The following day, while the caravan was passing down the freeway through the city itself, another foraging party found an outlet filled with bottled water and dried foods that could still be eaten. Helen had one of the tractors and a slat–sided wagon taken off the road and brought down to be loaded with the supplies. They might still have some distance to go, but at least they would have something to eat and drink along the way.
While all this was going on, Hawk stayed with the main body of the caravan, knowing that his job was to keep its members moving toward their destination. He still didn’t know where that was or how far they had to go, and he could sense the restlessness growing in those he led. At times, he could sense hostility, as well. But when he spoke of it to Logan, the Knight of the Word told him to ignore it. Those who traveled with him did so of their own volition. They did so at his sufferance. If they didn’t want to go with him, they could leave at any time. Hawk refrained from pointing out how many of these were children who didn’t really have a choice because he knew Logan meant well.
But his own uneasiness persisted, and the restlessness and even the hostility were reflections of what he was feeling toward himself.
Spokane seemed virtually deserted, an oddity given the nature of most cities, which served as havens for refugees of all sorts. But no one appeared to challenge them, and there were only glimpses of brief, furtive movements in the shadows of the buildings they passed. Hawk asked Logan and Angel to keep an eye out for others who might want to come with them, but no one appeared to do so. Perhaps they were frightened of the size of the caravan, or perhaps they simply didn’t want to go. Whatever the case, the residents of the city, human or otherwise, remained in the shadows.
At one point Hawk saw a sign by the side of the freeway that read CHENEY. He was so surprised that he stopped to stare at it momentarily, and Candle, walking with him, stopped, too.
After they began walking again, she said, “Do you think they will ever come back?”
He put his hand on her head and stroked her hair. “I don’t know, Candle.”
But he did know, though he wouldn’t admit it. He had known from the look in Panther’s eyes when they had said good–bye. He had known when he had sent Cheney with him, a protector for the boy and for Cat, once he found her. None of them would be coming back.
It was instinctive by now. It was a part of his transformation since leaving the gardens of the King of the Silver River. He knew a lot of things he should not have been able to know, knew them with increasing regularity and with unshakable certainty. More and more, he sensed the truths that were hidden from the others. Without that sense he would have faltered long ago, he believed. Without that mystic reassurance that told him how things were he would have despaired.
So it was that he knew Panther would find Cat and stay with her, and Cheney would stay to watch over them both. Their lives would take them in a different direction from the other Ghosts, and the family would shrink accordingly.
Now and then, he wished he had been able to keep Cheney with him for a little while longer. It was hard to think of going on without the big dog.
But what was the point of hanging on to something you weren’t going to need?
The CARAVAN TRAVELED EAST for another three weeks, the speed of its already slow passage further diminished by changes in the landscape. Flatlands gave way to steeply rolling hills that were rocky and forested, and then to miles of foothills leading into the mountains they had been heading for all along. Hawk began to gain a fresh sense of perspective on their destination, and at last felt comfortable enough to tell Owl and Tessa, if no one else, that he believed they were getting close to where they were meant to go.
They had passed through the city of Spokane without finding anyone who wished to join their pilgrimage, but all that changed when they neared the mountains. Other families drifted in from the wilderness, some bringing what remained of their livestock, some bringing household pets. There was only a scattering of each, but enough so that it began to feel as if a full–blown community was forming. They might be starting over, wherever they were going, but they were bringing with them vestiges of the old world, and it felt comforting to be able to do so.
Then one evening a band of men and women rode in on horseback, the first horses anyone had seen in years. They had been living up in the hills, isolated and protected by the natural terrain, veterans of living off the land, and they had seen the caravan passing from afar. Anxious to learn what they could of the world, they stayed to eat dinner and talk, and then chose to stay for good and travel to wherever the caravan was going. Hawk was never certain what decided them, although they spent a long time talking with Logan and Simralin. They had never seen an Elf or a Knight of the Word, but whatever the two conveyed was persuasive enough to convince them that hiding out in the hills was not what they should do.
In the morning, they rode back for the rest of their community, and by nightfall another fifty had joined the march.
The three weeks following Spokane passed quickly and without incident. Once, a militia rolled up to them in armed vehicles and confronted them near the passes leading into the mountains. But Simralin had marked their approach long before they arrived, and the defenders were waiting to greet them. A brief exchange resulted in a few threats and some bitter words, and Logan gave the raiders some of their water to appease them. It was just enough to avoid bloodshed, and the raiders, sensing the probable outcome, took the water and left.
Then, on a bright sunlit morning, they crossed through a high pass in the mountains and looked out over a broad valley dotted with lakes and trees that were still fresh and green to a horizon clustered with even bigger mountains that stretched away for as far as they could see, blue–black and jagged shadows backlit by the sunrise.
“This is it,” Hawk said softly, standing alone at the forefront of the march, and he went to tell the others.
Simralin COMPLETED HER MEASUREMENTS and stood at the very center of the forested bluff, looking around. “I think this is the place, Kirisin.”
The boy nodded. “It feels right. The Elves will want height and distance when they emerge, a sense of being apart from the rest of the world. They won’t be able to change their feelings about that right away. It will be hard enough for them to accept that they can no longer hide.”
He’s growing up, Logan thought approvingly. He was standing next to the boy watching Simralin pace off the distance atop the bluff, measuring the available space for the Elven city. His black staff was strapped across his back, out of his hands for the first time that he could remember. He’d tied it there for the journey across the valley. There hadn’t been any need for it since they had arrived. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he didn’t think there would be any need for it again.
He smiled despite himself at the idea.
“The others from the caravan will have to get used to the Elves, too,” he interrupted the siblings. “They all have to share this valley together.”
“It will help that most of them are children,” Simralin added.
It will help mostly that they have to make it work because this is all there is, Logan amended. But he kept that to himself, too.
In the company of the remainder of the Elves, the handful who had found their way clear of the Cintra, they had traveled all day to reach this spot. Simralin had explored it two days earlier and come back with her report. By then, they had been inside the valley–this safehold to which Hawk had taken them–for three weeks. The caravan was already beginning to split apart and its members to take their leave and go out to make their homes in this new world. The Lizards and Spiders and the other mutants had been the first, gone the very night of their arrival. No one had suggested that they needed to live apart; it was mostly an individual choice that each species had made. Some distance between the different groups wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, Logan thought. They would need time to adjust to this new life. They would need space to grow accustomed to what that required.