'Or someone else's.' Naldeth unsheathed his hacking blade and gripped it resolutely.
Velindre looked up at the vivid evening sky. 'The dragon's still a good way away.'
'Both of them?' Risala's vigilance ahead wavered for a moment.
'I'd feel the black dragon coming anywhere close,' Naldeth reassured her. 'Fire and earth are sympathetic elements and given that creature's power—'
'We can discuss all this when we're safely back at the Zaise? Kheda narrowed his eyes as he thought he saw some movement among the motionless forest of upthrust stems.
Was that some brush stirred by a breeze or some animal or just my eyes deceiving me?
He swapped his own hacking blade to his off hand and drew his sword. 'We move as quietly as we can. Sound will carry further than we can see once it gets dark.' He picked up the pace, Risala at his side.
'How are we going to cross that river in the dark?' she asked in a low tone.
'Without using magic?' He glanced at her and shrugged. 'I don't know. I don't even know if we'll get that far. It might be better to find some shelter on this side and cross at first light.'
'That skull-faced mage lives on this side of the river,' she reminded him.
He grimaced. 'And the black dragon lives on the far side, between us and the Zaise?
'I take it we're not stopping for food?' Velindre was rummaging in the leather sack she was carrying. She handed Kheda a scrap of salted duck meat wrapped in stale sailer bread.
He chewed it, finding his mouth too dry for comfort. 'We'll certainly have to look for water before long.'
'Will you look for omens at first light?' Risala asked with unexpected insistence. 'Please—'
'Kheda,' Naldeth warned from the rear, 'there's definitely something following us.'
'Quiet.' Velindre hushed him. 'Listen.'
A night breeze was rolling down from the hills inland. Faint yet unmistakable, Kheda heard heart-rending sobbing. 'Where is that coming from?' he breathed.
Velindre raised a hand, magelight no brighter than starshine flickering between her outspread fingers. 'Over
there.' She pointed inland, not far off the line Kheda was estimating would take them back to the river.
'Do we head back towards the coast?' Risala looked towards the cliffs that were now a black rampart across the golden horizon.
A.s Kheda pondered their options, a scream tore through the silence, raw with anguish. Gooseflesh prickled down the back of the warlord's neck. 'Wait here while I scout ahead,' he ordered.
'With something creeping along behind us?' Naldeth shook his head. 'Not when you're the one with the sword and the skills to use it.'
The scream came again. Louder sobbing followed, ripe with panic.
'You might need more than a sword to deal with whatever or whoever's inflicting those agonies.' As Velindre ilosed her hand on her magic, a pale glow within her lingers showed she had not wholly quenched it.
Risala looked at Kheda, her eyes dark as the fading light muted everything to colourless shades of grey. 'I don't think we should split up.'
'Then stay close and stay quiet.' He began picking a eareful path in the direction of the screaming.
Better to know what the danger might be and avoid it than leave such uncertainty at our backs.
He halted when he reached an unexpectedly wide sandy track. There was no doubting that this path had been trodden by countless men over many years. Kheda crouched low in the meagre shadow of a cluster of spiky plants and Risala and the two wizards followed suit. Beyond the open swathe of ground that had been cleared of even the smallest thistly plant, a crude barrier had been woven from thorny stems pulled down and lashed together with cords of twisted grass. The yellow-green fleshy plants grew thickly inside the fence.
Another shriek ripped the silence apart. A hubbub of pleading sounded shockingly close before it was cut short by a commanding shout.
No animal is inflicting these agonies, then, or at least, not a four-legged one. Isn 't that all we need to know?
Kheda glanced at Velindre. 'Is that sky dragon anywhere close?'
She shook her head, mute.
Naldeth was peering back into the gloom behind them. 'Whatever's following us has no magic, I'm sure of that much.'
'We know what brutalities these savages are capable of.' Kheda looked at Risala. 'We don't need to see it again and we might still get to the river before we lose all the light if we keep moving.'
'But there's someone with magic out there.' Velindre pointed in the direction of the frantic weeping that was still tearing at their ears.
'That skull-faced mage or his women?' Kheda looked along the cleared path and tried to judge if it curved away from the sounds of torment.
That sky dragon wasn 't the only one humiliated. Many a man would look to share such mortification around to take the sting out of it.
'Let's get well away before he feels a wizard's presence out here and comes looking for a fight.' Risala stood up in the same movement as Kheda.
Naldeth rose more slowly, gripping his hacking blade with both hands. The last rays of the sinking sun burnished his steel leg. 'So we let whoever is screaming just go on screaming until they die of it?'
'Give me one good reason why we should risk the same fate,' Kheda said curtly.
'A wizard is doing that.' Naldeth looked at Velindre. 'We came here to stop their abuses of magic'
'A wizard with all the aura of a dragon to draw on,' she pointed out, not unsympathetic. 'How do we fight that?'
'It's not our concern,' Risala said roughly. 'They're savages. And your magic wasn't working as you wished earlier. Do you want to confront some wild mage and find yourself powerless?'
Naldeth stared at her, outraged yet unable to find the words to answer her.
'We came here to learn what this place means for Aldabreshi and mages alike.' Kheda forestalled him, voice low and forceful. 'Which means we must pick any fights carefully, when we've worked out as much of this puzzle as possible.'
Somewhere across the tangled barrier of spiny stems, ragged cheers were now drowning out the fading lamentation. Naldeth looked at Kheda, his mild face hard. 'I'm not sailing away until I know exactly what uses magic is being put to here.'
'We'll discuss it when we're back on the Zaise? Kheda stepped out onto the open path and set a rapid pace towards the river. Disconcertingly, the land sloped upwards and the curious forest of upthrust stems and thistly plants fell back to leave a dry plateau dotted with the strangest trees Kheda had ever seen. Their squat brown trunks were three or four times the height of a man yet ten men would be hard pressed to link hands around the largest of them. Each was crowned with an incongruously small tangle of knotted branches twisted into fantastical shapes and topped with tousled twigs.
'Watch your step.' Kheda noticed hummocks dotting the bare sand that were too regular to be the work of wind or rain. 'Something's been digging here.'
He slowed to move cautiously from the cover of one massive trunk to the next, doing his best to look in all
directions as tension pricked between his shoulder blades.
We 're far too exposed.
'There's the river plain.' Risala pointed to a pallor beyond the edge of the open plateau and they heard the soft, welcome rustle of grasses.
Kheda realised they were on the bluff of high ground that reached out into the valley. The barren slope that the skull-faced mage had descended must be somewhere ahead.
A scream ripped through the dusk behind them, closer than the sounds of torment they had been trying to leave behind. Running footsteps slapped the hard-baked earth.
Kheda pressed his back against the swollen tree and cursed the thing for having no branches low enough that they might at least try to climb and hide out of sight. The Greater Moon was rising, now at its full and casting cold, unwelcome light on the events unfolding below. He slid down to crouch in the barrel-like tree's shadow.