Shadows Linger

My respect for the old devil rose. Crafty bastard.

It was not till we were back on the Shaker Road that I thought to ask Hagop if he had seen any evidence that anyone had left the clearing by another route.

“Nope,” he said. “But that don’t mean anything.”

“Let’s not spend so much time yakking,” One-Eye said. “Shed, can’t you make that damned mule go any faster?”

He was scared. And if he was, I was more so.

Chapter Forty-Five

Meadenvil

Hot trail

We made the city. But I swear I could sense something sniffing along our backtrail before we reached the safety of the lights. We returned to our lodgings only to find most of the men gone. Where were they? Off to take over Raven’s ship, I learned.

I had forgotten about that. Yes. Raven’s ship... And Silent was on Raven’s trail. Where was he now? Damn! Sooner or later Raven would lead him to the clearing... A way to find out if Raven had left it, for sure. Also a way to lose Silent. “One-Eye. Can you get hold of Silent?”

He looked at me strangely. He was tired and wanted to sleep.

“Look, if he follows Raven’s every move, he’s going to head out to that clearing.”

One-Eye groaned and went through several dramatic shows of disgust. Then he dug into his magic sack for something that looked like a desiccated finger. He took it to a corner and communed with it, then returned to say, “I got a line on him. I’ll find him.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah. You bastard. I ought to make you come with me.”

I settled by the fire, with a big beer, and lost myself in thought. After a while, I told Shed: “We have to go back out there.”

“Eh?”

“With Silent.”

“Who’s Silent?”

“Another guy from the Company. Wizard. Like One-Eye and Goblin. He’s on Raven’s trail, tracing every move he made from the minute he arrived. He figured he could track him down, or at least tell from his movements if he was pla

Shed shrugged. “If we have to, we have to.”

“Hunh. You amaze me, Shed. You’ve changed.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I could have done it all along. I just know that this thing can’t happen again, to anybody else.”

“Yeah.” I did not mention my visions of hundreds of men looting amulets from the fortress at Juniper. He did not need that. He had a mission. I couldn’t make it sound hopeless.

I went downstairs and asked the landlord for more beer. Beer makes me sleepy. I had a notion. A possibility. I did not share it with anyone. The others would not have been pleased.

After an hour I took a leak and dragged off to my room, more intimidated by the thought of returning to that clearing than by what I hoped to accomplish now.

Sleep was a time coming, beer or not. I could not relax. I kept trying to reach out and bring her to me. Which meant nothing at all.

It was a weak fool’s hope that she would return so soon. I had put her off. Why should she? Why shouldn’t she forget me till her minions caught up and could bring me to her in chains?

Maybe there is a co

I did not wait for her to start. I started talking. I talked fast and told her everything she needed to know about the lump in Meadenvil and about the possibility the troops had carried hundreds of seeds out of the black castle.

“You tell me this when you are determined to be my enemy, physician?”

“I don’t want to be your enemy. I’ll be your enemy only if you leave me no option.” I abandoned debate. “We can’t handle this. And it has to be handled. All its like must be handled. There is evil enough in the world as it is.” I told her we had found an amulet upon a citizen of Juniper. I named no name. I told her we would leave it where she could be sure to find it when she arrived.

“Arrive?”

“Aren’t you on your way here?”

Thin smile, secretive, perfectly aware that I was fishing. No answer. Just a question. “Where will you be?”

“Gone. Long gone, and headed far away.”

“Perhaps. We shall see.” The golden glow faded.

There were things I wanted to say yet, but they had nothing to do with the problem at hand. Questions I wanted to ask. I did not.

The last golden mote left me with a whispered, “I owe you one, physician.”

One-Eye rambled into the place shortly after sunrise, looking a lot worse for wear. Silent came along behind him, looking pretty beaten himself. He had been on Raven’s trail without let-up. One-Eye said, “I caught him just in time. Another hour and he would have headed out. I co

“Yeah. You want to wake the troops? We get an earlier start today, we ought to be able to get back before dark.”

“What?”

“I thought I was pretty clear. We’ve got to go back out there. Now. We’ve used one of our days.”

“Hey, man, I’m ripped. I’ll die if you make me...”

“Sleep in the saddle. That’s always been one of your big talents. Sleep anywhere, any time.”

“Oh, my aching butt.”

An hour later I was headed down the Shaker Road again, with Silent and Otto added to the crew. Shed insisted on coming along, though I was willing to excuse him. Asa decided he wanted in, too. Maybe because he thought Shed would extend an umbrella of protection. He had started talking mission like Shed, but a deaf man could hear its false ring.

We moved faster this time, pressed harder, and had Shed on a real horse. We got down to the clearing by noon. While Silent sniffed around, I worked myself up and took a closer look at the lump.

No change. Except the two dead creatures were gone. I did not need Hagop’s eye to see that they had been dragged through the entry hole.

Silent worked his way around the clearing to a point almost identical with that where the creature trail entered the forest. Then he threw up an arm, beckoned. I hurried over, and did not have to read the dance of his fingers to know what he had found. His face revealed the answer.

“Found it, eh?” I asked more brightly than I felt. I had started to count on Raven being dead. I did not like what the skeleton implied. Silent nodded.

“Yo!” I called. “We found it. Let’s go. Bring the horses.”

The others gathered. Asa looked a little peaked. He asked, “How did he do it?”

Nobody had an answer. Several of us wondered whose skeleton lay in the clearing and how it had come to wear Raven’s necklace. I wondered how Raven’s plot for vanishing had dovetailed so neatly with the Dominator’s for seeding a new black castle.

Only One-Eye seemed in a mood to talk, and that all complaint. “We follow this and we’re not going to get back to town before dark,” he said. He said a lot more, mostly about how tired he was. Nobody paid attention. Even those of us who had rested were tired.

“Lead off, Silent,” I said. “Otto, you want to take care of his horse? One-Eye, bring up the rear. So we don’t get any surprises from behind.”

The track was no track at ail for a while, just a straight shot through the brush. We were winded by the time it intercepted a game trail. Raven, too, must have been exhausted, for he had turned onto that trail and followed it over a hill, along a creek, up another hill. Then he had turned onto a less traveled path which ran along a ridge, toward the Shaker Road. Over the next two hours we encountered several such forkings. Each time Raven had taken the one which tended more directly westward.

“Bastard was headed back to the high road,” One-Eye said. “Could have figured that, gone the other way, and saved all this tramping through the brush.”