The Gypsy Morph (6 page)

“How are we going to do this, Sim?” Kirisin asked her suddenly.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. It was so dark by now that he could barely make out her face. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

“Will they even give us a chance to tell them what might happen? Will they listen to anything we have to say?”

“Kirisin, I don’t know,” she repeated. She glanced over, and in a sudden flash of lightning he saw anger on her bruised face. “You have to find a way to make them listen, Little K. That’s what’s expected of you. That’s what you’ve been given to do. You have to figure out a way to do it!”

He was surprised at her vehemence, and he went silent immediately in response, hunkering down farther into his cloak to ward off the harshness of her words as much as the chill and the damp. He wished he hadn’t asked the question, that he had kept quiet about the whole business. She was right, after all. It was his charge to fulfill and his responsibility to figure how to carry it out. She had come with him on this journey out of love and loyalty, his big sister looking out for him. She had nearly died because of him back in the ice caves on Syrring Rise. Ultimately, she had saved his life. He had no right to expect anything more from her, no right to ask it.

He was embarrassed and ashamed that he had.

Nevertheless, after a long silence, she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. This isn’t your charge alone anymore. It’s mine, too. I accepted that when I decided to go with you in search of the Loden. I just get so frustrated about things. I know I don’t show it much. My Tracker training, I guess. I keep everything inside. I let it get away from me this time, and I shouldn’t have.”

“I shouldn’t be asking you to solve my problems,” he responded quickly. “You were right. I am the one who has to figure out how to make everyone believe. I am the one asking for their trust. So I have to demonstrate that I deserve it. You can’t do that for me.”

She reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “But I don’t have to make a big point of it, do I? What you need to hear is that I intend to stand with you no matter what.”

He grinned. “I never thought you would do anything else.”

He reached out to her and hugged her through the rain, feeling the reassuring comfort in her strong arms as they embraced him back. For just a moment, he could believe that no matter what obstacles they might face, they would be able to overcome them.

“Go to sleep,” she told him, breaking away. “I’ll keep watch.”

He was too tired to argue the matter, his eyes already drooping, his body stiff and aching. “Wake me so you can sleep, too,” he said.

But even as he hunkered down to shield himself against the weather, he knew that she wouldn’t.

H
E WOKE TO FIND LARKIN QUILL
standing over him. Even from the back—for he was turned away—the cloaked form of the ex-Tracker was instantly recognizable. He was facing toward Simralin, who was busy strapping a still-unconscious Angel to a wooden frame that cradled her body on a broad piece of tightly stretched canvas. Kirisin raised himself to a sitting position, noting as he did so that the day was bright and sunny and all but devoid of evidence of the previous night’s storm. Save for a few puddles and damp spots on the otherwise dry ground, there was nothing to indicate the deluge had ever happened.

“Wake up, wake up, Kirisin Belloruus,” Larkin Quill intoned. He turned his head slightly. “Awake, maybe you can be of some use.”

Kirisin rubbed his eyes and stretched. “Sim was supposed to wake me. She let me sleep.”

“Yes, it is all her fault, no question. She’s like that, Simralin is, always thinking only of herself. So selfish.” He was grinning as he gestured toward the river, swift flowing and choppy in the wake of the downpour. “But now that you’ve made it back from the land of dreams all on your own, I need to be going my way, as well. Would you help me carry our wounded Angel down to the boat so I can ferry her back across?”

Kirisin rose, and together they bore Angel Perez along the banks of Redonnelin Deep to where the ex-Tracker’s boat was beached and tied off. As before, Larkin Quill was sure-footed and steady, seemingly able to see as well as the boy. Simralin came, too, lending an extra hand while they loaded Angel aboard and settled her on a long bench at the stern where the stretcher could be secured.

“I have a ramp at my dock that will allow me to drag off the stretcher when we get to where we’re going. I’ve had to do this before when I wasn’t ready for it, so this time I came prepared.”

“Can you help her?” Kirisin asked.

The older man grinned. “Oh, I think so. She’s banged up pretty good, but she’s already healing at the breaks and cracks. Some of that Knight of the Word magic, I imagine. I’ll be able to help her mend faster still with a little magic of my own, the kind that relies on potions and poultices and sleep. A week or so, she’ll be back to fighting form.”

“That’s awfully fast,” Kirisin said doubtfully.

Larkin said nothing.

“She won’t be easy to keep down even that long,” Simralin declared. “She’ll want to be up and on her way.”

Larkin Quill shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about that. I can manage her. You have the harder task, I’d guess.”

“We’ll do what we have to,” Kirisin declared bravely. “We won’t let anything stop us.”

Larkin grinned anew. “Well said, young man. Still, be careful how you go. Especially with the King. He’s not to be trusted, whether he is Elf or demon. You’ll need the Council’s support to keep him in line. A few are worth enlisting to your cause. Ordanna Frae’s a good man; he will see that you have your say. Maybe more than that, if you’re lucky. You can trust Maurin Ortish, too, even if he isn’t a member of the Council. The Home Guard lives for him as much as for the King, though I would never say it to his face. The rest you should not put your faith in.”

He walked over to Simralin and embraced her. “You were always the best of the lot, you know. The best of the Trackers I knew. The others were good—skilled and brave. But you were the smart one, the clever one, the one who always knew how to make the right decision.” He turned toward Kirisin. “If anyone can see you through this, your sister will. Pay attention to her.”

“I know enough to do that,” the boy answered. “I won’t take foolish chances.”

“I think that might be so.” Larkin Quill’s smile dropped away. “One last thing. The King’s Hunters. They haven’t come here yet, which is troublesome. They should be looking for you everywhere by now, and especially here. They know we were friends, Simralin, and a handful, at least, know how to find me. But no one has come. It may be that they know something none of us does. So watch yourselves. Keep your presence hidden from them for as long as you can and then choose wisely a time and place to reveal yourselves.”

He turned away, put one hand on the gunwale of his boat, and vaulted aboard effortlessly. “Not so old, you see?” he offered, turning back to them. “But I could use a push off the rocks.”

Simralin obliged, putting her shoulder against the bow and shoving until the boat slid free. Larkin Quill was already at the helm, the sails raised and billowing with the fresh breeze. “I’ll see you on the new wind,” he called back to them as he leaned into the rudder and the boat began to turn away.

“Good-bye, Larkin,” Simralin shouted.

Kirisin called out to him, as well, something about seeing him again soon. But he could not shake the feeling that they were all wishing for something that would never happen.

FIVE

S
IMRALIN WAITED
until the boat carrying Larkin Quill and Angel Perez was well out on the water and heading for the far shore before turning to the task of reinflating the hot-air balloon so that Kirisin and she could set out for the Cintra. Kirisin, who had been cleaning up the campsite, packing away their foodstuffs and supplies, was glad to begin preparations for setting out. Movement helped ease his discomfort with leaving Angel behind, focusing his thoughts to the particulars of what was needed to get under way.

It took them less than an hour to set up the balloon, fill the bag, load their supplies, and cast off. The day remained bright and welcoming as they lifted into the sky, empty of clouds and filled with sunshine. Kirisin glanced down several times to see if he could spy Larkin Quill’s boat, but it had disappeared somewhere along the far bank, back in the heavy trees and the inlets, safely out of sight.

Good luck, Angel,
he mouthed silently.

He glanced over to see Simralin watching him, and he blushed despite himself.

They sailed across Redonnelin Deep and the beginning of the Cintra Mountains, reaching the northern edge of the chain by midday. Kirisin expected them to continue on immediately, but Simralin told him they were taking the balloon down again and anchoring where they were until dark.

“Can’t risk traveling farther south in the daylight,” she said as they worked together to leak the air from the bag and land the balloon in a meadow at the foot of the mountains. “We’re too easy to spot up there against the sky. They might not know who we are, but they will be quick to want to find out. They can track our silhouette and be waiting when we land. At night, we won’t be so visible.”

Kirisin had to agree, even though he wanted to set off right away. Delays of any sort at this point were frustrating. But he didn’t argue. Instead, he helped her land the balloon, pull in the deflated bag, and anchor the basket. Then he offered to keep watch so that she could sleep for a few hours.

“Much appreciated, Little K,” she told him, yawned, stretched out, and went right to sleep.

He watched her for a time, smiling inwardly at how quickly she could make the transition. Then his attention wandered to the countryside surrounding them, bleak and withered and dominated by the barren craggy peaks of the mountains. Having just left a mountain so different from these, a mountain on which trees and grasses and flowers still grew in lush profusion, green and fresh and thriving, he was dismayed anew at the devastation that had taken hold of his world. No number of Elves could change this, he thought darkly. The sickness and rot were too pervasive and deep-seeded. It made him angry all over again at the humans who had been so careless with their caretaking, at their failure to act more quickly and reasonably when they still had a chance to stem the tide. But he guessed they hadn’t been any more successful at saving themselves, and the price exacted for their foolish inattention was far greater than he would have wished on them.

Except that the Elves were paying the same price. Every living thing was paying it. When a massive failure to preserve the integrity of an ecosystem occurred, no one escaped the consequences.

The hours slipped by. Simralin slept, her breathing deep and even. Kirisin pondered the world’s destiny along with his own, and after a time drifted into memories of Erisha. He found himself wishing he could see her once more, to tell her how much knowing her had meant to him and how sorry he was that he couldn’t have done more to protect her. He thought about how they had played together growing up, in a time when everything happening now would have seemed impossible. It still seemed impossible. Erisha dead. Simralin and himself fugitives. Culph a demon that had betrayed them all.

He was particularly bitter about the old man. He could see his face, smiling and reassuring. He could hear his voice, could feel it make him want to shake his head in blind agreement. He hated that he had thought Culph was his friend, but he hated even more that he had liked him. Nothing would ever change the sense of outrage he felt at knowing how badly he had been deceived. He would live with that memory until he died. It might even go with him to wherever he went afterward.

The recognition burned like fire, and he tamped it down and shoved it away. In the aftermath of its fading, he found himself staring off into middle space, seeing nothing but the past, and then seeing nothing at all. His thoughts wandered like children lost, seeking peace and comfort in the presence of the familiar.

His thoughts strayed, and without thinking about it or even wanting it he followed after.