small?»
«Why worry about it?» Tagwen asked, throwing up his hands. «We don't know how to find this thing anyway, so the matter of applying the tar unobtrusively and in sufficient amounts to render the creature helpless is of very little consequence!»
«We'll find it,' Pen declared grimly.
They started walking north, the direction theSkatelow had flown. Pen reasoned that the creature knew Cinnaminson's talent was most effective in the dark. It probably preferred to hunt at night anyway, since that was the only time they had ever seen it. They had been keeping watch for theSkatelow since sunrise, but hadn't seen anything other than birds and clouds. Pen felt pretty certain that the airship wouldn't reappear until nightfall.
As they traveled, they discussed how they were going to lure their hunter into the tar once they found it and attracted its attention. There were all sorts of problems about accomplishing this. In order to get it into the tar, they would have to spread the tar around, then lead the creature to it and hope it stepped blindly in. It didn't seem too likely that this would happen, — the thing hunting them was smart enough to avoid such an obvious trap. More to the point, one of them was going to have to act as bait, and the only one who would do was Pen. But neither Khyber nor Tagwen would hear of that, so another way had to be found.
It was midafternoon, and they were high on the slopes leading up to the Charnals, when they finally began to put a workable plan together. By then they were beginning to think about food again, remembering how good the rabbit Pen had caught two days before had tasted and wishing they had saved a bit of it. They had water from the mountain streams and had found roots and berries to chew on, but none of it was as satisfying as that rabbit.
«We can build a fire,' Khyber said. «That will attract attention from a long distance. The creature on the Skatelow won't miss it. But we won't be there. We'll bundle up some sticks and leaves to look like sleepers, but we'll be hiding back in the rocks.»
Pen nodded. «We need to find the right place, one where the creature will have to land in a certain spot and approach in a certain way. It has to seem to the creature that we think we are protected but really aren't. It has to think it's smarter than we are.»
«That shouldn't be too hard,' Tagwen declared with a snort. «Itis smarter than we are.»
«An open space leading to a gap in the rocks would be ideal,' Pen went on, ignoring him. «We can coat the ground and rock sides with the tar. Even if it just brushes up against it, that would help.» He looked over at Tagwen. «Does this stuff stay sticky when it gets cold?»
The Dwarf shook his head. «It stiffens up. We have to keep it warm. Frost is a problem, too. If it frosts, the tar will harden and lose its stickiness.»
There were so many variables in the plan that it was tough to keep them all straight, and Pen was growing increasingly worried that he was going to miss at least one of them. But there was nothing he could do about it except to continue talking the scheme over with Khyber and Tagwen, hoping that, together, they could keep everything straight.
The afternoon slipped away, and the shadows were beginning to lengthen when Khyber suddenly gripped Pen's arm and said, «There! That's what we're looking for.»
She was pointing across a sparsely wooded valley to a meadow that fronted a heavy cluster of rocks leading up into the mountains. The rocks were threaded by a tangle of passages that gave the cluster the look of a complicated maze. The maze lifted toward the base of a cliff face that dropped sharply for several hundred feet from a high plateau.
«You're right,' Pen agreed. «Let's have a closer look before it gets dark.»
They went down through the valley, into the trees, and along a series of ravines and gullies that rains and snowmelt had carved into the slope, watching the sun slide steadily lower on the horizon. East, the sky was already dark behind the mountains, and a three–quarter moon was on the rise. Night birds were winging through the growing gloom, and night sounds were beginning to surface. A wind had picked up, bitter and chill as it blew down out of the higher elevations.
They were almost through the trees when Pen drew up short and pointed back the way they had come.
«Did you see something move just then?» he asked.
The Dwarf and the girl peered through the dark wall of trunks and the pooling shadows. «I didn't see anything,' Khyber said.
Tagwen shook his head as well. «Shadows, maybe. The wind.»
Pen nodded. «Maybe.»
They went on quickly and were out of the trees and across the meadow in moments, heading for the rocks. Pen saw at once that it was exactly what they had hoped to find. The meadow sloped gently upward into a jumble of boulders too high and too deep to see over. There were passages leading into the rocks, but most of them ended within a dozen yards. Only one led all the way through, traversing small clearings in which sparse stands of evergreens and scrub blocked clear passage. It was possible to get through, but not without maneuvering over and around various obstacles and making the correct choices from among the narrow defiles. Best of all, one of the choices led to an outcropping at the edge of the woods they had just come through—and it was elevated enough to allow them to see over the rim of the maze to the meadow below.
«We build our fire in one of these clearings, make our sleeping dummies, and hide out here.» Pen had it all worked out. «An airship can spot our fire if she comes anywhere within miles, but we can spot the airship, too. We can tell if she's theSkatelow. We can see her land, we can watch what happens. Once the creature comes into the rocks, we slip down off the outcropping, skirt the trees, and come at the ship from outside. It's perfect.»
Neither the girl nor the Dwarf cared to comment on that bold declaration, so it was left hanging in the stillness of the twilight, where, even to Pen, it sounded a bit ridiculous.
I hey went back through the maze to a clearing where the opening from the meadow was so narrow it was necessary to turn sideways to squeeze through. Pen looked around speculatively, then found what he was looking for. On the other side of the clearing, deeper in, was a rocky alcove where someone could hide and watch the opening.
«One of us will hide here,' he said, facing them. «When our friend from theSkatelow comes through that opening, the tar gets thrown at it. The leaves will split on impact, so the tar will go all over. It will take the creature a moment or two at least to figure out what happened. By then, we'll be heading for the airship.»
Tagwen actually laughed. «That is a terrible plan, young Pender–rin. I suppose you believe that you should be the one who throws the tar, don't you?»
«Tagwen has a point,' Khyber agreed quickly. «Your plan won't work.»
Pen glowered at her. «Why not? What's wrong with it?»
The Elven girl held his angry gaze. «In the first place, we have already established that you are the one individual who is indispensable to the success of the search for the Ard Rhys. So you can't be put at risk. In the second place, you are the only one who can fly the airship. So you have to get aboard if we're to fly out of here. In the third place, we still don't know what this thing is. We don't know if it's human or not. We don't know if it has the use of magic. That's too many variables for you to deal with. I'm the one who has the Elf–stones. I also have a modicum of magic I can call upon if I need to. I'm faster than you are on foot. I'm expendable. I have to be the one who confronts it.»
«If you miss,' Tagwen said darkly, «you had better be fast indeed.»
«All the more reason why you and Pen have to be moving toward theSkatelow the moment it enters the rocks. You have to be airborne before it can recover and decide it has been tricked, whatever the result of my efforts. If it gets back through that maze and out into the meadow before you board and cut the lines, we're dead.»
There was a long silence as they considered the chances of this happening. Pen shook his head «What if it brings Cinnaminson into the rocks with it?»
Khyber stared at him without answering. She didn't need to tell him what he already knew.
«I don't like it,' Tagwen growled. «I don't like any of it. But the matter was decided.
Four
