Tamis called a halt, glancing around as she did so, taking her time. “I don’t think we should attempt to circle back through the city at night,” she said. “There’s bound to be other traps. There might be sentries, as well. Better to wait until morning when we can see something.”
Quentin, like the others, had adjusted to the idea that they were alone and cut off from rescue or escape, that whatever they chose to do, they had better do so with that in mind. Mistakes would prove costly now, perhaps fatal. If the Mwellrets wanted to try tracking them in the dark, let them do so. With any luck, the city and its horrors would swallow them.
“We’ll make camp in the forest?” Panax asked.
Tamis nodded. “As best we can. No fire, cold food, and one of us on watch all night. We’ve seen what’s in the city, but not what’s in these woods.”
A comforting thought, Quentin mused, trailing after her into the trees until she found a suitable clearing. The sun was down by then, and the first stars were appearing. The same stars would already be out at home, so far away he could barely imagine it anymore. His parents would be in bed and perhaps asleep under them. He wondered if Coran and Liria were thinking of him now, as he was thinking of them. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
They had a little food and water, but no bedding. Almost everything had been lost in the flight out of the maze or left behind at the edge of the ruins. They ate what they had, drank from an aleskin Panax was carrying, and slept in their clothes using whatever they could find for pillows. Tamis took the first watch. Quentin was asleep so fast he had barely cradled his head in the crook of his arm before he was gone.
He dreamed, but his dreams were jumbled and disjointed fragments. They left him shaken and at times frantic, but they lacked meaning and were forgotten almost immediately. Each time, after jerking awake, he slipped quickly back to sleep again. Black and still, the night enveloped and carried him away.
It was Kian who woke him, gripping his shoulder firmly, steadying him when he started from his sleep. “You’ve been dreaming all night, Highlander,” the Elven Hunter whispered. “You might as well take the watch and let those of us who can rest do so.”
His was the last watch, and already he could sense the shift in time. The stars had circled about and the darkness was losing its hold. Quentin sat looking out across the clearing to where the sunrise would begin, waiting for the light to change. His companions slept all about him, their dark shapes unmoving, the sounds of their breathing slow and ragged in the stillness.
Once, something flew through the branches of the trees overhead, a quick and hurried movement that disappeared almost as fast as it had come. A bird of some sort, he decided, and let his heart settle back into his chest. A little later, feeling uneasy, he rose and peered out into the ruins of the city, searching the darkness. He saw nothing and heard nothing. Maybe there was nothing to see or hear. Just themselves. Maybe in a world of creepers and fire threads, of Mwellrets and the Ilse Witch, they were all of humankind that was left.
But as the dawn brightened in a thin silver thread along the eastern horizon, chasing back the forest shadows just enough to give identity to shapes and forms, he saw that he was wrong. A man stood opposite him on the far side of the clearing, vaguely defined by the light, immobile against the gloom. At first Quentin thought he was seeing something that wasn’t really there, that the light was playing tricks on his eyes. Why would someone be standing there in the dark? But as the light sharpened the image and gave clarity to its features, he found he wasn’t mistaken after all. The man was tall and thin, wearing a sleeveless tunic, pants that ended at the knees, sandals that laced up his ankles, and leather wrist guards. He carried what seemed to be a spear yet wasn’t, a slender piece of wood six feet in length with a second, much shorter length fastened to its center.
Quentin waited until he was absolutely certain of what he was seeing, then reached over to Tamis, who was sleeping right beside him, and touched her arm.
She was awake instantly, rising to a sitting position and staring at him. He pointed at the figure. A second later, she was standing beside him, fully alert.
“How long has he been there?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. He was already there before it was light enough to see him.”
“Has he done anything?”
Quentin shook his head. “Just stand there and watch us.”
Tamis went silent. She sat with Quentin, studying the man, waiting to see what would happen. In the new light, her small face took on a different cast; she looked young and pretty and faintly exotic with her Elven features. Quentin found himself studying her as much as the stranger. He liked the calm, easy way she dealt with things, the way she was never flustered, the fact that she never overreacted. In another time and place, in other circumstances, he would have responded to that attraction; he did not think he could allow that there.
The sun crested the horizon and sent splinters of brilliant light chasing after the fading night. In the wake of their passing, the stranger’s features were fully revealed. His skin had a reddish cast to it, almost copper. It gleamed faintly, as if it was oiled. His hair, redder still, if a shade lighter, was thick and tightly curled against his skull, cut short and left free. Even his eyes, now visible in the dawn, were vaguely cinnamon.
He continued to regard them, a statue carved of stone. For the first time, Quentin saw what might be a short javelin tucked into his leather belt behind his back, one end protruding.
“What is he carrying in his hand?” he whispered to Tamis.
She shook her head. “I think it’s a blowgun, but I’ve never seen one that size. See the piece strapped to its middle? That would be a holder for the darts.” She went silent again, then said, “We can’t wait on this any longer. We have to see what he wants. Stay here while I wake the others.”
She rose and moved from Panax to the Elven Hunters, waking each with a touch, bending close to caution them, to tell them not to react. One by one they sat up and looked over to where the stranger stood watching.
Tamis came back to Quentin and bent close. “This might be tricky. He won’t be alone. There will be others in the trees. He wouldn’t expose himself so completely if there wasn’t someone protecting his back. He’s offering himself as a decoy to see what we do. Let’s not give him reason to think we mean him harm.”
She stood up and walked slowly over to where he stood. She kept her hands at her sides and her weapons sheathed. Quentin heard her greet him in the Elven tongue and then, when he failed to respond, in several variants. None worked. She tried several Southland languages. Still nothing. She spoke bits of half a dozen Troll dialects, all without result.
Then all at once the stranger said something. When he spoke, his mouth opened to reveal that even his teeth were burnished copper instead of white. His speech was rough and guttural, and Quentin could not understand any of it. Tamis seemed perplexed, as well.
“Hold up a minute.” Panax stood suddenly and walked over to them. “I think he’s speaking in the Dwarf tongue, a very old dialect, a kind of hybrid. Let me try.”
He spoke to the stranger, taking his time, trying out a few words, waiting for a response, then trying again. The stranger listened and finally replied. They went back and forth like this for several minutes before Panax turned back to his companions. “I’m getting some of it, but not all. Come over and stand with me. I think it’s all right.”
He went on talking with the stranger, Tamis staying close beside him, as Quentin, Kian, and Wye joined them.