“Oi!”
He whirled about, clutching his beanpole, and saw the little girl appear in the rocks overhead. The wind caught at her veil, but she grabbed it and held it in place. “There you are! I thought maybe you’d gotten lost.”
Leo growled and lowered his beanpole quickly so she wouldn’t think he was scared. “Why did you disappear on me?”
She shrugged. “I led you up the mountain.”
“No you didn’t!”
“Did.”
“I didn’t see you.”
She shrugged again. “Ain’t you comin’ up?”
“Coming up?” Leo looked at the climb between him and her. He felt elevated enough as it was, perhaps even a little dizzy with altitude. But the girl shouted down to him from a good twenty feet higher still, up what looked to him like a sheer rock face. Besides, now that he’d stopped to catch his breath, he was getting cold. “What for?”
“I got somethin’ to show you.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Ain’t you huntin’ the monster?”
Leo stared up at her. He knew as sure as he breathed that he was being manipulated. He also knew that it was working.
Not liking to lay down his beanpole, he clutched it tightly in his left hand while using his right for climbing. The rocks were cold under his fingers and felt like knives as he gripped them. He made it perhaps two feet up before his foot slipped and he skidded back down, panting with fear. The ground was solid beneath him, but a few false steps and he had a long fall behind him.
“What’re you doin’?”
Leo glared at her, with her head tilted to one side. “I’m coming up, like you said!”
“Why don’t you use the Path?”
“What path?”
Then, much to his surprise, she came skittering down the rocks, fast as a beetle down a wall. Before he quite knew what was happening, she had taken his hand in one of her grimy gloves and was leading him up that sheer wall, following a path that, even while he stood upon it, he could scarcely see. But it was there; he felt it under his feet, real as anything. And if his head spun while he climbed and his eyes felt fuzzy and strange, well, that must be due to the height.
They reached the top, and once more Leo looked out across the way he had come. But now, only twenty feet higher, his perspective changed.
The whole world seemed to spread beneath his feet. From here he could see beyond the mountain range to the southern ocean. The forest spread like a thick rug across the mountain’s lap, smoke rising from the villages in the valleys. He could see the low country, where the Baron of Blackrock’s grounds, shrouded now in heavy rain clouds, began at the base of the mountains and stretched all the way to a marble-white bridge. To his left and his right, the mountains continued in a vast ring all around the kingdom, the largest mountain range on the entire known Continent. The Circle of Faces, it was called, for legend had it that giants once dwelt here and, because of a great sin, were turned into stone and had at last crumbled into mere mountains. Now only their faces, on certain spellbound nights, could be seen in the rocks.
But most important, Leo could see the higher gables of Hill House peeking through the trees below, and the twirling smoke ascending from its many chimneys.
“Silent Lady,” he breathed, in awe rather than fear.
The little girl let go of his hand, and though Leo hated to admit it, he felt momentarily lost without her grip. Disoriented, as if suddenly plunged into the middle of a maze. He turned to her, and though her face remained covered, he could almost feel her smiling.
“A fine sight, what?”
He gulped. “So where is this monster?”
She turned and led the way. For while they had come a long way, there were yet higher slopes to this mountain and still more sheer climbs than they had already traversed. But she didn’t lead him toward these. Rather, she picked her way among the stones around the side of the mountain, veering to the right rather than continuing the ascent. Leo followed slowly, for he was not surefooted among the rocks. So focused was he upon his feet that he nearly ran into her when she stopped abruptly.
“Do you see?”
His heart pounding, Leo looked where she pointed. At first he didn’t see it; then his eyes seemed to squint and adjust on their own, and he saw the monster’s mouth.
He sucked in a sharp breath and held it for several seconds before he realized that what he saw was only a cave. The rocks around it formed the shape of a great beast, perhaps a wolf, but unlike any wolf Leo had ever seen brought back by hunters, slung on a pole. This stone wolf was also frighteningly like a man.
But it was still just a cave. Leo sagely stated as much.