"A girl!"
She was hiding in the deep shadow of a streamside boulder but, seeing she was discovered, came hesitantly forth, taking Emilo's arm in a protective gesture.
"This is Mirabeth," said the kender with grave formality. "She was waiting here for us."
There was something familiar about the slight figure, who stood a little taller than Emilo. Danyal saw the top-knot that split into two long tails, one over each shoulder, and he was certain.
"You're not a girl. You're the kendermaid who tamed Nightmare, who showed me where the apples were!"
"Yes… that was me." Again he heard the musical voice, soft and hushed but still delightful to his ear.
"Remarkable! Simply remarkable. Now, wait-I must get this down," declared Foryth, fumbling in his pouch for the tools of his trade. "You were feeding apples to our lad, here?"
"Forget about the book!" hissed Danyal. "Remember, we've got to get away from here before daylight!"
"The boy is right," Emilo said. "I picked this place for your escape carefully, and we've got a bit of a head start, but we don't want to dally any longer than we have to."
The historian looked as though he were about to argue, but Danyal stepped in front of him and addressed Emilo Haversack. He felt like a chronicler himself, wanting to ask a thousand questions-starting with why the kender had taken such a risk. Instead, he forced his thoughts along practical lines.
"Where do we go from here? What's our best chance of getting to some kind of hiding place before daylight?"
"If we go downstream, we'll meet the river in a few miles. We won't be able to cross, but there's thick woods in the valley, and we could go either right or left along the bank. The walking's easy, with lots of cover."
"So they'll assume we went that way?" Danyal was trying to think, remembering how easily their camp had been discovered late on the night when he had met Foryth Teel.
Emilo nodded in response to the question. "Upstream, there's still woods, but we'll find groves of evergreens, like this one, or aspens, with lots of meadows in between. Also, there's a few cliffs where the stream turns to a waterfall."
"I remember." In fact, Danyal had spent the hour of sunset looking over this same valley, though from the road high on the ridge, the terrain along the streambed had looked much less daunting than it did from here. Still, he didn't think any of the cliffs would prove unclimbable.
"We should go upstream,” Danyal urged. "I don't think they'll try to look for us that way, and the route down the valley is too easy, too obvious."
"I agree," Emilo said, quelling any objections Foryth Teel might have raised.
Surprisingly, the historian also nodded in agreement. "Loreloch is somewhere up in these mountains, so I certainly don't want to waste a lot of time marching back down to the lowlands."
Danyal looked at the historian in amazement. "You still want to go to Loreloch?"
"My dear boy, a slight setback should never be allowed to deter the diligent research of the hard-working historian."
"Setback? You were captured! For Gilean's sake, he held you for ransom!"
"Tsk-and that provided me with a perfect opportunity to conduct my interviews. An opportunity which, through no fault of my own, has been indefinitely postponed. Now, am I correct in assuming that we should be on our way?"
"Quite right," the kender declared with a curt nod.
Emilo led the way, with Mirabeth at his side and Foryth stumbling through the darkness behind. Shaking his head at the historian's single-minded obstinacy, Danyal brought up the rear.
They tried to climb in silence, but the terrain was rough, and overhanging pines, as well as sharp crags of rock, cast much of the footing into deep shadow. As a result, they frequently stumbled over unseen obstacles, tumbled loose stones into the river, and generally made enough noise, Danyal thought, to rouse the dead from their graves.
Fortunately they encountered no sign of the bandits. Emilo postulated, reasonably enough, that the men would have backtracked along the road for quite a distance, assuming that in the darkness the escaped captives would not have dared to venture on the steep slopes above and below the rutted track.
Danyal had no difficulty keeping up, even over the rough ground. In fact, he found himself anxious to continue when Foryth and Emilo paused to catch their breath. They had progressed no more than a mile, and the youth was vividly aware of the dawn that must eventually illuminate the skyline and reveal the muddy slide that had been their escape route.
"I'll have a look ahead," he said, passing the historian and the kender, who had taken seats on flat rocks near the bank of the stream.
"I'll come with you," Mirabeth said.
"We'll be along in a minute," Emilo promised, while Foryth nodded weakly in agreement.
The kendermaid seemed unaffected by fatigue as she climbed along with Danyal. They picked their way between large rocks, seizing roots and branches to pull themselves upward. In one place, the human youth had to leap to catch a handhold. Scrambling up the steep face of a boulder, he saw that the distance was too great for Mirabeth.
Danyal stretched himself flat on top of the rock and reached down the face.
"Here-take my hand," he whispered, projecting just enough to be heard over the musical splashing of the nearby stream.
She jumped and caught his grip, her weight surprising as she was suspended momentarily by his clutching fingers. Quickly her feet, in their soft moccasins, found solid purchase and she scrambled up to join him atop the rock.
"Do you think we should wait for them?" Danyal asked, fearing that Foryth and Emilo would have difficulty over this portion of the route.
"Yes," Mirabeth replied softly. Her eyes were wide, almost luminous in the darkness, and-as when he had first seen her beside the horse-Danyal was struck again by her resemblance to a human girl.
"Were you traveling with Emilo the other day when I saw you beside the stream near Waterton?" he asked.
"We were following the road," she said with a nod. "And I saw the orchard and wanted to get some apples. Emilo was tired-he gets that way a lot-so he took a nap while I came down to the trees. I wasn't expecting to see you or your horse."
"She wasn't my horse," Danyal objected. "At least, not until you haltered her for me."
He cleared his throat and shook his head against a wave of melancholy, suddenly feeling a strong pang of sadness, missing the mean-tempered mare with more feeling than he would ever have imagined.
"Where is she-the horse, I mean? Did those men get her?" Mirabeth's smooth brow furrowed in concern, and suddenly the lines of her age were heightened, revealed like clear shadows in the starlight.
Danyal's chuckle was rueful but fond. "Actually, it was Nightmare that got some of them." His laughter died quickly at the memory of poor Gnar, crippled by the kick of the horse and then executed by his companions, who found his presence an inconvenience. He wondered about Nightmare, hoping the horse was all right.
Movement stirred below as Foryth and Emilo came into sight. Danyal helped them both up over the steep boulder, then resumed his place at the rear of the little party as they continued upstream along the course of the plunging, splashing brook.
Soon the steepness mellowed into a grassy valley, where the ground proved soft and marshy underfoot. Moving to the side, they hastened along a low ridge where the terrain was still open, though large clumps of gray-black rock jutted from the carpet of grass and flowers. The stream was a shimmering ribbon of silver, visible as it meandered back and forth through the flat, low ground.