Brael regarded Larad with suspicion. “This one must have been skulking after us all day, Your Majesty. I’d like to find out why. I’ve always thought he had a crafty look about him.”
“You can put that sword away,” Grace said to Brael. She gave the other knights what she hoped was a commanding glance. “All of you. I’ve been expecting Master Larad. Though he’s a little late.”
Brael gave her a startled look. He began to speak, but she turned her back on him, and she knew the knight would not dare to question her. Being a queen did have certain advantages. She heard the men grumble as they sheathed their swords. Taking Larad’s arm, she steered him to the other side of the grove. The ball of blue light bobbed after them.
“You can thank me later for saving you from getting your head lopped off,” she said quietly. “Right now, I want you to tell me what you think you’re doing. And I had better be mightily entertained by the story, or I’m handing you back over to Brael.”
“I’m coming with you,” Master Larad said.
It was a statement, not a request. Grace knew it was neither useful nor queenly, but she could only gape at him.
“I must speak with Master Wilder,” the Runelord went on. “After you left my tower, I considered all that you told me. I can only believe the rift and the weakening of magic are linked somehow. Perhaps both arise from the same cause. In which case, my recent studies regarding magic may prove useful to Master Wilder in his search for the Last Rune.”
Grace finally found her tongue. “And it didn’t occur to you this morning to ask if you could come with me?”
“It did, and I rejected that idea, for I knew you were refusing all who asked.”
“So you decided to follow me without my permission.” She placed her hands on her hips and glared at him. “What’s to stop me from sending you back to Gravenfist?”
“You won’t, Your Majesty.”
“And why not?”
“Because yours is a logical mind, and you’ve already realized that I must come with you on this journey.” He nodded to the ball of light. “Even this simple runespell is proving a challenge to maintain. Something must be done before all magic ceases to be, and our chances of finding a solution are greater if Master Wilder and I can work together.”
Grace was angry enough to disagree out of spite, but before she could, the dry doctor’s voice spoke in her mind.
He’s right. You didn’t refuse the o fers of the others because you didn’t want their company, but because you knew that this time they couldn’t help you. However, Larad is a Runelord. There’s a significant probability he can help Travis discover what the Last Rune is.
Even so, she had the feeling Larad was not telling her all his reasons for following her. The Runelord had a history of keeping his true motivations secret. However, he also had a history of doing what he believed was for the greater good, without regard to the cost to himself.
She looked him in the eye. “No more tricks, Master Larad. From now on, if you want something, then you ask me for it. Do you understand?”
His scarred face was as unreadable as ever. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He closed his hand around the ball of blue light, snuffing it out, and night closed back in over the forest.
Dawn found them already riding down the Queen’s Way. Larad had ridden after them on one of the trusty mules the Runelords favored. With a rider, the mule would not be able to travel as fast as the horses, so they had transferred the foodstuffs and gear to it, and now Larad bounced in the saddle of the former packhorse. The Runelord was every bit as poor a horseman as Travis. Grace was beginning to think a talent for wizardry precluded any ability whatsoever for riding. Luckily, the horse was a placid beast, and it bore Larad with a resigned look on its long face.
They moved at a steady pace over those next days, though their progress seemed maddeningly slow to Grace. On the second day they left behind the section of the Queen’s Way the Embarran engineers had repaired. While the road continued to cut unswervingly over the landscape, its stones were cracked and weathered, or in some places gone altogether, replaced by grass or trees, so that the way could be discerned only as a flat space between two sloping banks. However, all of the bridges they came to still stood, arching over stream or gorge, a testament to the skill of the ancient builders who had erected them.
On their fourth day they left the silvery trees of the Winter Wood behind and found themselves riding over plains that had been baked gold by the summer sun. To their left rose the Fal Erenn, the Dawning Fells: a purple‑gray range of mountains, their tumbled brows crowned by circlets of white clouds. For the first time in a long time, Grace found herself thinking of Colorado. The Beckett‑Strange Home for Children–the orphanage where she had spent most of her childhood–had been built on a high plain not so different from this. Except its windows had all been boarded up, shutting out the beauty of the mountains.
“What is it, Your Majesty?” Master Larad said as his horse veered close to Shandis. “Is something amiss?”
She smiled, not taking her gaze from the mountains. “No, I was just looking out the window.”
The next afternoon they came to a crossroads. A timeworn statue stood watch over the meeting of ways, a nameless goddess who gazed with moss‑filled eyes. The main road continued on straight, while a smaller path led off to the left, winding up a steep embankment. Grace had never been that way–despite many invitations over the last three years–but she knew that if she followed the path she would come to a valley and a half‑ruined keep on the shores of a lake.
She had long wanted to visit Kelcior, though she was always afraid doing so would convince King Kel she had at last acquiesced to his proposals of marriage. Now it was but an hour’s ride away. However, Kel was not at his keep; he had remained in Malachor to give Melia and Falken advice on ruling in her absence.
“The bard has more experience at wrecking kingdoms than running them, in case you didn’t know,” Kel had told Grace in a gruff attempt at a whisper that half the keep could hear.
Besides, she didn’t have even an hour to spare. Now that they had left the forest behind, Grace had been able to see the rift again at night. It was still there, and she was certain it was larger than when she first saw it–a dark hole twice the size of Eldh’s enormous moon.
They left the silent goddess at the crossroads and rode on.
Three days later they came to the town of Glennen’s Stand. The town stood on the banks of a stream a few furlongs from the Queen’s Way: a hundred or so slate‑roofed houses clustered beneath a hill with a modest stone keep. As they drew near, Grace noticed that here and there a section of a pale stone wall still stood on the perimeter of the town, though in most places it had been knocked down and its stones hauled away. A lot of walls had been torn down since the war, Grace thought as they rode closer. And not just those around towns.
They found Glennen’s Stand crowded, dirty, and thronging with life. There were at least as many animals as people, and all of them were talking, laughing, or braying loudly. The Dominion of Eredane had suffered longest under the oppression of the Onyx Knights, and its people were perhaps the most grateful to be freed from it. As they rode through a market in the heart of the city, Grace saw folk selling mysteries–small figures carved of wood, representing the gods of the seven Mystery Cults– and hedgewives hawking potions. Such acts would have been punishable by death under the rule of the Onyx Knights. Now they were practiced in broad daylight.
They reached the edge of the market. There, an old woman was taking small bottles of green glass from a table where they had been displayed and, one by one, opening them and pouring their contents into the gutter.