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? d.a.m.n! 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d. 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 planning to trick Asa."

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 connection on a level I do not understand. For I wakened from a drowse, thinking I needed to visit the head again, and found that golden glow hanging above me. Or maybe I did not waken, but only dreamed that I did. I can't get that straight. It always seems so dream-like in retrospect.

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 conned him into waiting till daylight."

"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 b.u.t.t."

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?"

n.o.body 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. n.o.body 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.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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."

Men growled at him. His complaints were grating. Even Asa tossed a nasty look over one shoulder.

Raven had taken the long way, no doubt about it. I would guess we walked at least ten miles before coming across a ridgeline and viewing cleared land which descended to the high road. A number of farms lay on our right. In the distance ahead lay the blue haze of the sea. The countryside was mostly brown, for autumn had come to Meadenvil. The leaves were turning. Asa indicated a stand of maples and said they would look real pretty in another week. Odd. You don't think of guys like him as having a sense of beauty.

"Down there." Otto indicated a cl.u.s.ter of buildings three-quarters of a mile south. It did not look like a farm. "Bet that's a roadside inn," he said. "What do you want to bet that was where he was headed?"

"Silent?"

He nodded, but hedged. He wanted to stick to the track to make sure. We mounted up, let him do what walking remained to be done. I, for one, had had enough tramping around.

"How about we stay over?" One-Eye asked.

I checked the sun. "I'm considering it. How safe you figure we'd be?"

He shrugged. "There's smoke coming up down there. Don't look like they had any trouble yet."

Mind-reader. I had been examining farmsteads as we pa.s.sed, seeking indications that the lump creatures were raiding the neighborhood. The farms had seemed peaceful and active.

I suppose the creatures confined their predations to the city, where they would cause less excitement. Raven's track hit the Shaker Road a half-mile above the buildings Otto thought an inn. I checked landmarks, could not guess how far south of the twelfth mile we were. Silent beckoned, pointed. Raven had indeed turned south. We followed and soon pa.s.sed milestone sixteen.

"How far are you going to follow him, Croaker?" One-Eye asked. "Bet you he met Darling out here and just kept hiking."

"I suspect he did. How far to Shaker? Anybody know?"

"Two hundred forty-seven miles," Kingpin replied.

"Rough country? Likely to have trouble along the way. Bandits and such?"

King said, "Not that I ever heard of. There's mountains, though. Pretty rough ones. Take a while to get through them."

I did some calculating. Say three weeks to cover that distance, not pushing. Raven wouldn't push, what with Darling along, and the papers. "A wagon. He'd have to have a wagon."

Silent, too, was mounted now. We reached the buildings quickly. Otto proved right. Definitely an inn. A girl came outside as we dismounted, looked at us with wide eyes, raced inside. I guess we were a rough-looking lot. Those who did not show tough looked nasty.

A worried fat man came out strangling an ap.r.o.n. His face could not decide if it wanted to remain ruddy or to go pallid. "Afternoon," I said. "We get a meal and some fodder for the animals?"

"Wine," One-Eye called out as he loosened his cinch. "I need to dive into a gallon of wine. And a feather bed."

"I reckon," the man said. His speech proved difficult to follow. The language of Meadenvil is a dialect of that spoken in Juniper. In the city it wasn't hard to get along, what with the constant intercourse between Meadenvil and Juniper. But this fellow spoke a country dialect with an altered rhythm. "And you can afford it."

I produced two of Raven's silver pieces, handed them over. "Let me know when we're over that limit." I dropped my reins over the hitching rail, climbed the steps, patted his arm as I pa.s.sed. "Not to worry. We're not bandits. Soldiers. Following somebody who pa.s.sed this way a while back."

He rewarded me with a frown of disbelief. It was obvious we did not serve the Prince of Meadenvil.

The inn was pleasant, and though the fat man had several daughters, everyone stayed in line. After we had eaten and most had gone off to rest, the innkeeper began to relax. "You answer me some questions?" I asked. I placed a silver piece upon my table. "Might be worth something."

He settled opposite me, regarded me narrowly over a gigantic beer mug. He had drained the thing at least six times since our arrival, which explained his girth. "What do you want to know?"

"The tall man who can't talk. He's looking for his daughter."

"Eh?"

I indicated Silent, who had made himself at home near the fire, seated on the floor, folded forward in sleep. "A deaf and dumb girl who pa.s.sed this way a while back. Probably driving a wagon. Met a guy here, maybe." I described Raven.

His face went blank. He remembered Raven. And did not want to talk about it.

"Silent!"

He snapped out of sleep as if stung. I sent a message with finger signs. He smiled nastily. I told the innkeeper, "He don't look like much, but he's a sorcerer. Here's how it stands. The man who was here maybe told you he'd come back and cut your throat if you said anything. That's a remote risk. On the other hand, Silent there can cast a few spells and make your cows go dry, your fields barren, and all your beer and wine go sour."

Silent did one of those nasty little tricks which amuse him, One-Eye and Goblin. A ball of light drifted around the common room like a curious puppy, poking into things.

The innkeeper believed me enough not to want to call my bluff. "All right. They was here. Like you said. I get a lot of people through in the summer, so I wouldn't have noticed except like you say, the girl was deaf and the guy was a hard case. She come in in the morning, like she traveled all night. On a wagon. He come in the evening, walking. They stayed off in the corner. They left next morning." He looked at my coin. "Paid in that same funny coin, come to think."

"Yeah."

"Come from a long way off, eh?"

"Yeah. Where'd they go?"

"South. Down the road. Questions I heard the guy ask, I figure they was headed for Chimney."

I raised an eyebrow. I'd never heard of any place called Chimney.

"Down the coast. Past Shaker. Take the Needle Road out of Shaker. The Tagline Road from Needle. Somewhere south of Tagline there's a crossroad where you head west. Chimney is on the Salada Peninsula. I don't know where for sure. Only what I heared from travelers."

"Uhm. Long hike. How far, you think?"

"See. Two hundred twenty-four miles to Shaker. Round two hundred more to Needle. Tagline is about one eighty on from Needle, I think. Or maybe it's two eighty. I don't rightly recollect. That crossroad must be another hundred down from Tagline, then out to Chimney. Don't know how far that would be. Least another hundred. Maybe two, three. Seen a map oncet, that a fellow showed me. Peninsula sticks way out like a thumb."

Silent joined us. He produced a sc.r.a.p of paper and a tiny, steel-tipped pen. He had the innkeeper run through it again. He drew a crude map that he adjusted as the fat man said it did or did not resemble the map he had seen. Silent kept juggling a column of figures. He came up with an estimate in excess of nine hundred miles from Meadenvil. He knocked off the last digit, then wrote the word days and a plus sign. I nodded.

"Probably a four-month trip at least," I said. "Longer if they spend much time resting up in any of those cities."

Silent drew a straight line from Meadenvil to the tip of the Salada Peninsula, wrote, est. 600 mi. @ 6 knots = 100 hrs.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah. That's why the ship never left. Had to give him a head start. Think we'll have a talk with the crew tomorrow. Thanks, innkeeper." I pushed the coin over. "Anything odd happened around here lately?"

A weak smiled stretched his lips. "Not till today."

"Right. No. I mean like neighbors disappearing, or what-not."

He shook his head. "Nope. Less you count Moleskin. Hain't seen him in a while. But that don't make no never-mind."

"Moleskin?"