by Alex Bledsoe
“Take care of him,” I said to Nicky, and she knelt beside Argoset.
“Did he kill my daughter, too?” Lesperitt asked softly. He hadn’t moved during the excitement. “Did he order it done?”
“No. A different man did that.” I walked over and stood in front of him. He’d pushed himself deep into the padded chair. I met his eyes. “Where,” I asked calmly, “did you send Liz?”
His lips fluttered soundlessly for a moment. Then he told me. In detail so I could find it.
“And you told that man”-I nodded at Argoset-“the same thing?”
He nodded.
“Thanks,” I said, and turned to the rest of them. “If any of you follow me,” I told him, “I will kill you. Neat, clean and fast. You’re not worth any more effort to me.”
None of them said anything. I left without another word.
TWENTY-FOUR
I took Argoset’s huge ebony horse from the inn’s small private stable; it seemed appropriate. I told the boy who saddled him about Pansy and vastly overpaid him to retrieve her and put her up for a while.
It was almost dark, but I headed straight out of town without even stopping at Angelina’s. Liz had been gone overnight; realistically, anything bad that was going to happen had probably already happened and hurrying was pointless, but where she was concerned I was not realistic.
I had only my sword and boot knife as weapons; over the years I’d amassed a large pile of overt and covert death-dealers, including a miniature crossbow that folded down into a tube I could strap to my arm and a garroting wire with a little spring-driven mechanism that automatically tightened it, but I did not stop and gather any of these. Liz was in the middle of the Black River Hills with Doug Candora and Marion the pitchfork murderer, and I couldn’t bear the thought of doing anything else but rushing to her. I no longer even cared that she’d lied to me; I just wanted her safe in my arms again.
The black stud proved equal to the task. I wore no spurs and could only urge him forward with heels and foul language, but neither proved necessary. He made great time down the road, maintaining a full gallop with little apparent effort, not put off by the darkness or the unfamiliar terrain. The stars came out above us as the last light of the day sank into the west.
When I guided him off the road, he took the forest trails with the same sure-footed grace, dodging anything he couldn’t leap over. I sank low along his neck and heard branches slash the air above me. We reached Bella Lou and Buddy’s place, but it was deserted. All the livestock was gone, along with their wagon and belongings. I’d just seen Bella Lou in town, mourning her loser of a husband; had they been looted out? More likely their paranoia made them prepare their departure so well that when it came time, Bella Lou was able to clear them out single-handed in record time before they set off for Neceda.
As the landscape grew higher and rockier the horse slowed a bit, but never faltered. The sky blazed with stars, and a waning moon provided light enough to see as the trees thinned. I was so preoccupied with thoughts of Liz that we were almost to the tree line before I realized why the horse was so sure-footed: Argoset undoubtedly scouted this whole region on his own fruitless quest for dragon eggs the day the stable burned down, and even if the horse didn’t know the specific trail, he remembered the terrain.
Still, the only thing that really filled my thoughts was Liz. I’d lost people I’d loved before, but it was nothing like this. Even the death of Liz’s sister Cathy, who I probably should have loved, or the long-ago murder of Janet as I was forced to watch, faded next to this new agony of anticipation. The thought of never again hearing Liz laugh, feeling her turn in her sleep beside me, seeing her sweaty face in the lamplight as we made love, twisted my stomach. I couldn’t be too late, not this time. I had to see her again; I had to save her. Or I’d have to die.
We’d once had that very conversation, lying naked beneath these same stars along another river, after I’d accompanied her on a delivery. We’d made camp, eaten dinner, taken a swim and ended up thrashing on the mossy bank until we were both satisfied. Then we’d washed off the mud and collapsed onto a blanket, wet and sated and content.
“Who do you think will die first?” she’d asked, not seriously.
“I get more sharp things shoved at me,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but you’re used to that. I could be robbed and killed at any moment, too.”
“I’m older.”
“Oh, just barely. Seriously, though. Who do you think it’ll be?”
“Me,” I said with certainty.
She rolled on her side and looked at me. Her hair was longer than normal then, and her bangs hid one eye. “Really? Why do you think so?”
I brushed them back so I could see her face. “Because I refuse to live without you. So I’ll have to make sure I die first.”
“What makes you think I could live without you?”
Because you couldn’t possibly love me as much as I do you, I wanted to say. Because you filled a gap I’d learned to live with, and if it opened up again, I couldn’t survive it. That was the real reason. But that thought, verbalized, would’ve kept us both laughing for an hour. So I just said, “If you could call that ‘living,’ ” and we both giggled. Then we made out some more.
I was so lost in this reverie that the low, dark shapes moving through the shadows didn’t register until I found myself in the middle of them. My horse whinnied nervously and I discerned the red scarves, gray in the moonlight, of two dozen Black River Hills people.
I slowed my horse to a walk as they formed up around me. So this was who Candora got to help him search. It made sense; there were a lot of them, and they were used to the terrain. They emerged from the hawthorns like badgers, low to the ground and without a scratch on them. The big, crude knives they carried would do considerably more than scratch, I knew. The blades reflected the moonlight raggedly, befitting their owners.
“You best stop,” one said, and pointed his weapon at me.
I did, pulling the reins and murmuring, “Whoa.” The big black stud tossed his head but didn’t panic.
Torches flared to life around me. Too bad they hadn’t used torches when searching; that I would’ve spotted. But the flickering orange light did nothing to make them any friendlier. If anything, their mean little faces seemed more devilish.
“Fellas,” I said genially. “There seems to be some misunderstanding here. I don’t want any trouble; I’m just passing through.”
“I know you,” one said. He had bruises around both eyes, which made him look even more like some low animal that had learned to walk upright. “You punched me in the face.”
“Yeah,” I said with a weary sigh. So much for playing innocent. Steps scuffed on the rocks behind me as well, and I knew I was surrounded. Time to be clever again.
I swung my leg over the saddle and slid to the ground. I did not draw my sword; I still had some hopes I could talk my way out. I spread my hands in a wide, let’s-be-friends gesture. “Hey, be reasonable. I’m sorry I had to punch you, but things happen. Would money make you feel better?”
Black eyes shook his head, slow and serious.
“Good, because I’m flat broke.” No one laughed. They moved slowly in, not rushing but simply sliding forward, their boots scraping on the rocks. Those big knives dangled loosely in their hands, and I could see spots that could be either rust, or blood they hadn’t bothered to clean off. The torches guttered loudly in the wind.
I took a step toward black eyes. A fence of knives appeared before me.
Okay. Decision made.
I dropped to my knees and stared up at the stars, eyes wide, mouth open. “Oh, my God,” I said softly. “Lumina.”
About half of them followed my gaze, including most of the ones directly in front of me. Yes, it was the old “look behind you!” trick, but if you do it with enough conviction, it’ll always work.
I leaped up, drew my sword and struck all in one motion. My wide swing cut through the cal
f muscles of half a dozen of the red-scarves, including black eyes. They fell with a mass howl, and I dashed past them, turned and prepared for the rest of them to rush me.
Only three of them did, though. The first one swung wide and overhand. I dodged, kicked his feet out from under him, and he fell face-first onto the ground, his head smacking the stone like a cantaloupe. His knife clattered off into the dark. The second one ran at me, knife extended straight out. Again I sidestepped and slashed off his knife hand halfway up his forearm. I spun to face the third, who threw the big knife at me and gave me a nasty cut atop my left shoulder. When he saw he’d missed anything vital, he turned and ran.
The rest of them stood over their moaning, bleeding comrades. Some knelt to help, but most just stared at me with those blank, dead eyes.
I waited to see if any of them would make a move, and also listened madly for anyone behind me. It would be just like Candora to suddenly appear and cave in my skull again.
Finally I said, “Is that it? Are we done?”
“Why you here?” one man said. It wasn’t a challenge, more a whine of someone out of his depth seeking to understand. “Why you all here?”
“I’m just here to find my girlfriend,” I said. “You’ll have to ask everyone else.”
“We live back in here,” he continued. “This is our home, and nobody don’t fuck with us.”
“Suits me, pal. Just send my horse over here and I’ll be on my way.”
One of them slapped my horse, and he trotted across the skirmish line to me. “You ain’t gonna find Lumina, you know,” their spokesman said. “Only a believer find her.”
I swung into the saddle. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not looking for her, isn’t it?” I headed up the slope into the dark before any of them had a change of heart.
TWENTY-FIVE
Finally I neared my destination. Lesperitt’s directions had been explicit, and even at night I was able to follow them with no trouble. The landmarks he’d used-rock formations, places where the trees grew in certain ways-stood out as plain in the moonlight as they did during the day. It helped that I knew the area a bit, but the easy directions meant that both Liz and Marion would’ve had no trouble, either. Those poor red-scarf bastards had no idea how close they’d really been.
The horse was speckled with foam, and I should’ve been conscientious and let him drink at one of the streams we crossed down below in the woods. Up here there was no water, only wind, dust and summer heat even at night.
One last bend awaited before the final straight stretch of trail ahead. But something suddenly caused the stallion to balk. He whinnied, fought to turn and eventually stopped dead, emphatically refusing to go any farther. I saw no reason for his abrupt terror, but knew enough to take it seriously. If a good animal gets spooked, there’s always a reason.
I dismounted and tied him to one of the stunted, scrubby trees that marked the top of the tree line. The silence was eerie. I continued on foot, checking the ground as I walked. The harsh moonlit shadows actually helped show that another horse had been up the trail recently, but had gotten similarly frightened not much farther on. Manure showed me where it, too, had been tied.
My ribs tightened around my lungs. A set of small boot prints that might’ve belonged to Liz continued past this spot, and another set, much larger, obliterated them in places.
The trail rose still higher, although the slope was slight and the climb easy. The constant wind blew the path clean down to solid rock and defeated my efforts at tracking. Moonlight bounced off the whitish yellow stone, and somewhere an owl announced its presence, the call echoing among the rocks. I could see for miles in three directions, the fourth blocked by the rise toward the little mount’s peak.
At last I climbed the final bit of hill toward the spot Lesperitt had described. I drew my sword and approached. I considered announcing my presence, but past experience taught me that was almost never a good idea. The place I sought was in a flat spot on the bare slope, with no place for Marion, Candora or anyone else to hide in ambush even in the dark. Except, that is, within the place itself.
After all this urgency, it was anticlimactic. The great split in the rock was about fifteen feet long and five feet wide, gaping straight down into the ground. Again I looked for footprints, but the rocky surface was too hard to show anything. I’d make a wider circle and look for another trail if I found no additional clues.
I crouched at the edge. The rock around the hole’s lip was covered in something black, like soot. I rubbed some on my fingers and sniffed; it was soot. Beneath the scorch I caught the tang of the same oily substance I’d seen the dragon people applying to crevices before. Had it been intended as a marker? Something that would catch fire and burn the ground if a dragon happened by and hiccupped? An impressively practical idea, if dragons actually existed, which they didn’t. Although it did explain why the red-scarves had not used their torches while they searched.
I leaned over the edge and peered down into the darkness. The moonlight made the shadows within impenetrable. I imitated a crow, the only birdcall I could do, and nudged some loose gravel into the opening. If someone lurked below, hopefully they’d think the insomniac bird had poked too near the edge. The gravel bounced off some rocks and quickly fell silent. Bottom wasn’t too far away.
“Liz?” I called quietly. “You down there?” I heard nothing.
I put my sword away and started to climb down. Then I noticed something else. On the opposite side of the opening, four parallel scratches raked across the stone, leaving white streaks where they cut through the dust and ash. I held out my hand and spread my fingers; it was roughly the same size. It certainly looked like a claw mark of some kind, but it was all wrong for a mountain lion or bear. Just below this, on a rock inside the crevice, was another identical mark, as if something had clawed its way up from the cave below.
I got a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.
Then I shook it off. It was the middle of the damn night, after all, and the spot’s isolation would spook anyone. Some random animal used the hole as a den; no big deal. Probably returned to it, found it covered in soot and human scent and ran away.
I carefully lowered one foot and felt my way down. The drop was only about five feet. I landed noisily at the bottom and dropped to a crouch, although my descent seemed to have attracted no notice. A low tunnel headed off directly ahead into the bedrock, and moonlight illuminated its uneven passage for only a few dim feet. The place smelled of char, and something else I couldn’t identify.
The space was far too tight for my sword, so I drew the knife from my boot. I entered the tunnel and closed my eyes, both to listen and to help my vision adjust more quickly to the near-total darkness. There was no sound beyond the wind that whistled down and around the opening. I felt no draft from the tunnel itself, which implied it had no other openings.
I opened my eyes. The tunnel was uneven and jagged, the result of two huge slabs of bedrock separating. No wind or water had come through to smooth the edges. Ahead, the passageway narrowed into utter blackness, except for a strange, dim blue glow. Caves were filled with growths and insects that generated their own light, but this appeared as a flickering line, like a brazier seen edge-on. As it was the only item of interest, I moved slowly toward it, knife held out ahead of me.
“Liz?” I tried again. No response.
The tunnel floor was pitted with holes and uneven spots. The last thing I wanted was a turned ankle down here, so I went carefully. I heard no voices or other movement, just the blue light flickering far down the tunnel.
The place also smelled weird. Beneath the burnt odor was one I couldn’t quite place; I’d smelled gas in caves before, and this was similar, but not identical. I began to get a little light-headed from it, though, and had to stop and lean against the wall.
I glanced down. An odd, bowl-shaped object with irregular edges lay barely visible at my feet. I nudged it, and despite its size it was incredibly lig
ht. It was as big as my two cupped hands, with a rough leathery texture on the outside. The inside was smooth as a river stone. I ran my finger along the uneven lip, and a piece broke off.
It sure looked like an eggshell. But what bird was big enough to lay it? And yes, I avoided the obvious conclusion because it was, after all, impossible. But I admit I was thoroughly creeped out. I was also sweating like crazy, and realized the tunnel had grown incredibly warm, far more than it should have. Caves were always cooler than the outside.
My head spun from the weird fumes, and I had to clutch the wall to stay on my feet. “Liz?” I tried one last time, to no avail. I put down the eggish bowl and turned back toward the entrance.
I stopped in mid-motion, though; the blue light in the distance had begun to move closer, swaying in the darkness like a lantern carried in a man’s hand. It was hard to focus my watery eyes, but an ominous black shape seemed to loom behind the approaching light.
I didn’t run-I wasn’t capable of it at that moment-but I did rush as fast as my wobbly legs would go and, with more difficulty than I anticipated, crawled out. I sprawled on the ground, not caring that I’d gotten the black residue all over me. My heart thundered like a waterfall. I lay there gasping, nauseous, and before I knew it I began to vomit. My recent dinner came up with alarming completeness.
My disconnected rational mind tried to puzzle through this. What the hell was in that cave, anyway? I knew some cave gasses were poisonous, but I’d never smelled anything like this one. And had I imagined the blue light coming toward me, or had I really seen it, along with the dark shape behind it? I rolled away from the puddle of bile and gulped mouthfuls of clean mountain air.
I would have to go back down. If Liz was in the cave, she might be just beyond that blue light, passed out in the darkness. I refused to admit any worse possibility. I’d wrap a wet rag around my mouth and nose, and crouch low to stay out of the strongest fumes. Yeah, that was a plan. But I’d need the canteen from Argoset’s saddle.