Finally the valley walls closed in again, and the course of the waterway returned to its steep and rocky dimensions. More trees grew here. Conscious of approaching dawn, Danyal was relieved to have some semblance of cover overhead. They found a trail that, while narrow and winding, was clear of the obstacles that had tripped them up all night.
Padding through the dark woods, Danyal strained to see Foryth Teel's tan robe, following the blur of color as they moved more quickly than they had been able to before.
A gasp of alarm accompanied Foryth's skidding to a halt, and Danyal bumped into the historian roughly.
"What is it?" asked the lad, pushing for a view around the historian's side.
Foryth pointed mutely to the ground before them, where one figure writhed on the ground and another, recognizable by her twin ponytails as Mirabeth, knelt nearby and cooed soothing sounds.
"Emilo!" cried Danyal, in his alarm forgetting to hold his voice to a whisper He, too, knelt beside the kender, seeing that their rescuer was rolling from side to side, back arched, eyes wide and staring.
"What's wrong?" Foryth whispered, clutching Dan-yal's shoulder.
"I don't know."
Even as he spoke his quiet answer, the youth was remembering a man from his village, Starn Whistler, who had been subjected to spells like this-"seizures," the villagers had called them. Danyal had been frightened when he witnessed one of the attacks as a young boy, but his neighbors had been nonchalant. Soon he had learned that, though Starn looked as though he was locked in the greatest agony, the man would awaken slowly from the seizure without lasting harm. Within an hour, he would have returned to normal.
The symptoms had seemed very much the same as this violent spell, which now caused the kender to make choking sounds, bringing his voice gurgling inarticulately from the depths of his throat. Danyal felt helpless as he watched Mirabeth stroke Emilo's forehead, then lean down to whisper soothingly into the afflicted kender's ear.
"Can I help?" Danyal knelt beside the kendermaid, who didn't raise her eyes from the struggling figure of Emilo.
"I don't think so," she whispered. "This happens to him a lot, and the only thing to do is let it pass and to try and keep him safe until then."
Finally the kender drew a deep, ragged gulp of air, then collapsed limply. His breathing slowed, settling into a normal cadence of sleep. When Danyal felt Emilo's forehead, however, his hand came away wet with sweat. The long brown topknot was matted across the kender's cheeks, and every so often his body would shiver under the assault of violent trembling.
"He'll need to rest for a short time," Mirabeth said. "He'll be confused when he wakes up, but I think we'll be able to start walking again."
"I wonder if we should just camp right around here," suggested the human lad, realizing that they were well concealed by the cloaking evergreens. Even as he asked the question, however, he wished they could have put more distance between themselves and the scene of their escape.
"We should go farther if we can," the kendermaid said.
A few minutes later Emilo groaned and his eyelids fluttered. Finally they opened and he looked around, his gaze flicking from Mirabeth to Danyal.
"Who-who are you?" the kender asked.
"I'm Mirabeth, and this is Danyal. The man over there is Foryth. We're all your friends."
Dan was amazed at the obvious answer, but as he watched, he saw that Emilo really seemed to be absorbing the information. These were things that he really couldn't recall!
"And me… who am I?"
"You're Emilo Haversack, a kender," Mirabeth said frankly. "From one of the oldest, most honorable of the kender clans."
"What-what happened? Where are we?" Emilo strained to lift himself from the ground, and the pair assisted him into a sitting position.
"We're in a stream valley in the Kharolis Mountains," Danyal said. "You had a spell. We're waiting for you to get better."
"I had a spell?" The kender regarded the youth with confusion.
With a serious nod, Danyal replied, "Yes, but you're going to be all right."
"Thanks… I…" Abruptly the kender's eyes rolled back in his head, and with a strangled gasp, he fell backward to collapse upon the ground.
CHAPTER 29
First Misham, Reapember 374 AC
"It got him again!" Danyal cried, patting Emilo's cheek, trying to draw some response from the stiff, motionless kender.
Once again Mirabeth knelt beside the afflicted fellow, talking to him soothingly. They heard him gasp some strangled, inarticulate sounds, though Dan thought he heard the word "skull" in the midst of the ravings, and finally he drew a deep breath and lapsed into a more relaxed, normal-seeming slumber.
Some time later the kender stirred, then sat up, looking around with a dazed expression.
"Can you walk?" Danyal asked, shivering at the dull look he detected in Emilo's eyes.
"Walk… yes… yes, I can walk." The kender's voice seemed to gain strength from the positive response.
"Good." Dan turned to Mirabeth. "'Do you want to lead the way? I'll help Emilo."
"I think I should stay beside him," she said quietly. "Why don't you see if you can find us a path?"
Foryth brought up the rear as the lad started through the woods, trying to keep his feet on the smooth, winding trail that he could barely see. He felt a glimmer of fear, a moment of melancholy and longing for the secure bed in the loft of his parents' house. But then he banished the memory, knowing he would never be able to go back there. Trying to stare through the darkness, he concentrated on looking for a good path up the rough valley floor.
Moving at a fast walk, he gradually realized that he could, in fact, discern the path better than before. Looking upward, he saw a patch of the eastern sky between two conical evergreens; the rosy tint of dawn was already reaching toward the zenith.
Still making good time, Danyal focused his attentions on locating a good place for them to hide during the day The copse of woods they traversed ended soon, and the small party broke into a jog as they crossed a meadow of tall grass and drooping, dew-laden flowers. The stream was out of sight to the left, running through a channel that was slightly deeper than ground level. Soon the enclosing arms of the pines were around them again as they entered a much larger grove.
"It looks like this woods goes some way up the side valley," Danyal noted as the four travelers paused to catch their breath. "Maybe we should get off this trail and try to hide ourselves up there, at least until dark."
"Are we running from something?" Emilo asked. His eyes no longer lacked focus, but he asked the question with obvious sincerity.
"Some men-evil men. I'll tell you all about it when we find shelter," Mirabeth said. "Until then you'll just have to trust us."
"I do," the kender agreed, chewing on the trailing end of his topknot. "But why don't I remember anything? Even my name?"
"I told you, you're Emilo Haversack," the kendermaid declared sternly. "And you're our friend, and you'll just have to be satisfied with that for now."
Silently accepting, Emilo mouthed the clearly unfamiliar sounds of his name several times. Danyal, meanwhile, ducked under the low branches of an evergreen and found a small clearing giving passage through the woods.