His face was shallow, his eyes sunken, and his scraggly beard and tangled hair helped to complete his haggard appearance. He sat on the bank and fished about in his pocket for a small knife. Sharpening it on a stone, he shaved himself. Next he cut away at the knots in his hair. A quick plunge in the pond to refresh himself, and he counted the small scales on his leg.
“Twenty-nine,” he said. “Twenty-damn-nine.”
He rose and ran again. After another hour Dhamon glimpsed three riders to the east—the first people he’d caught sight of all day. From their angular outlines he felt certain they were armored. Perhaps they were more Legion of Steel Knights. He tried to circle behind them, but they were moving quickly and took a road to the southeast. Dhamon had no intention of traveling that far away from his companions.
Dhamon returned to the vale at mid-afternoon, finding Maldred still talking to the earth. He headed out again, running for a few more hours until his boots had rubbed his heels raw, and he finally felt a hint of fatigue. It was sunset when he finally came back. Varek and Rikali were sitting next to a small fire, roasting something that suspiciously looked like lamb. Maldred was on his back, snoring loudly, the draconian standing over him.
“I can’t pretend to understand what he was trying to do with his magic,” Varek said, indicating Maldred. “Whatever it was, it didn’t work.”
Rikali nudged her husband. “Mal says this just isn’t the right spot. Said we’ll go a little farther south tomorrow and he’ll try again.” She fell to devouring a hunk of meat Varek had passed her, not coming up for air until all that was left was a bone.
Dhamon ate very little and found himself wishing for some alcohol to wash the food down and relax him. It was hours before he could fall asleep.
By mid-afternoon the next day, Maldred had directed them to another likely place, but this, too, proved unrewarding. For three more days they wandered the countryside, passing a village and a cluster of sheepherders’ homes, crossing a prairie, and coming to a narrow strip of woods that looked as though loggers had worked it over in the spring.
Again Maldred stretched out on the ground, and again Dhamon took to running, gone from sight in minutes. The big man’s fingers sifted through the grass, which was brittle and yellow.
“Fall’s taking a strong hold here,” Maldred said. “The weather will start getting cool very soon.”
Within moments he was humming and thrusting his fingertips into the ground. Minutes later he rose and moved west, stretching out again and repeating the process. Magic had come so much easier to Maldred when he was young. Now it was work, even the simplest of enchantments. Sweat soaked his clothes and ran from his forehead, though the day was not especially hot. His throat was dry and his tongue swollen. He asked Rikali for water before he moved onto another spot, and then another and another. He was about to ask her for water again when his mind finally touched something wooden beneath the branches of a locust tree. It wasn’t roots, and the wood was not alive—it was rotting and speckled with nails.
“Where’s Dhamon?” Maldred managed to gasp.
Varek and Rikali shrugged in unison.
“Running,” the sivak said. “Watching for Knights.”
“Find him for me, would you?” Maldred asked Varek.
The young man twisted his lips into a crooked frown and shook his head. However, Rikali gave her husband a pleading smile, and he grudgingly acquiesced, trotting off to pursue Dhamon’s tracks. The half-elf watched him go, then turned her attention back to Maldred.
“What did you find, Mal? You can trust me.”
He didn’t answer. He was humming once more, digging until his hands were covered with dirt, pulling them free, edging forward a few feet, and digging all over again. The half-elf followed him, persisting with her questions, and Ragh kept nearby as well, intently watching the big man. Before the hour was out Maldred was exhausted, after having put so much energy into his spell, but he refused to quit. He dug into the earth in a half-dozen more places before moving to the top of a scrub-covered bank, where he rolled over onto his back and gasped.
“Mal? Mal!”
“I’m all right, Riki,” he said after a moment. “Just let me rest for half a minute.”
Without his asking, she fetched another skin of water, cupped the back of his head and poured practically all of it down his throat. Her hands brushed the sweat off his brow.
“Learning to be motherly, Riki?” he asked, after he had caught his breath. He saw her pinched expression. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Her face relaxed only slightly, and he rolled over onto his stomach and started humming again, thrusting his fingers into the soil.
“There is something here,” he said after a few minutes, his voice raspy despite all the water he’d drank. “Big, broken.” Maldred rested his face against the earth, concentrating on the feel of the dry grass and the dirt against his skin, working to send his senses even deeper into the ground. The magic let his mind travel. Burrowing like a mole, his mind went past the remnants of roots from a tree that used to be here, past rocks and dried husks of bugs, past the skeleton of a small animal. There was a thin sheet of slate, then he was traveling through more dirt, more rocks, past large chunks of stone that appeared to have been worked—perhaps remnants of a building. There were pieces of wood, thin and polished and somehow preserved despite, or perhaps because of, the weight of the earth.
“Table legs,” he whispered. “A cooking pot.” There was more worked stone, roughly uniform. Probably they were the bricks of a house or a well. And so he rose and moved on another hundred yards, then a hundred more.
“Iron,” he whispered. “More iron. No wood this time.” He sagged in disappointment and was about to give up for the day, but his mind was still restless, still roved and touched object after object.
“Iron,” he repeated. His eyes flew open wide. “Iron? An anchor!” Maldred refused to let himself become too excited. That would break his concentration on the finding spell—and threaten the enchantment that cloaked his ogre body.
He delved deeper, searching in concentric circles away from the anchor. How large was the anchor?
His magical senses couldn’t tell him that. Was it from a fishing boat? How old was it? Was it from a ship on that river he’d noted on the old map? His spell could answer none of those questions, and he didn’t want to stop to consult the enchanted map.
“Ah, finally. Wood. Curved timbers. Broken timbers.” He spoke in Ogrish, his native tongue coming easier to him. Riki tapped her foot in frustration. His mind floated over sections of wood that were little more than mulch piles, then pieces that had been better protected by slabs of slate that covered them. He discovered something he couldn’t put a word to, and for several minutes his mind caressed it as he might run his fingers over a lover’s back. A sail, or what’s left of it, he finally decided, attached to a shattered spar. Another anchor. Bones—lots of bones. A ruined sea chest.
“Where’s Dhamon?” he finally croaked.
The half-elf shrugged, even though she knew he couldn’t see her with his face pressed against the ground.
“Go get Dhamon!” His fingers stopped working, and his eyes closed.
“Mal?” Rikali knelt by him. “Asleep,” she said after a moment. Sighing, she sat next to the sivak. There was little she could do except wait for Varek and Dhamon to return. Varek came back in the mid-afternoon, shaking his head and muttering that he’d tracked Dhamon at least four miles before giving up. He hadn’t wanted to stay away from her any longer, and if Maldred wanted Dhamon so badly, he could go search for the man himself. Riki didn’t argue, but she put a finger to her lips and nodded toward the big man, who was still soundly sleeping. Varek sagged next to her and closed his eyes.