The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) Page 20

  “Far.”

  She rolled her eyes. Really? That was the best answer he could give her? “Down both the east and west highways?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, they couldn’t be that far ahead to disappear completely out of a griffin’s sight. No, they had to have a bolt hole fairly nearby. “Do you see any areas that look…strange? Like the area that trapped you.”

  “I cannot see human magic.”

  Ahhh. That explained why he was trapped within it. Well, staying up here any longer would serve no purpose except to freeze her even further. “Thank you,” she said politely. With griffins, you were polite, or you were a mid-meal snack. “If you’ll take me back now?”

  “That is all you wish of me?” he sounded surprised.

  “That’s all I needed to know,” she assured him. “If you can’t see them from up here, then they’re hiding nearby. Knowing that, I’ll be able to find them.”

  He didn’t respond, but his lack of response carried weight, as if he was thinking it all over. He turned and dove back toward where Decker and the wolves waited on them. It seemed that the return trip took half the time, which Sevana felt like saying a prayer of thanks for, as her hands felt so cold she didn’t know how much longer she could grip anything. From now on, if she ever had to pursue anyone in the dead of night, she was wearing gloves.

  The griffin landed lightly on the ground, wings fully extended, and stayed still as she undid the sticking charms and slid stiffly to the ground. With frozen face muscles, she managed a smile and gave him a bow. “Thank you.”

  For the first time, the griffin reciprocated the courtesy and gave a nod of his head in return. “You make fair deals, Artifactor. I will remember this.”

  Oh? Sounded like she’d just made a friend, of sorts. “I promise to track down the men that trapped you.”

  He gave a curt nod of the head, feathers bristling. “If I am nearby, and you need my aid, you may call on me. I am Clear Wind.”

  She gave an appropriate bow for the gift of his name. “I will do so.”

  With a last, piercing cry, he lifted off the ground again, sending gusts of wind swirling about them. She lifted her arms to shield her face in a defensive gesture, but as quickly as the air hit her, it disappeared as he took to the sky.

  She blew out a breath. “Well. That was an adventure.”

  “What did you see?” Decker pressed.

  “Not a blasted thing,” she confessed frankly. “It all looked like various shades of black to me. But he said there weren’t any humans moving about and a griffin’s eyesight is not to be underestimated. He also said that he couldn’t see anything that has human magic on it—”

  “Hence why he got trapped?”

  She gave a nod at his guess and continued, “—so it’s likely they’re holed up somewhere. Somewhere close, if they managed to get under cover this quickly. Hinun, Gid, it’s up to you to track these gormless twits down.” She didn’t think she’d be able to see their true bolt hole. As much as it pained her to admit it, their magician’s skill level was too high for him to make careless mistakes.

  They remounted, with much pain and grumbling on Sevana’s part, and set off. The wolves kept their noses in the air or dropped them to the ground now and again. After shivering for a full minute, she gave up and picked up the bottom of Decker’s jacket, climbing her way underneath it.

  Decker yelped as her cold hands touched his back and squirmed. “Sevana!” he squeaked. “What are you doing?!”

  “Shut it. I’m freezing.”

  “What, you don’t have warming spells or something?”

  “Not on me,” she grumbled against his back. Ooooh, so nice and waaaarm. Like a lizard finding a hot rock, she wrapped her arms around his stomach and snuggled in. The chill started leaving and she felt like purring in contentment.

  “Happy?” he drawled.

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” she sighed.

  “You realize your hands are freezing me?”

  “Do I care?”

  Decker muttered, “Apparently not.”

  They rode along in silence for several minutes. Eventually, Sevana started to feel too confined and stifled by being under the jacket like this. Most of her body liked being warm but it felt hard to breathe. After some internal debate, she gave up and climbed back out of the jacket and into the progressively colder night air. When she lifted the jacket up, Decker let out a hiss of protest. “What?” she asked in exasperation. “I thought you didn’t like me under there.”

  “I don’t, but every time you lift the jacket, a cold blast of air goes up my back!” He shifted one hand off the reins so he could tug his jacket back into place.

  She shrugged, as this didn’t bother her any, and asked, “How are the wolves doing?”

  “Still going strong. They don’t seem the least bit confused. Is it possible to duplicate someone’s scent and lay a false trail?”

  “Yes,” she responded instantly. “But it’s hard to do it in a hurry and make it credible enough to fool an Illeyanic’s intelligence. Hinun especially will be able to tell the difference.”

  Decker gave a nonverbal grunt of understanding.

  A thought occurred and she asked, “Have you ever hunted down men before? Thieves, murderers, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply.

  She didn’t press him for details. She didn’t need to. Huntsmen in any corner of the world were depended on for more than just game and furs. They also augmented the ombudsmen and whatever law enforcement might be in place. Sevana had joined in with such parties once or twice before on Milby’s behalf because the criminal they chased had some sort of magical talent or device on them that a normal man couldn’t safely handle. She knew exactly what Decker had experienced before this. The way he reacted to this situation, spur of the moment as it was, spoke a great deal of his history.

  “Have you?” he asked her, as if he hadn’t thought to ask this until she had.

  “Oh yes. I’ve never had to do it in the dead of night like this, as I said earlier.”

  Decker mulled that over for a moment before saying slowly, “The more I’m around all of you, the more I realize that Artifactors are rather jack-of-all-trades. You seem perfectly capable of turning your hand to anything.”

  “We have to be,” she agreed. “We cater to both magicians and those with no magic at all. We must think outside of the lines and inside of them. Being an Artifactor means that we are the most intelligent, the most creative, the most talented, because that’s what you have to be in order to do the job.”

  “You sound so matter-of-fact about it.” A timbre of amusement colored the words. “Even though you are renowned for being a prodigy.”

  “I don’t believe in false humility.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Obviously.”

  Really, if she had a choice on whom to go into a rough situation with, she’d choose Sarsen, Master, Kip or someone else she’d known for years and trusted. But aside from the fact that she’d never fought side by side with Decker before, she had no complaints about him. In fact, he might be the better choice as he knew the land like the back of his hand. He’d been hunting and living in this area for decades, after all.

  Their pace slowed slightly. She perked up and tried to look ahead, but really, she couldn’t make out much. “Why are we slowing?”

  “There’s a ravine up ahead. It’s shallow, as ravines go, but steep enough that I don’t want to take it at any speed.”

  Scratch that—Decker was the perfect person to take into this situation. She’d have run right into that ravine and probably broken a few bones, to boot.

  They slowed to a walk and within a few steps started to navigate the sloping sides of the ravine. In this season, it contained a good quantity of water in the bottom, but not enough to do more than cover the horse’s frog. It barely even splashed any water on Sevana’s boots. She said many a prayer of gratitude for that. What did hit her felt so icy cold that she was amaz
ed it hadn’t frozen solid yet.

  It took bare minutes to cross the water to the bank on the other side.

  Wait. Crossing water? Wouldn’t that mean— “Won’t Hinun and Gid lose the scent since we’re crossing water?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no. That’s an old wife’s tale, actually. Scent is stronger on top of the water. It’s actually easier for them to follow it.”

  She blinked. Despite having been around Hinun for ten years, she hadn’t known that. Of course, she’d never gone tracking or hunting with a wolf before either. “Really. So what does mess with their sense of smell?”

  “Too many smells,” he admitted easily. “If we followed them into a city, for instance, there would be no way for him to discern their scent from others. He’d get confused and lose the trail eventually. Even a village is a mite challenging. Fortunately Gid’s very familiar with the village scents, otherwise we’d never have been able to follow them.”

  Sevana made a mental note of that for future reference. Using Decker for support, she leaned around him and checked on the wolves. They’d already climbed lithely up the bank and were back on the road on the other side as if nothing had changed, their eyes intently watching the humans following along as they waited for the slowpokes to catch up.

  The stallion strained a little to climb back up to the road, but the ease with which he picked out a path said without words he’d done this many times before. They returned to the road without any mishap and kept going, the wolves silently leading the way.

  Sevana blew out a heavy breath. She’d worked a full day and only gotten a few hours of sleep before the thieves had struck, and her body felt the toil of being awake and moving so long. She started wishing for a flat surface. A bed would be preferable, of course, but any flat surface would do. The only thing that kept her from turning around and heading back toward Chastain was the awful premonition of what an evil man could do with the gadgick in hand. That thing could transport whole armies, if it felt like doing so. The thought sent a chill racing up and down her spine.

  Decker abruptly reigned into a stop and called, “Gid, Hinun, stop!”

  The wolves skidded to a halt immediately and trotted back to him, their noses in the air in an inquiring manner.

  “Ah, Decker?” Sevana saw absolutely no reason to stop. The woods around them had gotten a little thicker near the road than they had been, but other than that, nothing had changed.

  “This doesn’t look right.” He stood in the stirrups and strained forward as if trying to get a better look.

  Sevana became alert, straining her senses in all directions. She could smell the water they’d just crossed behind them, and the scents of pine trees and damp earth. No wood smoke, though, so it couldn’t be that which tipped Decker off. Her ears heard the sounds of insects and bull frogs, but no other strange noises. In this pitch darkness, she didn’t trust her eyes at all and quickly gave up on that.

  “Decker. Nothing looks or seems out of place.”

  “Something’s not right,” he insisted. “This area doesn’t look right.”

  She rolled her eyes to the heavens in a bid for patience. “We’ve been riding around in the woods for hours in pitch darkness with barely enough light to tell the trees from the road. How in mercy’s name can you tell?”

  “I know these woods. There should be a large clearing right after we cross the ravine.”

  Her strained patience evaporated, replaced with taut concentration. “How sure are you?”

  “Sure.” He dropped back into the saddle and turned slightly to look at her. “There should be a clearing off to the left. You think it’s another trap, like the one before?”

  A ‘no’ hovered on the tip of her tongue. She looked at the area with new eyes, questioning everything, but it still looked like normal forest to her. “No, Decker. If it was a trap like before, there would be something about it that would seem suspicious, something that would draw my attention. There’s no magic aura here at all. If you didn’t know the area so well, I would have kept on riding.”

  A feral smile stretched over his face. “Then this is likely where they’re hiding?”

  “I’d lay good odds on it.” She turned to Hinun. “You smell them going off the road?”

  The wolf let out a confirming huff.

  Good enough for her. “How many, do you think?” she asked the wolf. “Ten? Less than that, huh? Alright, we can handle less than ten.”

  Decker looked at her cross-eyed, as if he didn’t know what she based that conclusion on, but didn’t question it. “So do you have a plan, Mistress Artifactor?”

  “I do, as it happens.” She rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “Let’s play a little bait and catch, shall we?”

  Sevana crouched a few feet away from Decker, both of them on the far side of the road waiting in ambush. She had her ears and eyes strained, waiting for any sign of the thieves bursting free from their hidey-hole.

  The wolves had gone in nearly a minute ago with the aim to chase them out. Sevana knew that if two wolves—two gigantic wolves, at that—appeared out of the dark woods growling, she’d certainly run for higher ground. The thieves were clever, but they’d gone to great lengths to avoid fighting, which suggested they wanted to avoid conflict if they could. She and Decker both were wagering they’d run from the wolves rather than fight. Hopefully, they’d run for a clear path—the road.

  But really, what was taking so long? She’d expected to hear or see something by now. Unless the wolves had found some situation in there that they didn’t know how to handle and were taking the long way back? Or—oh, no. Maybe they’d run into trouble? Sevana started rethinking the idea of sending them into the unknown.

  Two long howls pierced the night air, sounding unnaturally loud. It sent her nerves, already stretched taut, jangling.

  “Something’s wrong,” she and Decker said in unison, bursting out of their hiding places and sprinting forward.

  She ran for what looked to be an open space between two trees and felt disoriented when magic washed across her skin and she felt no resistance from the trees. Oh, the mirage, eh? Right. Wand in one hand, sword in the other, she kept moving at a fast clip, swiveling her head back and forth as she panned the area. No, no sign of movement at all. A feeling of unease grew in her chest. “HINUN!”

  The wolf let out a yip of acknowledgement, and she followed the sound to him. He stood almost invisible in the open clearing, only his gleaming eyes giving her something to pinpoint him by. She intended to go directly to him, but at the last second realized something lay on the ground between them. Skidding to a stop, she raised a foot to step over it before realizing just what lay on the ground.

  Bile rose in her throat as she stared for a long moment. A man? No, a corpse. Horrified, she quickly looked about the clearing. What she had mistaken for logs at first glance weren’t. Under the weak moonlight, eight prone bodies lay deathly still.

  Decker got over his shock faster than she, kneeling to check the body nearest to him. “I’d say he’s been dead a good hour. I can’t find any blood or obvious sign of injury, though. Magically killed?”

  “There are several curses that can kill a man without leaving a mark on him,” she answered past a dry mouth, not even really aware of what she was saying. “An hour. They’ve been dead for the past hour?”

  “No wonder your griffin didn’t see any signs of movement.”

  She slowly sheathed the sword, eyes roving the clearing again. “This is…”

  “Disturbing?” Decker finished.

  “Creepy. I was thinking creepy.” In fact, she would like nothing better than to turn and leave immediately. But first— “The box. Do you see the black box that has the gadgick?”

  “No, but it’s hard to see much of anything. It might be blending in with the ground.”

  Or more likely was taken. The only explanation for this scene that her mind could think up was that there had been a falling-out among thieves and the box had been taken
by the murderer. Nevertheless, they looked diligently. Without needing to worry about discovery, Sevana now freely used mage lights to brighten the area. But it was to no avail. The box didn’t turn up at all.

  Decker leaned down, resting on one knee, and put his hand on the grass in an ‘L’ shape. “It rested here. See the indentation it left? We tracked the right group.”

  Tracker she was not. She didn’t see anything that would tell him that, but took his word on it. “Hinun, Gid, can you find the scent of the man that left here?”

  The wolves circled about in confusion several times before sitting down, clearly giving up. She swore several choice curses but didn’t feel surprised. “He had time to mask his scent and erase any tracks. An hour would be plenty of time to a skilled magician. We’re not going to find him tonight.”

  Decker grunted as he pushed his way back to his feet. “I must agree. What now? Back to Chastain?”

  “For now.” She rubbed at her forehead and hoped that the image of this scene wouldn’t stick in her mind for long. Hoping for no nightmares at all would probably be asking too much. “I can’t track this man, so he might well get away with this, but I might still be able to get the gadgick back.”

  “How?” he asked in puzzlement.

  “The black market. I imagine our murderer friend will take it there.”

  Decker seemed less than pleased with this. “The nearest black market is in Belen. And it’s huge.”

  “Don’t I know it.” She shrugged and waved the wolves to follow her. With the black box gone, she had no desire to stay in this unburied cemetery even a second longer. “But I have a contact there. I stand a better chance of finding it there than tramping blindly out here in the woods. Come along, Decker. We’re not going to do any good standing around out here.”

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time that they made it back to Chastain, it was well past dawn. Sevana had gone from tired, to exhausted, to grumpy. Night owl she might be, but she still preferred to sleep every now and again! Besides that, even though the sun stood in the sky, it held no warmth. She’d retreated back under Decker’s jacket after a while, unable to stand the cold anymore. He had to have been miserable too, as he didn’t argue or complain about her snuggling, which meant he felt glad for the extra warmth.