“At that ring. Did you hear Teif? They bring him there every day at the same time. He’s out in the open where we can see him.”
Dax stopped in his tracks. “Are you daffy? When he’s in the ring, he’s surrounded on all sides by every Eol’i in the city, not to mention those Uk falling all over the place. That would be the worst place to try to capture him.”
Raleigh grinned at him. “I’m glad to see you thinking this through. That’s what I really need from you right now—a tactical brain. We have to capture him in the ring, no matter the danger. First of all, we can plan for all those dangers. We have no way of knowing what elements they’re using to hold him prisoner in that basement, and they plan to move him in two weeks. We have to attack before then, and it has to be at the ring.”
“You said yourself we would be outnumbered by the cats at the ring, and I don’t hear you coming up with any way to defeat the Uk.”
“What about those concussive guns Angela had?” Raleigh suggested. “A few shots of those would throw the Uk out of the way. A few well-placed splatter grenades should send those cats running for cover. They may be smart and everything, but they seem like ordinary cats to me.”
Dax pursed his lips. “You’re getting carried away with the idea of getting Bishop back, and you’re not thinking clearly. Even if you’re right and those weapons worked on the Uk and the Eol’i—and I’m not convinced they will—how will you deal with the Eochehxea? We know nothing about them.”
Raleigh shrugged. “We’ll just have to deal with that when the time comes.”
“We’ll deal with it by getting our heads shot off,” he countered. “You just told me in there we had to prepare for every contingency so we could get Bishop out on the first try. You said if anything happened to us, he was finished. Now you’re going off half-cocked, not even listening to your own words.”
She turned to face him. “Angela will tell us what we need to know about the Eochehxea. She might even know a way to defeat them or at least defend ourselves against their weapons.”
He frowned. “How are you going to find her? She could be anywhere in Hinterland by now.”
Raleigh opened her mouth—and blinked. The next thing she knew, she found herself on a cobbled sidewalk in lovely Pernrith. A quaint little shop stood at her side, and a painted sign hung over the door announcing to the whole world, Pringle’s Dry Goods.
Chapter 19
As Dax and Raleigh stood on the sidewalk looking at each other in startled amusement, Pringle’s door opened and who should step out but Angela Cross. She carried a basket on one arm. A linen table napkin covered the contents, but Raleigh didn’t have to guess at the contents. Angela could only be shopping for one thing at Pringle’s—the place where all the Guildsmen of the Martial Arts came to buy their weapons.
Angela frowned at Dax and Raleigh, one after the other. “What are you doing here?”
“We found Bishop.”
Angela’s eyes flew open. “You did? Is he alive and well?”
Raleigh grimaced. “He’s alive, but he’s not very well, and he won’t be either of those things if we don’t act fast. What did you find out in Kaldkirk?”
Angela inclined her head down the street. “Walk along with me. I’ve taken a room at a tavern down here. We can sit down and talk it over.”
Dax and Raleigh accompanied Angela back to her room, where she set her basket on the table. Raleigh sat down in a chair while Angela busied herself opening the windows and pushing back the curtains. She smiled and hummed to herself while she bustled around the room.
Raleigh waited until Angela took the napkin off her basket. She set out grenades, weapons of all sorts, and a few assorted sensors and measuring devices. “You should have brought more grenades with you, Raleigh. I hate to think of you coming to Hinterland unprepared. You, too, Dax.”
“We had plenty of grenades. The problem is Bishop never showed us how to program them. He was going to show me when we got home, but then he got…he got taken.”
Angela bent over her purchases. “Never mind. Tell me what you found out.”
“Bishop is being held in the basement of the Guild Elementary School. A very kind Eol’i, who is the School Master, let me talk to him. He’s in a pretty bad state, and he doesn’t want to believe he’ll be rescued. He’s hopeless. He’s so hopeless he didn’t even want to see me.”
Dax gasped. “You didn’t tell me that!”
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
Dax paced around the room. He glared out the window. “That’s it. We have to go get him.”
“How are you going to do that?” Angela asked.
“We have a couple possible strategies,” Raleigh told her. “There is the more direct route, which involves large numbers of Eol’i, not to mention Uk.”
“Don’t forget the Eochehxea,” Dax added.
Raleigh waved her hand. “At least with that way we know where he is and when. We’ll have him in sight. We don’t have to go hunting him or worrying about anybody finding us. We go in. We start fighting.”
Angela stared at her. “What’s the other option?”
“We know where they’re holding him. We find him and sneak him out.”
“Don’t forget the Eochehxea,” Dax chimed in again.
Raleigh wheeled around. “Will you be quiet about the Eochehxea? You’re making this a whole lot more complicated than it has to be.”
“You can’t forget the Eochehxea,” Angela told her. “No matter what you do, they’ll know. There is no sneak in and take him in Solaris. That’s for certain.”
“The second plan has a couple of other problems, too,” Dax remarked. “For a start, we don’t know how to find the Elementary School or how to get into the basement. None of us has Epistemological powers like Teif does.”
“You do,” Raleigh returned.
He colored and turned away. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
“Listen, babe,” Raleigh told him, “if you can transport us back to Solaris in the first place, you can get into that basement or anywhere else. You just think about it, and you’re there.”
“While you’re at it,” Angela added, “why don’t you just transport yourself to Bishop’s cell, put your arms around him, and transport him and you back to his house? Nothing is off the charts for you.”
Dax looked the other way. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Raleigh clapped her hands. “Anyways, that’s not relevant. You don’t have enough control over your power to do that—not yet, anyway. We have to find another way to get Bishop out. I favor the direct route myself, but Dax disagrees.”
“I don’t like any of it,” Angela muttered.
“Well, what did you find out?” Raleigh asked. “What did your friend say?”
“He didn’t say anything about Bishop, but he did say there’s a big move afoot to relocate the Guild of Martial Arts. I thought they would set up their new headquarters in Pernrith, since that’s been their stronghold for so long, but Chairman Kuntz has other plans.”
“Where do they plan to set it up?”
“Henleyville,” Angela replied.
Raleigh stood rooted to the spot. She opened her mouth and closed it again. “Henleyville? But that’s….”
Angela nodded. “I know. It’s in the other world. That’s what doesn’t make sense, but Chairman Kuntz was most emphatic about it.”
“Didn’t you say your friend is a slipper from the Guild? Maybe he made a mistake.”
“He wouldn’t repeat it to me if he wasn’t sure of his information. Anyways, after he told me, I was so shocked I came back here to confirm it. I checked with some of my old contacts in the Guild while you were gone. I even checked with Chairman Kuntz, and it’s all true.”
Raleigh blinked at her. “But that’s impossible. How did you do all that in the short time we’ve been gone?”
Now Angela took her turn to stare. “You’ve
been gone for four weeks.”
Dax and Raleigh looked at each other. “It was only a few minutes, maybe an hour, tops.”
Angela shook her head. “Time operates differently in Solaris. When you disappeared in Kaldkirk, I came back here. I had no way of knowing when you were going to show up, so I just went on with my own investigation. There’s no mistake. The Guild of Martial Arts is moving to Henleyville.”
Raleigh sank into her chair. “This is impossible.”
“I know it’s farfetched.”
Raleigh rocketed to her feet again. She trod around the room while she thought out loud. “It’s beyond farfetched. Not only is it unheard of for a Guild of Hinterland to set up shop in a human town, but there are a lot of other forces converging on Henleyville at the same time.”
“Like what?”
Raleigh counted off on her fingers. “First of all, there’s a trainload of blue mussels heading for a factory in Henleyville. Do you know what that means? It means there’s a twen farming operation getting started there.”
Angela shuddered. “I don’t even want to know what’s second of all.”
Raleigh paced up to her. “Listen to me, Angela. Do you remember what you told me about Bishop getting obsessed with his father’s death, with him turning over every stone in the hunt for some sign it was foul play? He wrote a letter to the cab service that ran his father down. He was trying to find the driver, but the driver quit the service and retired to a farm in Henleyville.”
Angela whispered low. “What are you saying?”
“What if Bishop was right all along? What if his father really was murdered? Bishop said his father knew a lot of the Guild’s secrets. He thinks that’s why the Guild ran him down in the street. Then the cab driver runs away and hides in the same town where the Guild is setting up long-term shop. What if the driver was a Guildsman? What if the Guild orchestrated the whole accident? Now the cabal has stolen his father’s notebook to get information about the Elixir of Life. It’s all too coincidental. There must be a connection.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Dax asked. “We can’t break off now and go hunting after a murder twenty years old.”
“We can’t break off until we get Bishop back,” Raleigh replied, “but the first thing I’m going to do when we get back to Perdue is track down that driver. I’m convinced he holds the missing piece of the puzzle.”
“We’re no closer to getting Bishop back,” Angela pointed out, “and there’s another problem. The Guild plans to go up to Solaris and bring Bishop back. They plan to relocate him to their new headquarters, too. They’re going to discipline him as a member of the Guild.”
“When’s that?”
“Three days’ time,” Angela replied. “If you coordinate your attack for their visit, you could have a couple thousand Guildsmen on your backside, along with the Eol’i, the Uk, and of course the Eochehxea.”
Raleigh slapped her thigh. “That’s it. We have to move now. We have to get him back before they go to Solaris. I don’t suppose you know how the Guild is getting to and from, do you?”
“The Eochehxea transport them to and from,” Angela replied. “The Guildsmen don’t have to do anything. They’ve got the Eochehxea’s permission to come.”
Raleigh sliced her finger through the air. “Gather up your weapons. We’re going back.”
“You can’t just go in there guns blazing,” Dax repeated. “The Eochehxea will flatten you.”
She patted his shoulder. “You’ll deal with the Eochehxea, darling. Every time someone has threatened you, you tapped your power to defeat them. You’ll do the same thing now. Now stop arguing and come on. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Chapter 20
Dax sank to his knees on the ground. He buried his face in his hands. “I can’t do it. I’m so sorry.”
Raleigh frowned down at him. “Just try one more time.”
Angela strode over. “Leave him alone. He already tried dozens of times. He can’t do it. That’s all there is to it.”
“He has to do it.” Raleigh waved to the duffel bags loaded with weapons standing on the ground nearby. “We’re all ready to go. We can’t withdraw now.”
Angela pointed down at Dax. “The harder you push him to do it, the more he’s not gonna be able to. We’ve been standing out here for more than ten hours. He can’t do it, and I’m hungry. I’m going to get something to eat. I’ll see you later.”
Her skirts swished away behind Raleigh, back toward the tavern where Angela was staying. Raleigh scowled down at Dax a moment more. He didn’t dare look up at her.
What was she doing? She told herself and him a dozen times it didn’t matter, that they shouldn’t count on his abilities to get Bishop back. Why didn’t she listen to herself instead of pounding him over the head with his failure?
She sat down on the ground at his side and took a deep breath. She gazed across the square. The city turned the crater of the old Guild of Martial Arts building into a tree scape. All traces of the catastrophic fight that destroyed the building disappeared. Only loveliness and beauty remained.
Raleigh laid her hand on Dax’s knee. “Come on. Let’s go home. There’s nothing more we can do here today.”
His head came up. “Go…home? What do you mean?”
“Go home to Bishop’s house,” she replied. “We can do some more investigation around Henleyville until you’re ready to try again.”
He blinked at her. “I can’t go home. What if someone sees me? What if something happens…I mean, what if I do something, and somebody realizes…you know, about me? I can’t go back.”
Raleigh sighed. “We’ll deal with that when it happens, but if you’re worried about it, you can stay in the house. At least you’ll be safe there, and you can practice your training in the back yard. No one will see you, and maybe you’ll get better at using your powers.”
“But you said we had to go right away. You said we had to get Bishop before they take him out of Solaris.”
She smiled at him. “First of all, we’re not getting him out of Solaris at all until you’re ready to travel there, and if you can’t, the whole project is a no go. Besides, they plan to take him out of Solaris and move him to Henleyville. That will make him a damn sight easier to capture. We won’t have the Uk or the Eochehxea to deal with. We’ll only have a couple thousand Guildsman to fight, and we beat them once before.”
“We beat them with a stampeding herd of hammaslahti, remember?”
She laughed. “Don’t confuse me with details, son. Just get on your feet and come on. We’ll catch the next zeppelin back to the Gingerbread House.”
Raleigh stuck her head into Angela’s room to let her know they were leaving, and within the hour, she and Dax rode back across the fields glowing sunset green to the little village under the stairs.
Raleigh looked neither right nor left at the staring patrons of the Gingerbread House. She and Dax went back to Bishop’s house, and Dax returned to the shed to feed the twen before he came up to the house.
Raleigh sank onto a stool in front of the kitchen fire. So many details jammed into her brain she couldn’t think of them all at the same time. She only ever gave way to her exhaustion and despair in two places in this world: sitting in front of Mrs. Mitchell’s fire in the kitchen and sitting in front of her father’s fireplace back home. All the rest of her life she spent running, fighting, outwitting, and holding herself tense against the rest of the world.
Mrs. Mitchell entered from the servants’ quarters. She jumped out of her skin when she saw Raleigh. She cried out loud and her hand flew to her heart. “Miss! Where did you come from?”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Mitchell,” Raleigh murmured.
Mrs. Mitchell bustled into the room. “And all alone again, I might add? Where’s the boy? Dead, too, I’ll be bound.”
“Dax is just fine. He went out to do a chore in the shed. He’ll be here in a moment.”
>
Mrs. Mitchell smacked her lips but didn’t reply. She stomped around the room to hide she’d ever been frightened at all.
Raleigh slumped on her stool. The flames dragged her eyelids closed, but she couldn’t let go of everything she learned and heard and saw while she was gone. Little by little, her eyes crept to Mrs. Mitchell’s face. “Mrs. Mitchell?”
Mrs. Mitchell set the stack of dinner bowls on the table. She bent over the fire to ladle the boiling stew into them. “What is it, Miss?”
“Mrs. Mitchell…” Raleigh hesitated to say the words out loud. Saying them out loud might make them untrue. “Mrs. Mitchell, Bishop is alive.”
Mrs. Mitchell started back so fast she dropped the loaded bowl into the fire. Neither she nor Raleigh noticed. She flew back, and she clasped her hands over her heart again. She wailed aloud and shrieked to heaven. “Alive! He can’t be! Alive! How do you know?”
Raleigh’s heart raced, but she kept her voice steady. “I saw him, and so did Dax. He’s alive, and we’re going to bring him home.”
Mrs. Mitchell pressed her fingers to her lips. “It can’t be,” she whispered. “It can’t be, Miss.”
“It’s true. He’s hurt, but we know where he is and we know where he’s going. We won’t quit until we get him back.”
Raleigh returned to staring into the flames. That’s when she noticed the bowl engulfed in flames. It was too far gone to try to retrieve it.
Mrs. Mitchell gulped down sobs while she served the meal. Dax came in and kicked off his boots by the fire. He yanked off his gun belts and hung them by the door. He looped his jacket over the hook on top of them and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He sat down on the stool across from Raleigh, and he smiled at her when he raked his hair out of his eyes.
That smile gave Raleigh hope. It was his old smile, the smile she fell in love with the very first time she met him down on the road.
Raleigh called back over her shoulder. “Mrs. Mitchell?”
“Yes, Miss?”
“You know this area pretty well. Do you know Henleyville?”
Hinterland Book 3: The Wolf's Hunt (Hinterland Series) Page 14