Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [139]
“It doesn’t, eh? Well and good, then. You lead and we’ll look for it.”
“Done, then. Even a wretched elf like me can follow a running stream.”
Back they went, and this time they’d gone not more than twenty yards when the trees began thinning ahead of them. Grinning in triumph Rhodry led them straight out into open ground.
“There we are! I knew it—” All at once he felt his grin disappearing. “But where was it before?”
“Just so,” Garin said. “Just so.”
Mic and Otho were looking round openmouthed.
“What’s that over there?” Mic pointed. “Looks like stone.”
Stone it turned out to be, a huge pointed slab of black basalt, tipped on end and graved with writing in the dwarven language. Garin ran one finger down it, as if to assure himself of its reality.
“This is the first marker on the road,” he said. “The one I was talking about. I doubt me if I would have found it, but Rhodry did, and that tells us somewhat, lads.”
Everyone looked at him expectantly.
“Ye gods, think!” Garin snapped. “It means he’s been foreseen or foretold or suchlike. From now on, Rhodry lad, you lead.”
“What?” Rhodry said. “I’ve never been here before, and you’ve been thrice.”
“So? I’ll act as guide, like. You’re the leader.”
Otho moaned and rolled his eyes heavenward.
“To think a cousin of mine and him an envoy at that would have gone daft! And us in mortal danger, too!”
“We’re not in any danger at all,” Garin sighed. “And I know what I’m doing.”
“Well and good, then,” Rhodry said. “Far be it from me to argue with dweomer, and this place stinks of it. Here, O Guide.” He paused for a grin. “What sayeth this most ancient stone?”
“If you’re going to talk like an apprentice bard,” Garin said with some asperity, “I’m going to tip you over the next cliff. It says, and in good plain language, too, ‘This is the first writing stone on the road to Haen Marn.’ As I remember, the first two times I came this way, I found two more, and the last time I found four.”
“And I’ll wager that they were always in different places, too,” Otho put in.
“Just that.” Garin glanced up at the threatening sky. “At the moment, lads, I’d say we need to find shelter more than another trail marker.”
As if in agreement a few fat drops fell, splashing on the black stone. Distant thunder cracked.
“I knew our luck with the weather wasn’t going to hold, not this time of year,” Garin went on. “Over there, O Leader, your guide seeeth a clump of trees that look a fair bit lower than the rest. I say we get under them and let the tall trees draw the lightning.”
In a patter of drops on branches above them they finished their meal, but as soon as they took to the trail again,the rain began in earnest. Although the greased canvas lashed over their packs kept the food dry, the men were soaked in minutes. They sloshed on, keeping to the lower ground and letting the lightning seek the high. Even though he was wet, chafed, and tired, Rhodry found himself singing whenever he had the breath, just odd snatches of elven songs that he’d learned from his natural father. He found himself laughing at every crack of lightning. Above them the white peaks hung invisible, shrouded in cloud.
They camped wet that night and traveled the next day in weather that alternately threatened and made good its threat of rain, until finally, at midafternoon, on a race of wind the storm blew over. By sunset, the sky was clearing to the north and east. When they began looking for a camp’ site, Rhodry was expecting that he’d find another marker stone as well, just because it seemed fitting and no reason more. They clambered out of one last valley and climbed to the top of a hill, where boulders among high grass offered some kind of shelter. While the dwarves squabbled about it, Rhodry stood on the crest and looked back to the south, down the long slope up which they’d climbed, where dark clouds lingered over the forests, wreathed with mist as blue as smoke in the far distance. His old world lay under that mist, and he wondered why he was so sure he’d come into a new one.
“Oy, Rhodry!