Perhaps his merriment was reaction to a narrow escape. It could just be excitement at his new powers. It was certainly not very manly. Rap forced himself back to sobriety, and shook Darad’s hand again, in civilized fashion, and the deal was made.
So Andor and Jalon and Darad would help. Sagorn was effectively dead. Thinal they must not call, not here in dragon country. Rap had no illusions of holding off a dragon if there was real gold in the neighborhood. He relaxed for a moment, still enjoying the warm soak, and also relishing his new adepthood.
He could listen to the distant murmur of dragons. His farsight was sharper and had a greater range. His ability to outbrawl Gathmor suggested that he would find he was expert at any skill he had ever practiced. He was as persuasive as Andor now, and he could read expressions in a way he had never dreamed was possible. His face was less blistered than Gathmor’s, although he had been closer to the dragon; the scrapes on his toes had stopped hurting. He seemed to be healing very quickly, and he wondered what other abilities he might uncover in himself during the next few days.
He turned to meet Gathmor’s scowl. “You want to get even with Kalkor?” The jotunn nodded warily.
“Then I suggest you stick around, too. There’s another prophecy: I meet Kalkor again.”
Gathmor’s pale eyes showed interest. “You’ll let me have him?”
“You couldn’t handle him. Darad might—”
The warrior growled. “Not a hope, sir! We tried a friendly bout once, and he mashed me. Half my ribs and a broken jaw, and he wasn’t much more’n a kid then. Fists, swords, axes—he’s the best.”
That was an ominous report, because Darad also had a word of power. Either Kalkor had more native ability, or his word was much stronger.
Or else, like Rap now, he knew more than one word. But that worry was far in the future.
“I want to hear the whole story,” Gathmor said, “before I commit myself to anything.”
It was his own fault he hadn’t heard it all long since; Rap had tried to tell him often enough. “We can talk as we go. It’s long enough to last till Zark. ”
“What next?” Gathmor heaved himself up stiffly. “We going to get on our way?”
Rap’s farsight nudged him, and he turned to stare at the watcher on the bank. Where had he come from?
He did not seem worrisome. He was standing on a fallen log and smiling shyly, although the smile was partly hidden by his hand—he had a finger up his nose. A gnome’s nose was not much more than two holes in his face.
The scrap of rag around his loins was filthy beyond belief, and too tattered to serve its purpose; the natural mud color of his skin was visible only where sweat streaks had loosened flakes of dirt. Rap was sorry to discover that his sharp new farsight could detect the teeming multitudes within the odious tangle of the boy’s hair. His head would have reached to Rap’s navel; he was about thirteen, maybe, depending on how fast gnomes aged. The only clean places on him were two very gorgeous, bronzetinted eyes.
Seeing he had the men’s attention, he grinned more broadly and beckoned with his free hand. Then he jumped off his log and ran in among the trees.
Darad lurched to his feet, with Gathmor right behind him. They plowed across the pond in twin tidal waves, heedless of Rap’s shouts.
It took a great effort of Will and was only possible because his farsight still kept the boy in sight, but Rap managed to go the other way first and grab up five of the six wooden sandals. He wanted the sixth and the gowns, too, but the urgency of the summons became unbearable and tore him away. He ran around the pond on bare feet and followed the others.
In that overgrown riot of jungle, the tiny gnome boy had all the advantages. He could squeeze through bamboo thickets. He could roll or crawl under walls of thorns that three naked men dare not approach, or scurry like a beetle over marsh that would swallow them to the shoulders. He was fast and nimble and occultly inexhaustible. His powers included some means of telling direction, for he held to a straight course, and he never drew so far ahead that the chase seemed impossible. Always, his pursuers must believe that another two minutes would do it, and when they flagged from total exhaustion he laughed, and his laugh had some occult power also, for it drove the men on again like red-hot whips.
Rap easily caught up with his companions and handed over the sandals. He himself went barefoot, and soon they were all doing so, trying to gain speed.
His greatest problem was staying in contact with the others. He could easily have left them far behind, and the craving to do so gnawed at him like a starved rat. Darad had an occult warrior’s strength, of course, and could keep up the pace and stand the punishment much better than poor Gathmor, who was only human and very soon exhausted. Rap took his hand and hauled him along, and their compromise pace was about what Darad could manage.
Eventually, as the hours passed and the young gnome led them up into the hills, jungle faded into parkland, and parkland into moor, giving welcome relief from the whipping and slashing of undergrowth. By nightfall, though, the chase was over rocky ground that chopped at feet like knives. Unable to rest for a moment, still staggering along after the gaily skipping gnome with his bewitching laugh and his beautiful eyes, Rap and his friends climbed ever higher between the barren peaks, and the muttering of dragons was very close.
Man’s worth something:
No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man’s worth something.
— Browning, Bishop Blougram’s Apology
SIX
Life and death
1
The Thume side of the mountains was a moister, kinder land than the desert to the east, with rich grass swaying underfoot and foliage-filled sky overhead. The air was friendly, heavy with woodsy scents. Inos could not identify the forest giants themselves, but among them she recognized some of the smaller, cultivated varieties she had seen in Arakkaran—citrus trees and olives, running wild. So whatever had destroyed the ancient folk of Thume had spared their orchards. She approved of fruit trees; unlike most others, they did something useful.
But she soon began to appreciate that even the others could be helpful. They cast shade, and shade discouraged undergrowth. The mules’ little hooves swished through tall ferns, thumped softly on loam or moss. There was no obvious road, but the green tunnels of the woods were mostly quite passable, leading from time to time out into grassy clearings that reminded her oddly of the tiny sunlit courtyards of Krasnegar. In the meadows, of course, the sun was fierce, but on the far side there was always shade again, more gloom-filled hallways pillared with massive trunks that fanned out overhead into rafters, cross-braced with thin shafts of light. She knew the spruce of the taiga and she had seen hardwood forest near Kinvale, but nothing so magical as this.
For a long while the three invaders rode in silence. Kade was still uncharacteristically downcast, and Inos could only conclude that the uncanny encounter with the petrified army still weighed on her mind. She was old; any reminder of death must seem morbid to a woman of her years, but Kade would certainly spring back soon.
Azak was tense, vigilant, his eyes never still. Not wishing to distract him with conversation, Inos let herself become caught up in the birdsong. A steady flow of it filled the woods like musical rainbows. Once in a very long while she would see a tiny shape flash away; mostly the singers stayed out of sight and emptied their souls in chorus and counterpoint. A thousand years we have practiced, they said, waiting for someone to return and hear our song. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!
Harness creaked and jingled, but the spongy ground muffled the mules’ tread. At times the river made itself heard, chattering busily off to the left somewhere, telling the way, promising it would lead them to its bigger brother and that together they would venture to the sea.
The beauty of the morning was a balm to all fears, pure gold. Nowhere could seem less accursed than this.
The approach of noon lessened the birds’ symphony, and Azak was the first to become talkative, as he began to relax. He pointed out some of what his tracker’s eyes were seeing—ancient traces of buildings and trails, animal tracks and how old they were. Those scats were from a wild dog; domestic dogs’ were less tapered. The bark of trees bore ravages of woodpeckers, the rubbing of antlers, old claw marks of bears.