Will Power Part 3

"I think you're overa.n.a.lyzing." Orgos laughed.

"It wouldn't be the first time," I admitted. "I just have to come up with a reason for why he makes me feel so strange."

"What is this, intuition? A hunch?"

"I suppose."

"A bit metaphysical for you, isn't it?" Orgos smiled.

"That's why I'm trying to rationalize it," I agreed. He took my hand and pulled me up beside him, and I found myself smiling. If we had to ride off into the unknown, I would at least have a companion who would exchange the time of day with me.

Renthrette appeared. She was mounted on a dapple-gray filly and still looked sullen. "Let's go, if we're going," she said. She had tied her hair back with string and wore a long mantle of creamish wool. A sword hung beside her, but she had no other weapons or armor, and I couldn't help thinking that we were ill-prepared to be anyone's escort in unfamiliar territory. Her face, almost white with sleeplessness and anxiety save for lips tightened to pinkish lines and eyes rimmed with shadow, was hard, stoic, under my gaze. Then, without waiting for a response, she turned the horse and began walking it out of the inn yard. Orgos watched her quietly, his face showing that curious emotional elasticity it had. He could slip from violent rage to easy and expansive laughter in the blink of an eye without ever seeming remotely insincere. Now his brow was clouded with concern and fears he dare not speak.

"Garnet and Lisha are on their way," I breezed. "Be sure of it."

Orgos looked down for a second and then grinned at me, knowing I was trying to encourage him, and grateful for it.

"Where's your crossbow?" said Mithos to me as he strode out of the inn with a basket of bread and cheese.

"I didn't have it with me, exactly," I faltered. "I ..."

"If you are unarmed," he said, cutting me off briskly, "you're no use up there. Get in the back with the amba.s.sador. I'll ride with Orgos."

So that was it. I climbed down and loitered for a while, but it was clear that we were ready to go. I kicked at the gravel of the yard and then looked up to find the carriage door swinging open. The amba.s.sador met my gaze from inside and he smiled slightly, knowingly. Even in daylight with the windows open, the interior seemed somehow dark and uninviting. It was like he exhaled shadow, or the sunbeams which came shafting through the windows like golden smiles took one look at him and thought better of it. I glanced round as if he might have been waiting for someone else but then, when no one came to my rescue, climbed in.

"It's nice to have fellow travelers for company," said the amba.s.sador evenly.

"Yes," I said, barely disguising the extent of the lie.

"And such a nice day."

"Yes," I said.

"Well, perhaps we ought to be getting on."

"Yes," I said.

He rapped on the roof with his knuckles once, and we set off. I tried not to look him in the face, though this was difficult to avoid since we were sitting directly opposite each other. As we turned out of the inn, I stared out of the window as if there was something extremely interesting about the countryside outside.

In fact, there wasn't. We were only a dozen miles north of Stavis and about the same distance east of the river Ya.r.s.eth, so although the ground was sandy and hard, the area was irrigated well and the near continual sun made the land fruitful for miles. How far it went, I really couldn't say. I supposed there were isolated villages and little market towns, but if there were settlements on the scale of Stavis or Cresdon, or, for that matter, of Adsine or Ironwall, I had never heard of them. So we were heading aimlessly into the back of beyond, and I got to make the journey with the world's funniest undertaker. Another smart career choice by all-knowing Will, clear-sighted clairvoyant extraordinaire.

After a few minutes studying the fields of green stuff we were pa.s.sing as if my life depended on it, I sneaked a peek at the amba.s.sador in the hope that he might have nodded off. He was sitting with his head tipped forward and his fingertips pressed together. His eyes, rolled slightly upward, were fixed unwaveringly on me.

"Oh, er ... Lovely countryside," I blurted out. "So, you know ... green."

"Yes," he said, throwing my taciturnity back at me.

I flushed, awkward and embarra.s.sed. He, predictably, smiled to himself as at a secret joke. I returned to the window, though I could feel his eyes on me continually as the miles pa.s.sed.

We stopped for lunch three hours later and I was out of that coach before you could say Mobile Tomb. After a morning two feet from the prince of darkness, even Renthrette's steely gaze seemed welcoming. Another misreading. She met my smile with a look that could turn milk to cheese at fifty paces and returned her attention to her horse, who she probably deemed a more worthy companion.

I had wandered cheerlessly off into the underbrush to relieve myself and was returning to the road up a shallow embankment when, glancing up, I saw that the sky, which had been bright and clear only moments before, was now darkening with huge purple storm clouds. They were moving at great speed, steadily obliterating the blue beyond, though I could feel no wind to speak of. There was a rumble of thunder and, almost immediately, there came a pattering of rain.

I scrambled up the slope to the road just as a distant lightning flash set Renthrette's filly snorting and stamping. She dismounted hurriedly and whispered to it. As she did so, I glanced at the coach horses which, by contrast, were curiously still and unaffected, even as the thunder bellowed loud overhead. Orgos and Mithos slid down from the driver's plate, hunching over to keep the rain from their faces, and, for a moment, the four of us were together in the road, caught quite off guard by the sudden storm. We exchanged bewildered and irritable glances and then I heard, from inside the carriage, the faintest laughter.

The amba.s.sador, who was watching us through the coach window, clearly found the idea of great adventurers caught out by a cloudburst extremely amusing. His eyes fell on mine. "The pragmatist gets drenched!" he exclaimed with strange rapture. "How easily the unlikely takes you off guard, Mr. Hawthorne!"

There was something oddly knowing about his manner and, recalling my dream, I felt a s.h.i.+ver course through my spine. He continued to laugh, staring at me, and then, with a great sigh as if he'd finally got what he wanted, he turned his face up to the sky. "See, William," he said. "Reality dawns."

I followed his gaze and found that the clouds were now a charcoal gray marbled with wisps of violet and pea-soup green, thick and impenetrable. Light had fallen to a fraction of what it had been moments before, and the clouds seemed to be swirling like some heavenly maelstrom. Then, with a deafening roar and a crack like the splitting of a great tree, there was a flash of lightning that burned the world away, searing everything white and throwing me onto the ground.

I don't know how long I lay there. It could have been seconds, but it felt like more. I thought I might have been blinded by the flash, but when I opened my eyes I found that they, and the rest of me, were quite unharmed. I was face down in the dirt and everything was still.

The dirt was dry.

Dirt?

I rolled over quickly and found Orgos already on his knees beside me. Mithos was a few feet away, and Renthrette, who was still holding her horse's bridle, was standing a little to his right. They were all gazing about them in silence. There was no rain, no coach, no amba.s.sador, no road.

"Where the h.e.l.l are we?" I gasped.

Mithos gazed around the gra.s.sy vale in which we stood, his eyes lingering on the steep snowcapped mountains which hemmed us in on all sides.

"I have no idea," he said.

SCENE IV

Bird Watching

"What do you mean, you have no idea?" I spluttered. "We are a few miles north of Stavis, right? Where we were a few minutes ago. I mean, we have to be."

"No," whispered Mithos, still gazing about him as if he were in a trance, "we're not. I've never seen these mountains before."

"I've never even heard of mountains close to Stavis," added Orgos in the same awed tone. "Outside Thrusia, the nearest range is Aeloria in the northwest."

"Home of the Diamond Empire," said Mithos. "And if we're there, we'll know soon enough. There'll be fortifications, patrols. ..."

"But Aeloria is three or four hundred miles from Stavis," added Renthrette, breaking silence for the first time. Her surliness had melted in the face of this new and thoroughly astounding development.

"More," said Orgos.

"So where in the name of all that's rational are we?" I demanded irritably. They were the adventurers after all. They were supposed to know these things.

"Like I said," Mithos replied, turning to me at last. "I have no idea."

"Well could you think a little harder, please?" I shouted. "I mean, we were only doing, what, six or seven miles an hour? And we had been on the Vetch road for about four hours. The Black Horse is twelve miles from Stavis, so that puts us ... What? What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you lot, eh? What are you staring at?"

Mithos took a deep breath and sighed. Then he took a step toward me and said, "I don't know the land north of Stavis as well as I might, but there are no mountains in that region."

"Yes there b.l.o.o.d.y are!" I yelled back at him. "Look around you! Use your b.l.o.o.d.y eyes, for G.o.d's sake! Mountains! Everywhere. Of course there are b.l.o.o.d.y mountains north of Stavis. You think they grew overnight like some kind of apocalyptic mushroom? You think maybe no one spotted them before?"

"Have you ever seen mountains on maps of this area?" he responded, cool and hard.

"So they got left off. They aren't especially interesting mountains. The mapmakers must have just figured they'd stick to the key stuff like towns and rivers. Maybe they had to write 'Vetch' in big curly letters and there was no room for the b.l.o.o.d.y mountains. Maybe-"

"We aren't on the Vetch road anymore, Will," he said with a touch of irritation. "Use your your eyes. There is no road. Something happened to us and we are somewhere else. That's all." eyes. There is no road. Something happened to us and we are somewhere else. That's all."

And suddenly my brain gave up and it just wasn't worth arguing. He was right. There had to be an explanation, but he was right. We weren't where we were supposed to be.

"This has something to do with the amba.s.sador," I muttered.

"Quite possibly," said Mithos, himself again.

"If I ever see that bloke again ..." I began, but couldn't think of anything that seemed suitable. "I'll bet he drugged us and then drove us somewhere, dumped us and waited for us to come round. ..."

"Hundreds, maybe thousands of miles?" said Renthrette skeptically, but too confused herself to give the remark the withering disdain she would have mustered in other circ.u.mstances.

"If I've been unconscious," said Orgos, "it hasn't been for long. My beard hasn't grown."

"Maybe he shaved you," I tried, lamely. Everyone ignored me and turned their eyes back to the mountains. A cold wind rippled the meadow in which we stood and, for the first time, I felt the chill of winter. Something was very badly wrong. It had been early autumn when we set out.

"So where to now?" Renthrette mused aloud.

"Shelter," said Mithos, "and any signs of people we can track to civilization."

"Which way?" said Orgos.

No one replied for a second, and then, with a half-shrug and no word of explanation, Mithos began walking across the valley. We followed, eventually, Renthrette remounting her horse, Orgos catching up with Mithos and striding silently along with him. I brought up the rear, in a stunned silence.

If the sun was going down, then we must be heading north. Presuming, of course, that the sun still set in the west. For all I knew, round here the sun might rise in the south, hang around for a bit and then go back the way it came. Maybe it didn't go down at all, and would turn into the moon, or a side of beef. ...

This was getting me nowhere, except perhaps on a fast horse to mental collapse. With that in mind, I chose to focus on what was was, rather than what might be might be. In truth, I still suspected that what was was was more a matter of what was more a matter of what seemed to be seemed to be, but there was clearly little point in dwelling on the distinction. My brain hinted that we'd get past the first mountain and find Vetch nestling at its foot as expected, and there would be the amba.s.sador looking lost and hurt and saying, "Where on earth did you get to? I just turned my back for a moment and ..."

Yes, not very plausible. Less plausible, in fact, than the aggressively real brush of the long gra.s.s about my ankles or the wind that burned my ears with each frosty gust. I pulled my totally inadequate jerkin tight about me and tried to pick up the pace a little before bits of me started falling off.

After almost an hour we had made our way to one side of the valley. There we came upon a stream, frozen at the edges, but fast and clear. Crossing it brought us to an embankment of some sort, like the wall of a dam formed by the scree and rubble which fell from the mountain. After a moment's deliberation, we scrambled up it awkwardly, sending little avalanches in our wake. Renthrette and Orgos had to virtually drag the skittish horse up the treacherous slope. I slid halfway down and took the skin off the palms of my hands trying to stop myself. The others waited silently at the top for me, showing the kind of patience that you might bestow on an imbecile child as he failed repeatedly to spell the word "moron." By the time I got up, sweating in spite of the bitter wind, even the horse looked bored.

A few steps, however, swept this mood away. For atop the embankment was a cinder trail that wound its way through the mountains. It promised more than shelter, it promised civilization. Given that I was freezing, irritated, totally confused, and bleeding slightly from wounds too minor to get any real sympathy, that promise was as good as a hot bath, a joint of venison, and a flagon of strong ale. Well, not quite, but you take my point.

But the idea of the bath cooled rapidly as we strode along the blackened track for an hour or more with no sign of intelligent life. The road, if that was what it was, felt like it was going somewhere, but it dragged through the mountains, curling aimlessly here, doubling back around an outcrop of rock there, so that its progress was random to say the least. After a while I felt like I was riding some huge, lazy, and very confused-or possibly blind-earthworm. After a second hour, I gave up on the beer and venison, too.

The one thing we did have on the path was protection from the icy wind and, though the air was still crisp and clear, the sun brushed our upturned faces and warmed them gently. Around us the mountains loomed: great angular crags of pale russet and violet-gray, towering as hard and impa.s.sive as a gold merchant's wife and fading into distant peaks white with snow. Of Vetch there was little hope and no sign.

After another hour, the company grew restless again. The sun had clearly begun its descent (in the west?) and we couldn't go on walking till dark with no plan for what happened if we didn't stroll into a cleverly concealed city around the next corner. Mithos grew even more surly than usual, and as he muttered earnestly to Orgos, they began walking a little faster. Renthrette, still mounted, trotted up to them and exchanged a few insights on our condition. Apprentice Will, man of dubious talents, tired legs and all-round miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d, trudged behind and counted off all the places I would rather have been.

Suddenly there was a bird call, high and caustically harsh, from in front of us. It was a starling, feathers ruffled, wings aggressively half-spread, and it sat in the bare branches of a small and withered yew tree just left of the path. We hadn't seen many trees in the mountains, and even one as blasted as this was something of an event. Moreover, the bird's position in it, coupled perhaps with the way it fixed us with its hard bird eyes, gave it the aura of a guard or sentinel. I couldn't help but smile as the bird, small though it was, continued to screech its anger at us, flicking its wings and bobbing its head up and down as it called.

Mithos and Orgos stopped in their tracks before reaching the little tree, giving me time to catch up.

"Odd that it doesn't seem afraid of us," Mithos remarked.

"Probably used to people 'round here," I answered, snide. The bird cried again and flashed its wing feathers, dark and glossy as polished steel. Then it took to the air, circled us once, and flew away over a great purple boulder, calling all the time.

That was the highlight of the afternoon. We walked on for another mile or two before Mithos came to an abrupt halt.

"We have only two or three hours of good light left, and there is no sign of a town or an inn," he said, as if we might have missed that fact. "We are going to have to spend the night outdoors."

I opened my mouth to protest, but the others seemed quite unmoved by the patent idiocy of this suggestion so, for the moment, I held my peace.

Turning to Renthrette, Mithos asked what we had with us.

The saddlebags on the horse were the only luggage that had completed the "journey" from the Black Horse. Most of the rest had been inside the carriage, and we had been traveling light even then. Now, as Renthrette's quick inventory of the leather satchels across her mount made clear, we were virtually weightless.

"Two blankets, flint and tinder, an oil lamp, one small hatchet, some bread and cheese, and a length of rope. About thirty feet," she said, not exactly exuberantly.

"No tent?" I ventured.

"Did I mention one?" she snarled, her eyes still on Mithos and Orgos.

"Then you'll have to build a bivouac," I said. Actually, I was far from clear what bivouacs were, though they were reputed to save the lives of outdoor types from time to time.

"Do you see large numbers of trees around here?" Renthrette spat, lips curled with that special talking-to-Hawthorne contempt.

"What?"

"Branches," she said. "Leafy boughs? Clods of soft earth and turf? Yards of twine or vines to hold the thing together?"

Her scorn suggested that these things were somehow connected, even integral, to bivouacs, and that construction of one in our present conditions seemed unlikely.

"You, no doubt," I began, "would rather construct a three-story villa with a pool and one of those tiled porches with a little fountain and ..."

"Shut up, Will," said Orgos, thoughtfully.

"I was only trying to be helpful," I said.

"We need to find a cave," said Mithos with a shrug. "And we'll need to build a fire, so gather what wood you see as we go. There won't be much, and we'll need all we can get. Renthrette, you can walk from here. Use the rope to bundle up the firewood and tie it to the saddle."