“The turnoff to Oltan’s not too far ahead,” he mumbled, his lips barely moving. “There’s a signpost — you can’t miss it. You just stay on that road, and in the end, you’ll get to Oltan. When you get to Fleet — it’s just beyond those hills you can see on the horizon — you’ll know you’re about halfway.”
Rye stared in dismay at the distant hills. How long would it take to walk that far?
“Oh, dear,” groaned Sonia. Ruefully she looked down at her slippers, which were already worn almost to rags.
FitzFee heaved a gusty sigh.
“As it happens, Popsy and I are going to Fleet,” he said reluctantly. “We can take you that far if … if you’re sure —”
“We are!” Rye exclaimed in heartfelt relief. “Thank you, Master FitzFee.”
“Say nothing of it,” the little man muttered, looking far from happy. “Just you keep your heads down, and when we get to Fleet, remember who you are.”
“Lost young travelers,” said Sonia obediently.
“Quite!” FitzFee nodded. “The Fleet people don’t want trouble any more than I do. Especially now, when they’re —”
Again he broke off, clearing his throat, and plainly thinking better of what he had been about to say.
It sounded as if the people of Fleet had a secret, too. Rye wondered what it could be, and whether it had anything to do with Midsummer Eve.
But FitzFee had already begun trudging toward the road. He was making it very clear that as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.
Very soon afterward, Rye and Sonia were jolting along in the green cart, being nuzzled enthusiastically by six large and curious goats.
Popsy had been thrilled to hear that her father was going to give the lost travelers a ride to Fleet. As Rye climbed into the cart, she gazed at him with embarrassing admiration.
“You run very fast,” she lisped. “Fast and faster! Are you a magic man?”
“Don’t talk foolish, Popsy!” her father ordered, shaking the horse’s reins, and the little girl giggled and hid her face in her hands.
“But you did run very fast, Rye,” Sonia whispered when they were well under way and Popsy had begun pestering her father with questions about how long it would take to get to Fleet. “I saw you, from the goat house. You suddenly — just took off! It was incredible!”
“It is incredible how fast you can run when a bloodhog is trying to turn you into minced meat,” muttered Rye. But uneasily he remembered how startled he had been to find the low-branched tree looming in front of him, when just an instant before it had seemed so far away.
I am not a bad runner, he thought. But I am not that good. I cannot beat Dirk. So how in Weld did I outrun the bloodhog?
And then, by chance, the cart hit a hole in the road, and he found himself thrown off balance, recovering, and staring at his hands clutching the cart’s side.
Only then did he realize that he was still wearing the ring he had put on the night before. He had not returned it to the little bag with the other things. He had forgotten all about it.
He stared down at it. It looked so ordinary. Gray threads, woven into a simple circle. And yet …
“The ring!” he breathed. “The ring helped me run!”
Sonia turned to look at him, her eyes wide.
“That is its power!” Rye hissed. “Speed! Speed when you need it! But how could I have known?”
“Look in the bag again!” Sonia urged. “Perhaps this morning you can find the ninth power, and we can work out what the other things do as well!”
But though he was longing to do as she asked, Rye did not dare risk it. Not in the open air, in a breezy, jolting cart. The things in the bag were so small. It would be all too easy for one of them to slip through his fingers or blow away.
“When we get to Fleet,” he said. “When we are inside and on our own.”
He scratched his head through the knitted cap. He was not used to wearing anything on his head, and the cap felt prickly.
“I do not know why FitzFee made me wear this,” he muttered. “It is not much of a disguise, and it is very uncomfortable.”
“Oh, you will soon get used to it,” said Sonia, pulling her own cap down almost to her eyebrows and making it look worse than ever. “I did. I found I had to wear one when I started moving through the Keep chimneys, or my hair got full of soot.”
At that moment, the horse slowed and the cart began to turn to the right. Craning his neck around the goats, Rye saw a signpost — the first he had seen since leaving Weld.
“Look, Dadda!” cried Popsy in great excitement. “A bad person drawed on the sign! They crossed out Oltan and put another name instead!”
FitzFee mumbled and clicked his tongue to the horse to make it go faster. His neck and back had stiffened. Rye could feel his tension as if it were his own. He was certain that the little man wanted to turn his head and see how his passengers were reacting to the changed sign but did not dare to do so.
“Ne-rra,” Popsy read slowly. “What’s Nerra?”
“Oh, that’s nothing. It’s just what Oltan used to be called before Chieftain Olt changed its name to be like his.”
FitzFee was trying to sound careless, but his voice was shaking a little. It could have been because of the jolting of the cart, but Rye did not think so, and as he met Sonia’s eyes he realized that she did not think so either. They could both hear that FitzFee was afraid.
Olt, Rye thought, his spine tingling, a picture of words scratched on a stone wall filling his mind.
“Didn’t people like Chieftain Olt changing the name?” Popsy asked. “Is that why —?”
“Don’t you worry your head about it, Popsy,” FitzFee cut in sharply. “It’s nothing to do with you. It happened a long time ago, when you were a baby.”
“I’m not a baby now,” the girl said. “Tigg is a baby, but I’m five!”
“So you are,” said FitzFee, very seriously. “You’re a big girl. Big enough and clever enough to promise never to say that old Nerra name to anyone, hear me? You just forget it. Chieftain Olt has forbidden it.”
“Is it a bad name?” Popsy asked with interest. “Is it like El —?”
But FitzFee at once began to sing loudly, shaking the reins and stamping his feet in time with the tune, until the little girl could not resist joining in.
“You were right, Rye!” Sonia whispered excitedly. “This tyrant — Chieftain Olt — must be our Enemy. He has conquered his own people, and now he is using skimmers to make war on Weld!”
Rye did not answer. He was grappling with a new, chilling idea.
“Rye?” Sonia nudged him impatiently.
Rye wet his lips. “Sonia, something is going to happen on Midsummer Eve,” he said, keeping his voice very low. “Something terrible.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Sonia. “Just because FitzFee —?”
“No. The Fellan Edelle whispered something about Midsummer Eve to me as well, when she gave me this.” Rye touched the little bag hanging around his neck. “And there was something else.”
Sonia listened closely as he told her of the words he had seen on the back wall of the goat shelter, but when he had finished, she merely shrugged.
“So? Whatever the danger is, it is surely between Olt and his people. It has nothing to do with us.”
“It might have everything to do with us,” Rye said grimly. “What if the person who wrote those words was not a barbarian at all? What if he was a Weld volunteer, who took shelter in the goat shed, just as we did?”
“But you said the writing looked new!” Sonia objected. “And you are the first volunteer to leave Weld for —”
“This volunteer might have been returning to Weld — or trying to,” said Rye. “He might have been trying to escape!”
“Running away?” Sonia made a wry face. “I would not have thought that any of the splendid heroes who chose the golden Door had enough sense for that!”