The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Hoy!” the call came again. “Fresh break, that way!”

  Fresh break! The same thought occurred to all of them, but the Silvers were quicker to react than Skan or Drake. They broke into a trot, shoving their way through the vegetation, leaving the other two to belatedly stumble along in their wake.

  Skan’s heart raced, and not from the exertion. He longed to gallop on ahead, and probably would have, except that it was all he could do to keep up with the Silvers. And much to his embarrassment, just as he developed a sudden stitch in his side, Bern, the scout who had been up in the tree, burst through the underbrush behind them, overtook them, and plunged on to the head of the column.

  Show-off.

  Another shout echoed back through the trees, muffled by the falling rain. The words weren’t distinguishable, but the tone said all Skan needed to know. There was excitement; but no grief, no shock.

  They’ve found something. Something and not someone—or worse, bodies…

  From some reserve he didn’t know he had, he dredged up more strength and speed, and turned his trot into a series of leaps that carried him through the underbrush until he broke through into the clearing beneath the break in the trees. He stumbled across the remains of a crude palisade of brush and onto clear ground.

  A camp! That was his first elated thought; if the children had been able to build a camp, they could not have been too badly hurt. Then he looked at the kind of camp it was, and felt suddenly faint. This was no orderly camp; this was something patched together from the remains of wreckage and whatever could be scavenged. Regin looked up from his examination of the soggy remains of the basket as Skan halted inside the periphery of the clearing.

  “They crashed here, all right.” He pointed upward at the ragged gap in the canopy. “They’re gone now, but they did hit here, hard enough to smash two sides of the basket. They both survived it, though I can’t guess how. Maybe there was enough in the way of branches on the way down to slow their fall. The medical kit’s gone, there’s signs they both used it.”

  They were here. They were hurt. Now they’re gone. But why! “Why aren’t they still here?” he asked, speaking his bewilderment aloud.

  “Now that is a good question.” Regin poked through a confusion of articles that looked as if they had just been tossed there and left. “Standard advice is to stay with your wrecked craft if you have an accident. I’d guess they started to do that, were here for maybe two days, then something made them leave. It looks to me as if they left in a hurry, and yet I don’t see any signs of a fight.”

  “They could have been frightened away,” Amberdrake ventured. “Or—well, this isn’t a very good camp—”

  “It’s a disaster of a camp, that’s what it is,” Regin corrected bluntly. “But if all I had was wreckage, and I was badly hurt, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do much better. It’s shelter, though, and that isn’t quite enough. I wish I knew how much of their supplies got ruined, and how much they took with them.” He straightened, and looked around, frowning. “There’s no sign of a struggle, but no sign of game around here either. They might have run out of food, and it would be hard to hunt if they were hurt. There’s no steady water source—”

  Amberdrake coughed politely. “We’re under a steady water-source,” he pointed out.

  Regin just shrugged. “We’re taught not to count on rain. So—no game, no water, and an indefensible camp. Gryphons eat a lot; if their supplies were all trashed, they’d be good for about two days before they were garbage, unfit to eat. After that, they’ve got to find game, for Tadrith alone. My guess is, they stayed here just long enough to get back some strength, and headed back in the direction of home. They’re probably putting up signals now.” He grimaced. “I just hope their trail isn’t too cold to follow—but on the other hand, if they headed directly west, we should stay pretty much on their trail. That’s where I’d go, back to the river. It’s a lot easier to fish if you’re hurt than to hunt.”

  Skan groaned. “You mean we could have just followed the river and we probably would have found them?”

  Regin grinned sourly. “That’s exactly what I mean. But look on the bright side; now we know they’re alive and they’re probably all right.”

  Skan nodded; as Regin signaled to Bern to start hunting for a trail. But as Bern searched for signs, Skan couldn’t help noticing a few things.

  For one thing, the piles of discarded material had a curiously ordered-disordered look about them, as if they had been tossed everywhere, then gathered up and crudely examined, then sorted.

  For another, there were no messages, notes, or anything of the sort to give a direction to any rescuers. Granted, the children might not have known whether anyone would find the camp, but shouldn’t they have left something?

  And last of all, there was no magic, none at all, left in any of the discarded equipment. So the surmise had been correct, something had drained all of the magic out of their gear, and from the signs of the crash, it had happened all at once. And yet none of the search-party gear had been affected—yet.

  So what had done this in the first place? What had sorted through the remains of the camp?

  And what had made the children flee into the unknown and trackless forest without even leaving a sign for searchers to follow?

  Was the answer to the third question the same as the answer to the other two?

  * * *

  Tad entered the cave, sloshing through ankle-deep water at the entrance, carefully avoiding Blade’s three fishing lines. Blade held up some of her catch, neatly strung, and he nodded appreciatively.

  “Water’s higher,” he told her. “In places it covers the trail here.”

  That was to be expected, considering how much is falling out of the sky. “Well,” Blade said with resignation. “At least we have a steady water supply—and we don’t have to leave the cave to fish anymore.”

  It had not stopped raining for more than a few marks in the middle of the night ever since they had arrived here. She’d wondered what the rainy season would be like; well, now she knew. The stream of water running down the middle of the cave had remained at about the same size, only its pace had quickened. The river had risen, and now it was perfectly possible for them to throw lines into the river itself without going past the mouth of the cave, with a reasonable expectation of catching something.

  That was just as well, since they were now under siege, although they still had not seen their hunters clearly. The flitting shadows espied in the undergrowth had made it very clear that there was no getting back across the river without confronting them.

  Tad nodded, spreading his good wing to dry it in front of the fire. He had gone out long enough to drag in every bit of driftwood he could find, and there was now a sizable store of it in the cave. He’d also hauled in things that would make a thick, black smoke, and they had a second, extremely nasty fire going now. It stood just to one side of the stream at the rear of the cave, putting a heavy smoke up the natural “chimney.” Whether or not there was anyone likely to see it was a good question; this was not the kind of weather anything but a desperate or suicidal gryphon would fly in.

  On the other hand—how desperate would Skandranon or Tad’s twin be by now? Desperate enough to try?

  Blade both hoped so and hoped that they would have more sense; their pursuers were getting bolder, and she hadn’t particularly wanted Tad to go out this afternoon. The stalkers were still nothing more than menacing shadows, but she had seen them skulking through the underbrush on the other side of the river even by day, yesterday and this morning.

  “I think they might try something tonight,” Tad said, far too casually. “I know I was being watched all the time, and I just had that feeling, as if there was something out there that was frustrated and losing patience.”

  “I got the same feeling,” Blade confessed. She hadn’t enjoyed taking her shields down and making a tentative try at assessing what lay beyond the river, but it had felt ne
cessary. In part, she had been hoping to sense a rescue party, but the cold and very alien wave of frustrated anger that met her tentative probe had made her shut herself up behind her shields and sit there shivering for a moment. “I—tried using that Empathic sense, and I got the same impression you did. They would like very much to get a chance at us.”

  She hoped that Tad wouldn’t make too big a fuss about that confession; he’d been at her often enough to use everything she had. Now she’d finally given in to his urgings, she was not in the mood for an “I told you that was a good idea.” She wasn’t certain that it was a good idea; what if those things out there had been able to sense her just as she sensed them?

  Then again, what would they learn? That she was hurt, and scared spitless of them? They already knew that.

  Fortunately for him, Tad just nodded. “It’s good to know that it’s not just my own worry talking to me,” he said, and sighed. “Now I don’t feel so badly about setting all those traps.”

  “What—” she began. At that moment, one of her fishing lines went tight, and she turned her attention to it long enough to haul in her catch. But after re-baiting the hook and setting the line again, she returned to the subject.

  “What other traps do you think would work?” she asked. “On our side of the river, that is. Where could we set more?”

  Thus far, they hadn’t had any luck with deadfalls like the one that had marked one of the shadows before. It was as if, having seen that particular sort of trap, the hunters now knew how to avoid it. Large snares hadn’t worked either, but she hadn’t really expected them to, since there was no way to conceal them. But perhaps now, with water over the trail, trip-wires could be hidden under the water.

  “I tended to that during my ‘walk’ earlier. There’s only one good place, really,” he told her. “The river’s gotten so deep and fast that there’s only one place where I think they might try to cross—that’s downstream, past where we crossed it when we first got here. I didn’t set a trap right there, though—what I did was rig something that’s harmless but looks just like the rockfall I rigged later on.” He gryph-grinned at his own cleverness, and she could hardly blame him.

  “So they’ll see the harmless decoy, and then walk right into the rockfall?”

  He nodded, looking very proud of himself. “It’s a good big one, too. If they actually try coming after us, at least one of them is going to be seriously hurt or killed, unless they’ve got lightning reflexes and more luck than any one creature deserves to have.”

  “Just as long as you don’t hurt someone coming to rescue us!” she warned. Yesterday she might have argued with him about the merits of setting something meant to kill rather than discourage—but that was before she had opened herself to the creatures across the river. She still might not know what they looked like, but now she knew what they were. Killers, plainly and simply, with a kind of cold intelligence about them that made her wish for one good bow, two good arms, and three dozen arrows. She would debate the merits of permitting such creatures the free run of their own territory some other time; and if they gave up and left her alone, she would be perfectly happy to leave them alone. But if they came after her or Tad, she would strike as efficiently and with the same deadly force as they would.

  There was still the question of whether or not these creatures were the “hunting pack” of someone or something else; she did not have the ability to read thoughts, even if these creatures had anything like a thought. But she hadn’t sensed anything else out there with them; all of the creatures had been of the same type, with a definite feeling of pack about them.

  Which could simply mean that their master was off, lounging about at his ease somewhere, watching all of this in a scrying-mirror. That would certainly fit the profile of a sadistic Adept; she couldn’t picture Ma’ar, for instance, subjecting himself to mud and pouring rain.

  If that was so, if there was an Adept behind all this, and she ever got her hands on him…

  “That wasn’t the only trap I built,” Tad continued proudly, oblivious to her dark thoughts. “I have trip-tangles under the water that will throw them into the stream, I balanced boulders to roll at a touch and trap feet and legs, and I put up some more snares. Between all that and the rock barricade we have across the front of the cave, I think we can feel a little safer.”

  “Just as long as we can continue fishing from in here,” she corrected. “And as long as you can stand to live on fish.”

  “All I have to do is think about eating any more of that dried meat, and fish takes on a whole new spectrum of delight,” he countered. “I’m learning to tell the difference between one fish and another, raw. Some are sweeter, one has more fat—”

  And they all taste the same to me. “Fine, I believe you!” she interrupted hastily. “Listen, I wonder if we could rig some kind of a net or something to haul in driftwood as it comes down over the falls. There’s a lot of stuff getting by us that we could really use.”

  There was nothing that Tad liked better than trying to invent a new way to do something, and the idea of a driftwood-net kept him happily occupied for some time. And more importantly, it kept him zestfully occupied; no matter how cheerful and energetic he seemed—or tried to appear—he was tired, and so was she. The ever-present roar of the falls would cover the sounds of anything approaching them, and most especially would cover the sounds of anything bold enough to try swimming across the river at this point. They both knew that, and she suspected that he was staying half-awake even through her watch, as she was staying through his. Not especially bright of either of them, but neither of them were able to help themselves. Their imaginations supplied the creatures out there with every kind of supernatural attribute, especially in the dark of the night. It was easier to dismiss such fears by daylight, except that she kept reminding herself that just because their hunters hadn’t done something yet, that didn’t mean they weren’t capable of a particular action. It was hard to strike a balance between seeing threats that didn’t exist and not being wary enough, especially when you didn’t know everything the enemy could do.

  “Not long until dark,” Tad observed, after a long discussion of nets and draglines and other ways of catching runaway driftwood. He pointed his beak toward the river. She nodded; although it was difficult to keep track of time without the sun being visible, the light did seem to be fading. Another one of her lines went taut; this fish was a fighter, which probably meant that it was one of the kinds Tad liked best. Any fish seemed pretty tasteless to her, wrapped in wet clay to bake and without any herbs to season it with. She’d thought about using some of the peppery leaves just to give her food some spice, then thought better of the idea. Although they had not had any deleterious effect rubbed on the skin, there was no telling if they were poisonous if eaten. You could rub your skin all day with shadow-berries and not get anything worse than a purple stain, but eat a few and you would find yourself retching up your toenails…

  She fought the fish to exhaustion and reeled it in, hand over hand, taking care not to tangle the line. That was enough for tonight; she pulled in the other lines, and by the time she was done, there was no doubt; it was darker out on the river.

  She took the fish back behind the rock barrier to the fire, where Tad still basked. Each day they added a few more rocks, but they were rapidly approaching the point where they wouldn’t be able to use river clay as mortar anymore. It just wasn’t strong enough.

  There was another advantage to this cave; no bugs. Enough smoke hung in the air from their signal-fire to discourage insects of all sorts. Her bites had finally begun to heal and didn’t bother her too much anymore. In fact, if it hadn’t been for those watchers out there, she would be feeling pretty pleased with the state of things. They had fire, excellent shelter, and plenty to eat, and sooner or later someone from White Gryphon or even Khimbata would see or smell the signal-fire, and they could go home. And in the meantime, while they were not comfortable, they were secure.

>   She took one of the big, sluggish bottom feeders from her string, gutted it, wrapped it in wet clay, put it in the firepit and raked coals and ashes over it. The rest she handed to Tad as they were.

  No longer as famished as he was when they first got here; he ate them with gusto. And if he lacked fine table manners, she was not going to complain about the company. I can think of worse people to be stranded with.

  “How’s the wing?” she asked, as she did at least once a day.

  “It doesn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday, but I still don’t want to unwrap it,” he replied. “Whenever I move in an unusual way, it hurts.”

  In Tad-language, that meant “it hurts enough that my knees buckle and I almost pass out.” She knew; she’d seen it happen. Tad was so stoic. He tried very hard to be cheerful, and it was likely for her benefit alone. By moving very carefully, she had managed to keep the same thing from happening to her, but that meant a lot of restriction on her movement.

  If only she had two good hands—or he had two good wings! If either of them could manage to get to the top of the cliff, she was sure they could think of a way to bring the other up afterward. Up there, they wouldn’t have to worry about pursuit anymore; if the hunters couldn’t climb a tree, they sure as stars couldn’t climb a cliff!

  Might as well wish for three or four experienced Silvers with long-range bows, she thought grimly. I have the feeling that there is something about all of this that I’m missing completely, something that should be obvious, but isn’t. I just wish I had a clue to what it is.

  “Do you really think they’re going to try something tonight?” she asked, more to fill the silence than because she thought he’d changed his mind.

  For an answer, he nodded toward the cave entrance. “Rain’s slackening early. The current isn’t bad in that one wide, shallow spot. Not that hard to wade across, if you’ve got claws to hang onto the rock with. And we already know they do have claws.”