Renegade, Page 3

  Darsal couldn’t stand this a moment longer. “Will you please stop that?”

  “Stop what?” Silvie asked.

  “The boards are screaming bloody death. I’m trying to think!”

  “Then think without being so sensitive,” Silvie retorted. “I’m sorry that Billos was so selfish to leave you behind in his betrayal of us all, but you don’t need to take it out on me.”

  In that moment Darsal wanted to reach out and slap Silvie’s pretty little face. She, with her man standing pompous in the corner, loyal to the bone. But Billos was as loyal as Johnis, even if he did express that loyalty with more subtlety.

  “He didn’t betray us,” Darsal snapped. “He’s forcing the issue as any good leader would do.”

  “Forcing the issue by breaking his word,” Johnis said, walking back from the window.

  “And did you break your word to Thomas of Hunter in the desert this last week?”

  Her accusation caught him flat-footed.

  “Of course, you did. So watch what you say against Billos, both of you! As of yet he hasn’t gotten anyone killed.”

  She stood and crossed to the same window Johnis had parked himself by. Outside the village bustled with people as the afternoon sun slipped farther into the western sky. The nightly celebration would soon sweep the beach. Song and dance and stew over blazing fires—with the Horde snatching life from them faster than they could make it, any excuse for a celebration of what remained was not only justified, but demanded.

  But Darsal had no life left to celebrate. Not without Billos. He should have known better than to leave her in this fretful state. If and when she did catch up to him, she would wring his neck!

  “We can’t stay here,” she said.

  “We have to,” said Johnis.

  “We have to find another book.”

  “You talk as if it’s a matter of going to market—just go out and select another book. And we can’t undermine Thomas.”

  “You had no problem undermining him when it served your own—”

  “And I was wrong!” he snapped. “We all know that now. I can’t—I won’t—do it again.”

  Darsal seethed. “We have to find another book and follow Billos. You know it’s the only way!”

  “For all we know Billos will pop out of thin air right here, in a few moments.”

  “We can’t just stay here,” Darsal repeated. “Elyon has given us an order. Our mission is to find the seven original books, four of which are still missing.”

  “All seven are missing, if you count the three with Billos,” Silvie said.

  Johnis sat down on the stool Darsal had vacated and crossed his arms. “We have to find the books, and we will. But we can’t just run off and defy our commander, not again. Michal will come to us. Patience.”

  This newfound loyalty to Thomas of Hunter will prevent Johnis from being as inventive as he’d been when searching for the first book, or his own mother, Darsal thought. If Johnis had proven one characteristic beyond a shadow of doubt, it was his stubbornness.

  But Darsal had no choice. They’d left her with none. She could wait here for Billos to magically appear, which wasn’t a choice at all, or she could do what needed to be done without them. And she knew what needed to be done.

  With each passing minute the conviction to follow Johnis concerned her less. Billos’s betrayal stung more. And the urgency to join the only man she could ever love consumed her most. Johnis and Silvie had both betrayed their superiors. Maybe ir was her turn. But fooling Johnis wouldn’t be like falling off a rock.

  “You asked us to follow you to the end of the earth,” Darsal snapped. “And we did. You demanded we spare the Horde, and we did. Each time you were right. Now you say sit and wait. Are you right this time?”

  He shifted his eyes away. “Would I have said it if I didn’t think so? Based on what I know, yes, I think so. Silvie?”

  Silvie shrugged. “It has to be right.”

  Darsal pushed herself from the wall and sighed. “You’d better be, Scrapper.” She headed toward the hall. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “None of us do,” Johnis said. “Where are you going?”

  “Please tell me waiting doesn’t mean I have to hold my bladder too.”

  He regarded her for a moment, then nodded. “At the end of the hall. Silvie—”

  “You’re joking. I may be a little discouraged, but I’m not so depressed that I can’t undress myself!”

  Johnis blushed.

  Darsal tromped down the hall, entered a small bathroom, and banged the door closed. “I’m not a child, Johnis!” she yelled.

  She was moving already. With a flip of her wrist she unlatched the window, stuck her head out to check for prying eyes, and satisfied that she was in the clear, thrust herself headlong into the opening.

  She coiled so that her legs followed her torso over the sill, landed on one shoulder with a soft thud, and rolled to her feet.

  No sounds from the house, not that she could hear over her own pounding heart. She was free.

  he front of the house, where Johnis might be keeping an eye out, was to her right. So Darsal sprinted left between two other houses, then south toward the forests edge.

  Her horse. She needed the sword in its scabbard, the battle dress in its saddlebag, the water … dear Elyon, she couldn’t forget the water!

  No member of the Forest Guard wandered farther than a hundred paces from his horse—one of Thomas’s standing rules in case of a sudden attack. They had tethered their horses to a feeding trough three houses south of Johnis’s. No sign of pursuit. With any luck, Johnis and Silvie still didn’t know she’d left them. But they would, sooner rather than later.

  She grabbed a bridle from a rack next to the trough, swung onto the saddled—always saddled—steed, and urged the beast through the gate. Several passersby gave her a casual glance, but she didn’t care if they saw her go, as long as they didn’t follow. That she had gone would be—maybe already was—obvious. Where she’d gone would be less so.

  Darsal kicked the mount and galloped down the street, took a sharp left off the main road, and entered the forest.

  A hundred thoughts crowded her mind, and only one, no matter how ludicrous it seemed, felt compelling. What was slow in coming through patience could be gotten much faster through force.

  She had to make up for these last few hours of wasted time, Billos had gotten himself into terrible trouble, of that she was sure, The fact that he hadn’t returned meant one of two things: Either he couldn’t come back because he was dead, Elyon forbid, or hurt, or in some other way incapacitated. Or he didn’t want to come back.

  She moved fast, cutting back and forth every two hundred meters to slow the pursuit of even the best trackers. Not until she was a mile south and at least as far west of the village did she begin to call out for the Roush.

  “Hunter!” The name of the one who’d led Silvie and Johnis to the Roush village a week earlier,

  “Hunter!” She thought she heard a rustle, but no fuzzy, white, batlike creature flew in. “Hunter. Any Roush, I need you!”

  The words felt stupid, not unlike those who cried out for Elyon’s salvation after a bloody battle. Save us, save us, O Elyon! And always Elyon seemed to maintain his silence.

  Now she was yelling at the sky for a white creature that no one other than she, Johnis, and Silvie could see. And Billos, though Billos wasn’t here to see.

  “Hunter!”

  “You’re trying to wake the dead?”

  Darsal pulled hard on the reins and spun back. A white Roush, roughly two feet in height, with wide wings and a furry, round body, perched on a branch, watching her without concern.

  It had been a few days since Darsal had actually seen one of the creatures. And never before then. No one had seen the Roush since the Great Deception. Seeing a Roush now, so close, so real, still sent butterflies through her belly.

  “You’re alone,” the Roush said.


  “Are you Hunter?”

  “One and the same. And you’re Darsal, one of the chosen. Why are you alone?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Because I was told that you were under strict orders not to leave the village.”

  Darsal realized her mistake then. The Roush knew what was happening, which meant that Johnis would soon know what was happening. There was no way she could make it to the Roush village without Johnis, Silvie, and even Thomas knowing exactly what she was up to.

  She looked back through the trees. Still no sign of pursuit.

  You’re throwing yourself off a cliff, Darsal How far will you go for him?

  She answered herself immediately. As far as Johnis would go to find what is precious to him.

  “Are there others around?” she asked. “Like you, I mean?”

  “Roush? I can cover a Hank by myself, thank you. But, yes, there are more.”

  “Where?”

  “To the east, near the lake. Where you should be, I’m guessing. You humans always do manage to lose your way.”

  To the east, good.

  “You’re right; I should be bathing in the lake. But before I hurry back, I have a burning question.”

  “Then put it out.”

  “Put what out?”

  “Your burning question. Douse it in lake water.”

  “I was hoping you could put it out. By answering it.”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll do my best. I have been known to ‘crack the wit’ now and then.” The Roush swept down and landed on the path, grinning at his own humor, “You do understand,” the Roush said. “It’s a play on words …”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Crack the whip; crack the wit. Do you mind sitting closer, on the horse? Can you do that, or will the horse bolt?”

  “No, not a problem.” Hunter leapt up to the mount’s rump. “You see. Not a problem; none at all.”

  “Hmm. The horse doesn’t even know you’re here?”

  “Sure it does. And it could sleep like a chick with me perched on its head, for that matter. Roush are enemies of no one but Shataiki.”

  “Really? You could sit on its head? Show me.”

  Eager to demonstrate, Hunter flew around Darsal, landed with both claws between the horse’s ears, and grinned. “Not bad balance, eh? I’m not scratching him, or he would bolt. Gentle as a leaf. Now, what is that question?”

  Darsal wasn’t sure how to go about capturing a Roush, but she’d convinced herself that she had no choice. Too much was at stake. Billos needed her.

  She leaned forward as if to ask the question in a quieter voice, then shot her hands out and clamped them around the Roush’s soft belly.

  “What, no, that tickles! No, no!” Hunter began to cackle with laughter, loudly enough to wake the forest.

  Now fully committed, Darsal tugged the animal toward her and was immediately rewarded with wings whacking at the air.

  “No, no, you’re killing me! I’m too ticklish!”

  “Quiet!” Darsal tried to flip the bat creature around so that she could muzzle it, but its wide wings tangled with her arms, pulling her off balance. They both tumbled from the horse and landed in a heap.

  Hunter squawked, alarmed. “What?”

  She pounced on the creature, threw her hand over its snout, and pulled it close. “Quiet! Be quiet. I won’t hurt you, but I need you to be quiet!”

  The Roush squirmed and almost broke free, forcing Darsal to clamp her arms tighter. “Stop it! You’re going to get hurt. Settle down!”

  Hunter settled. They were tangled on the ground, human and Roush: an odd sight, to be sure.

  Darsal released its wet snout long enough to snatch a knife from her thigh and press it close to the Roush’s neck.

  “If you raise an alarm, I’ll be forced to make my point. I’m sorry. I don’t want to do this, but I need your help.”

  Hunter whimpered.

  “We’re going to get on my horse, and I’m going to have to restrain you with some rope. I won’t hurt you, but I cant leave you here to turn me in.”

  Still no words from the talkative Hunter.

  “You can speak now; just keep it down.”

  “Have you lost your sense?” the Roush demanded. “What are you doing?”

  Darsal glanced at the trees. “You’re going to help me find Teeleh.”

  illos stepped back, half his mind on the frightful scene in this white room, half on the thought there might be a hole in the air behind him through which he could make a quick escape.

  He felt behind him: nothing but empty space. A quick glance confirmed that the gateway had closed, stranding him in this small room, roughly ten paces per side.

  No sign of the books.

  He closed his hands to still a shiver and tried to make sense of the strange sight before him. The stench of fire filled his nostrils. Not wood smoke, but the kind of fire that came from burning rubber trees. Only there was no fire, not that he could see.

  The room was white, square, with something that made him think of water on one wall. Perfectly smooth, dark water contained in large rectangles. Square “pools” of water that did not spill, even though they were on their side.

  He stared at the water, distracted from the other wonders in this room. Six similar but much smaller square pools of water were fixed to the opposite wall in two rows of three.

  Billos tore his eyes from the shiny surfaces and scanned the huge, fixed monster in the room’s center. What appeared to be chairs or beds or wings of some kind surrounded a large rock.

  A perfectly smooth white rock with dark eyes set around the crown. Or was it a giant white mushroom? Black roots ran from the white rock-mushroom into the wing-beds.

  In some ways the monster looked like a spider with six legs jutting out of a round white body. Billos blinked at the thought. He touched the knife at his waist and took another step back.

  Looking at the beast, he was sure that it was indeed a massive white spider, now sleeping, but sure to waken the moment it realized that prey had fallen into its gargantuan square web.

  The flat pools were its drinking source, perhaps, which left Billos as food. He’d stepped out of the green forest into a spider’s white trap! But the beast wasn’t moving, not twitching, not breathing that he could see. Did spiders breathe? He didn’t know.

  The spider-beast had a tattoo stenciled under one of its eyes. Four letters: D-E-L-L.

  A name?

  Why would a spider have a word on its torso? Billos straightened. So then maybe it wasn’t a spider at all.

  He glanced behind his shoulder again, hoping for the gateway, but saw instead what appeared to be a white door.

  Without stopping to consider where the door might lead, he rushed to it, grasped the silver knob, and twisted. But the handle refused to budge.

  Whirling back he let out a slow, long breath. The DELL spider—if that’s what it really was—hadn’t moved. Now that he was starting to think a little more clearly, Billos was quite sure this beast wasn’t a spider.

  Since when did spiders have doors on their webs? Since when did spiders have square webs? Since when did spiders collect water in their webs?

  When you enter a forbidden world created by the Books of History, that’s when, you fool.

  So then it could be a spider. But there seemed to be no immediate danger, and the courage that had brought him here in the first place began to return.

  Think, Billos. Just calm down and think. First things first. You must find the way out.

  He searched the walls for another door. None. He tried the silver knob again, all the while keeping one eye on DELL. But the handle refused to budge.

  So he carefully edged over to the large square pool of water on the wall. Still no movement, no sign of immediate threat. Facing the shiny dark pool, Billos reached out and touched the water’s surface with his index finger.

  The water didn’t yield. Only then did it occur to him that this wasn’t water after all. H
e pressed the surface with his palm. This was a cool, hard surface, like perfectly formed black glass. The kind Thomas had taught them to make from sand.

  Billos spun back, heart hammering. DELL still slept. Not a sound, not a breath of air, not the slightest movement.

  What would happen if he touched the beast? He gripped his knife tighter. But his reason began to return, and once again it told him that this couldn’t be a spider. Spiders could sense prey from a long way off. You didn’t catch a spider taking a nap or looking the other way.

  For a long time Billos considered his options, which seemed particularly limited to him at the moment. Then, reaching deep for the same boldness that had served him so well on many occasions (never mind that it had also nearly cost him his life on as many), he inched forward, reaching out his knife, and touched the very edge of one of the beast’s legs.

  Nothing.

  Billos started to let the wind out of his lungs. But then nothing became something, because at that moment the beast named DELL opened one of its eyes.

  Billos leapt back, crouched for what would come next. It is okay, he thought. He was bred for battle. Better to die fighting than from starvation in a spiders trap.

  He would take the offensive and slaughter this beast where it crouched.

  he’d never imagined, much less planned, the kidnapping of a Roush before, and at first handling the creature unnerved Darsal. But really it wasn’t so different from handling a small, furry human with wings.

  Withdrawing a length of rope from the saddlebag, she quickly tied the creature to the pommel in front of her. To any Roush or Shataiki casually observing, she hoped it would appear that Hunter was just along for the ride.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to bind your snout,” she said, looping the rope over the Roush’s mouth.

  “What? You can’t mean it! It’s inhuman.”

  “You’re not human. And, yes, it is a bit cruel, but I can’t risk you making the kinds of sounds that might draw your friends. I’m committed now.”

  Hunter set his jaw and sat stoically as Darsal bound his jaw shut. It ruined the casual riding-partner look, but she had no choice.