Grace pulled her horse away from the others and rode close. “What are you doing, sister?”
The woman did not look up. “Wrong,” she muttered. “All wrong.”
“What’s wrong?” Grace said, shaking her head.
“My simples, that’s what. All the good has gone out of them. There’s no use in selling them anymore. This morning I tried to weave a spell of plenty over my hens. Only they pecked at each other, and broke one another’s eggs. Sia is angry. She has placed a curse on the world.”
The crone took another bottle and poured out its contents. The emerald fluid blended with the sludge in the gutter. Grace opened her mouth, but then she saw Brael motioning for her to follow. The old woman kept muttering as she emptied out her potions. Grace turned Shandis around and followed after the others.
They rode on, to an inn near the town’s center. After a discussion with the proprietor, who was as jovial and red‑faced as an innkeeper should be, they were led to rooms on the upper floor. Now that they were in Eredane, Grace should have presented herself to King Evren to request permission to ride through his Dominion. However, there wasn’t time for such formalities; the king’s castle of Erendel lay fifty leagues to the west. She told the innkeeper she was the daughter of a Calavaner merchant traveling on business for her father. No one would question her story. There were many travelers on the roads these days–another benefit of freedom.
They took their supper in a private dining chamber and retired early to their rooms. As night fell, music and laughter rose from the common room below, but Grace felt no temptation to go down and join in the merriment.
It was after midnight when she woke. The inn was silent, and starlight filtered through a crack in the shutters, slicing across the chamber like a silver knife. Grace tried to will herself back to sleep, but it was no use; her bladder would not be denied. She rose and used the chamber pot, then started back to bed.
Halfway there, she halted and moved to the window. She hesitated, then opened one of the shutters. The window faced north, and she wondered if she might be able to see it: the rift.
No. A haze of smoke hung over Glennen’s Stand. She doubted if the folk in this town even knew it existed. How could they, if they had been so willing to sing and clap and laugh in the common room below? Only perhaps some did know. Grace thought of the old woman in the market, pouring out her potions. Sighing, she reached to close the shutter.
And froze. A shadow moved in the narrow street below. It slunk toward the inn, keeping low to the ground, avoiding any stray beams of light that spilled from nearby windows.
It’s just a dog looking for scraps, Grace told herself, even though she knew it was too large to be one, that it moved nothing like a dog.
A night breeze wafted down the street, and the shadow’s outlines appeared to ripple. The thing’s motions were slow and purposeful, almost languid; it seemed to ooze rather than creep as it drew closer to the inn, heading straight for the wall below her window.
A door opened across the lane, and a beam of firelight fell onto the street. In an eyeblink the shadow slipped into the alley between the inn and the stable, vanishing as if absorbed by the darkness. Grace snatched the shutter back and locked it with an iron bar, her heart thudding.
She considered waking Brael. However, that was absurd. What would she tell him? That she had looked out her window and had seen a drunken man crawling home? For that was surely all it had been. She climbed back into bed, and at last she fell asleep.
By daylight, the memory of the shadow was less sinister, and she nearly forgot about it until Larad asked her as they rode from the town how she had slept, and she mentioned it to him.
“You should have come to me at once, Your Majesty,” the Runelord said, his expression stern. “I could have spoken the rune of vision. We might have gotten a glimpse of it.”
These words startled her. “It was only a shadow, Master Larad.”
“If you wish, Your Majesty.”
However, rather than reassuring her, the Runelord’s words ate at her like acid all that day, and she resolved that if she saw something out of the ordinary again, she would alert Larad at once.
Only she didn’t, and as they continued their journey south, it became harder to maintain the same keen sense of urgency she had felt on setting out from Gravenfist Keep. Instead, the monotony of the journey dulled the edge of her fear as well as her mind. Every day was the same: The mountains rose up to their left, the plains swept away to their right, and the road stretched on before them: straight, predictable, and–as far as the eye could see–endless.
Her urgency might have been renewed each night if she could see the rift, only she couldn’t. The air in southern Eredane was moist, and at night all the stars were lost in haze. By day the weather was unseasonably hot and muggy, and she found the woolen riding gowns she had packed heavy and oppressive.
At last, on their twelfth day out from Gravenfist, the Queen’s Way veered sharply in its course, turning to zigzag its way up a steep ridge in a series of switchbacks. They had reached the juncture of the Fal Erenn and the Fal Sinfath, the Gloaming Fells.
All that day they climbed upward, and in some places the road was so steep they were forced to dismount and walk in front of the horses so as not to exhaust the beasts–though Larad’s mule plodded along as placidly as it had when the road was level.
They reached the top of the pass just as night began to fall. Before them lay the rock‑strewn highlands of Galt, while behind and far below lay the rolling fields of Eredane. Grace panted for breath, for they had gone the last half mile on foot. Then she turned around, and her breath ceased. They had ascended far above the hazy air of the lowlands, and there was nothing to block her view.
“It has grown,” Larad said beside her.
A hard wind scoured across the highlands, evaporating the sweat from Grace’s skin. Though the stars were only just beginning to come out, there could be no doubting it: The rift had indeed grown, eating a dark hole in the northern sky. The dullness of boredom vanished; fear once again sliced into Grace’s chest with a sharp blade. She welcomed the pain, for it cleared her mind and reminded her of her purpose.
Larad touched her arm. “Look, Your Majesty. Down there.”
It took Grace a moment to see it in the failing light. Below them–far, but not so far as she might have liked–a dark blot moved along the road. It progressed rapidly, smoothly, ascending toward the highlands like a drop of dark liquid flowing up rather than down.
“It seems your shadow has followed us,” the Runelord said softly.
Grace knew it was anatomically impossible, but it felt as if her heart was lodged in her esophagus. “Can you see what it is?”
Larad held out his right hand. “ Halas,” he whispered. In the gloaming, the silver rune shone clearly on his palm: three crossed lines. At the same time his eyes glowed crimson, like those of an animal caught in the beam of a flashlight.
The night was deepening. Grace couldn’t be sure, but it seemed the shadow halted, then flowed toward a crevice in the rocks, vanishing.
She clutched the sleeve of Larad’s robe. “Did you see what it was?”
“No,” he said, the red light fading from his eyes. “Whatever our stalker might be, I think it realized we had detected it. Even as I gazed at the thing, it seemed to melt away into the rocks. I doubt we will see it again tonight. Or at all, after this. It is likely to be even stealthier.”