As they traveled, Morgan told again the story of Par Ohmsford and the dreams of Allanon. The three figures receded slowly into the distance, midnight came and went, and the new day began.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They spent what remained of the night in an arbor of white oaks bordering the Mermidon a few miles below the Kennon Pass. It was cool and shady where they slept, protected from the late summer heat that gathered early on the open grasslands, and they did not wake until well after sunrise. They washed and ate from the supplies that Damson carried, listening to the steady flow of the river and an effervescent birdsong. Morgan rubbed sleep from his eyes and tried to remember everything that had happened the previous day, but it was already growing vague in his mind, a memory that seemed to have been stored away a long time ago. That Padishar Creel was safe again, however distant the event, was all that mattered, he told himself wearily, and he let the matter slide into the distance of yesterday.
He pulled on his boots as he munched on bread and cheese and considered what lay ahead. Today was a hot, sultry expectation that shimmered through the dappled shadows of the leaves and branches, and it might take him anywhere. The past was a reminder of the vicissitudes of life, chance playing off opportunity and giving back what she would. The hardships and losses that Morgan had experienced had tempered him like iron run through the fire, and a vacuum had formed around him that he did not think anything would ever get past again, a dead place where hurt and disappointment and fear could not survive, a shield that let him keep everything away so that he might go on when sometimes he did not think he could. The problem, of course, was that it kept other things away as well—hope and caring and love among them. He could admit them when he chose, but there was always the danger that the other feelings would come in as well. When you let in one, you always risked letting in the others. It was his legacy from Steff and Quickening, from the Jut and Eldwist, from Druid wraiths and Shadowen. It was a truth that haunted him.
He brushed aside the musings and speculation, finished off his meal, and stood and stretched.
“Ready?” Damson Rhee asked. She was flushed from cold water splashed on her skin, and her fiery hair was brushed out so that it shone. She was pretty and vital and filled with a determination that radiated like heat from a flame. Morgan looked at her and thought again how lucky Par was to have someone like that in love with him.
Matty Roh finished washing off her plate and handed it over to Damson to pack. “Where do we go from here?” she asked in her customarily blunt fashion. “How do we go about finding Par Ohmsford?”
Damson shoved the plate in with the others. “We track him.” She tightened the stays on the pack and stood up. “With this.”
She reached down inside her tunic front and pulled out what looked to be half of a medallion threaded on a leather thong. Morgan and Matty bent close. The medallion—a metal disk, actually—had no markings or insignia, and the jagged sharpness of the straight edge indicated that it had been broken recently^
“It is called a Skree,” Damson explained, holding it up to the light where it gleamed a copper gold. “I gave the other half to Par when we separated. The disk was fashioned out of one metal, one forging, and can only be used once. The halves draw the holders to each other. They give off light when they are brought close.”
Matty Roh looked skeptical. “How close do you have to be?” Her black hair was short and straight about her elfin face, and her eyes were deep and searching. She looked fresh-scrubbed and new—younger than she was, Morgan thought, and nothing of who she could be.
Damson smiled. “The Skree is a street magic. I have seen it work; I know what it can do.” The smile tightened. “Shall we try it out?”
She held it outstretched in her palm and faced west, north, and then east. The Skree did nothing. Damson glanced at them quickly. “He was traveling south,” she explained. “I saved that for last.”
She pointed her hand south. The coppery face of the Skree might have pulsed faintly, but Morgan really wasn’t sure. Damson, however, nodded in satisfaction.
“He’s a long way away, it seems.” Her smile was hesitant as she let her eyes meet theirs. “You have to know how to read it.” She stuffed the disk back inside her tunic. “We had better start walking.”
She reached down for her pack and swung it over her shoulders. Matty Roh gave Morgan a sideways glance and a shake of her head that said, Did you see something I missed? Morgan shrugged. He wasn’t sure.
They set out into the heat, following the Mermidon on its winding path east toward Varfleet, keeping as much as they could to the shade of the trees. A breeze blew off the water and helped cool them, but the surrounding countryside was empty and still. The peaks of the Dragon’s Teeth north were barren and gray with the summer’s swelter, and the mix of hills and low mountains south were burned out and dry. The sun lifted in the cloudless sky, and the heat beat down in waves. Dead animals lay scattered on the open plains, their twisted bodies rotting. Vast stretches of Callahorn’s woods had been sickened and the earth beneath left bare. Pools of stagnant, dull-green water stood listless and stinking. Trees were ravaged and withered like the carcasses of creatures hung out to dry. Often the stretches of ruined earth lasted for miles. Morgan could smell the decay in the air. This was more than the summer heat and dryness; this was the Shadowen poisoning that he had witnessed time and again since coming north, a devastation of the land that the dark things were somehow causing. And it was growing worse.
Midday faded into afternoon, and they skirted Varfleet to the north, still following the Mermidon as it began to bend south. They encountered a handful of peddlers and other tradesmen on their way, but the heat kept most would-be travelers out of the sun, so they had the river road pretty much to themselves. They spotted their first Federation patrol as they neared Varfleet and stepped back into the trees to let it pass.
Damson used the Skree again while they waited, and the result was the same. The disk glowed faintly when pointed south—or it might have been nothing more than a glimmer of sunlight. Again Morgan and Matty Roh exchanged a surreptitious look. It was hot, and they were tired. They were wondering if this was leading somewhere or if Damson was just being hopeful. There were other ways to track Par if the disk wasn’t working, but neither of them was ready to challenge Damson on the matter just yet.
They needed a boat to travel down the Mermidon to the Rainbow Lake, she advised, tucking the Skree away once more. It would be quicker by three times than trying to make the journey afoot. Matty shrugged and said she would go into the city, since it was less dangerous for her to do so than for them, and she would meet them here again as soon as she had found what they needed. She put down the bedroll she had been carrying and disappeared into the swelter.
Morgan sat with Damson in the shade of an ancient willow close by the riverbank where they could see anyone approaching from either direction. The river was muddy and clogged with debris in the wake of last night’s storm, and they watched it flow past in sluggish, deliberate fashion, a bearer of discards and old news. Morgan’s eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, and he closed them against the light.
“You’re still not certain of me, are you?” he heard Damson ask after a time.
He looked over at her. “What do you mean?”
“I saw the look you exchanged with Matty when I used the Skree.”
He sighed. “That doesn’t mean I’m not certain of you, Damson. It means I didn’t see anything and that worries me.”
“You have to know how to use it.”