“What makes you think I could live without you?”
Because you couldn’t possibly love me as much as I do you, I wanted to say. Because you filled a gap I’d learned to live with, and if it opened up again, I couldn’t survive it. That was the real reason. But that thought, verbalized, would’ve kept us both laughing for an hour. So I just said, “If you could call that ‘living,’ ” and we both giggled. Then we made out some more.
I was so lost in this reverie that the low, dark shapes moving through the shadows didn’t register until I found myself in the middle of them. My horse whinnied nervously and I discerned the red scarves, gray in the moonlight, of two dozen Black River Hills people.
I slowed my horse to a walk as they formed up around me. So this was who Candora got to help him search. It made sense; there were a lot of them, and they were used to the terrain. They emerged from the hawthorns like badgers, low to the ground and without a scratch on them. The big, crude knives they carried would do considerably more than scratch, I knew. The blades reflected the moonlight raggedly, befitting their owners.
“You best stop,” one said, and pointed his weapon at me.
I did, pulling the reins and murmuring, “Whoa.” The big black stud tossed his head but didn’t panic.
Torches flared to life around me. Too bad they hadn’t used torches when searching; that I would’ve spotted. But the flickering orange light did nothing to make them any friendlier. If anything, their mean little faces seemed more devilish.
“Fellas,” I said genially. “There seems to be some misunderstanding here. I don’t want any trouble; I’m just passing through.”
“I know you,” one said. He had bruises around both eyes, which made him look even more like some low animal that had learned to walk upright. “You punched me in the face.”
“Yeah,” I said with a weary sigh. So much for playing innocent. Steps scuffed on the rocks behind me as well, and I knew I was surrounded. Time to be clever again.
I swung my leg over the saddle and slid to the ground. I did not draw my sword; I still had some hopes I could talk my way out. I spread my hands in a wide, let’s-be-friends gesture. “Hey, be reasonable. I’m sorry I had to punch you, but things happen. Would money make you feel better?”
Black eyes shook his head, slow and serious.
“Good, because I’m flat broke.” No one laughed. They moved slowly in, not rushing but simply sliding forward, their boots scraping on the rocks. Those big knives dangled loosely in their hands, and I could see spots that could be either rust, or blood they hadn’t bothered to clean off. The torches guttered loudly in the wind.
I took a step toward black eyes. A fence of knives appeared before me.
Okay. Decision made.
I dropped to my knees and stared up at the stars, eyes wide, mouth open. “Oh, my God,” I said softly. “Lumina.”
About half of them followed my gaze, including most of the ones directly in front of me. Yes, it was the old “look behind you!” trick, but if you do it with enough conviction, it’ll always work.
I leaped up, drew my sword and struck all in one motion. My wide swing cut through the calf muscles of half a dozen of the red-scarves, including black eyes. They fell with a mass howl, and I dashed past them, turned and prepared for the rest of them to rush me.
Only three of them did, though. The first one swung wide and overhand. I dodged, kicked his feet out from under him, and he fell face-first onto the ground, his head smacking the stone like a cantaloupe. His knife clattered off into the dark. The second one ran at me, knife extended straight out. Again I sidestepped and slashed off his knife hand halfway up his forearm. I spun to face the third, who threw the big knife at me and gave me a nasty cut atop my left shoulder. When he saw he’d missed anything vital, he turned and ran.
The rest of them stood over their moaning, bleeding comrades. Some knelt to help, but most just stared at me with those blank, dead eyes.
I waited to see if any of them would make a move, and also listened madly for anyone behind me. It would be just like Candora to suddenly appear and cave in my skull again.
Finally I said, “Is that it? Are we done?”
“Why you here?” one man said. It wasn’t a challenge, more a whine of someone out of his depth seeking to understand. “Why you all here?”
“I’m just here to find my girlfriend,” I said. “You’ll have to ask everyone else.”
“We live back in here,” he continued. “This is our home, and nobody don’t fuck with us.”
“Suits me, pal. Just send my horse over here and I’ll be on my way.”
One of them slapped my horse, and he trotted across the skirmish line to me. “You ain’t gonna find Lumina, you know,” their spokesman said. “Only a believer find her.”
I swung into the saddle. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not looking for her, isn’t it?” I headed up the slope into the dark before any of them had a change of heart.
TWENTY-FIVE
Finally I neared my destination. Lesperitt’s directions had been explicit, and even at night I was able to follow them with no trouble. The landmarks he’d used-rock formations, places where the trees grew in certain ways-stood out as plain in the moonlight as they did during the day. It helped that I knew the area a bit, but the easy directions meant that both Liz and Marion would’ve had no trouble, either. Those poor red-scarf bastards had no idea how close they’d really been.
The horse was speckled with foam, and I should’ve been conscientious and let him drink at one of the streams we crossed down below in the woods. Up here there was no water, only wind, dust and summer heat even at night.
One last bend awaited before the final straight stretch of trail ahead. But something suddenly caused the stallion to balk. He whinnied, fought to turn and eventually stopped dead, emphatically refusing to go any farther. I saw no reason for his abrupt terror, but knew enough to take it seriously. If a good animal gets spooked, there’s always a reason.
I dismounted and tied him to one of the stunted, scrubby trees that marked the top of the tree line. The silence was eerie. I continued on foot, checking the ground as I walked. The harsh moonlit shadows actually helped show that another horse had been up the trail recently, but had gotten similarly frightened not much farther on. Manure showed me where it, too, had been tied.
My ribs tightened around my lungs. A set of small boot prints that might’ve belonged to Liz continued past this spot, and another set, much larger, obliterated them in places.
The trail rose still higher, although the slope was slight and the climb easy. The constant wind blew the path clean down to solid rock and defeated my efforts at tracking. Moonlight bounced off the whitish yellow stone, and somewhere an owl announced its presence, the call echoing among the rocks. I could see for miles in three directions, the fourth blocked by the rise toward the little mount’s peak.
At last I climbed the final bit of hill toward the spot Lesperitt had described. I drew my sword and approached. I considered announcing my presence, but past experience taught me that was almost never a good idea. The place I sought was in a flat spot on the bare slope, with no place for Marion, Candora or anyone else to hide in ambush even in the dark. Except, that is, within the place itself.
After all this urgency, it was anticlimactic. The great split in the rock was about fifteen feet long and five feet wide, gaping straight down into the ground. Again I looked for footprints, but the rocky surface was too hard to show anything. I’d make a wider circle and look for another trail if I found no additional clues.
I crouched at the edge. The rock around the hole’s lip was covered in something black, like soot. I rubbed some on my fingers and sniffed; it was soot. Beneath the scorch I caught the tang of the same oily substance I’d seen the dragon people applying to crevices before. Had it been intended as a marker? Something that would catch fire and burn the ground if a dragon happened by and hiccupped? An impressively practical idea, if dragons actually existed, which they didn’t. Although it did explain why the red-scarves had not used their torches while they searched.
I leaned over the edge and peered down into the darkness. The moonlight made the shadows within
