5

SILAS SPENT THE next few days riding the length and breadth of the Bitterbush Valley, searching among the washes and thickets for possible hideouts. He didn’t find anything, not even an abandoned campsite. Here and there across the valley he spotted rickety wooden structures, four angled beams topped by what seemed to be a lookout platform, that looked like they might shelter mining digs. But, given the ranch folks’ irritability about the digging on their land, he decided he’d better not investigate those without permission.

When he returned to town, he paid for another nineday on his room and the stabling; he had learned not to let his rent go to the last day when he was in the middle of a hunt. As he went about his business in town that day and the next, he kept an eye out for Lainie Banfrey, and spotted her riding into town the next afternoon.

He retreated into the Bootjack and seated himself where he could watch her out the front and side windows of the saloon. She hitched her brown mare in front of the cattlemen’s co-op and went into the office. A short time later, she came back out and walked up the street past the Bootjack to the bank next door. When she left the bank, she paused and looked up and down the street. Apparently she didn’t see what she was looking for; her shoulders slumped a little as she walked back past the Bootjack to where her horse was hitched.

Silas waited while she mounted up and headed out of town. When enough time had gone by that it wouldn’t look like he was following her, he left the Bootjack and fetched Abenar from the stable. He didn’t want this particular meeting with her to come to anyone’s attention, especially not anyone connected with Carden.

The day was even hotter and stickier than the days before had been. Tall white and gray thunderclouds had piled up high over the mountains to the west and were beginning to slide down the slopes towards the valley, promising long-awaited relief from the hot, dry weather, a promise echoed by the tension in the air. Once Silas was out of clear view of the town, he pushed Abenar to a gallop to catch up with Lainie. It didn’t take long; she had her mare going at an easy walk in the heat. “Miss Lainie!” he called out to her.

She reined in her horse and turned to look at him. A brilliant smile, not shy at all, lit up her face, and she brushed some loose strands of hair out of her eyes. Then, with a visible effort, she suppressed the smile. “Why, Mr. Vendine,” she said. “What brings you out here?”

He pulled up next to her, and they started riding side by side at a walk. “You’re looking well today, Miss Lainie,” he said.

Her smile came back, shy this time, and she blushed in the shade of her hat. “Thank you, Mr. Vendine. You look well yourself, though it’s so hot today.”

“Looks like there might finally be some rain.”

“I hope so; we could sure use it by now.”

The polite pleasantries out of the way, he said, “Miss Lainie, you said that miners have dug up ore for Carden on your father’s property, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Do you know where they’ve been digging?”

She nodded. “We’ve found four pits so far. They don’t even try to hide them.”

“Would you be kind enough to take me to one of them? It might be worth my while to take a closer look at that ore. I want to know what makes it so valuable to whoever’s paying Carden for it. What makes it valuable enough that Carden would risk trouble with the A’ayimat to find more of it.”

“And why a rogue mage might be interested in it?”

“That too. And…” He paused, wondering how much information to trust her with. “If it presents a danger to the settlers here, there are other mages I’m allied with, who also support the rights and freedoms of Plain folk, who might want to know about it, as well.”

“You mean there’s other mages like you, who care about Plains?”

“Yes. It’s a secret, though; the Mage Council would call us traitors if they found out about our alliance. We’d be hunted down and killed or Stripped.”

She looked at him intently, as though trying to decide if he was telling the truth. “I won’t tell anyone,” she finally said. “There’s one dig I can take you to without risking that my Pa will see us. I told you how he is, he gets so worked up over things, what with all this trouble, an’ Blake getting killed an’ all.”

They rode on for a few more leagues, making small talk about the weather and events in town, until a ranch house and its outbuildings and sheltering stand of scrub oak and lowland pine came into view a hundred measures or so north of the road. “That’s our place,” Lainie said. “I’ll go on along to the house. Keep on the road till you come to the next creek. Turn north before you cross it, and follow it to the mushroom pine. Wait for me there.”

In the Wildings, especially in the more remote areas where roads were almost non-existent and landmarks were few, such arcane directions were common, and Silas had learned long ago to pay close attention to them. “I’ll do that,” he said.

Lainie headed for the ranch house, and he continued on down the road, the oaks and pines keeping him hidden from view of the ranch compound. Soon he came to a wooden bridge over a shallow wash with about a hand’s depth of water running in it. There must have already been a fair amount of rainfall up in the mountains. He turned right before crossing the bridge, and followed the creek north, keeping to higher ground in case it continued to rise. After a league or so, he came to the tree Lainie had described, a stunted lowland pine with a strangely-rounded top.

Thunder rumbled from the mountains to the west, and gray sheets of rain obscured the front range as the clouds moved down the slopes. By the time Lainie arrived at the mushroom pine, the storm was moving east across the valley. “Sorry,” she said. “Pa kept wanting to talk about things in town. I told him I needed to check on some fencing out here before that storm blows in. Come on.”

She led him another league or so north, veering away from the creek, then stopped near a wooden structure like the others Silas had seen scattered across the valley. She dismounted, and Silas followed suit.

“Look at the grass.” Lainie gestured towards the structure.

In an area perhaps ten measures wide around the mine shelter, the long green-gold grass that covered the valley floor had turned gray. A closer look revealed that it wasn’t just dead but slimy and rotten, with a rank smell of decay. The strange, dark power he had detected days ago while he was still a hundred leagues away was so thick here that he could feel it even without using his mage senses.

“And there’s a spring over here.” Lainie led Silas a short distance into the area of dead grass, to where water oozed sluggishly from the ground only to disappear again after only an arm-length or so. Although springs were often slow or dried up this time of year, at the tail end of the dry season, there was something unnatural about this spring’s slowness, as though the water itself was dead. It was also strangely dull, not reflecting even the slightest glint of daylight. It gave off a faint sour, metallic odor. “That spring’s ruined,” Lainie said. “If it’s a stream passing through where they’ve mined, it clears up again a little ways beyond the area. But if the spring is in the mining field, that spring and the water from it are no good any more, far as anyone can tell. At least they’re too dead to spread to any other streams and poison them, but during the dry season we can’t afford to lose too many springs that should be running.”

Silas walked over to the wooden structure, Lainie keeping well behind him as though afraid to approach it. He didn’t blame her; something about that particular spot made chills run up his spine and the back of his neck go all prickly.

The structure surrounded a rough-edged hole in the ground. He peered down the hole; it was deep enough that the bottom was lost in darkness. A crudely tied-together ladder extended a couple of hand-widths out of the hole. Though it looked rickety, Silas judged that the wood was sound.

He returned to Abenar and took a hunting knife, his leather gloves, and a small leather pouch from his saddlebags. “What does the ore look like?” he asked Lainie.

“I’ve never had a close look at it. It’s black, that’s all I know.”

“It shouldn’t be too hard to spot, if those beef-brains Carden has working for him can find it. I’ll be right back.” He pulled on his gloves, in case the ore was poisonous to touch, then climbed down the ladder into the dark pit.

LAINIE WATCHED NERVOUSLY as Mr. Vendine climbed down the rickety ladder into the hole. She hoped he didn’t take too long; it made her uneasy, being around the pits where they’d dug the ore out. Echoes of the night terrors crept into her body, chilling her, making her lungs labor for air and her heart pound heavy and fast. Fear teased at the edges of her mind, and harsh, wordless whispering filled her ears. She pulled herself away from the brink of panic and focused on hoping that the ladder wouldn’t break.Her fears for Mr. Vendine’s safety eased a few minutes later when his brown leather hat reappeared at the top of the ladder, followed by the rest of him as he climbed out of the mine. The leather pouch hung heavily from his gloved hand, and he was grinning. “It’s not too hard to find, even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.” He tipped the contents of the pouch into his hand. The ore looked like small chunks of coal but blacker than anything Lainie had ever seen, and completely dull, not reflecting even the tiniest flicker of light. It actually seemed to smother any light that touched it.

“What’s it like?” Lainie asked.

“Cold,” Mr. Vendine said, rolling the lumps of ore around in his hand. “I can even feel it through my gloves. And there’s definitely magic in it.”

“Let me see.” Lainie held out her hand.

Mr. Vendine took a bandana out of one of his duster pockets, folded it and covered her hand with it, then dropped a few of the black lumps into her palm.

Icy pain shot up through her arm, seizing her heart and her lungs in freezing agony. Dark terror wrapped around her mind, cutting off sight, hearing, and even thought. Cold ran through her veins, spreading through her arms, her back and legs, her belly and loins. It was like the night terrors, only a hundred times – a thousand times – worse. The harsh, malicious whispering filtered into her mind, and the words took shape. Come with us, you are like us. Come with us, renew us, let us make you stronger, be our hands under the light…

Terrible visions of what they wanted came to her – her life-force to replenish them, her hands and will and her power, strengthened by their own, to do their work, to destroy all that lived in the light, the infestation that fouled the surface of their world. Their frozen grasp dragged her down into a crushing weight of darkness, where more hateful voices whispered to her and greedy fingers of ice probed at her, violating every part of her mind and body and spirit. Frantically, she struggled, trying to free herself, but their grip was too strong and, in the dark, she didn’t know which way to go to get away –

“Lainie!” Her name, shouted in a male voice filled with strength and desperation, penetrated the malicious voices and snagged her awareness. A blue glow, faint and distant, pierced through the darkness surrounding her mind. Putting all of her thought onto that voice, now calling out words in a fluid-sounding language she didn’t understand, and that small blue light, she began dragging herself towards them with all her strength.

The icy fingers pulled at her, scrabbling and snatching, trying to keep her from going. No! she cried out. They pulled all the harder, but she poured every scrap of her will into moving towards the light and voice, towards freedom.

Finally, she slipped free of their grasp. For now, they said as they let her go. For now you leave us, Sister. But you will return.

The dark and cold melted away. She came to herself hunched up in a tense huddle on the ground. Mr. Vendine was crouched beside her, his arms around her, his left hand glowing blue. A cool breeze whipped her hair, thunder rumbled overhead, and fat, hard raindrops fell against her face. She had dropped the chunks of ore. She dragged in a long, deep breath; had she breathed at all during the time she was lost in the dark, struggling to get free? “I’m okay now,” she said as the tension drained from her body.

“Thank the gods,” Mr. Vendine said, his voice worn to shreds. “What happened?”

“It’s – like the night terrors. But – more. Hateful, powerful. They want to destroy all of us, they wanted me…” She got hold of herself before she could spin away into terror again. “Why did that happen to me, and not to you or anyone else who touches it?”

“You’re a Wildings-born mage. You must be attuned to the power in that stuff in a way that I’m not, nor would any Plain person be able to sense it.”

Sister, they had called her. Lainie shuddered. “But the night terrors – I’m not the only one who’s had them.”

“It could be,” he said slowly, as though thinking it out as he spoke, “that when the ore is dug up, or when it’s exposed to the open air, some of the power is released to affect the grass and water around the mines or any people in the area.”

He took his arms from around her, and Lainie realized that she was nearly sitting in his lap. Her cheeks grew warm. The edges of her mind and emotions still felt shredded by the horror she had experienced, but she was well enough that there was no more excuse for her to stay where she was. Although she did like it there.

She stood up, and Mr. Vendine got to his feet as well. “I’d like to know how much Carden knows about this stuff,” he said. “I’m certain he knows the night terrors come from it; I wonder if he realizes how powerful it really is. And I’d like to know what it’s being used for, and by whom.”

“Foreign scientists, supposedly.”

“I’m not so sure I believe the scientist story any more. This is magic, going beyond the common forces of nature that anyone can sense and use. Scientists deny the existence of this kind of power.”

“Do you think Mr. Carden might be the rogue mage you’re looking for, and that he’s really collecting it for himself, or for another renegade?”

He gave her a keen look and seemed to think it over for a moment. “Could be. The thing is, I haven’t detected the slightest trace of power from him, and running an operation like this is more work than most rogue mages are interested in doing. Besides, he’d have to be a damned reckless fool, even for a rogue, to be messing around with this stuff if he does have any idea at all how powerful it is. Either way, though, I think I need to take a closer look at him.”

The rain was coming down harder now. Lainie wiped water from her eyes. Her clothes were fast on the way to being drenched.

“Let’s get you out of this storm and safe home,” Mr. Vendine said. He tossed the ore he had dug up back into the pit, then fetched an oiled canvas rain cape from his saddlebags and draped it around Lainie.

“What am I going to tell my Pa about why you’re bringing me home?” she asked.

“We’ll tell him the truth. Or something close to it.” He gave her a grin and a wink, and a shiver went through her, deliciously warm in spite of the chill from the rainstorm.