Bone Magic Read Free Page B

Several stems were slowly
rising, like an arthritic man standing up. "Someone was here," she
said. "Someone stood on this tuft of grass just a few minutes
ago."
    He squatted
beside her, peering blankly at the grass.
    "No horse," she
said. "A horse would leave signs. There's no hoof prints, no
droppings." She glanced back at the path Daisy and the pony had
taken through the trees. The fallen leaves were clearly disturbed,
the moist layer beneath showing as darker splotches where it was
exposed. Tam's footprints showed clearly. He had scuffed through
the leaves, turning them over or brushing them aside.
    Only Tira's
tracks were invisible. She hadn't been trying to hide her
footprints, but she was light on her feet and cautious by habit,
setting her feet down with unconscious care, making little sound
and leaving the ground undisturbed.
    The watcher was
someone like her, then. Someone with a light step, at home in the
forest.
    Someone
impossible to track.
    "Bring the
animals," she said. "Stay well back." Then she uncased her bow and
strung it, and walked deeper into the forest, scanning the ground
and the underbrush.
    Sometimes she
was almost sure she was on the right path. The leaves were slightly
disturbed, in a pattern that was only noticeable over ten or
fifteen feet of ground. Any one leaf might have been moved by wind
or a squirrel, but taken all together it showed the path of a
walking person.
    Other times she
was just guessing. She chose the path that a cautious ranger might
take, and sooner or later she found something that hinted that she
might have gotten it right. When the ground was soft there were
depressions that might have been made by human feet. Broken twigs
and bent stalks of grass showed up about where her quarry would
have stepped.
    She moved
slowly, deliberately, her eyes always scanning for the next clue.
Behind her, Tam was having a much harder time of it, veering back
and forth to lead the animals around fallen logs and other
obstacles that Tira could scramble over with ease.
    Finally she
stopped, perched herself on a fallen log, and waited for Tam to
catch up. He reached her in a few minutes, puffing and red-faced,
his cheek showing a scratch from a stray branch. Daisy looked
annoyed, her ears laid back against her skull. The pony took it all
in stride, lowering his head to crop the spring grass as soon as
Tam stopped walking.
    He took a
moment to catch his breath. "Why'd you stop?"
    "Game trail."
She gestured with her bow.
    He brightened.
"Great! We'll be able to ride."
    She shook her
head. "The branches are too low. We'll have to lead the animals.
But that's not the problem."
    His eyebrows
rose. "What's the problem, then?"
    "Tracks." She
gestured at the trail. "There won't be any more tracks, and I don't
know which way he went." She sighed in frustration. "That's
assuming I didn't lose the trail half an hour ago."
    "He went to the
left," Tam said, and she stared at him.
    "How do you
know that?"
    "Spider
web."
    He pointed.
Sure enough, she could make out strands of silk glinting in a rare
sunbeam that had penetrated the mesh of branches above. The web was
large and intricate, and it completely blocked the path to the
right. Nothing larger than a fox had gone that way in quite a few
hours.
    As she watched,
the glow on the spider web faded and disappeared. The sun was
getting quite low in the sky. "We won't go much farther tonight,"
she said. "I don't fancy tracking a kidnapper in the dark."
    Tam looked glum
at the thought of stopping, but he nodded. Tira took Daisy's reins
and led the way down the narrow ribbon of path, stooping sometimes
to clear low-hanging branches. After a few minutes she heard the
sound of running water.
    A narrow brook
wound its way through the trees, and she let Daisy drink while she
scouted around. She found a hollow that would partially obscure the
light of a campfire and provide some shelter if the wind started to
blow. It was as good a campsite as any.
    A fire was a
calculated