by Greg Keyes
This wasn’t an English fellow in Jodhpurs, either. He was hard-looking man with cerulean eyes. He had on worn jeans, a khaki shirt, snakeskin boots and a cowboy hat to complete the image.
Actually the twin six guns and the Winchester rifle completed the image; the saber muddled it a little. He sat his massive piebald horse, staring at David in a clinical sort of way.
“Are these your dogs, sir?” David asked.
“Yes,” he said. “They’ve run you up that tree because they know you don’t belong here.”
“I don’t mean to trespass,” he said. “I never saw a sign.”
“You didn’t get here on your own,” the man said. “You had help.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” David objected. “I just came here to . . .” He broke off. Maybe this was one of the men who had Aster. Surely he was.
“Go on,” the man said.
David didn’t say anything.
The man sighed. “I’ve had a long day,” he said. “I’ve chased abominations and trespassers I should’ve caught. I’ve been interfered with by them that has no business interfering. Now you tell me what you know.”
“I don’t know anything,” David said. “I was just hiking.”
The man sighed and drew his pistol. Without pause he lifted it and fired.
David screamed at the sound, unable to believe what was happening to him. He felt a sharp sting on his cheek.
“Oh, God!” he said.
“You’re not killed,” the man said. “Yet.”
David realized the bullet had struck the tree a few inches from his face, and that it was flying bark that had stung him. He felt blood dribbling down his chin.
“He sent me,” he said, his ears ringing from the gunshot so his words sounded muffled. “He sent me to get Aster. Hypnotized me. Maybe drugged me. Please don’t shoot me. I just—she’s just a girl. I don’t know what you want with her —”
“This Aster,” he interrupted. “She have companions with her? A fellow made of wood, a blond girl?”
“A fellow made of wood?” David said.
Was everyone crazy?
But then he remembered, back at Aster’s house. There had been a sort of puppet or automaton made of wood and wire standing in the doorway. He’d pushed past it and been startled when it moved but then other things had taken his attention. And he remembered the girl, too, golden-tressed and pretty but with something weird about her eyes.
“Yes,” he said.
“And then who sent you after them?”
“I shouldn’t tell you.”
The man raised his gun.
“I can’t tell you!” David shouted. “He hypnotized me. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened.”
But the man cocked his hand and spit before sheathing his gun.
“So you’ve been made to find her?” the man said. “Not of your will?”
“If I try to do anything else—”
But even the thought was so devastating that his whole body went weak, his hold loosened on the tree and he smacked into the leaf-littered floor of the forest.
He closed his eyes, already feeling the dogs ripping him apart with their teeth, but when nothing happened he opened his eyes.
“Get up,” the man said.
David did so.
“I’m trying to find the girl too,” the man said. “But my dogs have lost her scent. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll deputize you and you’ll come along with me. And we’ll find her.”
“I don’t know—” David began.
“Or I can shoot you and let the animals gnaw your bones.”
“Yeah,” David said. “Right. The first option.”
“Fine. You’re a deputy of the Marches. Now you just keep on where you’re going, and I’ll follow.”
“Who are you, sir?” David asked.
“Why, I’m the sheriff,” he replied.
FOUR
CHILD’S PLAY
Errol carried Aster out of the thicket, where they were joined by Veronica, who gave Aster a curious glance. She had drawn the remains of her shirt tight, and the front of it was now soaked with blood.
“Is she dying?” Veronica asked.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Dusk replied. “A spring just down here, I think. Come along.”
“How long was I unconscious?” Aster asked Errol.
“A few hours,” he said. He gave her a brief sketch of what had been happening, including their meeting with Dusk.
By that time, they had reached the spring. Dusk unfastened her helmet and set it on the ground. Long locks of auburn hair tumbled out, and Aster suddenly realized that Dusk—despite her bearing—was probably not much older than she. But she was a great deal prettier. Just above her brows a small, six pointed star gleamed faintly golden in the sunlight.
“The wooden fellow,” Dusk asked. “Is he an enchanted person or a living thing?”
“He is a person,” Aster replied.
“Is he your husband?”
“My . . .?” she started. “No.”
Veronica laughed.
“Then he should stand at a discreet distance,” Dusk said.
“I can hear you, you know,” Errol muttered. “I’ll turn around.”
When he had done so, Dusk pulled her shirt open. Her concerns over modesty were a little excessive, given that Dr. Shecky hadn’t cut through her bra; since he had apparently intended to gut her first, there hadn’t been any need too. Still, she felt exposed, and weak, and not a little terrified and was grateful to have someone thinking of her feelings.
Dusk cleaned the cut with a wet rag, but dark blood welled back up.
“You’re from here?” Aster asked, to take her mind off of the blood. She already knew the answer; the star on Dusk’s forehead said it all. But she was hoping to learn more.
“From this place?”
“From the Kingdoms.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Although I was born very far from this demesne.” She whistled a short little tune, continuing to dab at the wound. Aster heard magic in the melody and began to feel alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” Dusk soothed.
She felt something tickle her ribs, and saw a large black ant was crawling up her side. She gasped and reached to slap it, but Dusk gently stopped her hand.
“No,” she said. “Bide.”
She caught the ant and brought it to Aster’s wound. With her other hand, she squeezed the cut closed. That hurt, a lot.
Then she pushed the insect right up to the incision. It bit her with its fierce-looking pincers. Dusk gave a deft little twist, separating the ant’s body from its head. The head remained clamped on her cut, like a suture.
More ants were on her belly, now, and in a matter of moments, Dusk had the gash closed as tightly as if she had used stitches.
“There,” Dusk said. “That will do for a while, until we find better help.”
“Thank you,” Aster replied.
“I have no garment to lend you, I’m afraid.”
Aster had seen the backpacks hanging from Errol’s shoulder.
“Errol should have one,” she said.
“The wooden man?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ll look,” Errol called, and started going through the pack. Dusk walked over and took the shirt he came out with.
Once Aster was dressed again, Dusk swung back up on her horse.
“We should go,” she said. “The Sheriff will pick up your trail soon enough, and he has authority to follow you here.”
“The Sheriff?” Aster said. “The man with the dogs? Why is he after us?”
“His task is to keep the borders between the Reign of the Departed and the Kingdoms,” she said. “You must have violated his authority.” Her gaze wandered significantly over Errol and Veronica.
Aster nodded. Now some of her father’s warnings made more sense. More, she remembered something now, when she was little, when she and her father were running.
The howling of hounds.
“How do we stop him?” Errol asked.
Dusk shrugged. “He would be difficult to kill. But he has other duties—if the chase becomes too drawn out, he might recrudesce to his station.”
“Why do you keep saying we?” Veronica asked.
“I intend to go along with you, if there is no objection,” Dusk replied.
“But why?” Veronica said. “You don’t know us.”
“I know you are in jeopardy. I am in position to be of assistance. This is all I need to know.”
But Veronica wasn’t ready to back down, just yet.
“It’s just awfully convenient,” Veronica said. “The way we met you in the in-between, right when we needed you. That you saved us in the nick of time back in the thicket.”
Dusk’s brow puckered. “The first was fortuitous, I suppose, although I was following the sound of the horn and the dogs, interested to see what had aroused the sheriff. But as to the second, I merely followed your footsteps. Errol’s are not easy to hide.” Her frown deepened slightly. “I’m surprised you feel I must explain myself.”
“You don’t,” Errol said. “Veronica is just being—Veronica.”
Aster actually thought Veronica had a pretty good point, but thus far Dusk had been nothing but helpful.
“Maybe,” Veronica said. “But it still doesn’t explain why you decided to help us. Did you have to fight the horseman?”
“No,” she replied. “It wasn’t necessary—I merely led his hounds on a fruitless chase. Drake here can outrun almost anything.” She patted her horse’s neck.
“As to why I’m helping you—I suppose I’m intrigued. You seem an interesting lot. You came from the Reign of the Departed, and I’ve never known any such before.”
“I don’t think that’s where we’re from,” Errol said.
“It’s what they call our world, Errol,” Aster told him.
“Departed?” he said. “As in dead?”
“It would take some time to explain,” Aster said.
“So I’m right, in any event,” Dusk said. “To come into the Kingdoms from that place requires no small magic. You must have a reason, and a compelling one, to attempt it. I have an instinct that in helping you, I might further my own cause.”
“What cause is that?” Aster asked.
“I’m on a quest, of sorts, but I’ve reached an impasse. I don’t know where to go from here. I think I was meant to meet you, go where you go, and in doing so find the inspiration I need.” She shrugged.
Aster reflected that Dusk still hadn’t really told them what her cause was, but she wasn’t prepared to press any further, because she didn’t want Dusk asking her similar questions about her own undertaking.
And that star on her forehead, what it might signify. She needed to know more about this girl, although there was danger in that.
“We are grateful for your help,” Aster said.
“Thank you,” Dusk replied. “I advise we not tarry here. The Sheriff is surely back on your path now.”
“Right,” Aster said. But when she tried to stand, she found she couldn’t. Her legs felt like rubber bands.
“You may ride Drake,” Dusk said, preparing to dismount.
“I’ll carry her,” Errol said. “We can go faster.”
“Very well,” Dusk said. “Then all we need is a direction to go in.”
Aster hesitated for a moment. She didn’t have the first clue where to begin her search for the giant. She had supposed that it would somehow just be at hand when she arrived. As loath as she was to tell anyone what she was up to, Dusk was the only person present who might have any idea where she should search.
“I need to find a giant,” she said.
“A giant?” Dusk repeated. “A true giant?”
“Yes,” Aster told her.
“That could be difficult,” Dusk replied. “Most giants live in the most distant kingdoms, in the old high places. Finding such a place—going such a place—they are separate things, and both very difficult. It could take years.”
Aster felt a sort of plummet in her belly.
“Years?” she said, weakly.
But Dusk was still thinking. “Perhaps a lost giant.” she said. “They are few, but they exist. What do you need a giant for?”
“I only know I must find one,” Aster said. “Just as I found these two.” She gestured at Errol and Veronica.
“So you consulted an oracle? You have some reason to expect there is a giant to be found?”
Aster nodded.
“Well, then there must be one,” Dusk replied. She turned her mount toward the mountains.
“There is a good place to start,” she said. “Giants like mountains.”
“I like mountains,” Veronica piped in.
“Are ya’ll kidding?” Errol exploded. “Are we just going to set off in some random direction?”
“It’s not random,” Dusk said. “Giants like mountains.”
“Hang on,” Errol said to Aster. “You knew where to look for Veronica, and you knew you needed me to find her.”
“That’s true,” Aster replied.
“If you knew that, why don’t you know where this supposed giant is?”
“I did a lot of research to figure out where Veronica was,” Aster explained. “I went to the library and read old newspapers and records. I talked to old people who remembered her. And I still might have been wrong. I got lucky. But researching the Kingdoms from our world—that’s more difficult.”
“You don’t have any clues at all?”
Aster sighed, and flicked her gaze over at Dusk, then back.
“Just that an orchard is involved, or some sort of walled garden,” she said.
“Giants like orchards,” Dusk said.
“Well,” Veronica said, pointing northwest. “The mountains are that way.”
They struck across the pasture and then into the woods. Dusk led, and she kept the pace brisk, but she took every opportunity to mislead the sheriff and his dogs, stopping at times to erase tracks and sprinkle something from a bottle she kept in her saddlebags, walking up and down streams. She even collected some of her horse’s droppings and laid a false trail or two. Errol thought he heard the hounds once or twice, but they didn’t seem to be getting closer.
He didn’t like the way Aster looked. Her normally pale face was bone white, and she kept drifting off.
Dusk noticed, too.
“It may well be the creature was septic,” she said, during a pause. “It would not be unusual.”
“I don’t have any magic for that,” Aster murmured.
“Aren’t there any towns?” Errol asked. “Anyplace with real doctors?”
“There was a village,” Aster murmured. “I remember we went around it.”
Dusk looked at her with an odd glint in her eye.
“You’ve been here before, then?”
“When I was little,” Aster said.
Night had crept close upon them when Dusk’s horse whickered nervously. Dusk swore something which—though Errol could not understand the words—sounded unladylike.
Something crouched in the shadows at the side of the road.
Errol felt an involuntary shiver.
In shape, it was more catlike than anything else; it might have been the biggest cougar he had ever seen. But it was hairless, covered instead with slick scales and patterned like a rattlesnake. When it twitched its long, catlike tail from side to side he heard it rattle.
Aside from its tail, only its eyes moved at first, looking from one member of their little group to the other. Then it bunched up tighter, and aimed itself at Dusk and her horse.
Dusk hadn’t been waiting idly. She had unlimbered the long, wicked-looking spear she carried on her mount. But Errol had big doubts she could stop the thing. Everything about it was wrong, and his senses told him that it was the most dangerous thing he had ever seen.
“Aster?” he whispered.
“Can’t think,” she said. “Put me down. Help Dusk.”
He started to do that, when Veronica made a disgusted little noise and started over toward the thing like it was a housecat.
It growled—a horribly unnatural sound—and shifted back, the muscles under its sleek scales bunching strangely so that instead of a cat it appeared almost manlike, as if the bones under its skin could shift at will.
“Stop that, you,” Veronica said, and before Errol could yelp a warning, she had touched it on the muzzle. For a moment the growl stretched, but then Veronica knelt and scratched it under the jaw, and soon it was nuzzling her like a big kitten. Except that the looks it was sending over Veronica’s shoulder suggested that although Veronica might be all right, it still considered the rest of them to be either food or a scratching post.
“Go on, silly,” Veronica said, after a moment. “Before someone gets hurt.”
Incredibly, the monster reluctantly did just that, its tail rattle fading as it drew further from them.
“Wow,” Errol said. “What the hell was that?”
Veronica shrugged. “I don’t know what to call it. There was one that used to visit the Creek Man, and we would play. Sometimes we would—you know—eat together.”
Errol did his best not to picture that.
“I hope it doesn’t have any relatives around,” Aster said.
Dusk was still having trouble controlling her horse.
“Something is wrong,” she said.
“Is it coming back?” Errol asked.
“No,” Veronica said. “I think it’s probably them.”
But by then he saw them too.
They were surrounded.
The first thing Errol noticed was that they had guns. For some reason, he hadn’t really expected that, but there they were. They were rifles and shotguns for the most part, and really old-fashioned looking. About half of the boys—none of them looked much over seventeen—had bow-and-arrows instead. They were motley in dress—some wore overalls, others vests and pants—with or without shirts—and some were stripped down to the waist. Their faces were as variable; some were as dark as anyone he had ever seen, and others as fair as Aster, with pretty much every shade between. Their eyes were black, green, brown and blue. Most had brown or black hair, but a couple of them were dirty blond.
