Part 30 (1/2)

A great curtain of rain swept across the lich-yard, bending the knee-high gra.s.s and splattering on the old tumbled stones.

”Did you find anything?” Miriamele called.

”Nothing that is pleasant.” She could barely hear the troll for the hissing of the rain. She bent closer to the crypt door. ”I am finding no tunnel,” he elaborated.

”Then come out. I'm soaking wet.” She pulled her cloak tight and looked up.

Beyond the lich-yard, the Hayholt loomed, its spires dark and secretive against the muddy gray sky. She saw light glimmering in the red windows of Hjeldin's Tower and crouched lower in the gra.s.s, like a rabbit covered by the shadow of a hawk. The castle seemed to be waiting, quiet and almost lifeless. There were no soldiers on the battlements, no pennants fluttering atop the roofs. Only Green Angel Tower with its sweep of pure white stone seemed somehow alive. She thought of the days she had hidden there, spying on Simon as he daydreamed through idle afternoons in the bell chamber. As constricting and smothering as the Hayholt had seemed to her then, it had been a comparatively cheerful place. The castle that stood before her now waited like some ancient hard-sh.e.l.led creature, like an old spider brooding at the center of its web.

Can I actually go there? she wondered. Maybe Binabik is right. Maybe I am being stubborn and headstrong to think I can do anything at all.

But the troll might be wrong. Could she afford to gamble? And more importantly, could she walk away from her father, knowing that the two of them might never again meet on this earth?

”You were speaking the truth.” Binabik slipped out through the crypt door, s.h.i.+elding his eyes with his hand. ”The rain is falling down very strongly.”

”Let's go back to where we left the horses,” Miriamele said. ”We can shelter there. So you found nothing?”

”Another place with no tunnels.” The troll wiped mud from his hands onto his skin breeches. ”But there were quite a few dead people, none of them good to be spending time with.”

Miriamele made a face. ”But I'm sure that Simon came up here. It has to be one of these.”

Binabik shrugged and set out toward the clutch of wind-rattled elms along the lich-yard's south wall. As he walked, he pulled up his hood. ”Either you are remembering it with some slight wrongness, or the tunnel is hidden in a way I cannot discover. But I have scrabbled in all the walls, and been lifting all the stones ...”

”I'm certain it's not you,” she said. A flare of lightning lit the sky; the thunder followed a few moments later. Suddenly an image of Simon struggling in the dark earth appeared before her mind's eyes. He was gone, lost forever, despite all the brave things she and the troll had said. She gasped and stumbled. Tears coursed down her rain-wet cheeks. She stopped, sobbing so hard she could not see.

Binabik's small hand closed about hers. ”I am here with you.” His own voice trembled.

They stood together in the rain for a long time. At last Miriamele grew calmer. ”I'm sorry, Binabik. I don't know what to do. We have spent the whole day searching and it hasn't done us any good.” She swallowed and wiped water from her face. She could not speak of Simon. ”Perhaps we should give up. You were right: I could never walk up to that gate.”

”Let us make ourselves dry, first.” The little man tugged her forward, hurrying them toward shelter. ”Then we will talk over what are the things we should do.”

”We have looked, Miriamele,” said Binabik. The horses made anxious noises as the thunder caromed across the sky once more. Qantaqa stared up at the clouds as though the great sound were something she would like to chase and catch. ”But if you wish it, I will wait and look again when the rain is gone-perhaps the searching would be safer by night.”

Miriamele shuddered at the thought of exploring the graves after dark. Besides, the diggers had proved that there was far more to fear in these crypts than just the restless spirits of the dead. ”I don't want you to do that.”

He shrugged. ”Then what is your wis.h.i.+ng?”

She looked at the map. The wandering lines of ink were nearly invisible in the dark, storm-curtained afternoon. ”There are other lines that must be other tunnels going in. Here's one.”

Binabik screwed up his eyes as he studied the map. ”That one is seeming to me to come out in the rock wall over the Kynslagh. Very difficult it would be to find, I think, and it would be even more beneath the nose of your father and his soldiers.”

Miriamele nodded sadly. ”I think you're right. What about this one?”

The troll considered. ”It is seeming to be in the place the town now stands.”

”Erchester?” Miriamele looked back, but could not see over the tall lich-yard wall. ”Somewhere in Erchester?”

”Yes, are you seeing?” He traced the line with his short finger. ”If this is the little forest called Kynswood, and this is where we are now standing ...”

”Yes. It must be almost in the middle of the town.” She paused to consider. ”If I could disguise my face, somehow ...”

”And I would be disguising my height and my troll-ness?” Binabik asked wryly.

She shook her head, feeling the idea solidify. ”No. You wouldn't need to. If we took one horse, and you rode with me, people would think you were a child.”

”I am honored.”

Miriamele laughed a little wildly. ”No, it would work! No one would look at you twice if you kept your hood pulled low.”

”And what would we do with Simon's horse, and with Qantaqa?”

”Perhaps we could bring them with us.” She didn't want to give up. ”Maybe they would think Qantaqa was a dog.”

Now Binabik laughed, too, a sudden huff of mirth. ”It is one thing to make people be thinking a small man like me is a child, but unless you could find a cloak for her as well, no one will ever have belief that my companion is anything but a deadly wolf from the White Waste.”

Miriamele looked at Qantaqa's s.h.a.ggy gray bulk and nodded sadly. ”I know. It was just a thought.”

The troll smiled. ”But the rest of your idea is good. There are just a few things we must do, I am thinking....”

They finished their work in a grove of linden trees on the edge of a fallow field just west of the main road, a few furlongs from Erchester's northernmost city gate.

”What did you put in this beeswax, Binabik?” Miriamele scowled, probing with her tongue. ”It tastes terrible!”

”That is not for touching or tasting,” he said. ”It will come loose. And the answer is being, just a little dark mud for color.”

”Does it really look like teeth are missing?”

Binabik c.o.c.ked his head, eyeing the effect. ”Yes. You are appearing very scruffy and not-princess-like.”

Miriamele ran her hand through her dirt-matted hair and carefully stroked her muddy face. I must be a sight. I must be a sight. She could not help being pleased for some reason. She could not help being pleased for some reason. It is like a game, like a Usires Play. I can be anyone I want to. It is like a game, like a Usires Play. I can be anyone I want to.

But it was not a game, of course. Simon's face loomed before her; she abruptly and painfully remembered what she was doing, what dangers it would bring-and what had already been lost so that she could get to this place.

It is to end the pain, the killing, she dutifully reminded herself. she dutifully reminded herself. And to bring my father back to his senses. And to bring my father back to his senses.

She looked up. ”I'm ready, I suppose.”

The troll nodded. He turned and patted Qantaqa's broad head, then led the wolf a short distance away and crouched beside her, burying his face in her neck fur to whisper in her ear. It was a long message, of which Miriamele could hear only the throaty clicking of trollish consonants. Qantaqa twisted her head to the side and whined softly but did not move. When Binabik had finished; he patted her again and touched his forehead to hers.

”She will not let Simon's horse stray far away,” he said. ”Now it is time for us to be going forward.”

Miriamele swung up into the saddle, then leaned down to extend a hand to the little man; he scrambled up and seated himself before her. She tapped her heels against the horse's side.

When she looked back, Simon's horse Homefinder was cropping gra.s.s at the base of a rain-dripping tree. Qantaqa sat erect, ears high, yellow eyes intent on her master's small back.

The Erchester Road was a sea of mud. The horse seemed to spend almost as much time unsticking itself as it did walking.