Chapter 3. A Barn in a Meadow

Eirleida struggled with the belly strap.

It’s a pity, thought Eirleida, that we can’t use Racing to do this, too.

The party had Raced back to the campsite, but preparations to leave were taking place at normal speeds.

She was the farthest behind: putting on a dress—even a riding dress—just takes longer than pulling on a shirt and a pair of trousers.

So she was rushing. And that haste made her fingers shaky and clumsy.

Well, perhaps not only the haste.

They were headed into danger, possibly into battle. She was terrified to her bones.

Logically, she realized this was the only natural conclusion of the journey. They Hunted someone. Eventually, he would turn to face them, or they would corner him and there would be danger.

She had just never thought she would be a part of it. Always, before, she had pointed the way. She told men where the danger was, and then they fought, bled, or even died. The danger was theirs, not hers.

For a moment, she wanted to suggest staying with the camp and allowing the men to take their prey. Then she thought of what that would mean. She would be alone and completely vulnerable. No Aurelian. None of Leontios’s machines.

No. It was definitely better to go with the rest of the Hunting party.

Aurelian stalked over from his own horse, reins twisted around a branch.

“Let me help,” he said, and she nodded assent. Jerking harder than needed on the saddle girth, he asked, “How far is he?”

“Not far, but he’s moving fast. Faster than he should be with a horse.”

“Do you know where to take us?”

She glanced around the camp. The fire was out and Leontios already sat his horse.

“I do.” She pointed south. “The main road will take us to him.” She paused as something occurred to her. “That is, unless he’s playing another of his tricks.”

“We can only work with what we know,” Aurelian practically growled as he gave the saddle blanket in a final perfunctory sweep of his hands. “We will follow our senses until we have something better.”

They may not have been able to Race in breaking camp, but it seemed they’d done the next best thing. It was not even predawn when the party set out.

Even at his inexplicable speed, the object of their Hunt had only put a short distance between them, yet Aurelian seemed determined to catch him up before the sun rose.

Jellyfish stretched out in a long line ahead of them, lighting the path before them, with a few behind and to the flanks for good measure. The floating lantern-things easily matched the pace of the horses, allowing for travel at speeds normally only safe in the full light of day.

As they trotted, the Seeker could feel the distance between them and their quarry close. If he could have maintained the speed of his initial withdrawal, he would easily have outpaced them.

Thankfully—or perhaps not—he did not appear to be able to move that fast for very long.

Aurelian rode stiff-backed at the front of their miniature column, propping his spear in his stirrup and holding it with his right hand. Its javelin-tipped spearhead shone in the light of the skyborne lamps. The light was even good enough for Eirleida to make out some of the markings burnt into the otherwise smooth wood surface of its shaft.

She shuddered. She had seen what that spear could do. It had fetched her dinner many times since she took up with Aurelian. It had done far worse, when the need arose.

The horses were flaring their nostrils and huffing ragged breaths when the Hunter finally called for a stop. The moon had long-since set and a faint purple glow to the east announced the coming sun.

Aurelian wheeled his horse around, his face a study in stone.

“I picked up his trail half an hour back,” he said. “Now I can feel him. I can feel where he is and something of what he plans. He means to stop… possibly to face us.”

Leontios only stared into the distance, then turned his horse so he could more easily peer at the rising sun. He took a deep breath and said, “I do not like this, Aurelian.”

The Hunter ignored the old Greek’s lamentation. “He is somewhere over that ridge. Perhaps two, or maybe even three miles.”

“It is closer to three,” added Eirleida. “I can feel him, too, in that direction. The fastest route is, again, to go south around the hill, then we can make straight for him.”

Aurelian shot her an appraising glance and then nodded. Surely, he knew of Seekers and way-finding after all his years of hunting. Perhaps he was merely surprised at her precision.

“I don’t like it, I say,” repeated Leontios. “It has a bad feel to it.”

Aurelian rounded on Leontios. “You think this is a trap?”

Leontios nodded grimly. “What else could it be?”

Aurelian’s face reddened. Just a little. Without the Jellyfish, it would never have been noticeable. His voice was an entirely different matter.

“So,” he said with an icy tightness, “shall we simply rest on our laurels whenever we have a chance at him? We are three and he is one. I have my spear and am accounted an excellent Fighter. You,” he gestured at the other man’s horse, “have whatever wonders you brought with you. I say we spring his trap while his own hand is still inside it.”

“We should not go in blind.”

“I—,” began Eirleida. She could not stop her voice from trembling for fear of what was to come, but she kept it as steady as she could. “I agree.”

Aurelian sputtered with incredulity. “So which of us is to scout? What do the other two do? If the scout is injured, will those who remain behind rush in to save him? ‘Two shall go where three feared to tread?’”

Leontios shook his head and said, “No,” as he swung his leg over his saddle and smoothly dismounted. “None of us will go,” he added as he rummaged through one of the panniers on top of his packhorse.

He pulled out what looked like three little copper statues of sparrows and tossed them skyward. They sprang to life in the air and turned into reddish-golden streaks heading south and west, gleaming as they caught the sun’s first rays.

Aurelian hunched in on himself. “How long?”

“They can scout a site 400 leagues away and report back in a single day. They should be able to tell us what they have found in just a few minutes. It will take them longer to survey than to travel the distance, but only barely.”

The Hunter visibly slackened. “That fast?”

“That fast.”

Eirleida seemed to be trying to pace a hole in the patch of dirt where they had stopped. Aurelian was crouching with his back propped against a large rock, arms crossed sullenly.

Leontios felt his Sparrows coming and lifted his right hand to provide them with a perch. They came streaking in from the southwest and alighted; one on his hand, one on his wrist, and one on his forearm.

Each took its turn reporting—feeding images directly into his mind—but he gave all the pictures a moment to coalesce into a single sense of the area.

“There is no sign of a horse,” he said. “Man-tracks, but no hoof prints. They cannot see as well as the Jellyfish, but they can see well enough in this light to know that.”

Aurelian sprang to his feet, all sign of petulance replaced with anticipation. “No horse?” he asked. “Maybe he abandoned it. Another ruse.”

“Maybe,” the Seeker put in without a pause in her stride. “Maybe.”

“The other side of this hill is a large meadow,” continued Leontios, his voice calm and almost trance-like. “Sharp cliffs all around. Too steep to climb. Three breaks in the cliffs.”

“Go on,” urged Aurelian, making an impatient rolling motion with his left hand and gripping his spear in a white-knuckled right.

“Two for the main road near the east sides of the basin,” Leontios continued. “One that breaks west. In the center…” his eyebrows shot up. “In the center, closer to the western break in the cliffs, there is a structure.”

“A structure?!” Aurelian and Eirleida exclaimed in almost perfect unison.

“Is this his home?” asked Eirleida.

“Doubtful,” said Aurelian. “Do we know if he has the aid of whoever lives here?”

Leontios smiled. “No,” he said. “To both of you.”

Aurelian said, “I admit you were both right. A short delay has given us knowledge of the land and his only possible hiding place, assuming he does not move between now and when we take him. Hobble the horses and carry what you need. We will Race to that structure and take him at once!”

Quick work with a few ropes secured the horses and set the Hunting party on its way.

Leontios had often wondered what Racing might look like to an ordinary person. Probably the three of them looked like a trio of blurs streaking along the road.

But the landscape did not look like it was streaking past to Leontios.

Instead, everything seemed to be frozen as he jogged along. The sun did not appear to be rising at all. A branch that was caught mid-breeze hung oddly twisted as if held back by an invisible hand.

His lungs burned and his legs ached. He certainly was not accustomed to Racing long distances.

Oddly, of the three of them, Eirleida appeared to have the easiest time. She was not red, panting, or even sweating. In fact, she did not appear to be running at all.

To Leontios’s eye, it appeared that the Seeker was carefully picking her way along the dusty road, clutching the skirts of her riding dress to keep them out of the dust. She had the look of someone who was on a casual stroll that was sped up to the point of absurdity.

Maybe that is what it looks like to the un-Ascended when someone of lesser Racing ability goes past, he mused.

Aurelian was also not struggling. He appeared to be jogging easily, as if he could run that pace all day and night. His right hand casually swung his spear as he ran, its javelin-tip having split into three tines to form a crossbar with three points at the end. His hair was slick with sweat, but he did not appear to be in any way distressed by the exercise.

The sun was still not fully risen when they broke out of their little valley and into the larger cliff-bounded plain.

Aurelian lifted his fist, signaling a halt and the three of them blinked back into normal time.

The meadow floor below looked soft and Leontios, panting, sank to his knees. Yet he found the surface far harder than he would have guessed. It didn’t matter. He would have collapsed onto polished granite at that point.

He bent forward at the waist, placing his hands on the rocky soil below and sucked in ragged gasps.

He could not bring himself to look up, but it appeared from the corner of his eye as if the Hunter and the Seeker were standing on the edge of a bare patch of grass, conferring.

Slowly, and with much regret, Leontios lifted his head enough to get a good look.

In the distance, perhaps a mile off, stood an old barn. Even that far away, Leontios could tell it was in a state of disrepair. It looked fairly small at that range, so he couldn’t say how he knew, but he knew it was.

As he regained his strength, something tickled his memory. A strange detail but he couldn’t recall what.

Slowly—even more slowly than he had lifted his head—he forced himself to rise, gulping great volumes of air as he did.

Once on his feet, he staggered to the edge of the bare patch so he could join the conference.

Wait, he thought. Bare patch?

Leontios looked down at his feet and noticed the edge of the bare dirt was an almost perfect line. His eyes followed the line that divided ordinary high grass from sparse, scraggly weeds. It was arrow-straight until it reached a corner where it made a perfect right turn. He followed the border the rest of the way around until reaching where he stood. It was a very large “L” shaped patch.

Ignoring the other two, he pulled a small spade from his belt pouch and ordered it to dig straight down. It began at once.

Leontios watched in fascination at his own genius as it tore through the dirt, then turned to listen to what Eirleida was saying to Aurelian.

“—but he can fool us. He might not be there at all.”

Aurelian shook his head, raising his hands while keeping a wary eye on the barn in the distance. “I agree. With both ‘could’ and ‘might,’ but we cannot allow ourselves to be dissuaded. This is not my first dangerous Hunt, nor will it be my last.”

A clanging sound drew the attention of all three. The little spade was returning itself to his hand as the other three turned to face him.

“We are standing on the foundation of a building that has gone to dust in ancient times,” said Leontios. “I’ve no idea how long it takes to make a building into nothing and then put a foot of dirt atop its bones, but it must be ancient in the extreme. I’m now certain.” He pointed at the barn. “That building has been preserved with the power of someone’s will.”

In the end, Aurelian won the argument by simply choosing to end it. He was a Hunter. He Hunted. His prey was in the barn. Leontios had never even intimated he wanted to stop, following without comment or complaint.

But, as far as he was concerned, that quivering, cowardly woman could remain behind on the footprint of the dead farmhouse or come along. It made no difference to him.

The mere act of ending the conversation with a quick chopping motion in his left hand and striding toward the barn was all he had needed to do in the first place.

Of course she would follow. She was too afraid to go out on her own or to stay back at the camp. Why would she be any less fearful of being caught alone a mere mile from this man they’ve been Hunting for months?

Silently and wordlessly, Aurelian berated himself for time wasted. He was close. The closer he got to his target, the stronger the feel of the Hunt. And there was that other feeling. That pulsing in his chest that drove him on this Hunt more strongly than the others.

He had to catch this man. He had to stop him. There was no room in his heart or mind for anything else.

When they drew near, he crouched low and stepped carefully. He could not remain completely silent in terrain like that—even a snake could not have moved through that dry grass without at least a little rustle—but he was as quiet as any animal of nature and that was good enough. Three hundred feet from the barn, they made a slow, careful circle.

There were three man-doors, one on each of the two long sides and one next to the large door on rollers meant for animals or equipment.

When they finished their circuit, they crouched behind some tall grass. It would not be impossible to spot them, but it was as good a hiding place as could be had under those circumstances.

Unbidden, Leontios placed two little suits of armor on the ground. Slowly, silently, they grew until they were the size of a very large man. With shocking quiet, each suit slunk off to one side of the barn and took up a position next to one of the man-doors.

So the exits are covered, thought Aurelian. Good man.

Aurelian could still feel his prey in the barn. He was certain the man he sought was in there. He looked at Eirleida who nodded curtly. She was clearly only barely in control of her faculties.

The Hunter turned to Leontios and made a motion, first pointing at his own eyes, then at the large square opening above the main rolling doors.

Leontios barely moved his head, but Aurelian took it for understanding and his interpretation was confirmed when a little copper sparrow flitted up to the loft door and perched just on the edge of the darkness within.

The time the bird-thing spent studying the interior seemed to stretch on endlessly. Aurelian’s ears thundered with his heartbeat—the thrill of the Hunt was trying to take him over, but he had come that far and taken care at the others’ urgings. He would not ruin it, now, by striking too quickly.

On soundless wings, the little metal bird glided back to the Maker and took a perch on his shoulder. The man appeared to think for a second, then turned to make eye contact with Aurelian.

Slowly, confidently, he nodded. Then, while holding that eye contact, he used two fingers on his left hand to create the impression of legs walking and nodded again. Then he used two hands and shook his head.

A man, but no horse, Aurelian thought and quickly nodded to confirm he understood.

He turned back to the study of the barn, but the Maker tugged at his sleeve and caught Aurelian’s attention once more. He made a box shape with his hands and then pointed into the exact center.

He’s in the center of the barn. Very helpful, thought Aurelian. He gave another quick nod to confirm he understood and then started toward the man-door in the front of the barn.

All three of them kept as low as they could and walked as quietly as possible. It was a slow, crawling pace, one that felt interminable, but also one Aurelian had come to savor in his many years.

Gripping his spear in his right hand, Aurelian reached out to grasp the handle of the door with his left. He tensed, ready to spring into action at the slightest noise, but the hinges gave no report at all.

The man-door gave way to a small space between the outer wall and what appeared to be a large animal stall, hiding their approach. Aurelian tensed and then exploded into action.

To Eirleida, the pained wail from around the corner did not sound like one of injury or battle. She forced down her fear and strode into the middle of the barn to find Leontios and Aurelian shifting their feet in slow circles, trying to look everywhere at once.

“He’s gone…fuzzy…again,” she said.

Aurelian flashed gritted teeth at her and resumed his study of the barn. “Indeed.”

Oddly, the Hunter seemed to relax. His expression was almost rueful.

“It appears he’s slipped away, again,” the man said as he shook his head, his shoulders shaking in what might have been a silent laugh. Might have.

Squaring his shoulders, he clapped his hand firmly on Leontios’s back. “Now, my man, you see—”

His words cut off with a cacophony of loud bangs all around them, seemingly happening everywhere and all at once.

Eirleida’s eyes shot as wide as they would go; so wide it hurt her face.

Everything froze. Motes of dust hung midair without moving. Aurelian looked like cold honey spreading across a barely-tilted surface. That probably meant he was Racing as fast as he could, but she was faster. She rushed to the door from which they had come. It was locked. She Raced to the back of the barn, first checking the door to her right. Locked. Then the door across the barn to her left. Locked as well.

Panic set in.

She Raced back to where Aurelian stood—seeming to just be starting a step—and forced herself to slow down directly in his path.

The Hunter flickered for a fraction of a heartbeat and then stood a few feet away, staring down at her, studying her face.

“We—w—we’re trapped,” she stammered. “All the doors. They’re locked.”

Aurelian nodded once and seemed to briefly explode into a spiderweb of brownish streaks stretching to all corners of the barn.

Then he was standing there again, facing a stunned Eirleida and Leontios.

“You were right, Maker. This is all preserved. Preserved and reinforced. I don’t think a hundred men could break down these doors or walls.”

A faint, acrid smell tickled Eirleida’s nostrils and true panic set in. She screamed at the top of her lungs. A wordless, animal shriek of terror.

This is how it ends, she thought. Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no, no, NO! Thousands of years to be cooked alive in an ancient barn!

Aurelian was not afraid, only considering. He snapped and pointed to the ladder leading up to the loft.

“Quickly, woman!” he shouted. “You can make it to the top. We’ll try to follow you, but the ladder will more likely hold you than either of us.” The Hunter gave her shoulder a rough shove toward the ladder and barked “Now!”

It was a point of hope. A broken leg would be better than burning alive.

Eirleida rushed to the ladder and started to climb, but her foot clove through the first rung like it was dry sand. The rungs she was holding came away in her hand and the entire thing fell apart. She sank back into despair.

Leontios grabbed Aurelian’s sleeve, causing the man to turn.

“He must have had a way out. Can you still follow his trail?”

Flames began to lick under the walls of the barn. The structure may have been reinforced, but the piles of fresh hay would burn and likely the interior wood, too.

Aurelian nodded and, again, hope glimmered. Distant and weak, like the light of noon shining from the top of a well, reminding someone trapped at the bottom that there was still something other than darkness in the world.

The Hunter looked around and pointed at a flaming door to an animal enclosure. Then, with a violence entirely natural, he hurled his shoulder at it, causing it to explode into a shower of embers skittering across the stall.

A pile of old wood was already catching fire at the far end, near the exterior wall. Aurelian ignored the flames, grabbing with his free hand, kicking with his booted feet, and sweeping with the butt of his spear.

Black smoke was billowing just above their heads, its tendrils reaching down and burning Eirleida’s lungs, but she gasped when she saw what was uncovered: A trap door, planks on fire and with a metal handle that appeared to be getting quite hot.

Aurelian tried to lift the door with the tip of his spear but could not. Leontios snatched the spear from the Hunter’s hands, earning him a dangerous scowl and thrust it along the floor through the handle. Then he crouched low and grabbed the spear.

Straining with effort, he barely managed to move the door.

Flames were crawling up the walls of the stall and creeping across the bottom of the loft. Any moment, they would be buried under red-hot coals and cooked alive.

Eirleida’s eyes unfocused with panic. For a moment, she thought she’d lost her senses and was howling uncontrollably. Then she realized what she heard was actually a roar of pain.

Aurelian had joined Leontios, using burned hands on the shaft of his spear to lift the trap door. Underneath the burning wood was a plate of steel more than three inches thick, explaining why it was so difficult for the men to open it.

Eirleida threw her meager strength at the problem. She was closest to the door, so the spear offered her the least leverage, but the men were grateful for any help they could get. The door gave way with a loud clang as it slammed into its open position.

With his right hand, Aurelian snatched his spear and dropped it into the hole. It clanged against something metallic almost immediately. He looked in briefly and then jumped in. A second later, Leontios followed.

Eirleida stood on the edge of the dark hole. She could see the floor in the dim light cast by the burning beams over her head, but she was again frozen.

“Jump, Eirleida,” came Leontios’s voice. “For the love of the gods, jump!”

“We will catch you,” followed Aurelian.

She closed her eyes and flung herself out over the hole.

Leontios felt the slight weight of the Seeker in his hands and caught her with ease. Even after lifting the door, she felt light.

“Move!” cried Aurelian as he threw himself to one side.

Leontios obeyed, hurling himself and Eirleida in the same direction. A loud crack came from the entrance to the tunnel above, followed by a crash behind him.

Leontios panted as he looked back. A huge pile of coals had fallen through the trap door and something had closed it from above.

They were in some kind of tunnel, and already it began to fill with smoke.

“This way,” said Aurelian as he started to jog away from the embers.

Leontios struggled to his feet, helping Eirleida up when he was steady and the two began staggering in the direction of the Hunter.

Not far off, they found themselves at a strange door. One the likes of which Leontios had never seen.

It appeared to be solid metal, but it was far lighter than the trap door. It had a window of clear glass that made a thumping sound rather than ringing when Leontios tapped it.

Aurelian peered in and then muttered to himself “He’s obviously already outside. Still. The day you abandon care is the day you need it.”

With barely a wince, Aurelian grasped the handle of the red door and opened it.

The inside of the room made the door seem normal by comparison.

Metal floors with crisscrossing raised dimples rang under boot heels as the men moved through. Long rows of low metal tables, each six feet long and four feet wide, lined both of the long walls in the large, rectangular chamber. Longer, narrower, chest-high tables were arranged in the center of the room.

Strewn about the larger tables were all manner of device, none of which were in any way recognizable to Leontios. He doubted very much they were any more recognizable to a Seeker and a Hunter and the wondering looks on their faces confirmed those doubts.

There were large, smooth, thin rectangles. They were made of no material he’d ever seen, more like the glass in the door than anything from the natural world. They didn’t seem to do anything when touched but Leontios could feel that their function was once a wonder to boggle the mind.

There was a strange tube with a handle and a little lever. Leontios thought that maybe he could have worked out what that was for, given time to study it. He was just about to snatch it up and put it in his pouch when something else caught his attention.

The Maker strode over to the far end of the hall, opposite the door through which they entered, and began studying one of three objects of interest.

“Over here,” he said quietly. Unconsciously, the knucklebone came out of his singed coat pocket, and he began to roll it around in his left hand. “Over here!” he shouted.

The others stepped quickly. Eirleida gave one of those gasps Leontios was getting used to. Aurelian simply said, “He went through that door.”

“What kind of place is this?” asked Eirleida.

“I don’t think that’s the right question,” was Leontios’s halfhearted answer. He crouched, transferring the little bone to his right hand and rolling it around between his fingers. “The right question is ‘What kind of people could make a place like this?’”

“Do you think he killed her?” asked Aurelian.

The Maker had been studying a smallish woman. She sat in what seemed to be a perfectly calm pose. Her eyes were closed. Her legs, covered in loose black trousers of unfamiliar material, were crossed in a chair that was much too large for her, but somehow too small for her long limbs. Her hair was straight and hung to her shoulders.

Everything about her was vaguely feminine, vaguely human, but not quite right.

She was perfectly still. She did not breathe, but Leontios was not sure that meant she was dead.

Leontios touched her face. The skin was unnaturally smooth and had a resilient, almost springy quality to it.

He tilted his head to peer at her from another angle. She had ears, but they, too were only almost human. They were the right shape, but too smooth. They didn’t have the ridges and folds of a normal ear.

“I’m not sure,” said Leontios. “I don’t know if she was ever alive.”

“What?”

“This,” said Leontios half-breathlessly, “is a machine. Like something I would make… but not. Vastly beyond anything I could do, and I do get a sense of… of… of living from her. But she was not a person. Not like we… or even like the un-Ascended.”

Suddenly, the creature’s eyes shot open. Sound came from its mouth, but it was unlike any language Leontios had ever heard. Its chest did not move as it spoke, and its lips didn’t seem to move in concert with the words, if that is what they were.

Eirleida’s hands were pressed to her middle, her face a study in shock and even more pale than usual. Aurelian’s brow was furrowed as if he could puzzle out what those noises had meant.

The small almost-woman made a different set of noises. Something that almost sounded like the speech of the men from the far north, but Leontios could not make out the meaning. He cursed himself for not bringing his Tongue Pendant, but how could he have known he would need it in an empty field?

She tried one more time. This time, it was almost Latin. It sounded twisted and halting, but intelligible in a vague sort of way.

She seemed to note the recognition in his eyes and repeated more firmly. Turning, she said “Be. Somewhere. Else.” Weakly, she extended a hand and a long finger.

Then all semblance of life left her body and she froze, like some sort of living statue, pointing in the general direction of a small, red metal plaque on the wall with strange symbols.

Leontios narrowed his eyes. The symbols appeared to be stretched out octagons, with dots, chevrons, and occasional crooked little breaks. On closer inspection, the number of dots in the rightmost figure appeared to be decreasing. When the last dot disappeared, suddenly it was full of dots and chevrons and had a crooked little break again.

But the octagon to its left had changed. The redness of the plaque was also not constant. It seemed to pulse, brighter and darker, brighter and darker, like a coal in a blacksmith’s forge being stoked by bellows.

Looking around, Leontios saw many such signs.

Sudden realization took him over, and it felt like an icy hand had reached inside to clench his guts. “I think we should go,” he croaked.

‘Go?’

Aurelian shook his head.

“We must discover what this place is and learn its connection to him.”

Leontios’s manner was suddenly firm. He straightened, stiffened his back and pointed at the little red sign.

“That is a number, Aurelian. A number that is getting smaller. I don’t know what happens when it gets to zero, but I don’t think I want to find out. If you want to catch him, we need to follow his trail out of here. Or I fear the Council will be assembling a new party and starting another Hunt.”

Aurelian ground his teeth. Tricked again. It was moving beyond mere frustration and stoking his rage.

But the Maker was right. The quarry had gained the upper hand, and it was time to run.

“I will lead, but we must stay together.”

He opened the door and began to run. He did not Race—that ran the risk of getting lost or losing the trail in such an underground warren—but he ran, and he could hear the other two running behind him.

Leontios was the limiting factor. They could not go faster than him unless they wanted to carry him.

Thankfully, urgency seemed to give him added strength.

As they ran, they noticed more and more of those numbered plaques on the wall. After the fifth time they made a turn, following their prey’s trail, the number of little figures had changed from four to three.

A shrill cry filled the narrow passages, like the most piercing part of the ring of a high-pitched bell, but it wouldn’t fade or end. When they reached another ladder, blessedly with the heavy trap door above it left wide open, Aurelian estimated they were almost three quarters of the way toward losing the third mark on those strange signs.

They scrambled up the ladder, uncaring of torn dress hems and stepped-on fingers.

When they reached the top, they found themselves near the foundation of the long-gone building.

Leontios collapsed, chest heaving. “I—” he panted, “can’t—”

Aurelian didn’t wait for him to finish. He hooked his burned hand under one of the Maker’s shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “Grab him,” he commanded Eirleida, who followed suit under the man’s left shoulder.

“We have to Race!”

Time once more snapped to a standstill. They struggled and stumbled across uneven terrain until they found the road. Leontios was almost no help at all, but Eirleida’s meager strength took just enough of the edge off for Aurelian to keep up his pace and keep Racing back to the horses. At last, they were passing through a crack in the cliffs and heading into the valley where they had left the horses.

Even with Aurelian’s endurance and strength, the effort was beginning to get to him, but he wanted to be as far away as he could when that number reached zero. He hadn’t known the Maker long, but the look on his face had been most terrifying.

At last, they reached the horses and collapsed in a panting, moaning heap.

Aurelian was beginning to struggle to his feet when a sudden thunder seemed to come from everywhere at once. The earth shook and took him back to the ground, grunting as his burned shoulder hit a rock.

Lying flat on his back, he watched in amazement. Behind the hill rose a strange cloud. Black and orange and white and red. It billowed as it climbed into the sky. It must have been two miles across, and it looked as if it was made of solid ash and burning material.

Leontios struggled to his feet. “We must seek protection.”

The air began to smell strange as the cloud rose and Leontios dug through his horse’s saddlebag.

“The air will be bad,” muttered the Maker.

The cloud had stopped moving upward and seemed to be hanging in place. Then it began to flatten and spread out.

Leontios had a small pole in his hand as he staggered away from his horse toward the center of the clearing next to the road.

The cloud, still billowing and changing colors was spreading at an alarming rate and appeared to be descending. The air smelled truly awful, like so many rotten eggs.

Leontios fell to his knees and raised the pole high over his head. The blackness above was no longer merely floating down toward them. It was falling.

The old Maker drove the pointy end of the copper rod into the ground and then collapsed on his side. The top of the metal sprang forward to meet the plummeting blackness and spread out into a large, orangish-brown umbrella, then stretched over the camp and spread back down, enclosing them in a dome just in time.

The patter of debris could be heard on the metal roof.

The central pole gave off a soft light. Similar to bright sunlight through the shade of a thickly-leaved tree. A gentle breeze began to emanate from the center of the dome, carrying the scent of fresh air.

Leontios rolled onto his back, chest heaving.

“Best thing,” he panted, “for bad air.”