We made the city. But I swear I could sense something sniffing
along our backtrail before we reached the safety of the lights. We
returned to our lodgings only to find most of the men gone. Where
were they? Off to take over Raven’s ship, I learned.
I had forgotten about that. Yes. Raven’s
ship . . . And Silent was on Raven’s
trail. Where was he now? Damn! Sooner or later Raven would lead him
to the clearing . . . A way to find out if
Raven had left it, for sure. Also a way to lose Silent.
“One-Eye. Can you get hold of Silent?”
He looked at me strangely. He was tired and wanted to sleep.
“Look, if he follows Raven’s every move, he’s
going to head out to that clearing.”
One-Eye groaned and went through several dramatic shows of
disgust. Then he dug into his magic sack for something that looked
like a desiccated finger. He took it to a corner and communed with
it, then returned to say, “I got a line on him. I’ll
find him.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. You bastard. I ought to make you come with
me.”
I settled by the fire, with a big beer, and lost myself in
thought. After a while, I told Shed: “We have to go back out
there.”
“Eh?”
“With Silent.”
“Who’s Silent?”
“Another guy from the Company. Wizard. Like One-Eye and
Goblin. He’s on Raven’s trail, tracing every move he
made from the minute he arrived. He figured he could track him
down, or at least tell from his movements if he was planning to
trick Asa.”
Shed shrugged. “If we have to, we have to.”
“Hunh. You amaze me, Shed. You’ve
changed.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could have done it all along.
I just know that this thing can’t happen again, to anybody
else.”
“Yeah.” I did not mention my visions of hundreds of
men looting amulets from the fortress at Juniper. He did not need
that. He had a mission. I couldn’t make it sound
hopeless.
I went downstairs and asked the landlord for more beer. Beer
makes me sleepy. I had a notion. A possibility. I did not share it
with anyone. The others would not have been pleased.
After an hour I took a leak and dragged off to my room, more
intimidated by the thought of returning to that clearing than by
what I hoped to accomplish now.
Sleep was a time coming, beer or not. I could not relax. I kept
trying to reach out and bring her to me. Which meant nothing at
all.
It was a weak fool’s hope that she would return so soon. I
had put her off. Why should she? Why shouldn’t she forget me
till her minions caught up and could bring me to her in chains?
Maybe there is a connection on a level I do not understand. For
I wakened from a drowse, thinking I needed to visit the head again,
and found that golden glow hanging above me. Or maybe I did not
waken, but only dreamed that I did. I can’t get that
straight. It always seems so dream-like in retrospect.
I did not wait for her to start. I started talking. I talked
fast and told her everything she needed to know about the lump in
Meadenvil and about the possibility the troops had carried hundreds
of seeds out of the black castle.
“You tell me this when you are determined to be my enemy,
physician?”
“I don’t want to be your enemy. I’ll be your
enemy only if you leave me no option.” I abandoned debate.
“We can’t handle this. And it has to be handled. All
its like must be handled. There is evil enough in the world as it
is.” I told her we had found an amulet upon a citizen of
Juniper. I named no name. I told her we would leave it where she
could be sure to find it when she arrived.
“Arrive?”
“Aren’t you on your way here?”
Thin smile, secretive, perfectly aware that I was fishing. No
answer. Just a question. “Where will you be?”
“Gone. Long gone, and headed far away.”
“Perhaps. We shall see.” The golden glow faded.
There were things I wanted to say yet, but they had nothing to
do with the problem at hand. Questions I wanted to ask. I did
not.
The last golden mote left me with a whispered, “I owe you
one, physician.”
One-Eye rambled into the place shortly after sunrise, looking a
lot worse for wear. Silent came along behind him, looking pretty
beaten himself. He had been on Raven’s trail without let-up.
One-Eye said, “I caught him just in time. Another hour and he
would have headed out. I conned him into waiting till
daylight.”
“Yeah. You want to wake the troops? We get an earlier
start today, we ought to be able to get back before
dark.”
“What?”
“I thought I was pretty clear. We’ve got to go back
out there. Now. We’ve used one of our days.”
“Hey, man, I’m ripped. I’ll die if you make
me . . . ”
“Sleep in the saddle. That’s always been one of your
big talents. Sleep anywhere, any time.”
“Oh, my aching butt.”
An hour later I was headed down the Shaker Road again, with
Silent and Otto added to the crew. Shed insisted on coming along,
though I was willing to excuse him. Asa decided he wanted in, too.
Maybe because he thought Shed would extend an umbrella of
protection. He had started talking mission like Shed, but a deaf
man could hear its false ring.
We moved faster this time, pressed harder, and had Shed on a
real horse. We got down to the clearing by noon. While Silent
sniffed around, I worked myself up and took a closer look at the
lump.
No change. Except the two dead creatures were gone. I did not
need Hagop’s eye to see that they had been dragged through
the entry hole.
Silent worked his way around the clearing to a point almost
identical with that where the creature trail entered the forest.
Then he threw up an arm, beckoned. I hurried over, and did not have
to read the dance of his fingers to know what he had found. His
face revealed the answer.
“Found it, eh?” I asked more brightly than I felt. I
had started to count on Raven being dead. I did not like what the
skeleton implied. Silent nodded.
“Yo!” I called. “We found it. Let’s go.
Bring the horses.”
The others gathered. Asa looked a little peaked. He asked,
“How did he do it?”
Nobody had an answer. Several of us wondered whose skeleton lay
in the clearing and how it had come to wear Raven’s necklace.
I wondered how Raven’s plot for vanishing had dovetailed so
neatly with the Dominator’s for seeding a new black
castle.
Only One-Eye seemed in a mood to talk, and that all complaint.
“We follow this and we’re not going to get back to town
before dark,” he said. He said a lot more, mostly about how
tired he was. Nobody paid attention. Even those of us who had
rested were tired.
“Lead off, Silent,” I said. “Otto, you want to
take care of his horse? One-Eye, bring up the rear. So we
don’t get any surprises from behind.”
The track was no track at ail for a while, just a straight shot
through the brush. We were winded by the time it intercepted a game
trail. Raven, too, must have been exhausted, for he had turned onto
that trail and followed it over a hill, along a creek, up another
hill. Then he had turned onto a less traveled path which ran along
a ridge, toward the Shaker Road. Over the next two hours we
encountered several such forkings. Each time Raven had taken the
one which tended more directly westward.
“Bastard was headed back to the high road,” One-Eye
said. “Could have figured that, gone the other way, and saved
all this tramping through the brush.”
Men growled at him. His complaints were grating. Even Asa tossed
a nasty look over one shoulder.
Raven had taken the long way, no doubt about it. I would guess
we walked at least ten miles before coming across a ridgeline and
viewing cleared land which descended to the high road. A number of
farms lay on our right. In the distance ahead lay the blue haze of
the sea. The countryside was mostly brown, for autumn had come to
Meadenvil. The leaves were turning. Asa indicated a stand of maples
and said they would look real pretty in another week. Odd. You
don’t think of guys like him as having a sense of beauty.
“Down there.” Otto indicated a cluster of buildings
three-quarters of a mile south. It did not look like a farm.
“Bet that’s a roadside inn,” he said. “What
do you want to bet that was where he was headed?”
“Silent?”
He nodded, but hedged. He wanted to stick to the track to make
sure. We mounted up, let him do what walking remained to be done.
I, for one, had had enough tramping around.
“How about we stay over?” One-Eye asked.
I checked the sun. “I’m considering it. How safe you
figure we’d be?”
He shrugged. “There’s smoke coming up down there.
Don’t look like they had any trouble yet.”
Mind-reader. I had been examining farmsteads as we passed,
seeking indications that the lump creatures were raiding the
neighborhood. The farms had seemed peaceful and active.
I suppose the creatures confined their predations to the city,
where they would cause less excitement. Raven’s track hit the
Shaker Road a half-mile above the buildings Otto thought an inn. I
checked landmarks, could not guess how far south of the twelfth
mile we were. Silent beckoned, pointed. Raven had indeed turned
south. We followed and soon passed milestone sixteen.
“How far are you going to follow him, Croaker?”
One-Eye asked. “Bet you he met Darling out here and just kept
hiking.”
“I suspect he did. How far to Shaker? Anybody
know?”
“Two hundred forty-seven miles,” Kingpin replied.
“Rough country? Likely to have trouble along the way. Bandits
and such?”
King said, “Not that I ever heard of. There’s
mountains, though. Pretty rough ones. Take a while to get through
them.”
I did some calculating. Say three weeks to cover that distance,
not pushing. Raven wouldn’t push, what with Darling along,
and the papers. “A wagon. He’d have to have a
wagon.”
Silent, too, was mounted now. We reached the buildings quickly.
Otto proved right. Definitely an inn. A girl came outside as we
dismounted, looked at us with wide eyes, raced inside. I guess we
were a rough-looking lot. Those who did not show tough looked
nasty.
A worried fat man came out strangling an apron. His face could
not decide if it wanted to remain ruddy or to go pallid.
“Afternoon,” I said. “We get a meal and some
fodder for the animals?”
“Wine,” One-Eye called out as he loosened his cinch.
“I need to dive into a gallon of wine. And a feather
bed.”
“I reckon,” the man said. His speech proved
difficult to follow. The language of Meadenvil is a dialect of that
spoken in Juniper. In the city it wasn’t hard to get along,
what with the constant intercourse between Meadenvil and Juniper.
But this fellow spoke a country dialect with an altered rhythm.
“And you can afford it.”
I produced two of Raven’s silver pieces, handed them over.
“Let me know when we’re over that limit.” I
dropped my reins over the hitching rail, climbed the steps, patted
his arm as I passed. “Not to worry. We’re not bandits.
Soldiers. Following somebody who passed this way a while
back.”
He rewarded me with a frown of disbelief. It was obvious we did
not serve the Prince of Meadenvil.
The inn was pleasant, and though the fat man had several
daughters, everyone stayed in line. After we had eaten and most had
gone off to rest, the innkeeper began to relax. “You answer
me some questions?” I asked. I placed a silver piece upon my
table. “Might be worth something.”
He settled opposite me, regarded me narrowly over a gigantic
beer mug. He had drained the thing at least six times since our
arrival, which explained his girth. “What do you want to
know?”
“The tall man who can’t talk. He’s looking for
his daughter.”
“Eh?”
I indicated Silent, who had made himself at home near the fire,
seated on the floor, folded forward in sleep. “A deaf and
dumb girl who passed this way a while back. Probably driving a
wagon. Met a guy here, maybe.” I described Raven.
His face went blank. He remembered Raven. And did not want to
talk about it.
“Silent!”
He snapped out of sleep as if stung. I sent a message with
finger signs. He smiled nastily. I told the innkeeper, “He
don’t look like much, but he’s a sorcerer. Here’s
how it stands. The man who was here maybe told you he’d come
back and cut your throat if you said anything. That’s a
remote risk. On the other hand, Silent there can cast a few spells
and make your cows go dry, your fields barren, and all your beer
and wine go sour.”
Silent did one of those nasty little tricks which amuse him,
One-Eye and Goblin. A ball of light drifted around the common room
like a curious puppy, poking into things.
The innkeeper believed me enough not to want to call my bluff.
“All right. They was here. Like you said. I get a lot of
people through in the summer, so I wouldn’t have noticed
except like you say, the girl was deaf and the guy was a hard case.
She come in in the morning, like she traveled all night. On a
wagon. He come in the evening, walking. They stayed off in the
corner. They left next morning.” He looked at my coin.
“Paid in that same funny coin, come to think.”
“Yeah.”
“Come from a long way off, eh?”
“Yeah. Where’d they go?”
“South. Down the road. Questions I heard the guy ask, I
figure they was headed for Chimney.”
I raised an eyebrow. I’d never heard of any place called
Chimney.
“Down the coast. Past Shaker. Take the Needle Road out of
Shaker. The Tagline Road from Needle. Somewhere south of Tagline
there’s a crossroad where you head west. Chimney is on the
Salada Peninsula. I don’t know where for sure. Only what I
heared from travelers.”
“Uhm. Long hike. How far, you think?”
“See. Two hundred twenty-four miles to Shaker. Round two
hundred more to Needle. Tagline is about one eighty on from Needle,
I think. Or maybe it’s two eighty. I don’t rightly
recollect. That crossroad must be another hundred down from
Tagline, then out to Chimney. Don’t know how far that would
be. Least another hundred. Maybe two, three. Seen a map oncet, that
a fellow showed me. Peninsula sticks way out like a
thumb.”
Silent joined us. He produced a scrap of paper and a tiny,
steel-tipped pen. He had the innkeeper run through it again. He
drew a crude map that he adjusted as the fat man said it did or did
not resemble the map he had seen. Silent kept juggling a column of
figures. He came up with an estimate in excess of nine hundred
miles from Meadenvil. He knocked off the last digit, then wrote the
word days and a plus sign. I nodded.
“Probably a four-month trip at least,” I said.
“Longer if they spend much time resting up in any of those
cities.”
Silent drew a straight line from Meadenvil to the tip of the
Salada Peninsula, wrote, est. 600 mi. @ 6 knots = 100 hrs.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. That’s why the
ship never left. Had to give him a head start. Think we’ll
have a talk with the crew tomorrow. Thanks, innkeeper.” I
pushed the coin over. “Anything odd happened around here
lately?”
A weak smiled stretched his lips. “Not till
today.”
“Right. No. I mean like neighbors disappearing, or
what-not.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Less you count Moleskin.
Hain’t seen him in a while. But that don’t make no
never-mind.”
“Moleskin?”
“Hunter. Works the forest over east. Mainly for furs and
hides, but brings me game when he needs salt or something. He
don’t come around regular, but I reckon he’s overdue.
Usually comes in come fall, to get staples for the winter. Thought
it was him when your friend come through the door.”
“Eh? Which friend?”
“The one you’re hunting. That carried off this
feller’s daughter.”
Silent and I exchanged glances. I said, “Better not count
on seeing Moleskin again. I think he’s dead.”
“What brings you to say that?”
I told him a little about Raven faking his own death and leaving
a body that had been confused for his.
“Bad thing, that. Yep. Bad thing, doing like that. Hope
you catch him up.” His eyes narrowed slightly, cunning.
“You fellers wouldn’t be part of that bunch come down
from Juniper, would you? Everybody headed south talks about
how . . . ” Silent’s glower shut
him up.
“I’m going to get some sleep,” I said.
“If none of my men are up yet, roust me out at first
light.”
“Yes, sir,” the innkeeper said. “And a fine
breakfast we’ll fix you, sir.”
We made the city. But I swear I could sense something sniffing
along our backtrail before we reached the safety of the lights. We
returned to our lodgings only to find most of the men gone. Where
were they? Off to take over Raven’s ship, I learned.
I had forgotten about that. Yes. Raven’s
ship . . . And Silent was on Raven’s
trail. Where was he now? Damn! Sooner or later Raven would lead him
to the clearing . . . A way to find out if
Raven had left it, for sure. Also a way to lose Silent.
“One-Eye. Can you get hold of Silent?”
He looked at me strangely. He was tired and wanted to sleep.
“Look, if he follows Raven’s every move, he’s
going to head out to that clearing.”
One-Eye groaned and went through several dramatic shows of
disgust. Then he dug into his magic sack for something that looked
like a desiccated finger. He took it to a corner and communed with
it, then returned to say, “I got a line on him. I’ll
find him.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. You bastard. I ought to make you come with
me.”
I settled by the fire, with a big beer, and lost myself in
thought. After a while, I told Shed: “We have to go back out
there.”
“Eh?”
“With Silent.”
“Who’s Silent?”
“Another guy from the Company. Wizard. Like One-Eye and
Goblin. He’s on Raven’s trail, tracing every move he
made from the minute he arrived. He figured he could track him
down, or at least tell from his movements if he was planning to
trick Asa.”
Shed shrugged. “If we have to, we have to.”
“Hunh. You amaze me, Shed. You’ve
changed.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could have done it all along.
I just know that this thing can’t happen again, to anybody
else.”
“Yeah.” I did not mention my visions of hundreds of
men looting amulets from the fortress at Juniper. He did not need
that. He had a mission. I couldn’t make it sound
hopeless.
I went downstairs and asked the landlord for more beer. Beer
makes me sleepy. I had a notion. A possibility. I did not share it
with anyone. The others would not have been pleased.
After an hour I took a leak and dragged off to my room, more
intimidated by the thought of returning to that clearing than by
what I hoped to accomplish now.
Sleep was a time coming, beer or not. I could not relax. I kept
trying to reach out and bring her to me. Which meant nothing at
all.
It was a weak fool’s hope that she would return so soon. I
had put her off. Why should she? Why shouldn’t she forget me
till her minions caught up and could bring me to her in chains?
Maybe there is a connection on a level I do not understand. For
I wakened from a drowse, thinking I needed to visit the head again,
and found that golden glow hanging above me. Or maybe I did not
waken, but only dreamed that I did. I can’t get that
straight. It always seems so dream-like in retrospect.
I did not wait for her to start. I started talking. I talked
fast and told her everything she needed to know about the lump in
Meadenvil and about the possibility the troops had carried hundreds
of seeds out of the black castle.
“You tell me this when you are determined to be my enemy,
physician?”
“I don’t want to be your enemy. I’ll be your
enemy only if you leave me no option.” I abandoned debate.
“We can’t handle this. And it has to be handled. All
its like must be handled. There is evil enough in the world as it
is.” I told her we had found an amulet upon a citizen of
Juniper. I named no name. I told her we would leave it where she
could be sure to find it when she arrived.
“Arrive?”
“Aren’t you on your way here?”
Thin smile, secretive, perfectly aware that I was fishing. No
answer. Just a question. “Where will you be?”
“Gone. Long gone, and headed far away.”
“Perhaps. We shall see.” The golden glow faded.
There were things I wanted to say yet, but they had nothing to
do with the problem at hand. Questions I wanted to ask. I did
not.
The last golden mote left me with a whispered, “I owe you
one, physician.”
One-Eye rambled into the place shortly after sunrise, looking a
lot worse for wear. Silent came along behind him, looking pretty
beaten himself. He had been on Raven’s trail without let-up.
One-Eye said, “I caught him just in time. Another hour and he
would have headed out. I conned him into waiting till
daylight.”
“Yeah. You want to wake the troops? We get an earlier
start today, we ought to be able to get back before
dark.”
“What?”
“I thought I was pretty clear. We’ve got to go back
out there. Now. We’ve used one of our days.”
“Hey, man, I’m ripped. I’ll die if you make
me . . . ”
“Sleep in the saddle. That’s always been one of your
big talents. Sleep anywhere, any time.”
“Oh, my aching butt.”
An hour later I was headed down the Shaker Road again, with
Silent and Otto added to the crew. Shed insisted on coming along,
though I was willing to excuse him. Asa decided he wanted in, too.
Maybe because he thought Shed would extend an umbrella of
protection. He had started talking mission like Shed, but a deaf
man could hear its false ring.
We moved faster this time, pressed harder, and had Shed on a
real horse. We got down to the clearing by noon. While Silent
sniffed around, I worked myself up and took a closer look at the
lump.
No change. Except the two dead creatures were gone. I did not
need Hagop’s eye to see that they had been dragged through
the entry hole.
Silent worked his way around the clearing to a point almost
identical with that where the creature trail entered the forest.
Then he threw up an arm, beckoned. I hurried over, and did not have
to read the dance of his fingers to know what he had found. His
face revealed the answer.
“Found it, eh?” I asked more brightly than I felt. I
had started to count on Raven being dead. I did not like what the
skeleton implied. Silent nodded.
“Yo!” I called. “We found it. Let’s go.
Bring the horses.”
The others gathered. Asa looked a little peaked. He asked,
“How did he do it?”
Nobody had an answer. Several of us wondered whose skeleton lay
in the clearing and how it had come to wear Raven’s necklace.
I wondered how Raven’s plot for vanishing had dovetailed so
neatly with the Dominator’s for seeding a new black
castle.
Only One-Eye seemed in a mood to talk, and that all complaint.
“We follow this and we’re not going to get back to town
before dark,” he said. He said a lot more, mostly about how
tired he was. Nobody paid attention. Even those of us who had
rested were tired.
“Lead off, Silent,” I said. “Otto, you want to
take care of his horse? One-Eye, bring up the rear. So we
don’t get any surprises from behind.”
The track was no track at ail for a while, just a straight shot
through the brush. We were winded by the time it intercepted a game
trail. Raven, too, must have been exhausted, for he had turned onto
that trail and followed it over a hill, along a creek, up another
hill. Then he had turned onto a less traveled path which ran along
a ridge, toward the Shaker Road. Over the next two hours we
encountered several such forkings. Each time Raven had taken the
one which tended more directly westward.
“Bastard was headed back to the high road,” One-Eye
said. “Could have figured that, gone the other way, and saved
all this tramping through the brush.”
Men growled at him. His complaints were grating. Even Asa tossed
a nasty look over one shoulder.
Raven had taken the long way, no doubt about it. I would guess
we walked at least ten miles before coming across a ridgeline and
viewing cleared land which descended to the high road. A number of
farms lay on our right. In the distance ahead lay the blue haze of
the sea. The countryside was mostly brown, for autumn had come to
Meadenvil. The leaves were turning. Asa indicated a stand of maples
and said they would look real pretty in another week. Odd. You
don’t think of guys like him as having a sense of beauty.
“Down there.” Otto indicated a cluster of buildings
three-quarters of a mile south. It did not look like a farm.
“Bet that’s a roadside inn,” he said. “What
do you want to bet that was where he was headed?”
“Silent?”
He nodded, but hedged. He wanted to stick to the track to make
sure. We mounted up, let him do what walking remained to be done.
I, for one, had had enough tramping around.
“How about we stay over?” One-Eye asked.
I checked the sun. “I’m considering it. How safe you
figure we’d be?”
He shrugged. “There’s smoke coming up down there.
Don’t look like they had any trouble yet.”
Mind-reader. I had been examining farmsteads as we passed,
seeking indications that the lump creatures were raiding the
neighborhood. The farms had seemed peaceful and active.
I suppose the creatures confined their predations to the city,
where they would cause less excitement. Raven’s track hit the
Shaker Road a half-mile above the buildings Otto thought an inn. I
checked landmarks, could not guess how far south of the twelfth
mile we were. Silent beckoned, pointed. Raven had indeed turned
south. We followed and soon passed milestone sixteen.
“How far are you going to follow him, Croaker?”
One-Eye asked. “Bet you he met Darling out here and just kept
hiking.”
“I suspect he did. How far to Shaker? Anybody
know?”
“Two hundred forty-seven miles,” Kingpin replied.
“Rough country? Likely to have trouble along the way. Bandits
and such?”
King said, “Not that I ever heard of. There’s
mountains, though. Pretty rough ones. Take a while to get through
them.”
I did some calculating. Say three weeks to cover that distance,
not pushing. Raven wouldn’t push, what with Darling along,
and the papers. “A wagon. He’d have to have a
wagon.”
Silent, too, was mounted now. We reached the buildings quickly.
Otto proved right. Definitely an inn. A girl came outside as we
dismounted, looked at us with wide eyes, raced inside. I guess we
were a rough-looking lot. Those who did not show tough looked
nasty.
A worried fat man came out strangling an apron. His face could
not decide if it wanted to remain ruddy or to go pallid.
“Afternoon,” I said. “We get a meal and some
fodder for the animals?”
“Wine,” One-Eye called out as he loosened his cinch.
“I need to dive into a gallon of wine. And a feather
bed.”
“I reckon,” the man said. His speech proved
difficult to follow. The language of Meadenvil is a dialect of that
spoken in Juniper. In the city it wasn’t hard to get along,
what with the constant intercourse between Meadenvil and Juniper.
But this fellow spoke a country dialect with an altered rhythm.
“And you can afford it.”
I produced two of Raven’s silver pieces, handed them over.
“Let me know when we’re over that limit.” I
dropped my reins over the hitching rail, climbed the steps, patted
his arm as I passed. “Not to worry. We’re not bandits.
Soldiers. Following somebody who passed this way a while
back.”
He rewarded me with a frown of disbelief. It was obvious we did
not serve the Prince of Meadenvil.
The inn was pleasant, and though the fat man had several
daughters, everyone stayed in line. After we had eaten and most had
gone off to rest, the innkeeper began to relax. “You answer
me some questions?” I asked. I placed a silver piece upon my
table. “Might be worth something.”
He settled opposite me, regarded me narrowly over a gigantic
beer mug. He had drained the thing at least six times since our
arrival, which explained his girth. “What do you want to
know?”
“The tall man who can’t talk. He’s looking for
his daughter.”
“Eh?”
I indicated Silent, who had made himself at home near the fire,
seated on the floor, folded forward in sleep. “A deaf and
dumb girl who passed this way a while back. Probably driving a
wagon. Met a guy here, maybe.” I described Raven.
His face went blank. He remembered Raven. And did not want to
talk about it.
“Silent!”
He snapped out of sleep as if stung. I sent a message with
finger signs. He smiled nastily. I told the innkeeper, “He
don’t look like much, but he’s a sorcerer. Here’s
how it stands. The man who was here maybe told you he’d come
back and cut your throat if you said anything. That’s a
remote risk. On the other hand, Silent there can cast a few spells
and make your cows go dry, your fields barren, and all your beer
and wine go sour.”
Silent did one of those nasty little tricks which amuse him,
One-Eye and Goblin. A ball of light drifted around the common room
like a curious puppy, poking into things.
The innkeeper believed me enough not to want to call my bluff.
“All right. They was here. Like you said. I get a lot of
people through in the summer, so I wouldn’t have noticed
except like you say, the girl was deaf and the guy was a hard case.
She come in in the morning, like she traveled all night. On a
wagon. He come in the evening, walking. They stayed off in the
corner. They left next morning.” He looked at my coin.
“Paid in that same funny coin, come to think.”
“Yeah.”
“Come from a long way off, eh?”
“Yeah. Where’d they go?”
“South. Down the road. Questions I heard the guy ask, I
figure they was headed for Chimney.”
I raised an eyebrow. I’d never heard of any place called
Chimney.
“Down the coast. Past Shaker. Take the Needle Road out of
Shaker. The Tagline Road from Needle. Somewhere south of Tagline
there’s a crossroad where you head west. Chimney is on the
Salada Peninsula. I don’t know where for sure. Only what I
heared from travelers.”
“Uhm. Long hike. How far, you think?”
“See. Two hundred twenty-four miles to Shaker. Round two
hundred more to Needle. Tagline is about one eighty on from Needle,
I think. Or maybe it’s two eighty. I don’t rightly
recollect. That crossroad must be another hundred down from
Tagline, then out to Chimney. Don’t know how far that would
be. Least another hundred. Maybe two, three. Seen a map oncet, that
a fellow showed me. Peninsula sticks way out like a
thumb.”
Silent joined us. He produced a scrap of paper and a tiny,
steel-tipped pen. He had the innkeeper run through it again. He
drew a crude map that he adjusted as the fat man said it did or did
not resemble the map he had seen. Silent kept juggling a column of
figures. He came up with an estimate in excess of nine hundred
miles from Meadenvil. He knocked off the last digit, then wrote the
word days and a plus sign. I nodded.
“Probably a four-month trip at least,” I said.
“Longer if they spend much time resting up in any of those
cities.”
Silent drew a straight line from Meadenvil to the tip of the
Salada Peninsula, wrote, est. 600 mi. @ 6 knots = 100 hrs.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. That’s why the
ship never left. Had to give him a head start. Think we’ll
have a talk with the crew tomorrow. Thanks, innkeeper.” I
pushed the coin over. “Anything odd happened around here
lately?”
A weak smiled stretched his lips. “Not till
today.”
“Right. No. I mean like neighbors disappearing, or
what-not.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Less you count Moleskin.
Hain’t seen him in a while. But that don’t make no
never-mind.”
“Moleskin?”
“Hunter. Works the forest over east. Mainly for furs and
hides, but brings me game when he needs salt or something. He
don’t come around regular, but I reckon he’s overdue.
Usually comes in come fall, to get staples for the winter. Thought
it was him when your friend come through the door.”
“Eh? Which friend?”
“The one you’re hunting. That carried off this
feller’s daughter.”
Silent and I exchanged glances. I said, “Better not count
on seeing Moleskin again. I think he’s dead.”
“What brings you to say that?”
I told him a little about Raven faking his own death and leaving
a body that had been confused for his.
“Bad thing, that. Yep. Bad thing, doing like that. Hope
you catch him up.” His eyes narrowed slightly, cunning.
“You fellers wouldn’t be part of that bunch come down
from Juniper, would you? Everybody headed south talks about
how . . . ” Silent’s glower shut
him up.
“I’m going to get some sleep,” I said.
“If none of my men are up yet, roust me out at first
light.”
“Yes, sir,” the innkeeper said. “And a fine
breakfast we’ll fix you, sir.”