Page 2 of Lake of Sorrow
Frayvar only shrugged and glanced nervously toward the approaching riders.
Summoning her flagging energy, Kaylina stepped away from the windmill, descended the backside of the hill, and stepped into icy water that flowed off glaciers in the mountains. Frayvar splashed after her.
“Be careful not to brush any branches.” She pointed toward rhododendrons, goatsbeard, sword ferns, and other plants she couldn’t yet name. It was only because of drawings in the ranger handbook Vlerion had tucked in with their supplies that she could identify any of the local flora. As her reading had emphasized, the royal rangers were hunters and trackers as well as defenders of the borders.
“Easier said than done.” Tall and gangly, Frayvar slipped on every other rock, wobbling even without a pack or any weapons weighing him down. And was he wheezing slightly? His recently cracked ribs had to be bothering him.
As the baying grew louder, the voices of men now audible, Kaylina and Frayvar fell silent. They hurried up the stream toward the looming forest, glancing back every few steps.
Ahead, a bridge arched over the waterway, its stone framework already in shadow as twilight approached. Kaylina didn’t notice anyone on it until a taybarri reached the top, the ranger mounted on the creature’s long back gazing downstream toward her and Frayvar.
Surprise and the immediate hope that it was Vlerion made Kaylina misstep. Her foot slipped on a slick rock, and she flailed, her pack slumping off her shoulder.
The ranger couldn’t have missed the movement, but his chin lifted, his gaze shifting farther downstream. The taybarri looked right at Kaylina, its floppy ears twitching, its long, thick tail swishing on the bridge.
The shadows made it hard to see the ranger’s face, but he had too much hair to be Vlerion. Disappointment filled Kaylina, as well as the certainty that this guy would impede them.
She lifted a hand to keep her brother from running into her and glanced toward the right bank, thinking of crawling into the undergrowth. The forest rose in that direction, but they were still a quarter mile away. It would be a long crawl. And the blue-furred taybarri had nostrils as good as any hound’s. More, it could run as fast as a horse, even faster if it used its flash power. If the ranger wanted to catch them, he would.
The man shifted his cloak aside, the gesture oddly flamboyant, and drew something from his belt. A weapon?
Kaylina tensed and grabbed Frayvar’s wrist, ready to yank him into the brush.
The ranger held up something flat and rectangular. An envelope. He looked like he was trying to read it by the vestiges of the sunset but shook his head, as if there wasn’t enough light. He set the envelope on the stone railing, then rode off the bridge.
The taybarri trotted down a trail that headed downstream, rustling encroaching foliage along the way. As the ranger passed close to Kaylina and Frayvar, he didn’t look at them, instead gazing with determination toward the hounds and horses.
Would he stop the hunters? Try to get them off Kaylina’s trail?
She doubted it. So far, the rangers hadn’t tried hard to catch her, but they were on the same side as her pursuers.
That thought didn’t keep her from hurrying upstream, climbing out, and heading for the envelope. Her boots squished on the stone bridge, leaving wet prints that even a nearsighted grandma could follow, but it couldn’t be helped. Kaylina wanted whatever the ranger had left. Something from Vlerion, she hoped.
The light had grown too dim to discern much, but she could make out the word pirate in dark ink on the envelope and grinned. That was what she called him, and it irked him to no end, but Kaylina had no doubt the message was for her.
After tucking the envelope into her waistband, trusting the belt to keep it secure, she climbed back into the water. Ducking low so they wouldn’t be seen, she and Frayvar continued under the bridge and upstream.
The bays had shifted to whines, the hounds right alongside the waterway now and almost to the bridge. Kaylina worried their pursuers would continue into the preserve after them and she and her brother wouldn’t be able to escape.
“Lord Ranger,” a rider called from the path, the words barely audible over the gurgling water. “We’re on the trail of the fugitive from the south.”
“I glimpsed her near the manor, but she was heading into the mountains. I believe she may have caught a ride on one of the mining wagons.” That voice was familiar. It belonged to Jankarr, Vlerion’s handsome comrade.
“That’s not what our hounds think.”
“No? Then by all means, follow them. Their noses are much keener than mine.”
“But not that of your taybarri.”
The words grew harder to make out as Kaylina continued to creep upstream. It sounded like the speakers had stopped moving. Maybe Jankarr was blocking the path and buying her time?
“The taybarri will not help hunt down an anrokk,” Jankarr said. “It is why we’ve struggled to capture her ourselves. Several times, they’ve led us—we believe—deliberately astray.”
“What in all the altered orchards is an anrokk?”
“One to whom animals of all kinds are drawn. They’re believed to have druids in their distant ancestry.”
Kaylina halted. She hadn’t heard that before. Vlerion had only said that animals were drawn to anrokk, and his mother, Isla, had implied that he might be drawn to Kaylina because the curse turned him into a beast, something more akin to an animal than a man.