"Good dog, Blackie," Horace said. The words were greeted by another tail thump from the dog and an angry glare from Trobar. The giant rarely spoke, Horace knew. His palate was deformed, and this made speaking an effort for him. In addition, his words were so slurred they were difficult to understand, and the inevitable questions that resulted tended to embarrass the big man. This time, however, he was sufficiently annoyed to make the effort. "No' Bla'ie," he said.
Horace hesitated, then thought he knew what had been said. He had noticed that Trobar had trouble with hard consonant sounds like t and k.
"Not Blackie?" he ventured, and the angry face nodded vehemently. Horace shrugged apologetically, a little put out. Everybody seemed to deride his choice of name for the dog, he thought. "Then what is his name?" he asked.
Trobar paused, then, trying his hardest to enunciate clearly, he said, "Sha'th'ow." There was just the faintest hint of a d sound in the th.
Horace considered for a moment, then asked, "Shadow?"
The big moon face lit up in a smile and Trobar nodded enthusiastically. "Sha'th'ow," he repeated, pleased that he had communicated something. The dog's tail thumped again as he said the word. Horace studied the dog, thinking how she slipped along, belly close to the ground, moving silently as a wraith.
" That's a good name," he said, genuinely impressed by the giant's creativity. Trobar nodded assent once more.
"Be'er tha' Bla'ie," he said disdainfully.
Horace raised his eyebrows at the taunt.
"Suddenly everyone's a critic," he said, and turned away to see if Will had finished decoding the message. Behind him, as he walked away, he heard the deep rumble of Trobar's laughter.
Will was stashing his crib into an inner pocket when Horace returned.
"What's the news from Alyss?" he asked.
"Mainly she wanted to tell us about MacHaddish's visit. But there's news for Orman as well. I'm afraid his father is dead."
Horace's face hardened. "Keren had him killed?"
Will shrugged. "Not directly. It was more an accident than anything else, but in the long run he is responsible. Alyss says that he'll never give in now. His only hope is to go ahead with his plan with the Scotti."
"And I don't suppose she has any idea of their timetable?" Horace asked.
Will shook his head."With any luck, Malcolm will get that from MacHaddish tonight," he said.
But Horace looked doubtful. "I wouldn't depend on that. He looks like a tough nut to crack. D'you have any idea what Malcolm has in mind?"
"No idea at all. I expect we'll find out tonight. For now, I'm going to have to tell Orman about his father."
He stood slowly, glancing down at the message sheet again as if it would tell him some easy way to impart the painful news to Orman. Horace dropped a large hand on his friend's shoulder.
"I'll come with you," he said. There was nothing concrete he could do to make the situation any better. But he knew that his presence would provide some comfort and support for Will.
" Thanks," Will said, and they started across the clearing together.
MacHaddish, alert to every movement in the clearing, watched them go.
Orman was in the little cabin with Malcolm and Xander when Will broke the news of Syron's death. Orman accepted it fatalistically. "Alyss says he would have felt no pain, at least," Will told him, hoping to make the news easier to bear. "He was unconscious at the end and just slipped away."
" Thanks for telling me," Orman said. "I think I knew it anyway. I'd sensed something – a lack or a loss. I knew in my heart that my father must be dead."
Xander's eyes had filled with tears at the news. He had served Syron's family since he had been a teenager. His sadness didn't stem so much from a sense of affection for the family – Xander was too much a servant to presume affection for his masters. His sadness came from a sense of duty. Syron's death brought with it a loss of direction in the little man, as if an arm or a leg had been cut off.
In spite of the fact that he had been serving as Orman's secretary for the past few months, his initial loyalty had been to Syron, and as Will and Horace had noted on several prior occasions, that loyalty was deep-seated and integral to his character.
He coped now as he usually did, by trying to find some way to serve Orman, now officially established as his permanent master.
"My lord, is there anything I can get you? Anything I can do?"
Orman patted his shoulder gently.
" Thanks, Xander, but you need to grieve as well. He was your master before I was, and I know you always served him faithfully. Don't bother yourself about me for a while."
The little steward's face seemed to crumple before them, and Orman realized that the most effective way for Xander to cope with the loss would be to busy himself doing things for his master.
"On second thought," he said, "I think I could use a large cup of tea right now. If it's not troubling you too much."
Xander's face cleared instantly.
"At once, my lord!" he said. He looked at the others. "Anyone else?" he asked.
Will and Horace hid their surprise. The little steward had been decidedly prickly over the past few days. Malcolm, however, understood his need for something to do.
"I'd like a cup too, Xander, if you don't mind," he said softly.
Xander nodded several times and bustled toward the small cottage's kitchen, rubbing his hands energetically together.
"What's the plan of action for tonight?" Will asked Malcolm when the steward had left the room.
" There's a clearing a little way east of here," Malcolm told them. "My people are setting up a few things now. We'll take MacHaddish there once the moon has set."
Horace frowned thoughtfully. He'd been wondering for some time how Malcolm intended to get MacHaddish to answer questions.
"What exactly do you have in mind?" he asked.
The healer regarded him. His normally kindly face was devoid of expression. "I'm planning to prey on MacHaddish's superstitions and fears. The Scotti have a host of demons and supernatural beings that I can use."
"You know what they are?" Orman asked, eyeing the healer with some interest.
Malcolm shrugged diffidently."Well, yes. One of my people spent his early years living north of the border. He's familiar with the Scotti demons and superstitions." A thought struck him, and he looked at Will. "I suppose we'll need a few Skandians tonight as guards," he said. "Ask Gundar if we can have two or three of his most simple-minded and superstitious men."
"I'll tell him," Will said doubtfully. "But wouldn't we be better with more intelligent guards?"
Malcolm shook his head. "Terror feeds upon itself. If Mac-Haddish sees the Skandians are terrified, it'll make it easier to frighten him. And it'll be better if they're not acting."
Xander returned at that moment, with a tray bearing two mugs of steaming tea. He offered the tray to Orman, who took a cup carefully.
"Thank you, Xander," he said. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
Xander smiled. It was an unusual expression on his face, and Will and Horace exchanged a surprised glance. They had just witnessed an object lesson in leadership and authority.
"And thank you," Malcolm said in his turn. He sipped appreciatively at his tea, then asked Will and Horace, "I assume you two will be along to watch tonight?"
"Of course," Will answered. " We wouldn't miss it for the world."
Malcolm nodded. "Thought you might say that. Well, I'll have Trobar bring you all along when the time's right. I'll be leaving shortly to get a few things ready at the clearing." He glanced down at his teacup and smiled. "Just as soon as I've finished this excellent tea."
21
Trobar led the little party along a typical Grmsden track. Narrow, constricted and overgrown, it wound its way beneath the massive trees that loomed above it. At ground level, the track was barely two meters wide. Above the ground, the canopy of the forest overhung the track, the branches and vines intertwin
ing to block out the view of the stars.
At odd intervals, they passed arcane symbols and warning signs – skulls and bones figuring prominently among them. MacHaddish seemed unperturbed by these, although they caused a certain amount of nervous comment from the three Skandians.
More ominous to Will was the fact that the forest was completely silent. There was no rustling of nocturnal animals among the undergrowth, no soft, swishing flight of bats or owls through the trees. Nothing.
And yet the silence did not suggest the absence of life. Far from it. In fact, there was a sense of some large presence around them – of eyes that watched them from the impenetrable darkness that began outside the narrow circle of light from the torches they carried. The forest itself seemed to personify a massive, ancient evil.
Will shivered at the thought of it and pulled his cloak more tightly around him. The darkness and the silence were causing him to have fanciful thoughts, he told himself. There was nothing here to be afraid of. He knew that the manifestations he had seen and heard when he first entered the forest had been the result of Malcolm's trickery. And yet, the forest had been ancient long before Malcolm had come to live in it. Who could tell what prehistoric evil might have taken root here, deep under the trees, where the warming, cleansing light of the sun never penetrated?
He glanced surreptitiously at Horace, marching beside him. In the light of the torch he carried, Horace's face was pale and set. He could feel the atmosphere too, Will thought.
They wound through the trees. Trobar walked at the front of the party, with MacHaddish behind him. The giant had levered MacHaddish's chain free of the log that had secured him through the night and stapled it to a slightly smaller log. Trobar now carried it by one hand as if it were weightless, but Horace and Will both realized that its weight would take all the strength of a normal man to lift. It was a simple way to ensure that MacHaddish didn't try to escape. All Trobar had to do was drop the massive piece of hardwood, and MacHaddish's progress would be reduced to a staggering crawl.
The three Skandians followed directly behind the Scotti general, their weapons ready for any sign of treachery on his part – and for any supernatural interference that might manifest itself in the meantime.
Will and Horace brought up the rear.
"How far's the clearing?" Horace asked quietly. The darkness of the forest was becoming oppressive. It seemed to press in on them, and he would have welcomed the sight of a patch of clear sky and a little room around him to let him breathe.
Will shrugged. "He said it was close by. But the way this trail twists and winds, we could be walking for miles."
At the sound of their voices, muted as they were, Trobar turned to look back at them. He placed his finger to his lips in an unmistakable sign for silence. Will and Horace exchanged a glance and shrugged. But they said nothing.
A few meters farther, Trobar held up his hand and they all stopped. He peered from side to side into the blackness, holding his torch higher to try to penetrate farther into the gloomy depths that surrounded them. Instinct ively, the other members of the little party copied his actions. For the first time, Will noticed that MacHaddish had lost his customary lack of concern. His glance flicked quickly from Trobar to the surrounding darkness and back again.
The man had some nerves after all, Will thought to himself. The Skandians muttered in an undertone until Trobar rounded on them fiercely and made the gesture for silence again. He started forward, then stopped, uncertainly. His nervousness communicated itself to the rest of the group. Will felt an overwhelming sense that something was coming up on him in the darkness behind them, but when he turned quickly to look, he could see nothing but blackness beyond the flare of his torch.
Then the sound began.
It was a deep, rhythmic noise, the sound of some massive creature's breathing. It came from the sides and from behind. Then it was ahead of them. Then to the right. The hair on Will's neck prickled upright. It's the forest itself, he thought. It's alive. He shook himself angrily to get rid of the ridiculous fancy. He knew how Malcolm arranged for sounds to move around the forest. The healer had shown him the network of hollow tubes he used to broadcast and amplify sounds to different positions. Somewhere out in the dark, Will told himself, Luka, Malcolm's barrel-chested assistant, would be breathing into the tubes, sending the sound through a network of tubes to different points in the trees around them.
Then the breathing stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Trobar stepped off again, MacHaddish and the three Skandians following reluctantly. Will realized, in a flash of inspiration, that the giant's reluctance and uncertainty were a pretense. It was brilliant playacting on his part – pretending to be nervous, pretending to be uncertain as to whether to carry on or not. As Malcolm had told them, fear communicates itself to others. The fact that the massive, gargoylelike Trobar was afraid was enough to make the others fearful as well.
Trobar stopped again. Then he turned his head from side to side, listening.
The sound came from nowhere and everywhere. The breathing was gone, replaced now by a deep sighing sound, an extended, visceral growl that was right at the lower register of human hearing.
Trobar looked back at the small party, his eyes wide with fear.
"Hur'y!" he croaked at them, and then, in case they hadn't understood him, set off along the track at a shambling run. MacHaddish was caught by surprise and remained rooted to the spot for a second or two. Then the chain leading to the collar around his neck tightened and nearly jerked him from his feet. He recovered with difficulty, staggering and blundering into trees as he tried to regain his balance, knowing that if he lost his footing, Trobar would not wait for him. He would be dragged along by the chain until the collar choked him.
The Skandians needed no extra urging. They careered behind the reeling general, shoving him with their weapons, exhorting him to go faster or to make way for them. Will and Horace, after a moment's indecision, took off in pursuit, stumbling on roots and depressions in the uneven track, the flames from their torches flaring behind them, trailing showers of sparks as they tried to keep up.
Will told himself that it was all a trick, an illusion. He knew that Malcolm and a party of his followers had been at work all day preparing for this. Yet even so, while logic told him there was nothing to be frightened of, his sense of terror in these cold dark woods could not be denied.
The groaning had changed. It had become a guttural laugh as the forest seemed to express its contempt for their efforts to escape.
Ahead of them, Trobar's hoarse, slurring voice could be heard as he continued to exhort them to hurry. Will glanced back over his shoulder, but with the glare of the torch beside his head, he couldn't see more than a meter or two behind him. Again, he had the sense of unavoidable dread – the feeling that something large and hostile was looming in the night behind him.
His feet caught in a tree root and he pitched forward. But before he reached the ground, he felt Horace's hand grab his upper arm and drag him upright again.
"Watch where you're going!"
The fear was infectious. Will sensed it in Horace's high-pitched voice. Horace saw it in Will's fearful backward glances. Each of them had the highest regard for the other's courage, so the thought that Horace was terrified added spurs to Will's fear, and vice versa for Horace. The night, the darkness, the narrow, winding track all magnified their fear. And it fed upon the oldest fear of all, fear of the dark unknown.
Now the voice in the night had changed again. The laughter had changed to a pulsing, wordless snarl. It was a sound that mingled frustration with hatred that told them beyond doubt that whatever was out there in the forest was weary of toying with them and was about to close in for the kill.
And then, blessedly, there was light and open space as they blundered into the clearing they had been searching for, and the sounds of the forest gradually died away.
The little party stood, heads hanging, chests heaving, as they recovered their breath.
The clearing was barely twenty meters across, but they could see the night sky above them and feel relief from the threatening wall of trees that had enclosed them. There was a small fire burning in the center of the clearing. After the oppressive blackness of the forest, it seemed twice as bright as normal, and instinctively, seeing it as sanctuary, they moved toward it. Then a figure stepped into the light between them and the fire, one hand up in an unmistakable gesture, his shadow long and wavering in the flickering light of the fire.
The figure was tall and narrow shouldered, dressed in a long black gown that was festooned with gold thread tracing out the shape of the moon and stars and comets. A high, flat-topped tubular hat crowned his head, with a narrow brim circling it about ten centimeters above its base. The hat was bright-burnished silver, and it caught the red glare of the fire, throwing weird dancing reflections of light into the trees around them with every slight movement of his head.
His face was painted in alien patterns of black and silver, completely covered so that only the eyes were left glaring out from the terrifying mask.
The figure held out his hands to the side, and Will could see that the arms of the long garment he wore were flared at the cuffs so the sleeves hung like a bat's wings from his arms. And his voice when he spoke was harsh and querulous, a voice that would brook no argument.
Gone was Malcolm, the gentle healer Will had come to know. In his place was the character he had created to keep intruders away from Grimsdell Wood.
Malkallam, Will realized. The sorcerer.
22
"Trobar, you fool!" grated Malkallam at his cowering assistant. "I told you to be here before moonset – before it awoke!"
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