Chapter 31 Click Click Click
Rolan left the city as soon as dawn came.
He would have gone earlier if he’d been armed with anything better than a paring knife.
Its dull blade wouldn’t put so much as a dent in a Cryptic’s scaly hide.
If he was lucky, it would make one collapse into monstrous laughter just long enough for him to run away.
Hoff and Cabbot were plotting to destroy the Arcanist, and only Rolan could warn him.
The Arcana he’d drawn on to escape Hoff had run out quickly, probably because it had come from one of the smaller Cryptics he’d defeated.
Its secret had been less troubling than the others he’d learned.
A girl had broken her mother’s heirloom mirror and hidden it by burying the shards in the dirt.
Rolan had felt sorry for the girl. Her desperation had bled through the vision, leaving him feeling panicked and guilty.
He limped down the road to Luc’s, hating that he couldn’t make himself move faster, resisting the temptation to crush yet another relic. Luc would be furious with him as it was. Then again, maybe once he realized Rolan had done all this to save him, he’d fall to his knees and weep with gratitude.
A kid could dream.
Luc’s house was much farther than Rolan remembered, and he thought wistfully of Apple with his long strides and easy canter. Maybe that would be Rolan’s reward for his devastatingly heroic actions; he’d ask for a horse of his own. One that couldn’t clear a small town with its toxic emissions.
“Can’t be much farther…,” he groaned as the sky grew brighter. A thick layer of cloud blanketed the sun, so it was hard to tell the exact time, but he was pretty sure he’d been walking for about a million hours. Luc had better throw in a new sword to go with his new horse.
When the house finally came into view, Rolan gave a sob of relief. He was matted with dirt and blood, both dried and fresh. His stomach clawed at his spine, desperate for food. And there was a fly that would not stop buzzing in his ear.
But the closer he got to Luc’s house, the more his aggravations gave way to dread.
These rolling fields had always felt unsettlingly quiet to him, but now they felt disturbingly quiet.
There was no familiar plume of smoke rising in the distance to mark the Arcanist’s homestead.
The air lay heavy and damp on his skin, the clouds above constipated with rain that would not fall.
Despite the feel of a storm lurking above, not a curl of wind disturbed the sky.
Rolan had the sense of walking through a dream world, a place not quite real, where anything could happen.
Probably something horrible and nightmarish.
Supper greeted him as he came around the last bend in the road. The goat nearly knocked him over, bouncing in agitated circles.
“What’s your problem, Supper?” Rolan asked, his dread tightening like a rope around his middle. It dragged him forward, step-by-step, up to Luc’s house.
The Arcanist had been at work in Rolan’s absence, partially rebuilding the burnt-down section of his house. Over the still-gaping roof and walls, he’d stretched layers of canvas and burlap.
But no work had been done for a while. There was an air of abandonment in the place that explained Supper’s anxious, needy bleating.
Luc was not home, and hadn’t been for some time.
“Where’d he go?” Rolan looked around, petting Supper’s quivering neck to try to calm the creature, only to snatch his hand away when Supper tried to take a bite out of it. “You’re hungry too, huh?”
Inside the house all was still. Nothing was out of place or broken, so Rolan’s first fear—that Luc had been attacked—was laid to rest. But a film of dust covered everything and the fireplace was cold. Wherever Luc had gone, he’d left days ago.
“Into the forest?” Rolan wondered.
Sure enough, Luc’s sword and belt were gone, with his satchel of truth salve, bandages, and other supplies. He hadn’t taken his knapsack though, which meant he hadn’t planned to be gone overnight. Why, then, did it appear as if he’d been gone for days?
Chills of dread scurried through Rolan like spiders.
A quick check in the barn confirmed his fears. Apple was still there, munching on a bag of feed he’d torn into. The barn stank, having not been mucked for days.
Luc must have set out on a short trip, intending to be gone for a few hours.
But he never made it back.
Feeling sick, Rolan gave Apple some fresh water, mucked out the worst of the horse’s mess, fed Supper some grain, and kicked rocks that looked liked they needed kicking.
“What do I do now?” he groaned. “Hoff and his miserable friends could show up any time!”
He doubted that when they did, they would settle for simply burning down Luc’s house. They were intent on ridding themselves of the Arcanist permanently, and Rolan was the only thing standing in their way.
Rolan looked at Supper, hoping the goat might secretly be some kind of oracle who would start talking and offer words of wisdom or at the very least, some idea of which way Luc had gone.
But the goat only lipped hopefully at the cuff of Rolan’s boot.
“This isn’t good, Supper,” Rolan sighed, shaking him off. “I guess there’s only one thing to do, huh?”
He still had his cloak on. Going back into the house, he scrounged up another pair of knives to replace the ones Evaine had stolen from him. He twirled them experimentally, but they did not glow blue. Their Arcana reserves were depleted, then.
Taking one of Luc’s extra supply belts, with its useful little straps and pouches, he equipped himself with truth salve, a waterskin, a roll of string for trap making, a small hatchet, a roll of linen for bandages that he hoped he wouldn’t need to use, a flint and striker, and another much larger dagger, just because there was no one there to stop him.
He added a slingshot for good measure, but passed on the training bow Luc had carved for him.
He’d never gotten the hang of it and would more likely shoot his own toe off than a Cryptic’s horn.
Into a small knapsack he dumped as many rations of dried jerky as he could carry.
After a moment’s hesitation, he strapped his satchel of relics onto his belt as well.
Feeling as prepared as he could be, which still felt dismally insufficient against the forest’s horrors, Rolan stood in front of the house and took a deep breath.
“Well, Supper,” he said. “Here I go. You protect the house while we’re gone. If Hoff shows up, headbutt him in the belly for me, will you? And eat his boots too, if you can stand the smell.”
“Bahhh,” Supper replied resolutely.
Giving the goat one final pat, Rolan struck out for the forest.
He had a rough idea of where to look. He knew of the cave where Luc made camp sometimes, and he figured that was as good a target as any.
In truth he hoped the Arcanist would find him.
Luc had an annoying way of knowing where Rolan was and what he was up to.
If there was ever a time to prove it, it was now.
Guiltily, he wondered how Evaine and Anaya were doing.
He hoped they weren’t out looking for him.
Maybe they were glad he was gone, given the trouble and worry he’d put them through.
Anaya had been angry enough at him, he could imagine she was relieved he’d left.
But he couldn’t really believe it. Deep down, he knew they cared about him, even if their methods had been on the smothering side.
The problem was, they cared about him but they didn’t trust him. Neither did Luc. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure anyone ever had trusted him, not since Anaya had taken her apprenticeship. They all thought he was too selfish, too reckless, too stupid.
It was a shock, seeing himself that way. Realizing they were probably right.
He had to prove he could be better. To Luc, and to himself.
The forest swallowed Rolan like a bug, sucking him deeper and deeper down its dark, twisted paths.
Many of them were false paths, little leafy roads that appeared like a promise beneath his feet to lead him through tangles of briars, only to evaporate traitorously and leave him stranded.
They made him long for the tried and true streets of Crisanth, which stank of pee and garbage, but at least they didn’t randomly disappear, making you feel like you were being laughed at by a thousand hidden eyes.
Luc had taught him to beware such capricious trails, and to trust nothing but the sun and stars when it came to finding his way.
Truth, but he hated the woods.
Rolan felt a thrill of satisfaction, however, when he recognized a large boulder shaped like a turtle’s head, jutting out of a hillside like a huge, mossy shell.
That rock meant he was close to the cave, and that somehow, miraculously, some of Luc’s pathfinding lessons might actually have stuck in Rolan’s slippery brain.
“If you’re here, Luc,” Rolan muttered, not daring to shout, “now would be a fantastic time to jump out of the bushes and scare the life out of me.”
But the bushes remained undisturbed, and Rolan pressed on, his stomach fluttering with nerves. If the cave showed no signs of the Arcanist, he had no idea where to look next. Maybe he’d just go back to the house and hope—
Click click click.
Rolan froze halfway through a patch of giant ferns, his hands parting the fronds.
His heart hammered like a person beating on a door, begging to be let out. He knew that sound. It was one of the few sounds every Cryptic seemed to make, one way or another. Clacking teeth. Clacking pincers. Clacking horns.
Slowly, slowly, he lowered his hands, letting the fern fronds sweep together like a curtain to conceal his pale, sweating face.
Click click click.
The sun was low in the sky, the forest already soaked in shadow. He hadn’t realized how late it had gotten until now, when the night breathed down his neck and sent chills skittering over his skin. One of his hands moved to a dagger. The other went to his satchel of relics.
Where was the thing? The sound clicked all around him as if it were circling him or, worse, prowling through the treetops.
Rolan looked up nervously at the lacework of thin branches and told himself he was only imagining that they were braiding more tightly together, sealing him into an inescapable cage.
Click click… click…
Was the Cryptic moving on? Did he dare hope he’d managed to hide from it? The horrid clicking was getting quieter, more distant.
He waited a few more minutes, but didn’t hear it again.
Rolan let out a breath.
“Close one,” he whispered.
He moved away, going in what he hoped was the opposite direction.
He was less concerned now with finding the cave than he was with putting distance between himself and whatever Cryptic was out there.
Preferably an entire forest’s worth of distance.
The Cryptics out here were much, much bigger than the juveniles he’d been hunting in the city. He knew his limits.
And in the back of his mind was the uneasy threat of the giant Cryptic, the one that had made even Luc turn gray with dread.
After an hour or so of sneaking through the forest, he circled back to the general vicinity of the cave. He heard no more clicking, saw no signs of Cryptics.
He was safe. Or, at least, as safe as anyone could be in a forest filled with monsters.
His spirits lifted. As in, instead of dragging on the ground, they hovered somewhere around his ankles. Still abysmally low, but slightly less than they had been.
They rose again when he glimpsed the cave, a dark smudge in the gray green of twilight. Rolan’s muscles relaxed gratefully as he stepped inside, his hand dragging on the dry rock walls.
Until his hand brushed something warm and wet.
Pausing, he held his hand up to his face and sniffed.
Blood.
Rolan’s heart dropped.
He plunged his hand into his relic satchel, taking out a curved talon. Instead of crushing it, he shook it gently, making it glow blue. The light was faint, but strong enough to illuminate a small radius around him.
Walking quickly now, deeper into the cave, he stumbled over rocks and searched the shadows on shaking legs.
“Luc?” he whispered. “Luc, are you here?”
He swung the relic around, its pale blue light rippling over the cave’s rough walls. He reached the list of names carved into the rock, all the Arcanists of Crisanth’s past.
Swallowing hard, Rolan pressed his fingertips to Luc’s name.
Then he turned around—and gasped.
The Arcanist lay several steps away, his face pallid, his chest bloody. He looked dead.
“Luc!”
Rolan dropped to Luc’s side and shook the man, letting out a cry of relief when his eyelids fluttered. Slowly, Luc turned his head, his gaze foggy. But when he focused on Rolan, his eyes grew wide.
“Boy…”
“It’s me! Luc, I’m here!”
“Why,” Luc rasped, his voice dragging itself over his tongue like a dying thing over a sandy desert. “Why are you here?”
“I—”
“GET DOWN!”
With a mighty shove Luc pushed Rolan aside, just as a massive club of a tail smashed into the ground where Rolan had been standing.
Stunned, Rolan lay on his back, gasping as a Cryptic’s roar thundered through the cave.