Tanequil by Terry Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

miss at least one of them. But there was nothing he could do about it except to continue talking the scheme over with Khyber and Tagwen, hoping that, together, they could keep everything straight.
    The afternoon slipped away, and the shadows were beginning to lengthen when Khyber suddenly gripped Pen’s arm and said, “There! That’s what we’re looking for.”
    She was pointing across a sparsely wooded valley to a meadow that fronted a heavy cluster of rocks leading up into the mountains. The rocks were threaded by a tangle of passages that gave the cluster the look of a complicated maze. The maze lifted toward the base of a cliff face that dropped sharply for several hundred feet from a high plateau.
    â€œYou’re right,” Pen agreed. “Let’s have a closer look before it gets dark.”
    They went down through the valley, into the trees, and along a series of ravines and gullies that rains and snowmelt had carved into the slope, watching the sun slide steadily lower on the horizon. East, the sky was already dark behind the mountains, and a three-quarter moon was on the rise. Night birds were winging through the growing gloom, and night sounds were beginning to surface. A wind had picked up, bitter and chill as it blew down out of the higher elevations.
    They were almost through the trees when Pen drew up short and pointed back the way they had come. “Did you see something move just then?” he asked.
    The Dwarf and the girl peered through the dark wall of trunks and the pooling shadows. “I didn’t see anything,” Khyber said.
    Tagwen shook his head as well. “Shadows, maybe. The wind.”
    Pen nodded. “Maybe.”
    They went on quickly and were out of the trees and across the meadow in moments, heading for the rocks. Pen saw at once that it was exactly what they had hoped to find. The meadow sloped gently upward into a jumble of boulders too high and too deep to see over. There were passages leading into the rocks, but most of them ended within a dozen yards. Only one led all the way through, traversing small clearings in which sparse stands of evergreens and scrub blocked clear passage. It was possible to get through, but not without maneuvering over and around various obstacles and making the correct choices from among the narrow defiles. Best of all, one of the choices led to an outcropping at the edge of the woods they had just come through—and it was elevated enough to allow them to see over the rim of the maze to the meadow below.
    â€œWe build our fire in one of these clearings, make our sleeping dummies, and hide out here.” Pen had it all worked out. “An airship can spot our fire if she comes anywhere within miles, but we can spot the airship, too. We can tell if she’s the
Skatelow.
We can see her land, we can watch what happens. Once the creature comes into the rocks, we slip down off the outcropping, skirt the trees, and come at the ship from outside. It’s perfect.”
    Neither the girl nor the Dwarf cared to comment on that bold declaration, so it was left hanging in the stillness of the twilight, where, even to Pen, it sounded a bit ridiculous.
    They went back through the maze to a clearing where the opening from the meadow was so narrow it was necessary to turn sideways to squeeze through. Pen looked around speculatively, then found what he was looking for. On the other side of the clearing, deeper in, was a rocky alcove where someone could hide and watch the opening.
    â€œOne of us will hide here,” he said, facing them. “When our friend from the
Skatelow
comes through that opening, the tar gets thrown at it. The leaves will split on impact, so the tar will go all over. It will take the creature a moment or two at least to figure out what happened. By then, we’ll be heading for the airship.”
    Tagwen actually laughed. “That is a terrible plan, young Penderrin. I suppose you believe that