The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

All I could think of was the room in the Guest House, and I tried to remember it in a way that would suit Hafnor. Sudden memories surged up, ones I had not known of, the color and sound of the fire, the feel of the woolen carpet on my hands, the smell of the polish used on the furniture. The memories assailed from every side, and I dropped the tiny figure of Hafnor in panic, to stand heaving like an overridden horse. When I had panted my way back to a kind of sanity, I said to Chance, “If I go, and if I am gone when night comes, then go to … to Three Knob. Get rid of that yellow horse and his strange shoes. Tell anyone who seems interested that the young man who was with you has gone away … to Vestertown, or Morninghill. But you go to Three Knob and wait there, however long it takes me. We’ll meet you there, Silkhands and I.”

He did not argue or make any great fuss about it, merely watched me, nodding the while, as I took Hafnor into my hand again. I summoned up the memories of that guest room and saw them take visible shape before me, as though framed in a round window. From the corner of my eye, I saw another window which looked out onto a flame-lit cavern, and another which showed the attics of Mertyn’s House in Schooltown, and another which showed the long, half-lit corridors of the magicians’ lair beneath the mountains. I spun, seeing these windows open about me, as though I stood at the center of a sponge or a great cheese, all around me holes reaching away to every place I had ever been or known of. “Where?” whispered Hafnor, and I turned to the hole which showed the guest room in Xammer, stepped through it, and stumbled upon the rug before the cold fireplace to fall sprawling.

When I had stopped shaking and had time to get up and brush myself off, for I was still covered with half dried grasses from that hill beside the road, far to the north, I sneaked down to the courtyard and appeared there to the first person I could find from Vorbold’s House. It was Gamesmistress Joumerie, who looked me over curiously and answered me words I did not like.

“Silkhands? Why, no, Gamesman. She rode out this morning with young Jinian and several servants and two Armigers for safety’s sake, riding to King Kelver’s purlieu, away north. They will not move over fast, not so far you may not catch them up, ride you swiftly.”

I left her with scant courtesies to find a hidden corner and take Hafnor into my hand once more. “What do I do now?” I begged. “I must find her, but I don’t know the road well enough to…”

“Hoptoad, lad,” came the laughing voice with more than a hint of malice at my discomfiture. “Hoptoad. Do you look far ahead, keen as your eyes will go, and I will do the rest.” That is what we did. I looked as far down the road as I could see, sharpening my vision to the utmost, spying the place ahead, the trees, the canals, whatever might be about, bit on bit, and then we flicked, and I was in that spot. Then I did it again, and flick, and again, and flick, each time scanning the road between to be sure we did not miss her. Until we saw the confusion and heard the screaming and flicked to find ourselves among a crowd, all shouting and running about near the unconscious body of one Armiger and the bleeding, perhaps dead, body of another.

I shook one of the bystanders and demanded that he tell me quickly what had happened. He pointed a trembling finger at the forest edge. “Ghoul,” he whispered. “Came with a horde of dead out of the trees. The Armigers tried to fight them, but you can’t fight that. The Ghoul took the women. Dragged them away into the trees.”

Though obviously frightened, he had kept his wits about him. I ran for the forest, knowing that Hafnor could not help me there. It would take Grandfather Tamor, swift flyer, to lift me up where I could see. So it was. He caught me up like a feather, moved me like a swooping hawk to peer this way and that, seeking the movement of leaves or the rustle of undergrowth below, quartering again and yet again, hearing only silence, working slowly westward, a little faster than a man might run.