It was the same village. The seemingly endless forest was an illusion. Walk north from the village, and you'd find yourself at the south end. That was why Dachev headed back the way he'd come when he thought I'd kept running down the path earlier-so he could head me off when I unintentionally looped back around. The moment I thought this, I saw a shape moving through the trees ahead. I glanced over my shoulder. More shapes running that way.
I dove into the forest on the left. Even as I crashed through the bushes, hearing nothing behind me, I knew I wouldn't get far. Not only had I lost the advantage of speed, but I was cutting their path for them. Any minute now, they'd be close enough to see.
I stopped running, dowsed my light-ball, slipped off to the left, and cast a cover spell. A moment later, the forest erupted in crashes and curses, as they stumbled through the dark looking for me. Should I stay here, covered, until the cavalry rode in? I was relatively safe, but would my rescue team know where to find me? I had to trust that they would… or that I'd hear them. So long as I was hidden here, with the killers fumbling in the dark-
A light flickered to my right. As I strained my eyes in that direction, I saw orange flame bouncing through the darkness, approaching from the west. A torch. Someone had gone back to the village for a torch. Within moments, all of them carried a lit tree branch, swinging it about and peering into the darkness.
"She's using magic," Dachev called. "She can make herself invisible, but she cannot move. If you bump into her, she will reappear."
A few grunts of satisfaction.
"There are two ways we can do this," Dachev continued, voice ringing over the shuffle of footsteps and the spit of the torches. "Competition or cooperation."
"I help no one," club-man's voice rumbled. "I find it, it is mine."
"Then you do that. Those who want to help me find her, come here and we'll split up, do this systematically."
"And then you will take her," someone said.
A chorus of agreement.
"No, then I will let you have her. All who help me will get a turn. And when you are done, she is mine. If that sounds fair to you, come over here. The rest, search on your own."
Several shapes moved toward Dachev, while others headed farther off, beginning to hunt. I waited until the lights dimmed, then began to creep away. There was no sense continuing west. If Dachev had come that way with the torch, that meant that he'd come from the village. This world was spherical. Keep walking in any direction and you'd end up back where you started. The deepest part of the woods, then, would be that strip to the north and south. That's where I headed.
I moved as fast as I dared. Once I was far enough, I'd find a tree and try that trick again. At least that would make it impossible for one of the searchers to stumble into me and snap my cover spell. But what if they bumped the tree? Would that vibration be enough to break my cover?
I should stop and fight. Lure them away, one by one, and disable them. Sure, great plan… provided I could outwit and outfight every last one of these bastards, with my spell-casting still drained from the fireball spell. Don't be stupid. Just find a tree and hide. But what if the bird-man had seen me jump from that tree, and told Dachev my trick?
In the midst of this internal debate, a hillock appeared in my path and, only a few yards to my right, a boulder blocked a blob of darkness deeper than that of the hillside. Some kind of hole. I walked over and peered in the narrow slit above the boulder. Beyond it, the darkness stretched as far as my light-ball illuminated. Not a hole, but a cave. Oho. Now, that's what I needed.
I moved to the side of the boulder and pushed. My pierced hand flared again. I grabbed a handful of leaves from the nearest tree and, using them for padding, put my hands back on the boulder, dug in my feet, and heaved. The rock didn't budge. Okay, not so perfect. Or was it? If I couldn't move the rock, they'd never think to look behind it. With proper leverage and a telekinesis spell, I should be able to shift it aside enough to squeeze through.
I found a thick branch and used it to pry the rock as I pushed and cast a telekinesis spell. The spell was intended to displace small objects, but many witches used it as an added muscle boost for moving heavy objects, like pushing out the fridge to clean behind it. Practical magic.
With the spell, my pry-bar branch, and a hefty dose of push power, I managed to move the rock about a foot, giving me an eighteen-inch gap to squeeze through. Problem was, the rock had been there so long, it had sunk into the ground, so I was prying it up from a hole. The moment I let go, it would roll back into place-and block the entrance again. I could try pushing it right out of the depression, but that meant going inside and leaving the door wide-open. First guy who walked by and saw the cave opening would know exactly where I was hiding.
So I squeezed through, yanked the branch in with me, and let the boulder tumble into place. Then I recast my light-ball spell and looked around.
The tunnel extended as far as I could see, the floor angling downward, like the entrance to a subterranean passageway-like the one that had linked the two castles. Had someone dug this one, too? Maybe that would explain the rock, put there by the Fates to keep the inmates of this dimension in the village where they belonged.
I looked from the entrance into the cave depths. The deeper I went, the safer I'd be, so no one passing by would see the glow of my light-ball. If I didn't have to cower under a cover spell, I wasn't about to. Better to find a place, hunker down, and take stock of my injuries. Pushing that rock had set my punctured hand and shoulder ablaze.
Then there was my ear. I could feel the half-severed lobe tickling my neck as I moved, but hadn't yet reached up to assess the damage, not really sure I wanted to know how close it was to falling off.
If I could stop, I could tear strips from my shirt and bind that ear and my hand. Nothing was bleeding-one advantage to being a ghost-but I'd be able to use my hand better if the wound was covered and cushioned. As for the ear, while losing a lobe would solve the problem of misplacing half a pair of earrings, I'd really rather keep it intact and hope the Fates could stitch it back up.
About twenty feet down the tunnel, what looked like a room branched off the right side. The main passage continued back as far as I could see. Was there an exit under the village? A chill ran through me, but I dowsed it with common sense. First, the village was at least a quarter-mile away. Second, even if the tunnel did extend that far, it wasn't being used-that entrance boulder had been in place long enough to grow moss. Still, best to play it safe and duck into this room, rather than continue on.
As I walked into the room, the floor dipped and my light-ball dimmed. Great. It must be a subterranean effect of the anti-magic barrier on this place. I hoped I wasn't going to lose the light altogether, like I had in Dachev's crawl space. I really didn't relish sitting in the dark for hours.
I took another step and kicked something-softer than a rock, but solid enough to nearly trip me. I glanced down to see a long pale cylinder. A tree branch. I went to step over it, then stopped. There was something covering the branch, and it didn't look like bark.
I swung my light-ball over and saw an arm lying in front of my foot. A human arm, still encased in a sleeve. I hunkered down for a better look. The arm had been ripped from its socket. Not that I've seen a lot of that sort of thing, but the torn and jagged flesh around the uncut bone certainly looked more like a rip than a saw job.
I hadn't noticed any of the men in the village missing an arm, but I hadn't taken a good look at a couple of them. Wouldn't surprise me if one of them had done this to a fellow villager. Put a group of killers together and eventually someone's going to start losing body parts. It kind of surprised me that they hadn't done worse.