Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar (3 page)

If it hadn’t been wearing exactly the same puppy-eager expression that Arville was, she’d have been terrified of it. It wagged its tail merrily.

And then it talked. Or tried to. Its voice, if it could be called that, was a mix of bark and howl limited by the chops and cut occasionally to form words. And it tried enthusiastically to be understood.

“Reyra!” it said. “Rye Ryu! Ryer Ryeree!”

It skidded to a halt on the wet grass and plopped its haunches down, staring up at her expectantly, its bushy tail pounding on the grass and sending up a spray of drops each time it thumped.

She blinked at it.

“He said his name’s Ryu, and he’s a
kyree,
” Arville supplied hopefully.

“Of course he is.” She looked at the thing carefully. Well, it talked. So it probably wasn’t going to unexpectedly turn savage and tear out their throats. And it wagged its tail, which was something that hadn’t been covered in her Fear-the-Monster classes. “And what does Ryu want?” she asked, hoping that the answer was
not
going to be “dinner.” They didn’t have enough meat to satisfy something that large.

“Rum ree ru!” Ryu said, his tail thumping soggily. That didn’t need any translation.

“He’s kind of—uh—Chosen me,” Arville said, looking guilty. “Pelas says it’s all right with him.”

Chosen him—some weird beastie out of the Pelagirs, and it’s Chosen him.
She wanted to thump her head against the side of the wagon. Why couldn’t
anything
these four did be straightforward? She
wanted
to tell both of them that this was absolutely out of the question, that the big, soggy gray thing could just turn itself back around and lope into the forest where it had come from. But two sets of big brown begging eyes were boring holes in her soul, in exactly the clichéd way they were supposed to in silly stories. And Arville’s Companion was all right with this ...

“He’ll have to catch his own food!” she said sharply.

“Rall rye!”

“And he
doesn’t
sleep in the wagon! It’s cramped enough in there as it is, and he smells like wet dog. I don’t care if there’s a spare bunk when the grain is gone, he doesn’t get it. And he definitely doesn’t get my bunk.”

“Rall rye!” This didn’t seem to bother the thing at all. “Rye ree runner!”

“He’ll sleep under the wagon, he says,” Arville said happily. “When we get to the village, I’ll buy him a blanket to sleep on. Won’t I, boy?”

The tail thumped soggily. Elyn gave up.

The creature managed to not get too much in the way, dutifully went out and presumably hunted himself some dinner, and settled in under the wagon to sleep as if he had done so all his life. It was all Elyn could do to persuade Arville
not
to settle in next to him. And that gave her some pause when she climbed into her own bunk for the night. The bond that had sprung up between the young man and what
looked
like some kind of savage beast seemed harmless enough—but it also was disturbingly strong and clearly magical in nature.

So what if it wasn’t harmless?

:It’s harmless,:
Mayar said instantly in her mind.
:Really. The
kyree
are known to us. Yes, it’s a magical beast, like the Hawkbrother bondbirds. In fact, the Hawkbrothers know all about
kyree.
:
She sensed something like a chuckle from Mayar.
:Ryu is younger than he looks, a mere stripling. He’s been lonely. His sort are supposed to go out and find someone to attach themselves to. It’s a little like what we do, except that ... well, never mind. Think of him as a congenital helper, and he’s been looking for the right someone to help for almost a year now.:

Elyn could only shake her head. Well if Mayar saw no problems, and Arville’s own Companion had no objections, who was she to interfere?

She only hoped she would have no cause to regret the decision.

And then, just as she was drifting off, she felt the wagon ... vibrating.

At first she couldn’t imagine what it was. Thunder? Earthquake? Landslide? But if it was anything dangerous the Companions would be screaming their heads off.

The she realized what it was. It came from below.

Ryu was snoring.

 

Oh, what a surprise. The most impressive thing about Bastion’s Stone was a stone. A great big stone that the cluster of little houses huddled against, like baby chicks up against their mother. It was too small to have a market. It was too small to have an inn—one of the locals who was apparently the only one capable of brewing drinkable beer sold it out of his house, and you either drank it in the yard or took it home to drink with your neighbors. So far as Elyn could tell, the only reason for the village existing in the first place was so that all the villagers could share farming equipment and the team of oxen required to pull it. And, of course, because they had a really big stone.

:It’s like a Heartstone, without the heart,:
Mayar commented.

Elyn sat down with the entire population of the village in the only structure big enough to hold them all, the communal threshing barn, and listened to what they had to tell her. Her four charges she told (a bit sternly) to stand and listen and not comment or ask questions themselves. She could tell that Alma was almost writhing with impatience at being muzzled, but that was too bad. At this point, these people didn’t need to have questions fired at them from five different people. One person had to be the voice of authority, and that person had better be her. Only when she was done would she give them leave to go question people on an individual basis, when it was clear that they were answering to her and not the other way around. Having multiple “authorities” only made for trouble.

As for the villagers, they all seemed to defer to the blacksmith, which was curious. Perhaps it was because he was the strongest, or just because, being in a trade that had “trade secrets,” he seemed the most important to them.

But when facing someone wearing a uniform and an air of unquestioned authority, he became almost comically deferential. Regrettably, with that deference came being tongue-tied.

“Just start at the beginning,” she coaxed, “when you all first noticed something wrong, no matter how trivial it seems.”

He mumbled something. It was a little hard to understand his accent; although what he spoke was similar to Valdemaran, the way the words were pronounced wasn’t always the same. She thought it sounded like, “I can’t remember.”

“Sure ye can, Benderk!” one of the others urged, studiously not looking at her. “Ye were the first t’say! ’Twere the Shadows.”

“Sounds like a wee laddie’s boggles,” Benderk mumbled. At least, that was what she thought he mumbled.

“Tell her, Benderk! Tell her ’bout them Shadows up at Stony Rill! How they was on’y there at twilight, lurkin’ like, but then they was them there rustlin’s and whisperin’s on’y no one was there, an that was by broad day! An’ then it weren’t jest whisperin’s but noises t’make the blood cawld, gibberin’s and gurglin’s an’ a mad laugh ’at made th’ dogs run away! Tell her!” The speaker was the fellow that sold the local ale; he had brought a barrel of it, and now he plied Benderk with a mug and a refill, and Benderk evidently found courage therein, for he finally raised his eyes to Elyn’s and pretty much repeated what the ale-seller had said.

“We mun know these parts, Lady,” he added. “We mun know every beast an’ bird in forest. Nothin’ never made no noise like that. Nor cast Shadows like the ones at night, neither. Nor man, nor beast we ever seen cast shadows like that. Half again as tall an’ broad as me, an’ I be no scrawny ’prentice. On’y hunched over, like.” He rounded his shoulders and tucked his head down between them by way of illustration. “An’ we never saw the Things, on’y Shadows, an’ fer all their bigness, left no tracks we could find. So we left Stony Rill alone, an’ that seemed t’satisfy it. Reckoned we leave them alone, they leaves us alone.” He shrugged, shamefaced. “We bain’t fighters, Lady, and this be edge of Pelagir Hills. Uncanny things come out of there, but bain’t mean no harm, so—”

She nodded. “A sensible way to deal with things,” she said soothingly. “I take it there was nothing much any of you needed up at this Stony Rill?”

He shook his head. “Kids liked t’play there i’ summer, but didn’ take but hearin’ that laugh once for ’em t’find ’nother spot of cool water t’paddle in. We’re not lackin’ i’ water.”

Well that was the truth. They must have crossed thirty streams of varying width, depth, and strength to get here.

“But obviously something else happened?” she prompted.

The man nodded, and the others shuddered. “They’re comin’ into village, of nights.”

“You’ve seen them with your own eyes?” Somehow Elyn doubted they had. And sure enough, one and all, they shook their heads emphatically.

“But we
hear
them!” The words came out in a whisper. “Between th’ houses, howlin’ and gibberin’, and in the mornin’, not a sign of ’em. Not a footprint, nor hoofprint or pawprint. Th’ dogs an’ cats, they all hide when they hears it. An’ afore we started lockin’ ’em up at night, we lost some beasts to ’em. Heard ’em cry out, and in mornin’, was gone, an’ no trace of what took ’em.”

There wasn’t much else that Elyn could get that was useful out of them. “You’ll hear ’em fer y’self” seemed to be the only answer.

Despite the fact that the youngsters were burning even more to question the villagers, Elyn let the villagers go back to their homes. For one thing, the closer it got to sunset, the more nervous the villagers became, and she didn’t want to have to cope with a load of hysterical people wanting only to get behind their locked and barricaded doors. For another, she was curious to see if “they,” whatever “they” were, actually did turn up tonight. Their absence might well tell as much or more than their presence. There was no reason why something supernatural would hesitate to manifest with the Heralds here. But if “they” were not supernatural, then whatever or whoever it was that was doing this might well be cautious about showing itself—or themselves—right now.

Once everyone was cleared away, Elyn set about making sure that the wagon, the horses, and the Companions were all set up for a stay of some duration. The villagers had kindly moved in bedding straw and fodder; horses were not exactly housebroken, so before they could all get themselves involved in a long discussion of what might be going on, Elyn got the Trainees to work arranging things inside the threshing barn. She put Rod to maneuvering the wagon against one wall and assigned Arville to making a stabling area for the horses against the opposite wall. Once the wagon was in place, Rod tied up the horses in their corner.

“We may be here a while,” Elyn pointed out. “And there’s enough room in here that anyone who would rather sleep outside the wagon certainly can. It might be a bit colder, but it won’t be as stuffy, and we can always set up the stove to keep a limited area warm at night.”

But Alma clearly wanted to talk about “haunting,” and she had already made up her mind about it; Elyn could see it in the set of her jaw and the furrowed brows. “We need to work out some way to trap these people,” she said.

“The villagers?” Elyn said, raising an eyebrow.

“No, of course not! Whoever is running this deception on them!” Alma said crossly.

“And you’re so certain it’s a deception?” Elyn countered. “I’m not convinced one way or another. If it’s a deception, what’s the motive? And if it’s not, then what are these things? Their behavior matches some of the descriptions of the creatures controlled by the Karsite priesthood.”

“The d-d-demons?” Arville stammered.

Ryu’s ears went straight up and his eyes widened. “R-r-remons?” he echoed.

“But only some of those descriptions, Herald Elyn,” Rod said deferentially. “Not all of them. And we are an awfully long way from the Karsite border. I can’t see any good reason for them being here, if that is what they are. And it could just be some new creature from the Pelagirs. Some things from there are friendly.”

Ryu thumped his tail, tongue lolling.

Elyn shrugged. “I am not convinced either way. What I
am
convinced of is that we need to proceed with great caution. The last thing we want to do is make things worse.”

Alma opened her mouth to protest, but she never got so far as uttering a word. As if something had been listening outside, there came one of the strangest and most hair-raising noises that Elyn had ever heard in her life.

Not loud enough to be called a howl but far too loud for a moan, it seemed to reach to some instinct deep inside Elyn and evoke a chill terror. It had a similar effect on the others, too. Arville yelped and dove under the wagon, joined there by Ryu; Laurel screamed. Rod and Alma both went white to match their uniforms, but they headed for the door of the barn with looks of determination on their faces.

“No! Leave the door alone!” Elyn ordered. Arville and the
kyree
hugged each other and shuddered. The noises multiplied, and Laurel looked around for a weapon, then clutched at her little dagger as if it were going to be adequate to defend herself with. Her sword and war gear were still in storage in the wagon, along with everyone else’s, and only Elyn wore a sword at the moment, since during the interview it’d been a sign of rank.

Alma and Rod had their hands on the door already and prepared to fling it open, only to find it had been shut tight, barred from the outside.

The noises were joined by maniacal laughter as Alma and Rod hammered on the door and tried to break it down, then tried the door opposite with the same results. There were no windows or hatches in the upper part of the building, or they probably would have tried to go out that way. The two draft horses were thoroughly unnerved by now, straining at their tethers, tossing their heads, and rolling their eyes. Arville finally climbed out from under the wagon, shaking, to go and try to calm them down. Elyn joined him; eventually they had to resort to pulling bags over their heads; the horses stopped trying to bolt, but they stood transfixed, shaking as hard as Arville.