Black dawn (18 page)

"I see." The void in Maggie's stomach had be
come a yawning chasm. "But-
²
'

"If he let you go, it was so he could come back
and hunt you," Jeanne said flatly. "I'm telling you,
he's
bad.
It was three years ago that the old king
died and
Delos
took over, okay? And it was three
years ago that they started bringing new slaves in.
Not just grabbing people off the mountain if they
got too close, but
actually
going down and kidnap
ping girls off the streets. That's why I'm
here.
That's
why
P.J.'s
here."

Beside Maggie, P.J. shivered. Maggie put an arm
around her and felt the slight body shaking against
hers. She
gulped,
her other hand clenching into a
fist.
"Hey, kiddo.
You've been really brave so far, so
just hang on, okay? Things are going to work out."

She could feel Jeanne's sarcastic eyes on her
from beyond Cady, daring her to explain exactly
how
things were going to work out. She ignored
them.

"Was it the same for you, Cady?" she asked. She
was glad to get off the subject of
Delos
, and she
was remembering the strange thing Cady had said
last night.
I
was coming here for a reason....

"No. They got me on the mountain." But the way
Cady spoke alarmed Maggie. It was slowly and with
obvious effort, the voice of someone who had to
use all their strength just to concentrate.

Maggie forgot all about
Delos
and the slave trade
and put a hand to Cady's forehead. "Oh, God," she
said. "You're burning up. You're totally on fire."

Cady blinked slowly. "Yes-it's the poison," she
said in a foggy voice. "They injected me with some
thing when they caught me-but I had a bad reac
tion to it. My system can't take it."

Adrenaline flicked through Maggie. "And you're
getting worse." When Cady nodded reluctantly, she
said, "Right. Then there's no choice. We have to get
to the castle because that's where the healing
women are, right? If anybody can help, they can,
right?"

"Wait a minute," Jeanne said. "We can't go down
to the castle. We'd be walking right into their arms.
And we can't get out of the valley. I found the pass
before, but that was by accident. I couldn't find it
again

"I could," Maggie said. When Jeanne stared at her, she said, "Never mind how. I just can. But going that way means climbing down a mountain
on the other side and Cady can't make it. And I don't think she'll make it if we leave her alone here
and go look for help."

Jeanne's narrow green eyes were on her again,
and Maggie knew what they were saying. So
we've
got to give up on her. It's the only thing that
makes
sense.
But Maggie bulldozed on in determination.
"You
can
take
P.J. to the
pass-I can tell
you how
to get there-and Ill take Cady to the castle. How
about that?
If you can tell me how to get to it."

"It
stinks,"
Jeanne said flatly. "Even if you make

it
to the castle with her hanging on you, you won't
know how to get in. And if you
do
get in, you'll be
committing suicide-"

She broke off, and everyone started. For an in
stant Maggie didn't understand why-all she knew
was that she had a sudden feeling of alarm and
alertness. Then she realized that Cady had turned
suddenly toward the door. It was the quick, instinc
tive gesture of a cat who has heard something dan
gerous, and it triggered fear in the girls who were
learning to live by their own instincts.

And now that Maggie sat frozen, she could hear
it, too, faraway but distinct.
The sound of people
calling, yelling back and forth.
And another sound, one that she'd only heard in movies, but that she
recognized instantly.
Hounds baying.

"It's them," Jeanne whispered into the dead si
lence of the shack. "I told you. They're hunting us."

"With
dogs?"
Maggie said, shock tingling through
her body.

"It's all over," Jeanne said. "We're dead."

CHAPTER
12

N
o, we're not!" Maggie said. She kicked the heavy cover off and jumped up, grabbing Cady's arm.
"Come on!"

"Where?"
Jeanne said.

"The castle," Maggie said. "But we've got to stick
together." She grabbed
PJ.'s
arm with her other
hand.

"The castle?"

Maggie pinned Jeanne with a look. "It's the only
thing that makes sense. They'll be expecting us to
try to find the pass, right? They'll find us if we stay
here. The only place they
won't
expect us to go is
the castle."

"You," Jeanne said, "
are
completely crazy-"
"Come on!"

"But you just might be right." Jeanne grabbed Cady from the other side as Maggie started for the door.

"You stay right behind us," Maggie hissed at P.J.

The landscape in front of her looked different
than it had last night. The mist formed a silver net
over the trees, and although there was no sun, the clouds had a cool pearly glow.

It was beautiful.
Still alien, still disquieting, but
beautiful.

And in the valley below was a castle.

Maggie stopped involuntarily as she caught sight
of it. It rose out of the mist like an island, black
and shiny and solid.
With towers at the edges.
And
a wall around it with a saw-toothed top, just like
the castles in pictures.

It looks so real, Maggie
thought
stupidly.

"Don't stand there! What are you waiting for?
Jeanne snapped, dragging at Cady.

Maggie tore her eyes away and made her legs
work. They headed at a good pace straight for the thickest trees below the shack.

"If it's dogs, we should try to find a stream or
something, right?" she said to Jeanne.
"To cut off
our scent."

"I know a stream," Jeanne said, speaking in short
bursts as they made their way through dew-wet
ferns and saxifrages. "I lived out here a while the
first time I escaped.
When I was looking for the
pass.
But they're not just dogs."

Maggie helped Cady scramble over the
tentacle
like
roots of a hemlock tree. "What's that supposed
to mean?"

"It means they're
shapeshifters
, like
Bern
and
Gavin. So they don't just track us by scent. They
also feel our life energy."

Maggie thought about
Bern
turning his face this way and that, saying,
"Do you
sense anything?"
And
Gavin saying,
"No.
I can't
feel them at
all."

"Great," Maggie muttered. She glanced back and
saw P.J. following doggedly, her face taut with
concentration.

It was a strange sort of chase. Maggie and her
group were trying to keep
as
quiet
as
possible,
which was made easier by the dampness of the
rainforest around them. Although there were four
of them moving at once, the only sound from close
up was the soft pant of quick breathing and the
occasional short gasp of direction from Jeanne.

They slipped and plunged and stumbled between
the huge dark trunks that stood like columns in the
mist. Cedar boughs drooped from above, making it
twilight where Maggie was trying to pick her way
around moss-covered logs. There was a cool green
smell like incense everywhere.

But however still the world was around them,
there was always the sound of the hounds baying in the distance.
Always behind them, always get
ting closer.

They crossed an icy, knee-deep stream, but Mag
gie didn't have much hope that it would throw the
pursuit off. Cady began to lag seriously after that.
She seemed dazed and only semiconscious, follow
ing instructions
as if she were
sleepwalking,
and
only answering questions with a fuzzy murmur.
Maggie was worried about
P.J.,
too. They were all weak with hunger and shaky with stress.

But it wasn't until they were almost at the castle that the hunt caught up with them.

They had somehow finished the long, demanding
trek down the mountain. Maggie was burning
with
pride
for P.J. and Cady. And then, all at once, the
baying of the hounds came, terribly close and get
ting louder fast.

At the same moment, Jeanne stopped and cursed,
staring ahead.

"What?" Maggie was panting heavily. "You see
them?"

Jeanne pointed. "I see the
road.
I'm an idiot.
They're coming right down it, much faster than we
can go through the underbrush. I didn't realize we
were headed for it."

P.J. leaned against Maggie, her slight chest heav
ing, her plaid baseball hat askew.

"What are we going to do?" she said. "Are they
going to catch us?"

"Not" Maggie set her jaw grimly. "Well have to
go back fast--2'

At that moment, faintly but distinctly, Cady said,
"The tree."

Her eyes were half shut, her head was bowed,
and she still looked as if she were in a trance. But
for some reason Maggie felt she ought to listen to
her.

"Hey, wait
look at this." They were standing at the foot of a huge Douglas fir. Its lowest branches
were much too high to climb in the regular way,
but a maple had fallen against it and remained
wedged, branches interlocked with the giant, form
ing a steep but climbable ramp. "We can go up."

`You're
crazy,
"
Jeanne said
again
.
"
We can't pos
sibly hide here; they're going to go right by us. And
besides, how does she even
know
there's a tree
here?"

Maggie looked at
Arcadia
. It was a good ques
tion, but Cady wasn't answering. She seemed to be
in a trance again.

"I don't know. But we can't just stand around
and wait for them to come." The truth was that her
instincts were all standing up and screaming at her,
and they said to trust. "Let's try it, okay? Come on,
P.J.,
can you climb that tree?"

Four minutes later they were all up. We're hiding in a Christmas tree, Maggie thought
as
she looked
out between sprays of flat aromatic needles. From
this height she could see the road, which
was
just
two wheel tracks with grass growing down the
middle.

Just then the hunt arrived.

The dogs came first, dogs
as
big
as
Jake the Great
Dane, but leaner. Maggie could see their ribs
clearly defined under their short, dusty tan coats.
Right behind them were people on horses.

Sylvia was at the front of the group.

She was wearing what looked like a gown split
for riding, in a cool shade of glacier green. Trotting
beside her stirrup was Gavin, the blond slave trader
who'd chased Maggie and Cady yesterday and had run to tattle when Delos killed
Bern
with the blue fire.

Yeah, they're buddy-buddy all right, Maggie
thought. But she didn't have time to dwell on it.
Coming up fast behind Sylvia were two other peo
ple who each gave her a jolt, and she didn't know
which shock was worse.

One was
Delos
. He was riding a beautiful horse,
so dark brown it was almost black, but with red
dish highlights. He sat straight and easy in the sad
dle, looking every inch the elegant young prince.