Kitai rolled his head in the negative again. “I don’t know. We do not stay where they are to learn of them.” He looked around and shivered. “We must be careful. It called. Others will come to search. They will be slow for now. But the Keepers will come.”
Tavi nodded and had to swallow and force himself to make the gesture slowly, not in nervous jerks. “What should we do?”
Kitai nodded toward the ancient tree rising from the center of the forest. “We continue the trial, Aleran.”
“Uh. Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“I will continue, Aleran. If you are too afraid to go on, then stay.” His lips curled in a mischievous sneer. “It is what I would expect of a child.”
“I am not a child,” Tavi hissed furiously. “I’m older than you. What are you, twelve years old? Thirteen?”
Kitai narrowed his eyes. “Fifteen,” he hissed.
Tavi stared at the other boy for a moment, then started smiling. He had to struggle not to break out into sudden laughter.
Kitai’s scowl deepened. “What?”
Tavi rolled his head in a slow negative, and whispered, “Nothing. Nothing.”
“Mad,” Kitai said. “You people are mad.” With that, he turned and glided deeper into the glowing forest.
Tavi followed close behind him, frowning, struggling to keep the irrational laughter from his lips, his steps silent. After they’d put several dozen more yards between them and the Keeper they’d seen, he reached back and unslung the pack Fade had pressed onto him from his shoulders. He opened it and rummaged inside.
The pack contained two small jars of fine lamp oil, firestones in their two-chambered black box, a small lantern, a box of fine shavings to serve as tinder for a fire, dried meat twisted into braids in a fashion odd to Tavi, two fine, warm blankets, several slender lengths of wood that could be fitted together into a fishing pole, lines, and fine metal hooks.
And at the bottom of the pack, a cruel, curved knife, heavy and with a spiked guard that covered the knuckles. It had a blade twice the length of Tavi’s entire hand. A combat weapon.
Where had Fade got something like that? Tavi wondered. Why had the slave had this pack stored with such efficiency inside his chambers, presumably ready to go at a moment’s notice? He had returned with the pack so quickly that he could not possibly have packed it. It had to have been ready to go.
Tavi shook his head and almost bumped into Kitai, who had come to a sudden stop in front of him. He came to a halt, close enough to the other boy that he could feel the nearly feverish heat of the Marat’s body.
“What is it?” he whispered.
Kitai shivered and moved his head almost imperceptibly.
Tavi looked to his left, moving only his eyes.
A Keeper squatted on a gnarled root that rose from the forest floor, draped in a mantle of glowing croach, not ten feet away. Tavi looked the other way, seeking the nearest means of moving away from the Keeper.
A second spider-like creature sat on a low, wax-shrouded branch, on level with Tavi’s head. It let out a high-pitched chirrup, bobbing up and down on its knobby limbs.
The first Keeper answered it in a different pitch. It too began to bob in fluid, steady motions. Other chirrups sounded from around them, out of sight. Many of them. A great many.
Tavi shuddered. He hardly breathed as he whispered, “What do we do?”
“I . . .” Kitai shivered again, and Tavi saw that the other boy’s eyes were wide, panicked. “I do not know.”
Tavi’s eyes flicked back to the nearest of the two Keepers. It shook its head, pale eyes peering this way and that, twitching in independent motion, a dark dot at their center the only thing that resembled a pupil. Then, as Tavi watched, something strange happened. The Keeper’s eyes changed color, right there before his own: They changed from a pale shade of maggot-white to something as bright orange as a candle’s flame.
In that instant, the Keeper went deathly still. Both eyes swung to orient on the boys, and it let out a piercingly loud whistle, something that sounded like a mad bird’s scream.
Kitai’s breath caught in his throat, and the boy leapt forward.
Tavi’s eyes swept left and right, and he saw what the Keepers did very clearly. The further Keeper’s eyes swirled to orange as well, and oriented immediately upon Kitai’s form. It too let out a shrill shrieking scream, and, mirroring the first, started after the Marat boy with a deceptively languid, deadly grace.
In that moment, Tavi saw exactly how the Keepers had detected them, and how they might be able to thwart them. “Kitai!” he shouted, and then bounded after the other boy. “Wait!”
More shrill whistles went up all around them, as Tavi raced to catch up with Kitai. It was all but impossible. The Marat boy carried no pack and moved with the grace and speed of a terrified deer. Tavi could barely keep the Marat in sight as he ran—and all around him gathered the glowing orange eyes of the wax spiders, standing out in sharp contrast to the green glow of the croach.
If Kitai hadn’t tripped on a sudden dip in the croach, perhaps where one of the wax spiders had recently raised itself up out of it, Tavi didn’t think he’d have caught up to the other boy. Instead, he swooped down and hauled Kitai to his feet by the boy’s wild hair.
“Ow!” Kitai hissed, eyes wild.
“Shut up!” Tavi said, his voice sharp. “Follow me.”
Kitai blinked in startled surprise, and Tavi gave the boy no time to argue with him. He looked to his left and darted forward, tugging the other boy forward a few steps to get him moving, then sprinting as quickly as he could toward the rocky wall of the chasm. A Keeper suddenly appeared on the ground in front of them. Tavi stifled his fear and kept running at the creature.
The wax spider reared up onto its rear sets of legs as Tavi approached, but before he reached it, the boy began a spin, holding the heavy pack out in both arms. The pack almost pulled him off balance, but instead he took a pair of whirling steps and felt the weight of the pack slam hard into the creature. The Keeper was lighter than it looked. The blow threw it to one side and slammed it hard into the wax surrounding a tree. It crumpled into the impact, legs curling up around it.
Tavi ran on, and behind him, around them, the chirps of the Keepers grew louder, more shrill, filled with what Tavi imagined must have been a chill and alien anger.
They reached the stony cliff face, both of them panting. Tavi dropped the pack long enough to put both hands against the stone, staring up and then to either side of the face, studying the dark stone as best he could in the faint light of the glowing croach.
“The ropes are far from here,” hissed Kitai. “There is no escape for us.”
“We don’t need escape,” Tavi said. He pressed his mouth to the stone and touched his tongue to it briefly, then spat out the sour taste of lime. “This way,” he said. He picked up his pack and continued on through the green light of the Wax Forest, the rocky wall on his left. He dug in the pack as he went.
“They are surrounding us,” Kitai said, voice cool. “Boxing us in.”