"Warrl can guard the children. Do we stay here," she asked, "or do we ride?"
Tarma paused for a moment, and in that silence, the keening wail with which the Shin'a'in mourned their dead began. Her eyes narrowed, and Kethry saw her jaw harden.
"We ride," the Shin'a'in said around clenched teeth.
They followed the river northward all day, then, when it dived beneath the cliff, up the switchback trail at the edge of the Dhorisha Plains. They reached the top at about sunset, but pushed on well past dusk, camping after dark in the midst of the pine-redolent Pelagiris Forest. Tarma had been silent the entire trip; Kethry burned to know what had happened, but knew she was going to have to wait for her partner to speak in her own good time.
Being an Adept-class mage meant that Kethry no longer had to be quite so sparing of her magical energies; she could afford to make a pair of witch-lights to give them enough light to gather wood, and to light the fire Tarma laid with a little spark of magic. It wasn't a very big fire -- in this heat, they only needed it to sear the rabbit they shared -- but Tarma sat staring into the last flames after she'd finished eating. Light from the flames revealed the huge trees nearest their campsite, trees so old and so large that Tarma could not encircle them with her arms, and so tall that the first branchings occurred several man-heights above the ground. Most of the time, the place felt a little like a temple; tonight, it felt more like a tomb.
"He didn't tell us much before he died," Tarma said finally. "By his clothing, what was left of it, he was For'a'hier -- that's Firefalcon Clan."
"Are they -- all gone, do you think?" Kethry could not help thinking of what had happened to Tale'se-drin, but Tarma shook her head.
"They're all right. We sent someone off to them, but he told us he was on his own. Firefalcon has always been -- different; the Clan that produces the most shaman, even an occasional mage. They're known to roam quite a bit, sometimes right off the Plains. This one was a laj'ele'ruvon, a knowledge-seeker, and he had come seeking up here, in Tale'e-dras territory -- the shaman of Firefalcon have a lot more contact with the Tale'edras than the rest of us do. Whatever happened to him, happened here in the Forest."
"You don't think the Hawkbrothers--" Somehow that didn't ring true, and Kethry shook her head, even as Tarma echoed the gesture.
"No -- there's a Hawkbrother mixed up in it somehow, he said that much before he died, but it was no Tale'edras that did that. I think he was trying to tell me the Hawkbrother was in trouble, somehow." Tarma rubbed her temple, her expression baffled. "I've been trying to think of a way that a Hawk-brother could possibly get into trouble, and I--"
Something screamed, just above their heads. Kethry nearly jumped out of her own skin, squeaked, and clutched Need's hilt.
The scream came again, and this time Kethry recognized it for what it was; the call of the owl-eagle, a nocturnal predator with the habits and silent flight of an owl, but the general build of an eagle. She might not have recognized it, except that a pair were nesting near the Keep, and her husband Jadrek spent hours every evening in delighted observation of them.
Tarma stood up, stared into the tree canopy, then suddenly kicked earth over the fire, dousing it. When Kethry's eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could hardly believe them. Hovering overhead was an owl-eagle, all right, a much bigger bird than either of the pair she'd seen before -- and stark white.
"That's a Tale'edras bird," Tarma said grimly. "They say the birds their mages use turn white after a while. I think he's been sent for help."
As if in reply, the owl-eagle screamed once more and flew off to the north and west, landing on a branch and looking back for all the world like it expected them to follow it. Kethry put her hand on her partner's arm to restrain her for a moment. "What are we going to do about the horses?"
"Damn. Release them, I guess. They'll head straight back to camp in the morning." Tarma didn't look happy about the decision, but there wasn't much else they could do; they certainly couldn't leave them, nor could they ride them through dark woods when they couldn't see where to put their feet. And leading them would be just as bad as riding them.
On the other hand, walking back to camp across the Plains in midsummer-
"Let's just leave them unhobbled, and try to get back before morning," Kethry suggested. "They won't stray until then." Tarma grimaced, but pulled the hobbles from her mare's feet and threw them on the pile of tack, while Kethry did the same. When she looked up, the owl-eagle was still there, still waiting. He didn't move until they were within a few arm-lengths of the tree -- and then it was only to fly off and land in another tree, farther to the north and west. Kethry had had a little niggling doubt at first as to whether her partner had read the situation correctly, but now she was sure; the bird wanted them to follow.
It continued to lead them in that fashion for what felt like weeks, though by the moon shining directly down toward the tree branches, it wasn't much past midnight. It was impossible to tell where they were, now that they'd left the road; one enormous tree looked like every other enormous tree. For the past several candlemarks, she'd been feeling an increase in ambient mage-energies; her skin prickled so much with it that she felt forced to shield herself, and she wasn't entirely sure that time was passing at its normal rate.
"Where are we?" she whispered finally to her partner.
Tarma stopped for a moment and peered up at the moon. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm lost. Someplace a lot west and some north of where we started. I don't -- I don't think we're in the Pelagiris Forest anymore; I think we're in Pelagir Hills country. I wish we'd brought Fur-face with us, now."
"I hate to admit it, but I agree-" Kethry began.
And that was when an enormous, invisible fist closed around them.
The bird shrieked in alarm, and shot skyward. Tarma cursed; Kethry was too busy trying to breathe.
It's the paralysis-spell, she thought, even as she struggled to get a little more air into her lungs. But she couldn't breathe in without first breathing out, and every time she did that, the hand dosed tighter on her chest. That's-supposed-to-be-
A darkness that had nothing to do with the hour dimmed the moonlight, and her lungs screamed for air.
-lost-
Blackness swooped in like a stooping hawk, and covered her.
Her chest hurt; that was the first thing she knew when she woke again. She opened her eyes as she felt something cool and damp cross her brow, and gazed with dumb surprise up into a pair of eyes as blue as Tarma's, but in an indisputably male face crowned with frost-white hair.
Indisputably? Not-quite. There was something unusual about him. Not that he was she'chorne, that she had no trouble spotting. Something like that, and not even remotely evil, but very, very different.
Beyond the face were bars glinting and shining as only polished metal could; and two light sources, one that flared intermittently outside of her line of sight, and one that could only be a witch-light, hovering just outside the bars.
The stranger smiled wanly when he saw that she was awake, and draped the cloth he'd been using to bathe her forehead over the edge of a metal bowl beside him. "Forgive me, lady," he said in oddly-accented Shin'a'in. "I did not intend to lure anyone into captivity when I sent out my bond-bird."