“So why did you follow?”
“Why did you steal that scroll?” he countered. “Twice?”
“Why did you steal it?”
“I didn’t exactly steal it.”
“Then where is it?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Now that there is no Sanctum of Stars to keep it in, I suppose it’s somewhere in the Prelate’s palace, under lock and key.”
“No, it’s not,” Chandra said. “The Prelate’s pets were going to torture me to find it.”
“That was before you escaped. Since then, the scroll has been found.”
“What?”
“Don’t even think about it, Chandra,” he said. “If it’s in the palace, you might get inside alive, but you’d never get back out. Not even you. They’ll be watching for you. And now they know they made a mistake by not killing you the moment they identified you. They won’t be that careless again.”
“You gave back the scroll?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you!”
They walked along in silence for a few paces.
“You gave it back?” she demanded.
“Yes.”
“No, you didn’t!”
He said nothing.
Her thoughts whirling, she said, “Why did you give it back?”
“It seemed like the most sensible thing to do. You know, to calm things down after you left.”
“That’s It?”
“More or less,” he said. “More or less of a reward?”
“Well, there was a reward.”
“So that’s why.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I didn’t precisely give it back.”
“If you didn’t give it back, then what did you do. Precisely?”
“I left it where it would be found by someone who would recognize it and turn it in for the reward.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “You stole it from me. You didn’t keep it. You didn’t sell it. You didn’t take credit for retrieving it, and you didn’t collect the reward.”
“Actually, you seem to understand perfectly.”
“If you didn’t want it,” she said, “why take it in the first place?”
“I thought that if the Prelate didn’t have the scroll and didn’t know where it was, then she wouldn’t execute you immediately. She’d want to find it before she killed you. And since you didn’t know where it was, there would be some delays.” Gideon concluded, “I thought that would give you time to try to escape.”
“You wanted me to escape?” She felt bewildered. “Why didn’t you help me instead of manipulating me with your passive little ploy?”
“I didn’t know about the Enervants,” he said. “Or I might have been a bit more proactive.”
“If you didn’t want them to execute me, then why did you help them capture me?”
“Because you were about to start a battle with those soldiers in a street full of innocent people.”
“In a… I was…” She realized what he was saying.
“You were thinking about yourself,” he said. “I was thinking about the dozens of people who might get killed.”
“Whatever.” After a few long moments of tense silence, she said, “So you didn’t want the scroll.” When he didn’t bother responding, she said, “And you don’t want me to go back to Kephalai.”
“I think it would be stupid.” He added, “And fatal.”
“Then what are you doing here?” she demanded. “Why did you follow me? Why were you looking for me on Kephalai? Who are you?”
Jurl said, “Stop talking.”
“What?” Chandra snapped.
The goblin raised his head, his pointy ears perked alertly.
“He hears something,” Gideon said in a low voice.
Their captive raised his head and sniffed the damp night air, apparently oblivious to their presence.
Chandra looked at Gideon. The grove of twisted, leafless trees that they were walking through cast so many shadows in the silvery light that she couldn’t see his face well. But she sensed that he was as tense as she was.
Then Jurl’s demeanor abruptly changed. He flinched, crouched low, and turned toward them, panting and making little noises of distress.
“What’s wrong?” Gideon asked in a low voice.
“Riders,” the goblin rasped.
“Riders?”
A moment later, Chandra heard the distant pounding of hooves. Approaching fast.
“Bad”
Jurl said, “Hide!”
Jurl scurried toward a thicket of bushes. The steel leash prevented him from going more than a few steps before he stopped, grunting in pain.
“Hide” The goblin sounded terrified.
Gideon took Chandra’s arm. “Come on.”
Moving fast, they followed Jurl into the bushes. The thundering hoof beats were already much closer. As the three of them crouched down low behind the bushes’ naked branches, Chandra was grateful for the dark. These shrubs were thick, even without leaves, but she knew that she and her companions would be visible in the light of day.
She leaned forward and looked off to the left, past Gideon, where the hoof beats were coming from. As she swayed slightly in that direction, unsteady in her crouching position, her shoulder came into contact with Gideon’s.
He turned toward her. It was too dark to see his expression, but she could see his eyes looking directly into hers. Neither spoke. Then he, too, looked in the direction of the approaching riders.
Chandra heard a sharp whinny as the galloping horses entered the grove. Peering into the darkness, Chandra could see them faintly now. Fortunately, they weren’t coming this way. They passed through the withered grove at some distance from where they crouched in the bushes, moving diagonally away. She counted three riders… No, four, she realized, as they galloped into a pool of moonlight.
They were racing through a dense, low cloud of fog…
No, she realized a moment later, the fog moved with them, surrounding them and traveling in their company, flowing swiftly across the landscape. It made the horses look as if they were running atop a shifting white cloud, galloping through the air rather than on the ground. Yet their hooves must be touching soil, because they made a sound louder than thunder.
Watching this spectacle, Chandra felt chilled. The horses were all dark, and they galloped through the night with heedless speed. Perhaps, like Jurl, their eyes were well accustomed to this perpetual night. Or perhaps, she thought, as she watched the fog move with them, they didn’t really need to see where they were going.
The lead horse appeared to be carrying two riders, one of whom was struggling, seemingly held captive by the other. She saw pale limbs fighting for freedom and dark-clad arms restraining them. Chandra thought she could hear a terrified wailing as the horses galloped out of sight. A few moments later, the sound of the riders had faded completely.
Now she heard only the pounding of her heart and Gideon’s rapid breathing.
“What was that?” she asked Jurl.
