He managed to raise his head, stared at her with darkringed eyes. “Monso needs a few hours to recover from any lingering effects of that creature’s venom,” he said. “And neither of us will get far afoot without rest. Sleep, Lydryth. I intend to.”
Feeling like a traitor-What if Yachne is even now closing in on Kerovan?-Lydryth nevertheless realized that her companion had the right of it. She nodded at him, then tumbled over onto her blankets, pulled an edge other battered cloak across her and knew no more.
Alon’s nudge roused her midmom, and, with a groan, she rolled over and sat up groggily. A bath, she thought longingly. If only we had Dahaun’s red pools hereabouts. Her nostrils wrinkled at the smell of food, simmering in a pot over a small, nearly smokeless fire.
“Here,” the Adept said, extending a cup filled with thick, hot gruel that was flavored with dried fruit. “Try this. You need to eat.”
“I cannot…,” she protested, feeling her stomach lurch. “I don’t feel as though I could ever eat again.”
He gave her a level glance. “Food will aid your body in overcoming the effects of the web-rider’s poison,” he said. “If you do not eat, you’ll be too weak to walk, and, remember, Monso goes unburdened today, save for our packs.” The cup moved toward her again. “Try . . . please.”
Dubiously, she took the thick stuff, sipped cautiously. As soon as she had downed the first few swallows, the churning in her middle quieted. The world around her seemed to solidify, brighten; a measure of strength returned to her limbs.
When it was time to go, she was able to stand and walk unassisted. As the travelers set out. Steel Talon swooped toward them, alighting on a nearby branch. The falcon screamed excitedly, flapping his wings with agitation. Alon stopped to stare at the bird intently. “What was he trying to tell you?” Lydryth asked, when he began walking again.
“I cannot be sure,” he said. “Contact between us is tenuous at best. But he believes that his quest may be coming to an end. He feels that soon he may be able to join his master.”
Lydryth glanced over her shoulder at the bird, seeing him wing upward into the skies. “Poor Steel Talon . . .”
Alon’s expression was grim. “We cannot help him. Best we concentrate on helping ourselves and those who are depending upon us.” They walked throughout the rest of the morning, trying to keep a steady, swift pace, chewing hunks ofjoumeybread for their nooning without halting, then slogging determinedly into the afternoon. Lydryth thought longingly of the swiftness with which the Keplian had borne them as she forced herself to keep up with the others. Every muscle in her body seemed to be sprained or bruised.
Alon was quiet again, brooding, and she did not like the look in his eyes when she happened to meet them. His thoughts, she could tell, were far from lightsome. Something was growing in him, some darkness of spirit that she feared.
In the early afternoon they climbed a long, sloping hill, then halted on its summit to breathe and scan the countryside before them. The hill sloped downward to a raw gorge of boulder-strewn, earth-colored land that seemed to be filled with a faint haze, despite the sun’s brightness overhead. The rift extended as far in either direction as the songsmith could see. “Our path lies straight across yon gorge,” she said, eyeing it dubiously. “But I like not the looks of it.” “Kar Garudwyn lies in that direction?” he asked, pointing. “Yes. But that looks like very rough ground. Do you think we should turn aside, find a way around it?”
“Finding a way around would take us many extra hours of walking.” Alon pointed out the truth. “The entire stretch is no more than half a mile wide. Despite its raw look, the ground appears solid. If we take it slowly over those rocks, there should be no danger.”
Leading Monso, he started off down the hill. Lydryth followed, growing ever more repelled by this strange, narrow floor to this small divide. For a moment she wanted to shout to Alon not to venture onto this ground, but she forced herself to silence, remembering the urgency of their journey.
/( will not take more than a half-hour to cross, she judged, eyeing the land before them, trying to find comfort in her thought. Alon has the right ofit… finding a way around would delay us by half a day or more. . . .
Ahead of her, Alon stepped from the green verge of grass onto that churned earth. He waved at her. “It is solid. Come ahead!”
The songsmith nerved herself to step over that border. She took a few strides, then gasped as a section of ground that had seemed perfectly steady turned abruptly, twisting her ankle. She barely saved herself from a fall by quick use of her staff. Hobbling forward, she felt another chunk of earth turn beneath her heel. “Alon!” she cried. “Wait!”
He stumbled, nearly falling, catching himself on Monso’s ragged mane, then halted and stood staring about him, his expression one of bewilderment and growing unease. Lydryth limped up to join him; then she, in turn, regarded the landscape surrounding them.
The green hillsides had vanished. Now the rock-strewn gorge seemed to stretch before them-and behind them-into infinity. Overhead, the sun had vanished, but a brassy, glaring sky made the land about them shimmer with heat. There was no living vegetation. Rather, dead trees seemed to have been cast down like a child’s jackstraws, and the underbrush was withered to a spectral ashy grey. Shadowy vines looped and coiled, snaking across the broken, churned ground. They were not living, for they bore no hint of green, rather resembled long-dead serpents.
As they stood there, a tremor rippled through the soil beneath their feet, making them both cry out and clutch at Monso, who threw up his head and whinnied with terror. A long crevice opened in the rocky ground, even as they watched. Finally the shaking quieted and their feet were once more planted on steady footing.
“Alon …” Lydryth’s words died on her lips, and she could only stand mute, knowing her fear must be written upon her features.
He nodded, shoulders sagging heavily. “I have been a fool. If only I weren’t so tired I could have sensed it…” His mouth tightened grimly. “The entire place . . . ensorcelled. This is Yachne’s doing. Her trap. And I marched us straight into it.”
Eleven
‘Where are we, then?” Lydryth asked, forcing her voice to remain steady. With one part of her mind she wanted to scream at Alon, curse him roundly for leading them into this trap, but what good would that do? With an effort that made her jaw muscles ache, she kept a tight rein on her tongue.
“I am not entirely sure,” he said softly, and the bitterness in his voice told the songsmith that he was cursing himself far more vehemently than she could ever have done.
“Are we still in Arvon, do you think?” She gazed about them, seeing the eerily lit sky, the ravaged landscape stretching onward without discernible horizons. Fear surged within her. “Or did we come through some kind of Gate when we stepped into this blighted land?” “I do not think so,” he said, absently fingering the crystal talisman Dahaun had placed about his neck, as though touching it would help him think. “I believe rather that we are still within the confines of that mysterious gorge we entered only a few moments ago.”
“But how can that be? There is no sun… and no horizon. We cannot see the hillsides that should surround us.”
“I know. But much of what we are seeing in this place is illusion,” he said. “Many of the false images I can dismiss by summoning true sight.” He pointed at a jagged boulder in their path. A ghostly grey vine with shadow-colored blossoms crawled up it like a viper. “That, for instance. The reality is not a boulder, but a gaping crevice in the earth, half-covered in dead vines.”
Lydryth stared at it, knowing that if she had continued onward, unwarned, she would have fallen over the edge. She licked dry lips. “Illusion … Can you break the spell, Alon?”
He gave a heartfelt sigh, leaning tiredly back against the Keplian’s shoulder. “That I cannot,” he said, sounding as if the admission cost him dearly. “Yachne’s magic is too strong.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. She had not expected him to admit defeat without even a trial. “How can you know unless you try?”
Bleak despair shadowed his face. “I know,” he insisted quietly. “This is too powerful for me.”
The songsmith opened her mouth to argue further, but after a moment she sighed softly and remained silent. The spell is not only one of illusion, she realized. It is also one of hopelessness. She could feel it affecting her, too . . . gnawing at the edges of her will, her determination, like a rasti chewing through a corncrib floor.