haunches to welcome the night. As the breathing of his friends subsided into the settled snores and soft grunts of rest, he was able to tune out those noises and concentrate on the land around them.
Even by night, not all was quiet. The companions had seen little in the way of wildlife and fowl during the day. Those few birds that had stamina to fly from distant eyries were content to circle at a great height, patient in the hope of fallen prey. On the ground, the heat and inevitable depth of any water encouraged only the most hardy of burrowing animals. Any aboveground dwellers who dared to encroach on the arid wasteland would soon scuttle back to their havens, or perish in the attempt. By day, few would venture aboveground, and even those that did would be wary of any who passed over their burrows. By night, it was a different situation. The cool air would draw them aboveground to forage. Their snufflings, the patter of claws on hard-packed earth, the occasional yowl of conflict, and pain or mating—perhaps both—were clear to Jak and proscribed a symphony of hidden movement.
The creatures were harmless, their musk faint and bespeaking of the distance they preferred to keep from the larger creatures they instinctively identified as a potential danger. Jak allowed himself something that appeared as only a flicker, a twitch, of the facial muscles, but was a laugh to all who knew him. Possible food, if he could be bothered to hunt them, but no threat.
Very well. There was something else that was bugging him that he could check out now that he was sure they were safe. While the others slept unaware, he walked to the edge of the crack in the earth. Mindful of his footing, he edged as close as he could to the lip, gingerly feeling for loose earth and rock. He found a path that was sure enough underfoot for him to reach the very edge, so that he could peer over and scan the width of the deep trench. With his eyesight being attuned more to the night than any of the others, he expected to be able to see more than Ryan or J.B. had a short while before. There was no fire to light the path of their prey, but the trail of a group of people couldn’t fail to be read on such terrain. It would be impossible to move without leaving something in your wake. Maybe, if fortune favored them, he may even be able to make out something even blacker than the hole below: a darkness caused by a clustering of bodies.
Now on the edge of the abyss, he concentrated his attention on the space below, shutting out not just the sounds of his companions, but all the other noises of the night. Down there, somewhere, were enough people to be making some sound, to leave some indication of their position.
Jak stared into the abyss.
And the abyss stared back. With a lurching fear that swept over him like a wave, an emotion to which he was unaccustomed, he felt the desire to throw himself off the edge and into the welcoming arms of…what?
Breathing hard, Jak hurriedly stepped back and looked up at the sky. The night was ink-black in patches, dotted only with the distant diamonds of stars and the wan disk of the moon. It was cold and distant, hardly welcoming, yet somehow reassuring when compared to what he had just seen.
For the land below the lip of rock had seemed to disappear beneath a blanket of darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. It was like a presence that seemed to have a life of its own, acting as a cover for whatever lay beneath it, and fiercely protective of its charge. It was almost as if it had tried to strike out at him when he dared to look beneath it.
Despite the cold weather, Jak was sweating. An icy-cold puddle formed in the small of his back. He turned away from the abyss to see that Krysty had awakened, and was now standing, watching him. Her hair was coiled around her neck, in an almost mirrorlike imitation of the sweat at his own. Even in the dark of night, he could see the unease and fear in her eyes.
“Not look down there,” he said softly. “Wait sunup.” He walked back toward the sleeping group. If she was to relieve him, then he wanted to find the oblivion of sleep as soon as possible. As he passed her, she began to step toward the edge of the abyss. Jak grabbed her arm, pulling her back so that she turned around to face him.
“No.” He said it simply and quietly, but there was a power in it backed up by the expression on his face and in his usually blank eyes.
Krysty tried to speak but nothing would emerge. It was all she could do to shake her head before taking up her watch with her back firmly to the fissure in the earth.
Jak sank down gladly against the sleepers, welcoming oblivion… .
* * *
BARON K SHIVERED as he recalled that day, shivered because he had no real memory of the day the children were taken. What had come before was still etched into his mind as though someone had taken a wag battery, cut it open and poured the gunk into his brain. And what had come after, when the whole ville had awakened from what seemed to be a stupor that could only have been induced by some kind of jolt was only too clear. But of that time—the time when the exodus had occurred—there was nothing.
And while Morgan stared into the fire, K brought back to mind the awful task of having to outline that moment to the one-eyed man and his crew as they had sat in front of him.
“You can’t tell us anything? But you expect us to go after these coldhearts with no real clue as to what they can do.” The man known as Ryan Cawdor had looked around at his people, all of whom were looking as incredulous as himself.
K squirmed. Part of the strategy that had made him a baron was to be in complete control of everything that went on around him. To admit that he hadn’t been was almost like an admission of weakness. And weakness was anathema to him.
“The only way I can explain it is that it was like the kind of sleep you get when you’re exhausted…when you’ve been on the road for days, and you kept traveling until every muscle is at breaking point, and your eyes are out on sticks with the grit of the road rubbing them raw. That moment when you’re just running on fumes one moment, and the next your body just gives up and you fade so quick you don’t even know it until you wake up and it’s dark, and your face is embedded in the dirt.”
Ryan sniffed. The baron had a colorful turn of phrase, but it served its purpose. He knew that feeling. They all knew it.
“Okay, so you just nodded out,” he said simply. “Your point is what? That these coldhearts drugged you in some way?”
The baron’s laugh was cold and bitter, with no humor. “The whole ville? How would they make that happen?”
Ryan shrugged. “Could be easy enough, from what you say. Gather the whole ville together in one place, make like it’s some kind of festival, and just spike whatever you’re going to give them. Doesn’t have to be anything mutie or some kind of weird shit.”
“Doesn’t have to be, but it probably was,” K had said with a shrug.
Doc, at Ryan’s elbow, indicated Morgan, who was seated by the baron. “I fear that perhaps you have been listening to your friend,” he said in an amused tone.
Morgan glared at Doc. His eyes bore into him, and for a moment the scholar experienced a shiver of apprehension as it seemed that the grizzled old-timer was peering into his soul. Morgan smiled slowly and slyly.
“You know that I can’t influence the baron in this matter, and you know that there are stranger things…what was it? On heaven and earth, Horatio, or something like that.”
Doc looked uncomfortable. Yes, he knew that, but he was unwilling to accept at face value that K was right.
Maybe he was…
There
