“Raven, you sit here.” Catcher indicated the right-hand corner nearest us. “Croaker, over here.” He indicated the left corner.
Raven placed a foot on the carpet gingerly, seemed surprised that the works did not collapse.
“Sit down.” Soulcatcher placed him just so, with his legs crossed and his weapons lying beside him near the carpet’s edge. He did the same with me. I was surprised to find the carpet rigid. Ft was like sitting on a tabletop. “It’s imperative that you don’t move around,” Catcher said, wriggling himself into position ahead of us, centered a foot forward of the carpet’s midline. “If we don’t stay balanced, we fall off. Understand?”
I did not, but I agreed with Raven when he said yes.
“Ready?”
Raven said yes again. I guess he knew what was happening- I was taken by surprise.
Soulcatcher laid his hands out palms upward beside him, said a few strange words, raised his hands slowly. I gasped, leaned. The ground was receding.
“Sit still!” Raven snarled. “You trying to kill us?”
The ground was only six feet down. Then. I straightened up and went rigid. But I did turn my head enough to check a movement in the brush.
Yes. Darling. With mouth an O of amazement. I faced forward, gripped my bow so tightly I thought I would crush handprints into it. I wished I dared finger my amulet. “Raven, did you make arrangements for Darling? In case, you know...”
“The Captain will look out for her.”
“I forgot to fix it with somebody for the Annals.”
“Don’t be so optimistic,” he said sarcastically. I shivered uncontrollably.
Soulcatcher did something. We started gliding over the treetops. Chill air whispered past us. I glanced over the side. We were a good five stories high and climbing.
The stars twisted overhead as Catcher changed course. The wind rose till we seemed to be flying into the face of a gale. I leaned farther and farther forward, afraid it would push me off. There was nothing behind me but several hundred feet and an abrupt stop. My fingers ached from gripping my bow.
I have learned one thing, I told myself. How Catcher manages to show up so fast when he is always so far from the action when we get in touch.
It was a silent journey. Catcher stayed busy doing whatever it was he did to make his steed fly. Raven closed in on himself. So did I. I was scared silly. My stomach was in revolt. I do not know about Raven.
The stars began to fade. The eastern horizon lightened. The earth materialized below us. I chanced a look. We were over the Forest of Cloud. A little more light. Catcher grunted, considered the east, then the distances ahead. He seemed to listen for a moment, then nodded.
The carpet raised its nose. We climbed. The earth rocked and dwindled till it looked like a map. The air became ever more chill. My stomach remained rebellious.
Way off to our left I glimpsed a black scar on the forest. It was the encampment we had overrun. Then we entered a cloud and Catcher slowed our rush.
“We’ll drift a while,” he said. “We’re thirty miles south of the Limper.-- He’s riding away from us. We’re overtaking him fast. When we’re almost up to where he might detect me, we’ll go down.” He used the businesslike female voice.
I started to say something. He snapped, “Be quiet, Croaker. Don’t distract me.”
We stayed in that cloud, unseen and unable to see, for two hours. Then Catcher said, “Time to go down. Grip the frame members and don’t let go. It may be a little unsettling.”
The bottom fell out. We went down like a stone dropped from a cliff. The carpet began to rotate slowly, so the forest seemed to turn below us. Then it began to slide back and forth like a feather falling. Each time it tilted my way I thought I would tumble over the side.
A good scream might have helped, but you could not do that in front of characters like Raven and Soulcatcher.
The forest kept getting closer. Soon I could distinguish individual trees... when I dared to look. We were going to die. I knew we were going to smash right down through the forest canopy fifty feet into the earth.
Catcher said something. I did not catch it. He was talking to his carpet anyway. The rocking and spinning gradually stopped. Our descent slowed. The carpet nosed down slightly and began to glide forward. Eventually Catcher took us below treetop level, into the aisle over a river. We, scooted along a dozen feet above the water, with Soulcatcher laughing as birds scattered in panic.
He brought us to earth in a glen beside the river. “Off and stretch,” he told us. After we had loosened up, he said, “The Limper is four miles north of us. He’s reached the meeting place. You’ll go on from here without me. He’ll detect me if I get any closer. I want your badges. He can detect those too.”
Raven nodded, surrendered his badge, strung his bow, nocked an arrow, pulled back, relaxed. I did the same. It settled my nerves.
I was so grateful to be on the ground I could have kissed it.
“The bole on the big oak.” Raven pointed across the river. He let fly. His shaft struck a few inches off center. I took a deep, relaxing breath, followed suite. My shaft struck an inch nearer center. “Should have bet me that time,” he remarked. To Catcher, “We’re ready.”
I added, “We’ll need more specific directions.”
“Follow the river bank. There are plenty of game trails. The going shouldn’t be hard. No need to hurry anyway. Whisper shouldn’t be there for hours yet.”
“The river heads west,” I observed.
“It loops back. Follow it for three miles, then turn a point west of north and go straight through the woods.” Catcher crouched and cleared the leaves and twigs off some bare earth, used a stick to sketch a map. “If you reach this bend, you’ve gone too far.”
Then Catcher froze. For a long minute he listened to something only he could hear. Then he resumed, “The Lady says you’ll know you’re close when you reach’ a grove of huge evergreens. It was the holy place of a people who died out before the Domination. The Limper is waiting at the center of the grove.”
“Good enough,” Raven said.
I asked, “You’ll wait here?”
“Have no fear, Croaker.”
I took another of my relaxing breaths. “Let’s go, Raven.”
“One second, Croaker,” Soulcatcher said. He retrieved something from his bundle. It proved to be an arrow. “Use this.”
I eyed it uncertainly, then placed it in my quiver.
Raven insisted on leading. I did not argue. I was a city boy before I joined the Company. I cannot become comfortable with forests. Especially not woods the size of the Forest of Cloud. Too much quiet. Too much solitude. Too easy to get lost. For the first two miles I worried more about finding my way back than I did about the coming encounter. I spent a lot of time memorizing landmarks.
Raven did not speak for an hour. I was busy thinking myself. I did not mind.
He raised a hand. I stopped. “Far enough, I think,” he said. “We go that way now.”
“Uhm.”
“Let’s rest.” He settled on a huge tree root, his back against a trunk. “Awful quiet today, Croaker.”
“Things on my mind.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “Like what kind of reward we’re set up for?”
“Among other things.” I drew out the arrow Catcher had given me. “You see this?”
“A blunt head?” He felt it. “Soft, almost. What the hell?”
“Exactly. Means I’m not supposed to kill her.”
There was no question of who would let fly at whom. The Limper was Raven’s all the way.
“Maybe. But I’m not going to get killed trying to take her alive.”
“Me either. That’s what’s bothering me. Along with about ten other things, like why the Lady really picked you and me, and why she wants Whisper alive... Oh, the hell with it. It’ll give me ulcers.”