Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [79]
Danyal stretched himself flat on top of the rock and reached down the face.
“Here-take my hand,” he whispered, projecting just enough to be heard over the musical splashing of the nearby stream.
She jumped and caught his grip, her weight surprising as she was suspended momentarily by his clutching fingers. Quickly her feet, in their soft moccasins, found solid purchase and she scrambled up to join him atop the rock.
“Do you think we should wait for them?” Danyal asked, fearing that Foryth and Emilo would have difficulty over this portion of the route.
“Yes,” Mirabeth replied softly. Her eyes were wide, almost luminous in the darkness, and-as when he had first seen her beside the horse-Danyal was struck again by her resemblance to a human girl.
“Were you traveling with Emilo the other day when I saw you beside the stream near Waterton?” he asked.
“We were following the road,” she said with a nod. “And I saw the orchard and wanted to get some apples. Emilo was tired-he gets that way a lot-so he took a nap while I came down to the trees. I wasn’t expecting to see you or your horse.”
“She wasn’t my horse,” Danyal objected. “At least, not until you haltered her for me.”
He cleared his throat and shook his head against a wave of melancholy, suddenly feeling a strong pang of sadness, missing the mean-tempered mare with more feeling than he would ever have imagined.
“Where is she-the horse, I mean? Did those men get her?” Mirabeth’s smooth brow furrowed in concern, and suddenly the lines of her age were heightened, revealed like clear shadows in the starlight.
Danyal’s chuckle was rueful but fond. “Actually, it was Nightmare that got some of them.” His laughter died quickly at the memory of poor Gnar, crippled by the kick of the horse and then executed by his companions, who found his presence an inconvenience. He wondered about Nightmare, hoping the horse was all right.
Movement stirred below as Foryth and Emilo came into sight. Danyal helped them both up over the steep boulder, then resumed his place at the rear of the little party as they continued upstream along the course of the plunging, splashing brook.
Soon the steepness mellowed into a grassy valley, where the ground proved soft and marshy underfoot. Moving to the side, they hastened along a low ridge where the terrain was still open, though large clumps of gray-black rock jutted from the carpet of grass and flowers. The stream was a shimmering ribbon of silver, visible as it meandered back and forth through the flat, low ground.
Finally the valley walls closed in again, and the course of the waterway returned to its steep and rocky dimensions. More trees grew here.
Conscious of approaching dawn, Danyal was relieved to have some semblance of cover overhead. They found a trail that, while narrow and winding, was clear of the obstacles that had tripped them up all night.
Padding through the dark woods, Danyal strained to see Foryth Teel’s tan robe, following the blur of color as they moved more quickly than they had been able to before.
A gasp of alarm accompanied Foryth’s skidding to a halt, and Danyal bumped into the historian roughly.
“What is it?” asked the lad, pushing for a view around the historian’s side.
Foryth pointed mutely to the ground before them, where one figure writhed on the ground and another, recognizable by her twin ponytails as Mirabeth, knelt nearby and cooed soothing sounds.
“Emilo!” cried Danyal, in his alarm forgetting to hold his voice to a whisper He, too, knelt beside the kender, seeing that their rescuer was rolling from side to side, back arched, eyes wide and staring.
“What’s wrong?” Foryth whispered, clutching Dan-yal’s shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
Even as he spoke his quiet answer, the youth was remembering a man from his village, Starn