Ruby Guardian (23 page)

Swallowing the retort he would have liked to utter, Vambran instead asked, “Arbeenok?”

The man jerked his head in the direction of another creature before moving off, ending the conversation. The creature he had indicated was accompanying the rest of the group but standing off alone, by himself. Vambran stared, for he had never seen such a beast before.

Arbeenok could almost have been an ape of some sort. His body was completely covered in light-colored

fur, and he had large, tufted ears that rose straight up from the sides of his head. He was immensely muscular, with his neck as broad as his head. He had a barrel chest and thick, bulging arms protruding from a crude leather shirt. His legs were equally robust, even though they were encased in similar leather trousers. The mercenary officer noticed beads and feathers woven into Arbeenok’s hair, and he carried a trio of javelins and a wicked-looking knife that jutted through a belt around his waist.

Though he was obviously physically powerful, the creature seemed reserved, almost shy, to Vambran. The lieutenant studied Arbeenok for a moment. The creature stood very still, his head cocked to one side, as though listening. Vambran could hear nothing, though, and when he noticed the mercenary staring at him, Arbeenok turned and strode away, vanishing into the trees ahead.

The rest was brief, and soon enough, Vambran found himself swaying once more back and forth as his bearers walked. He pleaded with the leader at one point to let them down, that he and the other Crescents would cooperate if they were allowed to walk, but all he got for his offer was a threat of forced silence if he did not be quiet himself. Sighing, he tried to find a way to ease the ache in his shoulders and neck.

The entourage’s journey took them deep into the woods, and though Vambran could hardly make it out sometimes, they were following a trail of sorts. At two different points along their route, they were forced to cross a sizeable stream that blocked their path, but each time, a carefully placed log permitted them to traverse the waterway easily, though for those hanging upside down, the crossing was nerve-racking. Vambran noticed that the trees on either side of the makeshift bridge had many markings carved into their bark.

Signposts? he wondered. Or messages?

After the sun was well up in the sky, the group stopped for a longer rest. Though the druids refused to untie the Crescents, they did feed Vambran and the others a bit of food. The female elf with the reddish hair came and knelt down beside the lieutenant, a leaf cupped in her hand. Inside, Vambran could see squirming slugs, freshly dug from out of the earth. The elf held one up and brought it to his lips. The mercenary officer did not want anything to do with it. The idea of consuming the still-living thing was repulsive to him, and he turned his head away.

His attendant frowned and shrugged, then popped the slug into her own mouth. “You will not eat?” she asked as she chewed. Her accent was odd, lilting and musical. “The food is fresh,” she added, showing him the leaf in her hand.

“A little too fresh, actually,” Vambran replied. “There’s jerky in my pack. I’ll eat some of that, if you don’t mind.”

The elven maiden made a face. “Dried meat,” she said distastefully. “It has no … goodness,” she said, struggling to find the word. “This is better.”

Vambran sighed, but he did not feel like continuing the argument. His stomach rumbled and he opened his mouth and allowed her to press one of the wriggling slugs onto his tongue.

If I can eat a live spider, he told himself….

Gingerly, the mercenary officer bit down on the slug and felt its fluids bathe his tongue. He grimaced, but surprisingly, the taste was not as bad as he had thought. Before he could think too much about what it was that he was eating, Vambran chewed up the morsel and swallowed it.

“Another?” the elf asked. Vambran nodded, and she fed him two more. Then she offered him a drink from his own waterskin. Vambran was thankful for

the chance to wash the remnants of the slugs out of his mouth. Regardless of their taste, he didn’t think he’d ever make a habit of eating them. Once the rest break was over, the druids hoisted their prisoners to their shoulders and the group was on its way once more.

After traveling for perhaps another hour, the entourage came upon a large section of exposed rock that jutted up out of the ground. The leader guided them all to a narrow crack that ascended like a ramp to the top of the formation. Vambran eyed the walls of the crevice, close in on either side of himself, as his bearers hauled him through it. More than once, his shoulders scraped painfully against the stone as he swayed along, but the two druids carrying him did not seem to care. Finally, they emerged onto an open, sunny platform of stone, surrounded on three sides with rock walls that were dotted with caves. There were several other individuals there ahead of the group and signs that the place was inhabited on a regular basis.

A small fire burned in a shallow pit near the center of the open area, though the pit was wide enough to accommodate a much larger conflagration, and apparently did from time to time, judging from the ash and soot that coated it. Several large logs had been dragged up to the platform, too, and those served as benches for a number of folk who sat around the fire, talking quietly or sipping at steaming mugs of something that boiled in a kettle. Several rugs and mats woven of rushes and vines covered much of the surface of the platform, and numerous buckets and skins were set off to one side, most of them holding water.

As Vambran and the other prisoners were hauled into the middle of the open area, the folk who had already been there eyed them with some interest. The six prisoners were unceremoniously set down on the

rock. Vambran groaned as he settled flat, feeling the strain in his back and neck finally ease. He closed his eyes for a moment and shifted his bound wrists and ankles about, trying to encourage circulation to return to them.

When he opened them again, a woman, a human of middling years with dark brown hair woven into braids that were interspersed with feathers and bits of colored stone on leather thongs, was standing over Vambran, studying him with a critical eye that was a piercing emerald color. She said something to the man in the same undecipherable language the lieutenant had heard previously, from the scouts. His guide answered her with a long explanation of some sort, gesturing more than once at Vambran as he did so. The woman frowned and shook her head, but the man grew animated, even angry, seeming to insist on something.

Just when it seemed that the pair might actually come to blows, another figure approached, hopping down from somewhere previously unseen atop the cliff face. It was Arbeenok who approached cautiously, nodding repeatedly, as though he wanted to speak but was afraid of interrupting. At his arrival, the other two quieted, and the woman gestured for him to speak.

His voice was deep and resonant, rich and warm. He spoke in the same language the other two had been conversing in, which Vambran had come to assume was the language of the druids. Whatever Arbeenok was saying, the other two listened respectfully. At one point, he gestured toward the lieutenant and his companions, then toward the caves lining the cliff walls of the area.

Vambran turned and peered at the openings in the cliffs and noticed for the first time that some of them had been secured with stout cage walls set right into

the stone. He could see no visible doors or means of moving the frames, which were constructed of stout saplings. He turned back to the conversation, wondering just what fate the trio was deciding for him and the other captured Crescents.

Finally, the woman nodded and waved toward the caves. The human scowled and shook his head, but she made a sharp, cutting motion that indicated the end of the conversation. The man turned, still scowling, and motioned to his associates, who hoisted Vambran and the others into the air once more.

The druids lugged the prisoners toward one of the caged-off caves. As they drew near, the frowning man muttered something, while at the same time gesturing at one of the saplings. The timber creaked and groaned as it began to magically curl up, and Vambran could see that both ends had previously been set into round holes cut into the stone of the cave mouth. As the slender tree warped, it dropped to the ground, leaving a gap between its neighbors large enough for a man to fit snugly through.

The bearers stepped through the narrow gap, into the cool, dark interior of the cage. Vambran was once again dropped roughly to the stone floor on his back. One of his carriers released the pole running the length of his torso while the other slid it out from beneath the lieutenant’s bonds, leaving him free to stretch or sit up, but still securely tied.

The other five Crescents were treated similarly, until all six of the mercenaries were inside the cave, which was just large enough to accommodate them. The druids stepped back out, and the leader picked up the curved wooden pole he had magically bent. Once more, he wove a spell upon the timber then held it in place as it popped and creaked back into its original, straight form, positioned in the holes, effectively jailing the Crescents.

The lieutenant looked out at his jailor, wondering if he was going to learn the reason he and his soldiers had been brought there, but the man seemed uninterested in him any longer, turning and stalking away. The woman, however, approached the prison. She peered through at the six of them there, as though thinking. Finally, she began to speak.

“Arbeenok has studied the portents of the earth and sky and says a great death is coming. He says you may be the key to stopping this great death. Even so, you are a soldier, and all soldiers are the enemies of the woodlands. Thus, we will suffer you to live, scions ‘of Arrabar, but you are our prisoners and will remain so until such time as Arbeenok comes to understand the meaning behind his visions. Should you try to flee, you will be hunted down and slain.”

It was the screaming of gulls so nearby that drew Emriana to consciousness, that and the sun beginning to burn her skin. She

became aware of the fact that she was half in the water, for the rhythmic bobbing motion of the tide gently bounced her against something hard. Everything stank of fish.

The girl groaned and tried to open her eyes, but the brightness of the light hurt too much, so she just lay there for a long time, trying to remember what had happened, how she had come to be there. Everything was mind-numbingly fuzzy, though, and it hurt to think. Finally, a flash of memory from the night before, a vague sense of danger, jarred her more awake, and she tried to rise.

Emriana discovered that she was tangled in some discarded fishing netting that had

been wrapped around a piling at the wharf. Somehow she wound up sitting in the mesh, as though it were a hammock, though her body was half submerged in the filthy water beneath the pier. The sun was canted at an odd angle, catching her face in just the right way so that, though she was actually beneath the wooden causeway, it shone directly on her.

Extracting herself from the ruined netting turned out to be harder than she would have imagined, for she was thoroughly tangled in it, and for a brief moment she wished she had one of her daggers. Then it all came flooding back, the memories of the alley and the carpet, of sinking to the bottom of the bay. She almost screamed right then and there. She stared around herself, wondering how she had managed to escape the confines of the rug and rise to the surface, and even more amazing was how she was able to work herself into the netting so that she wouldn’t drown. She didn’t remember any of it.

Carefully, the girl disentangled herself from the mesh and settled into the water. She then swam around to the end of the pier and found a partial ladder that she could use to climb up onto the surface of the platform. Once she was out of the water, she surveyed herself and discovered that she was missing one boot and that her left sleeve was torn almost completely off. Other than that, she seemed to be intact, though her head began to pound as she moved around. She cast one last look down into the water and thought she might barely be able to make out an elongated form, like that of a rolled up carpet, perhaps a dozen feet below the surface. The imagery made her shudder, and she was just about to turn away, when she saw a glint of movement.

She knelt down and stared, certain that she had seen a figure moving through the shallows beneath the pier, a slender and graceful form that was more

human than fish. But there was nothing there when she looked again, though she remained there for several moments more. Wondering if she had imagined it, Emriana rose to her feet again and tried to figure out where she was.

In doing so, she failed to notice a head break the surface for a brief moment, with delicate features that were angular and tinted blue. Those features watched the girl stagger away for a step or two; then the head vanished beneath the surface once more.

It did not take Emriana long to navigate her way off the pier and onto dry land and before much longer, she began to see where she was. The section of Arrabar where she and Xaphira had ventured the night before was nearby, and even in the daylight, the girl thought better than to pass through there alone, especially in her condition. She knew she looked a sight, and she doubted she could put up much of a struggle should anyone decide to accost her. Even with the circuitous route she chose to follow, she drew more than a few strange looks from the early-morning shoppers and strollers who were out and about.

As she struggled up the hills upon which Arrabar had been built, working her way slowly from the dock area to the nicer part of town, Emriana tried to consider everything that had happened. Remembering that Xaphira had disappeared worried her greatly, and she pulled her pendant out and tried to contact her aunt again.

Again there was no reply for her efforts.

The thought that Aunt Xaphira was already dead nearly made the girl drop to her knees in the middle of the street, but she resisted the weakness in her legs and pushed on, determined to return home and let everyone know what had happened. She imagined what her mother would say about her wandering in after being out all night, but truthfully, Emriana did