Owl cleared his throat. He was the senior Singer in the group, and the others were inclined to defer to him. “I think, Lady Moon, you have overlooked a resource that has nothing to do with the Songs.”
This was such a radical suggestion to come from a Singer that Moon was momentarily dumbstruck. The Songs were the history of the People, the idea that there might be old knowledge found elsewhere was startling.
“I refer, of course, to your sister, the High Prince.”
Moon realized her mouth was open and closed it. Owl, seeing that she had his point, remained respectfully silent, though Moon was sure his eyes were twinkling as he examined the surface of his ganje. Her sister. Of course. Was not the High Prince bound to the whole of the Lands? Surely, Cassandra would know where in those Lands the mountains of Ice Tor might lie? And even if she did not, at the least Truthsheart could heal Moon’s headache.
“Brilliant,” she said, getting to her feet. “I thank you for the work you have done, and the suggestion you have made. If you will now excuse me.”
Her heart already lighter, Moon composed her mind, subtracting the details of her workroom and substituting the rocks, mosses, and trees of the clearing just to the south of the High Prince’s camp, where it was permissible to Move. She stumbled; in her eagerness she had miscalculated the height of the ground in this precise spot, but a nearby Tree put out a branch for her to steady herself on.
“My thanks, Glinde’in,” she said. “That was kind of you.” The Tree shivered, exactly as if it were a young child giggling. In a way, Moon thought, that was exactly what Glinde’in was. With a final caress the branch withdrew and Moon made her way into the camp proper, finding her footsteps inexplicably slowing as she went. Or perhaps not so inexplicably. Cassandra might still be angry with her for the steps she had taken over Wolf—not that she had shown her anger. Like everyone else, her sister was treating her with great delicacy.
Moon chewed on her lower lip, stopping completely as a Sunward Rider in a yellow tunic led a Cloud Horse across her path. Riders were coming and going from the horse line, exchanging tired mounts for fresh, it seemed to Moon. One or two of the Cloud Horses looked her way and whinnied, as if they meant to greet her. In case it was so, in case they were Lightborn’s, Moon raised her hand in salute. The whirl of activity had, as she suspected, her sister at its center. Moon lifted her flaxen eyebrows. Perhaps she should slip away. There must be some other way to find Ice Tor.
But before she could act on her thought, Cassandra’s head lifted, swung around, and her eyes met Moon’s. There was nothing to do now but match her sister’s smile, and go to her.
“I come at a bad time,” Moon said. Her sister’s kiss, her sister’s arms, made a sudden sob catch in her throat, and for a moment Moon clung to Cassandra as she had when a child.
“Of course not,” Cassandra stroked Moon’s face as though pushing back a loose curl. Moon felt her headache melt away as the warmth of Cassandra’s presence enveloped and relaxed her. “You are always welcome to me.”
Moon swallowed, her throat suddenly thick. She had been without family for all the time that her sister was Warden to the Exile, had almost lost her chance of regaining it. She had never thought to feel that loneliness again. She had her sister now, and Max, and Stormwolf; she was not alone. How was it, then, that at these moments, with her sister’s arms around her, she felt Lightborn’s absence the heaviest?
“Moon, my dear one, is there something specific you need of me?”
Faced with a direct question, Moon found her voice. “Do you know of a place called Ice Tor?” As her sister’s eyebrows drew down in a vee, Moon explained her line of thought, gaining strength as she spoke.
“Sound reasoning.” Cassandra shifted as if her gra’if mail shirt had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I’m sure I do know the place, but not by that name. I know and feel the very essence of the Lands, but I do not necessarily know what name has been given, or might have been given in the past. Without a description, I can only point to general areas.”
“High Prince, we are ready.” The Starward Rider who spoke was someone unknown to Moon.
“One moment.” Cassandra turned back to Moon. “Is this for the Horn?” Moon nodded. “Perhaps there is some Natural or Solitary you might ask.”
Moon shook her head. “Possibly, but by custom they share their lore with our Singers, and I have spoken to every Singer who has knowledge of the Horn.”
“Still, you might ask Trere’if. He’s eldest of the Tree Naturals, and may know of some clue now lost to the others.” Cassandra turned away again, this time to mount the Cloud Horse that was being held for her.
“A lost Song? But if it’s lost…” Moon let her voice die away as another idea occurred to her. There was someone else, someone she’d not been thinking of as a Singer. “It’s worth a try, certainly,” was what she said aloud.
“Shall I send someone with you? One of the Wild Riders who knows the Naturals well?” Cassandra’s honey-blonde eyebrows drew down.
Moon drew herself up, squaring her shoulders. “I think I can manage to speak with even so formidable a Natural as Trere’if by myself,” she said, finding that her tone was stiffer than she had intended. Let Cassandra think her offended, so long as she was allowed to leave alone.
Cassandra leaned down to stroke Moon’s cheek. “I’m sorry. It is only that I have developed the habit of worrying.”
And then she was gone, and Moon could not tell her what she planned to do, no matter how guilty she felt. Moon walked as quickly as she could to the clearing where she could Move. She had always understood when Wolf refused to speak of what it was like to be a Hound—indeed, all things considered, Moon had thanked her Guide the Manticore for it. But she also knew that occasionally there came to him, from time to time and in flashes, memories of before he was a Hound. Moon remembered the way he listened to the Singers at Honor of Souls’ fortress, the look on his face, the way his body moved unconsciously to the music, making her almost certain Wolf had been a Singer once upon a time. Moon also knew of Cassandra’s theory that Wolf’s time was long before the present, perhaps even more than one Cycle ago. Moon shivered. Did the Hunt live through more than one Cycle? What a horrible thought.
Cassandra might let Moon go to Trere’if alone, but she was not likely to want Moon in the Shadowlands unescorted. Moon looked down at her clothes. She was sure she knew enough from the books Max had given her to be able to pass as human.
I could not tell her, Cassandra thought as she and her troop neared the Quartz Ring. The news that Wolf might be a tool of the Hunt would be too much for Moon to bear so soon after the loss of Lightborn.
She would have felt easier about her decision, if she hadn’t been sure that Moon also was keeping something back.
“You look concerned, my Prince.”
“I was just thinking how much simpler things might be if I had a Truthreader among my people,” she said, smiling to show she was not serious. Too bad it would kill Valory Martin to live here.
Alejandro, Nighthawk, and I were standing in a dimly lit front hallway. I’d seen enough of them in the time I’d lived in Spain that it felt familiar. A wide wooden door behind me, made up of many layers and sections of thick oak, an elaborate locking mechanism two thirds of the way up on the left-hand side, a massive pommel in the center of the door to serve as handle, and a tiny metal slot at eye level—for someone in the 1400’s—that covered the grated peephole. We were standing on a floor that looked to be tiled in slate. The tiles on the wall picked up the blue-gray color, and along with some greens and some whites, made a complicated pattern up to about shoulder height—again, for someone in the 1400’s. The wrought iron base of a half-moon hall table lay on its side, its glass top shattered over the floor. There had been a vase of flowers on the table, but they were now so dry they didn’t even smell.
There was also a spatter of blood on the walls and floor that wasn’t dry at all.
Hawk held hi
s arm out in front of me, barring my way. I stopped as quickly as I could, but not before I brushed against him. [His clothes were made by a tailor in Madrid.] “I am not so very sure it is safe to touch it.”
“Now you tell me.” I squatted to get closer to the blood. It had to be the Hound’s own, and it looked as though it had only just hit the surface of the tiles. One large glob even dripped off the leg of the hall table, though nothing hit the floor under it. I reached out a finger and caught the next drop as it fell.
[Agony. Thirst. Craving. Dark and cold. Blows. (flicker) space too small. (flicker) Phoenix. The smell of dra’aj filling everything (flicker) Pain. Cold. SNAP!]
“Valory!”
A sharp pain on my cheek, and I held up my arm to ward off the next blow. “Okay, okay. Sheesh.” I put a hand up to my face. “I hope that isn’t going to leave a mark.” I seemed to be sitting down. I looked around and saw that we’d moved out of the hall into a small sitting room. I’d been seated in the only upholstered chair, a massive thing with sagging springs. Alejandro was crouched on his heels in front of me, and Hawk was rummaging in a low cupboard against the wall to our right, finally lifting out a bottle of brandy with a smile.
“You were taking a very long time.” Alejandro’s voice sounded tight. Hawk handed me a glass of dark-gold liquor. Alejandro sat on the arm of my chair.
“Just making sure I got everything I could.” I shivered, and took a sip of the brandy, coughing as I remembered the feeling of the flickers and the pain/not pain of the blows the Hound had felt. “It was definitely a Hound,” I said. “She got out of here pretty fast. Didn’t go far immediately, bounced around a bit…” I concentrated. “She ended up in North America, though I don’t know why she went there.”
The two Riders looked at each other.
“Not Australia?” Alejandro said. “She did not go to the Goblin, Vein of Gold? That is where I sent Stormwolf.” He turned to me. “It did not follow him?”
Frowning hurt my head. “They weren’t here at the same time, I can tell you that, she definitely came after him.” I hesitated. “Wait. She knew he’d been here, but it was…” I sat up straighter. “She was following a Rider’s trail; she just didn’t know it was Wolf’s. And like I said, she didn’t go far, although there were a lot of changes. I’m sure she’s in North America now.” Hawk glanced at Alejandro, clearly wondering how I could know so much. “That’s her blood dripping out there,” I pointed out. “It’s still wet, as if she were just now injured. For the blood, it’s as if no time has passed at all, as if it was still part of her.” I shivered again. “It’s like touching her.”
“How is she moving so quickly?” Hawk said. “I cannot see a Hound booking a flight, nor can I imagine it waiting to go through customs.”
“But if they’re stable,” I said, “If they look normal? What would stop them?”
“How stable are they?” Alejandro said. “How long can they hold their shapes? The Atlantic flight is seven hours at the least.”
“Another Rider has been here,” I said, slowly, still trying to sort through the images from the front hall. “Not Wolf, and not either of you.”
“One of the Basilisk Warriors?”
I shook my head, that wasn’t what I was getting. “Can a Rider Move a Hound?” Suddenly I remembered the SNAP! I’d felt when the blood touched me. It had been that, and not the slap Alejandro had given me that had focused my attention and woken me up.
“Is there any way for the Hunt to Move themselves?” I asked.
Both of them were shaking their heads even as I asked the question, but Hawk stopped shaking his first, and seemed to be thinking something over. I waited.
“You speak of ‘she’ and ‘her,’” he said. “It is female?” When I nodded, he continued his thought. “I have never thought of them as having gender; I suppose more is known about them now, since we learned about the Basilisk.”
“She isn’t a Basilisk, she’s a Phoenix.” Now they were both looking at me again, and again Hawk’s face was tight.
“It has a Guidebeast?” The incredulity was clear in Alejandro’s tone. Incredulity and a kind of horror.
“Well, not exactly. Not the same way any of you do.” Or Wolf does, I said to myself. I’d just as soon not remind them of him, however, now that it seemed he wasn’t involved.
“But it would have one, in some broken, twisted way; it would indeed have a Guidebeast.” Hawk seemed to be thinking aloud. “It may not yet be generally known,” he added, his gaze returning from wherever it was his mental abstraction had taken him. “But the Hunt were once Riders. The High Prince herself made the discovery, when she was the prisoner of the Basilisk. They eat dra’aj, they crave it, they must have it, more and more of it, and it is this craving, this addiction, that makes them the Hunt.” He looked at Alejandro. “But once, who knows how long ago, they were Riders.”
“But the shifting of shape?”
That did it; a piece of the puzzle had finally fallen into place for me. “They have to keep changing,” I said. “Don’t you see? They’ve absorbed the dra’aj of all these other People, and therefore their Guidebeasts as well, that’s why they keep changing, and why they can’t maintain one shape, not even that of their own Guide.”
“Even though they must have more than enough dra’aj to manifest, they cannot keep to one form, but must play, over and over, the forms they have stolen.” Now there was pity along with the horror, in Alejandro’s voice.
“And that’s why human dra’aj stabilizes them,” I concluded in triumph. “Because humans have no Guidebeasts.”
“So they are looking now for human dra’aj?” Hawk was not as convinced as I was. “Why, then, the attacks on Shower of Stars? On Jenaro the Troll? And on the Goblin?”
It should have been funny to see them both looking at me for answers, considering by how much I was the youngest in the room. Then it hit me, and my stomach dropped. They thought of the Hunt as an alien thing, apart from the People. And they thought of me the same way, even Alejandro—though to be fair about it, Alejandro at least knew in his bones that I had ways of knowing things I shouldn’t otherwise know. To Hawk, it just made sense that, as a non-Rider, I would have insight into how non-Riders thought. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted.
“Okay.” I nodded. I thought we could approach things like a cop or a detective would—at least, the way they do in mystery novels, though I didn’t tell the Riders that was what I was doing. “We know the Hunt are feeding off humans more than they did before because of the increase in the numbers of Outsiders. So, I think we can agree that they’re doing it on purpose, that they’re actively seeking out stability, not just finding dra’aj where they can.”
“This is logic,” Alejandro said, nodding.
“So, if they’re also trying to take the dra’aj of, shall we say, their more traditional prey, either the human dra’aj is not enough for them after all—”
“In which case they are still a danger to the People,” Hawk said.
I saw the implications of that, but I went on building my logical case. “Or they’re eliminating potential enemies—”
“In which case, their danger is limited to those of the People who are still in the Shadowlands. If we all return to the Lands, the Hunt here will present no further problem to us.”
I felt Alejandro stiffen at my side. Was it just that he wouldn’t want to abandon me, his fara’ip, and the place that still, for him, held traces of his true love? Or did he remember that the Hunt was feeding on real people, innocent people, even if they weren’t People? Did he remember his promise to help them?
“It may be more simple,” he said. “They are addicts, and as such cannot forgo feeding on dra’aj when an opportunity presents itself.”
“We were going to ask you about helping the Outsiders,” I said. “The human victims of the Hunt? Are you just going to let the Hunt go on making more of them? If they used to be Riders, as you say, then Nik and the othe
rs are right in saying that you have some kind of responsibility for their existence, for dealing with them.”
“I am not unsympathetic,” Hawk said. “But you must realize that for those still in the Lands, the first concern will be the safety of the People.” I made sure not to look at Alejandro. This attitude fit too closely with what he’d warned me about. “If we take this report back to the High Prince, there will be many who will say that once our People return, and we are in no further danger from the Hunt or the followers of the Basilisk, nothing more need be done.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” There was a hot, angry spot growing in my chest. I wasn’t sure about what I was going to say next, and I didn’t want to examine too closely my motives in suggesting it, but the idea that Riders would just turn their backs on humans was making me boil.
“I know what Moving feels like from the inside,” I began. “I knew that Alejandro could Move the very first time I shook his hand, and I could tell that about you, and about Wolf. That time I met her, I knew that Shower of Stars couldn’t Move, at least not the way you guys do.”
“Is there a point, my dear one?”
I pointed past Hawk to the front hallway. “That Hound Moved—not far, I grant you, and maybe she wasn’t even aware of it herself—but I felt the actual Move when I touched the blood, the same way I can feel the ability.”
“This is not possible.” Hawk’s voice was a strained whisper.
“Why not? Maybe they can’t keep a Rider’s form long enough to spend hours on a plane, but it doesn’t take hours to Move. In a way, it doesn’t take any time at all. And who knows, the more human dra’aj they get, the more stable they become. Maybe one day they won’t change at all. But they’ll still be the Hunt, won’t they?” I looked up at Alejandro. “It’s not like they’ll have gone through rehab. They won’t be cured, like Wolf is.”
“If they can Move, they will be able to use the Portals.” Hawk’s voice was icy cold.
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