“Asa, you hung around with Raven. Shed, he lived at your place for a couple
years, and you were his partner. What did he bring from Juniper that could have
come to life and become that?”
They shook their heads and stared at the bones. I told them, "Think harder.
Shed, it had to be something he had when you knew him. He stopped going up the
hill a long time before he headed south."
A minute or two passed. Hagop had begun working his way along the edge of the
clearing. I had little hope he would find traces this long after the fact. I was
no woodsman, but I knew Raven.
Asa suddenly gasped.
“What?” I snapped.
“Everything is here. You know, all the metal. Even his buttons and stuff. But
one thing.”
“Well?”
"This necklace he wore. I only seen it a couple times. . . . What's the matter,
Shed?"
I turned. Shed was gripping his chest over his heart. His face was marble white.
He gobbled for words that would not come. He started trying to rip his shirt.
I thought he was having an attack. But as I reached him, to help, he opened his
shirt and grabbed something he was wearing around his neck. Something on a
chain. He tried to get it off by main force. The chain would not break.
I forced him to take it off over his head, pried it out of stiff fingers, held
it out to Asa.
Asa looked a little pale. “Yeah. That's it.”
“Silver,” One-Eye said, and looked at Hagop meaningfully.
He would think that way. And he might be right. “Hagop! Come here.”
One-Eye took the thing, held it to the light. “Some craftsmanship,” he mused. .
. . Then flung it down and dived like a frog off his lily pad. As he arced
through the air, he barked like a jackal.
Light flashed. I whirled. Two castle creatures stood at the side of the black
lump, frozen in midstep, in the act of rushing us. Shed cursed. Asa shrieked.
Kingpin zipped past me and drove his blade deep into a chest. I did the same, so
rattled I did not recall the difficulty I'd had during our previous encounter.
We both hit the same one. We both yanked out weapons free. “The neck,” I gasped.
“Go for the vein in the neck.”
One-Eye was up again, ready for action. He told me later he had glimpsed motion
in the corner of his eye, jumped just in time to evade something thrown. They
had known who to take first. Who was most potent.
Hagop came up from behind as the things started moving, added his blade to the
contest. As did Shed, to my surprise. He jumped in with a knife about a foot
long, got low, went for a hamstring.
It was brief. One-Eye had given us the moment we needed. They were stubborn
about it, but they died. The last to go looked up at Shed, smiled, and said,
“Marron Shed. You will be remembered.” Shed started shaking. Asa said, “He knew
you, Shed.“ ”He's the one I delivered bodies to. Every time but one.”
“Wait a minute,” I countered. “Only one creature got away at Juniper. Don't seem
likely it would be the one who knew you. ...” I stopped. I had noticed something
disturbing. The two creatures were identical. Even to a scar across the chest
when I peeled back their dark clothing. The creature the Lieutenant and I had
hauled down the hill, after having slain it before the castle gate, had had such
a scar.
While everyone else was suffering post-combat shakes, One-Eye asked Hagop, “You
see anything silver around Old Bones? When you were checking first?“ ”Uh. . . .”
One-Eye held up Shed's necklace. “It might have looked something like this. It
was what killed him.”
Hagop gulped and dug into a pocket. He handed over a necklace identical to
Shed's, except that the serpents had no eyes.
“Yeah,” One-Eye said, and again held Shed's necklace to the light. “Yeah. The
eyes it was. When the time was right. Time and place.”
I was more interested in what else might come out of the black lump. I pulled
Hagop around the side, found the entrance. It looked like the entrance to a mud
hut. I supposed it wouldn't become a real gate till the place grew up. I
indicated the tracks. “What do they tell you?”
“They tell me it's busy and we ought to get out of here. There's more of them.”
“Yeah.”
We rejoined the others. One-Eye was wrapping Shed's necklace in a piece of
cloth. "We get back to town, I'm sealing this in something made of steel and
sinking it in the harbor.''
“Destroy it, One-Eye. Evil always finds its way back. The Dominator is a perfect
example.”
“Yeah. All right. If I can.”
Elmo's rush into the black castle came to mind while I was getting everybody
organized to get out of there. I had changed my mind about overnighting. We
could get most of the way back before nightfall. Meadenvil, like Juniper, had
neither walls nor gates. We would not be locked outside.
I let Elmo lie in the back of my mind till the thought ripened. When it did, I
was aghast.
A tree ensures reproduction by shedding a million seeds. One certainly will
survive, and a new tree will grow. I pictured a horde of fighters bursting into
the guts of the black castle and finding silver amulets everywhere. I pictured
them filling their pockets.
Had to be. That place was doomed. The Dominator would have known that even
before the Lady.
My respect for the old devil rose. Crafty bastard.
It was not till we were back on the Shaker Road that I thought to ask Hagop if
he had seen any evidence that anyone had left the clearing by another route.
“Nope,” he said. "But that don't mean anything.
“Let's not spend so much time yakking,” One-Eye said. “Shed, can't you make that
damned mule go any faster?”
He was scared. And if he was, I was more so.
MEADENVIL: HOT TRAIL
We made the city. But I swear I could sense something sniffing along our
backtrail before we reached the safety of the lights. We returned to our
lodgings only to find most of the men gone. Where were they? Off to take over
Raven's ship, I learned.
I had forgotten about that. Yes. Raven's ship. . . . And Silent was on Raven's
trail. Where was he now? Damn! Sooner or later Raven would lead him to the
clearing. . . . A way to find out if Raven had left it, for sure. Also a way to
lose Silent. “One-Eye. Can you get hold of Silent?”
He looked at me strangely. He was tired and wanted to sleep.
“Look, if he follows Raven's every move, he's going to head out to that
clearing.”
One-Eye groaned and went through several dramatic shows of disgust. Then he dug
into his magic sack for something that looked like a desiccated finger. He took
it to a corner and communed with it, then returned to say, "I got a line on him.
I'll find him."
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. You bastard. I ought to make you come with me.”
I settled by the fire, with a big beer, and lost myself in thought. After a
while, I told Shed: “We have to go back out there.”
“Eh?”
“With Silent.”
“Who's Silent?”
"Another guy from the Company. Wizard. Like One-Eye and Goblin. He's on Raven's
trail, tracing every move he made from the minute he arrived. He figured he
could track him down, or at least tell from his movements if he was planning to
trick Asa.''
Shed shrugged. “If we have to, we have to.”
“Hunh. You amaze me, Shed. You've changed.”
“I don't know. Maybe I could have done it all along. I just know that this thing
can't happen again, to anybody else.”
“Yeah.” I did not mention my visions of hundreds of men looting amulets from the
fortress at Juniper. He did not need that. He had a mission. I couldn't make it
sound hopeless.
I went downstairs and asked the landlord for more beer. Beer makes me sleepy. I
had a notion. A possibility. I did not share it with anyone. The others would
not have been pleased.
After an hour I took a leak and dragged off to my room, more intimidated by the
thought of returning to that clearing than by what I hoped to accomplish now.
Sleep was a time coming, beer or not. I could not relax. I kept trying to reach
out and bring her to me. Which meant nothing at all.
It was a weak fool's hope that she would return so soon. I had put her off. Why
should she? Why shouldn't she forget me till her minions caught up and could
bring me to her in chains?
Maybe there is a connection on a level I do not understand. For I wakened from a
drowse, thinking I needed to visit the head again, and found that golden glow
hanging above me. Or maybe I did not waken, but only dreamed that I did. I can't
get that straight. It always seems so dream-like in retrospect.
I did not wait for her to start. I started talking. I talked fast and told her
everything she needed to know about the lump in Meadenvil and about the
possibility the troops had carried hundreds of seeds out of the black castle.
“You tell me this when you are determined to be my enemy, physician?”
"I don't want to be your enemy. I'll be your enemy only if you leave me no
option.“ I abandoned debate. ”We can't handle this. And it has to be handled.
All its like must be handled. There is evil enough in the world as it is." I
told her we had found an amulet upon a citizen of Juniper. I named no name. I
told her we would leave it where she could be sure to find it when she arrived.
“Arrive?”
“Aren't you on your way here?”
Thin smile, secretive, perfectly aware that I was fishing. No answer. Just a
question. “Where will you be?”
“Gone. Long gone, and headed far away.”
“Perhaps. We shall see.” The golden glow faded.
There were things I wanted to say yet, but they had nothing to do with the
problem at hand. Questions I wanted to ask. I did not.
The last golden mote left me with a whispered, “I owe you one, physician.”
One-Eye rambled into the place shortly after sunrise, looking a lot worse for
wear. Silent came along behind him, looking pretty beaten himself. He had been
on Raven's trail without let-up. One-Eye said, "I caught him just in time.
Another hour and he would have headed out. I conned him into waiting till
daylight.''
“Yeah. You want to wake the troops? We get an earlier start today, we ought to
be able to get back before dark.”
“What?”
“I thought I was pretty clear. We've got to go back out there. Now. We've used
one of our days.”
“Hey, man, I'm ripped. I'll die if you make me. . . .”
“Sleep in the saddle. That's always been one of your big talents. Sleep
anywhere, any time.”
“Oh, my aching butt.”
An hour later I was headed down the Shaker Road again, with Silent and Otto
added to the crew. Shed insisted on coming along, though I was willing to excuse
him. Asa decided he wanted in, too. Maybe because he thought Shed would extend
an umbrella of protection. He had started talking mission like Shed, but a deaf
man could hear its false ring.
We moved faster this time, pressed harder, and had Shed on a real horse. We got
down to the clearing by noon. While Silent sniffed around, I worked myself up
and took a closer look at the lump.
No change. Except the two dead creatures were gone. I did not need Hagop's eye
to see that they had been dragged through the entry hole.
Silent worked his way around the clearing to a point almost identical with that
where the creature trail entered the forest. Then he threw up an arm, beckoned.
I hurried over, and did not have to read the dance of his fingers to know what
he had found. His face revealed the answer.
“Found it, eh?” I asked more brightly than I felt. I had started to count on
Raven being dead. I did not like what the skeleton implied. Silent nodded.
“Yo!” I called. “We found it. Let's go. Bring the horses.”
The others gathered. Asa looked a little peaked. He asked, “How did he do it?”
Nobody had an answer. Several of us wondered whose skeleton lay in the clearing
and how it had come to wear Raven's necklace. I wondered how Raven's plot for
vanishing had dovetailed so neatly with the Dominator's for seeding a new black
castle.
Only One-Eye seemed in a mood to talk, and that all complaint. “We follow this
and we're not going to get back to town before dark,” he said. He said a lot
more, mostly about how tired he was. Nobody paid attention. Even those of us who
had rested were tired.
“Lead off, Silent,” I said. "Otto, you want to take care of his horse? One-Eye,
bring up the rear. So we don't get any surprises from behind."
The track was no track at ail for a while, just a straight shot through the
brush. We were winded by the time it intercepted a game trail. Raven, too, must
have been exhausted, for he had turned onto that trail and followed it over a
hill, along a creek, up another hill. Then he had turned onto a less traveled
path which ran along a ridge, toward the Shaker Road. Over the next two hours we
encountered several such forkings. Each time Raven had taken the one which
tended more directly westward.
“Bastard was headed back to the high road,” One-Eye said. “Could have figured
that, gone the other way, and saved all this tramping through the brush.”
Men growled at him. His complaints were grating. Even Asa tossed a nasty look
over one shoulder.
Raven had taken the long way, no doubt about it. I would guess we walked at
least ten miles before coming across a ndgeline and viewing cleared land which
descended to the high road. A number of farms lay on our right. In the distance
ahead lay the blue haze of the sea. The countryside was mostly brown, for autumn
had come to Meadenvil. The leaves were turning. Asa indicated a stand of maples
and said they would look real pretty in another week. Odd. You don't think of
guys like him as having a sense of beauty.
“Down there.” Otto indicated a cluster of buildings three-quarters of a mile
south. It did not look like a farm. “Bet that's a roadside inn,” he said. “What
do you want to bet that was where he was headed?”