Artemis Invaded (2 page)

Griffin rolled to one side, narrowly escaping the blow that struck down where his head had been. As he dropped to the floor, he heard a dull thud against his pillow.

Momentarily, Griffin considered shouting for help, but the thought died in mid-breath. They were staying in one of the outbuildings on the Trainers' property. A cry would surely bring help, but it might also awaken small children or some of the old folks to whom the Trainers gave a home. A yell would also surely alert the dogs—the Trainers had dozens.

Even as he put distance between himself and his attacker, Griffin realized that anyone who could sneak in through a compound overrun with guard dogs was very dangerous indeed. Therefore, instead of calling out, Griffin counterattacked, his body coming to the conclusion that this was the best course of action even before his thoughts had taken shape.

Griffin viewed himself as a scholar—a historian and archeologist—but the Danes were a warrior clan. In truth, Griffin had learned to fight hand to hand before he had learned to read. Right now he was seriously angry, every bad thing that had happened to him since his shuttle had crashed boiling up and fusing until it was embodied in the figure seeking him in the darkness.

Surging up from the floor, Griffin struck for what his brother Alexander had humorously called the man's “vulneraballs.” Either the man could see in the dark—Griffin had met those on Artemis who could—or he was just lucky, for he turned enough that Griffin's blow caught him on one thigh. When he staggered back a few paces, Griffin swung for his midsection. This time he landed a satisfying blow, and the man began to crumple.

Or so it seemed. Griffin was readying a knockout strike when his would-be assailant dropped, rolled, then rose in a graceful leap that carried him up and out the open window. Griffin listened for a crash or some other indication that the man had hit the ground but, if there was one, it was covered by the sudden baying chorus of howling dogs.

Griffin started to rush for the window, halted, and was making a more cautious approach when Terrell burst in, lit candle in hand, unclad except for a pair of loose trousers barely secured around his waist.

“What the…” he was beginning to say when a slender figure darkened the window.

“What…” Adara began, but Griffin cut them both off.

“Someone attacked me. Left by the window. Do you…”

It was his turn to be cut off. Adara dropped from sight. Griffin knew that she and her demiurge, the puma Sand Shadow, would be looking for any trace of his attacker.

Terrell sighed and crossed to light the candle near Griffin's bed from his own. “If whoever came after you is to be found, Adara and Sand Shadow will find him. We'd better go tell the Trainers what has the dogs all stirred up.”

*   *   *

A short time later, Griffin, Terrell, and Adara gathered in the single room that made up the ground floor of the small building they had been given to use by the Trainers. With them was Elaine Trainer. Her husband, Cedric, was still quieting the dogs.

“No one was hurt,” Elaine said, taking the indicated chair, “although a couple of the guard dogs are suspiciously groggy. We're guessing they must have been darted, since they're trained not to take food from anyone who doesn't give specific commands. Whoever hit them had to estimate the dose and we're lucky they didn't make it too strong. The dogs were already coming around when Cedric found them.”

“I'm so glad,” Griffin said. “We've proven to be unlucky tenants for you.”

“We knew you had enemies when we invited you to stay here. We're grateful that you aren't angry that you weren't better protected. We were sure the dogs would keep you safe.”

“I don't blame the dogs,” Griffin insisted. “I'm only sorry I didn't get the bastard.”

“Tell us,” Adara said from where she sat on the ledge of an open window, half in and half out, “what happened.”

Griffin did, ending, “While you and Sand Shadow were trying to track the fellow, Terrell and I searched my room in case he dropped anything. We found this.” He held up a neat cosh, leather sewn around lead shot. “Happens that I recognize it. It looks very much like one that belonged to Julyan.”

“Julyan?” Elaine asked, seeing that the name meant something to her three guests.

“Julyan—once called Hunter,” Adara said, her voice stiff with suppressed emotion. “He was a senior student with Bruin when I was in the middle of my own training. He left Shepherd's Call some years ago. I heard nothing of him until he resurfaced here in Spirit Bay as an assistant to the Old One Who Is Young, working on the secret base on Mender's Isle.”

Griffin mentally filled in what Adara did not say. Julyan had also been Adara's lover and had thoroughly broken her heart. He'd also tried to kill her not long ago, but if Adara didn't care to talk about that … Still, he felt fairly certain that Elaine, her thin features as sharp and alert as one of her own greyhounds, guessed that something had been left out.

Griffin continued, “Julyan enforced the Old One's rule on Mender's Isle. He carried this cosh as a means of subduing without killing. I'd thought whoever came into my room meant to kill me, but now I wonder.”

Terrell nodded. “Certainly, the Old One could want you dead. You know things about him that would ruin what little reputation he has left. Apparently, though, he may value you more alive.”

Adara cut in. “Even if the cosh didn't point to Julyan, there's reason to think he might have been your attacker. His hunter's training would have given him the skills to slip in here unseen, to climb up to your window, even to drug the dogs, since part of our training includes techniques for taking prey alive. When Sand Shadow and I tried to trail your assailant, we had no luck. Julyan would have known how to blur his trail to fool even another hunter. Given the number of dogs here, especially the trained trackers, he certainly would have taken precautions to mask his scent in advance. Sand Shadow is checking outside the compound, but I'm guessing she will have no luck.”

Elaine's disappointment showed. “We were going to suggest tracking with one of our hounds, since—excellent as she is in many things—Sand Shadow is not a scent hunter. If this Julyan was trained by Benji Bear, though, then it's unlikely even one of our best could find him—not if he took advance precautions.”

“Julyan is a ruthless man,” Terrell said. “It's best you and Cedric not attract his attention any more than you must.”

Griffin agreed. “We were lucky this time. I think we need to leave Spirit Bay soon, before anyone else gets drawn into our troubles. Next time someone might get hurt. We may be in as much danger on the road, but there, at least, we won't involve the innocent.”

“I think we'll be in less danger on the road,” Adara said. “In the wilds, Sand Shadow and I are much more in our element. It will be far harder for anyone to sneak up on us.”

Elaine looked torn between protest and reluctant relief. “But where will you go? Back to Shepherd's Call? To where your friend Lynn took those you freed from Mender's Isle?”

Griffin hesitated, wondering how much to tell. Terrell spoke with absolute confidence. “Best you not know, Elaine. Best for all of us, if you don't know.”

*   *   *

“You failed … No matter. Capturing Griffin was a long shot at best.”

Julyan wanted to protest, wanted to point out that he'd gotten past all those damn dogs, gotten right into the room with Griffin, that even with Griffin waking up unexpectedly as he had, he would have managed. Who could have known that the man was a trained fighter? Griffin had shown no sign of being anything but docile during the twenty or so days he had resided against his will in the complex beneath Mender's Isle.

Julyan wanted to say, “I did perfectly what I set out to do. How could I know a lapdog would turn out to be a mastiff?”

But he didn't. There was a mocking expression in the Old One's cool grey eyes that forbore protest, which made Julyan feel certain that his explanations would be dismissed as excuses.

”We're not giving up, are we?”

The Old One gave a thin smile. “We are not, although I think it wisest if we delay. All the indications are that Griffin and his escort will soon leave Spirit Bay. I have some idea where they might be headed.”

“Where?”

“Crystalaire, or rather, somewhere in the vicinity of Crystalaire.”

Julyan searched his memory. The name made him uneasy. In a moment, he remembered why. “That's where many of the seegnur were gathered when the attack came, isn't it? There was a wedding. Those who were not slaughtered outright fled for the hills. They died, just the same.”

The Old One nodded. “There is a prohibited area near Crystalaire called Maiden's Tear. Both historians and loremasters have speculated that the seegnur fled there because they believed something in the vicinity would help them against their enemies. No one knows what, but clearly they did not find it—or perhaps they did not have time to find it.”

Holding back an instinctive shudder, Julyan asked, “But why do you think Griffin and the others will be going there?”

“Because Griffin Dane is searching for remnants of the seegnur's technology. That is what brought him to my Sanctum at Spirit Bay. He doesn't desire mere relics, such as are in any loremaster's museum, but more or less undamaged machines. As with my former home, there is little evidence that the widespread destructive measures employed elsewhere were used in Maiden's Tear—even though they were used freely in the town of Crystalaire itself. Where the hotel stood—the one in which the wedding was being held—there is nothing but a crater.”

“Nasty…” Julyan said.

“I still have friends among the loremasters. Fewer, true, but there are those who continue to revere my knowledge. From these, I have learned what maps and archives Terrell the Factotum has consulted. The evidence confirms my conjecture.”

Or you conjecture based on that evidence,
Julyan thought.
You still long to be thought wiser than any other, despite your recent failure.

He glanced quickly at the Old One. He didn't believe the Old One Who Is Young could read minds, but a man did not live as long as the Old One had without learning to read people as easily as some men read print.

Julyan wondered that he could fear a man as much as he did the Old One. The Old One was small and neatly built. There was something fussy in how he had trimmed his pale blond hair every few days, so that the short cut remained similar to those shown in representations of the seegnur. When the Old One had dwelt in his Sanctum, he had affected clothing that evoked the seegnur. Although now he was a fugitive and had adopted attire that would not excite comment, he remained meticulous in matters of grooming.

The Old One looked like the sort of man Julyan—large, strong, in perfect condition—could break with one hand, but Julyan knew from experience that the Old One could throw him across the room.

Yet that is not why I fear him … Even when I doubt he knows as much as he claims, I am continually uneasy. I know—few better—how he uses those around him. I am useful to him, so he treats me well, but I have seen him step on others with as little concern as I might step on an ant. Even now, unwelcome where once he was revered almost as a king, exiled from his home, I cannot help but feel the Old One remains a power in the land—perhaps in this whole vast world. Certainly his facility beneath Mender's Isle shows that his ambitions are unlimited by more normal concerns.

The Old One's research had led him to conclude that the seegnur's technology had possessed an incorporeal element, that the most sophisticated devices had not been controlled by switches or levers or push pads, but by thought. He had also believed that the adapted might hold in their genes the ability to breed those who could use the seegnur's devices. Implied in this theory was the idea that those systems had not been completely disabled by the attackers, as had always been held by the lore, but that, with the right operators, it could be made to work again. The Old One had set about to create those operators—and had resorted to imprisonment, rape, murder, and other atrocities even without any certainty that he would achieve his goals.

The Old One gave no sign of following Julyan's thoughts, only said mildly, “You will come with me?”

Julyan nodded. “If my reward will be as you promised. I get you Griffin. You give me Adara.”

“I promise.” The Old One's smile was thin-lipped and cruel. “Griffin has proven solid bait to lure Adara the Huntress in the past. I will get her for you—and deliver her to you better than a captive. With Griffin in my hands, I will have the means of making Adara your willing slave.”

*   *   *

Well, this will be a journey through the maze of memories,
Adara reflected, as she checked the condition of their saddlebags and related tack.

Molly, the pale red chestnut mare who was Griffin's mount, hung her head over the half-door out into the paddock, supervising Adara's preparations. Beyond her, Tarnish, Adara's own smoky grey roan gelding, and Midnight, Terrell's black gelding, were methodically ripping hay from a rack, as if aware the slow, easy days were coming to an end.

First, Julyan, now … I wonder if Terrell realized that the route he has suggested will take us through Ridgewood, where my family lives? I can't remember if I ever told him where I grew up. Probably not, since I have lived with Bruin since I was five and Shepherd's Call is home. That's the problem with traveling into the mountains. Unless you're willing to go by more difficult routes, everything narrows down to a few passes.

I could suggest an alternate route, but that would mean explaining why I don't want to go through Ridgewood … And that would mean admitting just how insecure I am when it comes to my family. I'm woman grown now, an official huntress. Surely, I can face …