The Farwalker's Quest Read online

  With a scowl, she stared into the shadowy cave. Her feet wanted to wander farther inside, so she let them. A gurgle of water rose to her ears. Following it into the dark, she stopped when the splashing seemed to surround her. Her hand fell to her green bead. She wondered if she could make it twinkle again.

  “Don’t go any farther,” Scarl called.

  “I’m not.” She closed her eyes and wished for light. When a glow lit her eyelids, it wasn’t her bead. Zeke and Scarl approached, torches in hand.

  “Liam came prepared,” Scarl explained.

  The flames lit water pouring from a crack in the ceiling and carving a channel downhill into darkness. They followed the stream until it pooled in a basin the size of a rowboat. The water gurgled and spun there before it disappeared down the funnel of the whirlpool.

  “It goes underground?” Zeke said.

  Scarl lowered his torch near the whirlpool’s surface. Wet, polished stone glinted beneath. Though the water was clear, his light did not reach to the bottom.

  “The mountain’s dark throat,” he murmured. “Slide down that and you’re swallowed forever.”

  “Oh!” Ariel cried. “The message is in there. It’s caught in this throat!” Her feet wanted to slide into the water, and not only to cool her burning soles. She sat and untied her boots.

  Scarl knelt to explore the pool with one arm.

  “There must be a ledge or hole down there,” Ariel said. “With something inside.”

  Wet to the shoulder, the Finder straightened. He shook his head. “If so, it stays where it’s at.”

  She gaped at him. “We have to try to get it.” She glanced to Zeke for support. He looked dubious, too. “I’m a good swimmer,” she added. “It doesn’t look all that deep, and the drain hole might not be big enough to fall through.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Scarl said. “You’d be trapped against it by the force of the water. You’d drown just the same.”

  “Tie the rope on me. You can pull me back out.”

  “No, I don’t know that I can.” He propped his torch against the wall. “I want you to feel something.” Dropping his staff and his pack, he dug for a rope. A sweater also emerged. Stringing the rope through its collar, Scarl tied it on snug, like bait on a line. Then he handed Ariel the end of the rope.

  “Hold tight.” He flipped the sweater into the whirlpool. It spun twice before the stream slurped it under.

  The rope jerked Ariel’s arm. She lurched forward. Scarl grabbed her.

  “Now pull it back up,” he instructed.

  Zeke had to help. The reeling in of their bait took more effort than she cared to admit. When they finally landed it, sloppy, Scarl bent to untie the rope.

  “You felt the tug on the sweater,” he said. “The force against your whole body would be considerably stronger.”

  She opened her mouth to protest.

  “No,” he repeated. “I trust your instincts that something is there. But I’ll not drown you for it. I don’t care if it’s the very door to the Vault.”

  It wasn’t. Something small beckoned from under the water, Ariel thought, small and enticing, like the tingle still left in her feet. She muttered, “You would have drowned someone for it before.”

  He looked away for a few seconds before returning her gaze. “I won’t now.”

  Ariel crossed her arms and stared at the whirlpool. After the tug on the sweater, she knew he was right. She didn’t want to be trapped by that deluge. But to come so close and be forced to walk away empty-handed!

  As she and Scarl had argued, Zeke had wrung out the sweater and walked a few steps upstream. Gripping tight to one sleeve, he plopped the sweater across the course of the water. The stream backed up behind the wet wool.

  “Look,” he said. “Could we stop up the water? Make it run deeper into the cave or outside instead?”

  They watched as, for an instant, the whirlpool dropped. Then water flowed around the sweater and found its channel again.

  Ariel leaped on the idea. “A rock dam would block it!” Unfortunately, unlike the tail of the tunnel, this end was barren.

  “That’s probably why your dart said, ‘Come united.’ ” Scarl studied the narrow stream channel. “With a dozen others, an Allcraft, ropes and wood and strong backs—maybe. With three of us …”

  Ariel could see him consider it. That was victory enough to encourage her.

  “We’ve got rope and your staff and our three packs,” she said.

  “Four,” said Zeke, “counting the dead guy’s.”

  Scarl regarded the corpse and rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. When he took off his coat, Ariel grinned and ran to empty their packs.

  Zeke volunteered to play beaver. Only Scarl had enough weight or strength to act as the anchor. That meant Ariel would drop into the whirlpool. She would have fought for that role anyway.

  The Finder took out his glass. When he put it away, he turned to her.

  “Where are you drawn to?” he asked.

  Facing the whirlpool, Ariel closed her eyes to better grasp the sensation. One foot itched to slide forward and down toward her right. She pointed. “Around there, on that side.”

  “I think so, too. If it’s a hole, as you said, and you have to reach far inside, you’ll need to be very careful not to get stuck. How deep, do you think?”

  She had no idea. “Um … as deep as you are tall, maybe?”

  He pinned her with his eyes. “Twice that, by my reckoning. So if we can’t lower the water a lot, I don’t think you can get down there, put your hands on whatever it is, and still come back up.”

  “I can hold my breath a long time—watch.” She demonstrated. Scarl counted.

  “Okay,” he said, when she finally released her pent breath. “I have an idea how soon to yank you back up, anyway. It’ll go faster when you’re struggling and cold.”

  She bent to stick her hand in the water. She yanked it out again hastily.

  “You can still change your mind.”

  At her impatient gesture, Scarl added, “Well, I’ll change it for you if Zeke’s dam doesn’t work.”

  Zeke had located a spot along the creek where the surrounding floor dipped and the water might be encouraged to veer out of its channel. The three of them stuffed into their packs what spare clothing they had and all the brush they could scavenge from outside. Zeke braved the stink to snatch Liam’s pack, too. Scarl lashed three packs together, leaving the fourth and his coat for stopping up chinks.

  The boy eyed the corpse wistfully. “We could use him, too, flop him right in the creek. Except I don’t want to touch him.”

  Scarl nixed that idea, worried about contaminating water that Ariel might gulp. But he did find a tightly rolled grain sack among the things Zeke had dumped from Liam’s pack.

  “He must have hoped to carry home treasures,” he said. Shaking it open, he discovered that the burlap had been lined with thin animal skin. By carefully splitting it along a seam, they created a tarp. Scarl and Zeke plotted how best to use it.

  When Zeke stood ready, Scarl tied the rope under Ariel’s armpits. Her feet were bare and she’d removed her trousers, too, to reduce the drag of the water.

  “That’s so tight I can hardly breathe,” she complained.

  “It won’t slip off, then.” He tugged the rope. “Jerk it twice, like this, if you’re ready to come up before I make you.”

  He planted himself where he could brace his good leg against the wall. Wrapping himself with the rope, he took up the slack, leaving her little more than a dozen feet to dive with.

  “I’m going to holler at Zeke,” Scarl said. “Don’t go until the water drops and I tell you. Then, unless the dam works even better than we hope, I’ll count to forty. No more.”

  Determined, she steeled herself against the icy water. “I’ll get it.”

  The instant Ariel hit the water, she was squeezed by the heart-stopping cold and dragged by the immense undertow. Her legs and elbows banged against the
sides of the pool. Her eyes flew open. Zeke’s dam had worked well enough that she could see a wavering torchlight through the water swirling over her head. She couldn’t see a thing in any other direction. Panic spiked through her. Bracing her palms against the nearest stone surface, she recovered her grip on her thoughts. She didn’t need to see, she reminded herself. She needed to feel. She closed her eyes again to shut out the blindness.

  Letting the water pull her down, she scoured the rock with her hands, forearms, and feet, searching for a crack or a hollow. She felt only water and slippery stone. Her chest grew heavier each second. Her toes wanted to stray farther right and still deeper, so she squirmed to orient herself head down to reach with her arms. Although she moved with the current, not against it, the effort used up most of the air in her lungs.

  She clamped down tight against the burning urge to breathe. Back and forth, up and down coursed her hands. It was here somewhere. If only she could breathe. The current felt weaker than when she’d jumped in, but water still rushed past and against her.

  One of her fingers jammed painfully. Sweeping back again, her hand crossed something not stone: an eyelet of metal. She scrabbled her fingers around it. It wasn’t a hole or niche as she’d expected, but a length of thin chain. Her hand slid down it and struck something larger.

  Ariel clutched it. Her air-starved brain couldn’t identify it. Only concepts flashed in her mind: round, hard, smooth, breathe oh breathe. She’d found what she’d sought, but the chain didn’t want to let go. She had to get out. Scarl had to pull now, because she must change the air in her lungs. But she couldn’t bring herself to relinquish the prize. Trying to find an angle where the chain could slip free, she twisted herself all around it, tugging feebly.

  A sharp wrench on the rope nearly knocked out her held breath, but it didn’t pull her away from the eyelet. The rope’s pressure grew. Pain swelled through her chest and flowed through her arms.

  A fuzzy darkness crept over the pain. Just before Ariel gave in to the command to breathe, water or no, she felt another fierce jerk. She flew through the water, scraping on rock. Her legs kicked, bashing her toes. The water broke over her head. She gasped. Air and water both rushed down her throat. She choked, not wanting to inhale again but unable to stop herself. More water caught in her windpipe. Coughs racked her.

  Scarl dragged her clear of the water. Spluttering, Ariel landed in a painful heap on the edge of the pool. A smack between the shoulder blades startled her into an instant of stillness. The next round of coughing cleared her throat better. Air found its way in.

  “Are you hurt? What was stuck? Is anything—” Scarl’s hands roved her limbs, searching for damage. They stopped at the thing locked in her arms.

  “Well, bloody no wonder! I thought I wasn’t going to get you back up! You just about did us both in, wrapping yourself around that!”

  Ariel focused on her prize: a milky jar with a clamped lid. Corroded metal sealed the lid and formed a few links of kinked chain—including the rusted link that had finally broken. It was entwined with her lifeline where it tied at her chest. Her arms alone never would have kept the jar against Scarl’s strength, but the entangled rope had held on to it for her.

  Zeke raced up, soaked and squelching and demanding to know if she was all right.

  “She’s better than I am.” Scarl exhaled hard. His hands shook as he removed the rope from them both. “That scared the life out of me.” He ignored the information from Zeke that his half-healed back was bleeding again.

  Ariel cleared her sore throat and wiped rivulets from her face. Water lay everywhere—puddled all over the ground, dripping from Zeke, and rushing alongside them. Though Zeke had done well for a moment, the whirlpool swirled high again.

  “I got it, though.” Her fingers tapped the heavy white glass in her lap. She couldn’t suppress a victorious smirk. “Just like I said.”

  A grin split the lingering strain on Scarl’s face. “You sure did, spitfire. Let’s see what it is.”

  CHAPTER

  41

  Ariel shook the white jar. Something rattled inside. Excitement sizzled through her. But the metal clamp on the lid had corroded solid. It could not be undone by any of them.

  “Break the jar,” Zeke suggested. “I’ll do it.”

  They took it out into the light. Zeke rapped the lid against a stone, gingerly first, then with more strength. The jar’s contents clattered with each strike.

  “Don’t smash whatever’s inside,” Ariel said.

  At last the glass shattered. Amid the white shards rested another brass telling dart.

  Zeke groaned. “If this is just like the first one, I’m going to bash my head on a rock.”

  “It’s not.” Ariel drew it from the pile of glass. The brass was smooth and nearly blank, its sharp tip unbroken. Suddenly terrified that she would somehow ruin it, she thrust it at Scarl.

  He turned it so all eyes could see. Only two symbols marked the outside. Ariel recognized both.

  “Farwalker,” she said, pointing. Her heart swelled into her throat. “And Tree-Singer. The message must be inside?”

  “Should be.” He passed the telling dart back to her. “Only you or a Tree-Singer can open it, though.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Press on those blades with one hand and twist with the other.” He demonstrated. “Gently. It should pop apart in your fingers.”

  Zeke cupped his palms beneath hers. “In case it holds jewels,” he explained.

  Sure she would accidentally break it, Ariel pressed and twisted. Some hidden catch clicked. The dart seemed to come alive in her hands, the shaft splitting lengthwise and springing into a curved strip of brass. Gray dust showered into Zeke’s palms. He gasped.

  Ariel slid a fingertip along the concave strip, leaving a smooth trail through the dust. The inner surface was unmarked.

  “It’s blank!” She checked again. Her eyes shot to Scarl for explanation or help. “Oh—what day is it? Mayfest?” She counted on her fingers. “The day after? The first dart said ‘no later than Beltane.’ We might be too late!”

  Scarl, too, inspected the strip. “From what the Storians told you, I got the impression you had to get started by Beltane, not finished,” he said. “But I could be wrong.” He reached to pinch the gray powder in Zeke’s hands.

  “It’s not shiny enough to be silver,” Zeke said.

  “It’s nothing but dust,” Ariel wailed. “Isn’t it?”

  “I think,” Scarl said, sniffing his fingertips, “it’s actually ashes.”

  “Ashes? All that for ashes?” Zeke started to tip the ashes into the wind.

  Scarl grabbed his wrist. “Maybe it has some significance we’re not seeing,” he said. “Get one of our water jars, Ariel. Dry it out. We can save this and—”

  “And what? Toss it into the air and make wishes? Cast it onto the sea so a mermaid will rise? Forget it.” Ariel slumped. “Whatever it was, it burned itself up yesterday. We can’t make it unburned. So we might as well let the wind have it.”

  Scarl gnawed his lip but found no argument. Silently, he released Zeke’s wrist. Zeke parted his hands and let the ashes trickle away in the breeze.

  “The Vault is in ashes,” Zeke murmured. “‘Sunlight and leaf pass to firelight and ashes.’”

  Ariel moaned. “It’s a horrible joke.”

  “Way too much trouble for that,” Scarl said. “And I’m not convinced it contained anything different yesterday or last week.”

  “What else, then? What could it mean?”

  Scarl studied the mouth of the cave without answering.

  Ariel nudged him. “You know.”

  “I might.” At her exasperated look, he continued. “I don’t know why the other darts weren’t sent until now. This one has been in that pool a good while, and clearly human hands placed it. But maybe the contents of the Vault burned long ago. Maybe that is the message a Farwalker needs to spread. So people like me will stop wasting e
nergy looking for it.”

  “You can’t find what doesn’t exist,” Ariel muttered.

  “Mmm.” Scarl closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His voice thickened. “You can spend your time more wisely, perhaps.”

  Ariel’s face crumpled by degrees. She carefully set down the sprung dart and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around tight. She hid her face in her lap, and she wept. All the grief on the twisted path from Canberra Docks to the mouth of the mountain caught up with her, and she gave herself over to sobs.

  Zeke and Scarl exchanged a pained look. Zeke helplessly patted Ariel’s shin. More practiced with grief, Scarl did a bit better. He reached an uncertain arm around her shuddering shoulders.

  Ariel turned her face to his chest and threw both arms around him. His embrace tightening, he rocked her. His chest muffled her wails.

  Some corner of Ariel’s mind may have known even then what the latest message truly meant. Perhaps the Farwalker inside knew what Ariel did not—that neither her body nor her heart could do what was needed, not then. At that particular moment, Ariel’s young body needed food and plenty of rest if she ever was to regain her strength. And her heart desperately longed for the chance to cry like a child in the arms of someone she loved.

  That’s what she did.

  CHAPTER

  42

  Ariel stopped crying eventually. The trio found their way to the outskirts of Libros, where a family of Reapers took them in. They slept in a corn shed still empty from winter. Scarl told a halting story: the two young people had lost their mother to poison, by her own hand. One look at their ragged father, a lame and impoverished Storian, was enough to explain why. His wife’s family had hounded him out of their village, but he would not surrender his kids. To feed them, he would trade any plain labor no one wanted to do for themselves, as long as it could be done with a limp. It was far too dangerous to practice his true trade within rumor’s reach of Mason. Ariel thought it a pretty good story, and it earned her and Zeke more sympathy than questions. Anyone who knew their ages would not have believed it, but the miles had been hard on them all. Scarl looked the part.