Wandering Lark (57 page)

Shona’s startled cry reminded Etienne of the gulls that followed the river into Caer Keltora. She turned towards the sound and cursed at the sight of mageborn warriors surging in from the balcony.
How?
One of them had seized Shona and was pushing her against the wall to restrain her.

“Here now!” Etienne said, rushing towards the lass, ignoring the ones who passed her to interrupt Wendon’s spell.

But she stopped in her tracks when she saw a familiar sight. It was that damned flying platform! She spent a silent curse on Fenelon for creating the thing that now hovered at the edge of the balcony. Standing on the platform like a captain aboard a fine ship, his robes flapping in the wind, was none other than Turlough himself.

The temptation to cast lightning at the platform was strong, but the sense that a number of mage bolt spells were aimed in her direction quelled that thought. With a sigh, Etienne let her satchel and cloak fall to the floor. Already, the door had been opened, and more mageborn guards led by Lorymer were pouring into the chamber.

Did he bring an entire army?

One of the mageborn on the platform lowered a small set of stairs where the rail was open. Turlough stepped down onto the balcony. His face was a mask of triumph as he walked across the balcony and into the chamber. There, he stopped before Etienne.

“My dear, it is so good to see you again,” he said. “I must say that you and your companions have led me on quite a merry chase what with casting this distraction of a spell and that. But as you can see, your efforts were in vain.”

Etienne sighed. She was not so sure she could return his first sentiment in any fashion, and the latter was clearly meant to scold her into submission. She kept her tongue and held out her wrists for the manacles, wondering who was carrying the gags.

Turlough merely took gentle hold of her hands and looked into her eyes.

“Where is Fenelon?” he asked.

“He is not here,” she said.

“Ah, but he was at some point along the way. I have already spoken to a landlord at one of the upper inns who remembers him leaving in the company of his father and a Dvergar. You wouldn’t happen to know where they might be at the moment, would you?”

Etienne shook her head. In that, she was being honest.

“Pity,” Turlough said. “Of course, we know that he will probably be coming back this way to join you...that was the message he sent you, was it not?”

Etienne clamped her mouth shut in a tight line and decided that she now meant every ill word she had previously spoken of Bran Alden.

“It doesn’t matter,” Turlough said. He shot a look at Shona. “I see your apprentice is up and about and looking well again. Sad that you have to go and waste your skills for one young mageborn and his demon.”

“I have wasted nothing,” Etienne said. “And you are wasting your time. Take us back to Dun Gealach and throw us all in the tower, since that is your aim. Because if you do not lock me away, I will just make every effort to escape again.”

Turlough looked briefly as though he might strike her for such insolence. Instead, he shook his head. “Oh, no, my dear Etienne. I will not be returning to Dun Gealach until I have a complete set of conspirators. So we will make ourselves comfortable and wait for Fenelon to return with his father. With luck, they will bring young Alaric as well, and then I will be able to do what I deemed necessary long ago.”

She stiffened her shoulders and glared at him. “You go too far, Turlough Greenfyn, and one day it will be your undoing.”

Turlough merely smiled. He let go of her hands and nodded to one of the guards.

This time, there were no soft manacles. She was pushed into a chair and had her hands tied back behind her and a gag slipped into her mouth. She continued to glare at Turlough as his mageborn warriors did the same to Wendon and Shona.

“Secure the inn for our purposes, Lorymer,” Turlough ordered. “Tell the landlord to name his price, but all his other guests must find new quarters. I suspect we are in for a bit of a wait, and I will have no one here who can interfere when Fenelon returns.”

And I shall pray to every god and goddess I believe in that Fenelon makes you sorry you ever crossed his path,
Etienne thought.

Fenelon was starting to believe
that they were going to fall out of a hole in the bottom of the world before they found the Pass of Baldoran. It seemed like all Hobbler did was lead them deeper and deeper into the earth, so deep, Fenelon swore he was hearing a great thundering sound. The rhythm pounded his eardrums like the beating of a heart.

He had to resist the overwhelming urge to step over to the walls of the caverns and listen. Besides, he had already touched those walls once and the oily black residue that dirtied his hand had yet to come off. He wasn’t squeamish about dirt, but there was something downright disgusting about the feel of the stuff. Tempting as it was, to burn it off with a quick fire spell, he decided it might not be wise...especially if this was the rock he heard mentioned that was used by Dvergar as a fuel. In his experience, setting oil on fire was a good way to lose skin.

Their trail occasionally split. Hobbler would stop and test the air by licking his finger then holding it aloft before he would announce, “This way.”

“Do we really trust him to know where he is going?” Fenelon whispered to Gareth when he was able to get close enough to his father to do so.

“To the pass, yes,” Gareth said. “Hobbler knows the way even thought he denies it. Beyond that, he’ll be as much in the dark as we will...in more ways than one.”

“You know, it seems to me it would have been simpler to use a fly spell and cross over the mountains...”

“Shows how little you know,” Gareth said. “Some of the mountains in the Ranges are so tall their peaks are not visible even on a clear day. And the air gets thin when you get too high. Breathing becomes nearly impossible. I should know, since I have climbed a number of these mountains in my youth. But like the spell that keeps me from gating back to that place I found all those years ago, the mountains will not allow you to fly over them at all. I have seen birds of no magical ability whatsoever flying at those mountaintops, only to be turned away by some force that even nature cannot comprehend.”

Fenelon sighed and fell back to his place at the end of the line.

He had no idea how many days or nights they traveled along. His body told him to eat, sleep and otherwise, when to get rid of wastes. But he soon lost count of those. Was it two days now? Or was it three? Or only one?

One could go mad underground this way.

He was almost convinced of his own madness when Hobbler stopped before a divided shaft and frowned. “Well, gents,” the Dvergar said. “That passage there will lead you to Baldoran’s Piles and between the Piles, you’ll find the pass. So I’ll just be on my way...”

He started to walk uphill. Gareth’s hand snagged the little man by the scruff.

“I think not, Hobbler,” Gareth said. “We’re going to need your guidance to get back out of here, so you’re going with us.”

“Down there? Into the pass?” Hobbler looked so pitiful now. “But...I don’t want to go into the pass...”

“Why not?” Gareth asked.

“There might be...well...them...”

“Them?”

“Look,” Hobbler said. “You know perfectly well that the Stone Forest lies just past the entrance of Baldoran’s Pass, and it’s full of them...”

“Them?” Fenelon said, emphasizing his father’s question.

Hobbler looked as though he were going to start crying. “Them,” he agreed.

“Just who are
them
...I mean, they?” Fenelon insisted.

“Oh, there’s all sorts of them,” Hobbler said. “Some as big as houses, others as tiny as gnats, and all of them want to lead you astray so that you find the hidden pits...and if you fall into one of those, well, there is no going home.”

“Hobbler, you know perfectly well that I would never allow
them
to harm you,” Gareth said. “So stop this nonsense and get moving. You’re wasting my time with all this arguing.”

“Thought as much,” Hobbler said with a sigh and lost his frightened air. “But it never hurts to try.”

Fenelon frowned. “Just what is he trying to pull now?”

“Hobbler is always trying to pull something,” Gareth said. “That’s part of his charm.”

“You and I clearly have a different idea of what constitutes charm,” Fenelon said.

Gareth merely smiled. He forcefully turned Hobbler around in the right direction and guided the Dvergar towards the tunnel. Hobbler hesitated, and then sighed with resignation and marched on into the tunnel, shaking his head.

“I’m going to regret this,” Hobbler muttered. “I just know I am going to regret this...I curse the day my cousin Tobbler ever told you about this place, indeed I do...”

“His cousin Tobbler?” Fenelon said.

“Aye,” Gareth said. “His cousin Tobbler was one of my first guides around the Ranges. It was back in the days when I was married to my first wife—the harridan, I used to call her, and it’s no wonder I took to wandering the way that woman could scold. Getting into the ranges and wandering around was the only way I could find any peace.”

“Then why did you marry this harridan?”

“I was very young, and I may have been drunk at the time,” Gareth said. “Not that it matters. She drove me insane, which is probably why I never stayed around long enough to sire any children on her.”

Fenelon said nothing. He’d heard enough tales from his own mother to know his father was not always faithful to the woman who carried his name, and that there were half brothers and sisters all over Ard-Taebh that he had yet to meet.

“I was never so happy to have a wife die as I was when she passed on,” Gareth continued. “At any rate, it was on one of my earliest forays into the ranges that I met old Tobbler. I saved him from a jotun that was trying to steal his keg of mead. In gratitude, he shared his mead with me, and somewhere around the fourth or fifth tankard, he started talking about his youth and how he was one of those of the Stone Folk who traveled with his family when they guided the Haxons out of the Ranges and into Ross-Mhor. And he mentioned the time they had a little trouble with a band of Hidden Folk who told them they could not stay in Garrowye...

“Now I had heard of Garrowye...I remembered an old text I had studied in my own father’s library, text that now resides in the Great Library of Dun-Gealach, and it was fragments of a journal written by a Ross-Mhorian scholar from that time period, who described the coming of the Haxons, and how they mentioned a land called Garrowye where the Aelfyn would not allow them to stay. I pressed Tobbler for more information, and learned that he had found a secret way in and out that the Hidden Folk were not watching as closely. So I tried to get him to tell me where it was.”

“And...?” Fenelon ventured.

“At first, he refused. Said it was forbidden to tell the Long Legs anything about the way. But I reminded him that he owed me his life, and being that Dvergar are very set in their ways when it comes to paying back a life debt, I told him I would release him of that debt if he would show me the way... So he did, in a sense. He led me to that river. He advised me to follow the water’s way as that would lead me to the entrance, but he warned that I would have to be a clever man to see it. That only a clever man would be able to find it.”

“And clearly, you did,” Fenelon said.

“Clearly, though I think it was more fool’s luck. I fell into a river, got dumped into a cave just under the waterline, was dragged along through the dark for what seemed like forever, and was too scared witless to use magic to get myself out. But that turned out to be to my advantage because the river finally spat me out, tossed me down a mountainside and landed me in a place where I could barely flounder ashore. There was a ruined village there. I was cold and wet and sore, so I kindled a fire and fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning, I could see that the village had been destroyed by a rockslide, and I could see a beautiful green land. I wanted so much to explore it, but I had no supplies and I was injured enough that I knew I needed a healer. So I gated myself back home, intending to get my arm fixed and gather provisions and return.”

The pause was rather irritating in Fenelon’s opinion. But he knew better than to say so. “And?” he encouraged, hoping Gareth was not about to decide all this talk was a waste of time.