Chapter 34
Edmund woke groggily, as he had done dozens of times before.
He was so lightheaded that he didn’t realize at first that he wasn’t moving.
The world seemed to slosh around him when he sat up.
For a moment, he thought he might be on a boat.
Then he saw the stone walls and the single candle, set on a low table, and congratulated himself for realizing that boats weren’t made of stone.
Neither were carriages, for that matter. So the scholar and her enormous henchman must have reached their destination.
He wondered what they wanted him for. Something to do with the Dervish? No, he’d thrown the sword away. They didn’t have it, and what good was he without it? The Dervish didn’t have to come after him. He was fine wherever he was.
Relief swamped him. He staggered to his feet, then had to sit back down again as the world sloshed harder.
There was a chamber pot under the bed, though, and he needed it desperately.
His skull throbbed harder, but he managed.
His hands were no longer tied, which helped.
There were red welts along his wrists, though, where the bonds had chafed.
He wondered how long he’d been in the carriage.
It took him several tries to reach the door. Many-Armed One, what had they been giving him? His limbs were as stiff as if he’d been … wedged into a carriage for days, actually. Hmm. Funny, that.
The door was locked. Edmund stared at it, tried the handle several more times, then gave up and slid down the wall to the floor. He was a prisoner, then. Still a prisoner. Something like that.
The bed seemed like an infinitely long way away, so he curled up on the flagstones where he was and slept.
In the end, it was neither tracking nor advanced geometry that led them to the cultists. It was Halla, who went up to the innkeeper and said, “’Scuse me, but you don’t happen to know of some people nearby, do you? Religious order, call themselves the servants of the Sainted Smith?”
The innkeeper’s eyebrows drew down. “Yeah,” he said. “They’ve got a compound near here. Why?”
The Dervish’s nerves yelled at him to jump in front of Halla and stop her from saying something like “They’ve kidnapped a friend of ours.” For all they knew, the innkeeper was in their pay, or at least uninclined to rile up the neighbors.
He needn’t have worried. Halla beamed and said, “Oh good! My cousin’s supposed to be there—well, not really a cousin exactly, he was my aunt’s husband’s boy by his first marriage, but he was just a wee little slip of a thing when his father married my aunt, so he was basically a cousin, because I’ve always said no good comes of making distinctions like that in a family, just breeds up a lot of resentment if you go around telling children they aren’t really a cousin, you understand? ”
The innkeeper’s expression had acquired a certain fixed quality, but he was a professional and recognized a pause in the conversation where he was supposed to grunt. He grunted.
“Is it far?” Halla asked. “I’d love to see him.”
“’Bout a mile and a half up the road. You’ll see the turnoff on the left. It’s not marked, but it’s the only left after you get past the fences.”
“Thank you so much!” Halla beamed at him. “He’s the sweetest boy, you know. Do you have any cousins? Or nephews?”
The innkeeper allowed as how he was in possession of something like a nephew.
By the time the horses were saddled, Halla had extracted the man’s life story, and his nephew’s life story, and would probably be invited to said nephew’s wedding. Sarkis helped her into the saddle with an air of intense resignation.
“Spymasters would give their eyeteeth for a dozen women like her,” he told the Dervish. “It’s terrifying.”
“He was a sweet man,” Halla said. “And his nephew sounds charming. Now let’s go find some cultists.”
The turnoff was harder to spot than the innkeeper had suggested, but there were fresh wagon tracks in the mud that gave it away. The Dervish dismounted to lead his horse down it, and the others followed. Dog Violet sniffed the air.
The road was small and weeds grew thickly on the verge and down the center, but the wheel ruts were clear. Trees bent over it, forming a long tunnel. Edmund would have known what kind of trees they were, the Dervish thought, and gritted his teeth.
“A gnole will scout ahead. Horses are too loud.” She handed Greathoof’s reins to the Dervish and vanished into the undergrowth with a soft swish.
“Quiet,” Sarkis said.
“If you say ‘too quiet’ I shall sue you,” Zale said.
“No, it’s just quiet enough. There are still birds. And mosquitoes.” He slapped his arm by way of demonstration.
Realistically, the Dervish knew that Dog Violet was only gone for about twenty minutes, but it felt like twenty years. Greathoof began enthusiastically clearing some of the overgrown weeds. The Dervish paced until he thought he might wear another rut in the road.
“A gnole has news,” Dog Violet said, practically under the Dervish’s elbow. He jumped and grabbed for a dagger, then stopped and glared. She snickered. “A gnole has … lay of a land, yes? Follow this way, and a gnole will show humans.”
The road split a few hundred yards farther on, into the main road and a narrow trail that looked more like a goat track than a road.
The trail turned north and immediately began to rise up one of the rocky hillsides that dominated the area.
At the top, it broke from the woods into grass and stone, like the bald spot at the center of a tonsure.
Halla stayed under the tree cover with the horses and the swords while the other three continued up.
“Now look down,” Dog Violet said, going to the far edge. Wind ruffled her fur and tugged at the woven rags around her.
The Dervish looked down.
One side of the hill had been sheared off into a cliff with a slight overhang. At the bottom of the cliff, directly below them, was a palisade wall, the points arrayed outward like an enraged hedgehog. The Dervish could see multiple small four-legged shapes moving below.
“Dogs,” the gnole said. “Whole yard is dogs. A gnole didn’t get anywhere close to fence before dogs bark, bark, all bark.”
“The actual building must be carved into the hillside,” the Dervish said. “Shit.”
“Not going to be able to set this place on fire,” Dog Violet said glumly.
“A forward assault was never the best idea,” Sarkis observed, “but it would have been nice to know that it was an option. Even if we could get them to lower the gate somehow, we’d be fighting our way through the whole place, and we have no idea how many people there are.
And that doesn’t include the dogs.” He grimaced. “I really, really hate fighting dogs.”
“Even if we lowered someone on a rope, the dogs would kick up a fuss, and it’d be the same problem, except the gate wouldn’t be down.” The Dervish dug his fingers into his hair. “Ancestors, we don’t have time for a siege.”
“I’m not sure we can conduct a siege with five people anyway.”
They stared down awhile longer. A person came out, to much frantic barking, then went back in again.
“The real problem is the dogs,” the Dervish said slowly. “If one of us could get past them, into the main building, all we’d need is stealth.”
“A lot of stealth.” Sarkis gave him a wry look over Dog Violet’s head. “Room-to-room fighting tends not to end well.”
“Good thing I’m immortal, then. But surely there can’t be that many people in there.” He gestured toward the clearing around the palisade. “No fields. No gardens. They’re getting everything brought in, and the road is too overgrown for big wagons to be coming through regularly.”
“Ventilation also becomes a concern, the deeper you cut into the stone,” Zale offered. “Even assuming there are slits to let air in, there are limits to how large such a fortress can be without some form of mechanical ventilation.”
The Dervish stared over the edge, thinking. Edmund was in there somewhere. He touched his pocket instinctively, where the little sketchbook lay, with its pictures of dragons and the Dervish and flowers that used ants …
And then he had an idea.
“Absolutely not,” Sarkis said. “That’s so far-fetched that it’s not even crazy.”
“No, it’s not!” The group had retreated down the trail until they were at the base of the hill but still well out of sight of the main road. “Listen to me. It’s like the thing!” the Dervish said, waving his hands. “With the ants!”
“Ants?” said Zale.
The Dervish clutched his head. “What did Edmund call it? Mur something … murm … core…”
“Myrmecochory?” asked Halla. Sarkis turned to stare at her. “What? I go to the library too, you know.”
“Yes! That’s it! With the ants!” The Dervish nodded furiously. “The ants and the flower, the … I don’t remember what the flower’s called. But that’s how I get in!”
“Are you sure the ants can carry you, though?” asked Halla.
Sarkis leaned over to Zale and murmured, “You’re hearing this too, right?”
“Oh yes.”
“Knife-man has finally lost his mind,” Dog Violet said sadly. “Stress of losing mate, probably.”
“No, no, not actual ants.” The Dervish’s mind was racing ahead, the way it did sometimes, and he had to try to slow it down or the others were going to sit on him and send for a healer.
“Look, the ants take the seeds because the seed has something they want to eat, right? And they don’t care about the rest, so they put it in the trash, which is where the seed wants to be.
” He swept his hands together. “I’m the seed. ”
This statement was greeted with politely baffled silence.
“And the cultists are the ants?” Zale asked finally.
“No, no. They’re … I don’t know, wasps or something.”
“Pollination by wasps is sphecophily,” Halla put in. “It was in the same book.”
“Are you suggesting you go in and get … er … pollinated?” Zale had a wary look. “I know you’re very attractive—”
“Thank you.”
“—but there’s a lot of cultists, and they would recognize you.”
“No, no. Forget the cultists. The cultists don’t matter.”