Stresa swung slowly about. “This is the Harrow,” he said. “Hssttt! This is where the Drakuls live.”
A form of demon—or Shadowen—Wren recalled. Stresa had mentioned them before. Dangerous, he had intimated.
“Drakuls,” Gavilan repeated, weary recognition in his voice.
Killeshan rumbled again, more insistent than before, an unnecessary reminder of its presence, of the anger it bore them for having stolen the magic away, for having disrupted the balance of things. Morrowindl shuddered in response.
“Tell me about the Drakuls,” Wren instructed the Splinterscat quietly.
Stresa’s dark eyes fixed on her. “Demons, like the others. Phhfftt! They sleep in daylight, come out at night to feed. They drain the life out of the living things they catch—the blood, the fluids of the body. They make—hssstt—some into creatures like themselves.” The blunt nose twitched. “They hunt as wraiths, but take form to feed. As wraiths, they cannot be harmed.” He spit distastefully.
“We will go around,” Triss announced at once.
Stresa spit again, as if the taste wouldn’t go away. “Around! Phaaww! There is no ‘around’! North, the Harrow runs back toward Killeshan, miles and miles—back toward the valley and the demons that hunt us. Rwwlll. South, the Harrow stretches to the cliffs. The Drakuls hunt its edges, too. In any case, we would never—hrraaggh—get around it before nightfall and we must if we are to live. Crossing in daylight is our only chance.”
“While the Drakuls sleep?” Wren prompted.
“Yes, Wren of the Elves,” the Splinterscat growled softly. “While they sleep. And even so—hsssttt—it will not be entirely safe. The Drakuls are present even then—as voices out of air, as faces on the mist, as feelings and hunches and fears and doubts. Phhffttt. They will try to distract and lure, try to keep us within the Harrow until nightfall.”
Wren stared off into the blasted countryside, into the haze that hung from the skies to the earth. Trapped again, she thought. The whole island is a snare.
“There is no other passage open to us?”
Stresa did not answer—did not need to.
“And on the other side of the Harrow?”
“The In Ju. And the beaches beyond.”
Triss had moved up beside her. His lean face was intense. “Aurin Striate used to speak of the Drakuls,” he advised softly.
His gaze fixed on her. “He said there was no defense against them.”
“But they sleep now,” she replied, just as softly.
The gray eyes shifted away. “Do they?”
A new rumble shook the island, deep and forbidding, rising like a giant coming awake angry, thunderous as the tremors built upon themselves. Cracks appeared in the ground about them and rock and silt fell away into the void. Steam and ash belched out of the Killeshan, showering skyward in towering geysers, arcing away into the gloom. Fire trailed ominously from the volcano’s lip, a trickle only, just visible in the haze.
Garth caught Wren’s attention, a simple shifting of his shoulders. His fingers moved. Be quick, Wren The island begins to shake itself apart.
She glanced at them in turn—Garth, as enigmatic and impassive as ever, steady Triss, her protector now, given over to his new charge; Dal, restless as he stared out into the haze—she had never even heard him speak; Eowen, a white shadow against the gray, looking as if she might disappear into it; and Gavilan, uneasy, unpredictable, haunted, lost to her.
“How long will it take us to cross?” she asked Stresa. Faun scrambled down off her shoulder and moved away, picking at the earth.
“Half a day, a little more,” the Splinterscat advised.
“A lifetime if you are wrong, Scat,” Gavilan intoned darkly.
“Then we will have to hurry,” Wren declared, and called Faun back to her shoulder. She brought the Ruhk Staff before her, a reminder. “We have no choice. Let’s be off. Stay close to each other. Keep watch.”
They struck out across the flats, winding down into the maze of depressions, through the tangle of tree husks, cautious eyes scanning the blasted land about them. Stresa took them along as quickly as he could, but travel was slow, the terrain broken and uneven, filled with twists and turns that prevented either rapid or straight passage. The Harrow swallowed them after only moments, gathering about them almost magically until there was nothing else to be seen in any direction. Mist swirled and spun in the wind currents, steam rose out of cracks in the earth that burrowed all the way to Killeshan’s core, and vog drifted down from where it spewed out of the volcano. Nothing moved in the land; it was still and empty all about. Shadows played, black lines cast earthward by the skeletal trees, iron bars against the light. All the while the earth beneath rumbled ominously, and there was a sense of something dangerous awakening.
The voices began in the first hour. They lifted out of nothingness, whispers on the air that might have come from anywhere. They called compellingly, and for each of the company the words were different. Each would look at the others, thinking that all must have heard, that the voices were unmistakable. They asked, anxious, intense: Did you hear that? Did you hear? But none had, of course—only the speaker, called specifically, purposefully, drawn on by some mirror of self, by a reflection of sense and feeling.
The images came next, faces out of the air, figures that quickly formed and just as quickly faded in the shifting haze, visions of things peculiar to whomever they addressed—personifications of longings, needs, and hopes. For Wren, they took the form of her parents. For Triss and Eowen, it was the queen. For the others, something else. The images worked the fringes of their consciousness, struggling to break through the barriers they had erected to keep them at bay, working to turn them from their chosen path and lead them away.
It went on relentlessly. The voices were never loud, the images never clear, and the whole of the experience not unpleasant, not threatening, not even real—a false memory of what had never been. Stresa, familiar with the danger, started them talking to each other to ward off the attack—for there was no mistaking what it was. The Drakuls stalked them even in sleep, some part of what they were rising up to follow after, seeking to delay or detain, to turn aside or lead astray, to keep them within the Harrow until nightfall.
Time slowed, as cautious and measured as the haze through which they walked, as bleak as the landscape that stretched ahead. The depressions deepened, and in places the lifeless trees formed a barrier that could not be crossed, but had to be got around. Wren called to the others as they trudged ahead, pushing past the voices, casting through the faces, working to keep them all together, to keep them moving. Noon approached, and the day darkened. Clouds massed overhead, heavy with rain. It began to drizzle, then to pour. The wind quickened, and the rain blew into them in sheets. It would sweep across in a curtain, fade away to scattered drops, and start the cycle over again. It lasted for a time and was gone. The earth’s heat returned, and the mist began to thicken. It closed about them, and soon nothing was visible beyond a dozen feet. They stayed close then, so close they were tripping over each other, bumping together as if made sightless, feeling their way through the gloom.
“Stresa! How much farther?” Wren shouted through the cacophony of voices that whirled about her ears.
“Spptptt! Close, now,” the reply came. “Just ahead.”
They passed down into a particularly deep ravine, a jagged knife cut across the surface of the lava rock, all shadows and shifting haze. Wren knew it was dangerous, almost called them back, but saw, too, that it sliced directly across their pathway out, that it was the only way they could go. She descended into the gloom, the Ruhk Staff gripped before her like a shield. Faun chittered wildly on her shoulder, another sound to blend with the others, the unseen voices that buzzed and raged and filled her subconscious with a growing need to scream. She saw Triss a step ahead, with Stresa a faint dark spot beyond. She heard footsteps behind, someone following, the others...