A Gnome! Mardu cried out, over their link. Hide! The Gnomes and the Wasketchin are at war! If he sees you he will attack!
The Gnome looked around with darting movements of his eyes and head. Eliza froze and watched him from scarcely ten feet away. Even without Mardu’s warning, terror crept its way up from her stomach, with its own grim reminder. The last Gnome she had seen had tried to kill her in some underground perv lair. What would this guy do if he saw her? She did not want to find out. Had he heard her approach? His eyes darted left and right as she watched him, but he did not pause when he glanced in her direction. Then he looked straight back toward the fire at the camp site, probably ruining any night vision he might have had in the process. Eliza thanked herself for her luck and slowly crouched down, sidling sideways as she did so, inching herself silently toward the deeper shadow of the large tree that stood off to her left. Scraw seemed to understand the situation, and clung to her shoulder as best he could, without a flutter or a squawk as her movements threatened to shake him free. Eliza kept her eyes on the Gnome as she made her way toward cover, but his gaze did not track with her. It seemed she had not been discovered.
Once she got behind the tree, Eliza leaned heavily against it, sucking air in and out, trying to calm her thumping heart. She pulled the blanket up higher, tugging its loose end up over her head, seeking its shadows to hide her face. And then a horrible thought occurred to her. The boys! What had happened to them? Eliza inched around her tree and risked a peek, but there was little she could see.
The Gnome guard appeared to have moved off, but how long would he be gone? Wait here, she said, meaning both Scraw and Mardu. I may need backup. Once the crow had stepped quietly off her shoulder, onto the branch beside her, Eliza sucked her courage up into her lungs and ventured cautiously out from behind her dark shield tree.
Gnomes normally have excellent dark vision, Mardu cautioned.
Not when they’re stupid, Eliza replied. This one kept looking back at the fire. I think he was scared.
Eliza crept further forward, keeping her body low to the ground and her hood pulled down over her face. From her vantage, on the slope above the hut, she could see three Gnomes below her. Two were on watch, one upstream, to her right, the other downstream, back near the hiker-berries. The third stood at the stream bank, tying the boys together with a thin rope. But for some reason, they were happy to just stand there, with vacant expressions, allowing themselves to be bound.
Why are they cooperating? Why don’t they run? Did they even put up a fight?
I do not know, Mardu replied. There was a quiet rustle of feathers and Eliza saw a dark shape flit down toward a tree near the bank.
It makes no sense, Mardu said. They just stand together, waiting to be tied.
When the Gnome had finished linking the boys, he wrapped the end of his rope around a branch—not even bothering to tie it—and then hobbled away toward the fire with his awkward Gnome-gait. Like the guard she had seen earlier, this one’s eyes kept flicking about with apprehension, seemingly nervous of the leafy unknown beyond the reach of the fire’s light.
What has happened to my people? Mardu asked. Even when their captor’s back is turned and his attention so obviously elsewhere, they do nothing. They simply stand, as though waiting to be led off to breakfast. Where are my mighty warriors?
As much as Eliza hated to admit it, even boys were not that stupid. Somehow they must have been drugged into a stupor.
Maybe that’s what happens when you give them a few thousand years of peace? Eliza asked.
No, Mardu replied. Peaceful they have become, yes, but not sheep. They have been charmed.
Great, drugged with magic, Eliza thought. So they’ll be no help at all. Not to us and not to themselves. She rubbed at her arms in the chill night air. Her skin was still slightly sticky from the berry juice. She’d washed the worst of it off as she’d stormed away from the boys earlier, but she hadn’t taken time for a full rinse, and she could only imagine that she still looked almost as scary as she had when she had first emerged from the hedge. Could she use that? Would she be able to frighten the guards for long enough? But long enough to do what? That slender thought of attacking died however, when a fourth Gnome emerged from the hut. Three? Maybe. If she was lucky. But four? Even at her most scary-looking, Eliza didn’t like those odds.
This new Gnome carried something with him, but he stood in shadow and she couldn’t make it out. A vaguely round shape, clutched tight under one arm. He shambled over to the fire and held a brief conversation with the rope-Gnome, who nodded in agreement. When the discussion was over, Eliza watched in confused silence as the junior Gnome snatched a burning branch from the fire and went over to the hut, where he set the flaming stick at the base of the dehn, next to the door, and walked away. Did he think he could burn it down? A living ring of trees? With a single, smoldering branch?
I do not know, Mardu replied. Eliza hadn’t even realized she’d been sending.
Back at the fire, the fourth Gnome raised his round burden to the flames. It was a large container, she realized, as she caught a glimpse of firelight shining off it in winks. Metal of some kind. And polished. Then she recognized it. But how could that be? One of Regalia’s urns? Here? After saluting the fire with his giant cup, the Gnome brought it down and tipped his head back. He was drinking from it! Then he lowered the urn and turned to face the shelter, as he uttered a single snarling bark of a word.
Get down! Mardu shouted suddenly.
And the entire hut exploded in a concussion of flame.
* * *
The burst of heat that erupted from the hut knocked Eliza to the ground. When she had scrambled back to her knees, she saw that one of the Gnomes had been caught off guard as well, and was now whimpering for help from the middle of the hiker-berries. But his companions did not go to his aid. Instead, they arranged themselves around the shuffling Wasketchin boys down by the stream, and with a tug on the rope to get them moving, marched their string of captives toward the blazing fire and the hill.
Toward her!
Little help? Eliza sent. A distraction maybe? But there was no response from Mardu. Had she been hurt in the explosion? But Eliza didn’t have time to worry about Mardu right now. The Gnomes were still coming right at her. In a few seconds, they would pass the raging fire and begin to climb up the slope.
Hot yellow light bathed everything—the Gnomes, their captives, and even helpless Eliza, kneeling there in plain sight. The lead Gnome hadn’t seen her yet, but surely even the slightest movement would draw his attention. She flicked her eyes—left, right, anywhere! But dammit, there wasn’t so much as a stump to hide behind. If not for the dark blotchiness of her stained blanket and the fact that she was frozen motionless on her hands and knees, they’d have already seen her. She could already make out the soft downy hairs that covered the leader’s face. The layer of fuzz glowed with reflected firelight in a golden halo that enveloped the great, flapping flesh-loaf of a nose that dominated his face. At any moment he was going to look up and see! His eyes would lock onto hers…
Remain calm. Think.
Mardu? Is that you? Again there was no reply.
But she was right. Eliza forced herself to breathe slowly and to think. Why hadn’t the Gnome seen her already? The fire! It was in front of him, still searing his vision. But not for long. He was almost even with the hut now, and as soon as he passed it and put its flames behind him…
But she just could not bring herself to break cover and run. She just knelt there, facing downhill, her weight still carried on arms that quivered and shook with fear. She wanted to run. She needed to run. But she could not. Whimpering with mounting fear, Eliza watched and sobbed as the leader of the Gnome group advanced past the hut. Any second his eyes would adjust. Any moment his gaze would lock… But still she could not move. He was only twenty feet away.
Eliza’s legs finally gave up waiting for orders from her brain, and slowly gathered themselves togethe
r beneath her, making ready to flee on their own. Stop that! she screamed at them inside her head. Crap oh crap oh crap! But it was too late. Already the leader’s gaze was turning toward her, toward the movement of her legs.
“Scraw!” At that moment, a black shape spun crazily from the trees, out of control, and spiraled into the hiker-berries, more a desperate lurch and plummet than actual flight. An instant later, a high, watery screech rose from the berry hedge. A screech of Gnomish pain. All the Gnomes jerked around at the sound, and for a moment, Eliza looked that way too.
But her feet didn’t.
They, at least, recognized this slender morsel of a chance, and before she could even murmur a silent thanks to her feathered friend, Eliza’s body flung itself away toward the darkness. It took her brain a moment to realize that her body was now running away without her, and when she did, she wisely decided to join it, taking over the management job from her legs, calling in favors from her lungs and her arms and sprinting now with her entire body. Eliza flew across the face of the slope, crashing through the low ground cover, snapping twigs and branches, heedless of anything save the need to reach that nearest cluster of trees and the hallowed darkness they guarded behind them.
In her mind, she was as noisy as a nun falling down a flight of stairs, and she was certain that the Gnome leader would grunt out one of his spell-barks at any instant and set her ablaze, like the hut. But she heard nothing above the roar of the fire and the pitiful wailing of the injured Gnome in the berry hedge. No cries of alarm. No snarls of command. And thankfully, no shouts of recognition from the boys either.
At long last, after what felt like an hour of terror-propelled flight, Eliza reached the cluster of trees and threw herself behind them, dropping to the ground in utter, exhausted surrender. If they had seen her, she was done. She was totally spent. Her lungs heaved in and out, clutching at the air in great sucking gasps. She strained her ears, trying to hear any pursuit, but all she heard was the hammering of her heart, the wheezing rasp of her lungs, and the steady, deeper roar of the flames.
Then she remembered her friends. Scraw? she thought.
We are safe, Mardu replied, and Eliza added a sigh of relief to the list of things she would do once she could breathe again.
For several long minutes, she just lay there, reveling in the relief of not being dead. After a time, when still no shouts of alarm had been raised, and no Gnomes had been sent to search among the trees, Eliza dared to push herself up and roll over. It was the hardest thing she had ever done, to lean her face out of the protective shadows and into the light of the fire. Hooded or not, she was sure she would be seen, certain that a Gnome face would snap at her the moment she looked around the trunk.
But there was nothing. To her left, at the top of the slope, she was just in time to see the back of the last Gnome as he disappeared over the top of the slope into darkness. At the base of the slope, the fire had exhausted most of its easy fuel, and the skeleton of the hut could now be seen through the smoke, black ribs, etched with embers of glowing orange. Beyond it, the hiker-berry bush looked as though it had been torn apart by wild animals. Apparently the Gnome who had been flung there had not wanted to be left behind.
Then it hit her. To her complete, and utter astonishment, they were alone. They were safe. “Hooray for us,” she said weakly.
And then she began to shake.
* * *
Once the trembling had subsided to merely jackhammer levels, Eliza stood up and limped her way down to the stream. She needed to clean the cuts and scrapes on her arms and legs and her poor, bare feet. But when she got there, she was stopped short by a twisted shape lying across the rocks at the water’s edge. Eliza swallowed hard. It was a body. She stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. Then finally, she sucked up her courage and took another step.
She could see the twist of a fabric-covered arm, and the swell of a hood. Whoever it was, he was turned face down. A strap trailed away from his leg and hung down into the water, twitching and tugging in the rippling current. Eliza took another step, peering through the pale moonlight. Scared to go closer, but scared not to, as well. What if he wasn’t dead? But it could be a trap, too. Eliza took another step. And then she started to laugh.
It was somebody’s laundry.
Three large pieces of cloth, freshly washed and laid out to dry. What she’d seen as an arm was in fact just an empty sleeve, and judging by the hoods and straps she could make out, it was probably a couple of the strange robes everyone seemed to wear around here. With a sudden giggle of relief, Eliza flung her tattered blanket aside and grabbed one of the garments. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get it on.
She was completely tangled in her unfamiliar new wardrobe when Mardu and the crow flapped down to join her, coming to rest on an old stump that jutted out over the water.
Eliza looked up and a more serious thought occurred to her. “We are going after them, right?”
To what hope? Scraw cocked his head in honest curiosity.
Eliza knew that it was really Mardu answering her, but it was still weird trying to match a crow’s body language to the very human voice she heard in her head. “To rescue them, of course. I thought that part was obvious.” She flipped a loose strap of fabric up over her shoulder, trying to decide if that’s where it was supposed to go.
Scraw shook his entire body. We cannot.
Eliza stopped fiddling with the belt thing and looked up at him. “What do you mean, we ‘cannot?’ Of course we can. As soon as the sun is fully up, we march over that hill and go the same way they went. They’re not exactly forest ninjas, you know. Even I can see that they leave a trail a blind man could follow, and this is the first time I’ve ever even been in a forest. We could totally do this.”
Scraw stamped a foot and glared back. Yet we will not, Mardu said.
“But we bound them to your stupid mission! We claimed them! And you don’t get do-overs on something like that. Where I come from, people like us stick together, because we’re all we have. We don’t turn our backs on each other, and that’s what you’re suggesting—turning our backs on them!”
You think I don’t know that? You think I watched my father lead his warriors into battle after battle against Dragons and Miseratu and xiucatl and windigos and yet learned nothing about the duties of command? That I do not know how a general must love his warriors more dearly than his own eyes?
Eliza let out a deep sigh. “You’re right,” she said. “I forgot. I’m sorry.” The memory of the horrors that Mardu had shared with her earlier came rushing back. Who was she to lecture a warrior queen on the etiquettes of leadership? “But do we really have to abandon them?”
Scraw looked down at the water and his shoulders slumped. We must, Mardu replied. For now. Time is not our friend, Eliza. With every day, the Gnome King grows stronger and his enemies—our friends—grow weaker. We can risk no delays. We must find stronger allies if we are to change the flow of history. And we must find them quickly.
“So how do we do that?”
Well, on this point, at least, I have a thought.
“K-k-k-keh!” Scraw laughed.
Eliza didn’t like the sound of that.
But first, let me explain the kirfa. You have it on upside down.
Eliza groaned and let the stupid fabric pool around her knees. “I’m all yours,” she said, and then a shudder of realization trembled through her. I am so totally and helplessly yours.
Chapter 10
Djin adventurers do not use maps. They discover the way to all the places of the Forest by smell and by feel. They learn to recognize the shape of the land as one trail wends into a particular village, or the way a river skirts past an especially welcoming homestead. But with the job of both Way Finder and Chanter falling to him, and with the ominous presence of the Wagon now hanging above them as well, Abeni had little time to look around.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?”
It was late morning o
f the day after they’d left the Wagon crater. The two travelers were sitting at the side of a stream they had just forded, and Abeni was busying himself over a small fire. The Wagon stood on its runners at the crest of the river bank nearby.
“Abeni is not lost,” he said, as he raised one powerful arm to point off into the trees, without even turning his head from whatever he was doing among the embers of his fire. “The Anvil is there,” he said. “Two days’ journey from this place. No more.” But the tree cover was too thick for Tayna to confirm this.
They’d had glimpses of the Anvil, of course, and the Wagon had always seemed to be pointed straight at it when they had, but as far as she could tell, they didn’t always seem to be walking straight toward it. For some reason, Abeni was leading her along an almost drunken zig-zag path.
“So why are we wandering back and forth then?”
Abeni pulled two small bowls from the fire and set them on the ground to cool. At their first stop, he had surprised her by digging into a muddy bank with his hands and pulling out a sticky wad of clay, which he had then fashioned into bowls and baked in their camp fire. Later that day, he had paused their journey in mid-chant to collect roots and leaves and bark, which he had then placed into the Wagon’s tailbox with some obvious delight, but again he had answered all her questions with silence and a sly smile. But now she caught a faint scent on the air and her face brightened with delight.
“Boh-cho! You’re making boh-cho!” And before Abeni could even nod, Tayna snatched up one of the bowls and held it to her face with both hands, savoring the spicy aroma of the Djin traveler’s brew.
There had been some roasted beet-like things, on the first day, and the two of them had eaten their fill of the tough little roots, breaking the long fast that had been forced on them by the Cold Shoulder, and there had been a thin leafy soup before sleep that night. But as nutritious and healthy as their diet had become, this was more than just nutrition and eight essential vitamins. This was boh-cho! And boh-cho was… civilized. Boh-cho meant they were okay. Boh-cho meant they were going to make it.
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