Fistanadantilus Reborn ll-2

by Douglas Niles

  He shivered, and the chill came from more than his wet garments. Indeed, as he considered the prospects of a long captivity, with Zack and his knife waiting always in the shadows, the lad didn't have any doubts but that the kender had indeed saved their lives.

  CHAPTER 26

  A Mysterious Affliction

  First Kirinor, Reapember

  374 AC

  Danyal was startled by a sudden movement in the shadows of the pines. He whirled, reaching for the fishing knife that he no longer wore at his belt. Then, as his eyes focused in the dim light, he gasped in shock.

  "A girl!"

  She was hiding in the deep shadow of a streamside boulder but, seeing she was discovered, came hesitantly forth, taking Emilo's arm in a protective gesture.

  "This is Mirabeth," said the kender with grave formality. "She was waiting here for us."

  There was something familiar about the slight figure, who stood a little taller than Emilo. Danyal saw the top-knot that split into two long tails, one over each shoulder, and he was certain.

  "You're not a girl. You're the kendermaid who tamed Nightmare, who showed me where the apples were!"

  "Yes… that was me." Again he heard the musical voice, soft and hushed but still delightful to his ear.

  "Remarkable! Simply remarkable. Now, wait-I must get this down," declared Foryth, fumbling in his pouch for the tools of his trade. "You were feeding apples to our lad, here?"

  "Forget about the book!" hissed Danyal. "Remember, we've got to get away from here before daylight!"

  "The boy is right," Emilo said. "I picked this place for your escape carefully, and we've got a bit of a head start, but we don't want to dally any longer than we have to."

  The historian looked as though he were about to argue, but Danyal stepped in front of him and addressed Emilo Haversack. He felt like a chronicler himself, wanting to ask a thousand questions-starting with why the kender had taken such a risk. Instead, he forced his thoughts along practical lines.

  "Where do we go from here? What's our best chance of getting to some kind of hiding place before daylight?"

  "If we go downstream, we'll meet the river in a few miles. We won't be able to cross, but there's thick woods in the valley, and we could go either right or left along the bank. The walking's easy, with lots of cover."

  "So they'll assume we went that way?" Danyal was trying to think, remembering how easily their camp had been discovered late on the night when he had met Foryth Teel.

  Emilo nodded in response to the question. "Upstream, there's still woods, but we'll find groves of evergreens, like this one, or aspens, with lots of meadows in between. Also, there's a few cliffs where the stream turns to a waterfall."

  "I remember." In fact, Danyal had spent the hour of sunset looking over this same valley, though from the road high on the ridge, the terrain along the streambed had looked much less daunting than it did from here. Still, he didn't think any of the cliffs would prove unclimbable.

  "We should go upstream,” Danyal urged. "I don't think they'll try to look for us that way, and the route down the valley is too easy, too obvious."

  "I agree," Emilo said, quelling any objections Foryth Teel might have raised.

  Surprisingly, the historian also nodded in agreement. "Loreloch is somewhere up in these mountains, so I certainly don't want to waste a lot of time marching back down to the lowlands."

  Danyal looked at the historian in amazement. "You still want to go to Loreloch?"

  "My dear boy, a slight setback should never be allowed to deter the diligent research of the hard-working historian."

  "Setback? You were captured! For Gilean's sake, he held you for ransom!"

  "Tsk-and that provided me with a perfect opportunity to conduct my interviews. An opportunity which, through no fault of my own, has been indefinitely postponed. Now, am I correct in assuming that we should be on our way?"

  "Quite right," the kender declared with a curt nod.

  Emilo led the way, with Mirabeth at his side and Foryth stumbling through the darkness behind. Shaking his head at the historian's single-minded obstinacy, Danyal brought up the rear.

  They tried to climb in silence, but the terrain was rough, and overhanging pines, as well as sharp crags of rock, cast much of the footing into deep shadow. As a result, they frequently stumbled over unseen obstacles, tumbled loose stones into the river, and generally made enough noise, Danyal thought, to rouse the dead from their graves.

  Fortunately they encountered no sign of the bandits. Emilo postulated, reasonably enough, that the men would have backtracked along the road for quite a distance, assuming that in the darkness the escaped captives would not have dared to venture on the steep slopes above and below the rutted track.

  Danyal had no difficulty keeping up, even over the rough ground. In fact, he found himself anxious to continue when Foryth and Emilo paused to catch their breath. They had progressed no more than a mile, and the youth was vividly aware of the dawn that must eventually illuminate the skyline and reveal the muddy slide that had been their escape route.

  "I'll have a look ahead," he said, passing the historian and the kender, who had taken seats on flat rocks near the bank of the stream.

  "I'll come with you," Mirabeth said.

  "We'll be along in a minute," Emilo promised, while Foryth nodded weakly in agreement.

  The kendermaid seemed unaffected by fatigue as she climbed along with Danyal. They picked their way between large rocks, seizing roots and branches to pull themselves upward. In one place, the human youth had to leap to catch a handhold. Scrambling up the steep face of a boulder, he saw that the distance was too great for Mirabeth.

  Danyal stretched himself flat on top of the rock and reached down the face.

  "Here-take my hand," he whispered, projecting just enough to be heard over the musical splashing of the nearby stream.

  She jumped and caught his grip, her weight surprising as she was suspended momentarily by his clutching fingers. Quickly her feet, in their soft moccasins, found solid purchase and she scrambled up to join him atop the rock.

  "Do you think we should wait for them?" Danyal asked, fearing that Foryth and Emilo would have difficulty over this portion of the route.

  "Yes," Mirabeth replied softly. Her eyes were wide, almost luminous in the darkness, and-as when he had first seen her beside the horse-Danyal was struck again by her resemblance to a human girl.

  "Were you traveling with Emilo the other day when I saw you beside the stream near Waterton?" he asked.

  "We were following the road," she said with a nod. "And I saw the orchard and wanted to get some apples. Emilo was tired-he gets that way a lot-so he took a nap while I came down to the trees. I wasn't expecting to see you or your horse."

  "She wasn't my horse," Danyal objected. "At least, not until you haltered her for me."

  He cleared his throat and shook his head against a wave of melancholy, suddenly feeling a strong pang of sadness, missing the mean-tempered mare with more feeling than he would ever have imagined.

  "Where is she-the horse, I mean? Did those men get her?" Mirabeth's smooth brow furrowed in concern, and suddenly the lines of her age were heightened, revealed like clear shadows in the starlight.

  Danyal's chuckle was rueful but fond. "Actually, it was Nightmare that got some of them." His laughter died quickly at the memory of poor Gnar, crippled by the kick of the horse and then executed by his companions, who found his presence an inconvenience. He wondered about Nightmare, hoping the horse was all right.

  Movement stirred below as Foryth and Emilo came into sight. Danyal helped them both up over the steep boulder, then resumed his place at the rear of the little party as they continued upstream along the course of the plunging, splashing brook.

  Soon the steepness mellowed into a grassy valley, where the ground proved soft and marshy underfoot. Moving to the side, they hastened along a low ridge where the terrain was still open, though large clumps of gray-black
rock jutted from the carpet of grass and flowers. The stream was a shimmering ribbon of silver, visible as it meandered back and forth through the flat, low ground.

  Finally the valley walls closed in again, and the course of the waterway returned to its steep and rocky dimensions. More trees grew here. Conscious of approaching dawn, Danyal was relieved to have some semblance of cover overhead. They found a trail that, while narrow and winding, was clear of the obstacles that had tripped them up all night.

  Padding through the dark woods, Danyal strained to see Foryth Teel's tan robe, following the blur of color as they moved more quickly than they had been able to before.

  A gasp of alarm accompanied Foryth's skidding to a halt, and Danyal bumped into the historian roughly.

  "What is it?" asked the lad, pushing for a view around the historian's side.

  Foryth pointed mutely to the ground before them, where one figure writhed on the ground and another, recognizable by her twin ponytails as Mirabeth, knelt nearby and cooed soothing sounds.

  "Emilo!" cried Danyal, in his alarm forgetting to hold his voice to a whisper He, too, knelt beside the kender, seeing that their rescuer was rolling from side to side, back arched, eyes wide and staring.

  "What's wrong?" Foryth whispered, clutching Dan-yal's shoulder.

  "I don't know."

  Even as he spoke his quiet answer, the youth was remembering a man from his village, Starn Whistler, who had been subjected to spells like this-"seizures," the villagers had called them. Danyal had been frightened when he witnessed one of the attacks as a young boy, but his neighbors had been nonchalant. Soon he had learned that, though Starn looked as though he was locked in the greatest agony, the man would awaken slowly from the seizure without lasting harm. Within an hour, he would have returned to normal.

  The symptoms had seemed very much the same as this violent spell, which now caused the kender to make choking sounds, bringing his voice gurgling inarticulately from the depths of his throat. Danyal felt helpless as he watched Mirabeth stroke Emilo's forehead, then lean down to whisper soothingly into the afflicted kender's ear.

  "Can I help?" Danyal knelt beside the kendermaid, who didn't raise her eyes from the struggling figure of Emilo.

  "I don't think so," she whispered. "This happens to him a lot, and the only thing to do is let it pass and to try and keep him safe until then."

  Finally the kender drew a deep, ragged gulp of air, then collapsed limply. His breathing slowed, settling into a normal cadence of sleep. When Danyal felt Emilo's forehead, however, his hand came away wet with sweat. The long brown topknot was matted across the kender's cheeks, and every so often his body would shiver under the assault of violent trembling.

  "He'll need to rest for a short time," Mirabeth said. "He'll be confused when he wakes up, but I think we'll be able to start walking again."

  "I wonder if we should just camp right around here," suggested the human lad, realizing that they were well concealed by the cloaking evergreens. Even as he asked the question, however, he wished they could have put more distance between themselves and the scene of their escape.

  "We should go farther if we can," the kendermaid said.

  A few minutes later Emilo groaned and his eyelids fluttered. Finally they opened and he looked around, his gaze flicking from Mirabeth to Danyal.

  "Who-who are you?" the kender asked.

  "I'm Mirabeth, and this is Danyal. The man over there is Foryth. We're all your friends."

  Dan was amazed at the obvious answer, but as he watched, he saw that Emilo really seemed to be absorbing the information. These were things that he really couldn't recall!

  "And me… who am I?"

  "You're Emilo Haversack, a kender," Mirabeth said frankly. "From one of the oldest, most honorable of the kender clans."

  "What-what happened? Where are we?" Emilo strained to lift himself from the ground, and the pair assisted him into a sitting position.

  "We're in a stream valley in the Kharolis Mountains," Danyal said. "You had a spell. We're waiting for you to get better."

  "I had a spell?" The kender regarded the youth with confusion.

  With a serious nod, Danyal replied, "Yes, but you're going to be all right."

  "Thanks… I…" Abruptly the kender's eyes rolled back in his head, and with a strangled gasp, he fell backward to collapse upon the ground.

  CHAPTER 29

  A Strange Malady

  First Misham, Reapember

  374 AC

  "It got him again!" Danyal cried, patting Emilo's cheek, trying to draw some response from the stiff, motionless kender.

  Once again Mirabeth knelt beside the afflicted fellow, talking to him soothingly. They heard him gasp some strangled, inarticulate sounds, though Dan thought he heard the word "skull" in the midst of the ravings, and finally he drew a deep breath and lapsed into a more relaxed, normal-seeming slumber.

  Some time later the kender stirred, then sat up, looking around with a dazed expression.

  "Can you walk?" Danyal asked, shivering at the dull look he detected in Emilo's eyes.

  "Walk… yes… yes, I can walk." The kender's voice seemed to gain strength from the positive response.

  "Good." Dan turned to Mirabeth. "'Do you want to lead the way? I'll help Emilo."

  "I think I should stay beside him," she said quietly. "Why don't you see if you can find us a path?"

  Foryth brought up the rear as the lad started through the woods, trying to keep his feet on the smooth, winding trail that he could barely see. He felt a glimmer of fear, a moment of melancholy and longing for the secure bed in the loft of his parents' house. But then he banished the memory, knowing he would never be able to go back there. Trying to stare through the darkness, he concentrated on looking for a good path up the rough valley floor.

  Moving at a fast walk, he gradually realized that he could, in fact, discern the path better than before. Looking upward, he saw a patch of the eastern sky between two conical evergreens; the rosy tint of dawn was already reaching toward the zenith.

  Still making good time, Danyal focused his attentions on locating a good place for them to hide during the day The copse of woods they traversed ended soon, and the small party broke into a jog as they crossed a meadow of tall grass and drooping, dew-laden flowers. The stream was out of sight to the left, running through a channel that was slightly deeper than ground level. Soon the enclosing arms of the pines were around them again as they entered a much larger grove.

  "It looks like this woods goes some way up the side valley," Danyal noted as the four travelers paused to catch their breath. "Maybe we should get off this trail and try to hide ourselves up there, at least until dark."

  "Are we running from something?" Emilo asked. His eyes no longer lacked focus, but he asked the question with obvious sincerity.

  "Some men-evil men. I'll tell you all about it when we find shelter," Mirabeth said. "Until then you'll just have to trust us."

  "I do," the kender agreed, chewing on the trailing end of his topknot. "But why don't I remember anything? Even my name?"

  "I told you, you're Emilo Haversack," the kendermaid declared sternly. "And you're our friend, and you'll just have to be satisfied with that for now."

  Silently accepting, Emilo mouthed the clearly unfamiliar sounds of his name several times. Danyal, meanwhile, ducked under the low branches of an evergreen and found a small clearing giving passage through the woods.

  "Go on ahead," he told Mirabeth as she followed with Emilo and Foryth. "I'll brush our tracks off the trail to cover our route if we're followed."

  "Good idea!" the historian agreed, absently grinding his heel into the ground as he tried to adjust his bootlace. "Would you like me to help?"

  "Urn, no," the lad demurred. Foryth followed the two kender while Danyal followed their backtrail to the edge of the meadow. The grass was trampled flat and would undoubtedly mark their passing for some hours to come, so he decided to concentrate on masking their rout
e through the woods.

  In several places, he could see footprints, mostly from the historian, in the soft loam of the needle-covered ground. He brushed these with a branch, starting to back carefully along the route they had taken.

  Abruptly he was taken with an idea. He stepped into the meadow at the end of the trail the companions had made. Moving at a right angle to their path, he took low, sweeping steps toward the bank of the stream. Trampling the grass, he stepped firmly, holding his feet in place to leave clear marks.

  When he reached the edge of the water, he saw that the banks of the streambed were slightly taller than his own height. A short distance below, the water babbled cheerfully along a flat, graveled bed, the flowage no more than a foot or two deep. At the lip of the tall bank, Danyal skidded downward, intentionally leaving a gouge in the dirt and a footprint at the very edge of the water. Next he rinsed his feet free of mud, then climbed across several boulders until he reached the fringe of the wood. Seizing a root of pine, he pulled himself into the shelter of the trees. Here he stepped lightly as he returned to the original backtrail and continued to sweep away their tracks until he reached the place where the trio had turned toward the deep woods.

  Danyal took care to obliterate every sign of their passage, feeling a strange thrill at the thought that he was deceiving Kelryn Darewind, Zack, and the other bandits. Of course, a stern and practical part of him was afraid that they might be followed, but another part was able to take grim pleasure in the knowledge that his careful masking would be certain to thwart the bandit chief and his villainous group of thugs.

  After he had concealed a hundred paces or more of the connecting trail, Danyal tossed his broom-branch aside and jogged after his companions, following footsteps that were barely visible in the smooth forest floor.

  However, he would have gone right past the clump of brambly wild rose that clustered at the base of a low rock promontory, except for the fact that the bush seemed to call out to him as he went by.