"Oh, just another of those nightmares," Seregil replied, affecting a nonchalance he didn't feel. He didn't like to think what might have happened if Alec had been in the cabin with him when he'd thrashed his way up out of this latest one.
Sitting up, he reached for his cloak on top of the trunk. The torn nightdress slipped off his shoulder, revealing a patch of reddened skin on his chest, just above the breastbone.
"What's this?" asked Alec, reaching to move the wooden disk aside for a better look.
Icy fingers clamped around Seregil's heart.
Overwhelmed by a sudden, inexplicable fury, he caught Alec by the wrist and shoved him roughly away. "Keep your hands to yourself!" he snarled.
Yanking the cloak around his shoulders, he retreated into the corner of the bunk. "Go to bed. Now.
Hunched in his alcove much later that night, Alec heard Seregil stir.
"Alec, you awake?"
"Yes."
A long pause followed, then, "I'm sorry."
"I know." Alec had been thinking and already had the beginnings of a plan. "Micum said you know a wizard at Rhнminee. Do you think he could help you?"
"If he can't, then I don't know who can." There was another pause. Alec heard something like a dark chuckle, and the sound raised the hair on the back of his neck.
"Alec?"
"Yes?"
"Be careful, will you? Tonight, for just an instant—" Alec tightened his grip on the sword lying across his knees. "It's all right, now. Go back to sleep."
Their last day aboard the Darter was a long one. Seregil spent the morning staring morosely out the window.
Alec maintained a careful distance, preoccupied with his own plans. By afternoon, he was ready to chance Rhal's displeasure and went above.
He settled behind the cutwater, hood pulled up against the wind. By the time they neared Torburn just before sundown, he'd managed to speak with the helmsman and several of the other sailors without their captain noticing. If it was up to him to get them both to Rhнminee, then he had to know how to get there.
To Rhal's relief, Lady Gwethelyn did not appear until the ship had put in at Torburn.
The first mate's tale, already gleefully if discreetly spread among the crew, had amply explained both the silence of the lady and his sudden coolness toward her. Surreptitious nods and nudges were exchanged all around the deck when she finally came above to disembark.
No one but Rhal noticed, however, when the lady slipped a small something into his palm as he handed her down the gangway. Unwrapping the little silk square later that night in his cabin, he found the garnet ring his strange passenger had worn.
"A peculiar character, and no mistake." he exclaimed under his breath. Shaking his head in bemusement, he hid the ring safely away.
11 Dark Pursuit
The cart bumped along over the rutted dirt road through the rolling Mycenian countryside. Seregil sat huddled in his cloak beside Alec on the single rough bench. It wasn't as cold here yet as it had been in the northlands, but snow wasn't far off and the chill seemed to get into his bones.
He found that if he stayed very still he could clear his mind, holding both the pain in his head and the increasingly frequent fits of irrational rage at a manageable level. It was exhausting work. In his more lucid moments he was relieved at how well Alec was managing, though the fact that the boy had not yet slipped away, despite ample justification and opportunity, continued to baffle him.
Their first night ashore in Torburn, they'd taken a tiny room near the riverfront and changed back into their stained traveling clothes. It was then that Alec had calmly outlined his plan.
"You're sick," he began, looking very deliberate. "Since you think this Nysander is the only one who can help, I say we push on for Rhнminee."
Seregil nodded.
Taking a deep breath, Alec continued, "All right then. The way I understand it, the fastest route this time of year is to go overland to Keston, then take a ship to the city—one that goes by way of a canal at somewhere called Cirna. I don't know where any of those places are. You can help me or I'll ask directions as we go, but that's what I mean to do."
Seregil began to buckle on his sword. After a moment's hesitation, however, he handed it instead to Alec. "You'd better take this, and these."
He gave Alec his belt dagger and a small, razorlike blade from the neck of his cloak.
Alec took them without comment, then said almost apologetically, "There's one more."
"So there is." Seregil drew the poniard from his boot and handed it over, fighting back another twinge of hot rage as he did so.
It was an uncomfortable moment for both of them, each knowing perfectly well that these precautions would be useless if Seregil made up his mind to retrieve his weapons. Alec, Seregil noted, kept his own weapons about him.
"How many days will it take to reach Keston?" Alec asked when they were done.
Seregil lay back on the bed and fixed his gaze on the rafters. "Two, if we ride hard, but I doubt I'll be able to do that."
His head hurt again; how long now until another fit came on? A brisk walk in the night air might have helped, but he was too sick to attempt it. Better to concentrate on helping Alec with the details at hand.
"I'll need money," Alec said. "What do you have left?"
Seregil tossed him a purse containing five silver marks and the jewelry he'd worn aboard the Darter.
Turning out his own pouch, Alec added two copper halfs and the Skalan silver piece.
"Hang on to the jewels for now," Seregil advised. "You're not dressed well enough to hawk them without attracting notice. Sell the clothes, though."
"They won't bring much."
"Illior's Hands, money's not the only way to get something! I should think you've been around me long enough to have learned that."
It was dark by the time Alec entered the Torburn marketplace. Only a few of the booths around the square were open, but he finally found a clothier. The dealer proved to be a shrewd bargainer and he came away with a disappointing four silver pennies.
He let out a harsh sigh, tucking the coins away. "That's not going to make my task any easier."
Passing a woman frying sausages on a brazier, he paused longingly, then moved on still hungry.
An hour later, after some hard bargaining, he was the owner of a battered pony cart. Though hardly more than a large box set on a single axle, it looked sturdy enough. This, and the purchase of a few modest provisions, left him with exactly two copper halfs and the Skalan coin. Buying a horse was clearly out of the question.
Time I turned thief for good, he thought, still stinging from Seregil's parting admonition.
He returned to the inn for a few hour's sleep, then slipped quietly downstairs just before dawn.
Letting himself out a side door, he pulled on his boots and headed for the stable.
Great droves of silver-gilded clouds moved slowly past the sinking moon. Alec's heart hammered uncomfortably in his chest as he lifted the latch on the stable door. With a silent prayer to Illior, protector of thieves, he crept in.
A guttering night lantern gave enough light for him to avoid the drunken stable hand snoring in an empty stall. Moving on, a shaggy brown and white pony caught his eye. Throwing a halter around its neck, he led the beast out to the nearby alley where he'd hidden the cart and harnessed it. With this completed, he hurried back to the room.
Seregil was awake and ready to go. One look told Alec that his night had not been a peaceful one.
Despite this, he eyed Alec's cart and pony with a shadow of his old crooked smile, his face just visible in the failing moonlight.
"Which one did you pay for?" he asked softly.
"The cart."
"Good."
By sunrise they were well on their way to Keston.
The road wound through rolling winter-bare farmland and countryside and they met only a few wagons and an occasional patrol of the local militia. With the harvest in and the G
old Road closing down until spring, Mycena would be a quiet place through the winter.
Seregil sank deeper into gloomy silence through the day, answering Alec's few attempts at conversation in such a dispirited manner that he soon gave up. When they stopped for the night at a wayside inn, Seregil retired immediately, leaving Alec to sit alone over his ale in the common room.
By the next morning Seregil's hunger had faded to a hollow ache; even the thought of water nauseated him.
Worse still, he was feeling guilty about Alec. The boy had proved too honorable to run off, but how he must be regretting his vow to stay. Seregil was trying to gather the strength for pleasant conversation as they road along when a hint of motion caught his eye off to the left. He turned quickly, but the field was empty. He rubbed at his eyes, thinking it was a trick of his weakened body, but the flicker came again, just on the edge of his vision.
"What's the matter?" asked Alec, giving him a puzzled look.
"Nothing." Seregil scanned the empty countryside. "Thought I saw something."
The annoying flicker came repeatedly as the day went on, and by afternoon he was more tense and withdrawn than ever. It might be some new quirk of the madness growing in him, he thought, but well-tried instincts counseled otherwise. Another violent headache had also grown through the day, leaving him too dull-witted and queasy to give the matter proper consideration.
Pulling his cloak tight against the cold wind, he kept watch and fought off the desire to sleep.
They spent that night in the hayloft of a lonely farmstead. Seregil's nightmares returned in force and he woke up bathed in a cold sweat at dawn.
An undefined sense of anxiety gnawed at him; he couldn't recall the details of the dream, but the wary sidelong glances he caught from Alec suggested that he'd been more restless than usual. He was just considering asking the boy about it when he thought he saw motion in a dark corner of the barn. Alec was busy with the harness and didn't see him brace, reaching for the sword that no longer hung at his side. There was nothing there.
This will be his fourth day without eating, Alec thought as they rattled off down the road again.
Wan and hollow-eyed as Seregil looked, he was bearing up better than Alec had imagined possible. Physically, that was; Seregil's odd behavior was increasingly alarming.
Today he sat hunched over like an old man, despondent except for occasional bursts of intent alertness. At those moments, a terrible glitter came in his eyes and his fists would clench until it seemed his knuckles must surely break through the skin. This new development, coupled with the strange events of the previous night, did not bode well.
Alec was beginning to be as frightened of Seregil as he was for him.
He hadn't intended to sleep the previous night, but the exhaustion of the past few days caught up with him and he'd dozed off. In the middle of the night he'd awakened to find Seregil crouched less than a foot away, eyes shining like a cat's in the dark, his breathing was so harsh it was almost a growl. Motionless, he simply stared at Alec.
Alec wasn't certain how long they'd remained frozen like that, staring each other down, but Seregil finally turned away and threw himself down in the straw.
Alec had spent the remainder of the night keeping watch from a safe distance.
In the morning neither of them spoke of the incident.
Alec doubted whether Seregil recalled it at all. But that, together with Seregil's nervous vigilance today, strengthened his resolve to not close his eyes again until he could lock his companion safely in a ship's cabin at sea.
Driving along in daylight, however, Alec could see all too clearly how Seregil was suffering. Reaching behind the bench, he pulled out one of their tattered blankets and laid it over his shoulders.
"You're not looking so good."
"Neither are you," Seregil croaked through dry lips.
"If we drive through the night, we might make Keston by tomorrow afternoon. I could probably manage the reins for a while-if you need to sleep."
"No, I'll be fine!" Alec replied quickly. Too quickly, it seemed, for Seregil turned away and resumed his morose vigil.
The sense of pursuit grew stronger as the day dragged on. Seregil was beginning to catch glimpses of whatever it was that stalked him, a glimmer of movement, the blur of a dark figure that disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Just after midday he started so violently that Alec laid a hand on his arm.
"What is it?" he demanded. "You've been doing that since yesterday."
"It's nothing," Seregil muttered, but this time he was certain he'd caught sight of someone on the road far behind them.
Soon after, they topped the crest of a hill and came upon a Dalnan funeral. Several well-dressed men and women and two young children stood by the road, singing as they watched a young farmer driving an ox and plow in the middle of an empty field. The winter soil gave way grudgingly before the plowshare, coming up in frozen plates of earth. An elderly woman followed the driver, scattering handfuls of ash from a wooden bowl into the fresh furrow. When the last of it was gone, she carefully wiped out the inside of the dish with a handful of earth and poured it out onto the ground. The farmer turned the ox and plowed slowly back over it.
A dusting of snow floated down as Alec and Seregil rattled past in their cart.
"It's the same as in the north," Alec remarked.
Seregil glanced back listlessly.
"The way they plow the ashes of the dead back into the earth, I mean. And the song they were singing was the same."
"I didn't notice. What was it?"
Encouraged by his companion's show of interest, Alec sang:
"All that we are is given by you, O Dalna, Maker and Provider.
In death we return your bounty and become one with your wondrous creation.
Accept the dead back into the fertile earth that new life may spring from the ashes
And at the planting and at the harvest will the dead be remembered.
Nothing can be lost in the hand of the Maker. Nothing can be lost in the hand of the Maker."
Seregil nodded. "I've heard that—"
Breaking off suddenly, he lunged for the reins and yanked the pony to a stop. "By the Four, look there!" he gasped, looking wildly across the field on their left. A tall, black-swathed figure stood less than a hundred yards from the road.
"Where? What is it?"
"Right there!" Seregil hissed.
Even at the distance of a bow shot Seregil could see something amiss in the lines of the figure, some profound wrongness of proportion that disturbed him more than the fact that Alec obviously could not see it himself.
"Who are you?" Seregil shouted, more frightened than angry.
The dark figure regarded him silently, then bowed deeply and began a grotesque dance, leaping and capering about in a fashion that would have been ridiculous if it wasn't so horrible. Seregil felt his whole body go numb as the nightmarish performance continued.
Shuddering, he shoved the reins into Alec's hands.
"Get us away from here!"
Alec whipped up the pony without question.
When Seregil looked back, the weird creature had vanished.
"What was that all about?" Alec demanded, raising his voice to be heard over the rattling of the cart.
Trembling, Seregil gripped the edge of the seat and said nothing. A few moments later he looked up to find the thing walking in the road ahead of them. At this range he could see that it was too tall to be a man. And there was too much distance between the shoulders and the head, not enough between shoulders and hips, so that the arms appeared immensely long, its movements graceless but powerful. It looked back over one sloping shoulder and beckoned to him, as if to hurry him toward some destination.
"Look there!" Seregil cried in spite of himself, gripping Alec's arm as he pointed. "All in black. Bilairy's Eyes, you must see it now!"
"I don't see anything!" Alec replied, the edge of fear clear in his voice.
Seregil released him with a snarl of exasperation.
"Are you blind? It's as tall as a—" But even as he pointed again it vanished with a parting wave of its arm. An icy wave of fear rolled over him.
Throughout the remainder of that leaden afternoon his dark tormentor toyed with him, playing an evil game of hide-and-seek. First Seregil would spy it far off, spinning madly in the middle of a bare field. A moment later it would appear beside him, striding beside the cart close enough to touch. A troop of Mycenian militia rode by and he saw it lurching along unnoticed in their midst; soon after it rode past in the opposite direction on the back of a farm wagon.
Alec clearly could not see it and Seregil soon gave up calling his attention to it; whatever the visitations meant, they were for him alone.
The worst came just as the sun was stooping to the horizon. He hadn't seen the specter for nearly half an
hour. Suddenly a wave of appalling coldness engulfed him. Jumping unsteadily to his feet, he whirled to find the creature crouched in the tail of the cart, arms outstretched as if to gather both Alec and him to its breast. The hem of its black sleeve actually brushed Alec's head.
Then it laughed. An obscenely rich chuckle bubbled up from the depths of the black hood and with the sound came a charnel stench so revolting that Seregil retched dryly even as he grappled with Alec for the boy's sword.
Obviously convinced that Seregil had gone completely mad at last, Alec fought him for it and they both toppled over the side.
They came down hard with Seregil on top. The pony continued on a few yards, then shuffled to a stop. Looking up, Seregil saw that the cart was empty.
He rocked back on his heels and drew in deep, shuddering breaths, one hand pressed to his chest.
"Look at me!" Alec demanded angrily, scrambling up to grasp him by the shoulders. "Never mind about the pony. It's not going anywhere. You've got to tell me what's going on! I want to help you, but damn it, Seregil, you've got to talk to me!"
Seregil shook his head slowly, still staring over his shoulder at the cart. "Get us off the road before dark!" he whispered.
"Tell me what you saw!" Alec cried, shaking him in frustration.
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