“Probably,” he said. “I don’t promise it won’t get, um, strange.”
“Stranger than it already has?”
“Oh, yes. In fact, I think the wonder-engine is…hmm…. grounding some of the oddities, like a lightning rod. Once we leave here, some very odd things might start to happen. Or nothing at all might happen. There’s no way to tell.”
“Okay. Good to know, I guess.” Slate sneezed, started to dig in her pockets for a handkerchief, and took the one the knight handed her instead. “Okay. We’ll move out tomorrow, and we’ll follow your best guess.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to travel?” asked Caliban, glancing at the rag tied around her shoulder.
“I’ll be fine.”
“We could wait another day—”
“I’ll be fine, Mother. I’ll wear a sweater and I won’t go home with any strange boys.”
Brenner snickered. The paladin’s lips twitched, and he turned back to the fire. “Very well.”
Slate woke up in the middle of the night, at some small sound. She lay awake listening to the people sleeping around her.
The fire popped and crackled. Learned Edmund snored. Grimehug made faint doggy noises where he lay draped across her legs, scuffling at the blankets occasionally with his feet.
From Caliban’s bedroll came no sound at all.
Bad enough when he’s gibbering, but when he’s not…now I reallyamworried.
Slate stared up at the stars. They crept slowly by overhead, and had no voices either. It was a long time before she got to sleep.
CHAPTER 17
THEY WERE LESS THAN TWO HOURSfrom the wonder-engine’s valley when things did indeed start to get strange.
Caliban took point, with Learned Edmund just behind him to call directions. Slate and Brenner followed with the pack mules. It was a cool, pleasant day, blessedly free of insects, and they followed the road for an hour, before reaching a point where Edmund said that they should split off and head southeast.
“There should be a river a few miles along. We want to make for it. We’ll follow it most of the way if…err….nothing happens.”
The sounds of the river came up to meet them soon enough. It was a broader, shallower waterway than the one they’d crossed to reach the rune. The horses splashed across it, and they dismounted to drink and water the animals.
Grimehug dunked his whole head in the river and pulled it out again. He paused, his small ears pricking up.
“You hear that, Crazy Slate?”
“Hear what?”
“Kinda grinding noise. Like a big millstone.”
Slate cocked her head. After a minute she heard it too, very faintly, a rumbling, scratchy noise. “It’s coming from downriver.”
The other three heard it soon after. Caliban pushed between the pack mules, coming down to join the woman and the gnole at the water’s edge.
“Think it’s coming closer,” said Grimehug, leaning out over the stream and nearly falling in.
Caliban caught him by a handful of rags. “Should we get out of here?”
“I’d like to know what it is,” said Learned Edmund.
“So would I, since we’re planning on traveling downstream anyway. We’ll run into it anyway, and I’d rather pick the ground.” Slate chewed a nail. “Let’s move the horses away from the river. Then we’ll wait—from a safe distance—and see what it is.”
The horses seemed oddly unconcerned about the strange noise, even as it grew louder. They moved up the bank anyway, until they found a vantage point, and sat down to wait.
