“Come away, Bueren Rose. Come away!”
All around her, people panicked, Knights yelled, horses thundered. Villagers cried out, children wailed, and somewhere in the sky, ravens gathered. Firthing pulled at her now, on his feet, urgent. He jerked her to her feet. She followed Firthing, running out of the dooryard, away from the fire, the screams and her dead father.
On the third morning since her flight from the Hare and Hound, after two days of hiding in the little cave to allow Ayensha to rest in stillness and begin to heal, Kerian went walking in the forest to check her snares. These she’d set using skills she only half-recalled from childhood, but the best hunters last night had been owls. Her snares were empty this morning. She sighed, hungry, and began a search for pinecones to free of their nuts. These she found in plenty, and a good stout branch to strip of twigs. She gave this to Ayensha for walking. She gave her most of the pine nuts, too, sweet and rich with oil.
“It isn’t much,” she said, “but I’ll find a way to feed us better soon.”
Leaning upon the sap-scented staff, Ayensha accepted the food and hobbled round the shelter to take water for herself. It was clear to both women that Ayensha would not lead today.
“Tell me the way,” Kerian said. “Speak the map.”
Ayensha lifted an eyebrow. “So. You remember the old phrase.”
Kerian said stiffly, “Yes, I remember things, Ayensha. Speak the map.”
In a voice small with pain, Ayensha did, with words painting a map upon which hills ran crowned by tall piles of stone, of pine marching on eastern ridges, and a narrow river in a deep chasm running south and then veering suddenly east. In all lands and at all times, this was the manner in which Kagonesti relayed information, be it a message carried upon the lips from one tribe to another, a tale as ancient as the time before the Cataclysm, or the safest path to a meeting site. Ayensha spoke the way to the eastern border of the Qualinesti forest, where the Stonelands lay between the kingdom of the elves and fabled Thorbardin, the hidden realm of dwarves.
They made their way through the stony forest. Though Ayensha directed and Kerian led, Kerian did not imagine them safe. They traveled deep into the wood, far from the road, and the Qualinesti Forest seemed as well behaved as it ever had.
“I think we’ve come away from whatever it was that affected the forest,” she said to Ayensha.
Ayensha shrugged. “Do you think so?”
Despite her rescue from Lord Thagol’s Knights, Ayensha evidently didn’t trust Kerian nor seem to think much of her, but the woman knew something about the oddity of the forest’s behavior or suspected a truth she was not willing to share. Of that much, Kerian felt certain.
On the afternoon of the third day walking, the lay of the land changed. No longer did they find the tall oaks like the wood near Qualinost. Here, the trees were all of the same clan, the fir, pine, and spruce. The land became a place of ridges and deep glens where water ran freely and caves studded the walls. Some of the caves ran far back into the earth, others were cracks in stone, a gathering place for shadows. Kerian and Ayensha did not lack for shelter in the night or for water. In these generous places woodland creatures came to drink, and here Kerian trapped or fished with growing ease. It seemed to her that all her senses were becoming honed, keen and bright. One night, sitting in the darkness at the mouth of a snug cave, as she and Ayensha ate the cold meat of hares roasted at the previous day’s camp, they heard the crash and slash of heavy-footed creatures in the forest. All her nerves tingling, Kerian smelled the sulphurous reek of draconian on the wind. Unless the draconians turned from the path they were on, the reptilian beast-men would be near soon.
“Into the cave,” she whispered to Ayensha, pointing into the deeper darkness.
Ayensha, sniffing the foulness too, lifted her head to speak. Kerian cut her short.
“I am no warrior, and you are too weak to make up for what I lack. Into the cave, and we’ll trust ourselves to luck.”
Plainly, Ayensha didn’t like the idea of trusting herself to a servant girl from the capital and her idea of luck. Just as plainly, she understood the need. She slipped into the cave, keeping still in the shadows, so quiet Kerian couldn’t hear her breathing.
Swiftly, her heart racing, Kerian cleaned the area before the cave of bones and any track they had made. They’d had no fire this night, there was no ash or cinder or smoking wood to betray them. She brushed the dirt with pine boughs, scattered forest debris before the entrance. She could do no more, and she sat just inside the cave’s dark mouth, hidden and watching.
They came, four of them, skin the green of tarnished copper, wings wide.
“Kapak,” Ayensha muttered.
The draconians marched upon the lip of the glen, their harsh voices echoing from one stony wall to the other. They spoke in roughly accented Common, each word coming out of thick throats like a curse. Their laughter raked Kerian’s ears like claws. Not one of them stood less than six feet tall, and starlight glinted on their fangs, on their talons.
One, the largest, turned and spread its wings wide, roaring. The bellow lifted the hair on the back of her neck. The roar echoed from wall to wall. Kerian’s fingers tightened round the bone grip of her knife. Her only weapon, it would do her no good if these creatures came her way. In a world where magic leaked away like water from a sieve, Kerian wished for a talisman, a charm, something to make her and her companion invisible.
Not moving, not breathing, she saw the sudden flash of steel, heard a high, rageful death-scream. The smallest of the draconians fell, tumbling over the edge of the gorge, hitting the side, hitting stone, dead of a sword in the gut before it ever hit the ground.
None of the luckless creature’s savage companions even looked twice. One wiped a sword on the ragged hem of a tunic and absently sheathed it, the blade’s work done. Another laughed, a third snarled, and the three were gone while dark blood poured out of their companion. The blood changed to acid, and soon the corpse itself melted into a dark and deadly pool.
“Let’s move,” Ayensha said, low.
“Where—?”
Ayensha snorted. “To a safe enough place, for now. You can follow me, or not. That’s up to you.”
“But my brother—”
Ayensha pulled a humorless smile. “Your brother has managed without you this long.”
The reek of acid fouled the air, stinging their eyes, burning their nostrils and throats. Kerian didn’t argue further, and they left the cave to find another place to pass the night.
The two elves traveled in the opposite direction from the draconians, back tracking and confident that the Kapaks would not do the same. Walking, Kerian breathed the night, the cleaner air. She listened to the hush and sigh of pines over head. When they found another cave, a quieter place, she turned the watch over to Ayensha and settled to sleep. Drifting in the place between waking and sleeping she felt a great satisfaction, for her weary muscles again knew how to find rest upon beds made of fragrant boughs and leaves whose perfume was that of eternal autumn.
They slept only until the sky began to grow light. Outside the cave, Ayensha leaned on her staff, more from comfortable habit now than from need. Four days into their travels, she’d begun to regain strength. Since they had left the Hare and Hound, she’d eaten well of what Kerian snared and the fishes she caught in the streams. She drank the cold, clear water and slept long and deeply at night. Sun had warmed the pallor from her cheek.
Over hours of walking, Ayensha brought them into a maze of gorges, winding and zigzagged, and all the while the walls grew higher. In some places they could not go dry-shod for there was room only for water, and they had to hold on to the damp stony sides for balance. A deep, distant roaring came to them from ahead.