by Rebecca Rupp
The first Kobold spoke again. “When you came last to us, Sagamore, you walked in a different guise. The help we gave was fitting then, for you were man-grown and battle-wise. But now it is a different time, and you are not the same. You would find it of no use to you.”
“A hindrance, even,” a hoarse rattly voice said.
Birdie, beside Tad, bristled. “How can you be so sure he couldn’t use it?” she demanded. “Whatever it is. You don’t know what Tad can do.”
A new voice answered. It reminded Tad of heavy boulders rolling. It was so deep that he could feel it vibrating inside his chest like a skin drum.
“We gave the Silent Sword,” the voice said.
A Remember stirred in Tad’s mind. His fingers curled as if they held a polished hilt. The blade was beaten steel set with patterns of gold. It was a beautiful thing, heavy, but not too heavy for his wrist. Once the Kobold put it in his hand, it was as if he and the Sword were one. . . .
“What’s the Silent Sword?” Birdie was asking.
“The Silent Sword was forged in the long-gone days when we yet wielded hammers and tongs,” the deep voice said, “and deep within its metal was set a fragment of the Earthstone. The bearer of the Sword was shielded from the Water Witches’ song, and the Witches could not withstand the touch of its blade. A worthy weapon, the Silent Sword.”
Birdie shot Tad a hopeful look. “It sounds the very thing,” she said. “Couldn’t Tad have it too?”
A buzz of mocking laughter. Tad felt his ears grow hot.
“The boy cannot use the Sword,” the first Kobold said coldly. “He has neither the strength nor the skill for weapons. The Sword is not for him.”
“Besides, the Sword is lost,” the deep voice said.
“Lost . . . lost . . . lost . . .”
Birdie turned in dismay from Tad to Willem and back again.
“They’re supposed to help us,” she said in a distressed undertone. “They’re acting like they don’t even care.“
“We cannot help you, Fisher boy,” the first Kobold said. “Our day is past. We are of the stone now, rooted in the mountain. We will not walk abroad again, but will grow more and more silent. Soon we will not speak or wake at all, but will be one with the bones of the Earth.”
From the face of the cliff around him came a chorus of agreement.
“Cannot help . . . cannot help . . . cannot help . . .”
“Sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep . . .”
Tad’s heart sank. They had failed, then. He had failed. All that long journey for nothing.
“It is not so!” A new voice, its syllables sounding like a flurry of crashing hammer strikes.
Tad’s head jerked up.
“It is true,” the hammer voice said, “that we are bound here forever and can no longer walk about the Earth as once we did. But we are not yet powerless, brothers.”
Agitated whispers.
“There have been many Sagamores,” the hammer voice went on, “and no two of them the same. Each one learned to find a way. Who are we to turn our backs on this one because he is small and young?”
From somewhere deep inside, the mountain gave an angry rumble. Tad thought it sounded like a giant stomach growling.
Then there was a loud tearing sound. The cliff wall before them split open in a long jagged crack and something rolled out and fell heavily at Tad’s feet. Pippit poked his head forward and nosed at it distrustfully.
“Take it, Fisher boy,” the hammer voice said.
It was a fist-sized lump of dull gray stone. Tad bent down and picked it up.
“What is it?” he asked. He looked at Willem, puzzled, but Willem only shook his head.
The hammer voice gave a dusty chuckle. “A helping hand, Fisher boy.”
The whispers murmured in grudging admiration.
“He’s given you his right hand, Fisher boy . . . his right hand . . . with which to fight the Witch . . . to fight the Witch . . . his right hand . . .”
Tad recoiled. “This is your hand?”
He looked more closely at the lump of stone. At first it appeared smoothly round, but then he saw faint grooves and ridges shaped vaguely like clenched fingers, and a jutting bump that might have been the joint of an in-turned thumb.
“Your hand?” he repeated.
“It is the best I can give you, Fisher boy. It will help you . . . help you . . . help you . . .” The hammer voice dwindled and faded, then suddenly, as though it were making one last effort, grew stronger again. “I always loved the waterfalls,” it said. “Are they still there?”
“Oh, yes!” Willem answered before Tad could speak. His eyes lit up. “They’re beautiful. Like silver curtains falling over the rocks of the mountains.”
Willem’s face fell suddenly. Tad remembered the Diggers’ motionless Waterwheel.
“At least they were beautiful,” Birdie said, “before the Nixies stole away all the water.”
Deep inside, the mountain growled.
“Take my hand, Fisher boy,” the hammer voice said. “And set the Waterstone to do its work again, as is the Law.”
“But how — ?”
Before Tad could finish the question, the crack in the cliff sealed itself shut with a sharp snap. The whispers ceased. All in an instant, the faces froze again, seeming as they did so to blur and fade, sinking deeper into the rock.
“Thank you,” Tad said into the sudden silence.
High above him a handful of pebbles rattled and fell.
Tad, Birdie, and Willem looked at one another, then looked down at the lumpy stone in Tad’s hand, with its shadowy trace of stony fingers.
“But how will it help us?” Tad asked. “What are we supposed to do with it?” He threw a frustrated look at the silent cliff. “Why couldn’t they have stayed awake long enough to explain things better?”
“Well, they seemed sure it would help,” Birdie said bracingly. “And they’re Witches, too; they must know more about how to fight Nixies than we do.”
“Then I guess this is it,” Tad said unhappily. Why couldn’t the Kobolds have explained? “This must be what we came for.”
“What do we do next?” asked Willem.
“We go back,” Tad said. “We have to tell the others. We promised to meet at the Gathering of the Tribes. I told your grandfather all about it. The Gathering. The Diggers should come too; all the Tribes should be there.” He hesitated. His throat felt tight. “And then . . .” He swallowed painfully. “And then I’ll have to go back to the black lake. To find the Nixies.”
“We’ll go to find the Nixies,” said Birdie and Willem, speaking at exactly the same time.
They hesitated, turned to each other, and made youfirst gestures.
“I’m going with you,” they both said at once.
Tad hesitated. It would be wonderful, he realized, to have Birdie and Willem with him. Friends at your back, a voice said softly in his head. Tad bit his lip.
Pippit croaked encouragingly.
“You can’t,” he said. “You mustn’t. It’s too far for you, Willem, and anyway, it’s too dangerous. Besides . . .” Can Diggers even swim? he wondered.
“Just wait until I get my equipment,” Willem said. “I have some things that should be helpful. Wait till I show you. And I have to find my bat.”
He turned and began to scamper down the mountain.
“I’ll meet you on the forest path,” he called back over his shoulder. “The path you took when you first got here. Beyond the front gate.”
“What about your grandfather?” Birdie called after him. “What about your family? What are you going to tell them?”
“I’ll leave them a note,” Willem shouted back.
Then he paused and turned, his bright eyes suddenly solemn.
“It’s our water too,” he said.
Squee! Squee! Squee!
Willem swooped down on them from the air. He was wearing a tight-fitting leather cap that buckled under his chin, and a pair of goggles w
ith round dark lenses that gave him the look of a surprised bug. Skeever, the bat, wore a pair of the dark-lensed goggles, too, fastened with leather straps behind his ears.
“He won’t fly in daylight without them,” Willem explained. He dismounted awkwardly, crawling backward over a pair of bulky saddlebags. The bags made muffled clanking sounds, and one of them had a lot of metal tubes poking out the top.
“What’s that?” Birdie asked, pointing.
“It’s an invention,” Willem said proudly. “I made it myself. It’s a machine for breathing underwater. It —”
He stopped abruptly. The hawk had appeared at the edge of the forest.
“It’s all right,” Tad said hurriedly. “His name is Kral. He’s a friend of ours.”
The hawk advanced slowly, setting his powerful claws down delicately, his head tilted to one side to study the newcomers with a bright amber eye. Tad hurried forward to meet him.
“These are friends of ours, Kral,” he explained. “This is Willem, a Digger. The bat belongs to him, sort of. His name is Skeever.”
The hawk inclined his head politely. Willem, in return, gave an awkward little bow. The fur on the back of his neck, Tad noticed, was standing straight up in a stiff ruff.
“Have you found what you came for, Sagamore?” the hawk asked. His voice was the harsh cry that Tad remembered. At the sound of it, Willem flinched.
“Yes,” Tad said. He patted the leatherleaf pouch at his waist that held the fist-shaped stone. “Yes, I did.” I hope, he added to himself.
“It is well,” the hawk said.
“Could you take us back now?” Tad asked. “We need to go to the Wide Clearing in the Piney Forest. There’s going to be a meeting — a Gathering of the Tribes. Could you take us there?”
“By sunset as the hawk flies, little brother,” the great bird answered. “Climb on my back, you and the frog and the young nestling here, and I will carry you where you wish to go. The Burrower may ride or follow.”
Tad turned to the others.
“Kral will take us to the Gathering,” he explained. “He’ll carry you, too, Willem. Or, he says, you can follow him on Skeever.”
“We’ll follow,” Willem said, casting a nervous glance at the towering hawk.
Kral looked back, unblinking. Then he twisted and, with a sharp tug of his hooked beak, pulled a fiery-red feather from his tail. He dropped it at Willem’s feet.
“Tell the young bat-rider to carry that,” he said to Tad, “and no bird of the air will harm him.” He gave a sharp caw that might have been a laugh. “Tell him I do not care for Burrowers. They taste of stone dust.”
Tad turned to Willem.
“He says if you carry the feather, no hunting bird will harm you,” he said. “It’s some sort of sign.”
He decided not to relay the part about the stone dust. There was no point, he thought, in asking for trouble. Especially since the fur on the back of Willem’s neck was just beginning to subside.
Tad and Birdie, entwined with a clinging Pippit, climbed onto Kral’s back and settled themselves on his shoulders between the great red-brown wings. Willem, clutching the feather, wriggled back into place on Skeever’s back. The hawk tensed. The bat flared its leathery wings. Then both sprang into the air and the wind took them.
The hawk set them down in a forest of pines. Massive black trunks marched away from them into the distance, as far as they could see in every direction. The ground beneath their feet was thick with brown and fallen needles, and the air smelled sharply of turpentine. The drooping branches above their heads were brittle and heavy with dust. Skeever settled beside them, darting swiftly through the trees like a flickering shadow, then plummeting abruptly to the ground. Willem climbed wearily from his back and shoved his dark goggles up onto the top of his head. The sun was just setting and the forest was growing dim.
“I will leave you here,” the hawk said. He gestured with his beak. “The Wide Clearing you seek is a short walk that way.”
Then, solemnly, the great bird dipped his red head toward Tad. “We will meet again, Sagamore,” he said.
“Thank you, Kral,” Tad said simply. “Thank you for everything.”
The amber eyes looked upward briefly, toward the sky through the branches high above their heads. “Avenge my Lady, Sagamore,” he said in his harsh cry. “End the Drying.”
Then, with a thunderous sweep of wings, the great bird leaped into the air. The branches of the pines trembled with his passing, and a spattering of dead needles fell.
Willem whistled through his teeth. “You have a strange taste in friends, Fisher,” he said.
Tad grinned at him. “So the pond folk will say, Digger,” he retorted meaningfully. “And the Hunters, too, beyond a doubt, when they see your furry face.”
Willem grinned back. “My friends call me Will,” he said.
“Do Diggers really eat earthworms?” Birdie asked.
Willem began to laugh. “All the time,” he said. “Roasted. On sticks.”
“Gick,” Birdie said.
Tad pointed through the trees. “The Wide Clearing is that way. A short walk, Kral said, whatever a short walk is to a hunting bird. We might as well get on with it. What should we do about Skeever?”
“He’ll be around,” Willem said. “Bats go anywhere. He’ll probably spend the night hunting. But we should take the saddlebags.”
The bird’s short walk was long. They followed a narrow path through the tree trunks, winding in and out among clumps of dead and crumbling ferns. They passed the shallow bowl of what must once have been a little pond. Nothing was left in it but a thin layer of bilious-colored slime and the dried body of a dead frog. Pippit gave a distressed whimper and Birdie turned her head away from it, biting her lip.
By the time they reached the Wide Clearing, the sun had nearly vanished below the horizon and evening was falling. The clearing glimmered with the lights of campfires. There was a smell of cooking in the air and a babble of many voices.
“Look, Tad,” Birdie said, pointing. “There are the Fishers. They’re all camped together. And that must be the Hunters over there, where all the wagons are.”
Each of the tribes had its own encampment. The Fishers had built a cluster of little lean-tos, cobbled together from sticks and dry leaves, one for each family group. Each lean-to had an open front, and all seemed to contain a cramped muddle of moss sleeping pallets, leaf-wrapped packs, and baskets. A fire, carefully corralled in a circle of stones, burned before each campsite. Barefoot children in fringed tunics ran back and forth between them, dodging in and out behind the lean-tos, squealing with the excitement of seeing so many people and being allowed to stay up at night. Just last year at the Gathering, Tad thought, he and Birdie had run exactly like that, shouting and kicking fat brown puffballs, while Pondleweed chatted with friends around a wooden keg of butternut beer. Tad felt a sudden terrible pang of homesickness.
The Hunters, on the opposite side of the clearing, had drawn their painted wagons into a circle. A single great fire burned in the middle of the circle, and beside it, there was a row of people dancing. Tad could see the swirl of blue and scarlet skirts and hear the beat of skin drums, the twanging of lutegourds, and a high piping of reed flutes. The tune seemed to be one that everybody knew, since there was a lot of rhythmic clapping and every once in a while, everybody, all together, shouted, “Ho-mon-ro!”
One thing was different. The bark water buckets that usually stood by each campsite, filled to brimming, were missing. Water was too precious now to risk spilling. The camp was dry and gritty with dust, and the surrounding forest was dull and brown, ugly with the skeletons of dead trees.
“What about the Diggers?” Birdie asked Willem. “Will your family come? When will the Diggers get here?”
Willem shrugged miserably. “They might not come at all,” he said. “There was a meeting last night — late, after all of us had gone to bed. My mother and father were talking about it this morning.” He scuff
ed his feet uncomfortably, kicking at the dusty ground. “Grandfather believes in your story, Tad, and so does old Pegger, but some of the others weren’t so sure. And most of the High Councilors didn’t think much of this Gathering. They don’t like to have much to do with the other Tribes. They say that they’re all too —” He stopped abruptly, looking shamefaced.
“Too what?” Birdie demanded.
Willem scuffed a toe in the dust. “Backward,” he said in an embarrassed voice. “They think you’re too primitive to consult with. It’s just that you don’t use machines, you know, or have any kind of central government. . . .” His voice trailed off uncomfortably.
“If you think you’re so much better, just because you have mechanical crossbows and dragon steam engines,” Birdie began hotly.
Willem took a hasty step back, the fur on the back of his neck flaring up nervously. “It’s not what I say,” he protested. “I’m just telling you what the High Council said.”
“Tad!”
Tad whirled around. Ditani was running across the clearing toward them.
“Tad!” Ditani called again. “We’ve been looking for you, eh? When did you get here? Where are you camped?”
She paused, skirts swirling around her slim ankles, dark eyes wide, staring at Willem.
“Are the Diggers here then?” she asked in a startled voice.
Tad shook his head. “Just Willem here — Will,” he corrected himself. “He came with us.” He decided not to explain just how they had come. He turned toward Willem. “This is Ditani, a friend of ours. She’s a Hunter.”
Willem put his right hand over his heart and dipped his head in a polite bow. Ditani blushed and swept back her skirt in an awkward curtsey. Tad found himself feeling annoyed. What was she blushing for?
“Is Uncle Czabo here?” he asked.
Ditani shook her head. “He comes and goes as he pleases, eh? We watch, but his wagon is not here yet.
“You’re just in time for the meeting,” Ditani went on. “They’re planning to have an open parley — right there in the middle of the clearing next to the Speaking Rock — where those boys are putting up torches.”
Several boys in fur-edged leather vests — Hunters, by the looks of them, and all a few years older than Tad — were setting torches in the ground in a wide semicircle around a low rock on the flat ground between the two encampments. Lit, the torches burned with a flickery orange flame and gave off a pleasant toasty smell of roasting nuts.