It had been quiet when they entered the village. When they left, they could hear in the distance the sounds of the wronk as it moved toward them.
Tamis wheeled back in something close to blind fury, her short sword glinting in the light. “Perhaps we should stand and face him right here!” she hissed. “Perhaps we should forget about hunting for pits that might not even exist!”
Quentin started to make a sharp reply, then thought better of it. He shook his head instead, and when he spoke he kept his voice gentle. “If we die making a useless gesture, we do nothing to help Patrinell.” She glared at him, but he did not look away. “We made an agreement. Let’s stick to it.”
They went on through the afternoon, out of the village and back toward Castledown, choosing a trail that was almost overgrown from lack of use. No sign of life appeared. About halfway between the village and the ruins, at the beginnings of twilight, they were passing through an open space in the woods in which tall dips and rises rippled the ground and grasses grew in clumps. The failing light was even poorer there, screened by conifers that grew well over a hundred feet tall and spread in all directions save south, where a wildflower meadow opened off the rougher ground. They were moving toward a pathway that opened off the far side when Tamis grabbed Quentin’s arm and pointed just ahead, which he thought looked like everything else around them, scrub-grown and rough. In exasperation, she pulled him right up to the place to which she was pointing, and then he recognized it for what it was. The pit was well concealed by a screen of sapling limbs layered with some sort of clay-colored cloth, sand and dirt, clumps of dried grasses, and debris. It was so well designed that it disappeared into the landscape. Unless you were right on top of it and looking down, you wouldn’t see it.
Yet Tamis had. He looked at her for an explanation.
She smirked with rueful self-depreciation. “Luck.”
She pointed to one side. It took him a while to see that a corner of the support cloth had worked itself to the surface and was sticking up. “Bury that, and the pit will be invisible again.”
“Or move it to another place, and you create a red herring. And an edge for us.” He looked at her questioningly. “What do you think?”
She nodded slowly. “Because Patrinell will see it, too, just like I did.” She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “This is what we’ve been searching for, Highlander. We make our stand here.”
They had cut away the bit of cloth and reburied it off to one side with the corner sticking up. They used a scattering of twigs and grasses to suggest that the pit might be located there. It was reasonable to assume that the wronk, using Ard Patrinell’s skills and experience, would be looking for traps and snares, especially if it found them prepared to stand and fight. If they could draw it in the wrong direction or mislead it in just the slightest, they could drop it into the pit before it knew what was happening.
It was a dangerous gamble. But it was all they had to work with.
So now they waited in the deepening night, listening to the adversary’s approach, to a sharp crackling of brush and limbs, steady and inexorable. They had considered lighting fires to give them a clear battlefield, but decided that darkness favored them more. The moon and stars appeared and faded behind a screen of clouds, providing snatches of light with which to operate. They had positioned themselves squarely behind the false pit, leaving the best and most logical path to reach them to their right, over the real pit. They stood together now, but would change position when the wronk appeared. They had worked their plan out carefully. All that remained was to test it.
It would work, Quentin told himself silently. It had to.
He heard the wronk clearly, heavy footfalls drawing closer. His skin crawled with the sound. Tamis stood right beside him, and he could hear the soft rasp of her breathing. They held their swords in front of them, blades glinting in the moonlight as the clouds broke overhead momentarily. Quentin’s head throbbed and his blood tingled with fiery sparks of magic that broke away from the Sword of Leah as it responded to his sense of danger. He felt the change in his body as he prepared to give himself over to its power. An equal mix of satisfaction and fear roiled within him. He would be transformed, and he knew now what that meant. When the magic entered him, he infused himself with its terrible fury and risked his soul.