Unless, of course, they’re too hurt to climb trees. But in that case, how did the decoys get up in one?
“Illusion!” Skan said suddenly, his head coming up with a jerk. “That’s it! There’s no illusion and no traces of one on those decoys. Tad’s not a powerful mage, but he’s good enough to cast an illusion, and if I were building a decoy I’d want to make it look as much like me as possible! So why didn’t he put an illusion on it?”
“Because he couldn’t,” Drake said flatly. “If mage-energy got sucked out of the basket and everything else, it could have gotten sucked out of him, and it might not have built up enough yet for him to do anything.”
“Oh.” Skan was taken a bit aback, but finally nodded his acceptance of Drake’s explanation. Amberdrake was just as glad, because he could think of another.
Tad can’t work a simple magic like an illusion because he’s hurt too badly.
On the other hand, those decoys were soggy enough to have been here for a couple of days, so that meant that the children made fairly good progress for two people trying to hide their backtrail, So that in turn meant that they couldn’t have been hurt too badly. Didn’t it?
He also didn’t want to think about how having mage-energy drained from him might affect Tad in other, more subtle ways. Would it be like a slowly-draining wound? Would it affect his ability to work magic at all? What if he simply was no longer a mage anymore? Gryphons were inherently magical for good reasons, and Urtho would not have designed them so otherwise. Although the Mage of Silence had made many mistakes, the gryphons were considered his masterpieces. Magic collected in their bodies with every breath and with every stroke of the wings. It stabilized their life systems, cleaned their organs, helped them fly. Amberdrake had never heard of what would happen if a gryphon were deprived of mage-energy completely for an extended amount of time; would it be like fatigue poisoning, or gout, or something even more insidious, like a mental imbalance?
The rescue party was moving along in a tightly-bunched group to keep from getting separated in the mist. We’re on the right track at least; the children certainly came this way, Amberdrake reminded himself. They’re moving right along, thinking, planning. If they’re in trouble, the best place for them is the river. There’s food there that’s easy to catch, and maybe caves in the cliffs. They’re doing all the right things, especially if they’re having to deal with large predators.
Maybe this was why the rescuers hadn’t found much in the way of large game. They’d tried to send on their findings by teleson, so that the other two parties out searching knew to turn back to the river. The mage Filix thought he’d gotten everything through clearly, but without local mage-energy to draw on, he couldn’t be certain that all the details had made it over. Still, whether the children went north or south when they encountered the river, someone should run into them now. Their own party was going to try to the north, mostly because they did know for certain that Ikala’s would be coming up from below them, also heading north.
This damned fog. It makes me more nervous than the rain! If—when—we all get out of this, I am never leaving the city again, I swear it. Not unless it’s to visit another city. So far as I’m concerned, you can take the “wilderness experience” and bury it in a hole. He’d never forgotten the hardships of the trek to White Gryphon, and he had been all too well aware of what this mission would involve. He thought he’d been prepared for it. Except for one thing; I’d forgotten that now I’m not as limber as I used to be for this sort of thing. Judeth and Aubri certainly didn‘t volunteer to traipse through the woods, and now I see why. They probably think I’m a fool, forcing myself to go along on this rescue, trying to do a young man’s job. Maybe letting me go was Judeth’s way of getting revenge upon me for threatening her!
But Blade wasn’t Judeth’s daughter, nor was Tad Aubri’s son.
No, I’d rather be out here. At least I know that I’m doing something this way. Zhaneel and Winterhart must feel the same, or they wouldn ‘t have insisted on coming either.
But the fog was doing more than just getting on his nerves; he kept thinking that he was seeing shadows flitting alongside them, out there. He kept feeling eyes on him, and getting glimpses of skulking shapes out of the corner of his eye. It was all nonsense, of course, and just his nerves getting the better of him, but—
“Drake,” Skan whispered carefully, “we’re being paced. I don’t know by what, but there’s something out there. I can taste it in the fog, and I’ve seen a couple of shadows moving.”
“You’re sure?” That was Regin, who had signaled for a halt and dropped back when he heard Skan whispering. “Bern thought he might be seeing something, too—”
“Then count me as three, because I saw large shadows moving out there and behind us,” Drake said firmly. “Could it be whatever tore up the ground back there?”
“If it is, I don’t want to goad it into attacking us in this fog,” Regin replied. “Though I doubt it will as long as we look confident.”
“Most big hunters won’t mess with a group,” Bern confirmed, nodding. “They like single prey, not a pack.”
Drake must have looked skeptical, because Regin thumped him on the back in what was probably supposed to be an expression of hearty reassurance. It drove the breath out of him and staggered him a pace.
“There’s too many of us for it to want to contend with—” Regin pointed out with confidence, “And we aren’t hurt. I don’t care if it paces us, as long as it doesn’t come after us, and it won’t. I’m sure of it.”
Amberdrake got his breath again, and shrugged. “You’re the leader,” he said, keeping his uncertainty to himself.
Regin grinned, as if to say, “That’s right, I am,” but wisely kept his response to a grin and waved them on again.
Drake continued to feel the eyes on his back, and kept thinking about beings the size of a horse with talons to match—the kinds of claws that had torn up the earth to the depth of his hand. Would a party of seven humans and one gryphon look all that formidable to something like that? And what if there was more than one of those things out there? The way the ground had been dug up certainly suggested that there were several.
“You won’t like this,” Skan gryphon-whispered, which was as subtle and quiet as a human’s normal speaking voice. The gryphon glanced from side to side apprehensively. “Drake, I think we’ve been surrounded.”
All the muscles in Amberdrake’s neck went tight, and he shivered reflexively. He no longer trusted Regin’s self-confidence in the least.
At just that moment, Regin signaled another halt, and Bern took him aside to whisper something into his ear.
The leader looked straight at Skan. “Bern says we’re surrounded. Are we?”
“I think so,” Skan said flatly. “And I don’t think whatever it is out there is just curious. I also don’t think it’s going to let us get much farther without a fight.”
Regin’s face darkened, as if Skan had challenged him, but he turned his eyes to the shrouding fog before replying. “The General always says the best defense is a good offense,” he replied in a growl. “But there’s no point in lobbing arrows against things we can’t see. We’ll lose ammunition without impressing them.”