«No, not Strakens. Humans.»
He stared at her. «What are humans?»
«People who look like me. Smooth–skinned.» She tried to figure out what else she could say. «Anyone who looks like me.»
He looked uneasy. «Like you? Some, not many. Strakens and warlocks and witches can look like anything with their magic.» He rubbed his hands together nervously and looked about.
«Can we go? That Dracha probably has friends. It might have gone to fetch them. Drachas are smart, and even a Straken as powerful as you can't stand against a pack of them.»
She stared him down. He knew something that he wasn't telling her, something important. She could see it in the shift of his eyes and hear it in his voice. But she decided to let it go for the moment. He was right about not lingering. It was too dangerous to stay anywhere for long inside a place like the Forbidding. Everything here was hunter or prey in its turn, and she could not afford to be seen as the latter.
She cast about again, trying to decide on a direction. She would have to choose one, whether it would take her anywhere useful or not. She had to get moving, away from this haven for dragons. Geographically, this world was the same as her own. She could use that, if she could just think how. Something about the similarity between the two should suggest a solution, a place to go, a way to survive.
She would have liked to use her magic, but she couldn't think of a way in which that would be helpful. The wishsong could do many things, but it didn't allow for opening doors between worlds. Besides, she was pretty sure that if she used it for that purpose, the amount of magic required would almost certainly attract unwanted attention.
Then, abruptly, she had her answer. She should have seen it at once. If the Forbidding was a mirror of her own world, it would have an equivalent to the Hadeshorn and perhaps a gateway to the Druids. If she could raise their shades here, as she would have been able to do there, she might be able to discover what she should do. As a working idea, it had promise. Besides, since it was the only idea she had, it was worth a try.
She looked at Weka Dart. «I'm going east, below the Dragon's … below the mountains.»
The Ulk Bog furrowed his brow and said something unintelligible, clearly unhappy.
«You don't have to come with me. I can go alone.»
She hoped he would agree with her, thinking that he would be of little help in any case. But Weka Dart, still not looking at her, still frowning, shook his head. «You may need me to help you find your way, being a stranger. The land is unsafe for strangers. It doesn't get any better where you want to go. Safer west, but I suppose you have your reasons for not going there right away. Maybe later.»
He looked up suddenly, eyes narrowed. «But you don't want to go east. You want to go south through the mountains. I know you call them something else, but here they are called the Dragon Line. We should go below them before we go east. Too dangerous to try to go back the way I have come.»
He was so eager to have her do what he wanted that she was immediately suspicious.
«We can take one of the passes,' he continued quickly. «That will put us in Pashanon. There are cities and villages. Fortresses, too. Do you know someone there? Another Straken, perhaps?»
Clearly he was hiding something, but since she had already made up her mind to go the way he was suggesting …
«Listen to me, Weka Dart,' she said quietly, kneeling so that she could look him the eye. She held him frozen in place with the force of her gaze, a prisoner to her eyes. «You are not to call me a Straken again. Is that understood?»
He nodded hurriedly, mouth twisting, gimlet eyes bright and eager. «You are in disguise?» he guessed.
She nodded. «I want my identity kept secret. If you travel with me, you must agree. You must call me Grianne.»
He laughed, a rather scary sound, all rough edges and rasps. «I will do exactly as you wish, so long as you do not knock me out of any more trees!»
She straightened. Maybe this would work out, after all. Maybe she would find a way out of here.
«Let's be off,' she said.
Without waiting for his response, she started away.
They walked all day—or more accurately, she walked while he scurried, a sort of crablike motion that employed all four limbs and carried him from one side to the other in a wide–ranging and aimless pattern. She was astonished by his energy, which was boundless, and by his seeming unawareness of the fact that he was covering twice as much ground as was necessary for no reason. She decided, after watching him scramble about for several hours, that it must be genetic to Ulk Bogs. She knew very little about the species, having only touched on the subject in her reading of the Druid Histories, and so had little to go on. Nevertheless, in this case observation seemed enough.
The country they traveled through was both familiar and strange to her, its geographical features similar to those of her own world, but not the same. The differences were often small, ones she could not specifically identify but only sense. It was not surprising to her that the world of the Forbidding, impacted by an alternate history, would not reflect everything exactly. In her world, the topography had been altered by the destructive effects of the Great Wars. The basic landmarks were identifiably the same—the mountains, passes, bluffs, rivers, and lakes—but certain features were changed. The landscape gave her the impression that she was revisiting a familiar place, yet seeing everything in an entirely new light.
They did not encounter any other dragons. They saw huge birds flying overhead, ones that were neither Rocs nor Shrikes, and Weka Dart told her they were Harpies. She could not make out their women's faces, but could picture them in her mind—narrow and severe, sharp and cunning. Harpies were mythical in her world, thought to be nothing more than the creation of ancient storytellers. But they were among the creatures banished in the time of the creation of the Forbidding, and so only the stories remained. To see one here, real and dangerously close, made her think about all the other dangerous things that were here, as well, creatures that would hunt her for food or sport or for no reason at all. It was an unpleasant prospect.
It had the effect, however, of distracting her. Since her awakening and realization of what had happened to her, she had given little thought to the problems she had left behind; they were distant and just then beyond her control. In a sense, it was liberating. The Druid Council, fractured by its contentious members and constant scheming, was a world away, and would have to get on without her as best it could. She hadn't been able to say that in almost twenty years, and there was a certain relief in being able to do so.
The weather inside the Forbidding never changed, earth and sky rendered gray and colorless by an absence of sunlight and a heavy, unbroken ceiling of clouds that in the distance flashed with lightning and rumbled with thunder. Sunset was little more than a deepening of the gray they had traveled through all day. Vegetation everywhere had a blighted and wintry look to it, as if sickened by the soil in which it grew. Nothing of the world suggested that living things were welcome or encouraged. Everything whispered of death.
By day's end, they had reached the southern mouth of one of the passes leading out of the mountains and were looking down from the foothills into the plains that Weka Dart called Pashanon, which in her world would be Callahorn. Burnt, stunted grasses grew in clumps over miles of hardpan earth and barren hills that stretched away from countless miles through a scattering of high, windswept plateaus.
«We need a safe place to sleep,' the Ulk Bog declared in his odd phlegmy voice, casting about for what he wanted. «Ah, there!»
He pointed to a huge chestnut set back from the bluff at the edge of a stand of trees that marched upward into the foothills like soldiers.
«We have to sleep in a tree?» she asked him doubtfully.
He gave her a wicked grin. «Try sleeping on the ground, Straken, and see what friends you make during the night.»
She was not happy that he was still calling her Straken after she had warned him, but she supposed there was no help for it. He addressed her as he saw her, and nothing she said was likely to change that.
«Is it safer in the trees?» she asked.
«Mostly. We are less visible in the trees and the worst of the things that hunt at night don't climb. Except for vine serpents.» He grinned, his teeth flashing like daggers. «But there are not so many of those this high up.» He started away into the trees. «Wait here.»
