Windmaster's Bane (36 page)

“O see you not that broad, straight road,

that lies across the lilied way?

That is the path of wickedness,

though the road to Heaven, they also say.

And see you not the narrow road,

that’s thickly walled with thorns and briars?

That is the path of righteousness,

though to its end but few aspires.

And see you not that pretty road,

that winds across the ferny way?

That is the road to fair Elfland,

where you and I must go today.”

She opened her eyes. “It’s too close, Davy, too close to the song, for it not to be the way.”

David shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know, I just don’t know. It still doesn’t quite fit. That’s a lake of blood out there, not a ‘ferny way.’”

Liz frowned. “That’s true, but there is another verse a little further on that runs like this:

For all a day and all a night,

he rode through red blood to the knee,

And saw he neither sun nor moon,

but heard the roaring of the sea.

“Well, that’s interesting,” David said thoughtfully. “There now seems to be logical reasons for following all three routes. There’s supposed to be a Test of Knowledge, a Test of Courage, and a Test of Strength. This seems to be the Test of Knowledge. But what if I’m wrong?”

“Then you’ll be wrong,” Alec said matter-of-factly. “Won’t be the first time.”

“But it might be the last—probably
will
be the last.”

“It’s your decision, David,” said Liz. “Because whatever else we do, we have to follow one of these routes. The Lord of the Trial said to follow the Track, not follow the
Straight
Track, so we have the option at least of taking that crooked road. It may not even
be
crooked, it may only seem that way to confuse us.”

David squared his shoulders. “Okay, Liz. It seems wrong to my way of thinking, but one thing I do know about the Sidhe is that though they are devious, they do not lie. Their riddles are difficult, but there’s always a solution. In fact, I don’t think they
dare
cheat. They use words like an artist uses a brush—only a really good artist can make you see more than one set of pictures at the same time.
I…”

“Whatever it is, you’d better decide fast,” Alec interrupted urgently, “’cause we’ve got company.” He inclined his head up- slope.

David followed his friend’s gaze, just in time to see three hulking shapes shoulder their way out of the woods fifty yards behind them. Branches squealed across their shells; blunt, low-held heads swung slowly from side to side with ominous deliberation, heavy front claws scraped upon the sand as the creatures came full upon the beach. A red light shone deep within their tiny eyes, increasing in brilliance as they turned their heads toward the travelers.

“David, hurry!” Liz cried.

“They’ve been tracking us!” Alec whispered. “They
are
meat eaters. Make it fast, Sullivan.”

David glanced about uncertainly. “I guess we’d better continue on ahead and hope the creatures won’t follow us there. If nothing else, we can wait them out. Alec, lend me your staff. I want to know where I’m going.”

Alec relinquished the staff somewhat hesitantly, and with that David stepped hastily onto the crooked road, hearing, rather than seeing, his friends fall into step behind him.

Though they did not seem to move rapidly at all, the creatures somehow gained five yards.

With some trepidation David eased the staff into the substance ahead of him, probing a bottom he could not see and did not truly want to visualize. To his complete amazement, the liquid—he could no longer bring himself to think of the stuff as water—drew away from it, barely a foot on either side, forming a sort of trough with the faint gleam of the Track superimposed on the copper sand at the bottom. Encouraged, he took a step, and then another, planting the staff ahead of himself again, and then once more. Alec followed him, with Liz bringing up the rear, her staff also borne low before her. Thus fortified they marched grimly forward into the tenuous rift formed by the untested Power of the makeshift spears of iron and ash that a would-be boy sorcerer had once made for pure amusement.

The Track twisted to their right, almost immediately, then to the left, and the trough grew deeper. They had to trace their way along with the staffs, ever fearful of losing the Track. It was slow going, and—with the knowledge of the creatures behind them—nerve-wracking.

The creatures had reached the edge. One lowered its nose toward the ruddy liquid but withdrew quickly. The other two shambled up behind it. One edged a tentative claw into the fluid, then jerked it back and shook it violently.

When they had gone perhaps a hundred yards into the lake David risked a look over his shoulder. “I don’t think those things like the lake,” he whispered. “They’re still prowling around on the shore. Maybe they’ll stop following us now.”

“I hope so, I truly hope so,” Liz replied as she followed his example. “They give me the creeps more than anything else we’ve seen. It’s almost like they’re—I don’t know—aware, or something.”

“Purposeful?” David suggested.

“Strange behavior for carnivores, though,” Alec observed. “I’d think they’d like blood.”

David raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it’s not blood.”

“Or maybe they can’t swim.”

Alec considered this for a moment. “Maybe not. They’re heading back toward the woods.”

David squinted across the glistening surface to where, indeed, the shell-beasts were ambling unconcernedly toward the shelter of the dark forest.

Liz whistled her relief. “Giving up, you think?”

“Maybe so,” David replied decisively. “And while they’re doing that, we need to put as much distance between us and them as we can.”

“I’ll drink to that!”

“Hush, Alec. What a thing to think of here.”

“Let’s move it, kids,” David said firmly, and turned back toward the center of the lake, striding forward at a quicker pace than they had previously maintained.

By the time the travelers reached what seemed to be the middle of the sanguine lake, the red cliffs had risen above their heads, towering in an uneasy, jellylike tension that set all their nerves vibrating like saws struck by a hammer.

Wet copper sand squished beneath their feet, smooth as a plate, marked by no rock nor weed nor living thing, save the Track. Before them was nothing but the roiling wall of dark red, here flickering purple in the reflected blue-white light of the witchmoon, there foaming to pink where it withdrew before David’s staff.

David quickened his pace as unease rose in him like the quivering walls beside him. He kept the staff before him, sweeping the viscous liquid ahead of him with a kind of grim determination, wondering how long his luck would hold, wondering when those awful walls would come crashing down around him and his friends. He dared not look back, not even to see their faces, for he feared to see the way collapse behind him as he knew it must be doing from the thick splashing sound; feared to know how closely peril stalked as they threaded a path so narrow the walls brushed their shoulders on either side, spreading alarming red stains up the sleeves of their jackets.

They walked for a long time: fearful, the rank smell of blood in their nostrils, the sickening squish of bloody sand beneath their feet. But finally—sooner than David had really expected—the walls began to lower again, and the bottom to slope upward.

A moment later the three friends stood once more upon dry sand. The Track continued on its twisted way across that beach before straightening itself at the edge of the inevitable line of trees.

David paused at the last turn and glanced fearfully back upon the lake.

And looked upon a trail that ran perfectly straight.

And
on a helmed and armored figure sitting on horseback in the exact middle of it, scarcely three yards behind them. No hoofprints marred the sand behind him: the Lord of the Trial.

The Lord raised his sword and flourished it once in the air as if in salute, then paced the horse closer, so that at last David stood virtually face to nose with the animal.

The rider regarded him for a moment, and then spoke. “Hear me, David Kevin Sullivan, and know that you have passed the Test of Knowledge—not by knowing which road to take, but by knowing when to trust another’s judgment above your own.”

David found himself grinning in spite of himself, and turned impulsively to embrace a startled Liz. “You did it, girl. One down.”

He stopped suddenly and stared at the ground, uncomfortably aware of how foolish he must look before this Lord of Power. But when he glanced up again, the man was gone. There was only the lake—and the shell-beasts still prowling slowly about the opposite shore.

The wood before them was darker than any they had seen, and more stately, beginning possibly ten yards ahead with a palisade of tall, red-trunked trees, each of almost identical thickness and height, presenting the appearance of nothing so much as a colonnade before a temple. The Track passed between two trees slightly thicker than the rest, their twined branches meeting in a pointed arch high above their heads, as if marking a gateway.

From moonlight they walked into gloom. The trail began to slope downhill, ever more steeply, as trees clustered closer to the track and more undergrowth filled the spaces between, effectively locking them into a tunnel in which the only illumination was the light cast by the Straight Track itself.

Down and down and down, ever more steeply, but continuing straight at a perilous angle so that at times they had to sit down and scoot along on their backsides or risk a foolhardy plunge into the blackness ahead.

Down and down and down.

It became darker as well, and even the trail shrank to a faint glimmer.

Darker and darker and darker.

Somewhere behind them three hulking shapes ranked themselves side by side at the juncture of three Straight Tracks and stretched their short necks skyward. One by one their mouths opened, revealing gray-white linings. Together they sent a shrill, keening cry wavering across the water.

On the opposite bank three similar shapes pricked their tiny, bone-shielded ears in response, and lumbered purposefully from the shadows of the forest, moving with absolute precision toward three sets of human footprints that showed beneath the glimmer of the Straight Track where it emerged from the lake of blood.

Darker and darker and darker.

Not until David felt fresh, cool air on his face did he realize how close the air had become in the tree-tunnel they had been pursuing. Up ahead the way lightened, the path turned level again. Eagerly David bolted toward that light.

Only Alec’s flying tackle saved him from disaster. His friend’s arms wrapped around his hips from behind, pitching David forward onto his knees, his arms scraping along rough rock. The breath was knocked from his lungs; he gasped, and the smell of wet stone and decaying leaves filtered into his nostrils.

“You really
like
running into thin air, don’t you?” Alec grunted.

“What?” David asked, momentarily confused, then adjusted his vision to the new light in which they found themselves.

It was light in fact, but only by comparison to the darkness through which they had lately passed. For the night sky still soared above them, and the Faerie moon which never seemed to set rode again at the zenith.

And directly in front of them, inches from David’s nose, a matching gulf opened in the land, seemingly as deep as the sky was high: a yawning black abyss between matching cliffs that rose unbelievably steep on either side. The jagged silhouettes of evergreens crowned those cliffs, and the narrow rocky shelf on which they had halted thrust out above the terrible darkness of the rift like fungi on an ancient tree. David looked at the rift with dread. It was not particularly wide—a hundred feet at the outside. But there was no way across.

The Straight Track simply ended, breaking cleanly off into empty air.

On the opposite cliff, etched brightly by the moonlight, the topmost branches of pale-barked trees rose above a stone archway composed of three immense rough-hewn boulders. The glow of the Track took up again there and continued through the opening. But in the empty distance between: nothing.

“Damn!” Alec cried. “It
was
the wrong turn, it must have been. We can’t go on from here.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Liz replied. “It
couldn’t
have been. The Lord of the Trial said we had passed the first test.”

David squinted into the darkness. “There has to be a way across.”

He struggled to his feet and as he did so, he dropped the staff he was still carrying. The end with the iron butcher knife lashed to it fell forward into the darkness above the gulf.

“No!” David cried, grabbing frantically after it. But it did not topple into the giddy darkness below them; rather, the staff rested in apparent defiance of gravity with two-thirds its length lying unsupported in the air above the abyss. The air rang with a gentle
ping
like the tinkling of a glass windchime.

And from the point of the knife sparks began to appear, a panoply of glittering motes borne into the night that began to spread in all directions until at last they limned, faint but clear, the shape of the most insubstantial-looking of bridges, arching across the chasm and butting neatly against the opposite cliff. It was steep—almost a true half-circle, like an oriental bridge—and narrow, no more than a foot and a half wide. Nor was there any rail. A bridge it was, but a perilous one, scarcely more than a glimmer in the air.

“We can’t cross
that,
“Liz groaned incredulously.