Eventually, they came back to the same road they had abandoned in the mountains, where the scouts discovered evidence of a camp along the verge, cold ashes where the Pharaxions had lit a fire and cooked a meal.
“They were here the night before last,” Orri reported to Prince Kivik. “We have gained on them, but not so much as I hoped.”
“The Furiádhin will be taking fewer and shorter rests than we do,” said Sindérian. “They make little of discomfort themselves—and their guards and acolyte-servants have no choice.”
“Then we have no choice either. We must ride harder and longer too,” said Skerry, coming up just in time to hear this exchange. “We followed this same road before, in the other direction. It has many windings, but we can cut across country some of the time.”
Under his raven-dark hair, his face was pale and set in lines of pain as well as determination. Long days in the saddle could only be torture on newly healed wounds—Sindérian wondered if she had done the right thing, encouraging him and Prince Kivik in the belief they were strong enough to ride. Yet would they, under any circumstances, have consented to stay behind?
They rode due south all of that day, where the grass grew higher, thicker, and greener, and the short turf gave way to beardgrass, foxtail, and wild oat. Once they left the road it became obvious the land was not nearly so flat as it looked from a distance. There were dips and hollows, dells and gullies, streams and wetlands; sometimes the fields were divided by sharp spines of stone, rising up like natural barriers.
Sindérian sensed desolation and a deep sadness through all this land. Travelling in the Autlands on the way to Tirfang there had been countless deserted farms and villages along the way, but little actual destruction. The Haestfilke had another tale to telclass="underline" charred ruins of manors, farmhouses, and settlements dotted the countryside; vast grain fields and orchards had been burned to the ground; crops that had somehow escaped the Eisenlonders’ attention lay untended in the heat. Occasionally, a great cairn of stones marked a mass grave; more often they rode past battlefields where acres and acres of bones lay bleaching in the sun.
Late on their second day of riding through this lonely country, one of the scouts pointed out a thread of silver smoke rising like a warning in the sky ahead of them.
“There are none of our farmers and herders left in this part of the realm,” said Kivik. “And while it might be a company of our own warriors, it will probably be more of the cursed Eisenlonders. We are too few to challenge a large band of them, so we will go around on the west and try to avoid meeting them.” Yet he took his sword out of its sheath and carried it naked across his saddlebow in case of trouble, and the other men did the same.
They rode on for several miles in the gathering twilight, veering toward the sunset. After they turned south again, a smudge of light grew on the horizon directly ahead, and brighter flares bloomed in the darkness to the east and west.
Kivik called for a halt. “This is as close as we dare go, until we learn whose fires those are.”
“I don’t understand why they have spread out over such a distance,” said Skerry, peering through the darkness. “No single encampment could be so large.”
It was decided Faolein should fly ahead and scout out the encampment, whoever it belonged to. The hawk launched himself into the sky and set off in the direction of the distant fires. It did not take long for him to disappear in the dusky air.
While the others awaited his return, they made a camp in a little hollow behind one of the bony ridges, kindling only the smallest blaze so that the light could not be seen by hostile eyes.
Sooner than anyone might have expected him, Faolein was back again. He landed in the grass at Sindérian’s feet, ruffled his feathers, tilted his head, and looked at her out of one firelit yellow eye.
It is not at all as we thought, he told her. They are Eisenlonders, but not roving bands. They are felling trees in a little woodland to the south. Elsewhere, they are digging ditches, hammering together stockades and pens for their horses; the next step, it would seem, will be building houses and planting crops.
Her eyes widened as she absorbed the news. This was not information she was eager to relay to Kivik and Skerry, but it had to be done.
“There are the beginnings of farms and villages up ahead,” she told them. “It appears that some of the Eisenlonders have made up their minds to stay.”
“It is good land here, despite their depredations,” said Kivik, his fingers curling into fists. “And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that having come so far, having murdered or run off the rightful inhabitants, they mean to live on that land themselves.”
“But how could they have settled in so quickly?” asked Skerry. “Those creatures out of Phaôrax are hardly more than a day ahead of us, and even if they have been spreading the word that Ouriána is severing her ties with Eisenlonde, that’s no time for the barbarians to put aside their murdering ways and take up farming!”
Prince Ruan was the first to guess. “It might be that they heard the news earlier, as the Furiádhin rode north. Or perhaps they simply grew impatient of wanton destruction and decided to take something of value for themselves.” His brows came together and his extravagantly colored eyes glittered in the firelight. “In the end, what does it matter? There they are, and there it would seem they intend to stay.”
In the days that followed, Prince Kivik’s riders were often obliged to turn aside from their chosen road as more and more of the new settlements sprang up ahead of them. So much for any last lingering notion that the war might be over, Sindérian thought unhappily. In all likelihood Skyrrans and Eisenlonders would be disputing this territory for the next hundred years.
Summer was wasting away toward autumn; the nights were getting longer and the days had lost much of their heat. These reminders of the passage of time, along with the detours and delays, only increased the crushing sense of dread that pressed on her. Day after day, and mile after mile, a thousand fears took shape in her mind: Camhóinhann would sacrifice Winloki as soon as he came to the shores of the sea. Or he would do it out on the water, where Ouriána’s influence was most potent. Or he and his cohorts had only been waiting for an auspicious hour or phase of the moon, which had finally arrived; the knives were already being sharpened.
But they can’t have harmed her yet. I would know if she were dead, Sindérian told herself over and over.
Faolein said the same, though with more assurance. Such a momentous event would never pass unnoticed. Too many webs of cause and effect, probability and circumstance, would unravel with the Princess’s death—and the downfall of the prophecy would be the very least of it.
Sindérian knew that he spoke the truth. Such was Winloki’s latent power that her violent passing must send shock after shock along the ley lines.
Yet none of that served to diminish her fears until Faolein began to give her thoughts a new direction by teaching her some of the lessons in magic she had missed by leaving the Scholia so early. War called you away too soon, he told her. We both know that you would be capable of more, much more, if you had stayed to study longer.
Other healers made that same sacrifice, she protested. How could I have stayed behind, when so many went out before me?
But few, very few, with natural gifts to match your own. Oh, the need for healers is great, I cannot deny it, said Faolein. But there may come a time of greater need when more will be required of you.
And so the lessons began, most often during the quiet hours of the night when only the men assigned to guard the camp were awake: first those things she already knew, but always in such a way that even the most basic principles of magic led on to a deeper understanding of greater mysteries. Thus he led her, step by step, through the Wizard’s Runes—so different from the runes of ordinary writing—then on to the various spells of white magic: the lledrion, béanath, and shibeath. The last two were already old friends, for these were the charms of blessing, protection, and healing. Now he taught her other applications, equally benign.