TWENTY-SIX
The alien jungle of the black moonlet crowded menacingly against the walls of the pirate keep. Its fronds and grasses, its brush and its trees grew in a riot of fantastic colors unlike anything Geran had ever seen before. A dozen strange, sweet scents hung heavily in the air, and he could hear the chirps and croaks of small creatures- birds, frogs, or something like them-echoing in the dim light. The air was damp and cool, with a faint white mist clinging to the ground. More than a few of the plants had a distinctly unwholesome look to them, and he wondered if any of them were carnivorous.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Hamil said softly. “I don’t like the looks of this place. I hope Mirya stayed on the trail.”
“So do I. Even Kara couldn’t track her through this.” Geran looked around the stone steps leading down from the keep’s postern gate. There was a small clearing right by the gate, with overgrown paths leading in either direction immediately below the walls. In theory, the postern allowed the keep’s defenders to send out parties of raiders to counterattack an enemy concentrating on the front gate. He saw no sign that Mirya or Selsha had circled the keep at the foot of the wall, though. If they’d fled the keep, they wouldn’t want to skulk around by the base of the wall; they’d want to get as far from the place as they could, and would hope to outrun or evade any pursuers out in the jungle.
Across the clearing, a single footpath led off into the jungle. Geran headed for it while still watching for any tracks along the trail. If he had to guess, he’d say that the path saw infrequent use at best; it was mostly overgrown, but a strip of bare dirt in its center suggested that people came this way from time to time. Fifty yards from the gate, the trail met the edge of the moonlet’s dark forest … and here Geran found something more familiar. He stopped and kneeled in the violet grass by the trailside. The impression of a small, bare foot lay in the center of the path. “Look here,” he said to Hamil.
The halfling kneeled beside him. “Selsha?”
“I think the size is about right. And I don’t think it’s more than a few hours old. It’s hard to tell, since I have no idea what sort of weather this place gets, but look-the grass that’s bent under the heel, there, it’s still damp and the same color as the rest.”
Hamil stood up and circled around the area, looking down. “Over here,” he said. “I think this may be Mirya.”
Geran moved over to look at Hamil’s find. This print was a smooth slipper of some kind, with a pointed toe, but the size was about right. It could have been any of the women enslaved by the pirates, of course, but he didn’t see any reason why serving women would leave the keep by this door, at least not in shoes such as those. “I don’t think those are Mirya’s shoes,” he said. “But then Olana said she brought Mirya a change of clothes. Maybe she brought slippers too.”
They set off again, following the footpath as it wound through the forest. After a few hundred yards, it emerged briefly along the lakeshore; they could look back and see the keep atop its hill, and the two ships grappled alongside the dock. A few thin streamers of smoke rose up into the dark sky, but no other signs of strife were evident from their distance. Several other footpaths-or gametrails, possibly-met by the shore. They searched the ground for any signs of which way the Erstenwolds might have gone, and Geran spotted something on the bole of a tree near the path they’d just emerged from. He took a closer look and found the tree’s fleshy bark scored in two rough horizontal lines. Beads of dark sap welled up from the marks.
“I think Mirya might have marked this tree,” he told Hamil.
“But that’s the way we just came. Why would she mark the trail leading back to the place she was escaping from?”
Geran frowned, thinking for a moment. It could have been simple caution; Mirya might have decided that she wanted to know how to get back to her captors if the wilderness outside the keep proved too dangerous. None of the other pathways had such a mark, so she clearly wasn’t trying to leave signs showing which way she’d gone. But studying the ground, he saw that Mirya-if the slippered footprints were in fact hers-had looked at each of the trails branching away from the lakeshore before finally choosing one. “We’ll ask her when we find her,” he told Hamil. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
They jogged along the new path. This time they went a mile or more before coming to an intersecting trail. Once again they found the trail leading back the way they’d come marked with a fresh blaze. “Mirya!” Geran called. “Mirya!”
There was no answer. With a grimace of frustration, he searched until he found the path whose prints seemed most like the ones he’d been following, and started off again. But something else on the ground caught his eye. Quite near to Mirya’s step-overlapping it, in fact-was the mark of a taloned foot as big as Geran’s own. It had two large toes and a third, smaller one back toward the instep. As he moved along the trail, he found more of the creature’s marks, paralleling Mirya’s. He was fairly certain that he hadn’t seen those prints back by the lakeshore; something had dropped out of the jungle and taken up the Erstenwolds’ trail, or so he guessed. He picked up his speed, now loping along at an easy run. Hamil kept up without complaint, sensing his increasing urgency.
They splashed across a rock-strewn stream and found on the farther shore that the old footpath led into the ruins of an ancient road of glossy black stone. Hexagonal blocks fitted together untold years ago marked the old highway, although scarlet grass pushed up in the gaps between the pavers, and vines hung down over the path. Geran halted in confusion, staring at the ground. The hard stone held no impression that he could make out. “Damn the luck,” he muttered. Somewhere in the forest nearby, an animal gave voice to a strange hooting cry. “Hamil, I’ve lost the trail.”
The halfling looked up and down the path and frowned. “Left or right?”
“Kara could tell us, if she were here.” Geran kicked at the ground in frustration. He’d exhausted what small store of woodcraft he possessed, but he kneeled and began to examine the stones more closely, hoping for a sign he’d missed. Hamil did the same.
“This stonework’s much older than the Black Moon keep,” the halfling said. “I wonder who put a road here?”
“It might lead to those ruins you saw as we descended. They’d be uphill from here, I think.” Geran peered up the overgrown road, searching for a glimpse of old towers and walls in that direction, or at least some sign that Mirya and her daughter might have gone that way. Then he looked down the road, which followed the stream back toward the lake. Another unseen animal on the other side of the stream hooted back at the first one. “Which way would Mirya and Selsha turn?”
Hamil shook his head. “Mirya would be looking for a place to hide, wouldn’t she? If she saw those ruins from the air, she might have decided to head for them. They’d be clear of the forest, anyway.” He waved his arm at the downstream direction. “That probably takes you back toward the lake, and then who knows where?”
“We could split up and cover both possibilities,” Geran said slowly.
“Not a chance. The last thing I want to have to do is go looking for you after I find Mirya and Selsha. In fact-” Hamil started to say something more, but he was interrupted by another of the hooting cries. His eyes narrowed, and he turned slowly, his head cocked to one side as he laid an arrow across his bowstring.
Hamil had an uncanny sense for trouble, and Geran trusted it. He eased his sword from the sheath and moved to put his back to Hamil’s. “Never mind about the splitting up idea,” he said softly. More of the cries sounded in the forest, now closer and around them on all sides. The swordmage stared into the gloom of the forest floor, straining for some glimpse of the creatures stalking them-and then the monsters attacked.
They hurled down from the treetops, leaping in great froglike bounds. Geran glimpsed mottled greenish white bodies and great yellow-orange eyes, a single orb that formed almost the entire head of each of the creatures. Behind him Hamil’s bowstring thrummed, and an uncanny screech split the air. Then the first of the things was on the swordmage. Its talons raked at him, scoring the flesh of his shoulders. He slashed furiously at it and felt his steel bite into its warty hide; dark ichor splattered the ground, and the thing bounded away again.
He wheeled to face the next of the monsters and saw it crouching in the fork of a moss-covered tree, staring at him. The creature was the size of a grown man, but it had a hunched, stooped posture, with long arms and knees bent into an awkward crouch. Its single great eye was almost the size of a human head and glittered with a
