The boxes did not turn, didn’t know how to turn, so they did not see what lay behind them, Fringe’s head, bloodless but largely intact, lying on the sand with them.
In the sand with them, for the sand was rising, blown by the wind, rising around them like a blanket.
“Why didn’t we die?” Mechanical, weary, infinitely sad.
“Must be a way. Something here we can turn off. Something here we can unplug.” Weary too. Determined.
Silence. The sand rises.
“We’ll find a way. I promise.” Bertran comforting Nela.
“Later, Berty. I’m so tired.”
“Later.”
And higher yet, moving gently across the boxes of the dinks, across the still face of the Enforcer, covering the torn fabric, the broken pieces of the flier.
“Poor Fringe….” Nela, sounding almost human, sobbing.
“Poor Fringe.”
The sand covered it all, smoothly, like a carpet.
From downriver came a ripple on the River Floh, a protruding wavelet, as might be made by an impatient fish, the wavelet spiked with a tiny eye on a stem, turning this way, turning that way, look-look, see-see, what is this, what is that, jabbing impetuous glances at the banks, the rocks, the river, the sandspit, searching for people, for a flier. It had heard a flier. A flier meant people.
But there were no people, no flier. Nothing but wind-sculpted sand and moving grass and the back of a huge gaver, floating slowly downstream, the way they did when they had eaten or were hunting. The gaver had been summoned. The gaver was supposed to be here. The eye took no notice.
The eye dived down through the murky water, looking, looking. The river had already carried the flier parts away. They were far downstream by now. On the bottom, however, something sparkled, and the eye went to that, focusing, fiddling. Nothing much. A circlet of gold, tiny, with words on it. Just as she is.
The circlet, the words were meaningless. The eye was looking for people or a flier. This wasn’t people, wasn’t a flier. The eye surfaced again. Nothing to report. It would go farther upstream and look again.
While behind it the sand moved in endless ripples, gently in the wind.
• • •
The Dove arrived at noplace.
Curvis, standing at the rail, saw pale buildings atop a nearby hill. He saw people, here and there. He saw tile-roofed dwellings scattered along the shore, beneath the shade of enormous trees. At some distance, among other trees, he saw the dragons.
Not Great Dragon. Not remotely related to Great Dragon. Though dragonish in appearance, these were entirely different beings.
He turned to speak to Jory, only to hear her cry out, reach out as though to grasp someone, then cry once more.
“What is it?”
“Fringe,” she said brokenly. “Something’s happened to her.”
The old man took her by the shoulders.
“Tell me! What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” she cried. “She was coming back….”
“Then they’ve rescued her.”
“But Danivon isn’t there. Zasper isn’t there.”
“The twins?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. Oh, Asner….”
“Shall we go there, where they are?”
She put her hands over her face, murmuring, “I don’t know what to do. It’s all lost. She’s gone.”
The old man held her while she cried. Held her and rocked her to and fro.
Curvis made no effort to comfort Jory. He merely nodded to himself, glad that Danivon hadn’t been hurt. Zasper hadn’t been hurt. Too bad about Fringe, but …
He looked back toward the dragons. Gone. Gone in under those trees. Vanished.
They had been wearing clothing. They had been carrying tools. And they were undoubtedly what he and Danivon had been sent to find.
FIVE
13
Zasper and Danivon moved along the water with the practiced lope learned in Academy and perfected over years of duty. In low-category places, Enforcers often went on foot, and it was necessary to move swiftly and tirelessly—and silently. There was no need to discuss strategy. Their entire strategy was to move and keep moving, to stay out of inhabited areas, to get through Beanfields and on west, past the wall, where, so Danivon had told Zasper in a few grunted words, the underground monsters probably hadn’t gained a foothold yet. He had gained that impression from Jory, sniffed it out, though he would have been hard put to explain it.
Their scuttling anxieties kept up with their trotting legs for a time. Trying to keep watch on all sides was exhausting. As the miles went by without attack, however, the anesthetic of movement took over, and thoughts faded until suddenly Danivon stopped short, murmuring in a choked voice, “Wait. No. Fringe….” He was sniffing the air, his face stiff with apprehension.
Zasper had sensed something too, though it didn’t come to him as a smell. It came more as a sound, a far-off roaring, something surging and surflike. Wrongness. Not merely the general wrongness that went with Elsewhere and grew daily more deadly, but something more personal and grievous.
“Fringe,” he said, acknowledging Danivon’s concern. “And the twins?”
Danivon’s nose twitched painfully, full of that stale, old-ice smell, lung filling, lung chilling, like breathing stagnant water. “Something wrong. Very wrong.” Feeling a sob coming up in his throat. Oh, something terribly wrong.
Zasper wiped his face. “The twins?” he asked again in a voice he fought to keep dead calm. “All three of them?”
“I don’t know. I can’t smell anything about them. They could be … all right.” He didn’t mean all right. They hadn’t been all right when he had seen them last. He merely meant he had no sense that they were dead, gone, unliving. But then, he had no sense they were living, either.
“How could they be all right and Fringe not?”
Danivon gulped, unable to breathe, aware of loss, as though an arm were gone, or his sight. This was grief. He’d never felt grief before, never lost anyone before.
“Do you get any
