Vault, Ariel wondered if it wasn’t too late.

  “I hope I’m doing the right thing in sending you off,” Pres added as they departed. “You’re sure you know the way? Don’t follow the deer trails crisscrossing these woods. They don’t really go anywhere, and the wolves run them at night.”

  Ariel held very still. She’d never seen a wolf, but she’d heard them howl from afar. They sounded hungry. Before her courage failed or the old woman could change her mind, she nodded and waved, then nudged Zeke toward the trees.

  “Goodwill, youngsters,” Pres called. “And good-bye.”

  Pierced by that word, Ariel’s heart tripped. Seeing Mirayna and Scarl that morning, she had longed to embrace them both in a heartfelt farewell. She never would have believed just a week ago that she would feel so bad, and so vulnerable, leaving Scarl behind. His trust in their words, and the cause of his distraction, only glossed her discomfort with guilt. She managed to abide it until she and Zeke had slipped out of sight. Then she grabbed her friend’s arm and raced away from good-bye.

  They ran until rough ground forced them to slow. Ariel spent a few moments absorbed in the symbols on her bone needle, then let her feet tread where they wanted. The sensation of preference was so strong that she wondered if it was totally new or if she’d just never noticed at home, where it may have been muted by familiar paths. The more she thought about it, though, the less clear her direction became. She began nursing a terror that she would run them in circles or lose them for good.

  Pushing the lump from her throat, Ariel asked Zeke, “Can the stones tell you if we’re going the right way or not?” She held her breath for his reaction.

  Zeke kicked a tuft of grass. “I doubt it,” he said. “They can feel where we’ll most likely end up, but that doesn’t mean you meant to go there. Besides, it’s more obvious to them that the world is a ball, so directions for them are more … curvy. But I can try, if you want.” He raised his eyes to her. They held no accusation or worry. “Shall I, Farwalker?” he added softly.

  “Maybe later.” His confidence boosted hers. Remembering Scarl’s advice about not thinking too much, she forged forward.

  They did not stop for nightfall. As the woods became black, the trees thinned and gave way to stony alpine meadows that rolled before them like swells on a dark sea. Clouds obscured the stars. Ariel hoped the hidden moon was still fat. If she could, she would have fed it her share of the food to stop it from dwindling.

  Her feet began wanting to veer west, but the forest crouched that way, a dark animal waiting to pounce. If they returned to the trees, they’d never see to keep walking. So instead she led Zeke on a route that twisted across boulder fields.

  She should have heeded her feet. As she twined her way between upthrust stones, a sudden emptiness opened before her. One boot slipped in loose shale. Instinct flung her weight back, where she fell to an abrupt seat. Behind her, Zeke grabbed her collar. Only air lay under Ariel’s heels.

  “Careful!” Zeke said. “That was close!”

  Hands clutching the ground, she strained to see. A sharp ravine yawned just before her, its bottom lost in the dark. Ariel’s stomach soured as adrenaline flowed through her. They retreated carefully from the crumbling edge of the cliff. Faced by the need to backtrack, though, she lost her drive. She suggested a rest. They settled into a niche between stones, where they’d be hidden from any observer not nearly atop them.

  “I don’t want to sleep long,” Ariel said, fear of pursuit already replacing the shakiness of her near fall.

  Zeke offered to stay awake while she napped. Then they’d trade before moving on. Before she lay down, Ariel retrieved her bone needle and clutched it to her heart.

  She slipped quickly into her dreams. The bone needle went with her.

  Perhaps Misha was most comfortable in surroundings not unlike the abbey; Ariel’s clearest dreams of him always came when she slept amid stones. She found herself sitting on an abbey bench with the ghost. He pointed to her fingers, which clutched a bone knitting needle. Instead of her charcoal-filled scratches, the symbols on this one glowed gold.

  “It’s my telling dart,” she explained. “But I can’t understand it.”

  His palm turned up to receive it. He whispered, “I can.”

  His claim sent a thrill through her. Of course he could. Who knew how long ago he had lived? Misha may have sent and received telling darts himself. As if fired by her excitement, the gold symbols grew in brightness until Ariel squinted. That unnatural glow—something was wrong. She moaned. Discomfort and unease seeped into her dream and dragged her from sleep.

  Zeke slumped opposite her, his mouth slack and his eyes shut. But what alarmed Ariel more was the glow—not from the needle still in her fingers, but bouncing off boulders not far away. She sucked in a tight breath. A campfire burned nearby.

  Reaching to nudge Zeke, her hand froze. Male voices blew to her ears on the breeze. Although the sound was distorted by echo, one voice came through clearly.

  “They’re here somewhere, I tell you!”

  Trembling, Ariel awoke Zeke and pointed. The whites of his eyes flashed as he made sense of the threat. He gestured for her to stay calm and eased toward the source of the glow on his belly. She slunk behind.

  More argument wafted to them. “… it’s them? I didn’t … to leave the village so …”

  “… too stupid to wait like a cat at a rat hole.”

  “Maybe you are, and we’re just chasing deer mice … not the best Finder I’ve met.”

  Their chins in the dirt, Ariel and Zeke peeked over the edge of the ravine. Two male silhouettes shifted around a roaring fire below. A third hunkered nearby—or was that just a shadow? One man piled wood on the flames. The second brandished a burning branch. Their argument dwindled
to mutters between them.

  “Sure, if we make it till dawn,” snapped one.

  Ariel flinched when Zeke touched her and pointed across the ravine.

  “Wolf,” he breathed in her ear.

  She couldn’t see anything until it moved. The dark form of a large dog crouched on the far rim, its snout trained on the bottom. Leaping, it skidded partway down the gulch to a new, lower lookout. Stones rattled beneath it.

  Shouts erupted below. The man with the torch thrust it into the dark. It revealed more canine shapes just beyond the light’s reach. The nearest retreated, but perhaps not for long. The pack knew daylight was coming. If they wanted anything near that fire, they’d have to close in and take it.

  Ariel yanked Zeke’s sleeve and wiggled back from the edge. Once shrouded by darkness and boulders again, they rose and first tiptoed, then scrambled, away. Groping through the rock rubble, they followed the ravine west toward the tree line.

  “That was a dumb place to sleep,” Zeke whispered when he felt safe. “Hard to escape, and easy for something to jump down on you.”

  “I’m glad they picked it!” Ariel replied. “If they hadn’t, the wolves may have come after us! And if not for the wolves, the men might have found us instead. It was Gust or his Finders, don’t you think?”

  Zeke shrugged. “Too hard to see against the fire. But who else would be out here?”

  Grimacing, Ariel scurried on. She was certain from their builds that none of those men was Scarl. As far as she cared, anyone else could be wolf food—particularly anyone hunting for them.

  Birds began welcoming dawn sooner than Ariel expected. Shortly the sun, though still under the horizon, bounced enough light into the sky that she and Zeke could move faster without stumbling and banging their shins. Allowed to follow their own path again, Ariel’s feet pushed hard. When the ravine dwindled and grew shallow enough, she and Zeke slid into the gulch to cross it. Ariel stared up its length, half expecting men or wolves to bound down it in attack. The silent draw gave no hint of events deeper inside.

  Beyond the ravine, they headed northeast. Sunlight poured over the mountains to cheer Ariel’s heart. She didn’t care if it meant they’d be more visible. She was more afraid of dangers that came out of the dark.

  “Scarl probably knows now,” Zeke said later that morning. They’d paused to nibble oatcakes Pres had packed for them.

  “How long do you think it would take him to catch up, if he won’t stay with Mirayna?”

  He considered. “Two-thirds of the time we’ve been gone, maybe less.” By late evening, then, a pursuer could be breathing at their backs—if those from the ravine weren’t already. Ariel would much rather see Scarl, but her conscience pricked her as sharply as fear. By leaving without saying a word, she and Zeke had undoubtedly made Scarl’s difficult place even harder.

  The moon that peeped over the mountains that night was too lopsided for Ariel’s comfort. Weary, she and Zeke stopped at last, dropping into tall grass near a creek bend. She had hoped to find bedrock or a cluster of boulders, but the earth hadn’t obliged. The peaks to their right were too far away. The wooded hills and meadows had given way to a grassy basin, beyond which a tongue of the Drymere licked at the mountains. Streams trickling through the grassland ensured plenty of water for now, but other than wet pebbles, she and Zeke didn’t have stones. The stems waving over their heads would have to suffice to hide them from anyone, man or wolf, who was looking.

  Ariel yearned for another dream of that gold-engraved needle. Wanting a dream and finding it, however, were two different things. Though her grass bed was softer than usual, she lay awake a long time. The smell of damp soil reminded her of the sea. Her chest thrummed with longing for people and things out of reach.

  When at last her mind let go of waking, Ariel wandered a shadowy forest. Eyes glinted in the dark. She thought some belonged to people she trusted, but she couldn’t tell those from the eyes of wolves. She had to keep moving to stay out of their teeth.

  The trees thinned until one stood alone. Ariel recognized its shape from the abbey—but this cherry had died. A bloated moon gleamed on its branches, where shriveled leaves clung. They rustled a warning. A dark blot oozed down the trunk to the earth.

  Its touch stirred dust or ashes below. From the cloud, the shadow rose into the shape of a young man, but with no face. Ariel shuddered, fearing it would leap and take hers.

  “Misha? Is that you?”

  The shade moaned with the wind. “You did not bring it. The bone.”

  “Yes, I did.” Her hands, though, were empty. Searching with the twisted logic of dreams, she checked both her socks for the needle and then pushed up her left sleeve. Instead of a scar there, Ariel stared at an unhealed slash in her skin.

  A black hand gripped her wrist and yanked down. Her arm bones sprang out through the wound.

  Gasping to scream, Ariel froze. Symbols etched the larger bone of her forearm. The telling dart’s message had been carved into her.

  “I understand all.” The shadow moved closer, exhaling rot. Its voice thinned to a hiss. “Shhhall I shhhow you?”

  Fear sucked Ariel’s heart into her belly. This dreadful thing was no kind teenage ghost. It stank not only of death but of absence and loss, forgetting and pain. A distant part of Ariel’s mind knew she was dreaming, but nothing would change if she woke herself up. This raw Misha would embrace her the next night, or the next. Always there, endlessly waiting.

  Certain she was asking to die, but unable to resist what that primal dark offered, Ariel stepped into the blackness. “Yes. Show me.”

  Not long before dawn, she awoke. One cheek rested on clammy, wet earth. Her left hand dangled, numb, in the creek. She jerked upright, her heart thudding, and spit mud from her lips. Ariel yanked at her sleeve. Her forearm bore merely a scar.

  Grateful to be alive and inside her skin, she hugged her arms to her chest. Handprints, not all of them hers, tracked the mud all around her.

  Without bothering to wipe the muck from her face, she crawled to Zeke where he snored in the grass. Before the sun rose, they were walking again.

  Her dream lingered, both hounding her and leading her on. For the first time since flunking her Naming test, Ariel Farwalker knew where she was going and what lay ahead.

  PART FOUR

  FARWALKER

  CHAPTER

  32

  “Uh-oh. Look.”

  Ariel glanced back. Zeke had stopped. Shading his eyes, he squinted at the horizon ahead.

  “I saw something flash.” He pointed. “There, again.”

  A small cry escaped her. Something moving in the distance had reflected the sun.

  “It’s coming toward us,” Zeke added. “Do we have to keep going this way?”

  Ariel gritted her teeth. “This is the right way.”

  From the moment she had awakened yesterday morning, she had been seeking a spire among the eastern mountains. She and Zeke had soon left the grassland and now minced along the gravel-strewn border between mountain and desert. Every mile forward revealed new peaks, but not yet the one that she wanted. Like a fang, it would be more pointed and sharper on one side than the rest, fringed, if not shrouded, with cloud. A voice in a nightmare had hissed its name: Cloudspear. Ariel’s skin prickled when she thought of that voice.

  The alarm now in Zeke’s voice troubled her, too.

  “This won’t be the right way if it leads us to Mason or Gust!” he exclaimed. “I don’t think Scarl could have passed us to be doubling back. Find some other route, Ariel, or a good place to hide, right away. Or I will. If we wait too long, whoever it is will be able to see us.”

  Ariel had no intention of turning into the desert, so she frowned instead at the rumpled land to her right. A wet glimmer traced the bottom of a ravine. A swath of lavender flowers tinted a ridge. If not the path her feet wanted, then which way instead? Frustration warped her face. She hated that their safety depended on her.

  Then something lik
e the pull of a tide drew her feet toward the creek-threaded gully. They’d inclined northeast for days, but now that she had a reason to detour, her instincts responded.

  When he and Ariel reached it, Zeke splashed into the stream with his boots. The water drained from the gulch like blood from a scratch, the slopes above too loose with shale for easy walking.

  “This is good,” he said. “We won’t make any tracks.”

  Behind him, Ariel wavered. Once they entered the gully, she’d lose the vistas that would reveal Cloudspear. Besides, she didn’t want to get her boots wet.

  “What are you waiting for?” Zeke stared back at her.

  “I’m coming,” she growled. It was crazy to worry about wet boots when whatever approached might want to kill them. She got nearly ten steps before the cold water seeped in.

  With Zeke regularly twisting to gaze back toward whatever had flashed, they began a slow jog. The gorge’s tight bends hid much of what lay ahead. Bear grass and briars straggled across the steep hillsides. The smell of wet stones made Ariel think of her nightmare.

  When the vacant, hissing blackness had offered to show her the telling dart’s message, she had known it would give her a view through a window belonging to Death. All things, made and unmade, succumbed to that void, and Ariel feared to approach. But the symbols had become part of her somehow, a message both to her and of her, and she wanted, she needed, to be shown.

  Blinding her eyes, engulfing her in an icy embrace, the dark shape had swallowed her whole. Its cold voice had wormed into her ears, and Ariel had tried then to scream. The hiss poured instead from her own open mouth. Her last rational thought had been, “Lost.” The world, lost, and her friends, lost, and her soul, lost: all lost.

  As she drowned in that word, drifting in blackness, an image appeared in her mind. A fang, she thought, one that would bite. This fang pointed up, though, standing alone.

  Her dreaming mind clutched another idea. “Stone,” she thought. “Mountain.” The peak anchored her in the swirling dark. The hiss faded. The growl of a predator slipped overtop.