Down a Lost Road (33 page)

“
Merelin.”

I uprooted myself and inched closer to
him.

“
Give me your
hand.”

I held it out to him. He took it firmly, and
I dropped to my knees in front of him.

“
This was all my fault,” I
whispered. “If I hadn’t been so stupid and crawled up the dune
where they could see me, none of this would have
happened.”

He lifted his head at that, his eyes calm
and sad. “Oh Merelin, do you think it was you they sensed?”

“
I don’t understand,” I
said, frowning. “I don’t understand anything.”

That made him smile. “Can you understand
this?”

He swept out his hand, and a flood of soft
light erupted from his palm. It raced over the sand until, not
twenty paces from us, it bathed the tall shrubs and strange trees
of the
Branhau
. I ran toward the trees.

“
Yatol!” I cried in relief.
“We made it! How—”

I turned to wait for him – he was coming
slowly, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of pain or
exhaustion, or some kind of solemnity. Something had changed in
him. I just couldn’t place what it was. But he carried himself
straight, head high and eyes still filled with the light of stars.
No. He wasn’t weak or in pain. Not now.

“
We’ve made it this far,”
he said. There was no smile in his eyes, but no uncertainty either.
“But we’ve barely begun.”

Before, those words would have crushed me.
But he spoke now with strength, and I steeled my nerves as I
followed him into the trees. Here at last we found some break from
the consuming darkness of the
Perstaun
, as the trees and
flowers threw their best assault of light against the shadow. The
soft luminance spilled from the tiny flower-cups in pools of gold,
and whispered down from the swaying tree tendrils in opaline
streams. It warmed some inner part of me that I suddenly realized
had been cold. I was almost happy, in a bizarre sort of way. We’d
gotten past the Ungulion. Nothing stood between us and K’hama.

Nothing but long emptiness.

And just like that, my sudden burst of
energy fizzled. The forest stretched on and on. Blue-cascade trees
surrounded us, towering over our path and spreading a net of
web-like roots over the ground. As I nearly tripped in them the
second time, I remembered the clinging grasses that had thwarted me
my first day here. It seemed so long ago, almost a different life.
I clenched my jaw and forged on.

I had to practically jog to keep up with
Yatol. I didn’t have room to walk beside him, though I desperately
wanted to talk to him. To be near him. I just tried to stay close
behind and kept my silence. Hunger snapped emptily at my stomach,
and I was so thirsty my blood felt like sludge. But I didn’t want
to stop. I only wanted an end. Then I remembered Yatol’s words and
echoed them bitterly to myself:
We have barely begun.
Fantastic.

After a while, the dusky blue luminance of
the trees faded to a mere shimmer in the darkness, and a thin veil
of cool fog drew up around us. It dampened my spirits as much as
the light, and I bowed my head and jogged on doggedly.

I’d stopped paying attention to the forest
when the ground pitched down abruptly. Everything had changed. The
trees shot up straight and grey, unblossoming with rough sandpapery
bark. My feet sank deep into the loamy soil as we picked our way
down into the valley. And still the mist curled like noisome
wraiths’ fingers around the tree trunks and my legs. The
strangeness of it all finally brought me to a halt.

“
Yatol…” I called through
the eerie fog. He came back to me, his gaze straying over the
forest. “We must be past Enhyla’s. It all looks so different
here.”

“
I’ve never been to these
reaches of the
Branhau
, but I do know them.”

“
How can you know them if
you’ve never been here?” I asked sullenly.

“
I have learned every path
our people have forged this side of Alcalon,” he said. “And I know
this too – we’re still a long way from the borders of the
forest.”

I knew what he meant: stop wasting time. I
hung my head and managed a nod, but he had already turned away. A
sick pang tugged at my heart, but I forced myself into a run.

Just like track. Don’t think about it. Just
run.

I was doing so well not thinking about it
that I jumped in surprise when Yatol’s arm caught me around the
shoulders. He had stopped and I hadn’t even noticed. My feet
halted, but my mind kept wandering.

“
Merelin. Wait
here.”

He turned to leave, but then his words
registered.

“
What?” I cried.

“
I’ll only be gone a few
minutes. Rest, but stay alert. This place should be safe
enough.”

He glanced around briefly, then vanished
into the strange somber trees. I stared after him, too dumbfounded
to move. The sound of his steps faded into the deep silence. No
breeze gave life to the tree-tendrils, and there was a strange dead
feel to the air. All of a sudden I realized how exhausted I was,
and I collapsed onto the ground.

As soon as I sat down, I knew it was a
mistake. I couldn’t stand up again. My legs ached too badly. The
sandals clung to my feet, coated with soil and wet from sweat, even
blood. I shuddered in horror as I loosened the straps. In the misty
glimmer of light I could see blisters between my toes and on my
heels, and I winced as I tore one open easing the sandal off. I
stared at my feet apathetically for a few minutes, then flopped
back onto the moss-shrouded ground.

My momentary feeling of peace dwindled in
the span of about a minute. A faint wary alarm triggered in my mind
– the vague feeling that someone was tracking us. All my senses
sharpened in response. My eyes drifted carefully over the grey
skeletal trunks leaning over me, gleaming strangely pale against
the muddy sky. I listened so intently that I could even hear the
soft click and scrape of insects creeping through the dirt.

Then, abruptly, the alarm vanished. Serene
indifference filled my mind, and I closed my eyes contentedly. I
could feel every swell and dip in the spongy moss. A warm, earthy
smell hung in the air, like Mom’s garden in the spring, traced with
just the faintest scent of flowers. Even the dank chill of the air
felt strangely wonderful. I let my thoughts drift…

“
I have food.”

I jumped, but couldn’t force myself
upright.

“
I can’t move,” I muttered,
staring at him from my back.

“
Your feet need to be
treated.”

“
Tell me something I didn’t
know,” I groused. “Sorry. But I don’t know what to do for
them.”

He just shot me a reproachful glance as he
knelt down in front of me. From his haversack he retrieved a few
items and a wad of clean cloth, then he placed my foot on his leg
to treat. He worked quickly, and he certainly knew what he was
doing. I barely felt him lance the blisters with a thin, sharp
blade. Once he had drained the fluid, he opened a tiny leather case
and scooped out a bit of pale green paste. It smelled strong and
somewhat familiar. Camphor. Shan’s salve. It cooled and numbed the
blisters, relieving the stinging pain. When Yatol finished he bound
my feet with cloth and wiped his hands on the edge of his
tunic.

“
Akhmar will come. You
can’t walk anymore just yet.”

I frowned at my feet, furious with them but
strangely relieved that Akhmar would be coming. Maybe it was the
grey gloaming of the forest pressing down on me, or some residual
alarm creeping back over me, but I wanted nothing more than for
Akhmar to be with us. Now.

“
This should give you some
energy,” Yatol said softly.

He was slicing a strange, gourd-like fruit
in half, sawing through the squeaky thick rind. On the inside it
looked like a pomegranate, with hardly any meat and only a small
handful of bead-like seeds in its hollow center. Yatol handed me
half of the fruit, and I watched him to see how to eat it. Like I
thought, he scooped out the seeds and munched on them, but he
didn’t spit out any fibery bits like I’m used to doing with
pomegranates. I shrugged and followed suit. The yellow juicy flesh
tasted like grapes, and the inner seeds just melted away. But even
better than the sweet, tangy seeds was their thirst-quenching
juice. When I’d finished the fruit, Yatol gave me a few pieces of
crisp, airy bread. I didn’t notice if he ate any himself.

“
I’m sorry there’s nothing
else,” he said when I had finished.

“
Nothing? I’m famished. I
thought you brought food from the camp.”

“
It was all they could
spare. And the food from the camp is for when there is nothing
else.”

That didn’t comfort me, but I forced the
thought away. “Where’d you go to get it, anyway?”

He nodded over his shoulder. “There’s an
outpost nearby where scouts can get food and rest. But their
supplies are nearly exhausted – there are far more scouts abroad
these days than usual.” I frowned, so he said, as if it were
obvious, “War.”

“
Right. Yatol, if the
Ungulion force is all gathered in the
Perstaun
, then where
is the rest of your army?”

“
You’ve seen all the army
we have.”

“
That was it?”

“
What do the numbers
matter?” he muttered. “You’ve seen the most damage we can do
them.”

“
Then why have an army at
all?”

“
To give our people some
semblance of hope,” he said, his voice thin. “We’ve always had an
army. For a long time it was merely ceremonial, before the Ungulion
began to plague us. Then they came, and the people fled to the city
and begged the army to defend them. So they marched. They went
bravely enough until the city vanished beyond the horizon, then
they took to dodging shadows and lying low, trying to keep the
enemy at bay without doing battle. It worked for a while.” He shook
his head. “The Ungulion are indestructible, as far as we can judge.
And yet, we go to destroy them.”

Everything inside me went cold. I wished he
hadn’t said it. I supposed I’d always known it, but I had never let
myself think about it. I stared at my hands, clenched
white-knuckled on my lap. I forced them to unlock. Forced myself to
breathe slowly.

“
We haven’t had much time
to talk since you returned,” Yatol said. “What did you
learn?”

I had gone back, hadn’t I? I’d almost
forgotten. Gone back and failed.

“
Not as much as I would
have liked,” I said. “My father taught literature. Kurtis said his
interest was mythology, and the work of a man named Tolkien.” I
frowned, trying to think of how to explain it. “Tolkien wrote a
book he called the ‘Epic History of the Elves,’ which had some
retellings of real myths.”

“
Elves?” said Yatol, his
eyes glinting strangely. “Interesting. Immortal beings?”

“
Yeah, something like that.
Kurtis said my father thought Tolkien’s mythology was as real as
the other myths.”

“
As real?” He shot me a
curious glance. “Or do you mean, as true?”

I thought about that a moment, then smiled.
“Yes. As true.”

“
Did you find the
book?”

“
Kurtis gave me a copy. I
left it behind. But my father had marked a passage, something about
an island being drowned and part of the world being torn
away.”

Suddenly I remembered the sheaf of papers
that had fallen out of the book. I hadn’t had a chance to look at
them yet. Actually I’d completely forgotten about them, in the
aftermath of our return to Arah Byen. I opened my pouch and pulled
them out.

“
I found these in the
book,” I said, smoothing the paper on my leg. “The book was my
father’s. Maybe these papers were his too.”

I squinted at them in the dim light, and
Yatol shifted closer to look over my shoulder. I could make out a
drawing, which looked like a map of the Mediterranean. Maybe.
Geography had never been my strong suit. There were other markings
on the page, too, like some strange script. I pointed at it.

“
I can’t read
that.”

Yatol slanted me a curious glance. “So you
can speak the language, but can’t read the writing?
Fascinating.”

“
Well, children learn to
speak before they learn to read,” I said glumly.

I shot him a furtive glance and saw him
smiling. Teasing. I knew what that look said:
You just called
yourself a child.
I shoved him.

“
Shut up!”

He just grinned at me, then tugged the
papers from my hands. “Do you mind?”

“
Have a party.”

That got a skeptical look from him. I hoped
the phrase didn’t mean something different in Arathi than it did in
English. For a while he sat quietly, studying the papers.

“
Let’s see,” he said after
a while. “This talks about the
ayshkahl
, some of the old
rune verses. Then here…”

He paused, then pointed to a set of
markings.
That
I could read.

“
Tolkien.”

“
Ah. This talks about
Tolkien’s work. There are a bunch of names, all pointing to each
other.”

He held it in front of me so I could look on
with him. I saw the names he was talking about, written in my kind
of alphabet.

“
That first one is Andor. I
remember that from the book. And it points to Atlantis? Atlantis in
myth was an island that
was
drowned,” I commented. “Then we
have The West, pointing away to…”