The Wind Through The Keyhole (26 page)

Maybe a lot,
he admitted to himself . . . but he had his father’s ax, he had his father’s lucky coin, and he had a four-shot. One that worked, and had already drawn blood.

“Continue,” he said.

“The distance to the North Forest Kinnock Dogan is fifty miles, or forty-five-point-forty-five wheels. The terrain is moderate. Weather conditions . . .”

Daria paused. There was a loud click. Then:

“Directive Nineteen.”

“What is Directive Nineteen, Daria?”

“To bypass Directive Nineteen, speak your password. You may be asked to spell.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Are you sure you would not like me to plot a detour, traveler? I am detecting a strong disturbance in the Beam, indicating deep magic.”

“Is it white magic or black?” It was as close as Tim could come to asking a question the voice from the plate probably wouldn’t understand:
Is it Maerlyn or is it the man who got Mama and me into this mess?

When there was no answer for ten seconds, Tim began to believe there would be no answer at all . . . or another repetition of
Directive Nineteen,
which really amounted to the same thing. But an answer came back, although it did him little good.

“Both,” said Daria.

His way continued upward,
and the heat continued, as well. By noon, Tim was too tired and hungry to go on. He had tried several times to engage Daria in conversation, but she had once again gone silent. Pushing the third button did not help, although her navigation function seemed unimpaired; when he deliberately turned to the right or left of the discernible path leading ever deeper into the woods (and ever upward), the green light turned red. When he turned back, the green reappeared.

He ate from the hamper, then settled in for a nap. When he awoke, it was late afternoon and a little cooler. He reslung the hamper on his back (it was lighter now), shouldered the waterskin, and pushed ahead. The afternoon was short and the twilight even shorter. The night held fewer terrors for him, partly because he had already survived one, but mostly because, when he called for the light, Daria provided it. And after the heat of the day, the cool of evening was refreshing.

Tim went on for a good many hours before he began to tire again. He was gathering some duff to sleep on until daylight when Daria spoke up. “There is a scenic opportunity ahead, traveler. If you wish to take advantage of this scenic opportunity, say
continue.
If you do not wish to observe, say
no.
”

Tim had been in the act of putting the hamper on the ground. Now he picked it up again, intrigued. “Continue,” he said.

The disc’s bright light went out, but after Tim’s eyes had a chance to adjust, he saw light up ahead. Only moonlight, but far brighter than that which filtered through the trees overhanging the path.

“Use the green navigation sensor,” Daria said. “Move quietly. The scenic opportunity is one mile, or point-eight wheels, north of your current location.”

With that, she clicked off.

Tim moved as quietly as he could,
but to himself he sounded very loud. In the end, it probably made no difference. The path opened into the first large clearing he had come to since entering the forest, and the beings occupying it took no notice of him at all.

There were six billy-bumblers sitting on a fallen ironwood tree, with their snouts raised to the crescent moon. Their eyes gleamed like jewels. Throcken were hardly ever seen in Tree these days, and to see even one was considered extremely lucky. Tim never had. Several of his friends claimed to have glimpsed them at play in the fields, or in the blossie groves, but he suspected they were fibbing. And now . . . to see a full half-dozen . . .

They were, he thought, far more beautiful than the treacherous Armaneeta, because the only magic about them was the plain magic of living things.
These were the creatures that surrounded me last night—I know they were.

He approached them as in a dream, knowing he would probably frighten them away, but helpless to stay where he was. They did not move. He stretched his hand out to one, ignoring the doleful voice in his head (it sounded like the Widow’s) telling him he would certainly be bitten.

The bumbler did not bite, but when it felt Tim’s fingers in the dense fur below the shelf of its jaw, it seemed to awake. It leaped from the log. The others did the same. They began to chase around his feet and between his legs, nipping at each other and uttering high-pitched barks that made Tim laugh.

One looked over its shoulder at him . . . and seemed to laugh back.

They left him and raced to the center of the clearing. There they made a moving ring in the moonlight, their faint shadows dancing and weaving. They all stopped at once and rose on their hind legs with their paws outstretched, looking for all the world like little furry men. Beneath the cold smile of the crescent moon, they all faced north, along the Path of the Beam.

“You’re wonderful!” Tim called.

They turned to him, concentration broken. “Wunnerful!” one of them said . . . and then they all raced into the trees. It happened so quickly that Tim could almost believe he had imagined the whole thing.

Almost.

He made camp in the clearing that night, hoping they might return. And, as he drifted toward sleep, he remembered something the Widow Smack had said about the unseasonably warm weather.
It’s probably nothing . . . unless you see Sir Throcken dancing in the starlight or looking north with his muzzle upraised.

He had seen not just one bumbler but a full half-dozen doing both.

Tim sat up. The Widow had said those things were a sign of something—what? A stunblast? That was close, but not quite—

“Starkblast,” he said. “That was it.”

“Starkblast,” Daria said, startling him more wide awake than ever. “A fast-moving storm of great power. Its features include steep and sudden drops in temperature accompanied by strong winds. It has been known to cause major destruction and loss of life in civilized portions of the world. In primitive areas, entire tribes have been wiped out. This definition of
starkblast
has been a service of North Central Positronics.”

Tim lay down again on his bed of duff, arms crossed behind his head, looking up at the circle of stars this clearing made visible. A service of North Central Positronics, was it? Well . . . maybe. He had an idea it might really have been a service of Daria. She was a marvelous machine (although he wasn’t sure a machine was
all
she was), but there were things she wasn’t allowed to tell him. He had an idea she might be
hinting
at some things, though. Was she leading him on, as the Covenant Man and Armaneeta had done? Tim had to admit it was a possibility, but he didn’t really believe it. He thought—possibly because he was just a stupid kid, ready to believe anything—that maybe she hadn’t had anyone to talk to for a long time, and had taken a shine to him. One thing he knew for sure: if there was a terrible storm coming, he would do well to finish his business quickly, and then get undercover. But where would be safe?

This led his musings back to the Fagonard tribe. They weren’t a bit safe . . . as they knew, for hadn’t they already imitated the bumblers for him? He had promised himself he would recognize what they were trying to show him if it was put before him, and he had. The storm was coming—the starkblast. They knew it, probably from the bumblers, and they expected it to kill them.

With such thoughts in his mind, Tim guessed it would be a long time before he could get to sleep, but five minutes later he was lost to the world.

He dreamed of throcken dancing in the moonlight.

He began to think of Daria
as his companion, although she didn’t speak much, and when she did, Tim didn’t always understand why (or what in Na’ar she was talking about). Once it was a series of numbers. Once she told him she would be “off-line” because she was “searching for satellite” and suggested he stop. He did, and for half an hour the plate seemed completely dead—no lights, no voice. Just when he’d begun to believe she really had died, the green light came back on, the little stick reappeared, and Daria announced, “I have reestablished satellite link.”

“Wish you joy of it,” Tim replied.

Several times, she offered to calculate a detour. This Tim continued to decline. And once, near the end of the second day after leaving the Fagonard, she recited a bit of verse:

See the Eagle’s brilliant eye,
And wings on which he holds the sky!
He spies the land and spies the sea
And even spies a child like me.

If he lived to be a hundred (which, given his current mad errand, Tim doubted was in the cards), he thought he would never forget the things he saw on the three days he and Daria trudged ever upward in the continuing heat. The path, once vague, became a clear lane, one that for several wheels was bordered by crumbling rock walls. Once, for a space of almost an hour, the corridor in the sky above that lane was filled with thousands of huge red birds flying south, as if in migration.
But surely,
Tim thought,
they must come to rest in the Endless Forest.
For no birds like that had ever been seen above the village of Tree. Once four blue deer less than two feet high crossed the path ahead of him, seeming to take no notice of the thunderstruck boy who stood staring at these mutie dwarfs. And once they came to a field filled with giant yellow mushrooms standing four feet high, with caps the size of umbrellas.

“Are they good to eat, Daria?” Tim asked, for he was reaching the end of the goods in the hamper. “Does thee know?”

“No, traveler,” Daria replied. “They are poison. If you even brush their dust on your skin, you will die of seizures. I advise extreme caution.”

This was advice Tim took, even holding his breath until he was past that deadly grove filled with treacherous, sunshiny death.

Near the end of the third day, he emerged on the edge of a narrow chasm that fell away for a thousand feet or more. He could not see the bottom, for it was filled with a drift of white flowers. They were so thick that he at first mistook them for a cloud that had fallen to earth. The smell that wafted up to him was fantastically sweet. A rock bridge spanned this gorge, on the other side passing through a waterfall that glowed blood-red in the reflected light of the setting sun.

“Am I meant to cross that?” Tim asked faintly. It looked not much wider than a barn-beam . . . and, in the middle, not much thicker.

No answer from Daria, but the steadily glowing green light was answer enough.

“Maybe in the morning,” Tim said, knowing he would not sleep for thinking about it, but also not wanting to chance it so close to day’s end. The idea of having to negotiate the last part of that lofty causeway in the dark was terrifying.

“I advise you to cross now,” Daria told him, “and continue to the North Forest Kinnock Dogan with all possible speed. Detour is no longer possible.”

Looking at the gorge with its chancy bridge, Tim hardly needed the voice from the plate to tell him that a detour was no longer possible. But still . . .

“Why can’t I wait until morning? Surely it would be safer.”

“Directive Nineteen.” A click louder than any he had heard before came from the plate and then Daria added, “But I advise speed, Tim.”

He had several times asked her to call him by name rather than as
traveler.
This was the first time she had done so, and it convinced him. He left the Fagonard tribe’s basket—not without some regret—because he thought it might unbalance him. He tucked the last two popkins into his shirt, slung the waterskin over his back, then checked to make sure both the four-shot and his father’s hand-ax were firmly in place on either hip. He approached the stone causeway, looked down into the banks of white flowers, and saw the first shadows of evening beginning to pool there. He imagined himself making that one you-can-never-take-it-back misstep; saw himself whirling his arms in a fruitless effort to keep his balance; felt his feet first losing the rock and then running on air; heard his scream as the fall began. There would be a few moments to regret all the life he might have lived, and then—

“Daria,” he said in a small, sick voice, “do I have to?”

No answer, which was answer enough. Tim stepped out over the drop.

The sound of his bootheels on rock
was very loud. He didn’t want to look down, but had no choice; if he didn’t mind where he was going, he would be doomed for sure. The rock bridge was as wide as a village path when he began, but by the time he got to the middle—as he had feared, although he had hoped it was just his eyes playing tricks—it was only the width of his shor’boots. He tried walking with his arms outstretched, but a breeze came blowing down the gorge, billowing his shirt and making him feel like a kite about to lift off. He lowered them and walked on, heel-to-toe and heel-to-toe, wavering from side to side. He became convinced his heart was beating its last frenzied beats, his mind thinking its last random thoughts.

Mama will never know what happened to me.

Halfway across, the bridge was at its narrowest, also its thinnest. Tim could feel its fragility through his feet, and could hear the wind playing its pitch pipe along its eroded underside. Now each time he took a step, he had to swing a boot out over the drop.

Don’t freeze,
he told himself, but he knew that if he hesitated, he might do just that. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw movement below, and he
did
hesitate.

Long, leathery tentacles were emerging from the flowers. They were slate-gray on top and as pink as burned skin underneath. They rose toward him in a wavery dance—first two, then four, then eight, then a forest of them.

Daria again said, “I advise speed, Tim.”

He forced himself to start walking again. Slowly at first, but faster as the tentacles continued to close in. Surely no beast had a thousand-foot reach, no matter how monstrous the body hiding down there in the flowers, but when Tim saw the tentacles thinning out and stretching to reach even higher, he began to hurry. And when the longest of them reached the underside of the bridge and began to fumble its way along it, he broke into a run.