Traveler Page 5

  In the short time she’d been training him, John’s running gait had changed, become something more fluid, directed and swift. He threw off his hood as he began to climb the tree. To Maud, his motions were loud and clumsy, but he still moved better than most Seekers she’d met. He was learning to focus his mind, and his body was following suit.

  Maud was used to perfect clarity in her own thinking. When she’d trained as a girl with her dear master, the Old Dread, he’d instilled in her a certainty of purpose and an ease in decision. A Dread was meant to stand apart from humanity and from Seekers so that her mind was clear to judge. And yet, the years she’d spent with the Middle Dread had eroded her faith in this simple rule. The Middle had interfered in the life of a Seeker—Catherine Renart, John’s mother—in a way that was unjust. He had participated in disrupting her. The Middle had committed other injustices long ago, but this one was recent, and he’d forced Maud to participate, which gave her a peculiar responsibility for the results. Was it wrong then, Maud wondered, for her to interfere in the life of Catherine’s son, John, in order to make up for what had been done?

  Her master had gone There after the fight on Traveler, to stretch himself out for years and years, decades even. The Old Dread could not answer this question for her. And so the Young had made the choice to train John, to make him a Seeker. A Dread must not take sides, but this was not taking sides; this was bringing an unbalanced scale back to level. She was not sure how honorable John would be, nor how seriously he would take the three laws of Seekers, but surely having a good teacher was the only chance he had.

  “Who is it?” John whispered, pulling himself up onto a thick branch next to her. He was breathing hard, but she could see that he was controlling himself, forcing his body to draw in air with an even rhythm. He took his training seriously.

  “You’ll see in a moment.” She nodded toward the old barn in the distance. All three visitors had disappeared inside. “Can you hear them speaking?”

  John closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head. “Only faintly.”

  “Imagine the words are clear,” Maud whispered, “coming straight to your ears, with nothing between you and them. Try it.”

  He stared at the barn, going very still as he concentrated on the distant sounds. Though Maud knew it would take much more than those simple instructions to teach John to throw his hearing, this was the first step. It was not a skill a Seeker required, yet she saw no reason John could not develop it.

  The smaller boy, Nott, emerged in the distance, his pale face visible in the dark air. “Why can’t we do what we promised?” he was saying. “He doesn’t want us to look for this girl or his athame. He wants us to look for him. He’s the important one. He’s going to send us—”

  “Stop telling me the same thing over and over, Nott. And stop whining. We will do what we promised! We’ll find our master, just after we find her,” Wilkin said as he appeared.

  “Children?” John asked, able to see their size, if nothing else.

  “Strange children,” Maud answered. There was something Dread-like in these boys’ motions, though they were loud in a way that was completely at odds with the behavior of a Dread. They spoke of their master. Who would that be?

  Briac stumbled out of the barn, and all three headed for the burned-out training barn, which meant they were walking toward Maud and John and becoming more visible.

  “Is that…?” John asked, straining to see details as the figures approached.

  “Briac Kincaid,” Maud told him evenly. She knew how much John hated the man, how much he longed to fight Briac and punish him for what he’d done to John’s mother, and for what he’d done to John himself in denying him his training, but John was her student now and could not be distracted by such an emotion. “We will wait here to see—”

  John was already moving, murder written on his face. He leapt from branch to branch as quickly as he could, barely grabbing one before he had dropped to the next. Maud saw him slip dangerously in his haste to reach the ground, but he recovered at the last moment, catching himself heavily on a lower branch.

  Unfocused and disobedient! she thought.

  She turned to follow, then stopped herself. The older boy, she perceived, had an athame at his waist. The butt of the stone dagger was sticking up from his trousers. The Young Dread held herself perfectly still, gathering her mind so that she might throw her sight farther than she was ordinarily able. She asked her eyes to summon all available light from the night sky. With a thrill of satisfaction, she felt her senses obey. The particulars of that athame became as clear as if she were holding it in her own hands. She saw the detail she sought: at the base of the grip was a small carving of a boar. A boar, the Young Dread thought. How curious.

  Then she moved down the tree, swinging herself effortlessly through the branches. When her feet hit the forest floor, she was already running.

  John was sprinting toward the three intruders. John! she called with her mind. Stop! But John didn’t stop, or even slow. During the time she’d been training him, Maud hadn’t managed to make any sort of mental connection with him, and she wondered if he were even capable of it.

  He was nearly at the edge of the woods.

  “Nott, weapons!” she heard the older boy say. They had spotted John, and they looked delighted at the prospect of fighting. Both drew whipswords and cracked them out into solid form.

  Even stranger, Maud thought. They have whipswords and an athame, but are they Seekers? she wondered. She didn’t think so. Something about the boys was off. And then a moment later: Their swords are not right.

  A memory came to her: she was training with the Middle Dread, long ago. She’d done a poor job fighting him that afternoon. Improve yourself quickly, he’d sneered, or maybe I’ll cut your whipsword in half. It looked as though someone had done just that to these boys’ swords. Was it a common punishment among Seekers? She’d never seen it before.

  Maud caught up with John and ran beside him.

  “Stop!” she said aloud. John must not attack other Seekers, or anyone else, while she trained him. It had been the first promise she’d demanded of him.

  Yet he ignored her. His whipsword was in his hand, and his gaze was locked on Briac.

  Briac finally noticed the two swift-approaching figures. He stood, frozen, muscles twitching, his mouth working without a sound as sparks gyrated across his face. He found his voice a moment later and yelled, “Strike the athame! Strike it now!”

  When the boys did not immediately comply, Briac grabbed the athame from Wilkin’s waist. Wilkin snatched it back, and they struggled for control. Briac let go suddenly and instead pulled the lightning rod from its spot on Wilkin’s other hip. In one quick motion, Briac swung the rod into the athame that was still clutched tightly in the boy’s hands. The athame’s vibration spread out from the dagger, reaching Maud through the air and the forest floor.

  “Stop, John!” she said again. Of course she could pull him to a halt, but that was not the point. He must learn to focus on her, to push other things aside—especially when he was most distracted. If he could not do that, he would never be a Seeker.

  Both boys were yelling at Briac, but Briac was undeterred. He grabbed Wilkin’s arm—the arm holding the athame—and with all of his strength he forced that arm into a circle, cutting an anomaly into the air even as the older boy struggled to push him away.

  “Go!” Briac yelled again. “Or she’ll kill you, she’ll kill you. You’ll die, I’ll die!”

  “She’s so fast!” the younger boy said, pointing at the Young Dread, who had surged ahead of John and was bearing down on them with all the speed she could muster. “She’s like—”

  “She’s deadly!” Briac spat.

  Briac’s words had an effect. Wilkin and Briac both grabbed the younger one, Nott, and the three of them stepped quickly through the anomaly.

  A knife flew by Maud’s head, thrown by John, as she raced toward the gaping doorway. When she reached th
e threshold of the darkness, she stopped. She didn’t intend to jump through, nor to fight Briac or the boys. Now that she’d seen their athame—an athame with a boar upon it—she merely wished to observe them at closer range before they disappeared.

  From within the anomaly, the older boy stared out at her. He looked frightened; his mouth was open, revealing blackened teeth. The smaller boy had tears drying on his cheeks and eyes full of amazement. Briac was clutching his back where John’s thrown knife had cut him. As the doorway began to lose shape and collapse, she studied their faces, searching her mind for some memory of them.

  By the time John arrived at her side, the anomaly had fallen shut. He stood next to her, panting and enraged.

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” he demanded. “It would have been so easy for you!”

  Maud turned, allowing herself to feel anger. She grabbed hold of John’s cloak and yanked him toward her, then pushed him firmly up against the stone wall of the training barn.

  “He tortured my mother,” John said, his breath steaming in the freezing air, his blue eyes clear and furious in the moonlight. “For years. I should be allowed to kill him. He deserves to die.”

  “Listen closely, John.” Her voice was even and slow, but she knew he would have no doubt about the fury beneath it. “If I am to train you, you will heed my orders.”

  He stared at her, still breathing hard, but he didn’t struggle against her grasp.

  “It is no concern of mine that Briac Kincaid appears on the estate. You are not in a position to pick a fight. Not while I train you. I do not help you so that you may attack others. I only give you the education Briac did not finish. That is all.” She waited until John met her gaze. “You will obey me,” she said, “or my help will end.”

  She kept him pinned to the barn, pressing him hard into the stone, making her point. Finally John nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right.”

  They tumbled through the dark doorway into cold, shallow water. Nott landed on his hands and knees, the tiny waves of the lake splashing his face, but even so the first thing he noticed was the smell. Dead animals. He and Wilkin had left a great pile of them outside the entrance to the fort, and there they were still on the shore, rotting in the moonlight.

  Nott carried a strip of deer flesh in the pouch around his waist, so some portion of that smell was always with him. But here it was everywhere in the air, identifying this ruined fortress, Dun Tarm, as a place where he and Wilkin and other Watchers belonged. It was where their master had trained each of them and taught them to be so much more than the children they’d been.

  Wilkin and Briac were splashing around in the water nearby. Wilkin had Briac in a headlock and was yelling, “Explain yerself!”

  Back in the woods of that strange, distant city—Is it called Kong Kong?—Briac had almost managed to steal their helm and their athame. They’d gotten the helm off his head, but he’d jumped with their athame into the darkness There, and they’d been forced to follow. He’d dragged them to that ruined place in Scotland to look for Quin and their master’s special athame. But of course she wasn’t there and neither was the athame, just as they hadn’t been in Hong Kong.

  Wilkin pushed Briac into the water, and the man flailed about before eventually finding his feet. It was obvious he’d lost his mind again. He’d gotten it back for a moment when he wore the helm in the Hong Kong woods, just as he’d gotten it back for a while when they put the helm on him in that madhouse where they’d found him—long enough to help them find Quin in the London hospital. But his mind was gone now.

  Where was the helm? Was Wilkin wearing it? Nott looked back to Wilkin. The moon was bright enough to show him the older boy’s hair, which meant he did not have the helm on his head. It must be safely inside Wilkin’s rucksack. Nott was relieved.

  Wilkin had already said he wouldn’t let Briac use the helm ever again. Hopefully this meant they wouldn’t be following Briac anymore. They weren’t supposed to be looking for the girl, and Wilkin knew that. But he’s an idiot, Nott thought as he waded through the freezing water to the shore. An example: Nott loved to slap Wilkin at night. The older boy slept like a dead man and often wondered why he woke with bruises on his face. “It’s because you thrash about and hit your head on rocks,” Nott told him, and Wilkin believed it.

  “Leave me be!” Briac roared, struggling out of the lake. “I’ll set the dogs on you both. I’ll trample you, I’ll knife you, I’ll impale you…”

  Nott stepped, dripping, onto the shore. Dun Tarm was crumbling into Loch Tarm. Half of the fortress had been built out over the lake to begin with, and that half was mostly under the lake now. Long ago, water had snuck into what remained and filled all the low-lying places with cold, wet, mossy fingers.

  Cradled in a steep valley, the crumbling fort was reflected clearly in the lake, and beyond the water, in the bright light of the moon and stars, Nott could see forested slopes reaching up to crags of bare rock that surged above the tree line, like giants from the ancient times.

  “Get inside!” Wilkin ordered, shoving Briac toward the gaping doorway.

  Nott passed through the jagged shadows of the remaining fortress walls. He was closer to the animal corpses here, and flies buzzed everywhere, even in the cold of the night. A deer lay on top of the pile, its body intact except for a series of slashes along its stomach. Its glassy eyes stared up at the dark sky. They hadn’t killed that deer to eat it; they’d killed it because it was important to kill things. You had to stay sharp. And you had to keep things in their place. Those were the rules their master had taught them.

  The helm helped you stay sharp, and it helped you keep things in their place too. It helped with most things. Nott’s eyes drifted toward the pack on Wilkin’s back. His fingers twitched at the thought of pulling out the helm and putting it on. But Wilkin wouldn’t let him use it tonight. He hadn’t let Nott use the helm in days.

  “Wilkin’s a tyrant that way,” Nott whispered to the deer as he passed. He imagined the animal winking sympathetically in response.

  The smell of decay wasn’t as strong inside the fort, where they made their camp and where they’d left most of their gear. Dun Tarm’s great room had split. Half had sunken unevenly into the lake, but much of the other half was intact, if you could ignore the streams of water among the stones of the floor. Three of the walls had crumbled, leaving only a small alcove under a roof, but this was large enough that they could sleep in shelter. There were several scrubby trees growing up from the ruined floor, providing protection from the wind that blew down from the distant peaks.

  Wilkin pointed to a spot on the ground where Briac should sit. The man was whimpering and trying to hold the wound in his back, which was bleeding all over everything. He’d been hit by a knife as they escaped from the burned estate, a fact Briac only now seemed to notice.

  “Sew him up, Nott!” Wilkin commanded. “While he explains himself.” Then to Briac: “You tried to steal from us.”

  “I don’t sit!” Briac said, ripping his shoulder away from Nott, and forgetting his wound again. He punched his own leg in an attempt to formulate a coherent thought. “We can’t—sit! We must—we must find her. Get that athame.”

  His words sounded more focused than most Nott had heard out of him. The sparks floating about his head were quite visible now that he was in shadow, but they were dancing more slowly than they had been. Maybe Briac’s recent few minutes in the helm had done something lasting for him—not that Nott cared.

  He found the sewing kit in his own rucksack and pulled out the thick black thread and dull needle they used to stitch themselves up after particularly bad fights.

  “You take us to find one girl, then you run away from another,” Wilkin said to Briac. “Why?”

  “She’s, she’s, she’s…she’s dangerous, that one. Young Dread…”

  “What does it mean, ‘Young Dread’?” asked Wilkin. “I’ve heard you call our master ‘Middle Dread’
before.”

  When Briac didn’t answer, Wilkin slapped him to help him focus. “Yes,” the man responded, holding up a hand so he would not be hit again. “She’s like him in some ways. Dangerous.”

  Briac screeched as Nott poked him with the needle and pulled the thread through his skin. The knife wound was producing an unexpectedly large amount of blood, but it was only a shallow slice. Nott had seen worse.

  “We’re not supposed to be looking for girls, or athames, Wilkin,” Nott said, for what felt like the hundredth time—but he was trying not to whine. He leaned over Briac and poked the needle in again, doing a terrible job of it. “We’re supposed to be following our master’s orders, waking the others, and searching—”

  “Quiet, Nott. We will…” Wilkin’s face was going through a series of contortions as he considered his options.

  The last time their master had come to them, he’d told them to search him out in twenty-four hours if they didn’t hear from him again. Twenty-four hours later, they’d made their way to their usual meeting place in London, only to find the entire city swarming around that great crashed ship in the park. And there, in the middle of it, was Briac Kincaid. They recognized Briac because they’d seen him in their master’s company several times. They’d used the helm on Briac late at night in the madhouse to which he’d been brought, and eventually he’d started talking some sense—though not much.

  If their master—the man Briac called the Middle Dread—was lost, they knew exactly how to search for him. It was their whole purpose as Watchers, to find their master if he was lost. It was the reason they existed and why their master woke them in turns to live out in the world. They were to keep him from disappearing There, as his enemies would want him to do. But Briac had said he already knew where their master was, so there was no need to search. And Wilkin—idiot!—loved the idea of finding him quickly and by themselves. He’ll praise us, Nott. He’ll know we’re the best out of all his Watchers.