He sprinted forward, quicker than the thief watching him had expected. Wick felt the man's fingers brush against the back of one shoulder, but he was free, running straight for Quarrel.
“The rope!” Wick yelled. “Grab the rope!”
A startled look flashed across Quarrel's face as she realized Wick was coming too fast to stop short of the ledge. Instinctively, she braced against his charge. If she'd been a full-grown man or a dwarf, perhaps even an elf, Wick knew he would have never been able to knock her from her feet. But she was slight, and she was weak from her injury. He just hoped she wasn't too weak to help save herself. She thought quickly on her feet. He knew that and he was counting on that skill.
“Stop him!” Ryman Bey yelled.
“Stupid halfer!” one of the thieves said.
“No,” Quarrel said, trying to move out of the way.
Then Wick was on her, hitting her at her waist, below the arm she threw out to stop him. He reached up and caught the rope with his right hand, flipping his arm to catch a loop behind his right elbow.
For an instant they hovered on the brink of the cliff, teetering as Quarrel fought back and tried to stop the impending fall. “Grabtherope!” Wick yelled.
“Grabtherope!”
They fell, spinning over the empty space above the sea and the jagged rock. Wick slammed against the cliffside and felt the breath leave his lungs. He got his left hand around the arrow in Quarrel's shoulder and snapped it off so that it wouldn't be savagely jerked from her flesh. She screamed in pain, or it might have been she was already screaming in fright, he wasn't sure. But she grabbed the rope with both hands.
Wick hoped that his arm wasn't torn out of its socket when they ran out of slack. He was still screamingâ
something
, he wasn't sure whatâwhen that happened.
They hit the end of the rope still seventy feet from the sea, slamming into mountainside as the thief above (evidently figuring out what was going to happen and fearing the worst) tried to dig in. Whatever the thief did, Wick knew, was potentially doomed to failure. That was quickly proven true when he and Quarrel began falling again. Only this time they were close enough to the mountainside to slide down to one of the ledges.
Wick hit the ledge with bone-jarring force and skittered along, flailing helplessly as he shot over the edge. He managed to grab hold of the ledge and chinned himself, mewling with fear. Quarrel had landed on the ledge and was in no danger of falling off. She lay silent and still, and he feared she was dead. Blood covered her wounded shoulder.
Motion above Wick caught his attention. He looked up and saw the thief falling from the ledge, arms and legs flailing. His scream echoed, growing closer. Then Wick realized that the rope was still around his arm. He whipped his arm from the coils as the thief fell within inches of him, screaming, “Letgooftherope!
Letgooftherope!
” to Quarrel.
Weakly, she shifted and shook free of the rope as well. Wick got the rope off his arm last, noticing from the stiffness in his fingers and palms that he'd suffered burns and abrasions from struggling to hang onto the rope. The cold wind threatened to tear him from the ledge and he didn't think he had the strength to climb up.
The thief turned end over end and smashed against the rocks below. His body lay there for just a moment, then the waves crashed in and carried it away. Somewhere in the foggy darkness, the dead man disappeared without a trace.
Wick tried to pull himself up, digging his toes into the mountainside and heaving with all his strength. Above him, he heard the shouts of the thieves. Two arrows splintered against the stone as archers tried to pick him off. Quarrel lay sheltered under an overhang, but she leaned out with her good arm and caught hold of Wick's cloak. Leaning back, she helped him clamber up while another arrow whizzed by. He huddled under the overhang.
“That was idiocy,” Quarrel accused.
Nodding, Wick said, “It was. But if we'd stayed up there, they would have killed us.”
“That shouldn't have worked.”
“You only think that because you haven't read Daslanik's
Practical Applications of Dual Penduluming Bodies
. It's a fascinating book. Daslanik did a lot studies regarding penduluming weights with no fixed points.”
Quarrel shifted and got to a sitting position.
“You shouldn't be moving,” Wick said. Blood smeared the stone surface where the young woman had lain.
“Staying here for them to climb down and slit our throats isn't a good idea. Neither is staying here to freeze to death.”
Wick nodded, realizing that it was a lot colder on the mountainside. He helped her to her feet. They crouched under the overhang, then peered upward.
Gujhar looked down at them over the side. “You got lucky, halfer.”
Wick didn't bother to argue or point out the mathematics of his actions.
“If you know what's good for you,” Gujhar went on, “you'll make certain we never cross paths again.”
“I'll have my sword back,” Quarrel promised.
Gujhar smiled at her. The light from the torch he held exposed the cruel lines of his face. “You're welcome to try, girl. I don't like leaving loose ends.”
The thieves had spread out along the cliff, but none of them had yet found a way down to the ledge where Wick and Quarrel were. But their efforts to find one were reason enough to go.
“Can you walk?” Wick asked.
“If I can fall down a mountain and live,” Quarrel said, “I can walk.”
Wick took the lead, marking their path with a trained eye. He hadn't navigated the steep and twisting staircases of the Vault of All Known Knowledge's subterranean recesses without learning a few things. They went slowly, but they went, switching back and forth as they needed to. Occasionally, till they reached the rocky shore seventy or so feet below, arrows still skittered down the mountainside or splashed into the sea.
At the water's edge, they walked east along the coast, thinking that the more distance they put between themselves and Thango's keep the better. Wick felt certain Gujhar would return to
Wraith
and set sail as soon as he could.
After all, the elven bow Deathwhisper yet remained to be found.
Quarrel stumbled and almost fell. Wick took her good arm across his shoulder and supported her as well as he could. He kept them moving through the snowstorm. A few minutes later, he heard footsteps behind them. His heart stopped inside his chest, then he turned around and saw the cat had joined them.
“Is she going to be all right?” Alysta asked.
“Yes,” Wick answered, though he wasn't sure. The wound looked horrible, and the rough trip down the mountain (the climb as well as the fall) hadn't been good on her. “She just needs some rest. We need to find shelter.” He turned and continued on.
The cat fell into step beside them, trudging through the snow with a definite limp.
“Ryman Bey and the Razor's Kiss thieves are leaving the keep,” Alysta said. “They have what they came for.”
“And they think we're as good as dead,” Wick said grimly.
“If we live through the night and manage to return to Wharf Rat's Warren, they'll be waiting.”
Wick went on, forcing himself to move through the physical pains and exhaustion that plagued him. The pain was dulled somewhat by the questions that revolved endlessly inside his head.
Safe Harbor
“
O
ver here!” someone cried. “They're over here!”growled.
“Thank the Old Ones!” a familiar voice growled. “Are they still alive?”
Wick struggled against the lethargy that filled him. He tried to move but wasn't able to. Even fear seemed walled off by the cold that filled him. He sat hunkered in the folds of his cloak where he, Quarrel, and Alysta had decided to take shelter beneath a stand of spruce trees when they could go no farther.
They'd walked for an hour or more and found no sign of habitation. That part of the coast appeared completely desolate. The bright spot was that they hadn't crossed paths with the Razor's Kiss thieves, either.
Unless they've come calling now
, Wick thought grimly. He kept still, trusting the snow that had fallen to keep them covered. The snow now felt several inches thick. He wondered how they'd been found. With the snow around them and falling fast, he'd believed they'd safely dug in and disappeared.
Then hands dug at the snow and uncovered them. Torchlight burned bright and hot against his eyes.
Hallekk peered at Wick. “Are ye truly alive, then?” Snow clung to his beard, and his breath had formed ice crystals in his mustache.
“I am,” Wick whispered. Heartened by the sight of his friend, the little Librarian tried to stand. Past Hallekk,
One-Eyed Peggie
sat at anchor well away from the rocky shoals. A longboat sat beached on the shore. Craugh stood nearby, his staff blistering the frigid air with a trail of green sparks. “It's good to see
you. I hoped you would come soonâsoon enough.” He tried to take a step and almost fell.
“Go easy there with ye,” Hallekk cautioned, throwing his big arms around Wick and lifting him as he would a child. “I got ye. Don't ye fret none. I got ye.”
“What about Quarrel and the cat?” Wick whispered.
Hallekk peered into the cloak nest. “They're alive. We'll take care of 'em.”
“Please,” Wick asked. Then the fatigue that filled him claimed him and took him into the yawning blackness.
Â
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When Wick woke again, he was on
One-Eyed Peggie
, sleeping in a bed this time instead of a hammock. For a while he simply lay there, luxuriating in the warmth he'd thought he'd never again feel while he'd huddled in the thin protection of his cloak. The ship was in motion, riding the ocean waves, rising and falling regular enough to let him know they were making good timeâwherever they were headed.
Thoughts of Quarrel and how the young woman was faring drove Wick reluctantly from the bed. He still wore the clothes he'd gone roving in while at Wharf Rat's Warren. A bath, he knew, was in order at his earliest convenience.
He found his cloak on a chair beside the door. He pulled the garment on, then went out into the waist. In the hallway, two dwarven pirates carried supplies up from the cargo hold to the galley, replenishing Cook's supplies. After a brief conversation, Wick found out that Quarrel was resting and that Craugh and Cap'n Farok were topside making plans to pursue
Wraith
. While the idea of the two making further plans didn't make Wick's heart leap for joy, he was still glad that Gujhar and Ryman Bey hadn't escaped undetected. Although he was afraid of crossing paths with the two againâand the mysterious master Gujhar worked forâthe little Librarian didn't like leaving any mystery unsolved.
And this one looked like the biggest he'd ever seen.
On the main deck, Wick found the wizard and the ship's captain on the stern castle, heads together as they consulted a map. Wick hailed them.
“So,” Craugh said, “you've risen.” He didn't look particularly relieved or glad to see Wick. Doubtless, he was thinking that Wick had managed to let yet another of the weapons escape their grasp.
Wick gazed at the sun and judged it was only a couple of hours past sunrise. “I have. And you're lucky that I did after all that I've been through. You found us early this morning. I've only gotten a few hours of sleep. I'm surprised I'm even up.”
“You've gotten more than a few hours' sleep,” Craugh said. “You slept through one whole day.”
The news shocked Wick. He never slept that long. His ability to sleep so little had helped him keep up with the work Frollo assigned him at the Vault of All Known Knowledge.
“A day?” Wick repeated.
“Aye,” Cap'n Farok said. He ran a withered hand through his gray beard and smiled a little. “Me, I never seen a halfer go so long without a meal. Unless he was chained up somewheres an' food couldn't be had, of course.”
“Of course,” Wick said, dazed.
A day? I slept a whole day away?
He looked at Craugh. “We've lost time.”
“We have,” Craugh agreed. “But we've learned more.”
“What?”
“We've learned that the three owners of those mystic weapons had hidden them,” Alysta said. “They didn't just disappear over the years.”
Wick turned toward her voice only to see her leap gracefully to the table where the map was. The cat sat on her haunches and wrapped her tail around her feet. “So?” he asked.
“That means someone was looking for them a thousand years ago,” Alysta said. “Otherwise there would have been no reason to hide them.”
“Who's looking for them?”
“That's just one of the questions we need answers for,” Cap'n Farok said. “There's somethin' more than meets the eye to this.”
“The monster's eye?” Wick asked, thinking of the great eye kept in the jug under the captain's bed.
Cap'n Farok frowned and waved a hand. “No. This doesn't have anythin' to do with that there eye. I meant the eye.” He pointed to one of his eyes. “Me eye. Yer eye. Just ⦠just ⦠the
eye
. It were a figure of speech.”
“Oh,” Wick said, realizing he was thinking too literally. Then he thought of something else. “How is Quarrel?”
“Mendin',” Cap'n Farok said. “Hallekk took the arrow out of her shoulder. He says it missed everythin' important. Gonna be painful comin' back from it, but she'll get it done all right. She's young yet. Got a lot of healin' left to her.”
“She's a very strong young woman,” Alysta added. “I look forward to getting to know her.”
“I'm glad,” Wick said.
“Although I'm not too happy with you.” The cat focused her unblinking gaze on the little Librarian. “When you threw both of you over the cliff, I thought you'd committed suicide and taken her with you.”
“âThrew yerself over the cliff '?” Cap'n Farok looked totally shocked.
“It had to be done,” Wick insisted. “It was the only way.”
In a disapproving tone, Alysta quickly related the events.
“Ye hadn't mentioned that when we talked,” Cap'n Farok said when the cat finished her tale.
“We had other things to discuss,” Alysta said.
Cap'n Farok dropped a trembling hand on Wick's shoulder and grinned, pleased and proud. “Jumpin' offa cliffs, is it? Wait'll I tell Hallekk. Or Cobner! By the Old Ones, that crusty warrior'll have hisself a laugh now, won't he? An' claim all the credit fer yer courage an' skill. 'Course, he'll probably leave ye yer trickery an' such fer thinkin' of such a thing.”
In spite of the situation, Wick grinned. Cobner, who still claimed that Wick had saved his life that night in Hanged Elf's Point, would rejoice in the telling of the story. No doubt Cobner would further embellish it when he told it in taverns.
By the time Cobner was finished with it, Wick was likely to be nine feet tall and to have taken at least fifty Razor's Kiss thieves with him. It would be something to hear, that was certain. He looked forward to it and felt a pang of wistfulness to see his friend again.
“I swear,” Cap'n Farok said, still grinning, “since ye started a-hangin' out with proper pirates, Librarian Lamplighter, ye sure have picked up some almighty un-Librarian ways.”
“I suppose,” Wick replied, but he felt proud of his accomplishments. He felt proudest of the fact that he'd lived through everything. Looking at Craugh took some of the celebration out of the moment, though.
Craugh gazed out to sea, his brows knit in consternation.
Wick hadn't often seen the wizard worried. “Do you know where
Wraith
is bound for?”
“Perhaps,” Craugh said.
“Where?”
Craugh glanced at Wick in a way that let the little Librarian know he'd rather not answer that question. But Cap'n Farok and Alysta were waiting on a reply as well.
“There can be only one place,” Craugh said. “The Forest of Fangs and Shadows.”
A chill passed through Wick. He'd spent a little time in the area, but never enough to get completely comfortable with it. The Forest of Fangs and Shadows was a dangerous place, filled with monstrous spiders, elves that had chosen solitary lives apart from the rest of the world and didn't welcome intrusion, and frightful beasts left over from the Cataclysm.
“Why there?” Wick asked.
“Because Sokadir lives there,” the wizard answered. “Somewhere.”
“Sokadir is still alive?” Wick asked. Sokadir was the elven warder hero who had taken up arms with Deathwhisper, the enchanted bow, at the Battle of Fell's Keep more than a thousand years ago.
Craugh nodded and took out his pipe. He tamped it full, then muttered an incantation to light it. “He is an elf, you know. They live for a long, long time. Unless they're killed, of course.”
“You never mentioned Sokadir was still alive,” Wick said.
“No.”
Wick couldn't believe it. “That's something worth knowing.”
“Now you know it.”
“I could have known it days ago, before we left Greydawn Moors.”
“Knowing Sokadir was alive wouldn't have helped us find Boneslicer or Seaspray,” Craugh replied testily.
“If we truly want to know what happened at the Battle of Fell's Keep,” Wick pointed out, “all we have to do is ask Sokadir.”
“Except that Sokadir doesn't want to be found,” Craugh said. “I went looking for him before I went looking for you.”
Wick thought about that. It was the first admission Craugh had made that his arrival in Greydawn Moors hadn't been exactly fortuitous happenstance.
“I couldn't find Sokadir,” Craugh said. “But I encountered others who were looking for him as well.” He paused. “These were very dangerous beings.”
Beings
. The description slammed into Wick.
Beings. Not people. Not creatures. Beings.
“It was their interest,” Craugh said, “that made me most curious about why they would be looking for him after all these years.”
Wick cleared his throat. “What â¦
kind
of beings?”
A small, mirthless smile pulled at Craugh's mouth. “The very dangerous, murderous sort, of course.”
Of course
. Wick sighed. “Gujhar believes that with Boneslicer and Seaspray in his possession he'll be able to track down Deathwhisper because of the magic spell that bound them at the Battle of Fell's Keep.”
“That's probably true. Magic ties all things together, after a fashion. Those three weapons shared a binding.”
“Then we need to catch
Wraith
.” Wick looked at the ocean, but there was no ship in sight.
“I'm keeping watch over
Wraith
,” Craugh said. “I can do that for a time. I've managed to place a compatriot on board that ship while it was at Wharf Rat's Warren.” He puffed on his pipe. “More than that, though, I can also track Sokadir and Deathwhisper. When the time is right.”
“How?”
“Through Master Oskarr and Captain Dulaun's descendants.”
“Why couldn't you have done that before?” Wick asked. “Bulokk is with us, and you sent Alysta to me. You had their descendants before I ever entered Wharf Rat's Warren.”
Craugh regarded the cat. “Alysta is not ⦠quite who she used to be. When she lost her old body, she lost that tie to Captain Dulaun.”
Wick looked at the cat, feeling a little sad for her and all that she had given up. After all, how could a person live as a cat after years of having hands?
“Now we have my granddaughter,” Alysta said, “and we have the scent of our enemies. I will have my ancestor's sword back where it belongs.”
“We'll have them all back,” Cap'n Farok promised. “Afore this affair gets any more outta hand.” Then he shifted his gaze to Wick. “There's breakfast a-waitin' belowdecks, Librarian. Best get at it while it's hot.”