Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  That quickly? That was impressive; but he called to mind what Aubri had told him about the pack’s collective intelligence. If there were many more than just the knot that he’d seen, it would mean that as a group, the pack might be as smart as a makaar, and that was pretty smart.

  Regardless of what Father claims.

  The bushes moved again, and he caught another glimpse of slick black hide. A cross of greyhound and snake . . . I can’t imagine anything more bizarre. But then, Blade would tell me that my imagination isn’t very good. 1 wonder what kind of vision they get out of those strange eyes? Can they see in the dark? Could that white film be a screen they pull across their eyes to protect them from daylight? Can they actually “see” magic? Or scent it?

  “I wonder what we look like to them,” he said, musing aloud. Blade shot him a sharp glance.

  “I suppose I looked fairly harmless until I whipped out my sling,” she replied. “But I suspect that you look like a movable feast. After all, you are burdened with a magical nature, and it might be rather obvious to them.”

  “You mean—they might be more interested in me than you as prey?” he choked. She nodded.

  “Probably as someone they’d want to keep alive a while, so they could continue to feed on your magic as it rebuilt. They’re probably bright enough for that.”

  He hadn’t thought about that.

  It did not make him feel any better.

  Amberdrake stood beside the leader of their party and wrung more water out of a braid of hair. He waited for the fellow to say something enlightening. Fog wreathed around them both, and shrouded everything more than a few paces away in impenetrable whiteness.

  “I wish I knew what was going on here,” Regin muttered, staring at the pair of soggy decoys wedged up in the fork of a tree. “There’s no trail from the camp, which looks as if the Silvers were trying to conceal their backtrail. But there isn’t a sign of anything hunting them, either. And now—we find this.”

  The ground beneath the tree was torn up, as was the bark of the lower trunk; but there was no blood. There was a deadfall rigged of wood that had been tripped, but there was no sign that anything had been caught in it. They might have passed the site by, thinking that it was just a place where some large forest creature had been marking his territory.

  Except that there was a human-shaped decoy and a gryphon-shaped decoy wedged high in a tree.

  That isn‘t very enlightening.

  “They might have run into some sort of large predator,” Drake pointed out. “Just because we didn’t see any sign of a hunter, that doesn’t mean they weren’t being trailed. That would account for why they tried not to leave a trail. Maybe that’s even the reason why they left their camp in the first place.”

  This was the first sign of the children that any of them had come across in their trek toward the river. Amberdrake took it as a good omen; it certainly showed that the duo had gotten this far, so their own party was certainly on the right track. And it showed that they were in good enough health to rig something like” this.

  “Maybe. But why decoys?” Regin paced carefully around the trunk of the tree, examining it on all sides. “Most forest predators hunt with their noses, and even in this rain, the trail from here to wherever they did spend the night would be fresh enough to follow. I wonder what we can learn from this.”

  “I don’t know; I’m not a hunter,” Amberdrake admitted, and let it go at that.

  Skan didn’t, however. “Whatever tore this place up is an animal—or at least, it doesn’t use weapons or tools,” he pointed out. “It might just be that the—that Blade and Tad wandered into its territory, and they built the decoys to keep it occupied while they went on their way.”

  “Maybe.” Regin shook his head. “Whatever it was, I don’t recognize the marks, but that doesn’t surprise me. I haven’t recognized much in this benighted forest since we got into it. And I’m beginning to wonder how anything survives here without gills.”

  With that, he shrugged, heading off into the forest in the direction of the river. Amberdrake followed him, but Skan lingered a moment before hurrying to catch up lest he get left behind and lost in the fog.

  “I don’t like it,” he muttered fretfully as he reached Drake’s side. “I just don’t like it. It didn’t look right back there, but I can’t put my finger on why.”

  “I don’t know enough about hunting animals to be of any help,” Drake replied bluntly. He kept telling himself that the children were—must be—still fine. That no matter how impressive the signs these unknown creatures had left were, the children had obviously escaped their jaws. “All I know is that whatever made those marks must be the size of a horse, and if I were being chased by something that size, I probably wouldn’t be on the ground at night. Maybe they put the decoys up one tree and then climbed over to another to spend the night.”

  Unless, of course, they’re too hurt to climb trees. But in that case, how did the decoys get up in one?

  “Illusion!” Skan said suddenly, his head coming up with a jerk. “That’s it! There’s no illusion and no traces of one on those decoys. Tad’s not a powerful mage, but he’s good enough to cast an illusion, and if I were building a decoy I’d want to make it look as much like me as possible! So why didn’t he put an illusion on it?”

  “Because he couldn’t,” Drake said flatly. “If mage-energy got sucked out of the basket and everything else, it could have gotten sucked out of him, and it might not have built up enough yet for him to do anything.”

  “Oh.” Skan was taken a bit aback, but finally nodded his acceptance of Drake’s explanation. Amberdrake was just as glad, because he could think of another.

  Tad can’t work a simple magic like an illusion because he’s hurt too badly.

  On the other hand, those decoys were soggy enough to have been here for a couple of days, so that meant that the children made fairly good progress for two people trying to hide their backtrail, So that in turn meant that they couldn’t have been hurt too badly. Didn’t it?

  He also didn’t want to think about how having mage-energy drained from him might affect Tad in other, more subtle ways. Would it be like a slowly-draining wound? Would it affect his ability to work magic at all? What if he simply was no longer a mage anymore? Gryphons were inherently magical for good reasons, and Urtho would not have designed them so otherwise. Although the Mage of Silence had made many mistakes, the gryphons were considered his masterpieces. Magic collected in their bodies with every breath and with every stroke of the wings. It stabilized their life systems, cleaned their organs, helped them fly. Amberdrake had never heard of what would happen if a gryphon were deprived of mage-energy completely for an extended amount of time; would it be like fatigue poisoning, or gout, or something even more insidious, like a mental imbalance?

  The rescue party was moving along in a tightly-bunched group to keep from getting separated in the mist. We’re on the right track at least; the children certainly came this way, Amberdrake reminded himself. They’re moving right along, thinking, planning. If they’re in trouble, the best place for them is the river. There’s food there that’s easy to catch, and maybe caves in the cliffs. They’re doing all the right things, especially if they’re having to deal with large predators.

  Maybe this was why the rescuers hadn’t found much in the way of large game. They’d tried to send on their findings by teleson, so that the other two parties out searching knew to turn back to the river. The mage Filix thought he’d gotten everything through clearly, but without local mage-energy to draw on, he couldn’t be certain that all the details had made it over. Still, whether the children went north or south when they encountered the river, someone should run into them now. Their own party was going to try to the north, mostly because they did know for certain that Ikala’s would be coming up from below them, also heading north.

  This damned fog. It makes me more nervous than the rain! If—when—we all get out of this, I am never leaving the c
ity again, I swear it. Not unless it’s to visit another city. So far as I’m concerned, you can take the “wilderness experience” and bury it in a hole. He’d never forgotten the hardships of the trek to White Gryphon, and he had been all too well aware of what this mission would involve. He thought he’d been prepared for it. Except for one thing; I’d forgotten that now I’m not as limber as I used to be for this sort of thing. Judeth and Aubri certainly didn‘t volunteer to traipse through the woods, and now I see why. They probably think I’m a fool, forcing myself to go along on this rescue, trying to do a young man’s job. Maybe letting me go was Judeth’s way of getting revenge upon me for threatening her!

  But Blade wasn’t Judeth’s daughter, nor was Tad Aubri’s son.

  No, I’d rather be out here. At least I know that I’m doing something this way. Zhaneel and Winterhart must feel the same, or they wouldn ‘t have insisted on coming either.

  But the fog was doing more than just getting on his nerves; he kept thinking that he was seeing shadows flitting alongside them, out there. He kept feeling eyes on him, and getting glimpses of skulking shapes out of the corner of his eye. It was all nonsense, of course, and just his nerves getting the better of him, but—

  “Drake,” Skan whispered carefully, “we’re being paced. I don’t know by what, but there’s something out there. I can taste it in the fog, and I’ve seen a couple of shadows moving.”

  “You’re sure?” That was Regin, who had signaled for a halt and dropped back when he heard Skan whispering. “Bern thought he might be seeing something, too—”

  “Then count me as three, because I saw large shadows moving out there and behind us,” Drake said firmly. “Could it be whatever tore up the ground back there?”

  “If it is, I don’t want to goad it into attacking us in this fog,” Regin replied. “Though I doubt it will as long as we look confident.”

  “Most big hunters won’t mess with a group,” Bern confirmed, nodding. “They like single prey, not a pack.”

  Drake must have looked skeptical, because Regin thumped him on the back in what was probably supposed to be an expression of hearty reassurance. It drove the breath out of him and staggered him a pace.

  “There’s too many of us for it to want to contend with—” Regin pointed out with confidence, “And we aren’t hurt. I don’t care if it paces us, as long as it doesn’t come after us, and it won’t. I’m sure of it.”

  Amberdrake got his breath again, and shrugged. “You’re the leader,” he said, keeping his uncertainty to himself.

  Regin grinned, as if to say, “That’s right, I am,” but wisely kept his response to a grin and waved them on again.

  Drake continued to feel the eyes on his back, and kept thinking about beings the size of a horse with talons to match—the kinds of claws that had torn up the earth to the depth of his hand. Would a party of seven humans and one gryphon look all that formidable to something like that? And what if there was more than one of those things out there? The way the ground had been dug up certainly suggested that there were several.

  “You won’t like this,” Skan gryphon-whispered, which was as subtle and quiet as a human’s normal speaking voice. The gryphon glanced from side to side apprehensively. “Drake, I think we’ve been surrounded.”

  All the muscles in Amberdrake’s neck went tight, and he shivered reflexively. He no longer trusted Regin’s self-confidence in the least.

  At just that moment, Regin signaled another halt, and Bern took him aside to whisper something into his ear.

  The leader looked straight at Skan. “Bern says we’re surrounded. Are we?”

  “I think so,” Skan said flatly. “And I don’t think whatever it is out there is just curious. I also don’t think it’s going to let us get much farther without a fight.”

  Regin’s face darkened, as if Skan had challenged him, but he turned his eyes to the shrouding fog before replying. “The General always says the best defense is a good offense,” he replied in a growl. “But there’s no point in lobbing arrows against things we can’t see. We’ll lose ammunition without impressing them.”

  “The rains are going to begin as soon as the fog lifts, sir,” Bern pointed out. “We still won’t be able to see what’s out there, and you can’t shoot with a wet bowstring.”

  Regin leveled his gaze on Filix next. “Is there something you can do to find out what’s following us? Maybe scare it away? I don’t want to waste time better spent looking for Silverblade and Tadrith.”

  The mage shrugged. “Maybe. I can try. The best thing would be to try to stun one so that we can see what it looks like. I don’t have to see something to stun it, I just have to know in general where it is.”

  The leader spread his hands, indicating his full permission. “You’re the mage. Try it, see what happens.”

  Amberdrake opened his mouth to object, but closed it again; after all, what did he know? Nothing about hunting, predators, or being stalked. If their stalkers were only curious after all, stunning one wouldn’t hurt them; if they were thinking about making a meal of the rescuers, well, having one of their lot fall over without a mark on him should make them back off for a while. At least, it certainly seemed to him that it should work out that way. And by the time the hunters regained their courage, the rescue party would probably be long gone.

  Skan opened his beak, and Amberdrake thought he was going to object as well, but it was too late. Filix had already spotted something, or thought he had, and had unleashed the spell.

  The result was not what any of them had expected.

  A dark shadow in the fog glowed suddenly— Amberdrake got an odd, unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach—and Filix and Skan cursed together with heartfelt fluency.

  “What?” Regin snapped, looking from one to the other. “What?”

  “It ate my spell—” Filix began, but Skan interrupted him, waving the teleson he’d been carrying around his neck.

  “It ate the teleson!” the gryphon roared. “Damn! Whatever’s out there is what pulled Blade and Tad down, and you just fed it everything it wanted!”

  Skan was just glad that they had alerted the other parties that they had finally found signs of the missing children before the teleson became a pretty piece of junk. By the time they camped that night, it was evident that, not only had the creatures out there “eaten” the teleson—or rather, drained away all of its mage-energy—but they’d “eaten” the energy from every other magical device the party had.

  Why they’d waited so long to do so was a matter of conjecture at this point. Maybe they’d been screwing up their courage to do so; maybe they had just been biding their time until they had a certain number of their lot in place. Maybe the things were staying in hiding until something was thrown at them, as a form of cover.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Filix kept protesting. “How was I going to know?”

  He couldn’t have known that some bizarre animals were the cause of the trouble, of course, but since they had known there was something out here that ate magic, it seemed to Skan that lobbing spells around indiscriminately was obviously a bad idea. He had been about to say just that when Filix had lobbed the first one.

  Well, what the search party had to deal with now were the results. In the short term, that meant the tents had to be put up by hand, and using freshly-cut poles and ropes; fires had to be started with the old-fashioned firestriker, and any number of other problems, both inconvenient and possibly hazardous, suddenly arose to confront them.

  In the long term—having gotten a taste, the strange and possibly hostile creatures that had stalked them through the fog and rain might now be looking for a meal.

  The tents were keeping the rain out, but were not precisely dry anymore. They weren’t keeping bugs out, either. Skan wondered how long it would take until it occurred to Regin that the waterproofing and bug-protections on their rations might also have been magical. Serve him right if he had to eat soggy, weevil-ridden ration-bread!
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  The two tents shared a canvas “porch;” it lacked a canvas floor and one wall, but gave protection to their fire. They gathered in the two tents on either side of the fire, with the flaps tied back. Regin called them for a conference as the light began to dim in the forest outside. Rain drummed down on the canvas, but Regin had pitched his voice to carry over it.

  “We’re doing fine,” Regin decreed, as they sat, crowded into the two tents meant for a total of four, not eight; at least this way they all had space to get in out of the wet, even if it was not completely dry beneath the canvas. “We have nothing to worry about. Canvas still keeps out rain, wood still burns, and we still have the north-needle, which is, thank the gods, not magical. We’ve found the river, and it’s only a matter of time before we either run into the missing Silvers or one of the other parties does. If they do, they’ll try and notify us, realize what happened when they don’t get our teleson, and come fetch us. If we find them first, we’ll just backtrack along the river until we meet one of the other parties, then get back to the base camp. Not a problem.”

  Skan was hardly in agreement with that sentiment, but Regin was the leader, and it was poor form to undermine confidence in your leader when it was most needed by others.

  This is not a wartime situation. And now we know that the magic stealers are just some kind of strange wild animal, not an enemy force. If we’re just careful, we should get out of this intact and with the children. At least, that was what he was trying to tell himself.

  “For tonight, I want a double watch set; four and four, split the night, a mage in each of the two watches.” Regin looked around for volunteers for the first watch, and got his four without Skan or Drake needing to put up a hand.

  Skan did not intend to volunteer, but Filix seemed so eager to make up for the mistake that cost them all their magic, that it looked as if the younger mage had beaten the gryphon to volunteering. Skan wondered what the young man thought he was volunteering for; he was hardly a fighter, and the idea of throwing magic at something that ate magic did not appeal to the gryphon.