Gandalf Grey's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

The country road ran flat and open under a thin moon. Gandalf and Sable had walked it for hours when the barking started behind them. Torches bobbed far back on the road. A patrol had found their trail. Gandalf stopped and listened. The dogs meant hounds, and hounds meant no outrunning them. "They're gaining," Sable whispered. She clutched the rolled map to her chest. Her sleeve had slipped, and the mark glowed white up her forearm. "There's nowhere to go. It's all fields." Gandalf turned in a slow circle. Fields, a ditch, and low reeds by a stagnant channel. Then he saw it. A dark shape rose past the reeds, taller than any tree. A watchtower, half-fallen, its stone cracked and its top timbers hanging loose. "There," he said. "Into the reeds first. Step where I step." He led her off the road into the wet ground. Rot-stalked cattails brushed their shoulders, dark and stinking of swamp. Gandalf broke a path low through them, then doubled back and bent the reeds upright behind them. The hounds would lose the scent in standing water. He had done this trick on other roads, in other years. They reached the tower's base. A gap in the broken wall let them crawl inside. Gandalf pressed Sable against cold stone and covered her glowing arm with his cloak. The light died under the wool. The torches came close. Boots slapped the road. A dog whined at the reed edge, then circled, confused. A man cursed. "Trail's gone. They took to the water." Another voice argued. They swept torches over the fields. One beam crossed the tower and found only crumbling stone and shadow. Gandalf held his breath and muttered under it, two voices braided low. Sable pressed her hand to his arm to still him. The patrol argued longer. Then the boots moved on, downstream, following the false water trail. The barking faded north. Gandalf let his breath go. "They'll search the banks till dawn. We stay here till they're spent." Sable slid down the wall and sat. She unrolled the map on her knees in the dark. Her marked arm gave enough light to read by now. She traced the inked coast to the hidden road beneath it. "We can't take the road again," she said. "They'll walk it both ways now." "No." Gandalf knelt beside her. He set his finger on the water channel that ran off the map's edge. "But the reeds saved us once. This channel runs the same way as your buried road. We follow the water instead." Sable studied the line. The glow had climbed to her elbow. She pulled her sleeve down out of habit, though it no longer hid anything. "Then we leave the road for good," she said. "We do." Gandalf looked out the gap at the dark fields. The patrol was gone, but the road with it. From here they walked the wet country, where no map he trusted had ever gone.