MOONDIAL
They survived the night. Those on watch reported
creatures scuffling and snuffling through the woods, but nothing
had come too close. Dawn arrived as another soggy, gray day and
camp was swiftly packed up.
Karigan didn’t think
any of the Sacoridians had slept well, except maybe Yates, who
snored his way through the night. Between his snoring and the rocks
rammed into her back, Karigan certainly hadn’t. As for the others,
pouches sagged beneath Lynx’s eyes, and she wondered if the voices
of the forest had infiltrated his dreams. Ard looked surly and
threw his gear around as if he’d like to break something. A haggard
Grant kept scratching his arm and muttering to himself about the
dripping.
Once everyone was
ready, they set off down the road, their mood subdued, no one
engaging in chatter. Nothing threatened them as they walked along,
though Karigan felt as if their every movement was observed by
malevolent eyes.
They paused only for
a meal at midday, and when they finished, Graelalea announced,
“Here we shall depart the road.”
“What?” Grant
demanded. “What do you mean we depart the road?”
“You don’t expect us
to bushwhack through this forest, do you?” Ard added.
The idea of leaving
the road dismayed Karigan, too, but she withheld her protest,
waiting to hear Graelalea’s explanation.
“There were once
paths, not just roads, that Eletians used to travel this land. If
you knew our roads, you would realize they are not ... efficient.
Think of your main thoroughfare in Sacor City. Is it the most
direct route to the castle?”
“No,” Grant
admitted. “There are shortcuts.”
“Though our roads
were not made to slow an invading army as your Winding Way was, the
result is the same. So I seek to shorten our journey by another
path.”
“I see. And what
will this path lead us to?”
“The heart of
Argenthyne.”
Her pronouncement
was met by silence.
“On the path,” she
continued, “it is even more imperative we do not stray. The forest
shall attempt to mislead us, I think, but
it may be the land is not entirely opposed to
Eletians.”
They were not
consoling words.
Karigan saw no path
leading from the road, but without further explanation or
hesitation, Graelalea stepped into the woods, followed swiftly by
the other Eletians.
“Wait!” Grant cried.
“We need to survey this for the map.”
“We have paused here
long enough,” Graelalea replied.
“Our mission is to
map and—”
“That is
your mission. Eletians need no maps.
You may stay and strike out on your own if you wish, or you may
come with us.”
The Sacoridians
waited for Grant’s decision while he stood on the road cursing the
Eletians, the gods, and the dripping water. Meanwhile the Eletians
disappeared deeper and deeper into the woods. Finally he plunged in
after them, much to Karigan’s relief, and no doubt to that of the
others. She was pretty sure they did not stand a chance in the
forest without the Eletians.
They thrashed
through brush and branches, tripping over roots as they went,
likely sounding like a pack of charging bears, until they saw the
flash of white armor between the trees. When they caught up, Solan,
who was last in line, cast them a smile. It was more than clear the
Eletians possessed the upper hand in Blackveil. Any pretensions
Grant once held about being in charge of the expedition were dashed
long ago.
No words were
exchanged as the Sacoridians followed. One advantage, Karigan
decided, to having others ahead was that they cleared the path,
though some branches still swung back at her from Yates’ passage.
The trail they trod, though not easily visible beneath layers of
loam and mud that sucked at their boots, was more level than the
adjacent forest floor. Now and then there were hints of
stonework—crumbling retaining walls and flat stones on the
treadway—not entirely obscured by moss.
But here the forest
felt closer, shouldering in and bearing down on them, the air
stagnant, almost suffocating with wet rot. Brambles grabbed at
trousers and sleeves. Yates stumbled to the ground and Karigan
almost tripped over him. She helped him rise and he kicked at an
arching tree root in the path.
“It tripped me on
purpose,” he declared, and he stepped around it, hurrying to catch
up with Grant.
Karigan tapped the
root with her walking cane. Was it her imagination, or did it
shrink away from the touch of bonewood ? Perhaps Yates had not been
exaggerating. She hurried on, taking especial care to watch her
footing.
Despite the chill,
perspiration trickled down her face. The Eletians maintained a
punishing pace, and she was grateful when they halted, until she
found out why.
“Be silent,” came
Graelalea’s order down the line.
A screech pealed out
overhead. Karigan’s toes curled in her boots. Eletian arrows nocked
to bows tracked something overhead obscured by fog and trees.
Another cry and the perception of vast wings beating the air. Water
poured off branches.
It must be, Karigan
thought, a flying creature, like the one that had crossed the
breach last summer. An Eletian arrow sang and somewhere beyond
their cloudy ceiling was impact and a screech that turned into a
wail. The creature crashed through tree limbs as it fell to Earth
somewhere beyond their sight.
“Good aim,” Yates
said.
“A large target,”
Solan replied. “An anteshey. It was
hunting us.”
And just like that,
they were off again. Off again and not stopping until the gloom
deepened toward dusk once more. The Sacoridians staggered to a halt
behind the Eletians in a slightly more flat and open space. There
was stonework underfoot where not covered by black moss, and as
Karigan took her bearings, she realized they were on a plateau of
sorts with the far side giving way to a valley. She could only
guess at its depth because of the fog. Granite steps descended into
it, fading away as though leading into a different
world.
Ard, who was the
oldest among the Sacoridians, was bent double, still trying to
catch his breath. He was very fit, but the pace had knocked the
wind from them all.
“You trying to kill
us?” he asked Graelalea.
“We made acceptable
progress today.”
“Acceptable?”
Graelalea made no
reply.
Lynx spoke quietly
to Ard who nodded and said, “I’m all right. Thanks.”
Karigan slid her
backpack to the ground and dropped down next to Yates whose legs
were sprawled out before him.
“This must be one of
the five hells,” he said.
“Told you,” Karigan
replied half-heartedly, too tired to be smug.
“Don’t sit around
too much,” Grant warned them, “or your muscles will
cramp.”
He was right, of
course, but Karigan could not bear the thought of standing on her
feet again. They hurt unto numbness, and she had no idea what the
blisters were doing. She’d beg Hana for some evaleoren salve before
bed.
“I’ll get up if you
do,” Yates said.
“Right.”
Neither of them
moved, until clouds of biters found them and it became a feeding
frenzy. They leaped up cursing and slathered on priddle cream from
a tub Lynx passed them. The stuff stank, but it helped keep off the
ravenous insects.
By the time Karigan
and Yates finished raising their tent, someone had gotten a smoky
campfire burning. Dark descended quickly, seeming to smother the
fire. Without lumeni to give them light, night fell more densely
than ever, until a couple of the Eletians produced their
moonstones. The dark then peeled away from their campsite, and when
Karigan gazed upward, she swore the trees recoiled from the light
as if it burned them, the mist carrying the light like swirling
smoke. Karigan did not pull out her own moonstone—she did not need
to with the others alight. Idly she wondered when last a moonstone
had shone in the forest.
“Ai!” cried Solan
who knelt near the rim of the terrace, where the stone steps began
their descent into the valley.
While the others
gathered around Solan to see what the commotion was about, Yates
stayed where he was.
“Tell me if it’s
something that’ll eat us and then I’ll move,” he told
Karigan.
She shook her head
and joined the others. Solan was peeling back layers of moss from
the terrace and wiping away dirt. Worms and centipedes squirmed
away from the light. What Solan revealed were crystalline stars
embedded into the flat terrace stone. They glittered brilliantly
even beneath a film of grime. Further digging revealed a tree
crowned by the phases of the moon.
“What is it?” Grant
asked.
“It is a piece of
time,” Graelalea replied.
“You mean a time
piece, like a sundial.”
“More a moondial,”
Karigan murmured and Grant glanced sharply at her.
“I mean a piece of
time,” Graelalea said. “The Galadheon is somewhat correct, that the
time is kept by the moon, though there is no moonlight to reach
this one and it is missing its gnomon. It would have been placed
here by the folk of Telavalieth whose village once lay down
below.”
Curiosity got the
better of Yates and he managed to rouse himself enough to come
over, journal in hand. He deftly copied the design, ink bleeding on
the damp paper. Solan cleared more moss, but there was no more to
be seen. Eventually they all broke away to attend to camp duties
and eat supper.
Later, when Karigan
crawled into the dark confines of her tent, she detected Yates
there still scratching away in his journal.
“Do you want a
light?” she asked him, thinking her own moonstone could be of
use.
“Nope.”
“Ah.” He was using
his special ability to see in the dark. Now that she thought of it,
he’d be able to see everything if she changed into the big shirt
she liked to sleep in.
The scritch of pen
on paper paused, and as if Yates knew her thoughts exactly, he
said, “No need to blush. It’s not as if you have something I
haven’t seen many times before. Not that I don’t enjoy it every
time ...”
Karigan’s cheeks
burned and Yates chuckled.
“You and your
conquests,” she muttered.
“And you are one of
my greatest challenges, impervious to all my charm and good looks.
You are like an ocean that cannot be crossed, a mountain that can’t
be climbed, a—oof!”
Karigan had slugged
him in the shoulder. She assumed it was his shoulder. It was hard
to tell in the dark. In any case, she found it immensely
satisfying.
“Now move over,” she
ordered, “you’re hogging all the space.”
When he complied,
she crawled into her bedroll.
“What? You aren’t
going to change?”
“No,” she replied.
“I’m on second watch, so why bother?”
“Such a
disappointment,” Yates said with a tsk,
tsk. “But we will have many more nights together
to—”
She kicked him, but
this time it just made him laugh.
It was so strange,
she thought, to hear laughter. It was as if once they entered the
forest, and especially after Porter’s grim death, such a thing as
laughter could not exist here.
“Do you suppose,” he
asked after some moments, “the Eletians sleep in their
armor?”
For that she had no
answer—she wasn’t even sure if Eletians slept, but she joined Yates
in his laughter, eventually falling asleep feeling much lighter
than she had since entering the forest.