It seemed unlikely. Except . . . those things were related to killing. And it could think about killing . . .
Later, in Xulai’s old room high in the castle gard, Oldwife grieved over Bartelmy and Black Mike while Xulai sat empty eyed beside her.
“He were just a lad,” Oldwife said for the tenth time. “Just a boy. A sweet boy. No harm in him. Went out to see his folks, got caught in the woods by that . . . that . . .”
“How do you know it was the . . . the creature, Oldwife?”
“What else kills and rips and tears flesh away and then just leaves a body? Bears don’t do that. The big mountain cats don’t do that,” she cried. “What else but that monster?” She sobbed. “Both on ’em, they wore those nice scarfs you made ’em. Both the boy and Mike. They was so proud of those!”
Xulai went to find Abasio. “Find Pecky Peavine and Willum and Clive Farrier. I knitted them each a scarf before I was taken from the abbey, remember. Bartelmy and Mike were wearing them when they were killed. They may have been smelled out, Abasio. Tell them to wear nothing they might have worn when they were with me, or Precious Wind, or Bear.”
Abasio collected Precious Wind and together they found the three living men. The scarves were burned and Xulai’s warning was passed on. Meantime Xulai lay curled on her bed, shivering uncontrollably. If it had smelled them out because their scarves had her scent upon them, how much easier to smell her out when she was bait in the trap.
That night Precious Wind, Abasio, and Prince Orez met atop the tower. It had been tented over to protect them from rain, the side curtains open to the south and east. Below them, in a room beside the bird lofts, four Tingawan warriors pedaled slowly, evenly, to create power for the small device set on a sturdy table. They were there to discuss the plan.
“This is Alicia’s pattern,” said Precious Wind, holding up a little angular receptacle. “We made this in Tingawa from the hairs that Alicia left in the forest here at Woldsgard. I put the pattern in this slot and press this small lever that says ‘record’ on it.” She pressed the lever and stepped away. “If it can read it and record it—and it did read and record patterns successfully in Tingawa—the red light at the lower left will go on.”
The red light blinked on as she spoke.
“Now, the locator will make its own map outward from us, searching for the pattern of Alicia, which is in her blood, even old, dried blood. It reads the area around it and shows coastline as a dark line, river edges by a slightly narrower line. Water is blue. Land is gray. Elevations are shown as the old mapmakers showed them, very thin lines every ten feet, or twenty, or fifty, or one hundred. Here I have it set for fifty.”
An image appeared. Precious Wind pointed out the clustered lines east and west, where the mountains or cliffs rose steeply. Beyond the mountains, the blue of the sea, the dark line of the coast, the narrower lines of the river Wells leading to the blue of Lake Riversmeet.
“I’ll bring the edges in closer. We want to have the tower here at the top so the screen covers all the land between here and where the Old Dark House used to be. We want to keep the cliffs on the screen, as well.”
They stared. Abasio stirred, laying a fingertip on the screen. “There he is. See this little light. It moves.”
For a moment, they couldn’t see it, a tiny dot, barely visible, a green tint. It did not seem to be moving. “What scale of distance do we have here?” Abasio asked.
“Three to four days’ journey across. You have good perception, Abasio, sensory or otherwise. That odd-looking blotch is where the Old Dark Tower was, and he’s very near that. We rather hoped for that. What was sowed there by the blast will help kill him, though it doesn’t kill as quickly as we’d like. Once we’re sure we are seeing him, we can come in closer . . .”
“Do it now. A larger scale will help his movements show up better,” said Abasio.
She made adjustments. The green light grew brighter, creeping like a spider.
“So,” said Prince Orez. “What now?”
“Now these men will work through the night: two men to pedal, one at a time, changing every half hour; one man to record. We have paper maps of this area, ones we made a long time ago. We have many copies. The recorder will mark on a map every few minutes where this green speck goes and how long it stays there. We’ll watch tonight. We’ll watch during the day tomorrow and tomorrow night, comparing the maps from night to night, and we’ll do it long enough to see if there’s a pattern. When we know where it goes, we will know how we can move.”
That night the locator signal moved back and forth across the map; by morning it returned to a place on the eastern slope of Altamont, not far from the road that led south, to the Lake of the Clouds. Each of the next two nights a pattern repeated itself. The thing moved out onto the road, swiftly, almost instantaneously, to the Eastwatch Tower and up the cliff. One of the men on watch went to fetch Precious Wind. She had wanted to be told if the creature went to the cliffs.
She climbed to the tower, pulled her chair where she could see the little light, how it moved. “It’s staying on the cliff road,” she said wonderingly.
“It doesn’t want to be seen,” one of the men remarked. “At night, there’s no travel on the road.”
“But it should be able to climb. It’s as long legged as a spider. I thought it would go straight up the face of the cliff between the roads.”
“Ma’am, the villages are on the inside edge of the road. They’re filled in behind to make a flat place, and the villages sit on that flat place. Along a village, the wall is three stories high, and the houses are part of it. There are windows in it and a few places where the little alleys come through . . .”
“I remember,” said Precious Wind. “Of course.”
“If it wants to stay away from people, using the road is the best bet. Otherwise it might end up waking or killing somebody and the whole cliff would be on guard.”
They watched it go up the road very quickly. It ran steadily, like an engine, seemingly tireless.
“Where’s it going to stop?” she murmured to herself. “It has to stop somewhere!”
It stopped at the turn in the road beyond the second village. A tiny twist in an elevation line showed the small flat surface.
Precious Wind nodded. “I remember now. It’s where we camped. It’s the village that’s ‘becoming pure,’ where they sold us those old robes.”
Abasio spoke from behind her. “It knows where we went last time. It knows we’re going back.”
“You’re up late,” said Precious Wind.
“I haven’t been down to get up from,” he said grimly. “I’ve been digging up bodies. Bartelmy’s. Black Mike’s. Their bodies are torn. Flesh missing. When Prince Orez mentioned that, I wondered what kind of weapon . . .”
Precious Wind’s mouth twisted. “Our emissary watched the battle at the Old Dark House. The creature has blades in its hands. It has metal teeth. It is terribly strong and terribly fast. The emissary thought it could shoot fire.”
“Acid?” he wondered. “They used to use acid in that part of the Dragdown Swamps that was mining country. It’s one of the things that makes old mines so dangerous. People still use it where I came from, but the people in the Edges are in control of it now.”
“We brought fireproof clothing . . .”
“Is there acid-proof clothing?”
“I’m sure there is. We’ll use the far-talker to find out.”
“You didn’t hear what Abasio said. It can hear the far-talker,” said another voice. Justinian.
She turned to stare at him, openmouthed.
The duke came into the circular room from the stairs, shook his head, made a face. “We should have foreseen that it would hear a far-talker, Precious Wind. We knew the far-talker was used at the same time the creatures were made. It may have even been used to instruct the creature originally. The pattern the creature is traveling each night is the pattern we intended to lure it into taking. How did it learn ou
r plans? Do you have an agent here? One you’ve been exchanging information with?”
“We never thought . . .”
Abasio said, “When you use the far-talker, do you talk in plain language? Or code?”
“I’ve always spoken Tingawan. You mean, it understands Tingawan?”
“If it’s supposed to be killing Tingawans, I would imagine it can. Your people found books. Were any of them books in Tingawan? If so, and if your plan intended something to happen at that campsite near the Pure Becomers, I think the monster knows all about it.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” came another voice from the top of the stairs. Xulai.
“Good?” Precious Wind choked on the word.
“Yes, very good.” Xulai was glassy eyed, obviously on the edge of collapse. “Because now we know what it expects, and it doesn’t know we know, so we’ll do something different. And we won’t use the far-talker. Or, if we do, we’ll mislead it, or we’ll do what Abasio said. We’ll talk in code.”
“But we don’t have a code,” Precious Wind cried.
“We’ll invent one. My grandfather is a very smart man.” She laughed, a mad little laugh that made Abasio shiver. “For example, if I tell him something will not create an elegance, he will know I mean that it is a bad thing. If I tell him I have to plant a thirty-foot hedge around my garden here because vicious horses with no blinders are jumping into it and ruining all the things we’ve been planting, he’ll know our plans are being upset. If I tell him I really wanted to use some of those old landscaping devices the old books mention, but we’re going to have to do without Distancia Oratoria trees because they’re spreading a disease through the air . . .”
“Allergy,” said Abasio very calmly, putting his hands on her shoulders and squeezing. “That’s what trees spread through the air. People sneeze.”
“Allergy,” she repeated, nodding, “Allerlgy. All gergy.” She began to laugh helplessly, almost hysterically.
Abasio took her in his arms. “Shh, dear heart. Shh. There’s an easier way. We can do as you suggested in the first place. You’re correct. It is good that it doesn’t know that we know.”
Justinian looked helplessly at his daughter. “We can probably adapt whatever plans were made; perhaps we can just move them. Make it happen earlier or later than the creature expects.” He looked questioningly at Precious Wind.
“If we’re going to change plans and can’t use the talkers, we need to send a messenger,” said Precious Wind. Her arms were folded on the table, and her head rested on them. She seemed to be speaking to the wood. She thought she was speaking to the wood inside her own head, not to have realized . . . “And we can’t do that until we know the creature is off the road and out of the way.”
Xulai said, “Send a bird, Precious Wind. Those people on the cliff are your people. Don’t they have birds?” Her voice was rough, barely intelligible.
“Yes,” she breathed. “I hadn’t even thought of that, we’ve been so used to using the other . . .”
Abasio asked, “Have any of the relay riders been attacked? Has any Wellsroad traffic been attacked?”
Justinian shook his head. “Orez hasn’t mentioned it. The men we met on the way here didn’t mention it. If it plans to trap us, it wouldn’t scare us off by attacking traffic. So far, it’s killed in remote places away from the roads. Places it judged it would be safe to kill some of our people.”
“Then we need to modify plans, send messages—multiple, to be sure they get through—and we need to move now,” said Abasio, glancing at Xulai’s white face. “This waiting is driving us all a little crazy.”
When Precious Wind went to her room that night, she found Abasio waiting for her. He held a small bundle, which he handed to her.
“In the event that Xulai and I do not return from this venture, we want you to get this to Tingawa, to Lok-i-xan. It’s something from the Before Time. Something benign. I want you to use the far-talker and message him where you’re leaving it, in case you don’t survive. Since the monster can hear the far-talker, say it’s something the monster won’t care about. Horse breeding records, maybe. A recipe for baked fish. Tell him you’re leaving it because you know he wants it, and be sure to put it someplace that will survive.”
“Abasio, this isn’t necessary. You’ll be able to—”
“You can’t guarantee that, lady. You can’t. We all try to act as though this is going to work, and not one of us knows whether it will or not. I do know one thing for sure, and that is if Xulai dies, she won’t go alone. And, maybe, I know that if I die, she won’t let me go alone either. She said this morning that she’s not so important now. She said that other people can do what she’s doing. I know what she’s thinking . . .”
“No. She can’t. She wouldn’t.”
“She can and she might, though I’d give my life to prevent it. This package is something important. There’s a letter with it, and whoever opens the package should read the letter first. Even though the thing is benign, it can kill you if you don’t know about it first. Don’t open the package, don’t think about it now. If all goes well, you can return it to me. Promise me, Precious Wind.”
He left her before she could respond. The library helmet had been a worry to him. He did not want to risk that falling into the wrong hands.
Very early the following morning, well before it was light, a wagon loaded with hay left Woldsgard. It had a number of horses following it and a larger team than was usual for slow-moving wagons, but then, it moved a good deal faster than such wagons usually move. The men who drove it were dressed in ordinary Norland clothing, clothing that smelled very much of horse and hay, with some pig and chicken to season it. When the wagon reached Hives, the men driving the wagon switched horses and traded places with other men who had been hidden in the load. By dusk, the wagon had come within a mile or so of Riversmeet. The wagon turned purposefully off the road and was driven close to a haystack. The horses were picketed separately. The men burrowed in the hay and slept, one of their number keeping watch on the pinnacle behind Woldsgard.
Later in the night, the creature, returning home and scenting the wind between the dreadful pits on the eastern slope of Altamont and the site of the Old Dark House, smelled only horses, and hay, and pig, and chicken, and nothing of the Tingawan flesh beneath. The creature did not look for and did not see the fire atop the pinnacle, but the man on watch did. Something moved in front of the fire, dimming it. It dimmed and brightened twice. This meant the creature was moving on the road south of them. The watcher woke the next man on watch, who took his turn watching the pinnacle. Well before dawn, it dimmed and brightened once. After a pause, it dimmed and brightened once again. And a third time. The creature was well away from the road and had stopped moving.
Though it was not yet light, the horses were hitched, and the wagon moved briskly back to the Woldsroad, turning east onto the road leading to the Eastwatch Tower. It would be a long day for the horses, but the load was not exceedingly heavy and there were many more horses than were necessary. By the time true darkness fell, both wagon and horses were inside the walls of the fort. Well before dawn, the light on the pinnacle signaled again. The wagon left the fort and by early afternoon had reached the place it was intended to be. By evening, the campground beside the Pure Becomer village had a wagon lying upside down beside the road, one wheel missing, its back end pointing down the road, its other end surrounded by neatly stacked hay. The horses that had delivered it to that place were already back at the Eastwatch Tower—it had been a downhill canter all the way. The two men who had led the herd down the cliff had joined the troops manning the tower. The other men who had been in the wagon were somewhere else.
“Well,” said Precious Wind on receiving a message relayed from Eastwatch to the pinnacle by mirror flashes. “It worked. Let’s hope it works the next time.”
“The creature was all over that wagon last night,” said Abasio. “The little green light crawled around it a
dozen times. It knew it hadn’t been there the night before.”
“The wagon was missing a wheel,” Orez commented. “I’m sure the creature assumed it was a wagon headed down that had lost a wheel and its driver left it there to get the wheel fixed.”
Precious Wind wished she were as sure. She asked the group to assemble in the tower, where they could be sure they were not overheard by anyone. Justinian sent word he had another matter to attend to, but everyone else involved was there.
“Our original plan was to set our trap in that way-halt, the one where the wagon is now. We had enlisted certain help from the people in the villages, a fact we never mentioned while using the far-talker. The creature expects us to go to that campground and pretend to camp there, while actually hiding out in the nearest house, which is on the same level. We’ve never mentioned sea eggs, so we don’t think the creature knows about them. If it did, it would want to destroy the sea eggs along with all Tingawans, including Xulai. The sea eggs were in the wagon that’s already there, and they are now in safekeeping in the next village uphill from the one we’re looking at.
“Our people who have watched the creature and studied how it works and how its fellows worked all those years ago believe it will go to the wayhalt in advance of our arrival, lie in wait, and attack the house when it has seen us arrive.
“Our new plan requires that we not reach the village. Our new plan requires that just at dusk we arrive below the village, meet a wagon coming down, get into a very difficult mixup, a messy wagon accident that entangles us with horses and yelling men. It should take advantage of that to attack us there. The three men here in the tower will not signal the pinnacle, they’ll use fireworks from here. It’s quicker, it’s visible, and we can signal red, blue, green, or white.
“Red means the thing is keeping to its usual pattern for that particular time of night. Whatever it usually does, it’s doing. Two reds means it’s sleeping, resting, whatever the hell it does when it’s not moving. Blue means it is getting ready to attack us as we think it planned to do, that is, moving toward the way-halt. Two blues, it’s moving toward the house at the south end of the village. Green means it is moving toward the place on the road where we wish to be attacked. White means they can’t see it, they don’t know where it is. If we see that, it’s every person for himself.
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