The Quest (31 page)

I looked nervously around at the surrounding peaks. Were there Angels heading our way even as we spoke? Without Merlin to hide me, my psionic power would be a beacon for the Angels to home in on, whereas any Angel patrol approaching us would be protected by their own hiders. Playing cat and mouse was never fun for the mouse, but especially so when the mouse had to wear a beeper collar and the cat was invisible.

Easily reading my mind, Terry said, “Hopefully we’ll find Merlin’s group on the other side.”

“So what do we have?” I asked.

“Not much,” replied Terry, shaking her head. “Food and water were in the other plane, and since you couldn’t spot our bags, we lost the tents and stuff too. Still, I got my pistol and two spare clips.”

I smiled. “And your hook.”

James also had his pistol and spare clips. I was the only one unarmed, having left my pistol in one of the bags. The lack of food, water and shelter was troubling, but that, like the gemstones, was something to worry about later. At least we were already dressed for hiking, boots and all.

“Let’s get going,” I said. “The sooner we find the others, the sooner you can lead us all to the Historian, and the less time we’ll spend being hungry, thirsty and cold.”

“Agreed,” said Terry. “But what makes you think I know the way to the Historian?”

I froze solid. “Excuse me?”

James looked just as shocked, asking slowly, “Are you saying that you don’t know the way from here, Terry?”

Terry shrugged. “The last time I came, I entered these mountains from the other side.”

“We’re lost?!” I asked, horrified at the thought.

“Not if you can show us the way,” answered Terry. “I’m not the guide here, Adrian. You are.”

I just stared at her until she asked, “Can’t you feel him?”

I slowly turned around on the spot, calming my breathing. Then I pointed to the northeast and said confidently, “That way.”

“Good,” said Terry, nodding. “Then I was right about the general direction.”

Now that I was tuned in, the Historian’s multiple and exceptionally potent destroyer powers were easily identifiable. So much so that even I, who usually couldn’t tell the actual direction of a psionic power, could point to the Historian as easily as if I had a psionic compass in my head. It was actually harder to accurately gauge the distance this time because the Historian’s power was so intense. I suspected that he was at least a hundred miles away, possibly much more.

“Merlin and company first,” said Terry. “Let’s go find them.”

By the position of the sun, I guessed that it was a little past midday. The air was dry and chilly, but refreshingly clear. Breathing deeply, I scanned the mountain range as we climbed, looking out for any signs of movement.

Despite our precarious situation, I couldn’t help being inspired by how beautiful and utterly merciless the terrain looked. Only the highest peaks were snowcapped, but the air was somewhat thin, making it hard to walk quickly. Some dry and thorny bushes were growing here and there, but they just added to the desolation. Looking up, I saw a few scattered clouds not far above us, and the sky was a deeper blue than I was used to. This was a truly different world from the one we had left back in Walnut Lane.

We plodded steadily on without talking, making our way westward up to the lowest part of the gap between two peaks. I couldn’t be sure about Merlin, but I was confident that Ed Regis would know which direction to lead his group in order to meet up with us. With any luck, we would rendezvous with them at or near the gap. The slope got steeper as we went, and Terry and James had to crawl on their hands and knees to get over some of the rockier parts of the climb. I simply levitated myself over the hard parts.

“Don’t tire yourself out doing that,” said Terry, clearly annoyed at how easy it was for me. “You never know when you’ll need your power for something more important.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, grinning at her. “I’m pacing myself.”

It made sense too, since I couldn’t risk cutting myself on the rocks for fear of losing my power completely. But even I couldn’t simply fly up to the top of the mountain. It was too far up, and though I was worried about Alia, I didn’t want to lose sight of Terry and James. Whenever possible, I walked.

As the sun began its slow descent toward the western peaks, the three of us cleared the gap and found what was on the other side, which was…

“Nothing,” I breathed, desperately looking around for my sister. Where had Alia and Ed Regis landed? Where was Merlin?

“Are you sure they landed over here, Terry?” asked James.

Terry shook her head. “Pretty sure, but not certain. It kind of depends on how straight the plane was flying when we jumped. Maybe they landed on this slope, but had to move elsewhere to evade capture.”

Or maybe they
had
been captured. Shaking my head, I quickly forced the thought out of my mind. There was nothing to be gained by entertaining my fears when we still had no idea what really happened to them.

“Alright, change of plan,” announced Terry. “We’re going straight toward the Historian. Merlin and Alia can sense him too, so we can all use the Historian as our magnetic north. If we’re lucky, we’ll meet up with them somewhere on the way.”

I wasn’t at all happy with this plan, but unable to suggest another, I agreed. Terry suspected that my sister’s group was slightly ahead of us rather than behind, but there was no way to be sure.

As we started walking again, James looked at me and said quietly, “I really hope Alia is okay.”

“Alia is with Ed Regis,” I replied in as confident a tone as I could muster. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

James chuckled. “I thought you didn’t like that man.”

I gave James a grim smile. “You don’t have to like someone to respect their skills. That Wolf just lost his whole team. He knows better than to lose another.”

With Ed Regis and Merlin to take care of her, my sister’s chances would be no worse than ours.

Terry said, “At least Merlin can hide Alia’s power, so those three won’t be as easily hunted as us.”

I remembered Ed Regis’s words about how professionals always put the mission first. “Maybe you guys will be better off if I’m not here,” I suggested. “There’s no way to hide my power from the Angels.”

“Together or not at all, remember?” said Terry, repeating what I had said to her before we jumped from the roof of NH-1. “Besides, how are we going to find the Historian without you to guide us, dummy? Don’t worry. We just need to get to Merlin before the Angels find us.”

We turned northeast now, heading in the general direction of the Historian’s power, and soon we were carefully making our way down a moderately steep, boulder-infested mountainside. I quickly discovered that descending wasn’t any easier than climbing: It used a totally different set of muscles and there was a greater risk of slips and falls. In less than two hours, we had to stop for the night. The night sky was nearly cloudless and the moon was just beginning to wane, which meant that it was bright enough for us to see each other’s faces without flashlights, but too dark to walk safely on the rocky slope.

“Break a leg out here and you’re dead for sure,” warned Terry.

Our trekking clothes were thick and warm, but not enough to keep us from shivering a bit in the cold night air. We took cover behind the largest boulder we could find, but it did little to shield us from the biting wind which began to blow soon after sunset. We huddled as closely as we could, shoulders touching, curled up and hugging our bodies to keep warm.

“It’s not so cold that we’d die in our sleep,” said Terry, “so we’d better sleep. I’ll take first watch. James can have the midnight shift, and then wake up Adrian. Try to sleep as much as you can. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

“I thought it was a pretty long day today,” I said, and then suddenly I couldn’t help laughing to myself.

“What is it, Half-head?” asked Terry.

“Nothing,” I said, still chuckling. “I was just imagining Alia huddled up somewhere out there with Merlin and – and Ed Regis!”

Terry laughed too. “That kid has no fear.”

I stopped laughing and said quietly, “Only in the daytime.”

“We’ll find her, Adrian. Just get some sleep.”

It’s hard to stay warm on an empty stomach, and I doubt James and Terry slept any better than I did that night.

The dawn was cold and uninviting, but at least the wind had died down during the night.

“Let’s get going,” said Terry, and we did.

We plodded steadily along all day, mostly without talking, doing our best to ignore our parched mouths and rumbling stomachs. There was nothing edible to be found on these barren mountains, but early that evening, we were fortunate enough to come across a narrow river running between two slopes. The icy water was clean and refreshing, and I took hope in the knowledge that if Alia’s group was heading toward the Historian, they would no doubt have crossed this river too. We didn’t have any bottles to carry the water in, but the outer layer of our hiking clothes were nylon raincoats which, once we made some crude adjustments, worked nearly as well.

Water was a poor excuse for sustenance, however, and that night felt even colder than the first.

“I’d like to find Alia before her birthday if at all possible,” I said as I stretched out my painfully cramped muscles in the chilly morning sunlight. Alia’s finding day, March 24th, was the day after tomorrow.

“She’s going to be eleven, right?” asked James.

“Theoretically,” I said, since no one knew exactly how old she was. “And assuming she’s still alive.”

But we didn’t see Alia’s group that day or the next. Fortunately, we met no Angels either.

Terry had a theory on the lack of pursuit: “First off, we’re still a good long distance from the Historian, and very few people attempt to reach him from this side of the mountains. Most of the Angels are probably guarding the common access route from the east. They know we’re here, though, so it’s only a matter of time.”

“What about the guns that brought down our plane?” asked James.

“I still think they were Angels or hired by Angels,” replied Terry. “But they may be non-psionic, in which case they won’t be able to sense Adrian’s power. Or perhaps they can and they’re trailing us at a distance as they wait for reinforcements. Who knows?”

From then on, James kept looking over his shoulder as he walked. I didn’t have the energy left to bother. We had been going without meals now for three days, and it was taking its toll. I no longer had the strength to levitate myself over the difficult parts of the journey, and my legs felt as heavy as the boulders we had to navigate. Even Terry was running on vapors, and I feared for my sister’s group, which had also jumped without supplies.

We had no maps, and really no idea where we were. All we had was a heading, and there was no straight line to the Historian. Without ropes or any proper mountain climbing equipment, we had to carefully choose our routes, which often took us in wide arcs around the jagged peaks. Sometimes we would get to the top of a relatively mild slope only to discover that the other side was a sheer cliff, and I wasn’t about to attempt another controlled descent with Terry and James hanging on to me. The going was slow and we still saw no sign of the rest of our team. We spent another cold night on the rocks.

In the mid-afternoon of Alia’s eleventh birthday, as we reached the top of yet another gap between two peaks, Terry asked, “How far do you think the Historian is, Adrian?”

“I can’t tell,” I replied honestly. “We’re getting closer, but I don’t think we’ve even come a quarter of the way.”

“We need food,” said Terry. “We’re not going to make it much farther if we can’t find anything to eat.”

James, who had so far refused to complain about this basic problem with our forced march, nodded weakly. “I feel like we’re walking in circles. These mountains all look alike.”

We weren’t, but James had a point. And I knew that Terry’s real fear wasn’t dying of starvation, but how weak we might be when the Angels finally decided to pounce.

“We’ll just have to keep going,” Terry said resolutely. “We still might find something beyond the next mountain.”

That didn’t sound very promising, but as I let my eyes wander down the slope, across the miles of desolate yellowish-brown terrain that we would have to cross before we could even begin climbing the next mountain, I saw something that made me do a double take before I believed it.

“Alia has been here,” I said quietly.

“How do you know?” asked Terry.

“It’s written in the rocks.”

Terry stared at me. “Have you lost your mind, Adrian?”

I pointed downward to a collection of seventeen large brown rocks set in a pattern on the ground near the bottom of our slope. Terry couldn’t read them but she recognized the writing. “Braille,” she said, nodding. “That’s her alright. What does it say?”

“Hansel,” I read.

“There’s probably a message near it,” said Terry. “Let’s try to get down there before nightfall.”

We did, but only just. In the fading light, we discovered hundreds of little holes carefully patterned along the bottom of my Guardian call sign. The Braille dots looked like they had been made by pressing the tip of a bullet into the soft earth. Alia had chosen her words carefully just in case someone aside from me out here could decipher Braille, and I couldn’t help smiling as I read her secret message.

“Well, tell us what it says already!” Terry commanded impatiently.

“Happy birthday to me,” I read aloud. “Already got two presents yesterday, but I think more are coming. This morning I’m taking my dog to the swimming pool first and then we’ll head to the party. Hope to see you there. Gretel.”

“What the heck does that mean?” asked James. “Is there a lake around here or something?”

Terry shook her head. “Today’s her birthday, so they were here this morning. There was a swimming pool a few blocks east from New Haven One. They’re headed east around the mountain before continuing toward the Historian.”

I glanced at the eastern slope, which was by far the easier climb compared to the steep north face.