The Waterstone (23 page)

The four children walked along the forest path in single file, with Ditani in the lead. She had abandoned her scarlet skirts and was dressed in loose silkgrass trousers, a belted blouse, and soft leather boots. The painted stripes on her cheekbones were scarlet instead of turquoise-blue, and there was a red feather tied in her braided hair.

“Battle colors,” she said, when Tad asked. “When the Hunters fight, they paint in battle colors and wear the blood feather.”

A bow was slung across her back. In one hand she carried a wickedly pointed spear; in the other, an acorn lantern that contained the flickering stub of a beeswax candle.

She was followed by Birdie, who carried a small bow and a bark quiver filled with red- and blue-feathered arrows; then came Willem, burdened with his clanking saddlebags; and finally Tad, with an anxious Pippit, bringing up the rear. They trudged along silently in the predawn darkness, each lost in thought. Tad kept his eyes on Ditani’s lantern flame, bobbing dizzily up and down, up and down, like a pond-sick firefly. Then Tad heard the singing.

It was a single flutelike voice, singing a melody so simple, so haunting, and so piercingly sweet that it brought tears to Tad’s eyes. Now that he had heard it, he realized that he had never known true music. The tune tugged at his heartstrings, sang in his blood. He would do anything,
anything
, to hear more of that silver fairy music. It was almost more than he could bear.

Ahead of him the lantern light vanished abruptly. Ditani had blown out the candle. Tad tripped over a root and almost fell on his face. The music stopped dead. Tad moaned aloud in dismay. What had happened? Into his mind crept a whisper of cold laughter.

This time you cannot win, Sagamore. Come listen . . .

With an effort, Tad shut the voice out. He could have kicked himself for being such a puddleheaded idiot. Tumbling into the Nixie’s trap like a fat buzzfly into a spider’s web. He called himself names, silently.
Mudhead. Wormbrain.

In the gray half-light of almost-dawn, they paused by the side of the path for breakfast: cold bread and a swallow of tea. Everyone was quiet and subdued. Even Pippit was silent, crowded behind Tad, nervously rolling his eyes. A faint rustle of wings above them signaled Skeever the bat, prowling watchfully overhead.

“How much farther?” Birdie questioned.

Tad shrugged.

“Not very,” he said. “Not much longer now.”

He reached out cautiously with his Mind, questing, like a shellfish poking out a curious tentacle. He could
feel
the black lake. He could sense a presence in the near distance — cold, wary, hungry. Determined to survive.

Azabel?

The sense of presence sharpened, turned toward him, but before it could come closer, Tad jerked his Mind away.

“We have to talk,” he said. “Before we go any farther.”

Quickly — as best he could — he explained about the singing.

“You wouldn’t be able to help yourselves,” he said. “It pulls at you. You feel as if you’d do anything in the world to just keep listening to it, forever. My father heard it” — his voice wavered —“and he just walked into the black lake. When we get closer, close enough for you to hear them, it could happen to you too.”

They sat silently, looking at one another.

“I should never have let any of you come,” Tad said. He felt awful. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Eh, we could give them a song of our own,” Ditani said stoutly. “Singing, all four of us, we could drown out the sound of yon fishy ladies.”

She began to sing at the top of her voice.

“There was a deermouse in the grass

A deermouse, fat and sweet.

A Hunter crept up with her bow

And took it home to eat!

Oh . . .

“Come on, sing.”

Pippit began a rhythmic blatting.

“Deaf-man’s leaf,” said Birdie.

“What did you say?” Tad said.

“There was a deermouse in the grass
—
”

“Deaf-man’s leaf,” repeated Birdie, louder. “Stop it, Ditani. Pippit, stop. That’s a dreadful song.”

“What’s deaf-man’s leaf?” asked Willem.

“It’s for poisons of the ears,” Birdie said. “It’s a little creeping plant, so big” — she measured with her fingers —“with blue flowers. You chew the leaves. But they taste good. Sweet, like wintermint.” She sounded knowledgable, confident. “It’s good for earaches, but it does other things too.”

She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll show you. I saw some, just down the path.”

She was back almost immediately with a handful of small pointed leaves. The Drying was killing them — all had withered stems and shriveled brown edges — but there remained a stubborn heart of dark green. Tad took one and put it in his mouth. Cautiously he bit down. It crunched unpleasantly. Then — Birdie was right — it tasted sweet and minty.

“It’s good,” he said, munching. “Try it.”

Birdie, Ditani, and Willem popped leaves in their mouths and chewed.

“Better than firepeppers, eh?” Ditani said.

Tad made a face at her. He helped himself to another leaf.

“But how do you know it will help?” he asked.

Birdie looked puzzled.

“Somebody must have told me,” she said blankly.

She dangled a leaf temptingly at Pippit. “Here, Pippit, pretend it’s a fly.”

Pippit threw her a scornful look.

“Poisons of the ears,” Will said. “Well, it makes sense.
Poison
sounds like Tad’s Witches, right enough.” He winked at Tad.

“Not
my
Witches, you rock-headed earthworm-eater,” Tad said smiling.

By the time they reached the edge of the forest, the sun was well above the horizon. The lantern was long out, and the cloaks, now grown too warm, were folded and stuffed bulkily into Willem’s bags. The path opened before them, and then, abruptly, ended. Before them lay the shore of the black lake.

They crowded together, peering out from under a concealing clutter of dead leaves and bracken. The water of the lake looked as thick and black as tar. The water’s edge was strewn with bones, large and small — the great bones of deer, the tiny remains of birds, mice, and squirrels. Half buried in mud was a broken wooden wheel.

Ditani gave a horrified gasp of dismay. The spokes and rim of the wheel were painted in bright alternating stripes of yellow, red, and green. Tad had seen that wheel before, parked beside a campfire in the forest, while an old man pulled berries out of nothing and turned scarves into butterflies.

“Uncle Czabo,”
Ditani whispered.

They stared miserably at the broken wheel.

“He must have heard her,” Birdie said in a small voice. “Heard her singing and just pulled his caravan right into the water.”

“May Death wait on her wagon step,” Ditani said fiercely. Her eyes were bright with anger. “He was my blood kin, of my clan and Tribe, a cousin. I shall avenge him.”

Willem put a warning hand on her arm.

“Not now,” he said quietly. “Don’t make any noise.” He tugged at Tad’s tunic sleeve and pointed. “Look at that,” he said, barely moving his lips. Tad followed the direction of Willem’s pointing finger.

They were not alone.

Some distance away, a crude fortress had been erected on the lakeshore. It was surrounded by a palisade of saplings that had been stripped of bark and branches and shaped to vicious points. On either side of the entrance gate stood a pair of armored soldiers, stiffly at attention. They wore leather helmets, leather jerkins stitched with disks of iron, and tall leather boots with iron buckles, and they carried shields and spears. Slung across their backs were bows — strung and ready — and quivers full of black-feathered arrows.

“Sentries,” Willem whispered.

Tad nodded. “Grellers,” he whispered back.

As if on some unspoken signal, the sentries, in unison, took two steps forward, turned sharply to the right and left, facing away from each other, and marched briskly to the corners of the palisade fence. Then, still in unison, they reversed themselves and returned to their original positions.

“Keeping watch,” Willem muttered. “How will we be able to get to the lake’s edge without their seeing us and raising the alarm? It’s all open ground from here to there, flat as a rock-thumping fry-pan cake.”

Tad nodded, frowning.

The sentries, moving like automatons, repeated their inspection of the perimeter, then returned to their posts.

“Could we do it while they’re turned away?” Tad asked. “If we put on the breathing tubes and things here in the forest and made a run for the water just as the sentries reach the farthest point of their patrol? They’d never reach us in time.”

“They’d never reach you at all,” Ditani said. “Not with me and Birdie to cover your backs.”

Willem looked doubtful. “We’ll clank,” he said. “They’ll hear us. And we won’t be able to run very fast. They have a long range with those arrows.”

“So do we have a long range with ours,” Ditani said ominously.

Tad could think of no better plan.

“Then let’s get ready,” he said. “Quietly now. You’ll have to show me how to put it on, Will.”

“Wait a minute,” Birdie said. “Something’s happening.”

The doors of the fortress were opening. As they swung wide, the sentries leaped back, snapped smartly to attention, and thumped the hafts of their spears on the ground. A small procession moved past them. It was led by a Greller in a long black robe with a hooded cowl pulled so far forward that his face was hidden in shadows. Behind him marched four more robed figures, walking two by two, their faces disguised by narrow black masks embroidered with silver. The procession advanced steadily down the lakeshore toward the children’s hiding place. As the Grellers drew nearer, Tad could see that the leader carried a roll of parchment in one hand.

“I wonder where they’re going,” Willem whispered.

Tad had a foreboding feeling that they were about to find out.

The procession halted some twenty paces from the bracken pile where the children crouched, and arranged themselves in a line with the hooded Greller in the middle. Pippit, crouched at Tad’s feet, began to mutter and twitch nervously. Birdie put a warning hand on his head. Then the leader raised the hand holding the parchment, threw back the folded hood of his robe, and took one step forward.

“I bear a message for the Sagamore,” he cried in a loud voice.

Birdie gave a gasp of horror and clutched Tad’s arm.

“They have our scent,” Ditani whispered urgently. “They know we’re here. What are we going to do?”

“I bear a message for the Sagamore!” the robed Greller cried again.

Then his voice changed. It grew higher, colder, clear as a bell made of Hunter steel and black ice. The black-masked Grellers fell to their knees and dropped their foreheads to the ground.

“Come out, Fisher, and parley!”

Tad’s heart began to pound. Slowly he straightened.

“It’s no good,” he said. “She knows I’m here. I might as well go out and talk.”

“Don’t be a hollow head,” Birdie whispered at him angrily. “The frog doesn’t parade itself before the heron.”

“Nor the mouse before the fox.” Ditani backed her up.

“I am not a mouse,” Tad said. He had a sudden vision of the fallen deermouse, dead, Nobono’s arrow lodged in its chest.

“I am not a mouse,”
he repeated.

A Remember answered from somewhere deep within his mind, a voice tinged with amusement.
No more you are, lad.

Or was it Will’s voice? Tad hesitated, caught for a confused instant between past and present. Will, feeling Tad’s eyes upon him, shifted a worried expression to a defiant grin.

“We’re more than a match for Grellers,” Will said bravely. “They’re all thick as posts.” He let his mouth sag open in a vacant stupid expression and crossed his eyes. “That’s what my grandfather always says about them. Too dense to tell gold dust from mustard seed, he says, and fools enough to follow a blind mole. Let’s go see what they want.”

Tad started to protest that he didn’t want company, but Willem waved him aside.

“He has his followers,” he said, “and you should have yours. Come on, Tad, don’t keep them waiting. You’re the Sagamore. You go first. I’ll be right behind you.”

They thrust the tangle of leaves and twigs aside and strode out into the open. The morning air was growing warmer and the breeze off the lake carried a smell of rotting meat. The masked Greller stood motionless, watching Tad and Will walk toward him across the packed sand and dead grass.

“It has been a long time, Sagamore.”
The Nixie’s high cold voice sounded almost wistful behind the blank fish-scale mask.

“Aye, Lady,” Tad said. “A long time.”

“The offer still stands.”
A barely perceptible note of music had crept into the cold voice. It sounded like silver syrup.

“What offer?”

The masked Greller thrust the rolled parchment into his hands.

“Our terms,”
the Nixie said.

Tad unrolled the parchment and held it out so that Willem could see it too. It was covered with writing in silver ink and stamped on the bottom with a black wax seal.

“I can’t read it,” he muttered to Willem under his breath. He felt as if he were confessing a shameful secret.

“I can’t either,” Willem muttered back. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. It doesn’t look like letters. It looks like crab tracks.”

Tad handed the parchment back to the waiting Greller.

“Tell us what it says,” he said.

Laughter. A cascade of silvery notes like fat raindrops falling into a silent pool.

“So forgetful, Sagamore? Perhaps I can help you.”

“Help me how?” Tad demanded suspiciously.

You are not as they are
, the voice went on, secretly, sweetly, inside his head.
They do not believe in you, Sagamore. They scorn you. They will never accept you. Your gift will set you apart. You will be envied, hated, feared. You will be alone. The Tribes will not unite for you, Sagamore. They are lost to you. Leave them behind. Leave them.