Gandalf Grey's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

They left the tower when the barking died north. All night they followed the water channel Gandalf had marked. By dusk the fields gave way to open reedland, flat and gray to the horizon. No walls. No roof. Just wind and rot-stalked cattails hissing in the cold. "We need shelter before dark," Gandalf said. His breath fogged. Sable walked close behind him, her marked arm glowing brighter now that the sun was gone. "That light draws eyes for a mile out here. And the cold will finish us before any patrol does." Sable stopped. She pulled her satchel around and dug out a rolled sheet. Not the stolen map. Her own, half-finished, its coastlines inked but its middle blank. "I've been drawing where we walk," she said. "Every bend of the channel." Her ink-stained finger traced a curve. "An hour back, the ground rose. There was a hummock. Dry earth above the water." Gandalf frowned. "Back the way we came? We lose the whole night." "We freeze if we go on." She held the sheet toward his face. "I mapped it. I know it's there." He looked at the blank reeds ahead, then at her steady eyes behind the round spectacles. He had led them into country he could not read. She had been reading it the whole time. "Show me," he said. They turned back. Sable led now, counting her own paces, checking the sheet by the light of her own arm. Twice Gandalf started to argue and caught himself. The mark that hunted them was also their only lamp. The hummock rose just where her map showed it. A low mound of dry earth, ringed by dead willow. The roots made a hollow, roofed by fallen branches and old reeds. Gandalf crawled in first and felt dry ground under his palms. "It holds," he said. "We can wait out the night here." He broke reeds and packed them across the gap until the glow no longer leaked out. Sable curled inside with the satchel against her chest. Gandalf muttered low to himself, two voices braided, until his hands stopped shaking from the cold. Then a smell reached him. Wet fur. A low, rolling growl came from the willows. Gandalf froze. Through a gap in the reeds he saw it. A wolf, huge, its coat dark as the swamp itself, one eye catching Sable's light like a coal. It had followed the glow across the open ground. Not a hound. Something wilder, drawn to the same beacon that saved them. "Don't move," Gandalf whispered. He gripped his staff. "Cover your arm." Sable pulled her cloak over the light. The hollow went dark. The growl deepened, close now. They had their shelter. But the thing hunting the reeds had found them in it, and the walls that hid them from patrols would not stop teeth.