The Book of Earth (22 page)

Erde clung to the mule, shivering in the mist-drenched up-draft. Past the crumbling edge of the ledge, she could see nothing but a curve of moonlit hills softening the dark and distant horizon. Around the dogleg, the ledge widened, cutting back into the rock to form a shallow cave. The she-goat backed into the overhang and immediately lay down. The mule glanced about, turned himself around gingerly to face the void, then twisted his head around to nudge Erde’s knees.

She slid off the mule without thinking, then sank to her hands and knees to crawl back along the ledge. The racketing of the dragon’s terror in her brain left her blind to all but a need to rush to his aid. She felt along the wall to the corner where the cut descended and the rock slide closed around it. Scaling a low boulder, she could see across the falls to the far wall of the gorge. Bright moonlight spilled across, outlining the dark bulk of the dragon trapped on a high dead-end ledge in full view of anyone upstream. In full view and well within range of her father’s archers, once they reached the edge of the pool. Now Erde could hear the shouts of the men as well as the baying of the hounds.

Oblivious to all but the dragon’s peril, she began to
scramble up the rock slide toward him, heedless of the precipitous gap and the thundering falls that separated them. The first of the dogs bounded into sight at the head of the gorge.

“NO!” Hal grabbed her roughly about the waist and hauled her backward off the rock. He was soaked through, as if he had swum the pool. “Stay down! You can’t help him now! Where’s the Mule?”

Erde pointed up the ledge.

“Don’t move!” Hal sidled away, then returned with his longbow and quiver from the mule’s saddle.

On the far side of the pool, the dogs swooped downstream in a rush. Discovering an impassable depth, they circled and whined at the edge, and made little dashes up into the surrounding rocks and back again. Clattering and shouting, the huntsmen arrived behind them as if already on the attack, several on foot with their crossbows loaded, the rest still mounted, their horses slipping and stumbling on the water-slick stone.

“Nervous, aren’t they?” Hal notched an arrow. “Keep still until we know we’re seen.”

Erde pressed her forehead to the cold rock. The arrival of the hunt was terrifying when seen through the dragon’s eyes, far more so than it was in reality—the awful baying of the dog pack, their evil smell filling his nostrils, the vicious sinewy curve of a bow, the steel tip of an arrow gleaming in the moonlight. She could not push reason to the surface past his panic. Her heart raced. Her breath came in silent gasps. Every muscle strained with Earth’s helpless need to flee. She gripped the rock with both hands to stay herself from leaping up again.

In a blink, the horrific visions were gone. Erde saw nothing but the backs of her eyelids, felt nothing but the chill grit of the rock beneath her grasping fingers. It was as if the dragon had winked out of existence, leaving her with only her own eyes and ears, and her own more familiar terrors. She looked up. Earth was there as before, clinging to his narrow ledge.

She heard Hal gasp softly, saw him squint in amazement, staring across the gorge. At the pool’s edge, the archers milled about, pointing this way and that, cursing and cuffing the whining, confounded hounds, never noticing the hulking
creature perched on a ledge in plain view in front of them.

“This is some magic of his,” Hal murmured wonderingly.

Erde frowned at him questioningly. She gestured at Earth’s dark profile, so clearly etched against the pale moon-washed stone.

“You see him still?”

She nodded.

“Not I. He was there as clear as day, and now only a chunk of the natural rock.”

Erde worried about the knight’s eyesight, but up till this moment, it had proven exceptionally sharp for a man his age. And the skilled huntsmen below were not the sort to miss so large a target, even at night. Apparently they couldn’t see the dragon either. She stared at Earth, trying to separate her awareness from his until he flickered a bit, then actually did blend with the wall behind him. When she blinked, he was there again. She sent him a view of himself as she’d seen him, an innocent chunk of rock on the wall of a gorge. Once he believed her, they both understood he’d done something to save himself without being aware of it. He could not tell her how it had come about.

There was much arm-waving down in the gorge as the hunt-master summoned his men for a conference.

Hal tugged her sleeve. “Recognize any of them?”

Erde nodded. The leader was a stout braggart named Otto, another of her father’s recent appointments. Watching him posture before his men, she realized how the new baron had chosen to surround himself with men weaker than himself. Even Rainer, she noted guiltily, but only because he’d been so young. This man Otto was blustery and stupid. Erde scratched his name in the dust with abrupt strokes.

“Who’s the best shot?” asked Hal.

Erde pointed out another man, shorter and grizzled, with a large hound tagging his knee. An old pro, this man, who had served her grandmother long and well. It seemed strange to be hunted by men she’d known all her life, even though she’d considered them the enemy since she’d begun leading the deer away from them.

GRIFF, she wrote.

“Griff. Ah, yes.” Hal adjusted the aim of his bow. “I
recall that man from my days with Meriah. He’s much aged . . . but then, so am I.”

Otto’s sharp voice carried easily over the roar of the falls. “She must have crossed over way back! If we double back fast, we’re sure to catch her.”

“I thought witches don’t cross over water,” returned a voice.

“Gave us the slip in the rocks, then. You can bet she didn’t go over the falls.”

Griff stood apart, studying the walls of the gorge. The dog beside him did not mill and whine with the others. Erde strained to hear his reply. “You know, a girl alone could hide herself anywhere in a spot like this. Some of us ought to stay behind and wait her out.”

“Wait here? Are you kidding?”

“A witch can make herself invisible. She might be standing right next to you!”

Hal grinned. “See how jumpy you’ve made them?” he whispered. “Hunching about like they expect to be spell-struck? Good thing the dogs can’t tell him everything they smell out there on the ground.”

A good thing also
, thought Erde,
that Otto is too insecure in his position to listen to anyone, even a more experienced man who had been hunt-master when the baroness was alive.
It had not been easy leading the deer away from Griff. But her father had demoted the old huntsman, saying he was not “respectful,” and replaced him with a lesser man, who was now turning his sensible advice into an argument.

“You’re dog-man now, Griff, remember? You’ll do what you’re told! We’ve wasted enough time here already! That damned bitch of yours has lost her nose! I’ve a mind to do her in right now!”

Griff looked up at Otto, then away. So did the dog lying at his feet. “You would have some explaining to do to his lordship.”

“Well, he’s a fool and so are you!”

The other men shifted uneasily, but Griff only smiled sourly, then gathered up the rest of the dogs and led them back upstream.

Hal unnotched his arrow. “We’re safe for now, I think.”

*   *   *

Earth withdrew into himself on the ledge above the pool, and stayed that way long after the baron’s men and dogs were gone from the gorge. Hal would not let Erde risk the pool and the falls to go to him.

“Is he still there? What’s the matter with him?”

Erde looked away from the dragon long enough to scrawl a reply.

THINKING. WON’T TALK TO ME.

“Thinking?”

HOW HE DID IT.

“How he went invisible?”

Erde nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on Earth.

“Yes, well, that will be interesting to hear. Now, no moving about until I’ve made sure friend Otto hasn’t left an archer or two behind just to hedge his bet.” Hal called the mule to him. “Keep an eye on milady, a close watch, you hear?”

He took his longbow and quiver, and slipped away among the rocks. The mule stationed himself in the path and gave Erde the same concentrated attention she was giving the dragon. One glance told Erde there’d be no sneaking past him. So she put all her energy for mental persuasion into drawing Earth off his ledge. She felt the loss of him in her mind as a vague but persistent anxiety, a potential for unbearable grief. Shivering in her still-damp clothes, she sent him pleas of love and encouragement, and very specific how-to pictures of himself climbing down into the gorge. The dragon did not respond. He was too busy thinking.

Hal returned before Earth did, with a small deer over his shoulder. The mule woke Erde from her doze with a gentle nudge.

“They’ve camped a mile or so up out of the gorge along the streambed. With luck, we’ll be able to slip past them.” He shrugged the deer carcass onto the mule’s withers. “Don’t know about you, I’m starving, but we should move out of this dead end before it gets light.” Hal nodded across the falls. “Any luck with him?”

Erde shook her head, as much to clear it as to answer him. Anxiety had dulled her hunger, but she wanted more than anything to be warm and dry again.

“At least I can see him now.”

Erde looked, then eased back against the rock as the dragon’s presence returned to her in full flood. Hal’s concern faded to relief tinged with envy as he watched the joy spread across her face.

“Is he all right? Will he come down now?”

Erde nodded, eagerly clearing space in the dirt.

HE THINKS HE REMEMBERS.

Hal waited.

NOT MAGIC, she wrote. SKILL.

The knight looked dubious.

STILLNESS = INVISIBILITY.

Hal frowned, reading her words several times over. “That would be a very profound stillness indeed . . .”

DEER IN THICKETS.

“But . . .” Hal rubbed his eyes. “Ah, why should I expect to understand him anyway. What’s important is, can he do it again?”

HE DOESN’T KNOW YET.

Hal nodded wearily. “Well, I hope he’ll let us know when he finds out. Brush those letters away, eh?” He turned back to the mule. “We’ve got to get moving before we freeze.”

Earth clambered down from his perch with a modestly self-satisfied air. He awaited them in the gorge, but still would not cross the stream.

“Can’t he explain about the water?”

IT’S MOVING, she scratched in a sandy spot.

“There’s a clue in that,” muttered Hal. “Somewhere.” He let the she-goat find a drier path around the pool, and they rejoined the dragon where the stream narrowed. Earth seemed surprised and gratified when Erde threw herself at him and hugged him joyously.

“Well, I’ve had a thought as well,” Hal announced. “I know our next destination. It’s a short week’s travel from here. Not exactly this whatever Mage-Queen you’ve promised him, and we may not exactly be welcome, but it’s as good a place as any to start unraveling this mystery.”

T
hey sneaked past the Hunt’s encampment well downwind, threading precariously through a high tumble of rocks that had once fallen just short of the gravel beach where the huntsmen slept. Down in the shadow of the boulders, the coals of a hastily built cook fire sputtered amidst a scatter of snoring bodies. No watch had been posted, but Hal pointed out a ring of crude crosses, fastened out of twigs and stuck into the sand around the sleepers.

“They’d do better to fear the living,” he murmured in Erde’s ear.

As they passed by above, the dogs below stirred and whined but did not raise an alarm.

Hal led his party around the crest of the mountain. By dawn, they had descended into the evergreen forests on the far side and felt safe enough to build a small fire of their own in the lee of a rock shelf, just as the sun glanced pinkly off the tall thin spikes of the firs. Erde envied those trees. She would risk a good deal just to stand quietly out in the open sun.

“Exercises tomorrow,” declared Hal. “This morning, we rest. It’s an advantage that they still think you’re out here alone. They’ll underestimate your food supply, the water you can carry, the distance you might travel, everything about us.”

He cut venison to cook for Erde and himself, then apologetically offered the rest of the deer to the dragon. Earth sniffed at it curiously, then curled up like a vast scaly dog and went to sleep.

“Too dead for him. Dragons are not scavengers,” the knight explained as he skewered chunks of venison with
lengths of green sapling. He seemed pleased that at least one bit of his hard-won dragon-lore had proven correct. Erde did not offer to explain Earth’s bizarre relationship to his living meals. It seemed far too complicated a subject for the limitations of sand scratchings. “But he’s eaten recently, has he not? He’ll be all right for a while.” Hal offered a filled skewer to Erde, who sat huddled in her cloak against the rock wall. “Come on, girl! Work for your supper!”

She roused herself for the skewer, then settled by the fire with eyes downcast. Their narrow escape from the Hunt had left her drained and feeling newly vulnerable.