Do something!
It was still moving, slowly and just a few yards at a time, studying the fire and the bundled forms. It might have sensed something was wrong or it might simply have been making sure it wasn’t missing anything. Whatever the case, if she was going to use the tar, she had to do it while the thing was still within striking distance. It would see her the moment she moved, of course. She would have to step out from her hiding place, and it would see her.
She realized suddenly that this wasn’t going to work. She wouldn’t be fast or accurate enough. It could drop down in those rocks much faster than she could move. It was looking for a trap, and it would spot her the moment she left the shadows.
What else can I do?
The question echoed in her mind in a hopeless wail of despair.
Then all at once the creature wheeled about, looking off to the south, toward the trees below the meadow, toward the path that Pen and Tagwen were already surely taking to reach the Skatelow. It froze in place, tensed and staring. A second later it was gone, bounding over the rocks and out of view, moving so swiftly that it seemed simply to disappear.
She stood staring after it for a second, realizing what it intended, immobilized by her sense of failure and helplessness to prevent it from succeeding. She was too far away to reach them, too far away to get back to where they were.
There was only one chance. Breaking from her hiding place in a rush, she raced across the clearing and through the passageway that led out to the meadow and the airship.
After Khyber Elessedil disappeared into the rocks, Pen sat with Tagwen and watched as the Skatelow moved steadily closer to their hiding place and then finally started to descend toward the meadow. Even with the bright moon and stars to aid him, he could not make out what was happening aboard the airship. As the vessel landed, he searched for Cinnaminson and her captor without success. A cold premonition began to seep through him that it was too late for her; that the thing that had taken her prisoner had decided she was not worth the trouble. His premonition was not eased when he saw the shadowy form of the creature slide over the side of the vessel to tie her off and then start toward the rocks in a skittering crawl.
“We have to go, Penderrin.” Tagwen nudged him.
He took a moment longer to scan the decks of the Skatelow for any sign of the girl, but all he could make out were the desiccated forms of Gar Hatch and his crew, still hung from the rigging. He swallowed and forced himself to look away.
She’ll be all right, he told himself. It won’t have done anything to her yet, not this quickly. But his words sounded hollow and false.
They descended from their hiding place in a crouch, staying back from the light and any view from the meadow. Pen glanced through the rocks only once to make certain the creature was still heading toward the fire, caught a glimpse of its dark, skittering form, and turned his concentration to the task at hand. It took them a few minutes to get through the back end of the maze and down to the forest edge, where they could begin to make their way out to the meadow.
They moved swiftly then, anxious to reach the airship and take control of her. The moonlight brightened their way, and they made good progress skirting the tree line, but their path was circuitous and it took them longer than Pen had thought it would. The minutes seemed to fly by and still they hadn’t reached the opening between the trees and rocks that would get them out onto the flats.
“Do you hear anything?” he whispered to Tagwen at one point, but the Dwarf only shook his head.
Finally, the meadow came into view ahead of them, its grasses silver-tipped and spiky in the moonlight. They began to move away from the maze, but still Pen couldn’t see the Skatelow. He glanced toward the rocks, catching a quick glimpse of the fire’s orange glow rising from their midst, dull and smoky against the darkness. The creature must be all the way in by now, but he still hadn’t heard anything. Any minute, Khyber would throw the tar into its face. They had to move faster. They had to get to Cinnaminson.
“Tagwen,” he whispered again, looking back to catch the other’s eye, beckoning him to hurry.
He was just turning away again when he caught sight of a spidery shape leaping across the boulder tops and coming toward them with frantic purpose. At first he didn’t comprehend what he was seeing. Then he let out a gasp of recognition.
“Tagwen!” he shouted. “Run!”
They bolted ahead, galvanized by the boy’s frantic cry, the Dwarf not yet fully understanding what had happened but accepting that it was not good. They tore down along the tree line and into a vale that fronted the meadow. In the distance the Skatelow was visible, silhouetted against the skyline, dark and silent. Pen turned toward it, taking a quick glance sideways into the rocks as he did so. The creature was still coming for them, moving swiftly across the crest of the maze, leaping smoothly and easily from boulder to boulder, closing the distance between them with frightening ease.
It’s too close, Pen thought in horror. It’s coming too fast!
“Faster, Tagwen!” he cried.
The Dwarf had seen the creature as well and was running as fast as his stout legs could manage, but he was woefully slow and already falling behind. Pen glanced back, saw his companion dropping away, and slowed. He wouldn’t leave Tagwen, not even to save himself. He reached for his knife, readying himself.
Where is Khyber?
Its cloak billowing behind it like a sail, the creature leapt from the edge of the rocks to the open ground, landing in a crouch that only barely slowed it as it came at the boy and the Dwarf on all fours. Crooked limbs akimbo, head lowered within its concealing hood, it rushed them in a scuttling sideways charge.
“Pen!” Khyber screamed in warning, appearing abruptly out of the maze, rushing into the meadow and turning toward them.
Then a huge, dark form catapulted out of the trees behind them, a blur of gray and black that rippled and surged like the darkest ocean wave. Hugging the ground in a long, lean shadowy flow, it intercepted the creature so quickly that it was on top of it before the other knew what was happening. With shrieks that caused the hair on the back of Pen’s neck to stand straight up, the two collided and went tumbling head over hindquarters through the long grass. Roars and snarls and a terrible, high-pitched keening followed as both scrambled up, clots of earth and grass flying in all directions.
“Bandit!” Pen breathed in disbelief, the name catching in his throat as the massive moor cat’s masked face wheeled into the light, muzzle drawn back, dagger teeth gleaming.
The creature was up as well, and moonlight flashed off a strange knife held in one gnarled hand, its blade as silver as the crest of waves caught in sunlight, its edges smooth and deadly. In the glow of moon and stars, Pen could see it clearly, and he knew at once from its unnatural brilliance that it was a thing of magic.
Bandit never hesitated. Enraged by whatever animal instincts the creature had provoked, determined to see the thing torn apart before backing away, it closed on its enemy with a scream that froze Pen’s blood. In a knot of rippling fur and billowing cloak, the antagonists tumbled through the grass once more, locked in a death grip that neither would release.
“Bandit!” Pen cried out frantically, seeing the knife flash as it rose and fell in short, choppy thrusts.
“Run, Penderrin!” Tagwen shouted at him, pulling on his arm for emphasis. “We can’t wait!”
The boy obeyed, knowing there was nothing he could do to affect the battle between the creature and the moor cat. Remembering Cinnaminson, he tore his eyes away from the struggle. With Tagwen panting next to him, he raced for the Skatelow. Bandit had been following them all this time, he thought in wonder. Had the moor cat come into the high country solely because of their chance meeting and his few halting attempts at communication? He couldn’t believe it.
Behind him, he heard grunts and gasps, snarls and spitting, sounds of damage inflicted and damage received.
They were almost to the airship when he forced himse
lf to look back again. The creature was staggering after them, coming as swiftly as its damaged limbs could manage, its cloak shredded. Bandit lay stretched on the ground behind it, unmoving. Damp, glistening patches of blood coated its still body. Tears filled his eyes, and the boy made himself run even faster.
Khyber was already aboard the airship, hacking at the anchor ropes with her long knife, freeing the vessel of her moorings. Pen climbed the ladder so fast he couldn’t remember later whether his feet had even touched the rungs. His eyes searched everywhere. There was no sign of Cinnaminson.
“Get us out of here!” Khyber screamed at him. “It’s coming!”
Pen leapt into the pilot box, fingers flying over the controls. He unhooded the diapson crystals as an exhausted Tagwen tumbled onto the deck, gasping for breath. Khyber cut away the last of the anchoring lines. On the plains below, their pursuer was closing on the ship in a terrible, hobbling rush, the bloodied knife lifted into the moonlight, a low wail that sounded like a dog in pain rising from the dark opening of its hood. Pen threw the thruster levers forward, feeding power to the parse tubes, and the Skatelow lurched and began to rise.
They were too slow. The creature caught the low end of the rope ladder with one hand and held on, lifting away with the airship.
“Tagwen!” Pen cried out frantically.
The Dwarf heaved to his knees, looked over the side, and saw the dark thing below, one hand gripping the ladder, the other the strange knife. Grunting with the effort, he began yanking on the brace of wooden pins that held the ladder in place. Below, the creature swayed in the wind, got a better grip on the rope, and began to climb. One of the pins came free, and Tagwen threw it aside. The ladder dropped to an unnatural angle, and the creature spit out something so terrifying that for a moment the Dwarf froze in place.
“Tagwen, the other pin!” Khyber howled at him, crawling across the listing deck.
The creature had both hands back in place now and was climbing swiftly. At what might have been the last possible moment, the Elven girl shouted out something in Elfish and flung out both hands in a warding gesture. The last pin erupted from its seating in an explosion of wooden splinters and flew off into the night.
The rope ladder and the creature fell away without a sound.
Tagwen and Khyber peered over the side, searching. The landscape below had turned to forest and hills that were dark and shadowy. There was no sign of the creature.
In the meadow farther back, Bandit’s still form was a dark stain on the silvery grasses.
As soon as they were safely airborne and the airship was flying at a steady rate of speed, Pen asked Tagwen to take over the controls. “Just keep her sailing as she is and you won’t have any trouble. I have to take a look below.”
Tagwen nodded without comment. “I can go with you,” Khyber offered quickly. “It might be better—”
Pen held up his hand to stop her from saying any more. “No, Khyber. I need to do this by myself.”
Without looking at her, he climbed out of the pilot box and walked to the rear hatchway. The door was open, and moonlight brightened the stairs leading down into the shadowed corridor below. All he could see in his mind was Bandit’s bloodstained body, an indelible image that dominated every possibility he could imagine for Cinnaminson’s fate. He purposely had not looked again on the corpses of Gar Hatch and his crewmen, trying to hold himself together against what he might find.
He paused at the top of the stairs, listened to the silence, then took a deep breath and started down.
At the bottom of the steps he stopped again, peering ahead into the gloom. Nothing moved. No sound reached his ears. He fought back against the panic rising inside, determined not to give way to it. He moved ahead cautiously, the sound of his own breathing so loud that it felt as if every other possible sound was blocked away. At each door, he paused long enough to look inside before continuing on. There was no one in the storerooms or sleeping chambers that the members of the little company had occupied on their journey out of Syioned.
The door to the Captain’s quarters stood ajar at the end of the corridor. It was the only place left to look. Pen couldn’t decide at this point if he wanted to do so or not. He couldn’t decide which was worse—knowing or not knowing.
He pushed the door open and stepped through. Shadows cloaked the chamber in layers of blackness, concealing and disguising in equal measure. Pen stared around blindly, searching the inky gloom.
Then he saw her. She lay stretched on the bed, bound hand and foot with ropes and chained to the wall. Her face was turned away, and her pale blond hair spilled across the bedding like scattered silk.
“Cinnaminson,” he whispered.
He went to her quickly, turned her over, and took away the gag that covered her mouth. “Cinnaminson,” he repeated, more urgently this time.
Her milky eyes opened, and she exhaled softly. “I knew you would come,” she whispered.
On deck, Khyber stood next to Tagwen in the pilot box. She had thought to take down the bodies of the Rovers, then decided to leave that job for later. The night air was cool and clear, and it felt good on her face as the airship sailed the feather-soft skies.
“You should go see if he’s all right,” Tagwen said.
She shook her head, brushing away strands of her dark hair. “I should stay right where I am.”
“I don’t hear anything. Do you?”
She shook her head a second time. “Nothing.”
They were silent again for a moment, then Tagwen said, “Did you see what happened back there in the meadow?”
She nodded. “I saw. I don’t understand it, though. That cat must have tracked us all the way out of the Slags. Why would it do that? Moor cats don’t like high country like this. They don’t ever come up here. But that one did. Because of Pen, I think. Because of the way he spoke to it back there, or how he connected to it, or something.”
Tagwen snorted. “That’s not the strangest part. It’s what happened afterwards, when it attacked that creature. It gave up its life to save the boy. To save all of us. Why would it do that?”
She touched the controls lightly, fingering without adjusting, needing to make contact with the metal. “I don’t know.” She glanced over at him. “Maybe Pen’s magic does more than he realizes. If it moved that cat the way it seems to have, it isn’t just a way of communicating or of reading behavior.”
“Doesn’t seem so.”
Again they fell silent. Ahead, stars filled the horizon with diamondlike brilliance, myriads spread across the dark firmament, numbers beyond imagining.
“I don’t think we killed it,” she said finally.
Tagwen nodded slowly. “I don’t think so, either.”
“It will come after us. It won’t give up.”
“I don’t suppose it will.”
She looked out into the night. “It’s probably already tracking us.”
Tagwen snorted and rubbed at his beard irritably. “I hope it has a long walk ahead of it.”
Pen could feel Cinnaminson trembling as she told him the story. “They caught us coming back across the Slags. They were in a Druid ship, the Galaphile, and they snared us with grappling hooks and came aboard. One of them was a Dwarf; I could tell by his voice and movements. He wanted to know where you were, what we had done with you. Papa was terrified. I could feel it. I knew from what had happened in the swamp how frightened he was of them. He didn’t even try to lie. He told them he had abandoned you after finding out who you really were. He gave them your descriptions and identities. I couldn’t do anything about it.”
She took a deep breath and pressed him closer. “I couldn’t do anything about any of it!” she whispered and began to cry again.
He had freed her hands and feet, and he was sitting with her on the bed, holding her, stroking her hair, waiting for her to stop shaking. He let her cry now, knowing she needed the release, that it would help to calm her. She seemed to be all right physically, but emoti
onally she was close to collapse.
“They left as soon as they got directions from my father on where to find you. The other one must have come aboard while this was happening. We never saw it until they left, and then all of a sudden it was there. It didn’t say anything and we couldn’t see who it was, wrapped in that cloak and hood. It didn’t look or move like a human, but I think it is. It spoke to me a few times, a strange voice, hoarse and rough, like someone talking through heavy cloth. I don’t know its name; it never gave it.”
He touched her face. “We dropped whoever it was over the side of the Skatelow as she was rising. We tricked it off, and it was trying to get back aboard, but we managed to cut the ladder loose as it was climbing up. I think it might be dead.”
She shook her head at once, her face rigid with terror. “It isn’t dead. It isn’t. I would know. I would feel it! You haven’t spent three days with it like I did, Penderrin. You haven’t felt it touch you. You haven’t heard that voice. You haven’t been through what I’ve been through. You don’t know!”
He pressed her close again. “Tell me, then. Tell me everything.”
“It made us prisoners. I don’t know how it managed, but I never heard anything. No one even had a chance to struggle. I was locked away below, but I heard everything. It tortured Papa and the others and then it killed them. It took a long time. I could hear them screaming, could hear the sounds of—”
She broke off, gasping. “I’ll never forget. Never. I can still hear it.” Her fingers were digging into Pen’s arms. She took a deep breath. “When it was over, the … thing came for me. I thought I was next. But it knew about my sight, about how I could see things in my mind. That was what it wanted. It told me to find you. I was so afraid that I did what I was told because I didn’t want to die. I did everything right up until I found you, and then I turned us another way. I don’t know why. I don’t know how I found the courage. I thought I was dead, then.”
“We saw you lead it away,” Pen whispered. “We knew what you had done. So we came after you.”