Act of Will (32 page)

It was impossible to tell who was in the pay of the governor, so we locked ourselves in our tavern room and tried to decide what we were supposed to do next. To my mind it was clear: “We’ve got to split up and spread out. We can’t move around Verneytha as it stands. It’s a waste of time. There are people watching everywhere I look. When I go to the bathroom I feel like I’m playing to a capacity crowd.”

“Will’s right,” said Lisha. “We should leave quickly, before the governor decides he wants us to stay in one of his little windowed prisons.”

“But where do we go?” said Garnet to himself.

“God, this is a mess,” said Mithos. Since the meeting with the governor, he had grown dour and unapproachable. “They’ve probably been watching us since we left Adsine. What a bunch of amateurs we must look like! We do have to leave, but I’m coming back, and they won’t see me this time. Will, check the corridor.”

We were all getting a little paranoid. I stood outside, eyes skinned for anyone who could be a spy. There was no one about, so this was one conversation the enemy wouldn’t hear. Come to think of it, neither would I. That was bloody typical of them. They would send me into the line to prove what an integral member of the party I was, but when it came to making decisions, good old integral Will had to check the corridor.

Garnet flung the door open suddenly, and it was obvious that he was unhappy with whatever had been decided.

“Come in, Will,” he sighed.

SCENE XLVII

Alone at Last

I
t was noon. The sun was high and the air still and humid. The wagon felt slow and conspicuous, trundling along like a very large beetle, but I had left Harvest two days ago, had just crossed the border between Verneytha and Shale, and hadn’t so much as glimpsed a crimson cloak. Indeed, I hoped to catch sight of Adsine before sundown. Recently, sundown had become a big deal with me: it reminded me that another day had passed and I was still alive.

They had sent me ahead with the wagon figuring that the safest place for me to be was Shale, beyond the jurisdiction of Verneytha and Greycoast, whose leaders considered me a slightly less welcome visitor than, say, some unpleasant disease that made all your gristly bits fall off. This suited me just fine, because things were getting too grim by half for me to want to stay with the others. So far I’d been lucky and we’d survived all my cock-ups, but it was only a matter of time before something I did got Orgos stabbed or Garnet shot off his horse. The more I had come to like them, the more difficult it was to be Will the Weak Link. I moaned to Orgos that they were treating me like a child, sending me out of harm’s way and all, but secretly I was relieved.

Lisha was to ride south to the villages that had borne the brunt of the attacks. Garnet would ride Tarsha part of the way with her and then return to Hopetown and Ironwall. There he would fume and complain by himself about how little action he was getting while reinvestigating the Razor’s keep. Orgos was going back to Caspian Joseph’s warehouse by the Iruni Wood, the closest thing to progress we’d achieved so far, even if it was still a bit of a dead end. The house was indeed where the raiders had been hiding their loot, but it wasn’t the operations base we had hoped for. Orgos was to go back, skulk through the orchard, peer through windows, and generally creep about (in an honorable way, of course) in the ludicrous hope that someone would tell him, in passing, like, who the raiders were, where they lived, and so on. He was expressly ordered not to try to re-create my little jaunt via the stone circle.

Mithos had moved out of Harvest but he would be back with a different name and face to learn what he could about Verneytha without Treylen’s spies monitoring him. It seemed to me that he was the only one doing anything useful. It seemed that way to Garnet also, who complained loudly about being gotten out of harm’s way. But in one week, barring significant events (which I felt we could rule out), we would all meet again in the Adsine keep.

I was glad to be out from under Verneytha’s watchful gaze. Though I had been there only a couple of days, I still found myself looking over my shoulder to see who was taking notes on the way I ordered a beer. It would wear off in time, no doubt, but at the moment I was as jumpy as a gazelle in lion country. Still, I was away from both Duke Raymon and Governor Treylen, there was no sign of the raiders, and Renthrette was currently asleep in the back of the wagon.

Realized that she wasn’t accounted for, had you? She hadn’t been much fun so far, to tell you the truth. Like her brother, she felt she was being protected, and that we had seen all that needed to be seen in Shale. Lisha corrected her, reminding us about the catacombs near Ugokan to the north of Adsine, which we had been told about when we first arrived. It was probably a blind alley, but we were used to those by now. After we had snooped around the deserted caves for a while, we were to meet with the count in Adsine and be the party’s goodwill ambassadors, hopefully countering whatever tales of our incompetence had found their way over the border.

I slid the hatch open and peered into the back. Renthrette was curled up on a sheepskin rug, her sun-touched hair carelessly strewn across the pillow—though she’d tie it back as soon as she woke lest I thought she was making herself look good for my sake. Her brow was creased into a frown. Above her, one of the scorpion bolt throwers was set up on its tripod. If we were attacked, it might prove essential. Then all I had to do was turn the winch a few dozen times, find the groove, put a bolt in, take the safety off, turn it round, aim, miss, and hope the raiders laughed themselves to death. Still, this little study in futility was, they assured me, a gesture of defiance and therefore valuable. So calling them names ought to help too.

By late afternoon we had reached the village of Ugokan, where we saw little more than a few shells of timber and stone: no people were left. A handful of children had gone missing in the ancient caves and the search party never made it out. Other villagers vanished after that, and finally the rest just packed up and left. A century ago, said local stories, the caves had sheltered an army that had ravaged the entire region. We were about to see what they sheltered now.

Renthrette was always irritable when she woke up. She particularly didn’t like to see my face as soon as she opened her eyes, since it reminded her that she had been sent off on a wild-goose chase with the apprentice, especially since we had already decided there was nothing in the catacombs but ghost stories. They were just too far west to be a useful base for the raiders. In any case, turning this pointless excursion into a romantic trip was going to be tough. Maybe I could set up a candlelit dinner in the caves and get the fruit bats to serenade us. Or maybe it would be so hot inside that we’d have to strip down to the bare essentials and we’d be rolling on the ground before you could say “Wake up, Hawthorne, you pathetic loser.”

We had left the fertile ground back in Verneytha and the earth had been getting steadily more dusty and worthless ever since. As we passed through the empty village, sand swirled in our faces, and there in a group of smooth, yellowish rocks was the opening to the caves.

“At least it’s shady,” I said as we approached. Renthrette sighed. We had shared a room in an inn the previous evening and that had been one of my life’s more major anticlimaxes. She had “kept watch” (on me) from midnight till dawn, intending to sleep in the wagon today. Now she was tired and sulky.

“After you.” I smiled as we neared the entrance.

“Please,” she muttered, pushing past me into the cave, adding, “Light?”

That was a request of sorts, so I struck my flint against the wall and onto an oil-soaked rag. From that she lit her lantern, and we advanced.

The cavern was large and smooth-sided. It looked like a natural formation, but I couldn’t be sure. The rock was pale.

There was only one way through and we took it, feeling the air chill as we pressed on. She shivered and I tossed her a blanket.

“Thank you,” she said distantly, wrapping it around her shoulders, listening. Somewhere in the tunnels beyond, water was dripping. We followed it. I wondered if we should have been unraveling a ball of string behind us, but it was too late now. I hoped that Renthrette knew where she was going, because I hadn’t been paying much attention.

The path, such as it was, descended slowly until the walls were cream-colored. Running water had cut little rivulets and channels into the floor, but there were hard angles down here unlike anything at the entrance: these passages were man-made. We passed small chambers cut into the rock, each bare as if it had been brushed clean. After another hundred yards or so, we came upon the first cache of bodies.

They were adults and they had been down here some time, but were far from completely decayed. The smell was bad, though not as bad as you might expect. Fungus grew on their faces, and in places where their flesh had gone, their rat-nibbled bones showed through. I didn’t look too closely. Renthrette did, but I sensed that it was for my benefit, to show what a strong stomach she had. As if I needed to be shown that.

The bodies obviously belonged to the search party who had gone looking for the missing children. What bewildered me was how they had died.

“They seem to be holding their throats or covering their faces,” said Renthrette. “I can’t see any wounds or broken bones. You think this could be part of the chamber you were in when you were with the raiders?”

We hadn’t spoken for a while and her voice echoed in the confined space so suddenly that I looked around me uncertainly, as if afraid of offending someone. “No,” I whispered. “That was a building. This is quite different.”

We moved on, stepping through a doorway into a cavern. It was huge, and vaulted like a temple. Renthrette held up her lantern, and as the light splashed across the floor, we froze. On the far side of the cave were four seated figures, armored with bronze and cloaked in scarlet. They were facing us.

SCENE XLVIII

The Secret of the Caves

I
gasped and turned to flee, pulling Renthrette after me. I blundered against the wall but managed to stay upright, and began stumbling back the way we had come, blinded by terror and sudden claustrophobia. I had barely gotten out of the corridor when a strong hand seized my wrist and pulled me sharply backwards. The shock felt like it would tear my arm out of its socket. Stopped in my tracks, I twisted round to face my captor.

A lantern shone in my face and Renthrette whispered, “Get back in there.”

I stared at her in amazement as she walked back down the stone corridor and into the great chamber.

“You want to take them on by ourselves?” I hissed. “Good luck.”

“I think even you could handle this fight,” she answered without looking back.

She strode away, not even trying to be quiet. I waited where I was, considering her composure and the sudden darkness. (She had, of course, taken the lantern with her.) As I started cautiously after her, she called back, her voice booming from wall to wall, “They’re dead, Will. See for yourself!”

She was right. The raiders were sitting against the wall, their weapons on the floor in front of them, their hands and faces leathery. Across the cavern lay several more. All dead.

“What the hell is this?” I whispered.

Renthrette adjusted the flame of her lantern and we got a better look at the cavern. We saw a dozen bedrolls and as many cloaks and weapons strewn about, but no sign of a struggle. I walked over to the back of the cavern and found a well shaft, almost brimming with dark water. Behind it was another dead raider, his helm in his hands and a twisted look on his desiccated face. I sat on the edge of the well and looked at him. They could not have been dead more than a couple of weeks, perhaps only days.

“The enemy has been tracking our movements since we showed up,” said Renthrette. “They knew we were bound to come here at some point.”

“You think this was a trap?” I said. “For us?”

I looked around some more, considering the damp stone of the walls as it picked up the light and glowed pale as opal. The entire cave sparkled softly with that same crystalline rock.

Well, at least you know how they got here.

Which meant that more raiders could appear here any second, taking the places of their comrades who had been killed.

“Renthrette!” I said. “I don’t think we should be here.”

She was crouching by the four seated corpses, and looked in my direction when I spoke. I was going to say more but then I heard a sound somewhere below me: it was a glugging sound, thick and liquid. I snatched the lantern and peered into the waters of the well. There was a moment of near-silence, the soft dripping of water resonating through the caves and tunnels, and then it came again, this time resembling a gurgling, bubbling sound that I could feel vibrating through my stomach. The water stirred, as if it was beginning to boil.

Something was coming up.

I leapt to my feet and ran, shouting, “Get out! There’s something in the well!”

I hit the opposite wall as the water sloshed over the rim and splashed onto the floor. I turned and saw, or half saw, the faint haze of an almost colorless cloud breaking from a bubble in the water.

“Gas!”

We ran.

We ran out and up, back the way we had come. With each step I fought my dread of the tightening of my lungs, a dry, sickening drowning feeling. . . . I stumbled and fell more than once. I held my breath until I could go no farther and had to gasp the thin cavern air, terrified of sensing some scent or flavor that would mean death. I was at Renthrette’s heels all the way, heedlessly bashing my knees against the stone until we burst from the caverns into the afternoon light. I’ve never run so hard or so fast in my life.

We threw ourselves into the dust and drank the air, wheezing and laughing at our escape. She sort of half embraced me in her joy, and I hung on until her desire to break away became unavoidable.

“Just some kind of gas,” she said, amazed.

But there was no “just” about it. I thought of those doubled-up corpses inside; we had survived where the raiders hadn’t. They weren’t invulnerable. They weren’t unbeatable. We
weren’t
destined to lose every time we saw them. I grinned at Renthrette and she grinned back, without distaste or suspicion. It was about time.

We readied the wagon and made for Adsine, pushing the horses as hard as we dared in the heat. Renthrette was as matey now as she had ever been, and I tried to think of a way to capitalize on her good humor. It wasn’t that she was never civil to me, but actual pleasantness tended to be the kind of thing you record in a ledger, like a lunar eclipse or the birth of a two-headed cow.

“It was a good thing you saw that gas,” she said with a disarming smile as we rolled into the afternoon.

“I heard it first, gurgling down there like the witch’s cauldron in a children’s story.”

“I don’t really know any stories,” she answered. “Once our waiting woman—”

“Hold it! You had servants?”

“A couple,” she replied.

“Tough life,” I muttered.

“One of them was my old wet nurse,” she explained, ignoring me. “She was once caught telling us stories and was replaced. My father said that such fantasies were corrupting nonsense.”

“I’ve heard that before,” I sighed. “For a while back in Cresdon I was held personally responsible for the collapse of morality and religion all over the region. I wish I had been. Maybe you saw some of my plays,” I ventured hopefully.

“I’ve never been in a theatre,” she said.

“Never? You’re joking! Never?”

“Did I miss something?”

“Theatre is where the world makes sense!” I exclaimed. “It’s where we admit the roles we play daily, where we confess our love of intelligence and evil. It’s where . . . You aren’t listening, are you?”

“What?” she said suddenly. “Oh, I’m sorry, Will. I was trying to remember Nurse’s story.”

“Don’t worry, I’m used to it.”

“It was something about a girl, and a dragon who was so lonely that he wept constantly—”

“And his tears flowed down the mountains and threatened to drown the village,” I said hurriedly. “Yes, I know it. But it was a boy, not a girl.”

“In mine it was a girl,” she said.

“Whatever.”

She paused for a long, thoughtful moment and then, with what I took to be courage, looked at me and said, “I don’t remember how it ended. The story, I mean.”

It was a request, of sorts.

“Well, as you’d expect, I suppose,” I said. “The little girl has to save the village, so she goes up into the mountains and petitions the dragon to stop crying. At first the dragon is angry and he weeps tears of rage so that the waters rise to the windowsills of the houses below and the villagers have to go upstairs. Then the little girl tells him about her family and how they are in danger, and the dragon cries tears of sadness so that the waters rise to the door lintels and the villagers have to climb onto their roofs. Then the little girl, realizing that the dragon is merely lonely, offers to befriend it, and the tears stop. The waters subside and they all live happily ever after. The end. Not much of a story really.”

“I like it,” she said without taking her eyes from the road ahead.

“I suppose it has a certain charm,” I confessed, watching her.

She was staring ahead so as not to show me her face but I caught her rubbing her eyes before she turned and smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said.

In three hours Adsine lay below us, its keep on the hill by the river. To the east were the stables, which were Shale’s last economic asset. Then there were woods, and the Wardsfall, which snaked gradually south and east to Greycoast. As soon as we got there I would have to go back to playing ambassador and soldier to the count and his entourage. Part of me would much rather stay on the wagon with Renthrette. I could do without the raider corpses and running through dark tunnels with gas clouds at our heels, but the trip had been pleasant in some ways. I wasn’t sure what it was about her I liked, if “liked” was the word, and she sometimes got right on my nerves, but . . .

There isn’t an easy end to that sentence, is there?

Renthrette smiled and I guessed she sensed my mixed feelings about reaching Adsine. As the sun sank, red and clear, we crossed the bridge and gave our names to the guard at the gate of the keep.

There it goes again,
I thought, watching the sun go down.
I’m still alive. Kind of miserable, admittedly, but alive.

For a brief, unreadable moment, Renthrette slipped her arm about me and squeezed me to her side. I jumped slightly, taken by surprise. She smiled, and murmured, “Cheer up, Will.”

I gave her a blank look and waited for the punch line. Then the guard returned and, as he led the horses by the bridle, she released me. The moment, Whatever it had been, evaporated.