They made slow progress to begin with,
picking their way through the forest from milestone to milestone, knowing that
if they strayed too far from the path that they risked becoming totally lost.
After a while, however, the parrots learned the best way to find the stones, by
flying in the rough direction shown by Dom’s compass and swooping down to
locate the lichen encrusted markers. Humanoid eyes, even Viola’s, would have
been deceived by every other rock and boulder, but the drab green birds were
experts at distinguishing the subtleties of dappled light.
They could only
travel during the brightest part of the day, as before about eight in the
morning and after four in the afternoon the contrast between sky and ground
became too faint to find the milestones. In places, as well, the oaks gave way to
expanses of tall ash woodland, where the wild garlic, just turning, covered the
ground with a white splash of flowers, also making searching difficult.
On the first night of
their hike up country they had had to decide how they would sleep in the two
tents that they had brought with them. Viola knew that Potentilla would do
almost anything to share a tent with Dom, but she also knew that this was
clearly out of the question. When Viola took her to one side to explain what
she was going to do, Potentilla went very quiet and said nothing for several
hours, but she made no fuss, so Dom shared the first tent with Viola and Kath
shared the second with Potentilla. It irritated Viola intensely that she had to
worry about the Potentilla’s infatuation as well as everything else. She wanted
to keep them apart, but she couldn’t really stop them if they really wanted to
be together.
The parrots slept in
the branches above them, but would fly down to bring them nuts and berries at
breakfast time. They also kept an eye on
everything within about a half-a mile radius, soundlessly patrolling the
branches around each camp. Parrots are entirely diurnal birds, however, and so
they were no use at all at night – in fact they would settle on a branch and
fall asleep almost immediately after dark, which was understandable as three
dimensional movements among tree branches is not at all prudent at night.
However, they had been trained to wake at the smallest hint of light on the
ground, so they were still effective guards, assuming that anything that was
approaching needed illumination.
The forest was generally
quiet enough during the day but full of noises at night. Most of what they
heard were small rustlings, the sound of little insect-eating mammals searching
for their prey, but also, every now and then, they heard larger animals. There
were endless debates in both tents as to what the animals might be – Panthers?
Bears? Wolves? – but as they never saw any animals bigger than a small deer
during the day, they were left uncertain and apprehensive. This made the nights
long and they were delighted to get up every morning into the bright spring
sunshine.
They saw no signs of pursuit for the
first few days of their hike. In fact, they saw nothing expect the endless
forest, the milestones and a few remains of buildings that had originally stood
at the side of the road. They sat by one
at lunchtime to eat their rations, augmented with sticky wild figs flown in by
the parrots. Kath laid out the modern map that they had brought with them on a
flat mossy rock and examined it carefully. They had had a copy printed by the
archive at considerable expense. They hadn’t dared to get a copy of the old map
printed as they feared this would draw attention to themselves.
‘Are we going the
right way, Kath?’ asked Potentilla
‘Yes – I think we
are’ Kath replied, pointing at a faint dotted line on the map. Her finger slid
down to the sea.
‘We landed here at
Tamaranti and now were making our way up on to the plateau above us. As long as
we follow the milestones we should be fine’
‘Can you see the city on the map?’ asked Dom
‘No – the road just
peters out…’
‘Thank the gods for
the milestones, then’ said Viola
‘I hope it’s not like
this all the way’ said Potentilla, shivering slightly, ‘I much prefer the open
spaces’
‘I think that we all
do’ said Viola, ‘but at the moment it looks like the trees go on forever’
‘Hopefully we’ll be
very hard to track in here…’ said Dom
‘Yes, hopefully…’
said Viola, ‘but don’t rely on it’
Kath folded the map
back up and slipped it into its case. She sat back against the wall of the
building and joined in with the others in eating. She stared up at the wall,
examining it half-heartedly.
‘I wonder what this
was?’
‘Perhaps it was a
restaurant’ suggested Potentilla, ‘it would be lovely to have some fresh bread’
‘Or an inn with soft
beds’ said Dom, grinning.
‘Or a bath house’ said Kath.
Viola scowled at
them. ‘It’s only been four days’ she said, ‘and we have enough food, and the
moss isn’t too bad to sleep on, and there’s springs and pools to wash in…’
Her companions sniggered.
Viola shook her head, intensely irritated. Kath decided to contribute something
more positive.
‘Perhaps I can work
out what it was. I’m no archaeologist, but Fred taught me a bit about old elven
buildings…’
Viola shrugged,
unconvinced. ‘We need to get on very soon…’
Kath pulled her tool
bag out of her backpack and stood up. She walked round the husk of the building,
stopping from time to time to examine the structure. She finally found a part
of the wall that seemed more interesting and began to scrape the encrusted moss
off very carefully with a knife. The others, even Viola, gathered round her,
squinting at what was being uncovered. There
was a slightly embossed oval seal about five feet across and on it, very worn
but very clear, was a stylised alder leaf. Below the leaf was a faint
inscription, impossible to read even with a rubbing. Kath took out a sheet of
translucent paper, which had been neatly folded into her bag. She unfolded it, cut
out a piece the size of the marks, and placed it against the inscription. The
paper began to glow with a reddish light, as if there were a scarlet liquid pressed
between the two skins of the paper. The liquid shifted in the paper and finally
coalesced over the faint marks.
Hekēkontaetia Basilieus Petros Ϝ . Arch Hesp. Enneos
Ith. Katabolaion λα
‘What does that mean?’ asked Potentilla
Viola said nothing –
Kath struggled to make sense of it. After a few minutes of silence a quiet
voice came from above them, speaking in Archaic Elven.
‘In the sixtieth year of the reign of Emperor Peter the sixth, built by
the western architects, Prime Nineteen, the thirty first storeroom’
They all looked up.
The little parrot above them looked very pleased with herself.
‘Which one are you,
scout?’ asked Viola.
‘I am Akenopteryx, at
thy service’
‘What does it mean, the inscription?’ Kath asked
Akenopteryx, ‘we don’t understand most of it’
‘That this is a storeroom and that it was
built by the Architects who made and maintained this part of the world, and
that it was made during the reign of a particular Basilieus – that is the old
elven name for Emperor’
‘I’ve never heard of
an Emperor Peter’ said Viola, carefully,’ and most certainly there haven’t been
six of them…’
‘And what about
“prime nineteen” – what does that mean?’ asked Kath
‘I am not sure, my
lady’ said Akenopteryx, ‘but it is found on many inscriptions in this area’
‘The alder leaf is a
promising sign, though’ said Kath, searching for good news.
‘Well, we’re
definitely on the right road’ said Viola, glumly, ‘but I think that we knew
that already. However, we still don’t know what we’re heading towards’
They thanked
Akenopteryx and packed up. They had a couple more hours of daylight and they
had to make the best use of it. They sent the birds out and made for milestone
forty-seven.
***
The things that slunk into their tents
that night were definitely shaped like panthers, but they didn’t smell like
them, and no rustling preceded them. Four of them were enough to overpower the
three humanoids who were in the tents. Dom, who was outside damping down the
fire, took a little longer to catch. He was overpowered by the humans, who came
behind with bright torches. He had had time to run off with Viola’s bag, but he
had nowhere to go, so eventually he had had to give in. They found him crouched
over the bag slipping some paper back into it. None of his captors,
fortunately, detected the smell of sulphur that hung briefly in the air.
They dragged him back
to join the others, trussed up on the floor of Viola’s tent. There were seven
humans along with the beasts that they had sent to capture them. Viola had
tried to talk to them but they were clearly under instructions to say nothing.
The panther shapes guarded them, but it was very hard in the half-light to see
what they were – they seemed to shimmer and shift a little too much to be real
mammals. It was almost as if a blue liquid was shifting under their skin.
Eventually an eighth human,
dressed in shabby black robes, appeared at the entrance to the tent. He held a
torch up and inspected them. He said nothing to them directly, but then he
turned to his companions and spoke to them in Rhylic, a language which
presumably they thought no Imperial subjects would comprehend. Fortunately,
Kath was no imperial citizen and she could speak Rhylic well enough to
understand them.
‘Keep them here until
our mistress can arrive. She is attending to other business but will be here my
noon tomorrow. She will be very pleased with all of you and I am sure that she
will reward you handsomely’
There was laughter
from the other humans.
‘How did you find
them?’ asked the newcomer. A voice shouted back, but it was barely audible from
inside the little tent.
‘They had disabled
the dragonfly, but not thrown it away. One of the idiots had put in a bag. It
was so easy to sniff it out!’
The laughter erupted
again, as if in a tidal wave that engulfed the tent. Then the newcomer moved
away and there was silence and darkness.
Everything was
starkly clear to Kath as she lay trembling in the dark. They had been pursued
and captured by enemies, and, it was all her fault.
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