The Farwalker's Quest (35 page)

“It's still bad,” he said in response to her glance. “You and Zeke didn't move at all for a couple of days, though. When I saw how ill you were, he and I tried to get you to Libros. We had to risk it. It isn't that far, but I just couldn't do it lame.”

“So I went by myself,” Zeke said. “Yesterday morning.”

Ariel turned a stunned look on her friend.

“I had hoped he could bring back a Healtouch,” Scarl explained, “without Mason catching wind of it—or of me.”

“But the Healtouch I found wouldn't come,” Zeke said. “Or give medicine to ‘a strange ragamuffin with nothing to trade.' That's what he told me.”

Scarl muttered something about trading for some of Zeke's courage. Zeke blushed.

“He told me that if I wanted a handout, I ought to ask Mason,” the boy continued. “Or if Mason advised it, he'd come.
I didn't listen, of course, but I did spy on Mason's house. People were lined up to see him. The Healtouch made it sound like they would wait standing on their heads if he said so.” Zeke shrugged. “Anyhow, the best I could do was to bring back fresh water for you. We were out.”

“But that water helped break your fever,” Scarl told Ariel. “Zeke probably saved you.”

Solemnly, Ariel thanked her bold friend. She said nothing more for a while, nibbling a morsel of dry bread and trying to imagine all that commotion. She realized that a big piece of the puzzle still hadn't appeared. Strengthened by the bread, she summoned her nerve to unearth it.

“Why did you follow us?” she asked Scarl. “After everything you said?”

The Finder's gaze dropped. His fingertips traced circles on the water jar in his hands.

“I had a visit from your ghost friend that first night.”

Ariel sucked in a breath. Snatches of nightmare swept back into her mind. Shivering, she guessed, “In a graveyard in Canberra Docks.”

Scarl's head jerked back up, unease rippling his face. He whispered, “You were there … weren't you?”

“What happened?” urged Zeke.

Scarl yanked at the tail of his shirt and drew it up over his ribs. Expecting slashes from talons, Ariel cringed. Then she blinked at his bare chest. The skin was unbroken, but it wasn't unmarked. An angry red welt glowed over his heart. It could have been formed by a burn or, more likely, a sharp slap—because the welt took the shape Misha favored: a handprint.

“He told me my work and my obligation to you was not done,” Scarl said. “To my shame, I needed reminding. And he
gave me a token so I wouldn't forget or think it was only a dream.”

“Misha,” Ariel murmured. So the dead boy could do harm, if he chose. Or his raven friend could. She wondered if Scarl had spied the dove as well as the raven.

“Does it hurt?” Zeke asked.

“Not on the outside.” Scarl tucked his shirt smooth again. “It woke me up, though, I can tell you. That's when I turned around and came to find you.”

Ariel studied her knuckles. She wanted to say that she and Zeke didn't need him. Obviously that wasn't so, but she resented the truth.

Her thoughts must have shown on her face. He reached to touch one of her elbows.

“I know I frustrate you greatly,” he said. “But I've never known a Farwalker before, least of all one who's still mostly a child. That confuses me more than you know. First I underestimate you, then I expect too much. I keep making mistakes.”

He caught her eyes so she would meet his regard. In their brown depths, Ariel found herself recalling mistakes of her own.

“Me, too,” she whispered.

“I don't know if you'll find anything where you want to go,” he said. “I don't know if I even still care. I—” He looked away. Ariel reached a hand to his arm, and the touch seemed to brace him.

“But I'll walk beside you and help you as best I can,” he finished, “for as long as you want me to be there. Or I will leave again if you'd rather. That's all I know how to offer.”

Ariel's fingers tightened on his arm. What she most wanted was to leave turmoil behind and find something steady to cling to.

“You can't find what doesn't exist,” she said. The saying
tumbled from her lips more in response to her own thoughts than to anything Scarl had said. But it seemed like a hard truth between them, a heartache they shared.

He wrapped her hand with his own. “You seem to be able to,” he replied.

If stones could see—and Zeke assured Ariel they felt movement so well it amounted to the same—Cloudspear watched them, uncaring, as they limped haltingly toward its mouth. Even after a full day of rest and food, Ariel could only travel in short bursts as her strength returned. Though he said little about it, Scarl struggled as much.

“Your foot's not getting much better, is it?” she asked him. Her mother had told her that limbs that were too badly damaged had to be cut off if the person was to survive. But Ariel couldn't imagine doing such cutting.

“The evening after we climbed out of the cave was the worst.” He shuddered. “If I hadn't lost my knife you'd see one foot, not two. But the pain eased a little from there. As long as Zeke's willing to keep serving as my legs for finding our water and food, we're all right. If Mason suspected we were here, he'd be on us already.”

“Still, you should let me look at it.” She didn't want to see the mangled flesh under Scarl's boot, but she felt it was her job to offer.

“And do what?” A sour grin softened the truth they both knew. “No. If it turns black, toss a flower on me when it finally takes me out of the world. If not, I'll live with it.”

They pushed on, finding new reserves of endurance once they'd glimpsed the end of their quest. From this side, the hole in the mountain looked indeed like a mouth. Round and gaping, it gave the hillside an expression of amazement that matched Ariel's own: they'd actually made it this far.

As they drew near, the roar of falling stones echoed in her memory.

“It's not going to collapse again, is it?” she asked Zeke.

“No.” Miserably he kicked a dirt clod out of his path. “I asked it to do that before. I didn't think it would listen. Not like that. I was just hoping one or two rocks—little rocks—I didn't mean to kill everyone! I didn't really mean to kill anyone!”

“You have no cause for guilt, Zeke,” Scarl said. “You were only defending Ariel and yourself the best way you knew how.”

“But Storian and Derr …” Zeke drew a ragged breath.

Scarl squeezed the boy's shoulder. “I know. You just didn't understand your own power. And stones aren't fine instruments, either. But killing seems to be part of living. It's a hard lesson you should hope not to use often. Sometimes, though, the world gives us little choice.”

“Made and unmade,” Ariel whispered, thinking she'd heard it in some dream.

Scarl nodded. “Sunlight and leaf pass to firelight and ashes,” he said. “And back once more to leaf. So the Tree-Singers say.”

“They do.” Zeke sighed, but he nodded.

As if the cave heard and had an opinion to share, its foul breath hit them. Ariel's throat clenched shut.

“Ugh. What is that smell?” Zeke asked, clutching his nose.

Scarl buried his own nose in the crook of his elbow. “If I'm not mistaken, it's death.”

They found the source of the stink just inside the cave mouth. A body, once human, slumped beside a large pack. Ariel, who had seen beached, bloated seals, was grateful this corpse had been dead long enough to look shriveled rather than squishy.

It was not hard to tell how the person had died: a wide slash split the neck from one ear to the other. The blunt end of a telling dart stuck out of the wound.

Ariel groaned. “When I dreamed about the mouth of the mountain, Misha told me the inside of my dart said, ‘A message is caught in a throat.' That's not it, is it?”

“Don't know,” Scarl replied. “I was thinking we may have found Liam.” He picked up a splinter of stone. “Don't watch.”

Neither of his companions obeyed. Scarl snagged a brass fin with the splinter and drew the dart out. Maggots clung to it, squirming. Ariel's gorge rose. She whirled away. When she looked back, her stomach still quivering, the dart had fallen to the ground. Scarl scuffed it clean in the dust before he bent to inspect it.

“Blank. It must have been his.” Scarl checked the abandoned pack. “Looks like a Storian's belongings to me. It has to be Liam. Perhaps he came here with Mason or Gust. Maybe both.” He turned to Ariel. “If there was any other message to be found here, Mason may already have it. Clearly this dart was left as a threat.”

With a scowl, she stared into the shadowy cave. Her feet wanted to wander farther inside, so she let them. A gurgle of water rose to her ears. Following it into the dark, she stopped
when the splashing seemed to surround her. Her hand fell to her green bead. She wondered if she could make it twinkle again.

“Don't go any farther,” Scarl called.

“I'm not.” She closed her eyes and wished for light. When a glow lit her eyelids, it wasn't her bead. Zeke and Scarl approached, torches in hand.

“Liam came prepared,” Scarl explained.

The flames lit water pouring from a crack in the ceiling and carving a channel downhill into darkness. They followed the stream until it pooled in a basin the size of a rowboat. The water gurgled and spun there before it disappeared down the funnel of the whirlpool.

“It goes underground?” Zeke said.

Scarl lowered his torch near the whirlpool's surface. Wet, polished stone glinted beneath. Though the water was clear, his light did not reach to the bottom.

“The mountain's dark throat,” he murmured. “Slide down that and you're swallowed forever.”

“Oh!” Ariel cried. “The message is in there. It's caught in
this
throat!” Her feet wanted to slide into the water, and not only to cool her burning soles. She sat and untied her boots.

Scarl knelt to explore the pool with one arm.

“There must be a ledge or hole down there,” Ariel said. “With something inside.”

Wet to the shoulder, the Finder straightened. He shook his head. “If so, it stays where it's at.”

She gaped at him. “We have to try to get it.” She glanced to Zeke for support. He looked dubious, too. “I'm a good swimmer,” she added. “It doesn't look all that deep, and the drain hole might not be big enough to fall through.”

“It doesn't matter,” Scarl said. “You'd be trapped against it by the force of the water. You'd drown just the same.”

“Tie the rope on me. You can pull me back out.”

“No, I don't know that I can.” He propped his torch against the wall. “I want you to feel something.” Dropping his staff and his pack, he dug for a rope. A sweater also emerged. Stringing the rope through its collar, Scarl tied it on snug, like bait on a line. Then he handed Ariel the end of the rope.

“Hold tight.” He flipped the sweater into the whirlpool. It spun twice before the stream slurped it under.

The rope jerked Ariel's arm. She lurched forward. Scarl grabbed her.

“Now pull it back up,” he instructed.

Zeke had to help. The reeling in of their bait took more effort than she cared to admit. When they finally landed it, sloppy, Scarl bent to untie the rope.

“You felt the tug on the sweater,” he said. “The force against your whole body would be considerably stronger.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

“No,” he repeated. “I trust your instincts that something is there. But I'll not drown you for it. I don't care if it's the very door to the Vault.”

It wasn't. Something small beckoned from under the water, Ariel thought, small and enticing, like the tingle still left in her feet. She muttered, “You would have drowned someone for it before.”

He looked away for a few seconds before returning her gaze. “I won't now.”

Ariel crossed her arms and stared at the whirlpool. After the tug on the sweater, she knew he was right. She didn't want
to be trapped by that deluge. But to come so close and be forced to walk away empty-handed!

As she and Scarl had argued, Zeke had wrung out the sweater and walked a few steps upstream. Gripping tight to one sleeve, he plopped the sweater across the course of the water. The stream backed up behind the wet wool.

“Look,” he said. “Could we stop up the water? Make it run deeper into the cave or outside instead?”

They watched as, for an instant, the whirlpool dropped. Then water flowed around the sweater and found its channel again.

Ariel leaped on the idea. “A rock dam would block it!” Unfortunately, unlike the tail of the tunnel, this end was barren.

“That's probably why your dart said, ‘Come united.' ” Scarl studied the narrow stream channel. “With a dozen others, an Allcraft, ropes and wood and strong backs—maybe. With three of us …”

Ariel could see him consider it. That was victory enough to encourage her.

“We've got rope and your staff and our three packs,” she said.

“Four,” said Zeke, “counting the dead guy's.”

Scarl regarded the corpse and rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. When he took off his coat, Ariel grinned and ran to empty their packs.

Zeke volunteered to play beaver. Only Scarl had enough weight or strength to act as the anchor. That meant Ariel would drop into the whirlpool. She would have fought for that role anyway.

The Finder took out his glass. When he put it away, he turned to her.

“Where are you drawn to?” he asked.

Facing the whirlpool, Ariel closed her eyes to better grasp the sensation. One foot itched to slide forward and down toward her right. She pointed. “Around there, on that side.”

“I think so, too. If it's a hole, as you said, and you have to reach far inside, you'll need to be very careful not to get stuck. How deep, do you think?”