They set out again shortly afterward, heading toward a line of mountains that provided the only landmark they recognized, traveling through bleak country marked by stretches of dead and dying trees and rocky flats empty even of that. They found no other water on their way, not even a stream, and the mountains seemed as distant today as they had the day before. Crace Coram could not be certain, but it seemed to him they were weeks away from where they needed to go.
On this day, they encountered a huge horned beast that resembled a bull crossed with a lizard. They saw it coming from a long way off, lumbering across the flats, slow and ponderous, and had plenty of time to avoid it. They did not have quite so much warning of the cat creatures they caught sight of several hours later from atop a rise overgrown with dead grasses, which was probably what saved them. The cat things found something else to occupy them—a thing that neither the Dwarf nor the girl ever had a chance to identify—converging on their victim and tearing it to bits in short minutes.
Afterward, safely off to one side as the cat things moved on, the Dwarf said, “Those aren’t anything I’ve ever heard of or seen, either. Not anywhere in the Four Lands.”
She was silent a moment. “I don’t think that’s where we are,” she answered quietly.
It took him aback. “What do you mean? Where else would we be?”
Her face began to change again, the wolfish side emerging. “Somewhere no one has ever been, maybe. Somewhere bad.”
He thought about it for a moment. They hadn’t crossed any large bodies of water, so they had to be still on the mainland. She was saying they were in a place within the Four Lands—or maybe just outside the known boundaries—that no one had been before. But even that didn’t feel right.
“Wherever we are,” he finished, climbing to his feet again, “we shouldn’t be there.”
They walked for the rest of that day and for two full days afterward and still didn’t reach the mountains. Time and again, they encountered new dangers, ones that neither had come across before. A huge lizard attacked Crace Coram, and it took all of Oriantha’s animal skills and strength to drive it away. A strange plant threw spikes at the shape-shifter, and the poison on the tips of the three that penetrated her animal hide would have killed her if the Dwarf hadn’t cut into her skin with his hunting knife and sucked it out. Twice more they encountered the cat things, and once they saw the dragon fly overhead, scouring the ground below for food.
It was becoming increasingly apparent that the chances were shrinking of finding their missing companions—if they were even still alive, which Crace Coram was beginning to doubt. Sooner or later, something bad was going to get one of them—or, more likely, both at once—and that would be the end. He kept his thoughts to himself, but they burned like live coals in the back of his mind.
Then, midway into the fifth day, Tesla Dart appeared.
They saw the small lizard first, a swift, momentary glimpse of it as it raced toward them and then away again. Because it was not threatening, they paid little attention. Even when it reappeared several hours later for a second look and a second quick disappearance, they barely gave it a thought. They were trudging along as before, trying to keep themselves alert enough to watch for predators, trying to stay focused in spite of the fact that their food had run out and their water was down to a single skin they had filled two days ago at a tiny stream where they saw other creatures drinking. They had ceased talking to each other except when it couldn’t be avoided, conserving their strength, knowing it was seeping away with each hour’s passing.