Will Power Part 20

I was so wrapped up in these considerations that I almost forgot to capitalize on the opportunity that that special gullibility had won me. I sprang up, dusted off my hands, and tried the door. It opened onto the gallery that skirted the great dome, and there was no sign of life that I could see or hear. I trotted hurriedly down the corridor to the great doors with their bra.s.s panels, lifting my skirts as I ran. When I got to them I found myself again aware of the dull hum which seemed to come from inside. As I stood there listening, my gaze fell upon the metal relief work which covered the doors. Before, I had noticed the images of the library with its great dome, but I hadn't considered the details. I leaned closer to consider the figures depicted in the panels, noting that the builders were small and squat. I was just thinking about how odd this was and leaning on the door in a pensive kind of way when I recoiled suddenly. It was as warm as before, and pulsed with energy.

This was no fire. I guess I had always known that, but it struck me like a crossbow bolt through the forehead that I had been lied to on all sides. It also meant that there was something behind this door which I was not supposed to see, something which perhaps explained the strange secrecy which hung over this building. Without thinking further, I took the great bra.s.s ring in my right hand and twisted it sharply. The door clicked and yielded. The door opened. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next.

The room inside was vast, and both walls and floor were stone. It could have been magnificent, and probably was, once. Now it was a scene of devastation and chaos. Much of the stonework was shattered and all the huge, carved images which stood like columns supporting the roof were disfigured so extensively that it was impossible to discern if they had been men or beasts. The intricately worked wooden paneling, which seemed to have borne remarkable pictures in marquetry, had been hacked to splinters. Only fragments of the beautiful wooden inlay could still be made out where the vandalism (for such it seemed) was limited to severe scoring and the crude strokes of a paintbrush dipped in scarlet. The same savage desecration was everywhere. The immense paintings which hung from the ceiling b.u.t.tresses were slashed to stained tatters, the bookcases had been emptied and their contents violently shredded, and the statues which stood on either side of the great throne at the far end of the hall had been beheaded and daubed with crimson paint. There was, and had been, no fire. There was no smoke staining, no ash, no charred timber. The ruin before me was man-made and it had been effected with what I can only describe as hatred: a hatred so profound that it had unleashed a fury beyond words, beyond reason. Furthermore, it had not happened recently.

On everything, from the brutalized statues to the torn pages of the books which littered the floor like a confetti carpet, was a gray furring: dust. It looked as if the room had not been disturbed for years, decades even.

But it was not uninhabited. In a stone chair at the far end of the chamber, overlooking this ruined wasteland and flanked by crippled statuary, sat a man. He was robed and hooded in purest white and his hands were lost in the sleeves. He was motionless, though he was turned toward me, and, though I could not see his face under his pale and heavy cowl, I felt his eyes upon me.

He did not move. I, seemingly paralyzed, was unable even to speak. The pulsing throb which I had felt through the door seemed to be all around me, not pus.h.i.+ng me out of the room, but swirling at me from all sides. It was as if I was at the center of an eyeball whose iris had contracted tightly about me. And then, as if the room had suddenly dwindled, the walls rus.h.i.+ng in until the entire chamber was only a few feet square, I stood at the man's feet and he was gazing down at me from his throne. My mind emptied. Then he spoke-or, rather, I heard a word in my head. The voice was cold and unfamiliar. It said one thing only, and it was not a question, comment, or exclamation. Rather it was the tone of someone acknowledging my presence-someone who had expected, even sent for sent for, me.

"Outsider."

My eyes were fixed on the dark hollow within the hood, the s.p.a.ce where the man's face should have been, and I could not tear them away. But however hard I stared I could not guess what that face would be like if I had the strength to reach up and tug the cowl back. Pale and old beyond reckoning, I knew, though where this idea came from, I could not say.

I felt cold, pinned like a bug under a lens, and then I had the strangest and most uncomfortable sensation of being read like a book, the pages of my life torn open and riffled as if he could see into me, into my past, into my mind and heart. I felt exposed, naked. I fought to close myself to him, but couldn't. He had me in some sort of inverse vice that forced me apart, separated my very thoughts and feelings.

It was horrible.

I knew I couldn't stop it, but somehow I lighted on another possibility, something that might distract or unsettle him. He had called me Outsider. Through the confusion and fear I managed to shape a defiance that was also a kind of question.

"As prophesied," I thought.

Then, as my eyes burned futilely into his, I became aware that the charge in the air, the energy that rushed about me like liquid, had acquired a color. It was now visible as a grayish smoke tinged with violet. As it surged and darted I saw, from the corner of my eye, that it was lit by flickers of blue-white lightning ripping through sullen clouds. I tried to look away from the seated figure, but my eyes would not leave his hooded visage. The air grew heavier and darker until the flashes of light burned themselves into my vision for seconds after they had pa.s.sed. As the light faded, I felt the hatred which had ravaged the room and the coldness of the mind which had gripped mine and I was overcome with fear. In desperation, I tried to shut my eyes, but they stood open as if their lids were pinned back. They burned. The black hollow of the man's head filled my vision, but around me the room was growing still darker. There was another flash of light, more brilliant than the rest, and it forked right through my head. I cried out with a defiance born of fear and again tried to shut my eyes. It was like closing vast, iron-bound doors, and required all my strength. For a moment, my eyelids were immobile and staring, dry, smoldering so badly that I thought they would clot over with blood; then they were moving. I drew them down as if I was winching some great weight over a pulley. When they were no more than cracks through which I could see the seated figure, he s.h.i.+fted.

And in that second I heard a voice. It was not the voice of the hooded figure who had gripped my mind, but a voice from long ago echoing down a tunnel of memory, a voice which seemed vaguely familiar but unplaceable. The voice faded in and out, each word almost just out of the reach of hearing, resonating like a bell struck years before but somehow still ringing.

"Outsiders will come to Phasdreille," said the voice in my head. "A small group of men and women from beyond your maps. They will alter the course of the war and of your world. They will bring change."

If there was more, the being in the library shut it out, as if slamming a door. I felt his uncertainty and anger at the memory of the words. Then there was darkness, a subsiding of the fear and panic and a stilling of the air. I waited, and when I opened my eyes again, I was where I had been when I walked in. The room was huge again, and the figure robed in white was a good hundred yards away from me. I knew instinctively that my window for escape would be narrow, so I turned hurriedly, yanking at the handle of the great bra.s.s door. His eyes burned into me and I felt the air thickening again as he strove to hold me, but I was already out and running as fast as my dress would let me.

I had good cause to run. Not only could I still feel him watching me, I felt sure that some strange alarm had been triggered and the guards would be after me. I glanced wildly around at the library's pa.s.sages and doors, unsure of whether to bolt from the building or find somewhere to hide.

The decision was made for me. In the hall which lay directly at the foot of the stairs that led up to the dome gallery, doors boomed and a dozen soldiers in white and armed with shortswords and silver helmets burst in. They moved with the resolve of men pursuing a bear that has eaten their wives. An officer shouted and pointed, and a pair of the library's own guards joined them, their voices raised and sharp.

"The Outsider is disguised as a court lady," said one. "He's upstairs."

The company divided, drew their swords, and moved toward the double staircases, their faces strangely grim. They apparently thought me dangerous, and that would make them lethal. I moved quickly out of the gallery and toward the door from which I had once seen Aliana emerge. I had reason to doubt that she could be trusted, but given the choice between doubt and the certainty that those soldiers would kill me on the spot, I'll take doubt any day. Call me an optimist. I tried the handle without knocking and burst in, tearing the wig and spectacles off as I did so.

She was standing inside, clad as before in a long, pale smock, open at the throat.

"They're after me!" I spluttered.

"Will?" she said, peering at me.

"Yes. They're after me."

"Who?" she asked, stepping toward me, her brow clouding with concern.

"Soldiers," I said. "I don't know why. But I think they plan to kill me."

"Stay here," she said. I just stood there. A wave of fear had hit me as I remembered the looks on their faces. I was damp with sweat.

She grasped my shoulders and looked into my face.

"Will?" she asked, her face earnest, almost pleading. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," I managed.

"I said, stay here. I can get you out, Will. Just give me a moment."

"Right," I answered, and began to pace beside her desk below the window.

She left the room, closing the door behind her. I sat and listened to the sound of my fractured breathing and my thumping heart. Outside, it was quiet. That unnerved me. Before, there had been booted military feet drumming on the steps and the polished stone floors. Now there was nothing.

What is she doing?

I got up and stepped closer to the door and heard, or thought I heard, stealthy movement behind it. I backed toward the window and I thought about what she had said. She had called me Will. Not Mr. Hawthorne, not William, Will Will.

Suddenly we were friends?

Opening the window, I peered out down forty feet of sheer stone to a flagged courtyard below. No chance.

Though small, the chamber was thoroughly furnished and the walls were lined with books: destined for the fire, no doubt. There was a miniature furnace with a narrow pipe chimney. Beside it at floor level was a hatch, about three feet square, with a heavy winch mechanism and a braking lever set in the wall above it. I pulled at the hatch door and it moved upward, sliding in a pair of grooves. The floor inside was a square wooden panel suspended by chain at its corners. Dropping to a crouch, I climbed awkwardly inside, feeling the base s.h.i.+ft and swing alarmingly. Then I reached one arm back into the room, groped for the winch handle, and pulled the lever downward.

Several things happened simultaneously. The panel beneath me dropped as my weight sent it tearing down a dark shaft, almost severing my hand in the hatchway as it fell. At the same moment, I heard the chamber door crash open as the soldiers entered. As I plummeted downward, the thought of hitting the bottom suddenly seemed at least as bad as whatever the troopers up there had intended to do with their swords. The chain rattled through its pulleys and all light but the receding square opening into Aliana's room dwindled to nothing as I hurtled noisily down.

Then there were faces peering down from that square, leaning down into the shaft. I saw the shadows of gloved hands grabbing at the chains, trying to stop my descent. Their efforts were in vain, though they slowed my fall slightly. This, ironically, made my impact with the ground less jarring. I crumpled and rolled, too delighted to be on solid ground to be too concerned with the inevitable bruising that the fall would leave me with.

I was getting to my feet in what seemed like another storage room piled high with books destined for censors.h.i.+p or destruction when Aliana's voice, distant and echoing like the ghosts in old plays, pinned me to the spot. She was leaning into the shaft and her voice was cool, gloating, so that I almost didn't recognize it. "You didn't really think I'd help you, did you, Outsider?" she whispered. I paused, astonished and touched with dread. It was as if a veil had been plucked from her face and I was seeing her as she really was for the first time.

"I should have known," I shouted back. "Never trust a book burner."

"You are as stupid as the goblins," she added. "You can't possibly get out of here, you know. A gross and degenerate creature like you, evade us?"

There was a hint of bitter amus.e.m.e.nt there; I could hear it. She started to say something else about how I was going to get the death I deserved, her voice never losing that calm, insinuating tone with which she had begun, but I wasn't listening. I stuck my head back into the shaft and turned to shout something up at her, and found that the crossbow, though awkward in the confined s.p.a.ce, was already aimed. I saw the light on her face and in her hair, but I never saw her eyes until I sensed the crossbow bolt speeding at my face.

I cried out, I think, and pulled back just in time to feel a rush of air and see three inches of steel-tipped quarrel slam into the splintering wooden platform. She began to talk again, but I knew she was just stalling till the soldiers got down to me. I didn't stick around to listen.

I was in a stone room piled with boxes of books. There was a single wooden door, and through this was a corridor which joined up with the pa.s.sage I had used to enter the building from the side. I ran out into the cold suns.h.i.+ne, unlacing my bodice and stepping out of the dress as I did so, knowing that they were mere yards behind me. I let the dress lie where it fell.

My course of action was clear: I had to put Phasdreille behind me. Nevertheless, I had returned to the palace, intending to stay just long enough to get my belongings and think for a moment. It wasn't a great idea, I suppose, but I didn't know where else to go, and I suspected the city gates were already held against me. I was in the palace for no more than two minutes, but it was long enough for Garnet to find me. Perhaps that was what I'd gone back for.

"What did you do?" he demanded, storming in without knocking.

"Last night?" I asked, alarmed by the look on his face.

"No," he said. "Since then. Something worse."

"Nothing!" I said.

"Don't lie to me, Will," he shouted suddenly. "You did something. The entire garrison is looking for you. I do not think ..."

He paused as if uncertain what to say, but then I realized he was uncertain what to think think.

"You don't think what?" I pressed him.

"I don't think you will talk your way out of this."

There was none of his usual righteous glee in the statement. There was, if anything, a glimmer of anxiety, even fear. Garnet knew I was capable of all kinds of appalling actions in word and deed, and he would happily watch me flogged with something spiky if it taught me the error of my ways and, more importantly, proved the rightness of his. But this was different. His face was paler than ever and his eyes were downcast. There was a studied blankness to his features and a rigidity to his posture that suggested a tremendous effort of will. He was being strong, and while this usually came naturally to him, the effort was nearly killing him. And as I thought this, it came to me. "They're coming to kill me, aren't they?" I mouthed.

He look at the floor and said nothing.

"Aren't they?" I demanded.

He looked up very slowly and there was doubt in his eyes. "They are coming to apprehend you for trial," he began, but his voice failed him and he paused. His eyes met mine and the doubt was gone as he answered me without knowing how he could be so sure: "I think so," he said. "Yes."

"Tell Renthrette I'm sorry about her dress," I said.

I was already grabbing my things and running for the door. He stood where he was, asking quietly, desperately, as if this would make everything clear, "What did you do?"

SCENE XVII

The Dead Forest

You may have noticed that running away is not a frequent feature in the lives led by the heroes of literature. You may also have noted that running is something I do rather a lot of. The fact of the matter is that dying, which is rather more popular in heroic tales, has never especially appealed to me, particularly when it involves pain and humiliation. I wasn't sure which method of slow torture the so-called "fair folk" preferred, but I was pretty sure that I would rather be otherwise engaged. I'm not particularly stoic when it comes to pain and, since I'm far from sure what may or may not lurk in the hereafter, I have learned to spot danger before it spots me and move away from it very, very quickly. Not particularly honorable or even dignified, I admit, but I can live with that. At least I'll live with something.

So I ran from Phasdreille, from its handsome book-burning soldiers, from that poisonous Aliana b.i.t.c.h and the valiantly murderous Sorrail, like a rabbit from a greyhound. The bridge sentries were still searching the palace, so I clambered into the back of a wagon of empty soap boxes packed in straw, and tried to still the hammering of my heart as we moved out over the bridge, through the barbican and out of the city at last. Garnet's warning had, it occurred to me, saved my life. I suddenly wished I had told him that his beloved Lisha was alive and only a few miles away.

Well, too late for that now.

I waited a few minutes and then slipped down from the wagon, rolling into the ditch by the road and lying still till I could hear no sign of life. I moved quickly into the woods to rest. I was not in the best shape, and my exertions, augmented by a stifling panic, had left me breathless and just about incapable of action. I was lying on my stomach and staring back toward the city while I tried to figure out what to do next when a company of hors.e.m.e.n came charging over the bridge and out of the barbican. There they clattered to a halt, divided into two, and set off in opposite directions on the road. This was not encouraging. I didn't actually hear them distributing my portrait, but their mission seemed clear: Find Hawthorne and put one of those carefully polished lances through his gizzard.

I wasn't sure what my gizzard was, but I was fairly confident that I had other plans for it, so I lay in the bracken and did my best to stop breathing for about ten minutes. Then another group of soldiers, this time on foot, came out of the city and my blood ran colder than Renthrette's eyes on a frosty day. At the head of the company, yelping and lunging forward with disturbing eagerness, was a pack of hounds.

It seemed about that time again. So I ran, straight into where the forest seemed deepest, diving through bracken and bounding over fallen trees like ... well, like someone with a company of soldiers and a pack of dogs at his heels. I figured it would take the dogs a moment to pick up my scent, but once they had it, my days, and-for that matter-my seconds, were numbered. I knew that I should be thinking up some brilliant ruse, but my legs had taken over and my brain was trying to keep up. I knew that even if I climbed a tree (presuming I could do that without killing myself) or hid in some conveniently positioned hollow, the hounds would track me down and I would gain nothing more than another minute or two to reflect upon those teeth and lance tips. So I kept moving with nothing more in my mind than getting as much distance between me and my pursuers as possible. Far behind me, the barking swelled and became unified: They were coming. And suddenly, as I blundered through a screen of hemlock, the stench hit me.

It had probably been growing with each footstep, but I had been too preoccupied with my footing to reflect upon the sweet and fragrant aromas of the forest. These aromas had now become a good deal less sweet and fragrant as a sour note overpowered the resin scent of the pines and brought me to a nose-wrinkling halt. The dogs answered, right on cue, with a bloodthirsty baying, so I silenced my offended nostrils (if you know what I mean), and pressed on. A huge spruce barred my path and I had to press blindly through its pale extremities. I s.h.i.+elded my eyes from the needles as I did so, and then, as I broke free, found myself gaping at my feet. One of my boots had sunk into the earth up to the cuff at the knee. I plucked it out with a long, sucking draw and the smell broke upon me like a cloud. Looking up, I found that the trees here had fallen away. Across a few yards of dark and stinking mud was the river, black, oily, and still as death.

I remembered the winding river instantly, of course, how it divided the fair woods and Phasdreille from the foul realm of darkness on the south bank, and as I stared across, it was all perfectly self-evident. The trees which sprouted from the stagnant water or stuck up at wild angles from its surface were blackened poles stripped of leaves, with branches like ragged claws, and on the far side of the river the woods were reduced to a thicket of the same dead pikes stabbing at the sky from dank and swampy beds. The air was chill and heavily silent for a second, and I could smell the evil through the decay. But then the silence was broken by the voices of the hounds and their handlers, and my dilemma hit me between the eyes like a pickaxe. Should I stay on the bank and wait for the soldiers to drag my bleeding remains from their dogs for formal torture and execution in Phasdreille, or should I brave the horrors of the water and whatever lay beyond it? Put like that, I seemed to have only one option. The stinking waters might even throw the dogs off my scent.

I took three more gurgling strides through the struggling reeds and mud and then felt the chill of icy water rus.h.i.+ng over the tops of my boots. It was an inconceivably unpleasant sensation. Another step, and the bottom, which was treacherously slick with what I took to be rotting leaves and branches, shelved sharply. The water rose up to my chest, driving the breath from my body as the surprising cold overcame me. I stood there gasping the noxious air and gazing, stricken, at the far bank, which looked about a mile away. I had just remembered that I couldn't swim.

There was a rustle in the vegetation behind me. It could have been a deer or a rabbit, but I a.s.sumed the worst and took another hurried couple of steps. The water rose and its frigid and viscous surface closed about my neck, so thick and dark that I could barely see my own body beneath it. I tipped my head back and closed my mouth, almost retching at the thought of this stinking fluid getting on my face, in my nose, in my mouth. The surface was curdled with a foul-smelling sc.u.m, unnaturally white and clotted with bubbles like oversized frog sp.a.w.n. My every movement roused a thick cloud under the water, black and heavy as blood.

Luckily, it got no deeper. I could hear the soldiers and their pack through the birdless trees, but their calls were of confusion. I might make it yet. Indeed, perhaps I didn't need to venture into the haunted forest, or whatever it was, on the other side at all. Perhaps I could just stay where I was, freezing quietly, until they left. But how long would that be, and how could I hope to reemerge from the woods onto the road without being seen and apprehended? So I continued to wade across, slowly, being careful not to slosh the heavy water which congealed about me, my joints beginning to seize as the cold shrank my sinews and froze my muscles. But then, quite unexpectedly, the river bottom seemed to swell and the water receded from my throat. The shelving was almost as steep here as it had been on the other bank, and it took both hands digging into the mud and clasping hold of stray logs before I could clamber, filthy and stinking, out of the water.

I say I got out, but in fact the water never really went away. It just turned into shallow stagnant pools and broad, still basins from which the dead trees emerged like some ruined palisade. I knelt s.h.i.+vering on the edge of one such pool and gazed back the way I had come, but I could see nothing. A heavy silence had fallen like a blanket of snow over the entire forest. For the moment, I was safe, but this was hardly prime picnicking territory. A brooding gloom suffused the place, filling me with slow dread. Out of the frying pan, as they say, and into the demon-infested swamp. ...

For what seemed like a long time I did nothing but wonder what to do. If I was trying to get to Lisha, I should follow the riverbank west; but if I was headed for the mountains where we had entered this h.e.l.lhole, I should go east. Both routes would take me on a several-mile stroll through the sinister expanse of death that lay stinking all around me, and I did not doubt that there were goblins and things still fouler lurking throughout the forest on this side of the river. But if I crossed the river, the "fair folk" would take one of their fair axes and remove useful parts of me. The world, apparently, wasn't my oyster.

I had almost decided to head west for the village tavern where Lisha was staying when I caught sight of smoke from the direction of the mountains, which would have been upstream if there had been any movement in the water whatsoever. It seemed close by, though I couldn't tell which side of the river it came from. Without thinking further, I began walking toward it, following a winding track around water-filled pits and s.h.i.+fting earth.

I came upon the source quite unexpectedly. Rounding a bend in the river I found myself no more than fifty yards from where it spanned the river: a great building, half-dam, half-mill, and constructed of what looked like new but stained and blackened brick. Chimneys spouted along the length of its roof and each belched thick and sulfurous smoke into the sky. As I stood there, the wind caught the smoke and it drifted, sagging toward me like some overweight and drunken cow. The smell was appalling. It was like both the air of the dead forest and the stagnant water of the river and pools; but it was, if anything, stronger, and touched with a rancid edge like b.u.t.ter left in the sun for days. I clutched my stinking hand over my nose and mouth to shut it out and fought to keep my gorge down. Then, driven by the curiosity which kills more than cats, I approached, skulking through the gray reeds.

It was a graceless structure, windowless and devoid of ornament. Along its side, about two yards above the level of the stopped-up river, was a series of five pipes, each a foot or more in diameter, and each trickling some yellowish filth into the water below. It congealed, this effluent, into greasy pools, sometimes collecting on the surface, sometimes sinking and drifting for a while until it settled elsewhere. One look at or sniff of that putrid glaze as it slopped out of the pipes and I no longer wondered why the river and forest were dead and stinking.

Right beside the bank where I crouched, a chute crudely constructed of heavy lumber emerged from the building and emptied into the marshy sh.o.r.eline. As I edged closer to peer into this, a hatchway somewhere inside opened and I heard for a moment the sounds of boiling, churning fluid and clanking pans. Then there was a clatter and a heap of objects came tumbling down the chute and into the river. Some sank without a trace; others missed their mark and fell around me like the rain that falls in nightmares. There were bits of armor, pieces of fabric, the broken hafts of weapons and fragments of metal, but mostly, there were bones: ribs, thighs, fingers, skulls, some almost human, but most ridged and heavy set. These were, there could be no doubt, goblin remains.

What the h.e.l.l? ...

I looked toward the mountains. Since the river ran fairly straight for about a mile, I could make out two similar structures straddling the river. There were sounds from inside the brick building, but it never occurred to me to see if the people within might protect me. Whoever-or whatever-they were, I did not want them to see me. I glanced across the river as I moved away, and there I glimpsed the wagon in which I had sneaked a ride from the city, incongruously bright and clean, painted elegantly in cream and trimmed with purple and gold. A man, tall and dressed in a buff leather jerkin, was loading crates onto the straw-packed back of the wagon. I knew what went into those boxes and recalled Garnet's words on how proud of their cleanliness were the citizens of Phasdreille. Through the stink of the smoke and the stuff which was pumping out into the river, I thought I caught a distant whiff of rose petals.

So, this is how they make their soap.

I wasn't sure if it was this realization or the sickly sweet aroma which finally pushed me over the edge, but I vomited quietly into the reeds where a cl.u.s.ter of pale bubbles puffed fat like fungus.

Being sick got rid of whatever lingered from the previous night's drinking binge, and though I was now thirsty and hungry, I felt better, clearheaded and ready to think. Of course, it didn't take much detailed a.n.a.lysis of my predicament to see that I was like a man who, coming home after a night on the town, finds that what he took to be his bedroom has become a cage full of tigers. The only thing more bewildering than how I had got into this insane situation was how I was going to get out of it.

Staying where I was would clearly be as dangerous as it was offensive to my nostrils, so I moved inland, if that is a fair term for the quagmire which stretched back into the blasted forest. I was still wet, and a cold wind had picked up and was coursing through the dead trees like a thousand sighing phantoms. I kept moving, for warmth more than to get anywhere specific, though after a close encounter with some quicksand-or its black and slimy equivalent-I picked up a stick and probed the earth before each step. Thus, with slow and uneven strides, I inched my way back from the river and into the dead forest.

I had been walking no more than ten minutes when my finely tuned adventurer's ears picked up movement behind me. In fact, my three-quarters-deaf aunt could have heard the clomping around in the reeds behind me, and she's been dead several years. I stopped and considered my options. Either whoever or whatever was behind me wanted me to hear them, which was not necessarily a good thing, or whatever it was was so immense and hulking that this pounding through the underbrush was what pa.s.sed for stealth among its kind. Since neither option was particularly optimal, I decided to get my weapon ready and turn slowly. I hadn't had time to arrange my pack as I would have liked, but my sword, now muddy and probably rusting, hung by my hand. I dragged it quietly from its sheath and wheeled rapidly as if I was ready for anything.

I wasn't, of course, but things could have been worse: a good deal worse, in fact. Behind me was a small woman, olive-skinned and with narrow black eyes and small features. Her long, raven-black hair was held back by a silver pin. She leaned on a silver-shod staff of ebony.

"Lisha?" I gasped.

"You're deaf as a post, Will," she remarked. "I've been following you for ten minutes, trying to make sure it was you and that no one else was tracking you on this side of the river. I thought I was making enough noise to wake the dead."

"I heard you," I replied, guardedly. This was not the first friend I had met wandering in these woods and the last one had turned out to have been dead some time. "How did you find me?"

"I heard from Rose that the city was up in arms looking for you."

"There's no way she could have gotten word to you that quickly," I replied, keeping my sword raised and level. "I've only been running from them for an hour or so. It would take her three times that just to get back to the inn and give you the news."

"She didn't have to," said Lisha, unoffended by my skepticism. "I came with her in the carriage, hidden, of course. I was concerned that we hadn't heard from you, and then one of Rose's other clients mentioned your behavior at the banquet. ..."