Owlknight

by Mercedes Lackey

  Seventeen

  If the people of Red Fox themselves had not been so determined to take Shandi’s solution and follow through on it, Darian would have had a harder time with his conscience. As it was, it was difficult, very difficult, to persuade himself that the tribe would do as well without his help as with it.

  But the survivors greeted the morning’s “revelation” by the three co-conspirators with unquestioning belief and even enthusiasm. It didn’t hurt that the eldest of the three widows confided to Darian with a look of wonder that she really had dreamed of the Red Fox spirit. Furthermore, she wonderingly said that in her dream the spirit had bestowed its approval of all that they had said and planned, and it had told her to tell the rest of the people to do as these special foreigners - the “Trusted Not-of-the-Tribe” - directed. Whether her own mind manufactured the dream, or it was a true vision didn’t really matter at the moment; what did make a difference was the reverence. She almost palpably projected a glow when she told the rest of her tribe of the manufactured vision. Because the spirits had approved of it, it became true for her and for her two co-widows. Their belief was contagious; it didn’t even require the mental nudging of the dyheli, which had been his private, emergency plan.

  When one of the younger widows lamented her husband’s loss again, the older woman gained a sudden look of extreme serenity and replied, “The Fox says, ‘Do not let yesterday use up too much of today,’ child.” Two heartbeats of utter stillness followed, and then the older woman bent to pick up some of her belongings to prepare for the journey. Whether that had been clever acting or an actual contact with the Fox Spirit he did not know, but the effect was startling. One by one, the rest followed suit.

  Kel, Hywel, and Wintersky went hunting that day as well, making certain that the village would have meat enough to carry it through not only the next fortnight, but the necessarily slow journey to Snow Fox. Steelmind, Shandi, Karles, and the dyheli “hunted” growing edibles and collected firewood.

  Perhaps “collecting” was an understatement. They hitched the dyheli and Karles to downed trees, which were then dragged to the village; before long there was an enormous line of them in the clearing, waiting to be chopped up. It was an exquisite irony that so many of Darian’s youthful indiscretions had revolved around collecting firewood, and now here he was, in charge of firewood yet again.

  Darian remained behind to help the survivors plan their journey, help Keisha, and chop the wood - with the help of the strongest of the girls, women, and any of the men fit to swing an ax or a mallet. Many of them were impressed by the high quality of the Tayledras axes, and marveled at Wintersky’s folding ax. And from the fierce and controlled anger with which the women dealt with their woody “adversaries,” Darian figured they were getting more than just stockpiled wood out of the exercise.

  For him, the day passed quickly. He took a great deal of his own anger out on the wood; it felt good to imagine the faces of the Wolverine raiders and strike with his full strength behind the blows.

  Everyone was so exhausted by the end of that day that they all went straight to bed relatively early. But there was none of the depression and gloom hanging over them that there had been; having a place to go and things to do to get ready for the migration had altered the entire mood of the tribe.

  He had no illusions about the damaged psyches of the women, however. What they had endured would have to be dealt with eventually - but he trusted, having met and worked with him, that the Shaman of Snow Fox would be able to give them help.

  Or if he can’t, their own tribal spirits certainly will.

  So he went to sleep feeling, if not cheered, certainly with his conscience doing little more than an occasional mutter.

  They left only when they all felt that they had done as much for the tribe as was needed; there was firewood piled high, racks and racks of meat drying, all manner of stores to tide these people through the difficult weeks ahead. Keisha had done as much as she could, given the brief amount of time she’d had to work; time and their own bodies would do the rest. The women had a purpose again, the men a reason to heal and get on their feet. The despair was gone, and there was even a glimpse of hope, now and again. These people were ready to stand on their own feet. If they weren’t to become dependent on their benefactors, it was time for Darian’s group to leave.

  So they rode out on the morning of their fifth day with Red Fox, though not precisely as they had ridden in. If there were no cheers sending them off, there were grateful farewells, hands pressed silently but fervently, eyes with life in them again. If Darian did not feel good about leaving them to carry on without any more help, he didn’t feel bad about it either. As they took their bearings and departed from that path of browned and dying underbrush, heading once again for the pass between two mountains to the west and north, Darian felt the weight of another responsibility descend on him. Now they knew that Wolverine was out there, raiding, looting, and killing. They would have to be twice as vigilant as before.

  He also held a secret from Keisha and Shandi, which made him feel a bit guilty. It wasn’t a major secret - but he wasn’t sure how they’d react if they knew it.

  Kel hadn’t won the hearts of Red Fox with his gifts; the dyheli had insinuated the concept of friendly, helpful, protective gryphons into the minds of the tribesmen long before the group ever reached the village itself.

  Now that was meddling, by any standard. The dyheli didn’t think of it that way; they considered it as being helpful, easing the way, making certain that the humans of Red Fox got no more traumatic experiences. However, they had planted a concept in the minds of the unsuspecting without consent or permission.

  Quite frankly, at this point, Darian was in accord with the dyheli. Things had been difficult enough without having to calm hysterics and panic. They needed Kel’s help, and needed to be able to have him come and go openly.

  According to Kel, their detour might have been a good thing in a tactical sense. There were no wide meadows between here and the pass, nothing but thick forest. At least the group on the ground would have cover the entire way.

  Yes, but so will any Wolverine raiding parties.

  Hardly a comforting thought.

  :Excuse me,: Neta said politely into Darian’s mind, :but there is something rather badly wrong in these woods. I don’t know what, precisely, but it’s too quiet.:

  :I agree,: Hashi spoke up. :There doesn’t seem to be anything around here bigger than a tree-hare, and even the tree-hares are staying high up. I haven’t scented anything of a decent size since we crossed that last big stream.:

  Darian didn’t like the way the forest felt either. The trees were a little farther apart here, letting plenty of sunlight through, and it should have been correspondingly more cheerful. But it wasn’t; the forest felt empty, hollow, like that deserted village they had encountered.

  Could Wolverine have hunted this place out? he wondered. That might be the explanation, and yet it didn’t feel right. For one thing, there wasn’t any sign of humans hunting - the broken undergrowth, trail marker ties, remains of camps, that sort of thing. For another, he didn’t think that even a tribe like Wolverine would hunt an area bare.

  They had been climbing steadily all day; they had managed to journey over all the territory between Red Fox and this final pass without crossing paths with any more raiding parties. There shouldn’t be any reason why they wouldn’t be on the other side of the mountains by tonight. Then, provided the information they had was correct, they would be within touching distance of Raven. And my parents?

  The shadow of the mountain fell across their path; it wasn’t just cool here, it was cold. Darian shivered, and out of the corner of his eye saw Shandi pulling her cloak closer. I’ll be glad when we get across, into the sunlight. Who would have thought it could be this cold at the beginning of summer? Small wonder that the Ghost Cat villagers had not been prepared for the summer heat in Valdemar. He was just glad that for once it wasn’t raining.
In this cold, rain would feel like drops of ice.

  There was another small clearing coming up ahead of them, one with a brush-filled ravine running along the left side. As they cautiously entered the clearing, Hashi and Neta were running flank guard, Kelvren was high above, Kuari was running tail guard, and the other two birds were in front. It was better to have the birds in front and behind; they could cover more ground than Neta and Hashi. It’s too bad they don’t have a way to pick up scent, but -

  There was a flash of motion. Out of nowhere, something huge and white reared up from the ravine, stretching up and up, and Darian froze. He couldn’t move; all he could do was stare upward, at the strange eyes that whirled and pulsed in the snakelike head two stories above the ground. . . .

  . . . . how . . . incredible. . . .

  Was there someone calling him? Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but those eyes. He forgot everything, even his name; all he wanted to do was to stare into those eyes forever. They were beautiful. He’d have thought his Clan, his Knighthood, and his quest were all useless if he’d even been able to think of them. The eyes were all that mattered. All else narrowed to them, or rather - yes, the eyes engulfed him. There was nothing above or below or around him that was of consequence, or was even noticed as missing, for that matter. There was only those eyes.

  Just as abruptly as the drake’s appearance, his mount went from immobile to active in a heartbeat. The dyheli spun in place, wrenching his attention from those hypnotic eyes, lurched into a run, and fled back down the way they had come. Greenery and stone flashed past at incredible speed, making even the view through Kuari’s eyes when they were linked seem plodding by comparison. Holding on for dear life, Darian’s dyheli caromed off the side of another one laden with supplies, which went down into the underbrush. Darian’s knee and shin hurt immediately from the crushing blow against the dyheli’s ribs, but the fallen dyheli was nowhere to be seen now. He looked around desperately. The noise of cracking branches and clattering gear mixed with a climbing whine behind him - a shrill one he had never heard before, much like the death cry of a rabbit, but forced from larger lungs. The dyheli he had crunched against struggled to get back up and then vanished into a pillar of white - the cold-drake’s open jaws crushed down upon the flailing dyheli and there were three swift thrashing bites. The dyheli was dead, somewhere back there, but the scenery blurred past and the line of sight was gone. He wasn’t alone; all of the dyhelis were stampeding back down the path, with Karles and Shandi in the lead. He shook off his pain and hung on like a leech as his mount lurched down the slope just a breath away from a disastrous stumble.

  That was a cold-drake. Oh, gods, that was a cold-drake! Now that he wasn’t under the creature’s spell, he knew the danger of what it was, and could put a name on it. He knew what must have saved them, too - Neta, out there free and not under the cold-drake’s mesmerizing gaze. She had exercised her own Gift and had taken over the minds of every other dyheli and probably Karles, too. Then she had made them all stampede away from the danger zone; the cold-drake wasn’t swift enough to keep up with them.

  The dyheli traveled across the forest floor in huge bounds, snapping Darian’s head back and forth until he got into the same rhythm as his mount. The dyheli didn’t usually break into this “stampede gait” when mounted, and he could only thank his luck that there was a saddle between him and that knobby dyheli backbone. As it was, his neck muscles hurt, and so did his head.

  As abruptly as they began their run, they ended it, bouncing in three or four steps to a halt a safe distance down the pass. The others came to a stop beside him, with the dyhelis shaking their heads so hard their ears flapped as Neta let their minds loose. Last to stop was Karles, and it seemed to Darian that as the Companion walked toward them, his expression was decidedly sheepish.

  Now it hit him - how close they had all been to a distinctly unpleasant death - and he began to shake with reaction, the sour taste of fear in his mouth. One more heartbeat, and we’d all have been dinner. Oh, gods.

  Keisha looked puzzled; Shandi still confused. “We lost - we lost Gacher. What happened?” Keisha blurted. “What was that? Why did the dyheli all run?”

  :Gacher has died. The herd ran because I made them,: came Neta’s mind-voice. :As for what that was, I do not know; only that it was dangerous. It had you all spell-trapped with its eyes and mind.:

  “It’s a cold-drake,” Steelmind said flatly. “Thank you, Neta; that was precisely the right thing to have done. You saved us all - except for poor Gacher. I hope his death was a swift one.”

  :It was,: Neta confirmed.

  “I don’t understand. I’ve studied all the weirdlings we were likely to find up here. Cold-drakes are normally dormant in the summer,” Steelmind continued as he wiped his hair back from his face. “I wonder what woke this one up?”

  “What’s a cold-drake?” Keisha wanted to know.

  Kel interrupted the conversation, coming in beside them for a noisy landing, his beak agape with agitation. He swung his head around, counting them silently, and heaved an enormous sigh of relief to see the humans all present. “I sssaw the drrrake!” he said, “But you all rrrran beforrre I completed a ssstoop.”

  “It’s just as well that you didn’t connect with it, Kel,” Darian told him, dismounting and clasping Kel’s neck - even though his own legs were still shaky. “One gryphon is no match for a cold-drake.”

  “Will someone please tell me, what’s a cold-drake?” Keisha repeated insistently. “And why couldn’t I move or think?”

  Darian and Steelmind exchanged a look, and Darian answered. “A cold-drake is a magical construct, like a gryphon; they were created during the Mage-Wars as offensive weapons, but the problem was that they couldn’t be controlled, and turned on their own side as often as not. They’re eating machines.”

  “But they use mind-magic,” Steelmind continued. “They freeze their prey in place, then move in and strike, or dine at their leisure depending upon their mood. That thing caught all of us, every one that could see its eyes. If Neta hadn’t done what she did, we’d be sliding down its throat right now.”

  Karles hung his head, as if he was ashamed that he had not somehow resisted the cold-drake’s gaze. Steelmind noticed, and turned toward the Companion. “No one is immune from a cold-drake,” he said, for Karles’ benefit. “I don’t care who or what you are. When you’re in front of a cold-drake, you belong to the cold-drake.”

  Shandi patted Karles’ neck sympathetically. The Companion didn’t say anything that Darian could hear, but he understood the Companion’s chagrin; he shared it.

  You’d think I would be able to shake that damned thing off. . . . How had he managed to get so completely under the monster’s power in so short a time?

  I didn’t even get a good look at it before it had me!

  It took one look at Hywel to realize that he did not have the worst of it. Darian was, by comparison, a war-hardened general compared to the young Ghost Cat warrior. In his past he’d been routed, ambushed, beaten up, surprised, attacked, and scared out of his wits before. It was Hywel’s first time for being totally, utterly helpless, face-to-face with death when there was nothing he could do about it. Hywel looked just as white as the Ghost Cat itself.

  “How are we going to get past that thing?” Hywel stammered, aghast. “Does it ever sleep?”

  “Yes, but they’re like spiders; they sense the vibrations of the ground if anything bigger than a mouse walks on it, and wake up immediately,” Steelmind told him. “I don’t think we could drive it off or lure it away either - they are very, very territorial. If we want to get through that pass, we’re going to have to kill it.”

  “Oh, great,” Darian muttered, as Hywel’s eyes went round. Being magical constructs, cold-drakes were, to some extent, designed to be immune to the effects of magic. “What I don’t understand is why it isn’t dormant - it’s summer.”

  “It’s also cold.” Steelmind looked over his shoulder
at the mountain behind him. “With this shadow falling over the pass for most of the day, and being so high up, it doesn’t ever really get warm. That’s probably why there aren’t any animals here - the drake has hunted the place bare, and the animals don’t get a chance to recover their numbers in the summer.”

  “It could be awake because it didn’t get enough to eat to support dormancy,” Wintersky said thoughtfully. “Unless it moves to a new territory, it’s going to starve to death.”

  “Well, we can’t stand around and wait for that to happen,” Darian replied with irritation. “And it just got fed.”

  Kelvren dipped his head toward Neta and intoned solemnly, “I am sssorrry forrr yourrr losss.”

  Neta returned the gesture, and her gaze went from buck to buck. :It is a risk Gacher knew he was taking by volunteering for this journey. He knew before coming that such things could happen to him. It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.:

  Darian could only nod, even though he knew Neta was speaking to the bucks and not to him. As much as he had questioned the human morality of Neta’s powers, those same powers had just unquestionably saved their lives.

  Darian’s mind was soon preoccupied, thinking on the ways to get around the drake. Wintersky went from one dyheli to another, checking them for injuries and making a mental inventory of what gear was lost when they fled. We’re so close -

  “We could go back,” Shandi pointed out. Dead silence dropped over them all; Darian looked at each of his party in turn. Shandi wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Hywel looked solemn and frightened; Wintersky thoughtful. Steelmind just shrugged. Only Keisha met his eyes completely, and looked just as determined as he was to continue.

  “We can’t stop now,” Keisha said firmly, and cast a withering glance at her sister. “That would be giving up.”

  Shandi shrugged off the criticism. “It’s no shame to give up under the right circumstances.”

  Keisha didn’t even dignify the comment with an answer; instead, she turned to Steelmind. “Do you have any idea what we can use against this creature?”