“So far I might have done as well,” said Bloster. “ ‘Twas you said the girl was not with her brother Mendost. I still think we’ll find her there.”
“The farmwife had seen someone like her,” the Basilisk hissed. “Seen her not long before. And in the child’s mind the picture was clear of the girl riding east toward this forest. And in the woodman’s mind the memory of a loose horse, coming from this direction. What more would you, Porvius Bloster? A map? A chart? The creature is here.”
“Then why haven’t we found her?”
“Because all around is a confusion of thought, small things, animals, birds, a constant commotion. Once we find a quiet glade, once night comes and the small creatures sleep—why, then we will find her. Then I will enjoy the hunt.” I could imagine the thing licking its lips.
By Towering Tamor, I could not help thinking, but they must have been on my trail only hours after I had gone if Bloster had had to get himself to some Demesne to find this Basilisk, then backtrack the way I had come. They had not dallied! He must want me very badly to have ridden so hard, I thought. While I was ambling along the side of Longbow Mountain, he must have been lathering his horses to get somewhere. “Why bother with her?” one of the men asked, echoing my thought. “It’s Mendost you’re after.”
“Mendost was my Game,” he growled. “Mine and no others. But when I returned to the Demesne, I found a message awaiting me there concerning this Jinian. It seems she has become larger Game than I knew. There are those—we will not mention names—who want her dead. They want her gone. They want her head sent up to them to verify I tell them no tales. There are those—still nameless—to whom I have sworn certain allegiances, let us say.
“Even if this were not so, I would have sufficient cause for personal enmity. If you are asked why, say because she poisoned me!”
He lied. I had done no such thing, though I could have killed him while he lay there. Had he thought of that? Certainly not! I heard the Basilisk draw a hissing breath and realized I had been thinking—clearly, angrily.
Consider water, I told myself desperately. Limpid, cool, gently sloshing to and fro in a pool, slosh, ripple, slosh, cool, sliding, slosh.
“I thought for a moment I sensed her,” the creature said, “but it was only some fish ...” And then they moved away, up the stream, where I knew the forest had opened a path for them. Lovely forest, trying to protect me. How far could it go in doing things without drawing the shadow to investigate? Little as I wanted to fall to that Basilisk, still less did I like the idea of that shadow.
I learned how far the forest would go when the voices retreated past hearing. There was suddenly a daft bunwit at my side tugging at me, whumping off a few paces, then turning to tug at me again. As clear a game of follow-me as had ever been played. This was my own, crumb-fed bunwit; I had no fear of him nor any now of the forest, but much fear of that creature which had gone hissing off up the rivulet, so I followed. We went back toward that same deep, hidden hollow of huge trees, this time me on my own two feet struggling down the slope. “Murzy,” I mumbled, “I wish you were here.” She would have some commonsensical thing to tell me that would make things go more smoothly. Tess Tinder-my-hand would give me a little lecture, possibly irrelevant. Cat would be silent and urge me to be the same. Bets and Sarah would argue about what to do next. And Margaret Foxmitten would smile a secret smile. It was my own style to grumble, so I grumbled. I can admit it now. The grumbling covered fear. Even when Mendost used to threaten to drop me from great heights, I had been no more afraid than of that Basilisk.
The hollow bottom was no less mysterious by day. The trees were great towers, lunging upward until all their tops drew to one point, a tiny circle of distant sky. Giant rocks stood among them, tilted centerward like heads of listeners, and dark lay deep and gentle among them all.
Tug, went bunwit. Tug, tug, hop. We went between two of the large rocks, turned left, and found ourselves confronted with a ladder. Very neat it was, sides straight as string, little steps all in a row, fading upward into invisibility, becoming no more than a spider’s web against the great trunk far above. Bump, went bunwit against my bottom. Up, it was saying. I couldn’t believe it.
Resolving to be unafraid when hauled aloft by Mendost and one can do nothing about it is one thing. Resolving to climb a ladder that looks like spidersilk into a height so monstrous even an Armiger might take fright is something else again. I stood where I was, unmoving. Bump, went the bunwit again, impatiently. I stood, mouth open.
Far back in the forest a noise was building, loud shouts and calls, rather the sound
