He glanced over at his companion every time he passed her, just to see if anything had changed. Shar's face was utterly still, without expression of any kind. Once again, she looked like a statue sitting there; if he hadn't seen her chest rising and falling in slow, even rhythm, he'd have thought she was dead, spellbound, or otherwise incapacitated.
And that chest, rising and falling, up and down, slowly—
It looked as good as the rest of her. He prowled a series of full circuits around the Mustang, still without seeing anything. This bit of magic was taking her a lot longer than the last time she'd done something. Of course, the last time, she'd had the Gate right in front of her, and this time they didn't even know if there was a Gate over here.
What would they do if there wasn't a Gate here? A good question. Turn around and go back, I guess. Take our chances with one of the unfriendly settings, or with the place before that. It was cold and not very hospitable, but we wouldn't have to be there all that long. I hate to backtrack, though. We might meet something on our tail. That would be bad.
It shouldn't take them all that long to get on our tail, either. All they have to do is figure out that Shar didn't move the Mach I like she said she did.
By now, Madoc Skean must have figured out they'd slipped through his fingers. He and his cronies were surely on their trail in some form or other. How long would it take him to sort through all of the possibilities? He wasn't stupid; he wouldn't have amassed as many allies as he'd had if he was. He had to be on his way already.
There—something flickered at the edge of his vision again. This time he patrolled a few more soundless steps, then made an abrupt about-face, hoping to catch whatever it was in the act of eluding him.
Nothing. Not even an eddy of mist.
Maybe this place is getting to me, making me see things. Haven't been this jumpy in a long time.
He decided that he might as well prowl in the opposite direction, since he was facing that way anyway.
Madoc's not stupid, and he's got a lot of ears in other domains. So, given how good a spy-network Madoc has, by now he's surely heard about our little visit to the Hall of the Mountain King. From there, there're only five destinations besides the one we came from. Given enough people to check them out . . . yeah, he could be on to us right now.
"Eh, lad?" Tom Cadge called from inside the car, sounding anxious. "How long ye reckon afore the blackguards follow us?"
Even the old man was following his thoughts.
"I don't know, Tom," he answered truthfully, leaning against the car to talk through the window. "Could be they're after us right now. The one thing we've got going for us is that they've got to tread the same maze that we do. With any luck, they'll get as lost as we are."
Tom nodded, his mouth solemn below his bandaged eyes. "Mayhap they'll blunder into a nest 'o their own foes, eh? Like knockin' over a beehive. That'd be a choice jest."
"Oh, that'd be the best thing that could happen," Tannim told him, with a mental image of the Black Bard's surprise on finding his home invaded by his old rival Madoc. That would be a lovely sight to see! If Madoc got out of there with half his followers, he'd be lucky. The Black Bard was without mercy when it came to his few friends—and when given a chance at a foe . . .
Tom cocked his head to one side for a moment, then grimaced. "This place is mortal strange, lad. I keep thinkin' I'm hearin' summat off i' the distance, an' then when nothin' comes of it, thinkin' it's nobbut m' addled wits."
"Well you're not alone. I keep seeing things, but when I turn to look at them, there's nothing there." He pushed away from the car as Shar stirred. "Well, it looks like the lady may have found us something. Keep your ears open, all right? They're probably keener than mine."
"Aye, I will," Tom promised solemnly.
Tannim reached the front of the Mustang just as Shar opened her eyes. "There is a Gate here, but it's a long way off," she said, stretching her arms and blinking to clear her sight. "I wouldn't have believed this pocket was so big—that Gate must be six or eight miles from here. I can't think of too many places Underhill that are this size, and all of them have huge populations."
Tannim raised an eyebrow at that. "I wouldn't have thought it could be that big either; I would have thought that a pocket this large would have been claimed by now."
"Maybe it has," she replied ominously. "I caught distinct traces of Unseleighe magics out there. Only traces, so this isn't truly a domain of theirs, but they use this place for something."
"Grand." He sighed, and hefted the crowbar just for the reminder of its comforting weight. "Well, let's get on the road, shall we? If we're moving, we're a harder target to hit."
She slid off the hood without a comment, and landed lightly on the sand. He turned around and headed for the driver's side. He reached his seat a fraction of a second before she took hers, but this time they both fastened their safety belts.
She pointed directly ahead when he looked to her for directions. "Straight on, the way we were already going," she said.
He nodded, with a quick glance at the gas gauge. He'd started this trek with darn near a full tank of gas, and he'd tried to be careful—
And we're still a hair above the three-quarter margin, he noted with a bit of relief. Hard to find a gas station out here, and neither of us are Sidhe, to be able to ken and replicate whatever we want.
He started the Mustang and drove on, slowly, in the direction she indicated. Visibility still wasn't good enough to warrant going faster than fifteen or twenty. Another towering rock-sample emerged out of the mist right in front of them, this one a huge nugget of pure copper, constructed like a branching coral formation.
Weird. Just too weird. He shook his head, and drove on.
* * *
A half an hour later by his watch, the mist had thinned to no more than a veil, upping visibility to about half a mile. The landscape had been changing for about the past fifteen minutes. The rock formations grew smaller, replaced by groves of dead and leafless trees, stretching blackened limbs against the white haze in the distance. Overhead was exactly the same as the nonexistent horizon: white haze. Lighting was a constant semidusk, nondirectional. All the place needed was a vulture or two for atmosphere.
The terrain itself had changed in that time; getting rougher, with increasingly steep hills and deep valleys, and nothing like a road in sight. The Mustang wasn't built for territory like this; heck, the Mustang wasn't built for anything but a real road. The only way to handle this kind of situation was to work his way up and down the hills in a zig-zag pattern, or travel along the ridge until a better crossing place showed up. The ground was still made of that strange sand; why it didn't slide and behave like dune-sand he had no idea. The top layer would slide down a little as the Mustang's wheels touched it, making the going a bit treacherous and tricky to drive, but beneath the top layer, the ground was firm.
That didn't help much, not when his jaw ached from clenching it and his knuckles were white from clutching the steering wheel.
Finally, they topped a rise only to find themselves looking down into a valley with a fifty-degree slope. Tannim stopped the car altogether.
"We can't take this in the Mach I," Shar said abruptly, before he could say a word. "Nothing short of a Land Rover could negotiate a slope like that. Tannim, I'm amazed you got this far—I'd have given up a mile ago. I almost asked you to quit when we passed that hematite boulder."
Tannim stared down the smooth slope, unbroken except for an occasional boulder of some highly polished stone or by a trio or quartet of spindly black trees, and nodded. Finally, after a long silence, he coughed.
"I'm pretty much stuck here without you," he admitted. "I don't know how to work those Gate things without already knowing the setting I want. I guess it's going to be up to you. Do we ditch the Mach I and try for this new Gate on foot?"
He was hoping she would think that was a bad idea. I'll argue with her if I have to, but we're partners in this. I'm not g
oing to make an arbitrary decision for both of us.
Shar shook her head immediately. "No," she replied decisively. "Not a chance. This is one we're going to have to do without. It'd take us hours to get there on foot, Tom couldn't do it, and we'd be without our protection, our ability to move quickly, and our power source. That wouldn't be stupid, it would be suicide."
He ground his teeth to relieve his frustration, then gave voice to the only other solution, the one he'd already contemplated. "We go back. And try the other Gate."
She nodded, her own face displaying her distaste for the obvious. "And unless we're willing to take the chance on running into the people following us by going back to the frozen plain—the only other setting we stand a chance with is Charcoal's holding."
"We'll decide that when we get there," he replied. "One problem at a time."
At least he had a good idea how to get back. The soft sand didn't hold tracks forever, but he could still make out a clear trail behind them. While the tire-tracks in the sand were still visible, he could follow them. And after that—he'd kept track of the various rock-samples they'd passed. Unless the unknown collector (if there was one) had a habit of swapping them around on a regular basis—or they moved on their own—he'd get back to the point where the mist got so thick he could use his talent to find the gap in the walls again.
It didn't feel right, though, turning back like this. Besides being frustrating, it felt as if he had missed a point somewhere. Granted, this wasn't a video game, where you always got the next level if you did things in the right order, but still—turning back felt like a mistake. There ought to have been a way, but if there was, he hadn't seen it, and neither had Shar.
One thing was oddly comforting, though, and that was Shar's behavior. Not only had she refused to give up the Mustang—she'd refused to dump Tom Cadge.
That was automatic, too. She didn't lean over and whisper to me that we ought to abandon him with the car. She didn't suggest we leave him and come back for him with help. It wasn't, "we could leave the passenger behind, but that wouldn't be right." Instead, it was, "it would take us hours on foot, and Tom couldn't do it." As if there was no question of keeping him with us—it's a given.
He could trust her. He could. That single sentence had told him that much. She had nothing to gain and everything to lose by continuing to help the old man, and she hadn't even given it a second thought. It had been a completely natural response; that she accepted him as a responsibility along with her "debt" to Tannim.
His mood now much lighter, he surprised her by smiling at her once they got the Mach I turned around and headed back the way they had come. The furrows cut by the tires pointed the way, and he followed, retracing their path exactly. And hoping that he was doing the right thing.
Now as long as there isn't someone laying false tire-tracks for us to follow, we'll be all right.
"I suppose it could be worse," she said after a moment. "There might not be anyone following us yet. We do have options still, and there's—"
Her head and Tom's came up at the same moment in identical startled movements, like a pair of deer alerted by a danger signal. "Oh, no—" she whispered.
"Tell me I didna hear a huntin' horn, milady," Tom begged, his wrinkled face white beneath the bandage. "Please tell me it was just th' wind, or summat like that. There's only one kind o' pack a-huntin' Underhill—"
He was interrupted by the sounding, faint but clear over the Mustang's rumble, of a hunting horn. At least, Tannim assumed it was a hunting horn, since they both shivered when they heard it.
"The Wild Hunt," Shar whispered, her eyes wide. "Oh no—we don't need that kind of trouble!"
"Whoa, whoa, what Wild Hunt?" Tannim asked, responding to the fear on both their faces by speeding up just a little. "What hunt? What's it mean to us? Who're the hunters?"
"The lost gods," Shar said fearfully, looking back over her shoulder as if she expected to see them at any moment, topping the hill behind them. "The spirits that once were gods of death and darkness in your world, who lost their worshippers and were banished Underhill. They hunt the living, led by their pack and their terrible Master. Even the Unseleighe fear them and hide when they hear that horn. It's said that there's no escape from them. Once they have the scent of you, they never give up!"
"Won't all this Cold Iron stop them?" he asked, as the horn sounded again, and sent a chill running up his spine. "I mean, we're talking pre-Christian, Bronze-Age guys here, aren't we? Shouldn't the rules that hold for the Sidhe hold for them?"
"The Master of the Hunt bears a spear tipped with the Death Metal from a fallen star," Shar replied, dashing his hopes. "That is why the Unseleighe fear him. They are no more bothered by iron and steel than a kitsune. They can cross running water with impunity, and holy things do not bar their way. Only sunlight stops them, and I doubt we're going to get any of that piped in to us on request!"
Tom Cadge had hunched down into his blankets, shivering, his head completely covered, like a child trying to hide from the monsters in the dark. It didn't look as though he had anything coherent to add.
"Great," Tannim muttered. "So what do we have going for us? Anything at all we can use against them?"
"We're not predictable." She stared through the back window; the horn-call sounded again, and it was definitely nearer. "They are more powerful than you, I, and all the Seleighe in Fairgrove put together—they used to be gods, for heaven's sake! Their horses never tire, nor do their hounds. But they will never have seen anything like this car, and they won't know what it, and we, can do. For that matter, they may not realize that the Mach I isn't alive—remember how the elves in the Mountain King's Hall reacted? If we can get out of this, it'll be by our wits."
"If I can get us into the heavy mist, can we lose them?" he asked. "Do you think that the turbulent area where the two pockets join is going to be confusing enough that they might lose the scent?"
"I don't know—but that just might work." She bit her lip and closed her eyes for a moment, thinking furiously. "Come to think of it, I know more than a few tricks along those lines. If you can get us some lead, I can kill the trail so cold they'll never find it, once we get into that mist!" Shar said at last, with determination replacing the fear in her eyes. "There wasn't a clever fox worthy of his tail yet that couldn't baffle any pack, on this side of the Hill or on the other, and haven't I nine tails?"
"That's the spirit, milady," Tom quavered from beneath his blankets. Tannim was surprised that he could respond at all, as obviously terrified as he was.
"All right then," Tannim said firmly. "Just let me get down where I can do some real driving, and I'll buy you that time."
In answer to that, the horn sounded a new set of notes entirely, and faintly beneath it came the deep and baleful baying of hounds.
Not the excited belling of foxhounds, however. These howls had a strange and doleful sound to them, as if the dogs themselves were in pain and wanted nothing more than to inflict that same pain on their quarry. This was a howl of bloodthirsty despair, a cry of doom approaching on four sore paws, whipped on by something even more terrible behind it. The deep cries called on the fear in the soul, the terror of the thing behind, the monster in the darkest shadows of childhood.
"They don't have hawks or anything, do they?" Tannim asked, suddenly struck by a horrible thought. If he had to contend with attacks from above as well as the hunters on the ground—granted, a hawk wouldn't be able to do a lot against the Mustang, but if this Master had complete control of them, there were things he could do with them. Having them drop rocks on the windshield—or hurl themselves against the windshield in kamikaze attacks.
"Not that I ever heard," Shar assured him. "Hawks can't be forced to course the way that hounds can. Turn a bird loose, however you have coerced it, and it can and will fly away."
One less thing to worry about. "Good."
As the ground gradually leveled, it became easier to drive. The sounds of the Hunt behind t
hem grew ever nearer, as if the Hunters realized that they had the advantage here, and were determined to catch up while they still had that advantage. "What kind of rules are they limited by?" he asked, negotiating the downslope of a hill studded with gemlike boulders. "Can they go faster than a normal horse would?"
"I don't think so," Shar replied after another moment of thought. "The whole point is that the Hunt is their sport, and it wouldn't be sporting if they could just run anything down, would it? The quarry has to have some chance."
"Well, how would they react if the quarry fought back?" he asked. "If we took some of them out before they caught up with us?"
"I don't know. I'm willing to find out, though." He glanced quickly at her, to see that she looked determined and stubborn. "I'll throw everything at them I can think of."
"Take everything you can from the Mach I," he told her. "Try not to erode the shields too much, if you can help it, but drain whatever you need."
Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 05 - Chrome Circle Page 32
