The Sword of the Truth, Book 12 - The Omen Machine (25 page)

H
enrik lifted his head from gulping water out of the brook to look back through the trees into the deep shadows. He could hear the hounds coming. They crashed through brush, snarling and barking as they came.

With the back of his fist, Henrik wiped fresh tears of terror from his cheeks. The hounds were going to catch him, he knew they were. They wouldn’t stop until they had him. Ever since that day at the People’s Palace, when they had showed up outside the tent, sniffing and growling, they kept coming for him.

His only chance was to keep running.

He stuck his foot into the stirrup and hooked his wrist over the horn of the saddle to help pull himself back up onto the horse’s back. He spun the reins around his wrists, locked them to his fisted hands with his thumbs, and then thumped the mare’s belly with his heels, urging it into an easy gallop.

He had hoped to take an extra moment to eat something more than a biscuit and a single piece of dried meat. He was starving. He was thirsty as well, but he’d only had time to lie on his belly and gulp a few swallows of water from the brook before he had sprung up and run back to his horse.

He had desperately wanted to eat more, to drink more.

But there was no time. The hounds were too close.

He had to keep running, keep ahead of them. If they got to him they would tear him apart.

He hadn’t known where he was going at first. His instinct had made him bolt from his mother’s tent and had driven him onward. He knew his mother would want to protect him, but she couldn’t. She would have been torn apart and then they would be on him.

So he’d had no choice but to run for all he was worth until, exhausted, he had happened upon the horses. They had been in a small corral with some others. He hadn’t seen anyone around. He needed to get away, so he snatched up a saddle and took two horses. He was lucky enough to have discovered some traveling food in the saddlebags or he would probably have starved to death by now.

He never gave a thought to it being wrong to take the horses; his life was at stake. He simply ran. Who could blame him? Would people really expect him to be torn apart and eaten alive rather than take a couple of horses to get away? What choice did he have?

When it grew too dark to see, he was forced to stop for the night. A few times he had come across an abandoned building where he had been able to hole up for the night, safe for a time from the hounds. Then, in the morning, he made a run for it before the hounds knew he was up. Several times he had slept in a tree to be safe from them. The hounds, somewhere down in the darkness, eventually grew tired of barking and took off for the night. He thought that maybe they went off to sleep themselves, or to hunt for food.

Other times, when there was no place of safety, he had been able to get a fire started. He huddled close to it, ready to grab a burning branch and brandish it at the dogs if they came close. They never did. They didn’t like the fire. They always watched from a distance, their heads lowered, their eyes glowing in the dark, as they paced back and forth, waiting for morning.

Sometimes when he woke they were gone and he dared hope they had finally tired of the chase. But it was never long before he would hear them baying in the distance, racing in toward him, and the chase would be on again.

He pushed the horses so hard keeping ahead of the hounds that the one he rode at first had given out. He switched the saddle to the second and left the first behind, hoping the hounds would be satisfied with the horse and he could get away.

The hounds hadn’t taken the horse, though. They’d kept coming for him, instead. They had followed him through the mountains, through the forests, ever onward, ever deeper into a dark, trackless land of immense trees.

Now he was beginning to recognize the gloomy wood he was passing through. He had grown up several days’ travel to the north, in a small village hard against the hills beside a branch of the Caro-Kann River.

He had been in this place, on this trail, before, with his mother. He remembered the towering pines clinging to the rocky slope, the way they closed in overhead, obscuring the heavily overcast sky, making it dark and dreary down among the brush and bramble.

The horse skidded, trying to find footing on the steep descent down the side of the grade. The woods were too thick and it was too dark in among them to see what lay down ahead. For that matter, he couldn’t see far off to the sides, either.

But he didn’t need to see. He knew what was ahead.

After a long descent down the ill-defined, twisting trail, the ground flattened out into a darker place where the trees grew closer together, and the underbrush was thick. There were only rare glimpses of light through the trees. The tangle of shrubs and small trees made it nearly impossible to take any course but the thinned area that served as a trail.

When he came to a rocky rim, the horse snorted in protest and refused to go on. There was no place beyond that was safe for a horse. What trail there was made its way down between and over cascading lifts of rock and ledges.

Henrik dismounted and peered over the edge down into the misty wilderness below. He remembered that the trail down was narrow, steep, and treacherous. The horse couldn’t take him any farther. He looked back over his shoulder, expecting the hounds to come bounding out of the trees at any second. By their growls and yelps, he knew they were getting close again.

He quickly unsaddled the horse so that it would at least have a chance to get away. He slipped off the horse’s head gear and slapped its flanks. The horse whinnied and bolted back the way they had come.

Henrik spotted the big black dog that led the pack as it broke through the trees. It didn’t go after the horse. It was coming after him. He turned and without further delay headed down over the edge of the rocks.

While the trail was too steep and jagged for the horse, with crags and splits in the sloping rock face, loose scree in some spots, and rugged outcroppings in others, he knew that the hounds would have no trouble following him down through the narrow defiles. He knew, too, that they could probably scramble and bound down the rock faster than he could. He had no time to waste.

Henrik didn’t question where he was going, or why; for that matter, he didn’t even think about it— he simply started down. Since that first day when he had scratched the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor and then dashed away, he hadn’t questioned what he was doing or the need to run. Crossing the Azrith Plain, he hadn’t even questioned where he was running. He had simply run from the hounds. He had instinctively known that if he’d taken another course they would have had him. In his mind, there had been only one possible direction to run and he had taken it.

By the time he made it to the bottom his face was covered with sweat and grime. He’d looked back a few times and had seen the short-haired brown dog that was usually near the front of the pack. Both the black and the brown dogs, the two leaders, were powerfully built, with thick necks. Long frothy drool swung from their jowls as they snarled when they caught sight of him.

That quick glimpse was all Henrik needed to bound down the trail as fast as he could, slipping downward between rock outcroppings at a reckless rate. In places he had simply let himself slide down the steep funnel of dirt and scree because it was faster.

He finally stumbled off the precipitous path onto a flatter area among vines and tangles of brush. The air was oppressive. The place stank with rot.

Out under the deep shade of thick growth he could see trees with broad, flaring bottoms that seemed made to help them balance in the soft, boggy areas. Here and there cedars grew on patches of slightly higher ground, but the broad-bottomed trees were the only ones standing in the stagnant stretches of foul-smelling water. Their gnarled branches, extending outward not far above the water, held veils of moss. In places the moss dragged in the water. In other places, twisting vines hung down all the way to the water from somewhere in the canopy above, providing support for smaller vines with deep violet flowers.

Lizards darted up the wispy trailers of plants as he came close. Snakes, lounging over branches, tongues flicking the air, watched him pass. Things under the water swam lazily away, leaving a wake of quiet ripples that lapped at the soggy trail.

The deeper into the wooded bog he went, the thicker the tangle of shoots and vines grew as they closed in from the sides, making the way in a tunnel through the snarl of woody growth. Out beyond, unseen birds let out sharp calls that echoed across the still stretches of water.

Behind, the hounds sounded like they were in a rabid rage to get to him.

He paused in the dark tunnel of dense woods, uncertain if he dared go on.

Henrik knew where he was. Before him, the tangle of growth and trailers of vine marked the outer fringe of Kharga Trace. He had heard from his mother that a person had to have a powerful need to go into this place, because not many ever came out again. He and his mother had been two of the lucky ones who had made it back out, making it seem all the more foolish to tempt fate twice.

His heart pounding, his breath coming in rapid pulls, he stared ahead with wide eyes. He knew what was waiting for him.

Jit, the Hedge Maid, was waiting for him.

There was only one thing worse than facing the Hedge Maid again: the certainty of being torn apart and eaten alive by the pack of dogs chasing him.

He could hear them getting closer. He had no choice. He plunged ahead.

A
fter a frightening race along the trail as it tunneled in places through the dense growth, the landscape opened somewhat as he reached some of the more open stretches of water. The trail, never more than inches above the muddy water, was gradually taken over by tangled roots, sticks, vines, and branches all woven together into a mat that made a walkway of sorts. Without it, the solid ground of the trail in places would simply have vanished beneath stretches of duckweed. As it was, the pathway of sticks and vines barely cleared the surface of the dark brown water.

Henrik worried about what would happen should he slip off the trail of tangled shoots and branches. He worried about what waited in the water for the unwary, or the careless.

He was so tired, so afraid, that only raw fear kept his feet moving. He wished he could be back, safe, with his mother. But he couldn’t stop or the hounds would get him.

While the stick and vine walkway was in places wide enough for several people to walk abreast, much of it was only wide enough for one person. In those narrow places where it became a bridge over stretches of open water, there were sometimes handholds or even rails made of crooked branches, lashed by thin vines to supports sticking up out of the tangle of wood underfoot. The whole thing creaked and moved as he made his way farther out onto it, as if it were a partially submerged monster displeased to have someone walking on its back.

Henrik couldn’t tell for sure how far the hounds were behind him because sound carried so well across water. He wondered if the dogs would have a hard time of trying to walk on the mat of tangled vines and branches that made up the bridge through the watery world. He wondered if maybe their paws would slip down between the woven mass and get caught. He hoped so.

Mist prevented him from seeing very far into the distance among the moss-draped, fat-bottomed trees. As mist closed in behind him, he couldn’t see very far back the way he had come, either. Among the snarl of roots snaking out from the nearby trees he could see eyes watching him.

He moved toward the center of the stick and vine bridge when he saw something in the water pass close by. What ever it was dragged a torn, fleshy mass behind. There were bite marks all over the pale, decomposing meat. There was no way to tell what animal it had come from, but by the size of the splintered bone hanging from the trailing end, it looked to have once been fairly big. He wondered if it was a human thighbone.

Henrik glanced down, nervous about how low the branch bridge rode in the water. It moved and swayed in a sickening way as he raced along it. He didn’t know if it was a floating bridge, or if it was supported from underneath. What he did know was that in most places it barely cleared the surface of the water. He worried that something might reach out, grab him by his ankle, and drag him into the murky water.

He didn’t know if that would be worse than being caught by what pursued him from behind, or worse than what waited for him ahead. He desperately wanted to avoid any of those three fates, but he could think of nothing to do other than to plunge ahead, running from one threat, avoiding the second, and into the arms of the third.

His legs grew tired as he raced onward across the endless bridge through the gloomy swamp. Unseen animals called out, their sharp cries echoing through the mist and darkness. It seemed that he was crossing a vast, shallow lake, but since he couldn’t see very far, it was hard to tell for sure. Big round leaves, something like lily pads, rode above the surface of the water in places, standing up as high as they could, hoping for a touch of sunlight that probably only penetrated the canopy on brief, rare occasions.

Several times Henrik slipped. The railing saved him. By the more distant barking, he judged that the hounds were having trouble keeping up and falling back. Still, they were back there, coming for him, so he dared not slow down.

As it grew darker, he was relieved to finally encounter lit candles along the bridge. He didn’t know if someone came out to light them at nightfall, or if they were always there and kept burning. They had been lit the last time he had come this way with his mother. As dark as it was in among the looming stands of smooth-barked trees, they would be a help even in the day.

The farther he went, the wider and more substantial the bridge of tangled branches and vines became. The trees all around, standing up out of the water on snarls of roots, crowded in closer together. The vines hanging down from the darkness above, too, became thicker, some of them looping between trees and staying above the surface of the water. Many eventually became overgrown and weighted down with plants climbing up from the water or tendrils curling down from above. The growth to each side became so dense that it once again seemed that the bridge tunneled through a rat’s nest of branches, vines, and bramble. The one constant was the murky water to each side. All too often he saw shadows move through the depths.

The candles become more plentiful as the stick bridge went farther in through the dark tangle of undergrowth. The candles were simply placed in crooks in the tangle of branches and sticks.

The occasional railings after a time developed into structures curving up from each side that seemed to be protecting the bridge from the encroachment of the thick undergrowth, or maybe from what lurked in the water. The walls, thick at the bottoms, thinner as they went higher, in places topped over the bridge with encircling branches that almost felt like claws closing in from overhead.

The candles grew so plentiful that at times it almost felt like passing between walls of fire. Henrik supposed that the bridge didn’t catch fire and burn down because it was so wet and slimy. Slick green moss and dark mold covered most of the woven mass of roots, twigs, branches, and vines. It made the footing treacherous.

The farther Henrik went, the thicker the mat of woven branches that made up the walls became until they eventually closed in overhead and he felt like he was inside a cocoon of twisted wood. He could see out only through occasional small gaps. It was getting dark, though, so there wasn’t much to see. Inside, the flickering glow of hundreds of candles lit the way.

When he realized that he didn’t hear the hounds anymore, he paused, listening for them. He wondered if they feared to venture out across the twig causeway and so had finally given up the chase.

He wondered if maybe he didn’t need to go on. Maybe the hounds were gone and he could go back.

But even as he thought it, an inner drive compelled him to move onward into the Hedge Maid’s refuge. As soon as he took a few steps, it was hard not to take yet a few more into the candlelit tunnel.

Finally, with supreme effort, he did force himself to stop. If he was ever to escape, now was the time. He turned and looked back the way he had come. He heard no hounds.

Carefully, tentatively, he took a step back toward freedom.

Before he could take another, one of the familiars, like a creature made of smoke, drifted through the walls into the tunnel of woven sticks to block his way.

Henrik stood frozen in terror, his heart hammering even faster.

The glowing form floated closer.

“Jit waits for you,” she hissed. “Get moving.”