I told her to be still with a sharp motion of one hand and turned again to watch the scene being played out below. Elder Darkwing and two of his finest warriors escorted Sun Eagle down the narrow gorge path to the river running below. Bear, Sun Eagle’s red dog, followed close behind. There was little room to walk on the riverbank. They needed to tread carefully on sharp wet rocks, for to slip would mean to vanish in the white water. So it was a slow company that made its way along the river’s edge below us to the place where the Gray Wood began.
Darkwing himself drove a stake into the ground and tied to it a stout-woven rope. The other end of this rope was looped securely about Sun Eagle’s waist. A young man who wandered into the Gray Wood without this anchor to secure him would never be heard from again.
The Gray Wood was an unmerciful predator.
Let the rope be sound, I whispered in my heart. Let the stake be solid.
Let the threats of Wolf Tongue be empty as the wind.
I could not hear the blessings Darkwing spoke to his son. The river’s voice was much too loud and we stood too far away. I saw Sun Eagle salute with his stone dagger. Then he turned to the forest and strode into the shadows without a backward glance.
The moment he disappeared, the mist rose.
It crept from the river like an army of ghosts, white and thick. I saw the men below give each other glances, and then they vanished from my sight. The mist continued to roil and thicken, climbing up the sides of the gorge like some living mass. I turned to my father, but he stood like a rock, staring down into that impenetrable gloom. Fairbird tugged at my hand, terrified, and I picked her up and held her close.
Let the rope be sound! I prayed again. Let the stake be solid!
I heard my father’s warriors murmuring behind us. I heard the shifting of their weapons. Then the mist spilled over and rolled over us all, a wet blanket over our heads. Fairbird clung to me with a death grip.
I thought I glimpsed something in the smothering gray; a black form clad in a wolfskin, standing on the far side of the gorge, oddly visible at that distance when those standing nearest to me were cloaked in mist. I saw that form, and my hope fled.
As suddenly as it came, the mist dissipated. The sun broke through overhead, and blue sky, hot with summer, relieved our eyes with its brightness. Standing once more, I looked about and saw the faces of the warriors looking as bewildered as I felt. But when I turned to my father, I found him standing as I had last seen him, staring down into the gorge.
I looked to see what he saw. Darkwing was on his knees beside the stake, pulling frantically at the rope, which had gone slack. The two warriors held on to a snarling Bear, who strained against them toward the Gray Wood.
I watched as the elder of the Crescent People dragged the frayed end of the rope out of the trees. Bear gave a monstrous howl, broke from the warriors’ grasp, and vanished into the forest.
I knew then, without a doubt: Sun Eagle would never return.
5
EANRIN
SOMEONE TOOK HOLD of his arm in the shadows. Then, with a tug that nearly dislocated his shoulder, Eanrin was spun about and pulled into headlong flight. “Run!” the voice in the dark urged him.
“Who are you?” Eanrin gasped, though he already knew. In his heart, he knew.
“No time for that now,” said the voice. “Run for your life!”
There was no room for thought, no room for anything save terror. He must run! Through twisted, labyrinthine ways, through gasping reaches. All this Eanrin sensed in no more than an instant as he fled hand in hand with that darkness he could neither see nor identify. Anything to escape the Hound! The Hound, who would devour him, body and soul!
How could it have come even here, into the depths of the pit? Eanrin’s spirit shuddered at the thought. Was there then no escape? He had fled throughout the turning of the ages; since the moment he drew his first breath, he had lived in constant flight. Eluding that One who would make him, if caught, into something other than himself. Who would break him and reform him until he could scarcely be recognized.
Nothing would be left but the Hound. Nothing, if he did not flee!
In that mad dash through the unassailable blackness, Eanrin’s fear-crazed mind played evil games. Flashes struck his eyes like lightning, and in those flashes he glimpsed scenes from his own life, moments he never stopped to count and therefore forgot sooner than remembered. None of these moments were in themselves worth remembering: fine games, high festivities, beautiful women and songs. But he saw them now, with the threat of the Hound just at his heels, and recognized them for the desperate battles they were. How he clung to the only life he knew! How he flung himself into it with every ounce of his strength, hoping to ignore the inevitable footsteps beating upon his fears.
The Hound had always pursued him. He knew it as he fled in the darkness. The Hound had pursued him from the moment of Eanrin’s first waking, coursing at his heels every day of his long and weary existence.
A final flash burst upon the poet’s vision. He screamed and fell to his knees, though the grip on his arm never relaxed. Covering his face with his hands, he strove to push from his eyes the memory seared there.