had felt the weight of sorrow bear down on him like a huge rock.
He longed to rescue the boys. And he could not. “It rests with you now, Gaelen,” he whispered.
And with the Hawk Eternal, he thought.
The four men walked for most of the night, stopping only to snatch an hour’s sleep before dawn. Then they moved on, crossing hills, running across narrow valleys, scaling tree-lined slopes. During the afternoon they were joined by six hunters cutting in from the east. A hurried conference was held. One man was sent back to the village to fetch more bowmen, and the remaining nine hoisted their packs and ran single file toward the towering peaks of the northeast.
They drove themselves hard, calling on reserves of endurance built during years of tough mountain living. Only Leofas, the oldest of them, struggled to maintain the pace; but maintain it he did, giving no sign of the pain from his swollen knee.
Just before nightfall Badraig halted the column, spotting something to the right of the track; it was a half- eaten oatcake. Badraig picked it up, breaking it into crumbs. At the center it was still dry.
“Yesterday,” he said. Then he scouted carefully around the area. Rather than destroy any faint traces of spoor, the other hunters squatted down to wait for Badraig’s report. Within minutes he returned.
“Four lads,” he said. “One is very large and can only be Lennox. You were right, Caswallon; they passed me.”
The group pushed on into the mountains, and as the sun sank, Caswallon found the hollow Layne had chosen for their camp. The men gathered around.
“Tomorrow should be easier going,” said Cambil, stretching his long legs in front of him and resting his back against the granite boulder. “The tracks will be easy to find.” His strong fingers kneaded the muscles of his thigh, and he grunted as the pain flowed.
Leofas sank to the ground, his face grey, his eyes sunken. With great effort he slipped his pack from his shoulders and unrolled his blanket. Wrapping himself against the night chill, he fell asleep instantly.
Badraig took two huntsmen and began to scour the area. The moon was bright and three-quarters full and the tracks left by the boys could be clearly seen. Badraig followed them halfway up the north slope of the hollow. Here he stopped.
Overlapping Lennox’s large footprint was another print twice as long. Badraig swore, the sound hissing between clenched teeth. Swiftly he returned to the men in the hollow.
“The beast is hunting them,” he told Cambil. “We must move on.”
“That might not be wise,” the Hunt Lord replied. We could miss vital signs in the darkness. Worse, we could stumble on the beast itself.”
“I agree,” said Caswallon. “How close behind them is it, Badraig?”
“Hard to say. Several hours, perhaps less.”
“Damn all druids!” said Cambil, his broad face flushed and angry. “Damn them and their Gates.”
Caswallon said nothing. Wrapping himself in his blanket, he leaned back, closed his eyes. He thought of Gaelen and wondered if Fate could be so cruel as to save the boy on one day, only to have him brutally slain thereafter. He knew that it could. All life was chance.
But the Gates were a mystery he had never been able to fathom.
The elders had a story of a time just before Caswallon was born, when a leather-winged flying creature had appeared in the mountains, killing sheep and even calves. That had been slain by the then Hunt Lord, a strong proud man who sought to be the first High King since Earis. But the people had voted against him. Embittered, he had taken thirty of his followers and somehow found a way to cross the churning waters of Attafoss to the island of Vallon. There he had overpowered the druids and led his men through the Forbidden Gate.
Twenty years later he returned alone, gravely wounded. Taliesen had asked for his death, but the Druid Council denied him and the man was returned to the Farlain. No longer Hunt Lord, he would tell no man of his adventures, saying only that a terrible vision had been revealed to him.
Many thought him mad. They mocked him and the once-proud lord took it all, making his home in a mountain cave where he lived like a hermit. Caswallon had befriended him, but even with Caswallon the man would not speak of the world beyond the Druid’s Gate. But of the Gates themselves he spoke, and Caswallon had listened.
“The feeling as you pass through,” Oracle had told him, “is unlike any other experience life can offer. For a moment only you lose all sense of self, and experience a great calm. Then there is another moment of sense- numbing speed, and the mind is full of colors, all different, moving past and through you. Then the cold strikes marrow-deep and you are human again on the other side.”
“But where did you go?” Caswallon asked.
“I cannot tell you.”
The wonder of it, Caswallon knew, was that Oracle had returned at all. There were many stories of people disappearing in the mountains, and even rare occasions when strange animals or birds appeared.
But Oracle was the only man he had heard of-save for Taliesen-to pass through and return. There were so many questions Oracle could have answered. So many mysteries he could lay to rest.
“Why can you not tell me?” Caswallon asked.
“I promised the druids I would not.”
Caswallon asked no more. A promise was a thing of steel and ice and no clansman would expect to break such an oath.
“All will be revealed to you, Caswallon. I promise you,” Oracle had told him cryptically.
Now as the young clansman sat beneath a moonlit sky his mind harked back to that conversation. He wasn’t at all sure he desired such knowledge. All he wanted was to find the boys and return them safely to the valley.
Badraig prepared a fire and the men gathered around it silently, fishing in their packs for food. Only Leofas slept.
Cambil pushed back the locks of blond hair from his forehead and wiped sweat from his face. He was tired, filled with the exhaustion only fear can produce. Agwaine was his only son, and he loved him more than anything else the world could provide. The thought of the lad being hunted by a beast from beyond the Gates filled him with terror; he could not face the possibility that Agwaine might die.
“We will find them,” said Caswallon softly.
“Yes,” answered the Hunt Lord. “But alive?”
Caswallon saw the man’s angular, honest face twist, as if a sudden pain had struck him. Beneath the wiry yellow-gold beard Cambil was biting his lip hard, seeking to prevent the collapse into tears of frustration.
“What did you think of the pack incident?” asked Caswallon suddenly.
“What?”
“Gwalchmai dropping his pack and outstripping Agwaine.”
“Oh, that. Clever move. Agwaine did not give up, though. He ran him to the end.”
“Bear that in mind, Cambil. The boy is a fighter. Given half an opportunity he will survive.”
“The thing will probably seek to avoid Man,” said Badraig. “It is the way with animals of the wild, is it not? They know Man is a killer. They walk warily around him.”
“It didn’t walk too warily around the Pallides scout,” said a balding bearded clansman from the west.
“True, Beric-but then, from the tracks, the Pallides was stalking it, though I can’t see why. Still, it is well known the Pallides are long on nerve and short on brain.”
Slowly, as the night passed, the men drifted off to sleep until at last only Cambil and Caswallon remained sitting side by side before the fire.
“It’s been a long time since we sat like this, cousin,” said Cambil, breaking a lengthy silence.
“Yes. But we walk different paths now. You have responsibility.”
“It could have been yours.”
“No,” said Caswallon.
“Many would have voted for you.”
“They would have been wrong.”
“If Agwaine is taken I shall take my daughter and leave the Farlain,” said Cambil, staring into the glowing ashes of the dying blaze.
“Now is not the time to think of it,” Caswallon told him. “Tomorrow we will talk as we walk the boys
