Archon (7 page)

More rustling noises came from the trees. More of Free Will’s men, or their intended victim?

“Taemon?” a familiar voice whispered. “Is that you?”

Breaking through the trees — and heading straight for the wire — was Amma.

There was no time even to think. Amma would be at the wire in a second or two. He stared at the wire and envisioned it snapping in half.
Be it so!

The wire broke and recoiled violently against the trees. Amma froze in shock. Free Will’s men came charging out of their hiding places, but still Amma stood there. Why wasn’t she moving? Free Will’s men were almost to her!

Taemon used psi to whip one end of the wire toward the men, lashing the legs of the man closest to Amma. The man cried out and fell to the ground, but his companions kept advancing. Taemon turned his attention to them, lashing them with the wire until each of them collapsed.

As the last man fell, Taemon’s vision became blurry and turned dark around the edges. He looked around for Amma but couldn’t see her — couldn’t see much of anything. Had she gotten away?

He tried to lift himself up on his elbows but found that he couldn’t move his arms. Tried to call out to Amma, but no sound came from his mouth.

All was quiet as Taemon lay in his hiding spot, trying to regain his strength. He’d wait a few minutes, then he’d try to find Amma. He hoped she’d gotten away.

He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the whine of a mosquito woke him. The ground felt rough under his cheek. Pebbles, leaves, dirt. Why in the Great Green Earth was he sleeping outside? He hated camping.

Grunting, he turned over on his back. His mouth was painfully dry.

“Taemon?” a voice called from nearby.

It was Amma.

Then he remembered. The mountain. Free Will’s men. The ambush attempt.

“I’m here,” Taemon croaked. He hauled himself into a sitting position.

“There you are!” Amma rushed over to where he leaned against the tree. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! It was you who saved me from Free Will’s men, wasn’t it? Are you okay? You look awful!”

“I’m fine,” he lied, sitting up a bit straighter. “Free Will’s men? Are they —?”

“They’re gone. I ran ahead, then waited for them to clear out. I figured it was you who broke the wire and attacked them, so I knew you had to be close by. After they left, I started looking for you.”

Taemon tried to stand up, but a wave of dizziness crashed over him and he slid back down the tree. He hung his head until the feeling subsided.

“What’s wrong?” Amma asked.

Taemon rubbed his temples. “I think using psi made me weaker, somehow.”

Amma frowned. “That doesn’t sound good. Is it related to your shoulder injury, do you think? How are you feeling now?”

“Better. I just have to be careful. Learn my limits.”

Amma frowned. “Will you admit now that you need me? You can’t possibly make it over Mount Deliverance by yourself — not when using psi weakens you this much.”

As much as Taemon hated to say it, Amma was right. If he had any hope of finding Da, he needed help. He needed Amma.

“Are you sure you remember the way?” Taemon asked, slowly getting to his feet. “You were only a kid when you saw the map.”

Amma seemed to consider the question. “I’m pretty sure I remember everything. But if we get in a real bind, you can always use clairvoyance to see what’s ahead. Between the two of us, we just might make it.”

Taemon gathered up his supplies and pulled on his backpack. “Are you sure about this, Amma? I have to go. It’s my da who’s out there. But you —”

“Hey,” Amma said, cutting him off. “We’re in this together. We need each other. Besides,” she said, picking her way through the brush, back toward the mountain, “if there’s even the slightest chance that the books from my library ended up in the Republik . . . well, I can’t very well just leave them in the hands of the enemy, can I?”

“Hannova thinks they’re buried under the temple,” Taemon said.

“But she can’t know for sure. None of us can, at least not until all the rubble is finally cleared, which could take months. Since you’re so all-fire determined to pay a little visit to the Republik now, I figure I might as well tag along and see if I can find out anything about the books.”

“Do you really think that’s likely?” Taemon asked. How in the Great Green Earth would someone carry that many books across the mountain? Or was Amma just using the books as an excuse to help him?

Amma had a distant look in her eyes. “This is all connected somehow. Elder Naseph was planning to use the books as leverage to make sure the Republik kept its side of the alliance. Even if the books are buried in the rubble of the temple, I’d like to know why they were so valuable to the Republik. It’s still my family’s responsibility to safeguard those books and whatever secrets they hold.”

Taemon wondered if he should tell Amma what he thought was going on — that someone from the Republik had kidnapped Da to power its psi weapons. If that was true — if the Republik was still planning to go ahead with its war and was on the brink of discovering that the city of Deliverance was powerless — then Amma’s books were now more dangerous than ever.

“All right,” Taemon said. “Let’s go.”

Seven days later, Taemon wondered if Amma was still glad she’d come along. Using her memory of the map, she had led them high into the mountains, and though the snow hadn’t fallen yet, the nights were cold. The sweaters and camping blankets they’d brought weren’t enough, but wood was scarce at this elevation, which meant they could build only small fires — barely big enough for preparing their meals, let alone warming their bodies.

Water, too, was a constant concern. They’d long since finished the water they’d brought, and the only streams they’d passed were shallow and muddy, hardly good for drinking. And in order to boil water to make it drinkable, they’d have to find more wood. It was a vicious cycle. Skies, even finding a place to go to the bathroom was an ordeal.

As for their food supply, it was holding out, but just barely. Soon they’d need to start supplementing it with food they could find on the mountain. This part of the journey involved hiking all day, every day. That was hard enough, but the difficult part was yet to come. Soon they would have to turn deeper into the rocky canyons and find the pass that would lead them to the Republik. They would need all the strength they could get.

They made camp for the night, and it was Amma’s turn to build the fire. Taemon had learned enough from Amma to make a decent fire, but she was still much better at it than he was — especially with his injury. Taemon rummaged through his knapsack for something to make a meager meal, but he couldn’t find anything. All their food was gone! His water bottle was missing, too. All the lightweight supplies were there — blankets, rope, twine, and Challis’s scarf. But no food.

Taemon opened his mouth to shout to Amma and tell her that their food was missing. Then it dawned on him. He checked Amma’s knapsack. Sure enough, it was full of food, water, and the heaviest of the tools and supplies that Drigg had given him.

Amma had been trying to lighten his pack.

Quickly, while Amma was busy with the fire, Taemon redistributed the food and supplies so that the packs were equally heavy. His left arm may not be fully functioning, but until he needed to use psi to get them out of a tight spot, he was fully capable of pulling his own weight on this trip.

He put together a meal of dried fruit, travel bars, and jerky. “We’re running pretty low on food,” he said as he handed Amma her share.

“No problem,” Amma said. “We can catch some of those ground squirrels we’ve been seeing.”

Taemon cringed. “Squirrel meat?”

“It’s not terrible. We had to eat it one year when most of the cattle died. And it cooks up pretty quick, so no need for big fires.”

“I suppose I could use a little psi to trap them.”

“No,” Amma said. “I know how to set a snare. We’ll save your psi till we really need it —
if
we really need it.”

“If I’m careful, if I use just a little —”

“You don’t know how much is too much. No psi, Taemon. Not until your shoulder gets better.”

Amma arranged the rocks she had collected to make a circle around the fire. They would place the larger, smoother rocks at the bottom of their bedrolls when it was time to sleep.

Taemon gathered his food and prepared to scoot closer to the fire, but his left arm decided not to cooperate, collapsing under him as he tried to push himself off the ground. His food spilled at his feet. “Oops,” he said. “That was clumsy.”

Amma pursed her lips. “Here, let me.” She gathered up the scattered food and handed it back to Taemon.

“Nature’s seasoning,” Amma said, pointing to the bits of dirt clinging to his food. “That’s what my brothers call it.”

Taemon ate a slice of dried apple and nodded. “It adds a woody flavor. With a hint of earthworm. Quite nice, actually.”

That at least got a smile out of her, but Taemon could tell that Amma was worried about his injury. Truthfully, he was worried, too. The numbness in his arm did not seem to be improving. There were days when he couldn’t feel anything from his fingertips to his shoulder. At least there was no pain involved.

After they’d eaten, Amma set to work on her squirrel snares, whittling sticks and tying pieces of twine to them. Taemon pulled the scarf Challis had given him from his knapsack and ran his hand across the strange design.

“Is that one of Challis’s scarves?”

Taemon nodded. “Do you like it?” He wrapped it around his neck and struck a silly pose. “Challis said you would.”

“It looks very . . . warm,” she said with a laugh.

“Warm is good,” Taemon said. “I’m liking warm more and more each day.”

Amma got up to check the rocks by the fire. “Then you’ll like these rocks. They’re just about ready.”

A few days back, when the temperature became uncomfortably cold for the first time, Amma had shown Taemon how to heat smooth stones by the fire and use big, glossy leaves they’d gathered to wrap the heated rocks and make bedroll warmers. It was a trick her brothers had taught her.

Taemon thought of his own brother. The only tricks Yens had shown him were the cruel kind, and those were usually aimed at Taemon. He wondered how different his life might have been if he’d grown up with a family like Amma’s.

Taemon watched as Amma tied the wrapped rocks with thin vines and placed a couple at the bottom of each of their bedrolls. Later, when he climbed inside his bedroll, the toasty heat warmed his toes. By morning the rocks would be cold, but his bedroll stayed warm long enough for Taemon to fall asleep.

The next morning, Amma had an announcement: “Today’s the day we should find the saddle.”

“The saddle?”

“That’s how it was labeled on the map,” Amma said. “It’s a dip where two valleys connect, so it probably looks like a saddle. That’s where we’ll need to cross over.”

Taemon frowned. “It can’t be that simple. Otherwise people would have crossed the mountain long ago.”

“True,” Amma said. “But remember that crossing the mountain was forbidden. From what I know of the city, people learn from a young age that they can’t do anything without permission. Would any of you even have thought to try to visit the Republik?”

Taemon shook his head. It had certainly never occurred to
him
to try to cross Mount Deliverance, and he’d never heard anyone talk about it, not even Yens, who seemed to think the rules didn’t apply to him. Still, he couldn’t shake the idea that crossing the mountain was going to be more complicated than hopping over a saddle.

Just getting to the saddle proved difficult. The slope was steep and rocky. Once they had to walk in a crouch for about twenty-five feet in order to pass under a rock roof. Another tough spot required them to remove their packs and slither between the rocks, tugging their packs behind them. Several times they had to scoot on their butts over boulders with little or nothing to hold on to.

“I guess you were right,” Amma called up to Taemon as she lowered herself down a crag. “Getting to the saddle isn’t simple.”

“I would have liked to be wrong,” Taemon called back. He walked toward the edge of the crag, turned around, gripped the ledge with both hands, and slowly started to lower himself. Almost immediately his left arm gave out on him. He held on with one hand and found a foothold just before he slipped. He scrambled the rest of the way down and shook out his left arm once he was back on solid ground.