Flight to the Ratterlin or A Cat and His Boy

[makesthings]

West of Belisaere and south of Sindle in a clump of trees, Sameth sprawled on the forest floor, all but dead to the world through blood loss. His horse, Sprout grazed beside him as the morning turned to afternoon and then to early evening when a piece of grass tickled his nose and he sneezed awake. He felt dazed and tried to remember, he must have had too much to drink, the last time he had a hangover this bad was in Milliways with that pirate.

So he sat up and opened his mouth to call for help when it all came back, his plan to help Nicholas, the disguise and everything going wrong. Two men, two of his father's men were dead because of him. Slowly he sat up, trying to brush the leaves off himself as he thought about their wives now widows.

The pain in his leg reminded him that he was alive, but his leg needed a proper caring for and that meant standing up and then getting Sprout. He just had to keep moving, because if the local constables caught up with him than everyone would know the true failure he was. So it was best to just keep going, disappear with a new face and find Nick near Edge.

Standing and getting to Sprout took longer than he expected but he did it and got deeper into the forest as it began to rain, which might kill him just as easily as anything else. His cloak was in his pack and he reached for it but touched the cold of The Book of the Dead, it had followed him like the bells. He would never be free of his duty that he could never live up to.

Comments

[mogget_cat]

It's true. He never would. The Book, the bells, the duty, they would follow him forever, even into Death itself.

"A little lost princeling, weeping in the forest?" A voice insinuated itself into Sam's hearing, from somewhere out in the forest. An unnatural voice. "I would have thought you had more steel in your spine, Prince Sameth."

"Still, I am often wrong."

[makesthings]

He didn't know that voice but it knew him, with a jolt of fear, Sameth sat upright and gasped as he reached for his sword.

Sprout took this is as a sign to canter and they went off into the trees for about fifty yards. After rather longer than he'd like, Sam finally got Sprout turned around and his sword partly drawn.

The voice had felt like Free Magic and now he could tell there was something up there, he had to do something, but a spell was too hard this tired.

So he'd just brazen it out, the worst that would happen would be he'd die out here,

"Who calls Prince Sameth? Show yourself, before I wreak a spell on you of great destruction!"

[mogget_cat]

"Save the theatrics for those who respond to them," replies the voice, sharp with thinly veiled disgust. It had followed him, of course.

This time, the voice is accompanied by the sight of two piercing green eyes, flashing the last of the reflected sunlight from a branch high above Sam's head.

"And count yourself lucky that it is only me," it says, acerbic, as the small white cat leapt from the tree, catapulting off a lower branch to land a short distance from the horse's forefeet. "You've left enough of your blood around to call a brace of hormagants."

[makesthings]

"Mogget! What are you doing here?"

Sam called out in surprise, Mogget who was constantly pushing him out the door towards a future. Yet this couldn't be that Mogget.

[mogget_cat]

"Looking for you," replied the cat, lifting a paw from the rain-damp forest floor and shaking it distastefully. "As should be startlingly obvious to even the most dull-witted Prince."

His eyes narrow, his tone flat. "Loyal servant of the Abhorsen, that's me. Ready to baby-sit at a moment's notice. Anywhere. No trouble at all. Now get off that horse and make a fire. I don't suppose you've been sensible enough to bring anything to eat with you?"

[makesthings]

Gently Sameth lowered himself off Sprout,

"I really don't understand. Did Mother send you to look for me? How did you she wake you up?"

Since it didn't make sense that Mogget was here, but it also slightly did. This was confusing and he was hurting too much and too tired to make sense of it.

[mogget_cat]

The white cat that was not a cat had begun cleaning its paw in a stately, unconcerned fashion, all the while being careful not to move too swiftly and let the tiny silver bell on his collar ring.

"The Abhorsen," he replied, dry, almost loftily, "had nothing directly, to do with it. Having been associated with the family for so long, I am simply aware of when my services are required. For example, when a new set of bells appears, suggesting that an Abhorsen-in-Waiting is ready to come into his inheritance. Having woken, I simply followed the bells."

"But the return of Cassiel's bells did not waken me," Mogget continued, musing. His thoughts were obviously half-elsewhere. "I was already awake. Something is happening in the Kingdom. Things long dormant are stirring... or being woken... and the ripple of their waking have spread to Abhorsen's House... for whatever wakes threatens the Abhorsen..."

[makesthings]

"Do you know what it is?"

Sam blurted out, maybe Mogget knows something that Mother doesn't,

"Mother said she feared some ancient evil was planning terrible things. I had thought it might be Kerrigor."

[mogget_cat]

"Your uncle Rogir?" replied Mogget, lightly. "Ranna holds him tighter than she does me. He sleeps in the deepest cellar of Abhorsen's House."

He pauses, remembering.

"And there he will sleep till the end of time."

"Unless," he adds, just in time to give Sameth's sigh of relief a swift death, "whatever is stirring wakes him up as well. Now tell me why my leisurely journey to Belisaere and its justly famous fish markets has been suddenly interrupted by a side trip to a forest. Where do you think you're going, and why?"

[makesthings]

"I'm going to find my friend Nicholas,"

At the question from Mogget, Sameth pressed on, "He's from Ancelstierre, a friend from school. I'm worried because he thinks everything can be explained by science. And even after we were attacked still doesn't appreciate the dangers of the Old Kingdom. He's very stubborn and its hard to change his mind, but he's also the Chief Minister's nephew."

The next look and question from Mogget was accompanied by green fire in his eyes that reminded Sam of the heat from the fight with Blodwen. So he just rushed on, he'd get through whatever he had to do here so Mogget of the future would be satisfied too,

"He was supposed to wait for me at the Wall, but he found a guide and crossed over. Now he's looking for some old legend called the Lightning Trap on his way to Belisaere, its apparently near Edge. That's also where Mother and Dad think the Enemy is."

[mogget_cat]

The Mogget's green eyes were closing to narrow slits of green darkness. "The Lightning Trap, near the Red Lake.... with the King and Abhorsen in Ancelstierre, with a friend to the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, himself a prince of sorts, on the other side of the Wall... the Clayr Sightless, save for visions of total ruin..."

"This does not bode well, and the connections cannot be purely coincidence," he rumbles, his voice quieting. "The Lightning Trap... I have not heard that name precisely, but something stirs... Agh, sleep grips and dulls my memory..."

The voice drifted into a low growl, before the growl itself became a snore.

[makesthings]

Sam shivered and put another branch on the fire, the rain had stopped so the fire was a comfort.

Some rain would have been a relief from the heat and provided more running water to stop the Dead.

He looked over to Mogget and found a green eye peering at him.

[mogget_cat]

"How were you wounded?" purred the cat, voice low, matching the crackle of the fire.

He sounds as though he already knows the answer, but wants to hear it out loud.

[makesthings]

He didn't want to think about this and hung his head, linking his hands together,

"I got in a fight with two constables. They thought I was a necromancer.."

As he trailed off, he spotted Mogget's sardonic eye and so whispered, "I killed them, a Death-spell."

[mogget_cat]

The Mogget yawns, pink tongue and sharp, ever-so-white teeth.

"Idiot. Worse than your father. Guilt, guilt, guilt. You didn't kill them." He says, riding right over Sam's exclamation. "You can't have killed them. They carry the King's protection, even from his wayward children."

[makesthings]

"I didn't think,"

Sam managed to say, he was hugely relieved but Mogget was back to making him feel a fool.

[mogget_cat]

"Obviously," the cat said, grumbling as he settled back down. "If you had killed them, you would have felt it. You're the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, Charter help us all."

"Coils within coils," murmured the cat, eyes drifting shut. "Fleas upon fleas. Idiots begetting idiots..."

"Wake me in the morning." The green eyes were fully shut now, the white tail draped across the pink nose. "It may be quite difficult."

[makesthings]

"Yes, sire," said Sam with as much sarcasm as he could manage, he knew it wasn't enough to equal Mogget who was now asleep.

He stuck out his tongue and then put a log on the fire and after straightening out his leg, lay down to sleep. It took him time to sleep as his own fears warred with the sounds of the night, but finally exhaustion sent him to sleep.

When he woke up, his leg had stiffened so he almost fell over as he tried to stand up. Mogget slept on while Sam cast a small spell on his leg and re-dressed his wound before eating and brushing down Sprout and saddling him up.

He tried waking Mogget up with a few loud calls and finally said as he looked down at the far too innocent looking ball of white cat,

"What am I supposed to do with you?"

[mogget_cat]

There wasn't much movement from the sleeping cat, only a muffled reply.

"Put me in a saddlebag. Wake me up when you find some decent food. Mwrr... preferably fish."

[makesthings]

"All right," Getting Mogget into the pack with his hurt leg took some doing and he didn't like putting him in there with The Book of the Dead. Then as he prepared to mount he started talking about his plans, it always helped,

"I'm going to ride through this small forest, then across the open country to the Sindlewood. We'll go through the Sindlewood to the Ratterlin, then follow it south till we can get a boat to take us to Qyrre. From there it shouldn't take long to Edge and hopefully we'll find Nick straightaway. When we come out of this forest, we're bound to find a village or a charcoal burner's camp or something,"

Mounting up hurt and he suppressed a cry of pain, he also felt slightly dizzy, as he started Sprout on a walk, he said, "By the way, last night you seemed to know something about this Lightning Trap Nick has gone to look for. I was wondering if it had anything to do with the necromancer."

[mogget_cat]

"Necromancer?!" came the immediate yowled eruption of Mogget from the saddlebag to crouch in front of Sam, looking in every direction with his fur standing on end.

[makesthings]

"Um, not here. I was just saying that you had started to talk about the Lightning Trap, and I wondered if it had to with Chlorr of the Mask, or the other necromancer, the one...the one I fought."

[mogget_cat]

Mogget snorted, darkly, subsiding back into the saddlebag.

[makesthings]

"Well, tell me something! You can't just sleep all day!" demanded Sam.

[mogget_cat]

"Can't I?" hissed Mogget. "I could sleep all year. Particularly since I have no fish, which I note you have failed to procure."

"I don't know what this Lightning Trap is," he continued, softly, "but I mislike the sound of it. A Lightning Trap. A gatherer of lightning? Surely it cannot be..."

"It is probably only a coincidence," replied Mogget heavily to Sam's curious interjection, the cat's green eyes slipping shut once more. "Perhaps your friend does only go to see a place where lightning strikes more commonly than it should. But there are powers working here, powers that hate everything of the Charter, Blood, and Stone. I smell plots and long-laid plans, Sameth. I do not like it at all."