“Hsst!” she signaled in warning, clasping his hand in hers once more. “We have to go now! Quickly! They’re coming!”
She drew him from his concealment, back the way he had just come, and he pulled up sharply. “No, wait, I’m not going back there!”
“You have to! They’re sweeping all of the ruins! They’ll find you otherwise!”
“But I can’t!” he whispered in desperation. “I can’t!”
She stopped tugging on his hand and released it. “Do what you wish, Elven Prince. But if you stay here, they will find you. Hiding won’t help. Mwellrets can sense you better than most creatures can, and they will search you out.” She stepped close. Her violet eyes were steady and searching. “Come with me.”
He wasn’t sure what made him decide to follow, but he did so, abandoning his shelter and hurrying after her. He glanced back several times without seeing anything, but his instincts told him she was telling the truth.
“What about Bek?” he asked after a few moments, keeping his voice low and his head bent toward hers as they slipped through the ruins. “Is he all right? Did you say the Ilse Witch is tracking him, that she’s gone after him on her own?”
The seer nodded. “Bek is unhurt. His magic and his courage ward him. Perhaps she will find it difficult to overcome both.”
“His magic? What magic?” The Elf hurried to keep up with her. “Wait a minute. Are you saying she’s tracking him because he has some sort of magic?”
Ryer Ord Star grasped his arm and pulled him close to her. “She is his sister, Elven Prince.” She registered the shock in his eyes and tightened her grip. “Walker told him just before we arrived, but Bek kept it to himself. When she appeared in the clearing, he told her who he was. The Ilse Witch did not believe him. She cannot. That was the cause of the confrontation between them. She hunts him now because she can’t get the truth out of her mind, even if she doesn’t accept it. She thinks that if she can confront him once more, he will admit he lied to her. Or perhaps she realizes there is something to what he says. Now walk more quickly!”
They moved ahead, faster, back through the buildings and rubble, back toward the trap they had been lucky to escape once already and were now braving again. Ahren Elessedil’s mind spun with the revelations about Bek, but his thoughts were made jumbled and confused by his fear. He knew that by going back, he was tempting fate in a way he would regret. He did not really think he could survive another encounter with the creepers, whatever Ryer Ord Star believed. But he could not let this slip of a girl return alone, leaving him behind to remember he had failed her as well as Ard Patrinell and his Elven Hunters. He kept thinking he could find a way to cause her to reconsider, to change her mind, and to turn her aside. But she was strong-minded and determined, and for the moment, at least, he would have to do what she wanted.
It took them much less time than he had expected to reach the square they had fled only hours earlier. It sat still and empty in the bright midday light, its maze of walls back in place, metal sheeting baking in the heat. Ahren cast about for signs of those who had been left behind. There was no one to be seen anywhere. There were no signs that a battle had been fought, no bodies, not a trace of blood, not a scar from the fire threads, not a piece of stray metal from one of the creepers. It was as if nothing had ever happened.
“How can this be?” he whispered to her in shock.
She shook her head slowly, staring out at the clean, empty expanse with him. “I don’t know.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. There was no sign of the Mwellrets. “What do we do now?” he asked.
She looked about momentarily, then took his hand in hers once more. “Follow me. Don’t speak, don’t do anything but what I do. Don’t run, whatever happens.”
Still holding tightly to his hand, she squared her slender shoulders, and walked out into the maze.
His shock was complete, and perhaps that was why he went with her without protest. Fighting down a surge of fear and horror that crowded into his throat, his eyes cast right and left for creepers and his skin prickled as he waited for the fire threads to burn him. She penetrated only a few yards into the deadly square before turning aside to skirt its edges, moving carefully across the metal flooring, staying clear of the shadows and well out into the bright sunlight. They moved as one, making no sound, no unnecessary movement, not speaking, barely breathing. Ahren thought he was a dead man already, but in an act of faith that surprised him completely, he gave himself over to the seer.
What surprised him even more was that nothing happened. They worked their way just inside the perimeter of the maze until they were about a quarter of the distance around, almost even with the northern facing of the dark tower that dominated its center. Once there, the seer led him just outside again into a deeply shadowed concealment formed by what remained of the walls and roofing of a collapsed building that abutted the square.
Atop a pile of rubble that looked out through a narrow gap in a wall on the landscape through which they had come, they crouched and waited.
“Why weren’t we attacked?” he asked in a whisper, still cautious, pressing close to her slender form, his lips brushing her hair.
“Because what wards the tower attacks only when there is a perceived threat to its security.” Her violet eyes glistened as she turned to look at him. “Walker was a threat, so it attacked him first and then the rest of us. Had we bypassed the square and the tower, we would have been safe.”
He stared at her. “How do you know this?”
Her pale, youthful face turned away. “I dreamed it,” she answered quietly. “In a vision, in my search for Walker.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time after that, mulling over her words while watching the ruins for signs of movement. Where were the Mwellrets? Why hadn’t they appeared?
“Do you think Tamis found any of the others?” he asked finally. “Did you see what became of them after we were attacked? What about Quentin Leah’s group?”
She shook her head wordlessly. Her eyes remained directed away from him, out toward the city. He studied her carefully. “They’re all dead, aren’t they? You’ve dreamed that, as well.”
“Not Walker Boh,” she said softly.
Before he could press her further, he caught sight of the Mwellrets moving through the ruins, dark forms sliding along walls and across empty spaces, little more than an extension of the shadows to which they clung. Ryer Ord Star gripped his arm anew, and she pressed against him in warning or, perhaps, in reassurance. He held himself still, his former composure regained at least in part from having survived yesterday’s attack and the return. He did not feel in the least invincible, but neither did he feel quite so vulnerable either. What he had lost in the attack that had claimed his friends had been restored in small part by his tightrope walk with the seer back through the maze to this hiding place. Before, he had thought that any kind of survival was momentary at best and undeserved. Now, he believed he might still be alive for a reason, that he might be alive because there was something he could accomplish.
Ryer Ord Star leaned close to him, her face almost touching his. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, as if to keep him calm and in place. “They won’t find us.”
The Mwellrets snaked through the city in increasing numbers, as many as twenty of them, appearing and disappearing like wraiths, cloaked forms blending with the shadows as they advanced. When they reached the maze, unaware of its dangers, they barely slowed. Using the walls for shelter in the same way the members of Walker’s company had done, they entered the square in ones and twos, hunched over and faceless within their robes and hoods, reptilian bodies easing ahead cautiously. Deeper and deeper into the maze they penetrated, and nothing happened.