Delver Magic: Book 06 - Pure Choice (39 page)

"But I do. Hopefully, you
will humor me."

"I find nothing humorous
about you."

"I could try to tell a
joke," Dzeb offered

"Don't," Linda snarled.

"Very well."

Deciding that standing motionless
beside the cliff behemoth was simply too frustrating, Linda pressed on once
more through the forest. She didn't follow the trail of the shag, but rather
turned slightly to her right and chose a random path through the trees.

Dzeb gave her plenty of space, but
then began to follow her as if guarding her flank. After a few steps, he made
sure she would accept his presence.

"Do you mind if I walk with
you?"

"What do I care?"

Dzeb smiled again, satisfied with
the arrangement. He followed Linda through the forest. Every now and again, he
would have to press smaller trees aside to fit through a passage, but he did so
with great care, creating just enough room for him to get by. He ignored
Linda's continued cursing as she pushed through the brush, but he took the time
to acknowledge the birds and squirrels that seemed to follow them along. While
the number of animals they encountered in their path grew, not a single dark
creature dared to come near.

Ryson followed Linda's tracks
through Dark Spruce
Forest as immeasurable panic
blurred his thoughts. He tried to focus, keep his mind on the task before him,
but he couldn't dampen the raging fear that was born from a simple reality. His
wife was alone in Dark Spruce
Forest, and that was probably a
death sentence.

He tried to keep the ponderous
despair from crushing his spirit, tried to hold to hope. He forced himself to
envision finding her alive just behind the next section of brush, but each time
he found only empty ground, a prevailing dread rushed back into his
consciousness. Flashes of horrible images kept reaching in from the corners of
his mind. He tried to beat them back, cursed his own lack of faith, but the
thought of losing his wife was not something he could easily discard like a
piece of stale bread. It was a driving fear that strangled every other possible
concern.

To add to his ever expanding
anxiety, he couldn't understand her movements. Her tracks revealed a determined
march, as well as a complete disregard for her surroundings. There was no
hesitation, no backtracking. Every step was made with conviction and it
appeared she chose the most difficult path she could find.

It was easy for him to follow. He
was a delver and the deep woods could not dissuade him from moving forward or
even slow his progress. Where Linda stormed angrily through the forest, he
glided swiftly over the uneven grounds. He faced no obstacle he could not
overcome, but the path left him bewildered.

At first, the trail led due west,
and in itself, the course made little sense. There was nothing for Linda in
that direction, nothing but bone-chilling peril that kept even the bravest
loggers out of Dark Spruce.

To add to the confusion, her path
started making twists and turns that lacked any apparent reason. It was not as
if she was lost, for she avoided every possible clearing. Instead, she had
plowed into the densest sections of the forest, not only with complete
disregard for the dangers she might face, but with an apparent craving to find
them.

Even as Ryson tried to block out
every imaginable horror that was not simply an exaggerated fear but a stark
reality, he could not ignore the underlying implications of Linda's movements.
It was not the path of someone trying to reach a certain destination, like
home. It was the path of someone trying to escape, and one question
crystallized in the delver's mind.

Why would she choose a path away from Burbon?

The answer opened a gouging pain
in his abdomen. He began to understand that she wasn't just running away from
Burbon... she was running away from him!

He shook off the crushing thought,
considered it nothing more than panic driven nonsense. He would only discover
the truth when he found her, and he was determined to do so. He moved with
greater speed born of desperation. Concentrating on Linda's trail, he shut out
the rest of the forest, but not completely, and in that, he found even greater
turmoil for his raging emotions.

Ryson could not help but notice
the fresh tracks of several small goblin packs. He didn't wish to acknowledge
them, tried to convince himself they were unrelated to his own concerns, but
how could he escape the truth? There were as many goblins in the forest as
there were trees. They would notice the careless movements of his wife. How
could they not? And they were not creatures of benevolence that would help a
lost human find her way.

He tried to avoid following the
goblin tracks with his gaze, but his delver mind forced him to uncover the
truth. He expected to see them intercept the trail of his wife, but for some
reason, they never did. From their movements, Ryson knew the goblins were aware
of Linda's presence, but rather than confront her, each pack clearly avoided
any encounter.

While the information he gleaned
from the trails relieved him, the rationale for such behavior puzzled him as
much as Linda's bizarre path. There was no plausible reason for the goblins to
make such a determined effort to flee from a human, especially one so
vulnerable. Such a target should have made the goblins gleeful with
anticipation.

But the tracks of the goblins were
just as clear as those of Linda. Packs of the vicious monsters consciously and
consistently altered their routes to elude his wife, as if they had discovered
a mountain lion, a shag or a rock beetle in their path.

As the delver pressed onward, he
found another set of tracks that brought him both delight and possibly an
explanation. The prints in the ground were clearly those of a cliff behemoth. A
single giant had come from the north, intercepted Linda's trail, and then
followed. Even a goblin horde might run from a lone cliff behemoth.

But as Ryson examined the
footprints, the theory did not hold. Many of the goblins had turned back long
before the cliff behemoth would have been noticed. Some of the goblins had even
turned north to avoid Linda, and probably inadvertently stumbled near the
titan. As he placed the trails in their proper sequence, the delver knew it was
not the cliff behemoth that the goblins chose to avoid, but instead, they had
turned away from Linda specifically.

Examining the tracks brought yet
another question to his delver mind. Why would a cliff behemoth come from the
north and then follow the trail of his wife? It didn't make sense.

His curiosity had still not
matched his concern for his wife's safety, but it was growing. The situation,
however, had turned and there was actually cause for optimism. The delver knew
a cliff behemoth would do Linda no harm.

He swelled with emotions of
confusion, concern and even hope. He had clear facts before him. He knew what
was happening, he just couldn't understand why.

The last set of tracks he came
upon were the most confusing of all. He found the trail of a shag converging on
Linda's path. At first, the finding ripped a hole through his budding hope as
the monster and his wife had clearly come face to face. The thought of such an
encounter was difficult to envision, but the signs on the ground revealed a
perplexing outcome.

She should have died. There was no
other plausible conclusion. The cliff behemoth had not reached her in time. The
shag was there first, and yet, no such horrible confrontation had occurred.
After a brief encounter, the shag had retreated. Linda was still very much
alive and had actually departed the area with the cliff behemoth in tow. The
signs were as undeniable as they were incomprehensible.

He also realized that he was
closing in on her. He cleared his mind of his confusion and anxiety. After
checking the direction of the wind, he inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He
caught Linda's scent, not from the ground or the brush, but from her person.

He tilted his head as he lifted
one ear higher than the other. He could hear the cliff behemoth pushing through
the forest. It also brought Ryson more than hope, it finally brushed away his
suffocating fears.

Linda was alive!

He was sure of it. She was moving
through the forest and the cliff behemoth was following her.

Racing at near top speed, leaping
over any thick brush in great bounds and dodging around tree trunks, Ryson
quickly caught sight of the behemoth's back. As he closed on the cliff dweller,
he was certain he recognized the giant. He could not possibly determine how or
why Dzeb was there, but even his delver curiosity could not overcome his desire
to be with his wife. He dashed passed the giant in a blur of motion and caught
up with Linda.

He cut off her path and came to a
stop directly in front of her, forcing her to come to a halt. He was thrilled
to see her, until he noticed her expression. When he looked into her eyes, he
almost didn't recognize her. He didn't see joyful acknowledgment, he saw
furious disgust.

"Why did you come
here?!" she hissed.

Ryson almost couldn't respond. All
of the relief at finding her drained out of him in an instant.

"I was looking for you,"
he was able to say just above a whisper, but he was almost in shock at her
hostility.

"Looking for me? Looking for
me?!!!" Her shout then dropped to an icy snarl. "Why would you bother
looking for me?"

All Ryson could do was point out
the obvious.

"You weren't home. I was
worried. They told me..."

"They? Who is
they
?" she demanded.

"Linda, what's wrong? You
know I'd come looking for you."

"Answer me! Who told
you?"

Stunned, Ryson blurted out the
truth.

"The guards saw you. Sy told
me."

"So you're talking to Sy
again? Good for you."

Ryson couldn't believe it. He
expected her to be overjoyed, but she seemed angry over absurd details.
Completely confused, he pressed for some kind of explanation.

"Why did you come out
here?"

Linda's eyes widened and she shook
visibly, but only for a moment. As she stared into Ryson's face, she seemed to
be able to see his thoughts, and her response was chilling.

"You know why," she
responded in another hiss. And then she nodded her head as if punctuating her
accusation. "Yes, you do. Deep down you know exactly why I'm here... to
get away from you."

"Don't," Ryson
whispered.

"Don't what? Go ahead! Tell
me what it is that I'm not supposed to do. Is there something you don't want to
hear? That's what you're really saying! You can't figure out what's going on,
can you? What should I do... am I supposed to throw my arms around you? Is that
what you want? Don't stand there looking all confused. Don't be a fool. I
understand what's going on. You want me to be thrilled to see you, but you
can't understand why I'm not."

He couldn't believe what she was
saying, knew there was something wrong with her. She was sick. She had to be.
That's what Ryson grasped at, but even holding to that thought, it still hurt.
He tried to reason with her, assert the full truth and not simply accept her wild
reasoning.

"You weren't running just to
get away from me. That can't be all there is. There's something else."

"And suddenly you know all
the answers?"

"No... I don't, but this
doesn't make sense. Why would you run out into the forest just to get away from
me? You could have went anywhere... Connel, Pinesway, even further east into
the farmlands. This was dangerous and you knew it. You could have even stayed
home and told me to leave you alone. You didn't have to come out here. Why
would you put yourself in that kind of danger?"

"Why?" Linda reeled with
shock at the question, as if incapable of believing that Ryson would actually
ask. "To show you what it feels like, that's why! Are you really that
stupid? You leave all the time. Where do you go? Just to Connel? To Pinesway or
the farmlands? No! You go into this forest. You go into the hills and the
mountains. You go anywhere you want. I can do the same!"

Linda's wrath grew. She began to
pace about the forest floor, flashing an angry gaze at Ryson with every turn.
She would start to talk, but before a hostile word could pass through her lips,
she clamped her mouth shut and grunted through gritted teeth. She shook her
head and smacked her hand against her hip as if she needed to strike out at
something, anything.

She suddenly stopped stone dead
still and stared into the ground. She bit down on her lip, almost drawing
blood. She stopped hitting herself, but her hands clenched into tight fists.
She began to breathe heavily and when she finally looked up at the delver,
there was pure rage in her expression.

"You tell me I could have
stayed home? That you would have left me alone?! You wouldn't even leave me
alone out here! You followed me like some pathetic puppy! I didn't want you
here. I
don't
want you here. I want
you to leave me. Go back to exploring some hole in the ground or whatever it is
that delver's do. I'm sick of you. Do you hear me?! I'm sick of you!"

The words cut him more than any
weapon could, but Ryson held his ground. He would not turn from her. He
wouldn't even argue with her. He accepted it all.

"I'm sorry," he offered.

His sincere apology, however,
meant nothing to her. She lashed out, swung with her fists, but not at the air,
the tree branches, or even her own hip. She struck at her husband. Struck him
over and over.

"Get out of here!" she
screamed.

But Ryson wouldn't move. He
wouldn't even try to avoid her assault. He accepted it; penance for every
conceived error in judgment. He allowed her to take out her anger on him, hoped
it would purge her of whatever fury was stuck inside of her.