that.
They walked on through the morning, and she felt a little better for doing so. Time and distance helped to blunt her sadness if not her uncertainty. Given the nature of their journey thus far, she would take what she could get.
«Did you see him?» Pen asked her when they stopped at midday to drink from a stream and to eat what remained of the roots the boy had foraged that morning.
She stared at him. «See who?»
«The cat. It's tracking us.»
«The moor cat?»
Tagwen, sitting a little bit farther away, turned at once. His eyes were big and frightened. «Why would it be doing that? Is it hunting us?»
Pen shook his head. «I don't think so. But it is definitely following us. I saw it several times, back in the trees, trying to keep out of sight, following a course parallel to our own. I think it's just interested.»
«Interested?» the Dwarf croaked.
«You can't mistake that masked face,' Pen went on, oblivious to the other's look of terror. He grinned suddenly at Khyber, a little boy about to share a secret. «I've decided to call it Bandit. It looks like one, doesn't it?»
Khyber didn't care what the moor cat looked like, nor did she care for the idea of it tracking them into the mountains. She had always thought moor cats pretty much stayed in the swamps and forests and clear of the higher elevations. She hoped theirs would lose interest as they climbed.
They trekked on through the remainder of the day, through hill country dotted with woods and crisscrossed by streams that pooled in lakes at the lower elevations, bright mirrors reflecting sunlight and clouds. The hours drifted away, and although they covered a fair amount of ground, they did not encounter any of the region's inhabitants. Darkness began to fall and the shadows of the trees to lengthen about them, and still they had not seen a single Troll.
«Is that moor cat still out there?» Khyber asked Pen at one point.
«Oh, sure,' the boy answered at once. «Still watching us, sort of like a stray dog. Do you want me to call it over?»
They made camp in the lee of a forested bluff, finding shelter in a grove of pine by a stream that tumbled down out of the rocks. Behind them, the hill country they had trekked through all day sloped gently away through woods and grasslands until it disappeared into the twilight shadows. Although Pen made a valiant effort to catch something, he was unsuccessful; there was nothing to eat. They drank stream water and chewed strips of bark from a small fig tree.
«Don't worry,' Pen reassured his companions. «I'll go hunting at sunrise. I'll catch something.
They sat back to watch the stars come out, listening to the silence fill with night sounds. No one spoke. Khyber felt an emptiness that extended from the darkness down into her heart. She could not put a name to it, but it was there nevertheless. After a moment, she rose and walked off into the trees, wanting to be alone in case she cried. She felt so unbearably sad that she could hardly manage to keep from breaking down. The feeling had come over her insidiously, as if to remind her of how badly things had gone for them and how desperate their circumstances were. She might argue that they were all right, that they would find their way, but it wasn't what she felt. What she felt was utter abandonment and complete hopelessness. No matter what they tried or where they went, things would never get any better for them. They would struggle, but in the end they would fail.
Away from her companions, unable to help herself, she sat down and cried, bursting into tears all at once. She wished she had never come on the journey. She wished she had never left home. Everything that had happened was because of her insistence on looking for a stupid tree that Pen thought he had been sent to find but might well have simply dreamed up. Uncle Ahren was dead because of her intractability and her foolish, selfish need to find a way out of her pointless life. Well, she had accomplished her goal. She could never go back to Arborlon, never go home again. Not after stealing the Elfstones. Not after letting her uncle die. She bore the burden of her guilt like a fifty–pound weight slung across her shoulders, and she had nowhere to set it down. She hated herself.
In the midst of her silent diatribe, she realized that someone was looking at her.
Or something.
Huge, lantern eyes peered at her from out of the blackness. It was the moor cat.
«Get out of here!» she snapped in fury, not stopping to think about what she was doing.
The eyes stayed where they were. She glared at them, hating that the cat was watching her, that it had seen her break down and cry, that it had caught her at her worst. For no reason that made any sense at all, she was embarrassed by it. Even if it was only an animal that had witnessed it, her behavior made her feel foolish. She took several deep breaths to steady herself and sat back. The cat wasn't going to move until it felt like it, so there wasn't much point in railing at it. She found herself wondering once again what it was doing there. Curiosity, Pen had thought. Could be. She kissed at it, whispered a few words of greeting, and gave it a wave. The cat stared without blinking or moving.
Then all at once, it was gone again. Like smoke caught in the wind, it simply disappeared. She waited a moment to be sure, then rose and walked back to where Pen and Tagwen were already asleep. The first watch was hers, it seemed. Just as well since she wasn't at all tired. She sat down next to them and wrapped her arms about her knees. It was chilly so high up, much more so than in the Slags. She wished she had a blanket. Maybe they could find supplies in the morning. There had to be a settlement somewhere close by.
With her legs drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees, she listened to the sounds of Pen and Tagwen breathing and stared out into the night.
* * *
Intending to wake one of her companions to share the watch, but failing to do so, she dozed off sometime after midnight. When she came awake again, it was with the sudden and frightening realization that things were not as they should be. It wasn't the silence or the darkness or even the sound of the wind rustling the leaves like old parchment. What caught her attention as her eyes snapped open and her head jerked up was the dark movement that crept like a stain across the forest earth in front of her. For a moment, she thought it was alive, and leapt to her feet, backing away instinctively. But then she recognized its flat, fragmented shape and realized it was a shadow cast from something passing overhead.
She looked up and saw the Skatelow.
She couldn't believe it at first, thinking that she must be mistaken, that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It wasn't possible that the Skatelow could be there, flying those skies, so many miles east of where it should be. But the shape was so distinctive that Khyber quickly accepted that it was her, come after them for a reason that was not immediately apparent. For come after them she had, the Elven girl reasoned, or she would not be here at all.
Particularly since she was flying straight toward them.
But there was something not quite right about her, a look to her that was foreign and vaguely frightening. She carried only her mainsail, its canvas billowed out in the rush of the wind, yet there were yards of rigging stretched bare and stark from decking to spars like spider webbing.
Khyber stared, transfixed, not yet fully awake and not yet come to terms with what she was seeing.
The Skatelow passed overhead and when she had gone a short distance beyond where the Elven girl stood watching, somewhere above the bluff east, she wheeled back and slid across the star–scattered firmament a second time, more slowly, as if searching.
Then, abruptly, she started to come down, making a slow and cautious descent toward the grasslands that lay just beyond the woods in which Khyber and her companions slept. As she did so, Khyber saw what she had missed before. Three ropes dangled in a ragged line from the yardarm, pulled taut by the weight of the bodies attached.
«Pen!» Khyber hissed, reaching down quickly to shake the boy awake, galvanized by sudden shock and a rush of fear.
Penderrin Ohmsford jerked upright at once, eyes darting in all directions at once. «What is it?»
Wordlessly, she hauled him to his feet and pointed, leaving Tagwen still stretched out and asleep at her feet. Together, they watched the Skatelow settle toward the grasslands, a ghost ship dark and ragged against the
