Hethya made a growl in her throat, glanced back at Bektis, and pushing Tir around by his shoulders, yanked the knots free of the bindings. The rawhide jerking away brought tears to his eyes, and the cold in the open cuts was excruciating.
She turned him around back. "Just till you finish eating, mind," she said.
Tir whispered, "Thank you."
"Not so fast, child."
Bektis rose from his place by the fire, crossed to where Hethya sat tailor-fashion in front of Tir, Tir kneeling with the food bowl between his knees. Tir got to his feet; Hethya too.
Tir tried hard to keep his voice steady. "I won't run away. I just..." He couldn't finish. Couldn't tell this tall bearded man how badly it terrified him, not to have the use of his hands, not to be able to run in this place where the Dark had descended on them, this place at the far end of that blind corridor of memories.
Bektis said softly, "See that you don't."
The flourish of his arm, wrist, and elbow leading-like Gingume at the Keep who'd been an actor in Penambra before the Dark came, seemed to reach out, to gather in the formless prairie night.
Gold eyes flashed there. Ground mist and shadow coalesced. Something moved.
Tir's heart stood still.
"You know what I am, don't you, child?" murmured Bektis. "You know what I can do. I know the names of the wolfen-kind; I can summon the smilodonts from their lairs and the horrible-birds from where they nest in the rocks. At my bidding they will come."
The camp was surrounded with them. Huge, half-unseen shaggy shapes, snuffing just out of the circle of the firelight. Elsewhere the glint of foot-long fangs. A snarl like ripping canvas. Tir glanced back, again, despairingly, at the pitiful handful of flames, the three black warriors crouched beside it, staring around them into the dark with worried silver-gray eyes.
Hethya put her arms over his shoulders, pulled him to her tight. "Quit terrifyin' the boy, you soulless hellkite." She ruffled Tir's hair comfortingly. "Don't you worry, sweeting." Bektis glared at her for silence-after hesitation she said, "Just you stay inside the camp and you'll be well."
Stomach churning with fright, Tir looked from her face to Bektis' cold dark eyes, then to the lightless infinity beyond the fire's reach. Movement still padded and sniffed in the long grass. Waiting for him. He didn't want to-she'd kidnapped him, dragged him away here, lied to him, she was part of Bektis' evil troupe-but he found himself clinging desperately to this woman's arm.
She added, a little more loudly, "He's such a great wizard, he can keep all those nasties at bay, sweeting.
They won't be coming near to the camp, just you see. Now come." She drew him toward the fire, opposite where Bektis had resumed his seat.
"Have yourself a bite to eat, and roll up and sleep. It's been a rough day on you, so it has." She meant to be kind, so Tir didn't say anything and tried to eat a little of the meat and potatoes she offered him. But his stomach hurt so much with fear he could barely choke down a mouthful, and he shook his head at the rest.
When he lay down in her blankets next to her, with the swarthy guards keeping watch, he could still hear the hrush of huge bodies slipping through the grass, the thick heavy pant of breath. Could smell, mingled with the earth smell and rain smell and new spring grasses, the rank carnivore stink.
All these interlaced with the clucking of the stream in the gully and lent a horror to dreams in which Rudy's death-over and over, struck by lightning, endlessly falling from the jutting rocks into blackness-alternated with the slow flood of still darker blackness spreading to cover the wizards' flares, to cover them all.
Then he'd wake, panting with terror, to hear only far-off thunder and the endless hissing of the prairie winds.
Chapter 5
On the third day out from Sarda Pass, Bektis and his party were attacked by a scouting band from the Empty Lakes People.
This didn't surprise the Icefalcon. He had never rated the intelligence of the Empty Lakes People much higher than that of the average prairie dog.
He had overtaken Bektis around noon of the second day, though the wizard was not aware of the fact.
Sometimes the Icefalcon trailed them north of the road, sometimes south, taking advantage of the gullies that scored this land and the low clumps of rabbitbrush and juniper that lifted above the waving green lake of grass.
The three black warriors, he saw, carried heavy packs-blankets and provisions for many days-bad news given his own need to hunt as he went. When they halted for nooning, he briefly considered helping himself to their stores but gave up the idea at once.
Like most of the warriors of the Real World, he carried talismans to give him at least some protection against the illusions-and the scrying abilities-of Wise Ones, but such amulets were only as good as the shaman who wrought them, and he suspected Bektis would be able to see through such wards without much trouble if he had any suspicion that there was a reason to look.
Even could he slip past whatever guardian-wards Bektis might put around the camp, the mere fact of the thefts would alert them that they were being watched, and with a Wise One in the party this was far too dangerous to permit.
He was eking out his small supplies of meat and fish with the roots of last autumn's water plantains and cattails, but even they took time to gather and prepare, and he could feel hunger gaining on him.
Toward sunset of the second day they left the road and turned north to Bison Hill, a mound in the midst of the prairie covered with elder and cottonwood and used by travelers as a campsite-and by bandits as a handy place to find travelers-since time immemorial.
Deer grazed in the woods, as did the small swift antelope of the plains. He worked his way up to the knoll through stream cuts and bison wallows and under cover of the long prairie grass, making a mental note to speak to Janus about changing the clothing of the Guards from their traditional black to the colors of the earth.
From a thicket of wild grapes some distance back he watched Hethya and one of the three black warriors-clones, Gil had called them, meaning identical people who were presumably common to her world-unload the donkeys while Bektis built a fire at the edge of the shelter of the trees.
Only an idiot or a Wise One would build a fire in such a place, where anyone could take advantage of the cover to come up on them, even as the Icefalcon was doing. But he supposed that with the advantage of wizardry it was possible to remain comfortably out of the wind and not worry about who or what might be deeper in the woods.
Any of the Talking Stars People would have camped some distance from the knoll, where they could see in all directions, even had they had a Wise One in their company.
There was never a guarantee that some other war band wouldn't include a shaman more Wise than one's own.
"I can help you," said Tir, as Hethya lifted him down from the donkey. "I promise I won't run away." He spoke matter-of-factly, but with a friendliness in his voice that told the Icefalcon that this woman must have used him kindly over the past day and a half.
Indeed, the woman's face was not cruel, and by the way she patted Tir on the shoulder, and the closeness between them as they stood, it was clear that she was used to children and liked them.
She glanced now over at Bektis, who was ordering the warriors about placing the blankets. It was the closest the Icefalcon had been to them-less than a hundred feet-and he studied the weapon of crystal and gold on the sorcerer's hand with wary interest.
A device of similar workmanship around Bektis' neck, a high collar fitted up close under the ears, was visible only briefly when the wizard pushed down the furred hood of his coat and tried to untangle his beard.
"I think best not, sweeting," Hethya said in a voice so low the Icefalcon had to guess at some of the words. "But thank you; 'tis kind of you thinking of it." She ruffled his hair again. "Sit you down there under the tree a bit. We'll be having supper soon, and I'll untie you to eat. Are you tired?"