Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) (37 page)

Not
much to argue about there.

CHAPTER
22

We
crossed the plateau and the foothills, Lor and Nance traveling easily, both old
hands at riding horses and sleeping on hard surfaces. I traveled miserably,
with the chill seeping into my bruises. I had bruises everywhere.

When
we reached the stream, it was winter different, wider, flowing rapidly, edged with
leafless trees and dead brambles. I would never have recognized it but Lor led
me to a path that ran from the stream's edge through the little forest.

“The
clearing is that way. Would have tied his horse there.”

I
turned slowly, studying everything, muddy water, muddy edge, muddy path, and
tried to imagine the place hot and dry with summer.

“That
path runs to a large clearing?”

“They
always pitch their tents there, then come through here to get water.”

“All
right, then he was standing where you are and I was in that direction.”

I
walked slowly with the stream's bank on my left, kept going, reached up with my
right arm and pushed aside dry branches that all seemed to stick out at the
exact height to scratch my face. I didn't remember that part. The water had
been still then, barely moving, full of floating leaves. Lower.

Now
the stream covered the path, reached almost to the thicket where I had
scratched my arms searching for berries. The hard dry path I'd followed was now
soft mud beneath the water's surface. The brown water spread up under overhangs
of dead branches forcing me to turn and weave my way behind the edging thicket.

Still,
this had to be the right direction and if I kept walking, no.

I
walked straight ahead, which should have kept my back to Lor and Nance.
Instead, there they were in front of me. Facing me.

“What
are you doing?” Nance asked.

I
stopped, stared at her, then looked at the stream. It was now on my right.
Somehow I had turned around and was walking back toward them.

Had
I walked in a circle around a tree? Probably. My PBS nature trek skills were
zip.

Shaking
my head, I turned again, held up my right arm to fend off the pesky branches,
and followed the water's edge. When I reached the snarl of vines that had
stopped me the first time I looked carefully in both directions, kept the
silver trunk of an alder in sight, cut in around it, touched it with my fingers
as I passed, walked another half dozen steps, and damn.

“Something
curves here,” I said.

I
had grown up in Mudflat and knew that seeing is no reason for believing. The
Daughter and her consort, that poor couple, probably seasoned hikers because
they carried a first aid kit, must have thought themselves losing touch with
sanity. I knew better.

Nance
said, “You're at the end of the world. There's nothing beyond.”

“Maybe.”
Or maybe I was insane. Maybe I dreamed that other world of paved city streets
and electric lights and long hot showers, but God, I hoped not.

I
sat down on a fallen tree trunk. It was a bit damp but we hadn't brought camp
chairs and I sure wasn't going to sit on a horse. Never again.

Although
the stream was wider, the distance between the lines of trees on either side
seemed about right. Imagine leaves on overhanging limbs, imagine a bright sky,
imagine looking up into it, add the path. Must be a thousand places in the
forest that looked identical, but Lor knew this country the way I knew the bus
routes in Seattle.

If
this was the favorite campsite for summer hunting trips planned to entertain
the warlord's son, and Lor said it was, then this was the place I got in. So
there must be a way to get out.

The
stream seemed to meander on into the distance. It didn't take any sharp turn.

“Do
you go boating on this thing?” I asked.

“What's
that?”

“Boats.
You know. Something that floats. A raft, maybe?”

“Floats
on the water? Like the leaves? What for?”

Okay,
these folks really were not Viking descendants despite nature gods, blond
complexions, and numerous Scandinavian communities in the Northwest. What all those
good people had in common was a love of boats.

I
thought about this, but not too hard, because while I watched the woods through
half-closed eyes my thoughts darted in any number of desperate directions. I
even watched birds flitting around, noticed the movement, and didn't care what
kind of birds they were.

I
had been in the water. Walking? Had I taken more than a few steps? And then I
waded out.

And
there he'd been, on the bank above me.

Where
had I gone in the water? How wide was the path, how far from the trees? Did it
matter?

The
small flock of birds circled. I was so bored I counted them as they swooped low
above the stream. Catching bugs, I guess. Or maybe practicing swooping for the
next bird Olympics. Who knew? But, wait, what just happened there? I hadn't
blinked, or not that slowly.

Half
of the flock was gone.

They
didn't fly away and they definitely didn't dive into the water. There had been
a couple dozen of them, a small flock circling and now, while I stared, there
were only a few, seven to be exact.

And
then they were gone, also, but I saw them go, flying across the stream and into
the trees. I had not seen the others go up, down or sideways.

They
simply disappeared.

Wasn't
that just my luck? I knew the exact spot where they disappeared, oh goodie,
right above the center of the stream.

And
here was I with folks who had never built a raft.

Hated
to ask, but I knew I had to do it.

“Lor,
how deep do you figure that stream is in the middle?”

“Come
up more than waist high.”

Sounded
right. I'd waded into it in summer and it barely reached above my knees. Waist
high was okay except this wasn't summer and I was already freezing out in the
dry air.

“I'm
going to wade down the middle.”

And
then, because I didn't want them floundering about, diving under the surface to
search endlessly for me, which I knew they would do, I added, “I think I see
the gateway. If I'm right, I'll disappear. Don't worry and don't hunt for me.
I'll be fine. I'm pretty sure I know where I am now.”

Two
pairs of pale eyebrows rose toward hairlines.

Lor
was silent but Nance said, “Get wet in winter, get the fever.”

Worse
yet, I'd have wet feet all the way home. Wet wool pants would be bad enough,
but soaked boots would be too much. I pulled off my boots and tied them together
by their laces, then hung them over my shoulder.

Then
I walked to the edge of the stream, put in a bare foot, bit back a shriek
because oh yes, it was barely melting ice, that stream.

Unfortunately,
there didn't seem to be an alternate choice and the old “you do what you have
to do” line covered my situation. I waded on in, step by grim step, sucking mud
underfoot, slime and cold seeping higher and higher up my legs. I pulled off my
wool cloak and rolled it up so I could hold it above the water. And help, the
water reached my waist. Holding my arms up, I reached the center of the stream
and waded north.

Something
splashed behind me.

“Go
back, Nance,” I said through chattering teeth.

A
branch slapped at my face. I tried to push it away but when I raised my arm, my
cloak bundle slid sideways and my scarf tangled with the laces of my boots.
Everything would be soaked. I struggled to grab the bootlaces on my shoulder
without dropping the cloak, stepped on something awful and tried not to think
what. I walked into a spider web, brushed at it and realized my hands were not
only wet, they were muddy and something burned at the corner of my eye,
probably the mud from my fingers and where had I lost my gloves?

One
misery after another. Where was I?

And
then I heard the splashing again and I turned around.

She
was plugging right along, teeth gritted, little face scrunched up with
determination, the water almost up to her chin.

“Nance,
go back.”

I
said it and then I looked past her to shout to Lor who wasn't there. I turned,
looked at the banks all around me. We hadn't come more than twenty or thirty
feet, but I could not see Lor or the horses. We hadn't come around a bend.

“Rain
approaching,” Nance said.

“Rain?”
I looked up at the gray sky, a thin low cloud cover.

“I
hear the thunder.”

Thunder?
No, it was a familiar whistling roar.

“That's
a plane,” I said, then got it.

Good
for me, bad for Nance. But still, the gateway seemed to be about where it had
been last summer. If I walked much further, I would never find it again, but
right now?

“Nance,
you're outside now. In the outlands. The outworld. Whatever. Hear those sounds?
That's not thunder, that's engine noise. You need to go back. Turn around and
walk right up the middle of the stream. Try to stay exactly on the way we
came.”

She
had a funny puzzled expression. Stared at me for several seconds and I could
practically see her brain whirling through ideas.

“This
is your side? Here?” she asked.

“That's
right.”

“Good.
I will never have to see my stupid cousin again.”

“What?”

“He
cannot give me away to some horrid old scum.”

Oh
lord, what now, what was I supposed to do with her? Okay, she wasn't an alien,
not from off-planet or anything, but she also wasn't anyone I could explain.
And when she tired of my world, then what? I would never find this exact stream
again. Considering how seldom strangers appeared in their land, this was
probably the only gate.

“You
won't be able to return unless you return right now.”

“Good.”

“Nance,
what about Lor? We dragged him with us.”

“He'll
go home to his own village,” Nance said, but for the first time she looked
unsure and her lower lip quivered. “He will be happier there. And rich, too,
with three horses.”

Couldn't
argue with that. Besides, I was standing in cold water in the middle of winter
somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. My choices were narrow. Stay here and die
sneezing or move my butt toward the low roar in the distance, that wonderful
sound of my favorite pollution source, traffic.

I
could hear it now and where there's traffic there's always a ride for two
shivering young women who stumble out of the forest with a long wordy tale of
getting lost on a hike.

I
stopped for one last look at the woods. I didn't want to look but Tarvik was
back there somewhere and so was a big piece of my heart. Once he had asked me
what happened to the tarbaby and I didn't know the answer. Now I guessed I'd
never know.

Maybe
this was only a few months later but I felt a decade older and a thousand years
wiser. The Decko brothers might be waiting for me in Seattle. Or they might
have moved on to other scams. It didn't matter. They were nothing compared to
the barbarian brothers. They didn't have swords or poison potions. They didn't
have armies. They wouldn't try to behead me, because despite the hands-off
Mudflat policy, the police don't ignore things like that.

And
most important, the Deckos lived in the land of hot showers, shampoo, coffee,
and I'd either override their scare tactics or figure out a way to get help.
Had to be easier than ducking barbarians. No way could a couple of bad boys
intimidate me any more.

Anything
to get back to the smog belt.

“Okay,”
I said to my short companion, and we grabbed onto the trunk of a tree leaning
out over the stream and hauled ourselves up the bank. “Follow my lead, don't
scream when we get into a big noisy box that moves, and most of all, let me do
the talking. Okay?”

“Okay,”
she said.

I
stopped to wipe my feet dry with my scarf, then pulled on my dry boots.
Wonderful.

“Do
you live in a castle or a hut?” she asked. “It doesn't matter, I can live
anywhere, truly, and I can cook for you.”

“I
live in a house.”

We
picked our way through ferns and between fir trees, heading for the highway
roar.

“What's
a house?”

“Halfway
between a hut and a castle.”

“That
sounds nice. Do you live alone?”

“A
troll rents the basement.”

She
smiled that vague smile of the totally confused.

“That's
nice,” she said.

EPILOGUE

For
three days he wandered through the forest, the long road within sight.

He
wound around the silver trunks of alders, their branches sprouting new leaves,
and tramped through the familiar undergrowth of ferns beneath the shadows of
the fir trees. When exhaustion stopped him, he slept curled against a fallen
log or in whatever hollow he could find that gave him any protection from the
steady drizzle of rain. Once, when the road was empty, he climbed up to it,
crouched down, took off his gloves and ran his hands across its surface.

Flat,
black, hard. Was this tar?

Then
he heard another beast approaching and hurled himself into the long
pebble-filled pit that ran beside the road. Above him he heard the beast's
roar, its odd squeal, and he felt vibrations and the blast of displaced air as
it rushed past him. When he lifted his head he saw its back and that it ran on
wheels like the barrows and realized that whatever it was, it was not alive.
But there was nothing pulling or pushing it.

At
night the giant barrows sped down the road with eyes as blinding as the sun,
shooting out arrows of light, and then they were gone and the road was once
more black beneath the dripping skies.

After
three days of walking through the woods and following the road, he began to
understand the wheeled things came in different shapes and sizes, had different
sounds and smells, and weren't hunting him. He was exhausted, his long wool
cloak and his boots soaked, and although the cold didn't bother him, he was
used to it, his food pouch was empty. He felt lightheaded and knew he was
losing strength.