The Farwalker's Quest (21 page)

“And you'll take us home when we say. Whether we figure out the summons or not.”

His amusement faded. He dipped his head. “Yes. I won't try to persuade you again.” His gaze slid once more to the red mark beside her, and he ran a hand over his mouth. “I can't speak for him.”

“I know. That's okay.”

“We're agreed, then.” Scarl's mouth twitched. “Do you want blood on those vows?”

Ariel groaned.

“I was joking,” he added quickly. “I think we've seen enough blood for a while.”

“For forever,” Zeke muttered.

Scarl's eyes found him. “I hope you're right.” He started to add something else. Changing his mind, he tightened his jaw.

“Can we rest here awhile first?” Ariel thought of the abbey, but she suspected that Ash would gently turn them away.

“Until you feel strong enough to walk.” Scarl cast her a wry grin. “I somehow lost my horse.”

She couldn't bring herself to smile back.

“I want something to eat anyway,” Zeke announced. “Before we go anywhere.”

Scarl rose to his feet. “I'll work on that.”

Thus, long after Namingfest Day, Ariel took up the Farwalker name. It was assigned by a ghost, not won through a test, but she'd already faced far more pain and fear than any Naming test was intended to hold. She had little idea what her trade would require, nor could she look to any master to follow. By the next morning, though, she wanted to lose the ache of her arm in the rhythm of walking. Her instincts were emerging, even if she wasn't aware of them yet.

When she announced that she was ready to go, Scarl appraised their packs and transferred their heaviest items into his own.

“Where are you taking us, anyway?” Zeke asked him.

Scarl straightened and shouldered his pack. “To the best Storian I know, one I trust with our lives. He works in a place
called Hartwater, about a week's journey from here. If anyone can figure out the dart's summons, it's him. So come on, Farwalker.” He offered his hand to help her rise from her seat in the dirt. “Your future awaits.”

Even his courage would have failed if he'd known where the Farwalker's path would take them. By then, though, Ariel had taken the lead.

Zeke lay on a boulder, his cheek against the sun-heated rock. Ariel and Scarl rested in the shade at its base, licking ground-melon juice from their fingertips. The tart liquid would have pricked tears from Ariel's eyes, but her body didn't have the moisture to spare. Over the past several days they had traipsed out of the mountains and into an arid waste of blowing sand and stone outcrops that Scarl called the Drymere. The wild melons helped relieve not only their hunger but the dogged thirst they could not escape.

“Want the last melon, Zeke?” Ariel called from where she sat cross-legged in the sand.

Zeke pushed himself from the stone and slid down to the ground. Ariel rose to brush rock grit from his cheek and hand him the palm-size orange fruit.

He took it automatically. “Men are coming this way,” he told Scarl. “More than one.”

The Finder, who had dropped to his haunches to eat, shot to his feet. He squinted to scan the horizon.

“Where did you see them?” he asked.

Zeke studied the groundmelon. “I didn't,” he mumbled. “The stone told me.”

“Don't sound so embarrassed,” Scarl replied. “Did it say where?”

Zeke raised his splinted forearm to point north. Ariel saw nothing in the distance but puddles of heat. As best she could guess, the direction he indicated was almost opposite Canberra Docks, many miles and mountains away. The approaching men weren't chasing behind them, but might cross their path as Scarl led her and Zeke toward Hartwater.

“How far away?” Scarl asked.

Zeke wrinkled his face. “Distance is hard. Stones don't think about motion like we do. Half a day? Maybe less.”

Scarl's gaze fell on Ariel, his eyes betraying his concern that the men were coming for her. “Best move on,” he said. He gestured toward a rock ridgeline that had teased them for hours, seeming to retreat as they made their way toward it. “We need to reach the water hole before they do. Just in case.” He crouched and motioned to Ariel.

She scowled. Scarl had taken to carrying her on his shoulders not long after they'd entered the Drymere. He'd crossed it before, he knew where water could be found, and the crossing would save them valuable time they might need to answer the telling dart's summons, if they could figure it out. He'd neglected to account, however, for traveling companions whose legs were not as long nor as hardened as his. They trudged without complaining, but together the three of them couldn't move quickly enough between water holes to prevent the spring sun from dangerously parching their bodies. It annoyed Ariel, though, that Scarl bore her, but never Zeke, when he wanted to move fast.

“I can walk quicker now that I've rested,” she said. When he started to argue, she added, “And if I'm on your shoulders, and they're closer than Zeke thinks, they'll be able to see us from farther away.”

“Good point. At least let me take your pack, then, stubborn.” He stuffed her meager bag into his own, and they set off. Ariel panted to keep up. She pretended not to see the Finder glancing sideways and slowing his pace.

“The stone said something else, something odd,” Zeke volunteered, also huffing. “Maybe I didn't understand right, but I think it said the men forgot with their hands and their feet.”

“They for—? Oh.” Scarl's strides faltered, then resumed.

“You know what it means?”

Scarl didn't answer. Having grown used to his taciturn ways, Ariel and Zeke simply turned their attention to the novelties around them. Never having been in a desert before, they were constantly amazed at the snake tracks and beetles, the spiked plants and odd patterns they found in the sand. Sharing their discoveries helped them forget the sticky thirst in their mouths.

Eventually, Scarl broke the silence. “Zeke doubted once that I was a Finder,” he said. “Do you remember?”

They nodded.

“I apprenticed for a while as a Storian.”

“You did not!” The disbelief burst from Ariel before she could stop it. She couldn't match her shadowy and usually silent protector to the only Storian she knew. Old Bellam was chatty and fond of tea at a hearth. Ariel doubted he could have killed a fish flopping on the sand. She'd seen Scarl kill a man.

He laughed at her reaction. “I'm sure your doubt is no compliment. But it's true.”

“How old are you, Scarl?” Zeke wondered.

Scarl hesitated, either adding or considering whether to answer. “Twenty-nine.”

Zeke and Ariel exchanged a glance. More than twice their age sounded plenty old, but from Scarl's closed, careworn face, both would have guessed older.

“I'm sure your Storian taught you about the Blind War,” he said. “Did he tell you much about what happened after, once sight returned?”

“Not really,” Ariel said, trying to remember.

“Only how the trades grew,” Zeke added, “but that was mostly while everyone was still blind.”

Scarl looked sidelong at them both. “We'll pretend my name is Scarl Storian, then, as it once was. I will tell you a story. It concerns the men we might meet. And it concerns you, Ariel.”

She met his eyes. He looked away first, to the horizon.

“Imagine this,” he said, using the opening to so many stories. “The Blind War has ended, its causes forgotten. For the first time in many long years, babies are being born who can see! The generations before them never lost hope that sight would return, so they'd devised clever tests, and soon the young children who pass speak of stars in the sky, distant birds, rainbows—things their parents know only from stories but the youngsters sense through their eyes. Yet some of the things that they're seeing confuse them: machines with mysterious purposes, devices their parents have heard of but no longer know how to use.”

“They must have figured out a few things,” Zeke said.

“More or less,” Scarl said. “But the telling darts are a rather sad example. They seemed to be nearly alive. If you held one
just so, symbols appeared and would shift with your thoughts. All that was needed to send it was to think of the receiver and fling it into the air. The Essence seemed to take care of the rest. Yet the meanings of so many symbols were lost, the darts became more of a plaything than a tool.”

“Or a way to summon a Healtouch,” Ariel said, remembering her mother's story.

“That's a better use than most,” Scarl said. “And even things like the darts that worked for a while soon stopped, their power exhausted, or the knowledge and materials for repairing them lost. The Allcrafts didn't have time to fuss with curiosities. They could barely keep up with the basic goods needed most to survive.”

Zeke sighed wistfully. “All that great stuff lying around—flying houses and darts and fire in a jar. I would have tried harder to fix 'em.”

“There was a reason they didn't,” Scarl said. “They weren't sure those wonders weren't responsible, in some way, for the war. And once the babies who could see had grown up, they were terrified of repeating their forebears' mistake. Life was so very much harder without sight. Nobody wanted to fall back into darkness, so few would risk meddling with anything left from the old age. What still worked, people busted. They collected up every device they could find and destroyed it.”

“I wish they would have saved some of the bikes,” Ariel said wistfully. She'd always dreamed of coming across one overgrown in the woods. Bellam's tales had inspired a longing in her, a wish to speed over the earth, hither and yon. Now, struck by this reminder, Ariel wondered if her interest in bikes had been an early hint of her Farwalker trade.

“Some people wished more than that,” Scarl went on. “A
few believed we could all learn a very hard lesson. They argued for keeping as much understanding and as many devices as we could recover. If we were careful, they thought, we could use what was left to make life better, without fighting over the marvels or turning them to foul purpose. Those people—mostly Storians—were outnumbered by the rest. We've been struggling to survive ever since.”

Ariel said, “But that sounds like … like maybe you made a mistake while reciting in class, so you just gave up and stopped going to classes at all.”

“This had much the same effect,” Scarl said. “It's been called the Forgetting, and we don't even know what we've lost.”

They walked on in silence beneath the searing sun, contemplating legends of marvels and magic. At last, Ariel interrupted the lonely swishing their feet made in the sand.

“Your story … you said it concerned me.”

Scarl started. “I'd better finish it, I guess. Perhaps you see why I ended up as a Finder.” He glanced toward the horizon. His feet stopped. “We have trouble first, though.”

Ariel followed his gaze. Five black blotches swam through the distant heat waves, first close together and then farther apart. Their motion gave them away as more than a mirage.

Scarl dropped to his knees in the sand. “Sit down and hold still. I don't want them to see you, if it's not already too late. And don't speak for a moment. I need to concentrate.” He dug in his pockets and pulled out a clear disk the width of a plum. Zeke murmured appreciatively. Ariel had seen it before only in glimpses, but she'd guessed what Scarl cradled now in his palm: a Finder's glass.

He tipped it to get the angle he wanted and then stared at it
intently. A picture was supposed to appear inside it, Ariel thought. She watched the glass as closely as he did—and surely she imagined the red sparks that burst in its center.

“Stop looking into it, Ariel,” Scarl said, without turning his head. “You're interfering.”

“I am?” A thrill of excitement gave way to the sense she'd been scolded. She gazed instead at the menacing blobs on the horizon. When she glimpsed a motion from the corner of her eye, she glanced back at Scarl. He'd dropped the glass back into his pocket.

“There's a big dead tree not far over that rise.” Scarl tilted his head toward it. “Since we're not going to make the water hole in time, we'll go there.” He gave a few curt instructions. Nervous enough to obey, Ariel hopped up to cling piggyback along with his pack. Since Scarl couldn't carry them both, he draped one arm over Zeke's shoulder, keeping the boy so close they sometimes tripped on each other. Thus the three of them might look from a distance like only one body.

They jogged in the direction of the unseen dead tree. Jouncing, Ariel began to doubt Scarl's finding. But at last they topped a dune with sun-bleached wooden bones jutting from the slope below. The dry winds had uprooted the skeleton and piled sand against its trunk. Scarl dropped Ariel near the snarl of roots.

He scooped at the sand along the trunk with his hands. “Dig yourselves in here like this, and cover back up as much as you can. Don't choke on sand.”

Zeke obeyed, using his splint like a hoe. Ariel waited while Scarl returned her pack and offered a water jar, half full, from his own.

“Here's what we've got left,” he said. “Try not to drink it all.”

Her hands lifted to take it. Scarl didn't let go.

“Listen, and hear me,” he said. “I'm going to cover some tracks, and then I'm walking out to meet them. If it's easy, I'll be back soon and we'll be on our way toward Hartwater again.” His tongue ran over his lips, which were chapped from the sun. “If it's not easy, I may take longer. I might even bring them here and pretend to discover you—or betray you. Do you understand me? I will just be pretending, but it must be convincing. And you must be convincing as well.”