But the dogs had traveled ahead. Their yelping tinkled off the mountains like broken glass.
“They’re following something,” Kendall said. He added emphasis to “something.” “If the creature came this way though it’s damned uncanny. Foliage is undisturbed.”
Sena looked at the crushed trail behind them and then ahead at the quiet, untrod bracken.
“With strides like those, I doubt we’ll catch it even horsed,” Vaughan said. “We’ll be lucky if the hounds don’t fall down a fissure.” He looked over his shoulder.
Caliph read his thoughts. If we turn back now, it will still be dark by the time we reach Isca.
He drew up on the reins and began to call in the dogs. They were trained from pups to ignore food even when they were starving should their master call.
It was quiet out in the mountains. Hundreds of leagues of unexplored valleys and ridges crumpled the land of the Healean Range. There must have been thousands of square miles for any kind of creature to hide.
Caliph called again.
He noticed Prince Mortiman looking at him in a kind of charmed way and felt suddenly uneasy.
Sena was looking at him too. Looking at the prince looking at Caliph. The bizarre momentary triangle made Caliph shift in his saddle as a gust of wind ruffled his hair. Mortiman cleared his throat musically and gazed off into the distance.
Caliph made one last attempt to call the dogs in.
The mountain air had turned cold. The tip of his nose was growing numb. He looked back at Sena; saw her face tense and pale. Jealousy? Or was she as nervous as he was?
A shuffling stirred the undergrowth.
“Ahh, here they come.” Sheridan clapped his gloved hands.
But the sticks and dying leaves parted for only one hound.
Caliph jumped down, his voice a whisper. “By the trade wind!”
Blood matted the animal’s coat and a great chunk of hide had been torn from the top of its head. One ear was missing altogether. It stood panting steam, whimpering softly.
“We need to go,” said Sena.
Caliph tore a strip of cloth from a roll in his saddlebag. “I’ll have to carry him.”
Sena sounded desperate. “We need to go now!” She turned her giddy horse around and began walking it the other way. Her terror was contagious. Vaughan, a trained woodsman, sat looking anxiously into the trees. He cocked his head slightly as though listening to something no one else could hear.
Prince Mortiman held his spear, hands clenching and twisting around the haft.
“I can’t just leave him,” Caliph said.
His ears picked through every sound. The falling leaves, the shush-shush of wind in the bracken. Nothing strange disturbed the mountain woods but he felt a slight involuntary shiver.
Sena’s voice drew his attention. He looked up, saw her eyes: wide, blue and frightened. “Caliph. We. Have. To. Go!”
She kicked her horse. Its bouquet of tails snarled. It coughed viciously and stamped its claws into the clay. Even these intimidating creatures seemed to grow nervous as evening sucked away the day.
Prince Mortiman turned his horse around and lashed its reins.
Sheridan seemed impatient. “Come on, Dad.”
The baron of Bogswallow raised his eyebrows at the High King.
“If we don’t want to be left, we’d best let your animal find his own way home.”
Caliph abandoned his work with a sigh. He buckled his bag and hurriedly pulled himself back onto his saddle.
“This is ridiculous,” he hissed.
The daylight faded as Vaughan and his father watched both ways while Caliph got his horse turned around in the thick brush.
But as the High King negotiated the terrain, he felt his well-anchored skepticism begin to crumble. Old familiar fears rose out of memory. He urged his horse into a gallop. Surreal tentacles seemed to morph and lengthen from behind.
Something snapped inside Caliph at the exact moment that the horse truly began to fly, as though the fear of rider or beast had somehow infected the other.
Clawing from the darkness of his past as much as from the mountains, a nameless horror bore down on Caliph Howl. It had eyes. Greedy, leering eyes. And teeth slick with the blood of dogs.
CHAPTER 36
Caliph lashed the reins on the mad snarl of horseflesh beneath him. Branches blurred: a delirious black net above the shred of claws. He felt like he was eight again. He felt nauseous.
He couldn’t tell whether he was tumbling or sliding or falling down the mountainside. A dry corn leaf, blown high above the valley like a runaway kite, wobbled through the air.
Down, down, down. The horse leapt a gully, scrambled for its footings, found