Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  My frown grew deeper. “That’s what you think?”

  “Yes.” His tone grew challenging. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Sand dribbled from the edge of the leather when I tipped it to one side. I watched part of it disappear in the short grass and the rest formed a grey smear on two dried leaves. What had happened? This was the second Guldur Stone that had turned to sand and dust.

  I dropped the piece of leather and started rocking back and forth like Trey had been doing. My mind was clearer than when I had awakened, and I thought back over the events just before everything went black. Trey was right in that each stone had a limit to the amount of magic it could access. All three stones had been at maximum power when I hoisted the pack and then tried to use more power to improve my eyesight. Then, poof, to use Trey’s words, everything had gone black. “You may be right,” I muttered.

  “I don’t want to be right,” he protested. He sounded scared when he continued. “I can’t do anything other than talk using magic, but you can do wonderful things, like healing people. If I’m right, you can only access a limited amount of magic. If you try too much, everything goes bad.”

  “Everything went bad,” I agreed glumly and started coughing. Finally, I stopped coughing enough to croak, “I need something to drink.”

  Trey hopped to his feet and reached behind one of the boulders. To my surprise, he brought out one of the drinking cups full of water. My throat felt better after the first sip. I only drank half of the water and held the rest carefully when I looked at him. “Where did you get the water?”

  He gestured down the hill. “The traveling group of about eighty people made a lot of noise when they went by. I took one of the cooking pans with me and went to check the road after they passed. There were several wagons or carts, a number of horses, and quite a few people on foot.”

  “Convict gang,” I hissed.

  “Maybe,” Trey said doubtfully. “But a lot of them were talking when they went by and no one was shouting orders. It may have been a work party. We heard rumors there was one coming.”

  I drank the rest of the water and reached for the piece of leather lying beside me. A small puff of dust spread in the light breeze when I flicked it with one finger.

  Trey watched the dust and spoke to the ground. “That other opal that turned to dust in your shed was a lot stronger than this one, wasn’t it?”

  “Much stronger,” I agreed.

  “That’s what I thought,” Trey said quietly.

  “Well, what else were you thinking?” I asked when he didn’t continue.

  He shifted around and stared at me and his hands clenched into fists before he continued, “How much magical power did the thief try to pull through it before it failed? What was he going to do with the power?”

  “I don’t know, oh…” I stopped, humiliated that I was talking before thinking, and that Trey seemed to be thinking much more clearly than I was.

  Maybe the thief had only needed one stone and had done a destructive test to determine which stone was the most powerful. I immediately dismissed that thought. I wasn’t trained in the use of magic and I had been able to access power through several stones at the same time. I started thinking of other reasons and soon gave them up. I didn’t have any clue about the identity of the thief, other than they could use magic.

  “Can you walk?”

  Trey’s simple question brought my attention back to the hillside. I leaned forward until I was on my hands and knees and slowly rose to my feet by pushing on a nearby boulder. Willpower was the only thing that enabled me to take the four steps to the next boulder. Once there, I sagged against it for support. “I can walk,” I said far more confidently than I felt.

  “Not from here to Glendale,” Trey remarked. “We’ll eat food from the packs and then you’re going to take a nap.”

  “I’m not napping,” I retorted, feeling incensed.

  “Do you remember your own words from two days ago?” Trey demanded as he spread his legs and placed his clenched fists on his hips. “Don’t do too much magic the first day or it may make you really tired. If you use a lot, you may have to stop and eat, or even take a nap. Well, you used a lot of magic and you need to eat and sleep again.”

  Trey pointed his finger at me and his tone grew harsh. “I can’t carry you, so find a comfortable place to sit before you fall down again. I’ll bring you more water and food. After that, you will take a nap, possibly even sleep all night. If you’re recovered then, we’ll leave tomorrow.”

  I thought about the two intact opals we carried. “I can use magic and be ready to travel in a few minutes.”

  Trey shook his head and spoke sharply. “Don’t try using the magic again until you’re thinking clearly. You might even die if you mess up again. You were close to death this morning. You were cold, almost as cold as when that Effigia got close, and you were barely breathing.”

  Taking a nap rather than going to help Ara was the opposite of what I wanted to do. Three unsteady steps later, I found a comfortable place to sit. I quit protesting when Trey brought me food and a sleeping fur. It took no effort to drift off into sleep.

  When I woke, it was still dark, but the dim moonlight showed that Celina had risen. That meant it was only an hour until sunrise although no light showed on the eastern horizon. I shifted positions and rose up on one elbow.

  “How are you feeling?” Trey asked quietly.

  I raised my arms and flexed my legs. “A little stiff,” I admitted, “but not tired like yesterday.”

  “Do you think you can walk today?”

  Instead of answering, I pushed the sleeping fur aside and rose to my feet. My movements weren’t as smooth as usual, but they were far better than yesterday. I walked to the next boulder, spun around and walked back. My legs felt stronger with every step. “I can do it,” I asserted.

  “Good,” Trey said as he also got up. “The other group and the Hunter have an entire day head start on us.”

  A few minutes later, we both had pulled cheese and dried meat from our packs and secured the sleeping furs in place. Trey held up his fist with the food clenched in it. “I can carry my pack today. It’s getting lighter.”

  “I will, too,” I said, picked up the pack, and swung it around. Pain shot up my arm when the strap caught on the bruise. I grunted and pulled the pack into place, fastening the ties in place. The fingers on the hand of my injured arm weren’t as nimble as on the other hand. I stared at my hand as I flexed the fingers. I had learned a lesson the hard way about the use of magic, but I wasn’t giving up using it. I had been able to heal others even before I found a magical opal.

  I took a deep breath and held it, as I reached for the strong magic. I ignored Trey as he stared at me. To my delight, I could reach the magic as easily as before. I stood as still as a tree stump and let the healing magic flow over me. The ache in my arm faded and my legs felt immensely stronger. I shifted focus and let the healing touch hover over Trey.

  “Thank you,” Trey said simply when I dropped the healing connection. “I rolled over on a rock while sleeping and the sore spot is gone.”

  “You’re welcome,” I chirped, feeling refreshed and invigorated. “We probably can’t make it all the way to Glendale today, but we can make it a long way.”

  Trey headed down the hillside in front of me, walking softly enough in the ankle-deep grass and weeds that I couldn’t hear his passage. “Should we use the road today?”

  “Why not?” I replied as I thought about Trey’s brief description of the traveling group. “No one knows we’re coming and our tracks should blend in with the tracks already on the road.”

  We had already traveled quite a distance along the road when the sun pushed a shoulder over the distant horizon and cast shards of golden light across the hills and high clouds. Trey held up his hands and turned them back and forth. “I�
�ve never liked traveling in the dark. My imagination won’t stop making up horrible things.”

  “They can’t be worse than some of the things we’ve seen,” I responded. “That Effigia, for example.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Trey said slowly, “but…”

  Our casual conversation of the day had dealt mostly with food and hunting, and I felt irritated that Trey had just stopped in the middle of an explanation. I glanced at him and said gruffly, “You’re always stopping in the middle of a story.”

  “I know,” he shot back, “but I don’t really like to recount my nightmares.”

  “Then why bring it up?” I countered.

  He opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking. “I’ve seen one of those Effigia in my nightmares. It started about three years ago, several months before your mother died. It only happens once or twice a month, but that is still far too many times.”

  “You have nightmares that often?” I asked.

  He nodded mutely.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said consolingly. “I haven’t suffered from a nightmare since I was a little boy.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and then began thinking about what Trey had said. I had dreamed many times over the last year, but I hadn’t suffered from nightmares since I had started thinking about hiding before I went to sleep. Maybe the magic had banished the nightmares, and that possibly meant evil magic caused them.

  My mind raced back over recent dreams I had nearly forgotten. In them, a grey-haired woman wearing a faded green dress accosted me in the same manner. Her frantic, beckoning gestures emphasized her fear and chilling words that still rang true, “They’re coming for you, Reuben.”

  I almost dismissed the dreams again when I thought about our recent visit to Glendale. The grey-haired woman who had talked to us there looked similar to the woman who had appeared in my dreams, even to the sound of her voice. This was bizarre, but if she was correct, someone was coming for me. I would have thought it was the wolves, but they had followed Zephyr. Was it the Hunters? That seemed certain until I thought about the Effigia finding us.

  A shiver ran down my back. If I believed the dream, someone was coming for me. Were they worse than the things causing Trey’s recurring nightmares? Did my dreams endanger Trey?

  Chapter 18 – Oats for Breakfast

  We walked steadily and only took two short rest breaks during the morning. Around noon, we stopped where the road crossed a brook. The brook was small, and the ground was quite rocky, so the road builders hadn’t spent the effort to put in a bridge. Trey and I crossed in our bare feet and the cold water stung our skin. The air smelled of evergreens, clean air, and moss clinging to the stones in the brook. We stopped at the far side to put our moccasins on.

  Trey finished before me and scooped up clear water with his cup. He looked around while drinking, and spoke just as I started to get a drink. “Rueben!”

  Startled, I swallowed wrong and ended up coughing water through my nose. “What?” I gasped, trying to catch my breath.

  “You look funny,” he replied, laughing so hard he could barely talk.

  “What was so important that you startled me?” I demanded.

  “Look over there,” he said, pointing to a bank exposed to the afternoon sun. “Those look like blackberry vines.”

  “Really?” I squinted in the direction he was looking and finally noticed red and black berries on the twisting vines. “You’re right.”

  “Let’s eat some,” he said, already heading away from his pack towards the vines.

  We had eaten a little dried meat while we walked, but neither of us had wanted to stop long enough to build a fire and cook some of the plentiful game. Up until now, I had been able to ignore the hunger pangs, but they grew stronger when I saw Trey reach for the first berry. Part of me wanted to continue walking, to push the pace up to a jog, but passing up ripe berries didn’t seem smart.

  I reached for the cross ties holding my pack in place, and by the time it hit the ground, Trey had already eaten several berries. His small sounds of satisfaction made my stomach growl.

  Some blackberries have a bitter taste, especially if they were slightly red in color, but many of these were dead ripe. A burst of sweetness greeted me when I popped in the first berry. The second berry followed behind it and the pleasure intensified.

  Unlike blueberries which tend to be individually small, blackberries grew singly rather than in clumps. These berries were huge. Some of them were half the size of my thumb. I moved too fast reaching for the next berry and raked thorns across the back of my hand, leaving a red streak. “Ouch,” I said.

  “You have to watch for the thorns,” Trey said without looking at me.

  I glanced at him and saw berry juice already staining his fingers. He used both hands to pop more berries in his mouth before I turned back to focus on serious eating.

  A few minutes later, Trey stopped picking berries and grinned at me with a satisfied look. “That was wonderful,” he said, brushing at a streak of juice on his chin with the back of his hand. The juice had stained all of his fingers black.

  The sweetest berries were so ripe they had started to soften and they were loaded with juice. It was impossible to pick one without getting juice on my fingers, and I didn’t care at the moment. “That was wonderful,” I responded, looking down at my stained fingers, wondering if my face was also messy.

  Trey held up his hands. “I’ll go wash in the brook and get my pack.”

  Side by side, we washed the sticky juice off our hands, but part of the stain remained. I looked at my hands and reached for a small trickle of magic as I dipped them in the brook again. This time, the stain vanished.

  “Can you do mine?” Trey asked as he knelt and stuck his hands in the water.

  “Sure, I could,” I answered. “But maybe you can do it yourself.”

  A thoughtful look crossed Trey’s face. “Show me how,” he said.

  We tried several different methods, but Trey couldn’t seem to access the magic. Finally, he looked at me. “We need to get moving. We can try again tonight.”

  “Okay, just dip your hands in the water again.” I concentrated for a moment and watched the water carry away the stain.

  Trey stood, holding his hands up above his shoulders, and rotated in a circle. “Did I get juice on my clothes? You have a big patch of juice on your left side.”

  “I slipped off a rock and brushed against a clump of ripe berries,” I explained as I lifted my arm and tried to see the offending place without taking my shirt off.

  “Just clean your shirt like you do every morning,” Trey suggested. “I didn’t use to notice the dirt, but I do now that you clean our clothes every day. Yesterday was the first time I wore dirty clothes since…”

  This time, I didn’t try to get him to finish the sentence. Instead, I used another trickle of magic to clean our bodies and our clothes.

  Trey was settling his pack in place on his shoulders before I finished the cleaning chores. “It’s time to keep walking.”

  Unlike the morning, we took several short rest breaks and a longer one in the middle of the afternoon. At the end of the long break, I put on my pack before Trey stood and studied the tracks on the road while he was fixing his pack in place. “We’re making good time,” I said, “but…”

  “But what?” he demanded. “Now you’re the one not finishing a thought.”

  I gestured at the ground. “Look at the road. I expected to make better time than the other travelers, but the tracks suggest we’re not any closer than this morning.”

  “We are a day behind them,” Trey observed.

  “Think about it,” I objected. “You and I have taken five or six rest breaks and moved to the side of the road each time we did. How many times did that large group do it?”
/>
  Trey fingered his lips as he looked back along the road. Finally, he shrugged. “They only spread out onto the edge in two places.”

  “That’s also what I saw,” I responded. “Something, or someone, is keeping them moving at a fast pace. Only taking a couple of outhouse breaks. We took more than that.”

  “Why?” Trey asked.

  I shivered. “I don’t know either. It’s strange, however, and a lot of strange things have turned nasty this week.”

  Trey nodded, his face pale. “You’re right about that. Let’s keep walking.”

  I glanced at the sky to check the time when we started along the road again. A little speck in the sky I first thought was a bird started getting larger. The unique flapping of the wings told me it was not a bird. “Look up there,” I said, pointing to the north.

  Trey squinted and then nodded. I had good eyes, but he had better distance vision than me. “I think it’s that dragon we saw several times.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed as the dragon circled in our direction and drifted lower in the sky still coming in our direction. It didn’t come close, but I was sure it was able to see us on the road.

  “What do you think it’s doing here?” Trey asked with an expression of concern. “Initially, the day after it flew over my house, I thought it was following us, but it must have gone back north when we moved south.”

  “Zephyr didn’t tell us much—” I bit off more words when Trey interrupted.

  “You’re right about that. Why not? It would have been the nice thing to do, especially since she had taken the time to befriend you. There is something going on that doesn’t make sense.”

  I was getting tired and snapped before I stopped to think. “Tell me when you figure it out.”

  We walked in silence for a while and then slowly resumed the casual conversation. We kept moving steadily and made better time on the road than we had made cutting across country. The sun was low in the western sky when we neared the intersection with Jude’s Road.