Meanwhile the year was withering around her. In the mornings, frost tingled in the air; in the evenings, she saw the moon as if through a thin haze of ice. So much time had passed, and she had hoped by now to be returning with the Princess to Thäerie.
Then one night Faolein returned much later than usual, just as Aell was waking Sindérian for the predawn watch—and this time he had news that sent everyone’s spirits soaring. He had flown as far as the camp of the Furiádhin and he had seen the Princess.
If the rest of you could grow wings and fly as I do, you might overtake them before sunset, he told Sindérian. As it was, given the nature of the terrain, she knew it might take two or three days.
Yet the gap between them and the Pharaxions had narrowed. Relieved of all urgency since crossing over from Skyrra, Camhóinhann and his party must have been travelling at an easy pace, while she and her companions continued to press themselves.
“They don’t know that we are here,” said Kivik as they ate a hasty, cold breakfast and sipped lukewarm tea.
“It is certain they do not, or we would never have been able to travel so swiftly and so safely,” answered Sindérian. “But even if they did know, I doubt they would consider a party the size of ours a threat, or hurry themselves because we were following.”
“Yet you continue to think that we can hinder them in some way?” said Prince Ruan, with a lift of his brows. “Four men and two wizards—one of whom has no voice or hands to work spells?”
Sindérian turned away rather than meet that keen gaze of his. “The world is full of many unfathomable chances,” she said, “and even the Furiádhin can’t always predict where lightning might strike.” Yet a desperate plan was beginning to form in her mind, she was beginning to understand what she must do.
And it was not a plan she was willing to share with him—or anyone.
Though the smell of rain was often on the air, they had continued to travel dry, with the weather always ahead of them. The mountains were now so near, it looked as though it might be possible to reach out and touch them in the clear air. So when Faolein failed to return at all one night, Sindérian tried not to think of the updrafts and the downdrafts that would make flying in the high country up ahead so perilous.
She was not prepared for the news he brought with him when he finally landed on her saddlebow late the next morning. They have disappeared.
Her first joy at seeing him rapidly faded. What do you mean?
I cannot find them. And I have spoken to every bird within miles. They are not the most reliable source of information, as you may know, for their minds cannot hold a thought for very long, but they all say the same thing: Camhóinhann and the rest disappeared yesterday morning. They went under the ground—gone to earth like foxes.
She tried to make sense of that and could not. There might, of course, be caves in the mountains ahead, but she could think of no reason why the Furiádhin should go into one of them and stay for a day and a night. Perhaps, she said, the birds are confused. Or perhaps Camhóinhann has cast some spell of concealment.
But from whom would the Furiádhin be hiding? She shook her head, for it defied explanation. It had been a long time since she had believed in benevolent powers, powers that took a kindly interest in the affairs of men. At best, the Fates were indifferent. But she had never imagined they could be so cruel as to allow her to come so close, only that those she followed might disappear, without reason, without sense. Even now she could not—or would not—believe it.
I will not tell the others just yet, she decided. It may turn out that the birds are mistaken.
Until now, Sindérian had been careful to move quietly through the world, using as little magic as possible, hoping in that way to avoid attracting Ouriána’s attention, to go undetected by those ahead. But with the disappearance of the Furiádhin and their prisoner she grew reckless, throwing her senses wide, soaking in all the influences of the countryside around her.
The ghosts and their dark history she already knew. Otherwise, it was an ordinary record of suns and moons and passing days: the flight of a hawk, a dim memory of some traveller bolder than the rest who had braved the hill country until night terrors drove him back. She searched through it all, found the thread she was looking for, and followed it to the lower slopes of Penadamin, in the Fenéille Galadan.
Her companions, not quite understanding what she was doing, allowed her to lead them on.
All this brought her to an ascending track, where it did not take a scout or a tracker to see that a party of twenty or more had passed in the last few days, the prints were so clearly marked where mud had dried and captured them. And when they came to the cleft in the mountain and entered the rocky gorge, the stench of black magic, the smell of recent bloodshed, were unmistakable.
But when the trail abruptly terminated at the base of a cliff with the carcass of a dead horse, four puzzled faces turned in her direction.
“They can’t—they can’t have walked or ridden through solid stone,” said Kivik.
“No,” she answered grimly. “I am afraid that the mountain opened up to receive them.”
There was a long, dumbfounded silence, during which she fervently wished she had warned the others what to expect. Then Prince Ruan said, “You think there is a hidden entrance?”
“I know there is an entrance. A pair of doors—I can’t see them but I can feel them—just there.” She indicated the place with a weary gesture.
“And you can open them?” Skerry asked with a hopeful look.
“That I don’t know,” she answered, swinging down from the saddle and skirting the body of the horse. In warmer weather, the smell would have been unbearable, yet it was not the carcass that made her stomach twist into knots or her scalp crawl. “But I mean to try.”
There are magics here it would be unwise to meddle with, said Faolein’s warning voice in her mind. And look at the horse: there ought to be scavengers somewhere about, but nothing has touched it. That isn’t natural. We should be away from here.
Sindérian was scarcely paying attention. A reckless mood was still on her, and in that mood good advice generally fell on deaf ears. Those spells are easiest that encourage things to do what is already in their nature. Faolein had said so himself. And it was the nature of doors to let people in, as much as keep them out.
But hours later, sitting on the ground and glaring at the place where she knew the doors to be—having run through every likely spell she could remember or devise on the spot—she was finally forced to admit defeat. A series of runes and other signs were scratched in the earth before her, where she had been drawing them and rubbing them out for what felt like weeks. “The spell that seals these doors is far too ancient. No one studies that sort of magic on Leal—we haven’t for hundreds of years!”
Blinking back angry tears, she tried to think what she ought to do next. But she was physically exhausted, her mind a tangle of charms and spells—all of them quite useless—and the effort required to form even the simplest plan suddenly seemed far too great.
“I suppose,” said Kivik, rising from his seat on a nearby boulder, “that it will take us weeks to go over the mountains in the ordinary way?”
Without looking up, Sindérian nodded, one short, sharp motion of her head.
“Then I think we had best begin. It is not so late, and surely we can ride for at least an hour before dark overtakes us.”
There was a rustle of movement and a clink of mail rings as the other three men stood. Hooking a strand of dark hair behind one ear, Sindérian raised her eyes to look at them. One after the other, the faces of her companions were hardening into lines of determination.