"Oh, fine!" snarled Ciaran. "What I want to know is, is there any way
out?"
The hunter shrugged.
"I'm going on anyway," said Ram. "My wife and son...."
Ciaran thought about the Stone of Destiny, and was rather glad there
was no decision to make.
They went on, at an easy jog trot. By bits and pieces Ciaran built up
the picture--raiding gangs of Kalds coming quietly onto isolated border
villages, combing the brush and the forest for stragglers. Where they
took the humans, or why, nobody could guess.[1] froze to a dead stop.
The others crouched behind him, instinctively holding their breath.
The hunter whispered, "People. Many of them." His flat palm made an
emphatic move for quiet.
Small cold prickles flared across Ciaran's skin. He found Mouse's hand
in his and squeezed it. Suddenly, with no more voice than the sigh of a
breeze through bracken, the hermit laughed.
"Judgment," he whispered. "Great things moving." His pale eyes were
fey. "Doom and destruction, a shadow across the world, a darkness and a
dying."
He looked at them one by one, and threw his head back, laughing without
sound, the stringy cords working in his throat.
"And of all of you, I _alone_ have no fear!"
They went on, slowly, moving without sound in small shapeless puddles
of shadow thrown by the floating sunballs. Ciaran found himself almost
in the lead, beside the hunter.
They edged around a jog in the cleft wall. About ten feet ahead of them
the cleft floor plunged underground, through a low opening shored with
heavy timbers.
There were two Kalds lounging in front of it, watching their wands
flash in the light.
The five humans stopped. The Kalds came toward them, almost lazily,
running rough grey tongues over their shiny teeth. Their blood-pink
eyes were bright with pleasure.