The red light blinked on as she spoke.
“Now, the locator will make its own map outward from us, searching for the pattern of Alicia, which is in her blood, even old, dried blood. It reads the area around it and shows coastline as a dark line, river edges by a slightly narrower line. Water is blue. Land is gray. Elevations are shown as the old mapmakers showed them, very thin lines every ten feet, or twenty, or fifty, or one hundred. Here I have it set for fifty.”
An image appeared. Precious Wind pointed out the clustered lines east and west, where the mountains or cliffs rose steeply. Beyond the mountains, the blue of the sea, the dark line of the coast, the narrower lines of the river Wells leading to the blue of Lake Riversmeet.
“I’ll bring the edges in closer. We want to have the tower here at the top so the screen covers all the land between here and where the Old Dark House used to be. We want to keep the cliffs on the screen, as well.”
They stared. Abasio stirred, laying a fingertip on the screen. “There he is. See this little light. It moves.”
For a moment, they couldn’t see it, a tiny dot, barely visible, a green tint. It did not seem to be moving. “What scale of distance do we have here?” Abasio asked.
“Three to four days’ journey across. You have good perception, Abasio, sensory or otherwise. That odd-looking blotch is where the Old Dark Tower was, and he’s very near that. We rather hoped for that. What was sowed there by the blast will help kill him, though it doesn’t kill as quickly as we’d like. Once we’re sure we are seeing him, we can come in closer . . .”
“Do it now. A larger scale will help his movements show up better,” said Abasio.
She made adjustments. The green light grew brighter, creeping like a spider.
“So,” said Prince Orez. “What now?”
“Now these men will work through the night: two men to pedal, one at a time, changing every half hour; one man to record. We have paper maps of this area, ones we made a long time ago. We have many copies. The recorder will mark on a map every few minutes where this green speck goes and how long it stays there. We’ll watch tonight. We’ll watch during the day tomorrow and tomorrow night, comparing the maps from night to night, and we’ll do it long enough to see if there’s a pattern. When we know where it goes, we will know how we can move.”
That night the locator signal moved back and forth across the map; by morning it returned to a place on the eastern slope of Altamont, not far from the road that led south, to the Lake of the Clouds. Each of the next two nights a pattern repeated itself. The thing moved out onto the road, swiftly, almost instantaneously, to the Eastwatch Tower and up the cliff. One of the men on watch went to fetch Precious Wind. She had wanted to be told if the creature went to the cliffs.
She climbed to the tower, pulled her chair where she could see the little light, how it moved. “It’s staying on the cliff road,” she said wonderingly.
“It doesn’t want to be seen,” one of the men remarked. “At night, there’s no travel on the road.”
“But it should be able to climb. It’s as long legged as a spider. I thought it would go straight up the face of the cliff between the roads.”
“Ma’am, the villages are on the inside edge of the road. They’re filled in behind to make a flat place, and the villages sit on that flat place. Along a village, the wall is three stories high, and the houses are part of it. There are windows in it and a few places where the little alleys come through . . .”
“I remember,” said Precious Wind. “Of course.”
“If it wants to stay away from people, using the road is the best bet. Otherwise it might end up waking or killing somebody and the whole cliff would be on guard.”
They watched it go up the road very quickly. It ran steadily, like an engine, seemingly tireless.
“Where’s it going to stop?” she murmured to herself. “It has to stop somewhere!”
It stopped at the turn in the road beyond the second village. A tiny twist in an elevation line showed the small flat surface.
Precious Wind nodded. “I remember now. It’s where we camped. It’s the village that’s ‘becoming pure,’ where they sold us those old robes.”
Abasio spoke from behind her. “It knows where we went last time. It knows we’re going back.”
“You’re up late,” said Precious Wind.
“I haven’t been down to get up from,” he said grimly. “I’ve been digging up bodies. Bartelmy’s. Black Mike’s. Their bodies are torn. Flesh missing. When Prince Orez mentioned that, I wondered what kind of weapon . . .”
Precious Wind’s mouth twisted. “Our emissary watched the battle at the Old Dark House. The creature has blades in its hands. It has metal teeth. It is terribly strong and terribly fast. The emissary thought it could shoot fire.”
“Acid?” he wondered. “They used to use acid in that part of the Dragdown Swamps that was mining country. It’s one of the things that makes old mines so dangerous. People still use it where I came from, but the people in the Edges are in control of it now.”
“We brought fireproof clothing . . .”
“Is there acid-proof clothing?”
“I’m sure there is. We’ll use the far-talker to find out.”
“You didn’t hear what Abasio said. It can hear the far-talker,” said another voice. Justinian.
She turned to stare at him,
