A Goblin sentry stood pressed against the cell bars, peering in at her. The torchlight cast his shadow across her like a shroud. She stared in confusion, feeling the lethargy and hopelessness return almost at once. This was no one. She was deceived. Her head lowered once more, and her eyes began to close.
“No! What are you doing? Straken! It’s me!”
She looked up in time to see the Goblin pushing back the hood of his cloak to reveal his face. She peered at it out of a fog of exhaustion and uncertainty, watched it take shape, and struggled to make sense of what she was seeing.
“Weka Dart,” she whispered.
She stared at him, not quite believing he was actually there. She had all but forgotten about the little Ulk Bog. Once he had abandoned her and she had fallen into the hands of the Straken Lord, she had not expected ever to see him again. That he was standing there was almost incomprehensible.
“You should have listened to me!” he hissed. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I warn you not to go on without me?”
His sharp features were scrunched into a knot, giving him the look of a demented beast. His hair was standing straight out from his head and neck, bristling and stiff. His sharp teeth flashed from behind his lips as he tried to smile and failed, and his fingers knotted on the bars.
Her mind cleared a bit further, and she pushed back against the urge to mewl and spit. “How did you find me?”
He stared at her as if she were mad. “You still don’t know anything, do you? What kind of Straken are you?”
She shook her head. “The worst kind.”
“You certainly look it.” Weka Dart laughed. “I found you by paying attention to the world around me, something you seem to have failed to master. But this isn’t your world, is it? This isn’t even remotely like it. So maybe you aren’t to blame for anything more than bad judgment.”
He was telling her something, but she couldn’t make sense of it. “Was it good judgment that brought you here, then?”
The Ulk Bog spit. “I am not sure what it was. I heard in my travels what had happened to you, and I admit that I thought it best to leave you to your fate. But then chance and inspiration intervened, so here I am.”
“Chance and inspiration?”
“I was crossing the Pashanon on my way to Huka Flats, the route I had chosen for myself and advised you to take as well. As I traveled, word reached me of your capture. Such things do not go unreported in this land, and I keep my eyes and ears open. It was easy enough to determine what had happened to you. The difficulty was in deciding what I should do about it.”
He puffed out his chest. “I will admit that at first I thought it best simply to go on. You had dismissed me, after all. What did it matter what became of you? You were rude to me. You insulted me. In the end, you ignored my good advice and brought disaster on yourself. I owed you nothing. No one could fault me if I chose to leave you to your fate.
“But then, I reconsidered. After all, it wasn’t your fault that you were a stranger to this country, one lacking in good judgment and common sense. You were to be pitied. I felt an obligation toward you. I thought it over and made up my mind. I would come find you. I would see how you were. If you were nice to me, I would decide whether you deserved a second chance.”
Even in her confused and debilitated state, of being not all of one thing or the other, she recognized that his words were lies. She could hear it in the way he spoke; she could see it in the rapid shifting of his eyes and body. As always, he was after something, but she had no idea what it was.
“How did you get down here?” she asked.
He gave a casual shrug. “I have my ways.”
“Ways that allow you to get past the demonwolves and the Goblins that serve the Straken Lord?”
He sniffed. “I am not without skills.”
She pulled herself into a sitting position and became aware for the first time in days how stiff and sore she was. She looked down at herself, first at the bruises and cuts on her arms and legs, then at the white shift she wore. She was much better dressed than when she had been taken to the arena. She glanced around. Her cell was cleaner, too.
Her focus narrowed sharply. Was she mistaken about the intentions of the Straken Lord? What was going on?
She looked at Weka Dart. “If you don’t stop lying to me and tell me the truth,” she said softly, “I might have to use my Straken magic on you, Ulk Bog.”
He grinned, showing all his sharp teeth. “That might be a little difficult, since you wear a conjure collar.”
He seemed to realize his mistake almost immediately, a change coming into his eyes and the self-satisfied look fading as his lips compressed in silent reprimand. “Conjure collars are not unknown to me,” he said quickly. “I’ve seen them before.”
In truth, she had forgotten about the collar until he reminded her of it, but he didn’t know that and she wasn’t about to tell him so. She held herself very still and continued to stare at him.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want, Weka Dart,” she said finally, “but you haven’t told me one word of truth since we met. This has all been a game for you, a game in which you seem to know all the rules while I know none. If you know what a conjure collar is, you know too much to be just a simple village creature traveling to a new part of the country. If you know how to bypass the Straken Lord’s guards, you have skills and knowledge that suggest you are something more than you pretend. I have had enough of you. Either tell me the truth or leave me here to rot.”
She held up one finger as he started to speak. “Be careful. If you are about to tell me another lie, think twice. I don’t have much left to call my own, but I do have my sense of what is true and what isn’t. You don’t want to try to take that from me.”
The Ulk Bog stared at her. Wary eyes studied her uncertainly; deep creases etched his wizened face.
He shook his head. “I don’t know how much I should tell you,” he said finally.
She sighed. “Why not tell me everything? What possible difference can it make now?”
“More than you think. Difference enough that I must consider carefully. You are right about me. You are right about my story. But you are in a stronger position than you believe. You have something I want. All I have to offer in exchange is the truth—and perhaps a way out of here. I can give you the one for the other. But I am afraid you will refuse me when you hear what I have to say. I am afraid you will hate me.”
He spoke with such sincerity that for the first time since she had met him she was inclined to believe what he said. She did not understand how all that could be, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had said he might be able to help her escape. At that point, she would do anything; make any bargain, agree to any conditions to gain her freedom. Because if she remained where she was, she knew she was lost.
But she couldn’t let him know that. She couldn’t let him see her desperation. Giving Weka Dart that sort of power over her was too dangerous. He would take advantage of her as quickly as Tael Riverine had.
She took a deep breath. “Listen to me. You came here with the intention of trading or you wouldn’t have come here at all. My word is good, Weka Dart. I keep my promises. So I will give you one now. If you tell me the truth about yourself, I will tell you if I can forgive you for your lies. Then you can decide if you still think it’s worth it to try to trade what you want for my freedom.”
She hauled herself to her feet and with some effort stumbled over to where he stood. “What’s it to be, little Ulk Bog? A bargain or a good-bye? I don’t really care anymore.”
He stared at her some more, his yellow eyes flicking left and right, up and down, scanning the whole of her face, but never settling on any one part. She could see a glimmer of doubt and fear mirrored there. But she could also see hope.
He nodded. “Very well, Grianne of the many promises. I will tell you, even though I think all Strakens lie.” He spit again and shook his head. “I know who you ar
e and where you come from. I always did. I know because I was Catcher for Tael Riverine before Hobstull was. I would be Catcher still if the Straken Lord hadn’t decided I had lost my skills. He was wrong, but there is no arguing with a Straken. So he replaced me. But not before he humiliated me in ways I will never discuss, so don’t ask it of me.”
He swallowed hard. “He took me in when I was driven from my tribe for eating my young. He cared nothing for any of that, only for what I could do for him. He recognized my skills and offered me a place at Kraal Reach as his Catcher. He knew that I would accept, that I had to because I could not survive alone and unprotected in the world of the Jarka Ruus. He gave me what I needed, but then he took everything back when he cast me out. So I vowed that I would take everything from him in turn.”
His voice grew fierce. “The plans to bring you here have been in place for some time. Tael Riverine would swap you for his changeling creature, the Moric. Easy enough for a Straken of his power. I decided to disrupt his plans by getting to you first, which I did. I intended to take you away from him, to steal you out from under his nose. I intended to embarrass Hobstull and reveal him to the Straken Lord as a failure! Then I would produce you and regain my rightful place!”
He was breathing hard, his eyes become narrow slits, his throat working rapidly as he sought to gauge her reaction. She gave him nothing, listening blank-faced and empty-eyed, her talent as the Ilse Witch resurfacing from where she had kept it buried for twenty years. So easy to call it up again, she thought. So easy to go back to being what I was.
“My plan failed when you refused to come with me,” Weka Dart continued. “Failed completely. I tried everything. But you were so insistent on going your own way! And I couldn’t change your mind without giving myself away!” He shook his head. “So I let you go. I said, If that is what she wants, then give it to her! See how well she does without you! Walk away from the Straken and nothing is lost! I wasn’t going to risk my life following after you when I knew what would happen. Hobstull was looking, and it was only a matter of time until he found you. He didn’t know exactly where you would appear, only that you would. But I knew! I knew, because I have always been better able to read the signs of such things! I have always been the better Catcher!”
He spit the words out and flung himself away from the cell bars, dropping to the floor in a crouch, refusing to look at her. She watched him for a moment, her mind working through the choices his revelations had given her.
“Weka Dart,” she said.
He stayed where he was.
“Look at me.”
He refused, turned away, and hunched down.
“Look at me. Tell me what you see in my eyes.”
Finally, he turned just enough to glance over his shoulder and make momentary eye contact, then looked away again.
“I am not angry with you,” she said. “You did what I would have done if our positions had been reversed. In fact, once upon a time, when I was a different person living a different life, I did things much worse to others than what you have done to me.”
He looked back at her once more.
“I don’t hate you,” she told him.
“You should.” His teeth clicked as his jaws snapped shut.
“My hate is reserved for others more deserving and less forth-coming about their efforts to see me dead and gone.” She gestured for him to come back. “Tell me the rest of what you know.”
He stayed where he was a moment longer, then sighed, rose, and came back to stand in front of her. “You don’t hate me? If you were free, you wouldn’t try to kill me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t hate you. Even if I had the chance to do so, I wouldn’t try to kill you. Now tell me the rest. Do you know the Straken Lord’s plans?”
The Ulk Bog nodded. “I was here at Kraal Reach when he was making them.” He looked closely at her. “You still don’t know what he intends? You haven’t seen the way he looks at you?”
She went cold all the way to her bones, the little man’s words conjuring up an image that froze her blood. “Tell me.”
“He has been testing you to see if you are a suitable vessel to bear his children. He wishes to mate with you.”
For the first time, she was really afraid. The demon was anathema to her. She could think of no worse fate than to be the mother of its children, the mother of demonkind, a bearer of monsters. She had never considered the possibility. She had never recognized that the Straken Lord had any interest in her beyond keeping her imprisoned and alive until its creature, the Moric, could do whatever it had been sent to do in her own world.
“This was the reason for bringing me here?” she managed to ask, working hard to keep her voice steady.
Weka Dart shook his head, his gimlet eyes glittering. “No. The idea must have occurred to him after you were his prisoner. His plans are much grander than that.”
“How much grander?”
The Ulk Bog leaned close. “He has been searching for a way to send the Moric into your world for some time. But for that to happen, it was necessary to find someone in your world willing to help. He found those people, and he used them as his tool. Whoever they were had no idea what the Straken Lord intended, but were only interested in disposing of you. That was what your betrayer knew—that using the magic would banish you to the world of the Jarka Ruus. That, and nothing more. Your betrayers knew nothing of the exchange, nothing of the way the magic really worked, nothing of the trade that was necessary to bring you here. The Straken Lord was careful to keep that secret hidden.”
As well it should have been, she thought. But she wasn’t sure that knowing a trade was required would have stopped whoever was desperate enough to send her into the Forbidding.
“But why was I brought here if not to mate with Tael Riverine?” she pressed.
“You miss the point, Straken!” Weka Dart snapped. “Bringing you here was never what mattered! What mattered was sending the Moric into your world!”
She shook her head. “Why?”
“So that it could destroy the barrier that keeps us locked away! So that it could free the Jarka Ruus!”
Now she understood. The Moric had been sent to complete the task that the Dagda Mor had failed to accomplish more than five hundred years earlier—to break down the walls of the prison behind which the dark things of Faerie had been shut since before the dawn of Man.
Her mind raced. To do that, it would have to destroy the Ellcrys, the magic-born Elven tree that had been created to ward the Forbidding. How would it manage that, when the tree was always so closely guarded?
More important, how could she stop it from happening?
“Does the Moric have a way to destroy the barrier?” she asked Weka Dart.
He shook his head. “It was to find one once it crossed over into your world. It is very talented and very smart. It will have done so by now.”
She ignored the fear that rushed through her at the thought that the Ulk Bog might be right. “Do you have a way to get me out of here?” she asked quickly.
On the landing above them, at the top of the stairway, a door opened and closed with a thud. Footsteps sounded on the stone steps, coming down.
“On the floor!” he hissed at her, and darted away.
She threw herself back down, sprawling in the same position in which he had found her, her heart pounding, her muscles tensed. Don’t move, she told herself. Don’t do anything.
The steps approached her cell and came to a stop. A silence settled in like morning mist.
Eyes closed, body still, she waited.
TWENTY-NINE
Pen Ohmsford’s ascent from the ravine was an endless slog. Burdened with self-recrimination and despair, it was all he could do to place one foot in front of the other. He kept thinking he should go back, should attempt one final time to free Cinnaminson, make one more plea or take one last stand. But he knew it was pointless even to think about doing so. Nothing would change until he had some better mean
s of succeeding. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t stop himself from feeling that he should have done more.
Lead-footed, he climbed through the hazy darkness, working his way up the narrow switchback trail, ducking under vines and brushing past brambles and scrub, leaning on his staff for support, his thoughts scattered all over the place. His grip about the rune-carved handle of the darkwand helped to center him, a reassurance that he had accomplished something in the midst of all the failures. Lives had been lost and hopes blown away like dried leaves in a strong wind, and he blamed himself for most of it. He should have done better, he kept telling himself, even though he could not think what more he might have done or exactly what he might have changed. Hindsight suggested possibilities, but hindsight was deceptive, sifted through a filter of distance and reason. Things were never so easy as they seemed later. They were mostly wild and confused and emotionally charged. Hindsight pretended otherwise.
But knowing so didn’t make him feel any better. Knowing so only made him work harder to find a reason to believe he had failed.
He took some comfort in the fact that he had gotten to Stridegate at all, that he had confronted the tanequil and found a way to communicate with it, that he had secured the limb he needed and shaped it into the darkwand. He had gotten much farther with his quest than he had ever believed he would. He had never spoken of it, but he had always thought in the back of his mind that what the King of the Silver River had sent him to do was impossible. He had always thought that he was the wrong choice, a boy with little experience and few skills, a boy asked to do something that most grown men would not even attempt. He did not know what had persuaded him to try. He guessed it was the expectations of those who had accompanied him. He guessed it was his own need to prove himself.
These and other equally troubling thoughts roiled through his brain as he climbed, working along the tunnels of his conscience like worms, probing and sifting for explanations that would satisfy them. He tried to lay them to rest, but he only managed to settle with a few. The rest continued on, digging away, finding fresh food in his doubts and fears and frustrations, growing and fattening and taking up all the space his emotional well-being would allow.