moonlit sky, the bodies at the ends of the ropes swaying like gourds from vines. The light caught those bodies clearly by then, illuminating them sufficiently for Khyber to identify Gar Hatch and his crewmen, faces empty, mouths hanging open, eyes wide and staring. There was a wizened, drawn cast to their features, as if the juices had been drained from them, leaving only skin and bones.
«What's happened?» Pen breathed.
Then his fingers tightened sharply about her arm, and he pointed. She saw it at once. Cinnaminson stood in the pilot box, a thin, frail figure against the skyline, her head lifted into the wind, her clothing whipping against her body, her arms hanging limply at her sides. One end of a chain was attached to a collar about her neck; the other was wound about the pilot box railing.
Khyber scanned the decks of the sloop from end to end, but no one else was visible. No one was sailing the airship, no one acting as Captain and crew, no one visible aboard save the three dead men and the chained girl.
Then Khyber saw something move across the billowing mainsail, high up in the rigging, a dark shadow caught in a swath of moonlight. The shadow skittered down the lines like a spider over its webbing, limbs outstretched and crooked as it swung from strand to strand. Nothing more of it was visible; its head and body were cloaked and hooded, its features hidden. It was there for just an instant, then gone, disappeared behind the sail and back into the shadows.
Khyber took a deep breath. It was the thing that had chased them through the streets of Anatcherae—the thing that had tried to kill Pen.
A shiver ran down Khyber's back when Cinnaminson turned her head slightly in their direction, as if seeing them as clearly as they saw her. In that instant, her features were clearly revealed, and such anguish and horror were mirrored there that Khyber went cold all the way to her bones. Then the Rover girl looked away again and pointed north. The thing that hung from the mainmast moved quickly in response, leaping through the rigging, changing the set of the sail, the tautness of the radian draws, and thereby the direction of the airship. The Skatelow began to lift away again, turning north in the direction Cinnaminson had pointed. The crooked–legged thing darted back across the moonlight, then fastened itself in place against the mast, hunching down like a huge lizard on a pole.
Seconds later, the airship disappeared behind the rise of the bluff, and the sky was empty again.
* * *
In the dark aftermath, Khyber exhaled sharply and exchanged a hurried look with Pen. Then she jumped in fright as Tagwen stood up suddenly next to her, rubbing at his bleary eyes. «What's wrong?» he asked.
«Don't do that again!» she snapped furiously, her hands shaking.
They told him what they had seen, pointing north at the empty sky. A look of disbelief crossed his rough features, and he shook his head, blinking away the last of his sleep. «Are you certain of this? You didn't dream it? It wasn't just the clouds?»
«It's tracking us,' Pen answered, his voice dismal and lost–sounding. «It's killed Gar Hatch and his Rover cousins, and now it's using Cinnaminson to hunt us.»
«But how did it get aboard the Skatelow?»
No one could answer him. Khyber stared at the empty sky, trying to reason it through. Was there a connection between the creature and the Druids? Could it have gotten aboard the Skatelow while the Galaphile had the Rover airship in tow? That would mean Terek Molt had deliberately lied to them about sending the Skatelow safely on her way. But why do that? For that matter, why bother to put the creature aboard the Skatelow at all if the Druid intended to hunt Penderrin on his own anyway? Whatever the answer, someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to prevent the boy from attempting to rescue his aunt. So someone must think he had a very good chance of succeeding, even if the boy himself thought he had very little. It was an intriguing conclusion, and it gave her unexpected reason for hope. Pen was staring at her. «Do you think the Elfstones could be used against whatever's got Cinnaminson?»
She gave him a doubtful look. «We don't even know what it is, Pen. It might be human, and the Elfstones would be useless.» «It doesn't look it.» «Whatever it is, we're not going to fight it if we don't have to.» She motioned toward the bluff.
«Let's get out of here. We can stop and eat when it gets light. I don't want to chance it coming back again.» Pen stood his ground, his mouth a tight line. «Did you see the way she looked at us?»
Khyber hesitated. «What are you getting at?» «She saw us. She knew we were here. Yet she turned the ship the other way.» His voice was shaking. «She's being made to track us, Khyber. Maybe her life depends on whether or not that thing finds us. Yet she steered it away. She saved us.»
Tagwen shook his bearded head. «You don't know that, young Pen. You might be mistaken.» The boy looked quickly at Khyber for support. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized what he was about to ask. She had to stop him, even if it meant lying to him about what she had seen. But she could not bring herself to do that. That was the coward's way out. Ahren would not have lied in that situation. He would have told Pen the truth. «We can't do this,' she said. «We have to!» he snapped. His face had an angry, almost furious look. «She saved us, Khyber!
Now we have to save her!» «What are you talking about?» Tagwen demanded. «Save who?» «She's not our concern,' Khyber pressed. «Our concern is with your aunt, the Ard Rhys.» «Our concern is with whoever needs our help! What's wrong with you?» They faced each other in stony silence. Even Tagwen had gone quiet, looking quickly from one face to the other.
«We don't have any way of saving her,' Khyber said finally. «We don't know anything about that creature, nothing about what it will take to overcome it. If we guess wrong, we'll all be dead.» Pen straightened and looked off to the north. «I'm going, whether you go with me or not. I'm not leaving her. I have to live with myself when this is over. I can't do that if something happens to her that I might have prevented.» He glanced back at her, the angry look become suddenly pleading. «She isn't the enemy, Khyber.»
«I know that.»
«Then help me.» She stared at him without answering.
«Khyber, I'm begging you.»
He wasn't asking Tagwen, he was asking her. With Ahren Elessedil dead, she'd become the unofficial leader. She was the one with the Elfstones and the magic. She was the one with the lore. She thought about the choices she had made on the journey and how badly many of them had turned out. If she made the wrong choice, it might cost all of them their lives. Pen's heart ruled his thinking; she had to remember to use her head.
She found herself wondering what Ahren would do in that situation but was unable to decide. The answer would have come quickly and easily for him. It would not do so for her.
She looked off into the trees and the night, into the shadows and darkness, searching for it in vain.
THIRTY
When Grianne Ohmsford reached the rim of the Forbidding's version of the Valley of Shale, Weka Dart was gone. Fled out of fear, she decided, too terrified to remain once the Warlock Lord appeared. Even so, she took a moment to look for him, thinking he might be hiding in the rocks, his sharp–featured face buried in his hands. But there was no sign of him.
He would be back, she told herself. No matter what happened, he would be back.
She wondered at her certainty about this, and decided rather reluctantly that it was fostered in part, at least, by the comfort she found in his presence. In a better world, such as the one from which she had come, she might not have tolerated him at all. Here, she had to take what friendship she could find.
She started back down the mountainside. Silence enveloped her, a hush that felt strange in the wake of the disappearance of the shades that had tormented her on the way in. They had all vanished, drawn back down into the netherworld with the Warlock Lord. Yet the memory of them haunted her, voices whispering at the back of her thoughts, damp fingers trailing lightly across her unprotected skin, an insidious presence.
The sun was rising, turning the eastern horizon the color of ashes, gray and damp against the departing night. Another day of low clouds and threatening skies. Another day of colorless gloom. She felt her already
