Nor Iron Bars A Cage (29 page)

“Lyon? Your choice. Do you want them to stay with us?”

For a moment I relished the look on the two sorcerer’s faces, as the king put them in my hands. But I really had no desire to have them close by, if they wanted to be elsewhere. “Whatever they think’s best, Sire.”

“We’ll go assist Firstmage, then.” Secondmage turned toward his horse, but was clearly unable to mount it. The king called for a complement of guardsmen to assist the two sorcerers on the ride back.

The captain led Cricket back over to me. I felt like I was made of pudding, but I dodged his hand under my arm. Tobin’s strong grip and a hearty shove to my butt got me back into the saddle. Cricket stood still, bless him, and let me get settled. Tobin set my foot into my stirrup and looked up at me. “You’re really all right for this?”

“I’m fine. It was just the shock.”

“And the ghost is gone?”

He expected a quick affirmative. I saw the lines around his eyes become drawn as I failed to answer him. After a moment he limped around to the other side of Dark and swung himself up.

Riding out felt different without Xan a strong presence in my head. I hadn’t realized how much of my enjoyment of the morning had been colored by his delight at seeing his beloved mountains. Without that, I was exhausted and cold, a little scared and a whole lot intimidated by the impossible task of finding one specific cave mouth in a hillside littered with them. As we rode along, a contingent of men peeled off to explore any opening we saw. Most were apparently shallow, and the men returned fast. A few were deeper, deep enough that a cursory look didn’t find the end of them, and there men were left behind to keep watch.

The next waterfall we came to was a low tumbling affair of wide shallow water. The king looked at me. I could only shake my head. I felt nothing, saw nothing, one way or the other. Perhaps Xan truly was gone. We continued, up and down hills. My knees were getting raw from bracing against the saddle, and my back ached. As we topped the next ridge, the king waited for me. Pointing up ahead he said, “That’s the Cascade. It’s a hard place to get to the base of. The river runs through a narrow canyon before coming out of the deep rock. But there are caves around the outsides of the canyon. What do you say?”

I stared at it. The water fell from one ledge to the next, going from a deep tumbling torrent to wider and flatter, before disappearing from view behind the trees on the ridge. “I don’t think we can count it out.”

Tobin pointed further along the skyline. “The Silverwend comes out about three miles further on. If that odd name meant ‘between the waters’ then perhaps the opening is in that three mile stretch between them.”

“Good thought.” The king waved an officer over, and a large contingent of the cavalry moved off at a good clip. “They’ll start looking.” He glanced at me. “There’s no visible cave mouth in the canyon of the Cascade, but it’s quite a sight. At least you’ll get a look while we’re here.”

The captain said reprovingly, “This is hardly a time for sightseeing, you majesty.”

“Indeed. But if we cross the Cascade River at the high point instead of the lower ford, Lyon will see one of the local wonders, and we won’t have lost any time.”

“As you wish, Sire.”

The king waved at his forward guard and we turned east from the route the cavalry had taken, and up a narrower trail. The king rode close beside me. “I love this area,” he said. “Although the first time I passed through was after the Badlands campaign, and I was too tired to appreciate it. We were here again six years ago though, Tobin. You remember?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There was a rumor then too, that Prince Miacosta was bringing troops through the Skyfield pass. It turned out to be false, but we had a good summer patrolling here.”

“It got damned cold by the start of winter, though.” Tobin said reminiscently.

“Yes. Father could really have called us off the scent a month earlier than he did.”

I listened to them talk in low voices as we climbed higher. The air was thin, and the clumps of pine trees were full of birds. After fifteen minutes we crested the ridge.

“We’ll work down at an angle to cross the river.” The king pointed out a route. “And search the caves south of it. But first, take a minute to look at the Cascade. Isn’t that a sight?”

I peered down into the dimness of the narrow canyon. At our feet the water of the river burst forth from the rocky canyon sides into a tumbling shallow river along the ravine. Upstream, it ran silent and deep, between high rock walls. And at the cliff, it fell, a hundred feet of free drop in a glistening rippling sheet. I stared at it, hypnotized. The water was like a solid living thing, shimmering on the surface, with undreamed-of motion in its depths. Behind the sparkling waterfall, the cliff was dark with spray and mysterious.

No. Not dark with spray. I grabbed Tobin’s arm in a grip that must have hurt him. “M’blean means through,” I said. “The tunnel is through the waterfall.”

“It’s
what
?” Tobin and the king both turned to look more closely.

“There’s something moving behind the water. I swear it.” I broke into a sweat. The air on that wide hilltop felt close and still and silent. Not even birds sang. “That’s the place.”

 As we watched, we all saw it. A flicker of light showed in the darkness behind the water. Just a moment and then gone. But we were certain then. The king turned to the officers behind us, snapping out orders. The archers were sent to find vantage points, guarding all exits from that canyon. The remaining cavalry were sent elsewhere. Voices were hushed. I leaned toward Tobin. “Why are we whispering?”

“The more of them we can trap at the mouth of the cave, before they know that we’ve spotted them, the better.”

“Do you think…?” I was going to ask if we were in time, when the sound of fighting suddenly broke out to our left.

Tobin swore. “Some of them must have already come through before we got here. Come on, let’s find a more defensible spot.”

A horn blew loudly, and then another. Off down the valley, a faint reply was heard. Tobin made Dark jostle Cricket toward a field of boulders. “Over there, lion-boy. Get some rocks at your back. They may have archers too.”

I let him guide me. The king was beside us for a moment, and then a different horn call made him raise his head. “That’s Cliban. He’s in trouble. Come on.” He whirled his horse and plunged off to the right. The captain gave me one glance, and then he and the rest of the King’s Own charged after the king. Tobin and I were left alone on the hill. I saw Tobin looking frantically back and forth, between me and the route the king had taken.

“You should go help,” I said.

“They’ll do fine. I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I’ll be safe here.” I steered Cricket into a narrow space between two big boulders. “See. Hidden and protected. I can wait here for you.”

“Not a chance.” He turned Dark to put himself in front of me, his sword in his hand.

There we stood still, listening. The hilltop was quiet. Downslope the sounds of fighting moved further away. There suddenly was a loud cry, like a growling roar, and then distant voices calling, “The king! To the king! He’s down!”

Tobin quivered like a horse struck with a whip. I said, “Go. I’ll be fine.”

He whirled and stared at me, his eyes boring into mine. “You’d better be. Stay hidden.” He and Dark leaped forward as if shot from a bow and disappeared from sight.

I was left shivering, sitting on my patient horse, in a damp, cold, blind pocket of rock. I whistled tunelessly, then remembered I was supposed to be hiding. I could hear nothing intelligible. Above me the open sky was blue and cloudless. I said,
-Xan? Are you there?
There was still no hint of his presence in my mind.

I wondered where Tobin was and what he was doing. There was still the ring and clank of a distant clash, and shouting. There must have been quite a few R’gin around, to still be engaging the king’s men. If I’d managed to persuade Xan to bring us directly here, perhaps there would have been fewer. Perhaps Tobin was dying right now because I failed to control a ghost.

No. I wasn’t going to picture Tobin dying or even admit that he could. He was perfect and immortal and was even now smiting the king’s enemies, after which he would return to me and… Something scraped over rocks, down and to my right. Tobin had ridden off to the left.

I froze, trying not to even breathe. Cricket seemed to catch my mood and raised his head, flicking one ear back and forth uneasily.

The sounds came again, louder. And then I barely caught a voice, in modern
r’ginian,
saying,
“fan out, clear it and go down…”

Shit!
Giving orders meant there was more than one man, and I had no illusions about taking on even one. Maybe they wouldn’t find me. But Cricket was awfully big. My safe niche felt like a trap. The sounds grew louder. I slid off Cricket’s back, squeezed between him and the rocks, and glanced around wildly.

The hillside was littered with rocks and trees, and plenty of places to hide. But as the sounds increased, they suggested several men on horses. Could I hide that well? My fear rose, echoed inside me, a drumming in my head that made it hard to hear and almost impossible to think. I looked around frantically. Behind me, a cliff face reared another hundred feet up to the rock pinnacle. It was steep, but rough, with hand- and foot-holds aplenty. Flatlanders never looked up.

With a touch of apology on Cricket’s shoulder for leaving him, I kicked off my boots and wriggled out of the niche. The R’gin wouldn’t hurt the horse. Although they’d probably steal him. My stomach lurched, and my pulse sped still faster. I told myself to take a breath, be calm. Tobin would just have to steal him back. At the base of the cliff I paused, but the sounds of the R’gin in the trees below spurred me on. I began to climb.

It was a challenge with my hand. I couldn’t grab the handholds properly. But fear drove me upward. I would find a way. I had to. I could jam my curled fingers into gaps in the rock, and apply pressure at just the right angle to keep them there. It worked, if I chose my spots carefully. Yes. There, and there.
I was doing it! Despite the danger, I began to feel an exhilaration in the climb. My bare toes were soon sore and bleeding, but they found their way from one outcropping to the next almost without thought. I was fifteen feet up before I knew it. Twenty feet. Twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-five.

Past my braced feet, I saw motion. I froze again, plastered against the rock. A brief flash of dark armor, a man’s shoulder, alien in its details, moved below me. I was out of his line of sight, but a sitting duck for arrows, should any of them actually look up. There was an outcropping to my left, with a dark sliver of shadow beside it. A deep fissure in the rock, almost a chimney although it petered out barely twenty feet higher. That might hide and shelter me. Thank the Skygod it was to the left, because I needed all the strength of my good fingers to pull me sideways across the rock. I jammed my scraped right hand into a narrow fissure, torqued it to the side, and swung a foot over.

Inch by painful, slow inch, I moved into that shadow. I found places to put my feet, enough support to take the strain off my tiring arms. I pressed my back to the stone behind me, worked out the most comfortable positions to hold onto, and took a slow, steadying breath. And looked down over my shoulder.

A shout from below startled me, but luckily I was well braced in my niche. A R’gin came into view, tugging Cricket out from between the rocks. I bit my lip hard. The horse would be fine, even though he was fighting the rough pull on his bridle. And thank the Earthmother I’d moved to safer ground when I had the chance. The R’gin soldiers scattered, searching, but sure enough, not one ran his eyes up the near-vertical cliffside. I set my feet more comfortably, to wait. I wished I could give my left hand a break, but didn’t dare. I did slide my right hand out of its crack and flexed the elbow for a moment. Using it that way to climb was the most useful thing I’d done with the damned thing in months, but it ached in unfamiliar ways.

Below me the R’gin were still failing to find the owner of that fine horse. They gathered for a discussion in hushed whispers too low to make out. I saw six of them, but thought I heard others moving downslope. They were all lean, wiry men with smooth beardless faces and darkened armor. The horses were dark too, blacks and two bays without white markings, sleek-coated and smaller than Cricket.

There was a sudden clash of noise on the hillside. I heard shouts, and the ring of metal. The men below me raised their heads, and then whirled. A group of our soldiers charged out of the trees, weaving through the boulders at a gallop. The R’gin met them, swords swinging. The bulk of the battle heaved and roiled, in and out of my range of view, men and horses jostling. The sounds were loud and yet thinned and attenuated by the air below me. I saw a R’gin fall from his horse, saw one of our soldiers slumped over his saddlebow, blood on his back.

I felt detached, most of my attention focused on remaining still and bracing myself on the rocks. The sounds were moving off a bit. Below me, Tobin suddenly came into view at a gallop. He reined Dark in on his haunches, staring into my empty hiding place between the boulders. He hissed what was probably a curse, and looked around wildly. He too never looked up.

Tobin turned Dark slowly, his eyes scanning the ground, and the spaces between and under the giant boulders on the hillside. I hesitated, not wanting to attract attention yet. The fighting clearly wasn’t yet over. As I watched, I saw an unmounted R’gin soldier pull himself up onto the large boulder behind Tobin, holding a short sword. From the way he moved, I thought his leg pained him, but he was alert, the hilt steady in his hand. Slowly and silently, the R’gin slithered forward over the stone’s massive flat top toward Tobin.

I could call out. But Tobin would probably look up my way, which would distract him and put his back to the R’gin even more. I needed to throw something, a stone, to guide his attention. It was doable. Probably not to hit the R’gin, but to at least turn Tobin that way, to warn him. I could jam my right hand in again and let go with my left, grab a flake of stone and, and…