The forest was still thick, and alive with small rustlings. None of them made by Syregorn or his men, so far as Rod could tell.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he froze only for a moment when a hand patted his arm. It was the third time he'd felt that signal, and knew what to do: rise from the tree he was crouching against, and move on along the trail without making a sound.
He did that, and so did the Hammerhand knights behind him.
The last of them had been gone for the time it took the Lord Archwizard to draw in three of his new, careful, oh-so-quiet breaths before something rose silently up the other side of the stout old tree Rod Everlar had been crouching against, and started to skulk after them.
Gar and Isk stiffened when someone stepped into the room, but it was only the Aumrarr, and she gave them a smile, not a brandished blade.
She'd gone off to walk about Stormcrag Castle some time ago, telling them firmly she did not want them along, for their own safety.
"Lurking beasts? Traps?" Garfist had growled at her challengingly, whereupon she had nodded and replied simply, "Yes."
A look from Isk had quelled whatever defiance Gar might have offered next, and Dyune of the Aumrarr had walked off alone.
Now she was back, her hands empty. There were cobwebs in her hair, and smudges and smears of dust all over her. "Find whatever it was ye were looking for?" Gar rumbled, raising one bushy eyebrow.
"No," she replied, and went to sit beside Iskarra, where they could both look out the window into the night.
Silence fell. Garfist lurched a few steps, threw up his arms in exaggerated exasperation, spun around, and returned to where he had been sitting, facing Iskarra. He stared, however, at the Aumrarr.
She gave him a nod and went back to staring out at the night.
Silence stretched.
"So," Gar asked thoughtfully after a time. "How many Aumrarr are there left, after Highcrag, d'ye think?"
Dyune stared at him, shrugged, and asked in defiant reply, "How many lorn are there in Falconfar, d'ye think?"
Garfist gave her a sour look. "I'd never have a way of even guessing that, but Aumrarr have always been few, have always worked together and had much to do with each other, and so…"
Dyune gave him a tight smile. "And so would never answer questions like that."
" Very few, I see," Isk said softly, from beside her.
"I didn't say that!" Dyune snapped.
"You didn't have to," Isk replied, even more quietly.
Dyune turned her head away, and said not another word.
There was a tiny sound in the night right in front of Rod Everlar, and he froze and crouched down. It was followed by a thud, the briefest of thrashings in grass, and then something that might have been a sigh.
What seemed like a silent eternity later, that hand patted his arm again, and then took firm hold of his shoulder and pulled. Rod allowed himself to be led-off the trail through the grass, in a little half-circle that brought him back to the trail again.
He suspected he'd been led around a body. Of a Lyrose guard who'd just been killed.
The moon was rising, and he could just make out shapes, now. One of them was the grim face of the Hammerhand knight still guiding him.
The other, soaring like a dark and endless cliff right in front of him, must be Lyraunt Castle.
"Bright moon rising," the Aumrarr whispered, as if to herself. She had not moved, nor stopped staring out the window.
Garfist rumbled deep in his throat, as if about to point out that he had eyes that worked, too, but it was Iskarra who spoke first.
"Dyune, there is something I would know. Something I hope you can tell me."
The Aumrarr turned her head. "An Aumrarr secret?"
"Perhaps."
Iskarra let that lone word fall into a silence, and waited.
Until Dyune shrugged and said simply, "Ask."
"Time and again Aumrarr warn that this new Lord Archwizard is going to do something terrible, soon. Now, I'll grant you, terrible things are what wizards-all wizards-do, darned near every time they really try to do anything. But just what are you afraid of? What can he do, that the others can't?"
Dyune grimaced. "We Aumrarr don't speak of such things, and-"
"Then ye Aumrarr are fools," Gar rumbled. "How many secrets and wise remembrances were lost when the Dark Helms slaughtered everyone in Highcrag? If ye tell us, then mayhap when ye're dead, one of us can shout to some handy hero what he has to stop the Lord Archwizard doing! Now tell us, glork ye! We healed ye, didn't we?"
The Aumrarr regarded them both thoughtfully, looking slowly from one to the other, then nodded. "Very well. There's an enspelled gem-we call it the mindgem-that scrambles the minds of wizards who get too close to it. Made long ago, by a forgotten enchanter. It's long been one of the treasures we Aumrarr keep secret-and has always had a tale clinging to it: that it sears the minds of wizards too close to it, until they're dragged back away from it or it's taken away from them, because it's waiting for just one wizard. The right one. The Lord Archwizard. So it could make him like unto a god, able to hurl mountains into nothing at a whim. That's why we guard it."
"And where is it now?" Iskarra asked softly.
Dyune shook her head, her lips tightening in might what have become a mirthless smile.
If, in that moment, she hadn't heard or felt something they could not.
Stiffening, the Aumrarr suddenly moved as swiftly as any striking serpent. Snatching up her weapons from where Iskarra and Garfist had laid them near to hand, she tugged hard on something hidden in her hair, tore forth a fine but now-broken chain that had been looped around both of her ears, and flung it to Iskarra.
Who caught it out of habit, and was still staring at the sparkling gemstone she now held as Dyune sprang out of the window, eluding Garfist's oath-accompanied grab at her, and flew fast and hard up into the night, warsteel ready in her hands.
Chapter Twelve
Garfist hurled himself at the window, but as always, Isk was faster. Like a lightning-swift serpent she was there and pressed to one side of the window opening, to give him ample room to do what she was doing: craning his neck to look sharply up into the night.
The light of the rising moon was strong, despite the countless trees blocking much of it, and they could make out what blotted out so many of the stars overhead.
The huge bulk of a greatfangs hung across the night sky like a vast ceiling-a ceiling that swooped, beating wings so massive that their cleaving of the air could be felt more than heard.
Dyune was swooping all around the vast beast, darting and stabbing, as its fearsome head sought her but turned too slowly to close on her jaws that three dozen Aumrarr could not have filled.
There were other Aumrarr swooping and stabbing too, their wings curling and flapping as they fought to keep too close to it to be easily reached, but just far enough away that it couldn't slam into them in the air, and leave them falling, broken or stunned.
As they watched, one of the winged women got struck glancingly, and tumbled down through the air, that great neck sweeping around to-
"Bright nipples of Nornautha!" Garfist swore, clenching one fist and using his other hand to stab a hairy pointing finger into the night. "That's Dauntra, one o' the wingbitches as brought us here! An' that's Juskra, yon! By the Devouring Worm, all four of 'em!"
"Aptly cursed," Iskarra murmured. "It will devour them, if it can catch them. Hmm. They weren't all that far off all this time, those four, I'll be bound."