More unsettled than she wanted to admit, Slate kept an eye on Caliban’s distant figure all the way back to camp.
“Well,” said Learned Edmund, their second night in the wonder-engine’s valley, “I have the proverbial good news and bad news.”
They were sitting around the fire. Grimehug was stretched out full-length on his back, looking like a hearthrug designed by incompetent weavers. Brenner was sharpening his knives. Caliban was oiling his scabbard. Slate was starting to feel a little uncomfortable with all the small deadly noises going on to either side of her, and was wishing she had a harmonica just to drown them out.
She seized on Edmund’s pronouncement instead. “So what’s the good news?”
“I’ve figured out more or less where we are in relation to the rest of the world,” said Learned Edmund.
“And the bad news?”
“There’s a lot of the Vagrant Hills in the way.”
“How did we get that far off track?”
The scholar sat back, rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well… we should never assign to malice what we can assign to our incompetence…”
“Hear, hear,” muttered Brenner.
“But near as I can tell, the Vagrant Hills reached out and grabbed us.”
“Can theydothat?”
“Apparently so.”
“There’s another possibility,” said Caliban. His voice was still hoarse, but had most of its timbre back. He had been staring into the fire, but he looked up now. The flames left his face backlit with orange, and woke unpleasant highlights in his eyes.
“Yes?” said Slate.
“The rune demon. I don’t know how much power it had, but it’s possible that it might have warped the landscape. It felt my demon as soon as we entered the Hills. Perhaps it wanted to bring it closer.”
“Might be right, big man,” said Grimehug. “Don’t know where your smuggler’s road is, but clocktaurs went in maybe twenty miles from Anuket City. Only cut a little through the hills when a gnole fell off and rune caught me.”
“And we were nearly sixty miles away from Anuket City,” said Slate. “So—what, the rune-demon managed to make the horses run forty miles in five minutes? Or she pulled the landscape outfrom under us like a rug? That can’t be possible.”
Caliban shook his head. “I don’t know. Some demons are supposed to be able to twist the world around them. It’s how they levitate and do some of the other tricks. And she was incredibly strong, and for her kind, very subtle.”
“Couldn’t do much about a slit throat, though,” muttered Brenner.
“I don’t know if that’s what happened. I’m just saying that it’s possible she was behind it.”
“The Vagrant Hills are notoriously malleable,” Learned Edmund said. “A demon might not need as much power here, in order to change things. It may even account for why we did not encounter any great oddities once we entered. She may have wanted to bring us as quickly as possible, and smoothed the way.”
They all stared into the fire in silence for a while.
“Still,” said Slate finally, “the demon’s gone, right?”
She was looking at Caliban when she spoke. He nodded, slowly, the fire painting shadows under his skin.
Brenner caught her gaze and jerked his chin a quarter-inch toward the paladin.
Yes. I know.
Slate gnawed on the edge of a fingernail. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Might even work as a shortcut, if we’re only twenty miles from Anuket City now. Learned Edmund, can you get us to the road?”
He met her eyes. Despite everything, Slate was pleased.
If I can get a scholar of the Many-Armed God to at least make eye contact with me, surely the rest of the world can’t help but fall into place.
