The Skeleton's Knife (The Farwalker Trilogy)

by Joni Sensel

  Swiveling his head toward Ariel, Willow blew in confusion. Then, more the Finder's horse than anyone's, he stepped gingerly away from her. His hindquarters bunched and he sank almost to sit on his haunches as his forelegs splayed from beneath him. Willow, too, disappeared from the ridge.

  Ariel called her friends' names until her throat felt raw. No one answered.

  "They're all right." She talked aloud to drown out the fear of disaster. "They're fine. We just need to meet up." But she struggled with a rush of panic. Scarl could find her, and Zeke probably could, too, if the stones would help him--but only if they hadn't been hurt. And with Willow descending behind them, they may have slid to a safe halt simply to be crushed by a tumbling horse.

  "So what do I do?" she murmured. She did not mean to ask her feet, but they answered, so she obeyed, clambering on down the slope toward the point. Her heart balked, reluctant to go even farther from her friends, and twice Ariel stopped to scan the ridge and reconsider. But rounding the headland seemed more possible than climbing back up. Her feet grew more insistent. She didn't dare doubt them.

  Only when she reached the waterline did her fear really mount. Now she could see what looked like the headland's farthest point. White spray scattered around it. A hollow knocking kept time as the waves beat on carved rock. Both told her the headland was impassable on foot. She couldn't even wait for an ebb tide. The high water mark fell above where she stood; the tide must be nearly as low as it got.

  Ariel scrambled over rocks toward the point anyway, her breath coming in sobs. Unless the ground ahead was drier and less slick than it looked, she'd have to swim in that chill, rugged sea. The hard part would be stroking out far enough to round the headland without being dashed against rocks or swept away by a current.

  Just before she kicked off her boots to dive in, an unexpected shape caught her eye. Tucked in a cleft alongside her was a sagging stone house.

  Sitting ruined and not far over the high water line, it looked almost as if it had washed up as flotsam. The house was no larger than a sheepfold, and its slate roof had caved in on one side. From where she stood, she could see no windows or doors, but as Ariel went toward it, she spied a low arch. Though the place looked abandoned, perhaps it contained something useful--like dry wood that could keep her afloat in the turbulent waters off the point. Her staff was too thin.

  "Hello, is anyone here?"

  She ducked through the arch. She had to stop for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, because the ground was littered with stones and debris. As the gloom receded, she tried to lift a downed timber. The roof beam was even too heavy to drag.

  "Who are you?"

  "Oh!" Ariel whirled. Movement fluttered from the darkest corner of the room. A hand snatched her wrist and towed her toward the doorway.

  "You sure aren't a ghost, so you don't belong here. Where'd you come from?"

  Once outside, Ariel's first thought was that she'd met an elf. Small-boned and fair, the creature stood half a head shorter than she did. A boy, Ariel decided, when he spit and repeated his questions with grit in his voice. For all his gruffness, however, he was no older than she was. His hair was the color of winter butter, even lighter than Zeke's, and chopped raggedly over his ears. Those were so delicate as to be almost translucent. His eyes were close-set but sky blue under scowling brows as bleached as his hair. A whorled seashell hung on a lanyard around his thin neck. When her gaze fell on it, he stuffed the shell into the collar of his jerkin as though afraid she might take it.

  "I'm Ariel Farwalker," she said. "I'm so glad I found you. I need someone's help. My friends and I were walking above, and we all slid down in mudslides--"

  "Aye, treacherous earth, this." The blue eyes flicked to the slope and the muddy blot Ariel had climbed out of. "You're lucky you're breathing."

  "I know. And my friends slid down the other side of the ridge. I was trying to get there. Do you know a way? I'm worried about them."

  The boy squinted at Ariel, at the hut, at the hillside. "Didn't know any Farwalkers were still in the world. If you're one of 'em, can't you find the way?"

  "My feet led me to you! What's your name? Won't you help me?"

  "I'm Dain." The boy spit again. "And there's no easy way t'other side of the ridge."

  "I'll take a hard way! Will you show me? Oh, please!"

  He gauged her. "I don't suppose it'd hurt. But nothing's free, Farwalker. What can you trade?"

  Ariel bounced with impatience. "I can take you anywhere you want to go. I have gifts from other places for your village, too. Or one of my friends is a Finder. He'll find for you. But first I've got to find him."

  Dain's face lit with an idea.

  "Please," Ariel begged, "if one of them's hurt..."

  "Trade to come on the tide, then?"

  "What's that mean?" Ariel had grown up on the seaside, but she'd never heard this expression.

  "It means I'll do for you now, if you'll do later for me, when I ask, knowing only that the asking will come. Like the tide."

  Ariel's throat tightened around such a broad promise, but she nodded. "Yes, fine, if it's fair. Can we hurry?"

  "Anything?"

  "Anything I have the skills for. Or the Finder does." She thought of Zeke, too, but explaining his skills would take far too much time.

  Dain nodded. "Done. Come with, then." He turned back into the ruin.

  Ariel nearly burst with frustration. "Wait, did you not understand? They're around--"

  "No, you don't understand, Farwalker girl." Dain grabbed her arm once more. "Stop talking so much and follow."

  Chapter 8

  Dain yanked Ariel into the same dark corner of the hut he'd emerged from. He seemed to drop to his knees. From her waist height, he hissed, "Are you coming or not?"

  Ariel's eyes pierced the shadows. Dain was standing in a pit on rough steps leading farther down into the dark. It could be a passage, but it might be a cell.

  "I am," she replied with a gulp. "But what is it?"

  "The tunnels. Jump down." Dain descended a few steps to make room. He steadied her when she stumbled and shifted his grip to her hand. "Don't let go," he added. "Might never find you again."

  He led Ariel down into clammy darkness. By the tenth step, her world shrank to the tight squeeze of Dain's fingers and the slick, uneven stairs underfoot. She clamped her staff under her armpit so she'd have a free hand to reach to the wall. Hewn from the rock, the passage was barely as wide as most doorways. Dank smells rose about her, and she instinctively ducked to keep from banging her head.

  She stumbled at the end of the stairs, unprepared for the flat.

  "Two skips left and one right." Dain hurried forward. Ariel didn't understand what he meant until the wall fell away from her hand and then smacked back into place. There were passages branching off this one. Ariel's respect for Dain's guidance--and her fear of being left--grew.

  Needing to hear more than the echo of footsteps and the distant slap of water on rock, she asked, "Did somebody dig this?" It was not much like sea caverns she'd known back home.

  Dain pulled her into a left turn. "Some's been dug, some's natural, some's an old-- ah." A gleam shone ahead, where an oil lamp made from a hollow kelp bulb rested in a niche in the wall. Dain reached for it. After so much darkness, the tiny flame glowed like the sun. It lit a junction of five passages, counting the one they'd emerged from.

  "You did good, Farwalker girl," Dain said. "I had to have fire the first time I came in. And it's a devil's task to get through this fork without sight."

  All five gaping mouths looked alike to Ariel, but Dain towed her into one without hesitation. The floor slanted up, and soon daylight pricked overhead as if they were walking a very deep canyon. Before their way became enclosed again, the angle of the slope above them let Ariel know they'd crossed to the opposite side of the ridge.

  Breathless from their pace, she asked Dain, "Aren't you scared of a cave-in?"

  He shrugged. "I find new dead-e
nds and places to swim all the time. Water's higher than it was in the old days." He turned a corner and stopped short at a blank wall.

  "Uh-oh. Wrong turn?" Ariel asked.

  "Nah. Just haven't come this way in a while. Forgot." He thrust the lamp at her, backtracked a few paces, and pulled a long boathook from a crack in the tunnel. With it, he fished in the darkness at the top of the wall. A knotted rope dropped with a thump. Hanging from above, it helped Ariel to see that the wall didn't reach quite to the ceiling.

  Dain replaced the hook. "You climb rope?"

  "Guess I'll have to." Desperation propelled her, and the knots gave Ariel's hands and feet purchase. After clambering onto the shelf at the top, she looked back down at Dain. He tossed her walking stick up. The third time, she nabbed it.

  "What about your lamp?" she asked. That would not suffer a missed catch.

  Dain blew it out. Crouched on the brink, Ariel didn't dare move. She followed the sound as he climbed and joined her on the ledge.

  His whisper came through the dark. "Hands-and-knees is all there's room for up here."

  "How do I hold onto you?"

  "Don't. Just follow. Nowhere else to get lost."

  Emptiness bloomed alongside her as Dain moved away.

  "Wait! Which way?" she cried, afraid of tumbling over the face she'd just climbed or, for that matter, other drops in the dark. She swept ahead with her staff.

  "This way. This way, Farwalker girl. Far-crawling girl now, maybe, huh?"

  She followed Dain's voice and only bumped her head once. They emerged into the side of a curved tunnel of brick that allowed them to stand and had a light at the end. Ariel had to shield her eyes from its glare.

  When they stepped into that daylight, Dain pointed. "There?"

  Ariel squinted through her fingers. "Oh! Yes!" She hurried a short way downhill and east toward spilled earth. "Scarl! Zeke!" The mud on this side had flowed all the way into the water. Willow stood beyond. He was matted with clay and his pack had slipped around to his belly, but he cropped the sparse grass as though nothing more than a lunch stop had happened.

  Neither Scarl nor Zeke stood beside him. Ariel whirled to search the ochre-stained waves, dreading the sight of drowned friends.

  A head popped up from the far side of a muddy heap. "Ariel!" Scarl stood and began clambering toward her.

  Feeling like she could breathe for the first time in an hour, she ran to meet him. "I'm so glad you're-- careful!" He slipped nearly the rest of the way to the sea. At least now she could help him out if need be. "Where's Zeke?"

  "He's here, too." Scarl eyed Dain, who came behind Ariel. "But he's struggling to breathe."

  "What's wrong?" Ariel crawled through the mud toward him, not bothering to try to remain on her feet.

  "Mud in his lungs, broken ribs, I don't know." Scarl looked at Dain. "Can you get a Healtouch from your village?"

  "Don't got one."

  Scarl's mouth tightened.

  Zeke lay propped on the clean slope near the far edge of the mud. As Ariel approached, he gave her a weak smile.

  "You know I don't... swim as well as you," he wheezed. "Goes double, swimming in... mud."

  She knelt beside him. "Oh, Zeke, does it hurt?"

  "Yeah, but mostly it's... like Willow's... sitting on me. Can't..." He coughed and grimaced with pain. "Catch m' breath."

  Ariel laid her hand on his muddy shoulder and threw a wild look at Scarl. "What do we do?"

  Dain stepped up behind them, nimbly picking through the mud. "It's his windbox that's broken? I might can help, then."

  "Oh, please, Dain!" said Ariel. "How?"

  Dain replied, "I'm a Windmaster's apprentice. Move. Let me listen."

  The Windmaster Ariel had known growing up could predict and sometimes influence the weather, but his success depended largely on the mood of the wind. Leed Windmaster would have laughed at someone who said wind and breath had anything in common but air. Nonetheless, Ariel moved out of the way.

  Dain bent his ear close to Zeke's face and told him, "Breathe best you can." Briefly he listened, and then he pressed on Zeke's chest. Zeke winced.

  Scarl reached to stop Dain. "Hold on. We don't want to--"

  Dain jerked his head up and whistled through his teeth, the sound not loud but shrill.

  Ariel would not have believed what happened next if she hadn't felt it herself. A gust of wind swept downslope to buffet both her and Scarl. She steadied herself with both hands on the ground while her hair whipped and her clothes fluttered. Above her, Scarl stumbled backward under the wind and slid in the mud nearly to the water before he could stop.

  "I said let me listen," Dain muttered.

  Ariel didn't dare comment. She only gripped Zeke's arm as Scarl, looking stunned, recovered his ground.

  "You're gurgling and sticking," Dain told Zeke. "Close your eyes and open your mouth. Wide."

  "What are you going to do?" Ariel asked.

  "Fix him," Dain said. "Or you want he should catch the 'monia and die? 'Cause he will."

  Zeke shot Ariel a desperate look, which she relayed to Scarl.

  "I have no knowledge of this," he growled. "I'd turn your companion over my knee, but I doubt I could get close enough."

  "You can't," Dain said. "You want I should help him or not? He's your friend, not mine."

  Zeke choked, "I'll... decide. But let me... listen first." One of his hands scuttled sideways to exposed stone, which he stroked. His eyes closed and his lips moved.

  When Zeke opened his eyes again, he said, "Do it."

  Throwing Scarl a smug look, Dain tipped back Zeke's head and drew his jaw open wide.

  "Probably hurt some," he said.

  Zeke flapped one hand in submission. Without releasing Zeke's chin, Dain reached with his other hand to the shell on his lanyard. Ariel had forgotten about it. The holes in the shell made her guess it must be a windpipe, though it didn't look much like the only one she'd ever seen. Dain raised it to his lips, tipped his face to the sky, and began to play.

  The tones that emerged were part whistle, part hiss, and part screech. They rose and fell, sounding first like the howl in a storm and then like a whisper in grass. The air stirred and churned, amplifying the sounds until the noise became painful. Ariel cringed, ducking her head. Scarl gripped her shoulder to reassure her--or maybe just to stay on his feet.

  With a final hollow note, Dain bent and blew his pipe straight into Zeke's open mouth. Air rushed past to follow that puff. Zeke's back arched and his body inflated visibly. Ariel gasped.

  Dain scrambled out of the way, dropping his pipe from his lips. Zeke convulsed and rolled to one side, clots of mud flying from his open mouth. A watery, spewing cough followed. The air stilled.

  In the sudden silence, Zeke vomited violently, heaving and spitting until tears leaked from his eyes. Dain moved farther uphill. Ariel cringed at the smell, her own innards uneasy, but she stroked Zeke's back to comfort him. As he grew limp, helpless in his retching, Scarl edged past her to support Zeke's chest and head.

  The convulsions finally eased. Zeke lay panting in Scarl's lap, wiping his mouth.

  "Oh," he gasped, "that hurt a lot, Dain. A lot. I can breathe better now, though. I think I could sit up, Scarl. Maybe."

  As Scarl propped Zeke up, Dain kicked mud over Zeke's mess. "Did that once to a drownt Fisher. He puked real good, too. He'd been windless too long, though. Wasn't quite right in the head after that. But you weren't out cold, so your head should still work."

  Ariel wiped Zeke's face with her sleeve. "Are you truly all right?" she whispered.

  Zeke took a tentative breath, drew it deeper, and nodded. "My ribs ache, but the weight's gone. Easier to inhale."

  Scarl left Zeke to Ariel's tending. He rose and approached Dain.

  "Forgive my suspicion," he said. "I'm not sure what you are, Dain, but you're no apprentice."

  Dain shrugged and turned away. "The wind likes me." But Ariel caught the pleased glow in his face
.

  "Well, I'm grateful," Scarl added. "I doubt we can trade you anything to equal what Zeke means to us, but we'll try."

  Dain's eyes darkened. "Oh, aye," he said, his voice soft. "You do owe me."

  Chapter 9

  Before long, Zeke felt able to stand, with some help.

  "Suppose you'll want to see the others who live here now, hey?" Dain said. "It's not far."

  "Do we have to go back into the tunnels?" Ariel feared Zeke might not manage the hard parts.

  But Dain shook his head and waved them down the grassy strip clinging between the waterline and the steeper cliffs above. "Just down 'round the corner, that's all."

  Ariel braced Zeke while Scarl removed their packs from the horse, carrying his and Zeke's both. They left Willow to graze, since the horse could not wander far. Dain led them alongshore toward the point.

  Ariel found herself not merely following Dain but studying him as he picked his way among the wrack tossed ashore by the sea. Now that she had time to compare him to Zeke, she wondered if she'd been wrong about his gender. Dain might be a wisp of a fellow who moved with uncommon grace. The name sounded to her like a boy's, and Dain's coarse jerkin and trousers seemed mannish enough. But the creature dressed in them could be a fierce girl, one who'd challenged Ariel's courage with irony by calling her "Farwalker girl."

  It would be rude to ask, and she couldn't ask for opinions from Scarl or Zeke with Dain right there to hear.

  As Ariel tried to think of a question that would reveal the truth indirectly, Dain brought them to a tiny cove hidden just shy of the point. A spring gushed from broken rock to cascade into the sea, and a dozen stone houses clung impossibly, like limpets, to the steep-sided cliffs on both sides. Their gables jutted in all directions, and some were so crooked that Ariel wondered if their furniture rested in piles in the lowest corner of each house. The one person she saw looked crooked, too--a bent old man packing mud between the stones of his house. He stared, not returning Dain's wave.

  Dain led on between the houses, where a few mostly derelict boats bobbed at the end of a cobbled slipway. The boats were tethered to rings embedded in the slip or the cliffs. They tugged against their slimy green bowlines with every back-surge of the sea. Ariel could see swaying kelp and pale shingle through the water, but it was too deep to wade, and she wondered if the Fishers swam out to their boats.