They turned onto the northward road, following a river. Hobbie brought Flame for Rick to ride while Neighbor walked alongside the ex-prisoners, healing as she could. Rick really wanted to go back and talk with his father, but escape was vital. He still hadn’t found Lolly. Maybe Alyse had taken her on as an apprentice. Would Lolly have done such a thing? King Segan’s son Richard had joined the Spikonians. In Richard’s case, it was all about survival and power. But luckily for Segan, his son was still with the Spikonian fleet far to the south so he didn’t have to watch his traitor son kill his own people.
They marched through the night with no lights to guide them, magical or otherwise, knowing that the lights could be seen at a great distance. Finally, just as the stars blinked out and the sky lightened to purple-grey, Geoffrey ordered everyone to stop and rest. They melted into the forest. None of the ex-prisoners wore shoes, so tread carefully on the needles, stones, and fallen branches.
“Odd that they’ve left a forest here instead of chopping it down,” Hobbie pointed out. “What with the Spikes so scared of the woods. Are we still in Spikonia?”
“Drake told me it’s a five-day march north of the capital to their training camps.”
The magicians—both the ones from Barabook and the ex-prisoners—piled next to each other to attempt some sleep. Ian came by again to ask about Lydia, who still didn’t want to see him. It seemed only Rogerin wasn’t afraid or nervous to be near the doppelganger. Or Neighbor. Rick settled next to his father. At last they had the opportunity to be alone, alone with thirty or so others. Rick removed his red cloak and covered them both.
“Your personal guard told me you got Elonna and your sisters to freedom,” his father, Matthew, said. Although Neighbor’s healing touch had healed made many people well enough to travel, his unsteady voice revealed how weak he still was. It was difficult to see him this way.
“Yes,” Rick said softly. He looked into his father’s green eyes. “But not all my sisters.” For he still didn’t know where Lolly was.
His father’s eyes teared, then overflowed. “No,” he muttered. “Not all.” And then his face twisted, making him look twice, three times, his age. From deep within him came a choking sob. He sat up and opened his mouth to the sky in a wordless cry before dropping his forehead to his knees and bawling in deep, loud sobs.
“Hush.”
“Quiet him.”
“Do something before he gives us away.”
Rick sat up with him. He still didn’t know what had happened to his sister, but suspected the worst. As his own warm tears streaked his face, Rick leaned close to his father and whispered the sleep spell into his ear. He gently laid his father back and covered him again with the cloak, feeling the body of the strongest and wisest man he knew shake while he cried in his sleep.
* * *
Marching all night and sleeping all day, Rick was surprised by the strength and stamina of his people. He shouldn’t have been. It hadn’t been just a desperate run by the weak. All the people, even the children, pressed tirelessly on and on and became stronger with each step forward. Of course, the healing gift of a certain war unicorn helped. By the end of the third night, the escaping Farhnerians still hadn’t been discovered. That they knew of. Eri could have flown south to see if the nettle walls were still intact, or where the Spike armies were and how they were doing and where they were aiming. That also might have given away the Farhnerian location. King Segan and Geoffrey were fairly certain after the nettle walls disappeared and the sleep spells wore off, Spike scouts would be sent in all directions, especially into Farhner. But they weren’t heading there. They were escaping north on the advice of a dragon only a handful of them had ever seen. But why north and how far?
When they approached the magicians’ camp, Rick noticed an odd man-sized shimmering within the circle. It was thin, like a door with the shadow of a human adult within. Some of the magicians had formed individual domes of protection. Others stood or sat, unprotected, including Bertran and Hobbie, as they watched the shimmer. As Rick walked into their midst, the robed figure in the shimmer turned to face him. Someone in a purple robe covered with stars. It was Alyse, Thram’s mother.
Rick drew his sword, rushed forward, and sliced through the shimmer. The form quivered but the witch remained. She chortled. He hadn’t thought that metal would slice through a magic doorway, but he wasn’t thinking when he charged. He was reacting. Rick lowered his sword and looked at Rogerin and Anna. His father, near them, looked more alert than he had been since the rescue. No one spoke. Farhnerian soldiers had formed around the circle of magicians. Some of their faces had gone very pale. They may have remembered Alyse’s family turning people of Nimrock into frogs. They’d drawn their weapons even though they knew full well that weapons couldn’t destroy her.
“You didn’t think you could escape me?” Alyse asked. Her eyes narrowed as she perused the magicians. Suddenly she sniffed twice. Her expression changed to curiosity. She sniffed around the circle of magicians, slowing when she reached Rick’s father, and then scowling at Rick and Neighbor. Her sniffing was irritating, but finally she stopped and grinned.
“What do you want?” Rick’s father asked her. His voice was weak. He wasn’t demanding. He wasn’t forceful. It was as though he was merely thinking out loud. “You’ve killed our people. You killed my children. What is it you want, Alyse?” He looked up into her eyes. “What do you really want?”
The shimmering image of Alyse stared at him and cocked her head to one side. Her face softened, and she frowned thoughtfully. A smoky breath sighed out of her as if she were standing in an ice house.
“I want…I want…” She looked pained, as if about to reveal something private, held in for far too long. It made her almost appear human, like a normal Farhner woman, a jilted lover.
“She wants us all dead,” one of their soldiers said, but not quietly enough.
Alyse searched the ranks, focusing on one, and her expression flashed back to the rage they knew. Geoffrey and King Segan had joined the group, making their way into the magician’s circle.
“As you say,” Alyse replied. “I have power over all of you, and, yes, I would see you all dead. However…”
There was a however?
She looked again around the magician’s circle. “Give up your doppelganger, and I shall allow some of you to live.”
She knew. She knew they had a doppelganger.
Rick refused to look at the false Lydia, but others weren’t as subtle. Alyse’s look had followed the others’ to Lydia. Lydia backed away, looking terrified. Anyone had to feel sorry for her, even if she was only a one-moon-old-twelve-winter-old double. She bumped into a wall of protection, and then Anna drew her to her side. Rogerin stood on Lydia’s other side. Good old Rogerin. He was the eldest of the magicians, except for maybe Rick’s father, and knew magic from wherever it was he came. Maybe his different knowledge would be enough to throw Alyse off.
“We shall give up no one to you,” Rick said.
The other magicians dropped their individual protections and now crowded around Lydia. Every eye watched the shimmering witch. Even so, Alyse didn’t look the least intimidated. She didn’t back down.
“You think I cannot find any of you? You think you—or a doppelganger—can hide from me for long? You can even keep that stubborn old unicorn. You’ve broken her. She’s too independent now to work properly. But give me your doppelganger, and I…I shall leave the rest of you be.”
Rick remembered how Thram tried to get as far from Alyse as he could, even building a strong, thick-walled tower in hopes of her not locating him again. Rick didn’t doubt Alyse had the power to hunt down and locate each of them like she had with her own son, like she’d done tonight.
“You think just because someone is a double,” Rogerin said, “real or doppel, that he would choose to follow you or be with you?”
“She doesn’t know what I can offer her,” Alyse said. Anna pulled Lydia in tighter. “Together, we can—” Alyse cocked her head and looked sideways at Rogerin. She squinted. “He?” she repeated. Then a smile slid across her lips. “They all thought it was her, didn’t they? They thought it was the child. But it was you. I felt your strength, your otherness. I assumed it was your skin, your race. How could I have been so foolish?” She raised a finger and her arm and hand went outside the shimmering doorway as she pointed to Rogerin. “You are the doppelganger.”
Rick looked at Rogerin, one of his personal guard he’d traveled with for three moons. A doppelganger. Rogerin’s strength and knowledge of magic perhaps could possibly equal Alyse’s. Plus, Rogerin, or Rogerin’s doppelganger, knew how to make doppelgangers. Alyse did not. Would all the magic in all of Farhner, or the entire world, be enough to stop if Alyse and Rogerin united…if he chose to go with her? If he did, Rick knew he had to stop him. If he and Neighbor changed into the unicorn-warrior-man, would it matter at all? This wasn’t the real Alyse, only her image. But if Rogerin agreed, what other spells did Alyse or Rogerin know? Rick set his hand on his sword hilt.
Rogerin slowly turned to Rick. Could the doppelganger also read minds? Rogerin barely shook his head once. Was it no for the mind reading, or no to engaging him in battle?
Anna and Lydia hadn’t taken their eyes off Rogerin. Tears streaked Lydia’s face. The real Lydia.
Rogerin turned back to the shimmering witch. “You may have chosen to abandon your family,” he told her. “I will not.” Lydia sobbed as she threw her arms around Rogerin’s waist. He put his hand protectively on her back. Anna laid her hand on Rogerin’s shoulder and faced the witch.
Alyse’s eyes opened wide. She threw her head back and released the cry of a banshurebar. People bent over in pain, holding their ears. Then, in a flash, the witch vanished.
“Well, that was most interesting,” Neighbor said.
“Interesting, perhaps,” Geoffrey replied. “We also know that she is now aware of our location.”