The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [164]
I looked over to where Jik was continuing his language lessons with the bemused Dragon. “Ready?” I asked.
Jik looked across at me unsmilingly, and for an instant he looked suddenly old and frail, as near to death as Pavo. Then he smiled, and the impression vanished.
We walked single file from then on, Darga leading the way through a stand of giant trees with monstrously gnarled and misshapen trunks and thick, dark roots writhing up out of the ground. I thought I had seen such trees beyond the compound wall in Matthew’s vision and hoped it meant we were nearing the other end of the pass.
At the same time, the ground beneath our feet became wet and soft. Our feet made sucking noises that echoed in the silence. The torchlight flickered on dark, odorous puddles of water that seeped into the slightest depression of earth. There seemed no source for the dampness. The light made a bizarre shadow play on the twisted tree trunks, making them look like the faces of ancient men and women. Dragon eyed them doubtfully as we passed.
After a time, the wind rose, and leaves flapped sluggishly, heavy with moisture. We waded through a thick blanket of them, and the smell of the festering layers of leaves below filled the air with a sweet, rotten scent that made us all gag.
Darga sent a constant dialogue of instructions as the way became more fraught with danger, and I began to regret not stopping. He warned against certain plants, trees, and even areas of bare ground, guiding us through the poisonous labyrinth. Without him, we would have been helpless, for there was scant outward sign of the poisons other than the distorted sizes and shapes of the trees and bushes growing all around us.
In the end, the dog called a halt, saying he needed to rest. We went on until he found a patch of ground relatively clean of taint. My feet no longer gave me any trouble, for an ominous numbness had deprived them of all sensation. I felt I could walk over flames without feeling anything. I did not dare undo the bandages, afraid of what the loss of feeling might mean.
We ate the last of our store of perishable foods and sipped at the meager remnant of water. I had wanted to fill the containers along the way, but Darga had pronounced all water in the pass tainted enough to make a person sick. We would have to ration what was left of the water to make sure it would last us out.
I was drifting into a light, troubled sleep when a terrible, savage growling rent the air around us.
21
THE GROWLING SEEMED to vibrate in the air, even after it had ceased. Nothing stirred in the silence that followed except for a faint breeze tugging at our blankets.
“What was that?” Jik whispered.
I set my mind loose, searching, hampered by the static given off by the poisons. I found nothing. “Do you know what that was?” I asked Darga.
“Some kind of animal,” he suggested unhelpfully.
Dragon was crouched near a tree, her eyes wide with fright. I opened my mouth to reassure her, but another of the blood-chilling growls cut off my words. My skin puckered into gooseflesh.
Again the growl faded, but still there was no sign of the creature that had made it. Neither Jik nor Darga were any more successful at locating the mind pattern of the monster. I encountered a number of barely sentient minor patterns, but these were mere flickers of instinct rather than thought.
We gave up and sat around staring uneasily into the darkness around us.
Five more times the eerie sounds shattered the night, and I began to suspect that it was not, as we had all feared, a signal for attack or a hunting cry. Even so, I could not help thinking that a creature who could make such a noise and conceal its mind might be clever enough to hide its intention.
But there was no attack.
Morning found us bleary-eyed and ill rested, for the sounds had seemed to grow nearer and more frequent as the night wore on. In the end, we decided there