Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  The desire to touch the opal was evident in Trey’s face, so I handed it over. Only then did I realize that we needed three stones rather than two. Trey might not be able to reach the external magic, but he could mind-talk with me when holding a stone. We would have to check if he got tired from mind-talking when he wasn’t carrying a stone.

  “Keep it for a few minutes while I look for another one,” I said.

  “Can I help you look?” he asked with a wary expression. He was afraid of the Hunter, but so was I. Both of us were fascinated with the idea of using magic to do things other people couldn’t.

  “We’ll work on you developing that skill later,” I said absent-mindedly. “I’d like to finish this search right away.”

  It was easier than previously to achieve the correct magical balance to look for another opal. I located a couple dozen other small stones deep in the creek banks or the surrounding ground before finally spotting another one near the surface in the creek bed.

  This time, we moved several large rocks and dug deep into the gravel before I pulled out another opal the same size as the one Trey had in his pocket. I rinsed it off and held it up. “This is another good one,” I said, unable to hide my satisfaction.

  “You’ve been busy,” Zephyr said from the creek bank. She was standing erect, glancing back and forth in every direction even as she talked. “We really should be going. That dragon will probably come back.”

  I was pleased that she was keeping watch, but I was also disgusted with myself. I needed to make a habit of routinely checking for problems. Someone else could have walked up to us just as Zephyr had done. With a quick flick, I started storing magical energy in the new stone. I clenched it in my fist, bounded up the bank and reached for my moccasins with my other hand. “Is the dragon more dangerous than the King’s Hunter?”

  “They represent different threats,” Zephyr said as she walked quickly towards the shed. Her sense of urgency seemed to get stronger by the moment. “Get your packs and weapons.”

  My hands started aching when we were back inside the shed. I looked at them, and then at Trey. “Did you wear the skin off your fingers? I did.”

  “Yes,” he said ruefully as he spread out his hands. There were pink and red patches where the skin was totally gone. “Can you heal them for me?”

  I spent a few moments and healed our hands, vowing to myself to work smarter in the future so I didn’t need to keep healing myself. I might not always be able to access the magic.

  “Why do you think she’s in such a rush to keep us moving?” I asked Trey as we both tied sleeping furs to our packs.

  He looked concerned as he knotted the ties on the pack and grabbed his bow. “I’m not entirely positive, but I think I heard a wolf howl while you were washing the second new stone.”

  Chapter 6 – Wolf Howls

  I scanned the sky with my eyes and with magic as we walked across the small clearing in single file. An osprey flew low over the trees, its black wings beating as it swooped back and forth over the winding creek. A white-headed eagle perched on the broken top of a dead tree near the top of the ridge. Zephyr seemed so anxious to be moving that she was out of sight under the big oak trees before Trey and I reached the first small one.

  “Should we walk faster?” Trey asked from behind me. “The wolf seems to be in a hurry.”

  I looked back as he hopped over a small log and turned onto the wider game trail. His pack slipped and he grabbed the shoulder straps to pull it back into place.

  “I’m stupid,” I said, using a word Mother had never liked.

  “What are you talking about?” Trey asked.

  “The packs,” I replied and stopped beside another small log. I unhooked the chest ties on my pack and swung it down to rest on the log. I patted it with one hand. “Put your pack down here.”

  Trey frowned. “What’s going on? We’re not going to keep up with Zephyr if we stop and mess in the packs.”

  “I’m going to try something magical,” I replied. “Just set yours down here.”

  He shook his head and cleared his throat twice. Finally, he nodded and set his pack beside mine. “You healed me using magic. What are you going to do now?”

  “Tie the packs together,” I said without waiting to explain. I pulled in the strong magic as I imagined passing a leather strap around the two packs and knotting the ends together. To my surprise, the packs shifted closer together on the log. I pretend-tied a long string from the packs to my belt and then imagined them lighter than air, floating like a cloud in the sky.

  Trey gasped as the packs rose from the log and bobbed in the air behind my back about even with my shoulders. I didn’t want them so high they would catch in the trees. I grinned widely, not telling Trey I had spent hours futilely trying to figure out how to do this after Zephyr had suggested it was possible. Even then, she had explained what to do before I finally got it to work. I took a step along the trail and looked back at Trey. “The packs will float along behind us.”

  “That makes it easy,” Trey said, trotting to keep up with me. “You didn’t do this with the turkey you killed last week. You carried it over your shoulder.”

  “I didn’t know how to do it until Zephyr told me it was possible.”

  The trail was wide enough at that point that Trey bounded up beside me. He pointed at the fresh wolf tracks ahead of us. “When did you meet Zephyr?”

  “The day after Ara got hurt crossing the ford.” I shivered, remembering her screams of pain.

  “What happened?” Trey asked.

  “It was almost too deep to wade across the river, but another storm was coming and the water would rise even more. We were most of the way across the river when a log washed over the rocks above us. It missed me, but a limb hit her in the leg. She got a bad bruise.”

  A sharp thought from Zephyr interrupted our conversation. “You talk too much and walk too slow.”

  I broke into a trot and Trey kept pace. “Did you just hear Zephyr?” I asked Trey, remembering he still had one of the new opals in his pocket.

  “Yes,” he blurted. “It’s strange to talk and run at the same time.”

  We were moving fast enough I had to focus on the occasionally treacherous footing. However, every time we came out in the open between trees, I looked up. The sky was a brilliant azure above us, but a bank of billowing white clouds rose high above the mountains to the east, promising rain. No dragons were in sight.

  My breath came faster and my legs started getting tired, but we continued running until we reached where we needed to cross the road leading upriver to the mine and downriver to Glendale. No one else lived farther up the valley and the road was a rutted dirt path. The guards escorting the carts pulled by convicts were vicious and not above kidnapping any onlookers to increase the size of their workforce.

  We stopped at the edge of the grove of big cedar trees above the road. I bent over with my hands on my knees, breathing deeply. Trey had lagged behind the last couple hundred paces and I heard him come to a stop beside me.

  “I need to rest,” Trey gasped. He shifted to using magical conversation because it was easier to talk that way when he was out of breath. “Why are we running so hard?”

  After several deep breaths, I replied, “Zephyr said something about the dragon coming back.”

  Sweat flipped in several directions when Trey shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Zephyr napped yesterday while the dragon flew over us.”

  His comment matched with what I remembered but one thing was different today. I said, “That was before someone stole the powerful stones.”

  “Does Zephyr think the dragon stole them?”

  I shrugged. My breathing was back to normal, even without pulling in magic to give me additional strength. “A dragon wouldn’t leave tracks,” I reminded Trey.

  “Not while it was flying,�
� Trey replied tartly. “But the wings should have made noise while it hovered outside the door.”

  “We need to keep moving,” I said.

  “I need to rest,” Trey responded between deep breaths.

  I straightened and glanced at Trey. Bright red spots on his cheeks stood out on his pale face. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his sunken eyes were dark under his brows. He hadn’t been eating much, while I had eaten well the last ten days, and he probably hadn’t slept much last night. He looked exhausted.

  Waiting for Trey to rest made sense but Zephyr wouldn’t like the time it took. He didn’t look in good enough shape to walk all the way to Glendale today, let alone try to run that distance. Without thinking, I lowered the packs that were still hovering behind my shoulders. A strange thought struck me and I spoke before thinking it through, “Trey, grab hold of the packs.”

  He blew a lungful of air out through puffed cheeks. His voice sounded strained. “I’m tired, really tired. I can do it, but why? Can’t you just set them on the ground?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but that’s not what I was thinking. You can grab the packs and float along in the air just like you would in the creek. I can run and pull you along.”

  He straightened to his full height, which was barely above my shoulder. “That would soon make you just as tired as I am.”

  “Not if I do it right,” I explained and lowered the packs in front of him. “Rest your arms on top of the packs, and then relax when I lift you.”

  Trey frowned and then slowly reached for the packs. He pushed on them with one hand and seemed surprised when they didn’t fall to the ground. He clenched his hands around the straps, stood motionless for a few moments, and then looked at me. “Well? I’m still standing here.”

  “Oops,” I said. “I haven’t started.” I pulled in more magic, used some of it to hide what I was doing, which required me to split my thinking into two parts, and imagined Trey floating in the air while nobody else could sense my actions. Nothing happened.

  Trey gave me an expectant look that conflicted with the disbelief in his words, “Can you really do what you just said?”

  After trying several more times, I was starting to feel foolish. Finally, I thought about what Trey had just said. Clouds moved through the air, but people floated in water. Maybe I just needed to imagine that he was bobbing along in the creek. I closed my eyes and pretended we were swimming together. I started to get lighter on my feet and then changed my thinking. I was standing on the bank of the creek watching him drift in circles in a pool of slow-moving water.

  “I’m waiting,” Trey said with a hint of exasperation.

  I opened my eyes and muttered, “It didn’t work.” I let go of much of the magic. “I don’t know what I am doing wrong.”

  “Have you ever done this before?” Trey responded shakily.

  Frustration roughened my voice. “No, but I thought it would work as it does with the packs. It should have worked. I need some time to think.”

  We needed to travel faster and Trey didn’t have enough strength to run. I could gain strength from the surrounding magic, but he didn’t know how to do that. Talking, hiding, hunting with a sling or bow, healing others and making a pack lighter was the limit of my magical abilities. How would those things help if I couldn’t make him float?

  I turned in a circle trying to think of new things to try. I jerked to a stop when I thought about how I had healed Zephyr when we had met just after I left Ara at Aunt Yedda’s farm. She had cavorted like a pup when I finished. “Let’s try something different,” I suggested and touched him on the arm.

  “What now?” he asked, relaxing his grip on the packs. “Do you want me to sit on the packs? You’ve been able to make them float while they were loaded.”

  “I don’t know,” I growled, feeling my throat get hot with irritation. “It should have worked, but the magic isn’t cooperating.”

  Disappointment gleamed in his eyes. “Just let me rest a little bit.”

  “No, no,” I blurted. “This is a totally different idea. You let me heal you before. I’ll try the same thing with your tired muscles.”

  He paused and then shrugged. “Okay.”

  This time I knew exactly what I wanted and the magic poured from me into Trey as soon as I pulled it from the surrounding hills. This might not work in other locations where less magic was available, but it worked today. I felt his muscles relax and his breathing slow to a normal rate.

  Finally, I dropped my hand. “That’s about all I can do.”

  He took a couple of tentative steps and grinned. “I haven’t felt this good in months. I can run again.”

  “Let’s go,” I said after taking a quick magical look up and down the road. No one was close by. Zephyr was already most of the way down to the first ford in the river. I hoisted the packs again and began walking towards the trail. We could run after we crossed the road.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked, knowing we were in the clear but trying to act in ways that didn’t reveal all of my magical abilities.

  Trey shook his head after he looked up and down the valley. “Nothing moving on the road in either direction,” he replied. “I don’t hear anything or see any birds acting unusual.”

  I glanced down at the footprints from the hundred or so men that had passed the previous day. They had beaten down many of the smaller weeds. Not even an excellent tracker would be able to tell if we tip-toed on the same weeds. However, just to be safe, I took a couple of steps on rocks and then over to a clump of weeds.

  “This is easy,” Trey drawled from behind me, no longer taking in big gulps of air. “I feel like I can run all morning.”

  A sense of satisfaction flooded over me as I jumped to another rock. Moments later, we were across the road and out of sight in a clump of elderberries. I turned down the valley, pulled in more magic to replenish my strength, and broke into a fast trot.

  “Hey, Reuben,” Trey said excitedly.

  “What?” I responded.

  “I hear a wolf howling,” he responded barely above a whisper.

  The packs floating behind me thumped into my back when I came to a quick stop. I cocked my head and listened. The wind fluttered branches in nearby trees, squirrels scampered among the bushes and I could hear the high piercing cry of a hunting osprey. No howl, though. “I don’t hear any wolf,” I muttered.

  “Be quiet and listen,” Trey ordered.

  After listening while I counted ten long, slow breaths, I still didn’t hear anything. I reached for stronger magic and listened more closely. The normal sounds of the forest grew louder, like peals of thunder after a lightning flash. Then I heard it. Definitely a wolf howl. It was a long way from us up the valley and I didn’t know how Trey could have heard it. Maybe one of his magical gifts was special hearing.

  I put aside those thoughts and began trotting faster than before. “I heard it,” I told Trey.

  “That’s twice today,” he insisted. “I heard it earlier.”

  I shot a strong thought towards Zephyr. “Did you just howl? Trey and I heard a wolf howl, but it was so far away it probably wasn’t you.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she retorted. “Which direction?”

  “Upriver. Maybe far to the west of the mine.”

  Zephyr harrumphed. “There’s a path through the mountains in that direction.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “Into the Gackle River valley.”

  Thoughts of my conversation with Father the day before he died came back. I had relatives who lived in that valley, although the only one I knew by name was my Grandfather Demarcus. “Can we go that way after I check on Ara?”

  A sense of negation accompanied Zephyr’s next words. “That’s not wise.”

  “Why not?” I demanded. “What aren’t you telling us?”

  I cont
inued trotting with Trey right behind me. I thought Zephyr wasn’t going to answer, but finally, she did.

  “You take words too literally, pup. The path is rough and difficult, even for a wolf. It might take you longer than walking through the valleys to get there.”

  Irritation tempted me to growl a sarcastic response, but I finally realized Zephyr had actually explained her words. I pushed ahead with more questions. “Why can we hear a wolf howling? Did the Council assign another wolf to watch over the kingdom?”

  Zephyr’s mental tone was dry. “They didn’t tell me what they were going to do. However, at least one wolf has watched over this kingdom since it formed.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  She replied gruffly, “You have the history book in your pack. There is more information in it than you know. Keep running.”

  “What history book?” Trey asked as surged up beside me as we crossed a small meadow.

  “A book Mother had since she was a child,” I replied. “I’ve read it several times. It talks about people coming up the treacherous Brizo River Valley and settling where Falkirk is now.” Trey and I continued to talk using the magic as we ran, trying to figure out what Zephyr meant about the history book having more information than I knew. Her comment didn’t make sense to either of us.

  Because Zephyr was in front and I kept track of where she was, we didn’t have to search for possible danger around every bend in the trail. Thus, we rounded the sharp bend in the road above the first ford in the river far sooner than I expected. We slowed to a walk on the steep slope above the river. Loose rocks rounded by the water action stretched between the banks that were nearly thirty paces apart. The water level had dropped from a few days earlier.

  “It’s shallow enough to wade across,” Trey commented.

  “Not even knee deep,” I said with a chuckle. I removed my moccasins and rolled up the legs of my pants. The muted roar of the rapids above and below the gravel bar wasn’t as loud as it had been a week ago. The current was surprisingly strong when we started wading and the water was deeper than it looked. It came above my knees when we reached the deepest part.