Dread Companion by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton [Norton, Andre]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, General, Science Fiction - General, Fiction, Non-Classifiable, Nonfiction - General
ISBN: 9780449243213
Publisher: Fawcett Crest
Published: 2010-01-21T15:44:22+00:00

11

"But we shall not stay here!" No matter how far away such a bridge might be, I wanted to be well away from here, though to move on in the mist also brought problems.

"No." He shook himself, as might an animal, to tree his body from water. My clothing clung tightly to me. For the first time I wanted heat, a chance to see the sun and to be warmed by it.

I was willing to let him choose our way, for I had no guide. I might well blunder back to the river in this blindness. He was again sniffing the air, as if he would so smell out our trail.

Then he said, "There is a safe place of the Folk not too far away."

He strode off as one who sees a clear road. I hurried to catch up to him and demand, "How do you know?"

"Can you not smell it?"

I could smell the scent of the bruised flowers I bore, and that was all.

"The Folk use growing things in their spells for doing and undoing. Where they grow, the scent hangs heavy."

"Such as this?" I touched my bedraggled branch.

"No, that is something else. I do not know who planted those. But the Folk do not use them. They are from an earlier time, perhaps another people - "

"Those mounds where these grew - was it once a city or a burial place?"

"It could be either, or both. If any know the history of this world, it is only the Great Ones of the Folk. And they guard their knowledge jealously. There is ever rivalry between them and the Dark Ones. And also some rivalry among themselves. Then, there is something else-" He paused as if he did not want to continue.

But I pressed him, for what I learned, each little scrap, might be an aid toward our return to a world I knew.

"What else?"

"I do not think that the Folk are supreme, though it is true they manage to hold those of the Dark in check. But I have heard enough to know that there is something they fear, that they pay a tribute to at intervals. And they pay that tribute in living creatures - which is also one or the reasons why they must recruit from other worlds."

"The children!" Had Bartare been summoned for such a reason? If so, there was all the more need for me to find them - and speedily.

"I do not know." It seemed he did not greatly care.

I had a flare of anger at that, until good sense snuffed it. After all, why should he? The children were nothing to him. And perhaps all that tied him to me was the food I carried. Only - if that were so, why did he simply not knock me out and take it? I had no doubt that his strength and fighting skills were superior to mine, and he could take the supplies with little trouble. Yet from the first he had asked and not forced.

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