“What did she say?” asked Keraal.
“She appreciates your gesture of submission but says that only pups present the back of the neck.”
Keraal’s ears flicked and he addressed himself to Marrow, “I doubt I would survive your tenderness, mother.”
Marrow’s tail waved rapidly, her ears flipped forward, and her mouth opened so that her tongue hung out. She looked, Ekhaas decided, amused.
“Humor, Keraal?” asked Dagii.
The other warrior’s mouth set in a firm line. “It happens sometimes,” he said.
Marrow led them into the night. The campfires faded behind them, obscured by trees and the rolling landscape until only the sharp finger of the ruined clanhold was visible against the sky. Biiri and Uukam had orders to break camp and return to the main army if Dagii didn’t return by mid-morning. They had tried to persuade him not to go, but Dagii had insisted with the same argument he had given Ekhaas: he needed to see the Valaes Tairn forces for himself.
For a while, the trail of the fleeing elves was so easy to see that Ekhaas could have followed it herself. She supposed that the elf warriors she had frightened with her song had made it, driven by their fear without a thought for stealth. Here and there, blood made a smear on the ground or on a leaf, evidence that at least one of the elves had been wounded in the battle. As the obvious trail of broken branches and crushed grass faded, Marrow moved to the fore. She cast about, sniffing, then stopped, whuffed sharply, and growled at two trees.
Chetiin found a long branch on the ground and approached the trees cautiously, tapping ahead with the branch. It caught something. Chetiin peered at the trees though Ekhaas could see nothing. Taking a few steps back, the goblin flung the branch.
There was a snap and a short hiss. The branch jerked and fell apart in three pieces, the leafiest piece somehow remaining suspended and bobbing gently in the air. “Come look,” Chetiin said. “It’s safe now.”
Ekhaas ventured forward. Three thin dark wires curled up close to one of the tree trunks. The leafy branch was caught in the embrace of one. A broken tripwire showed how the trap had been triggered. “They were stretched between the trees,” said Chetiin. “A goblin walking into that trap would have been seriously injured.”
“Will there be more traps?” asked Keraal.
“There might be,” Chetiin admitted. “But I think it’s more likely this was set as a warning, to deter pursuers or at least make them wary and slow them down. We should be fine.”
“Should be?” Keraal said.
Chetiin shrugged.
“Keep alert,” ordered Dagii. “Marrow, show us the way.”
The elves must not have anticipated the presence of a scent-tracker-the worg was able to follow their trail with ease, even when there was absolutely no visible sign of their passage. Once or twice, false trails appeared, seemingly accidental traces indicating that the elves had turned this way or that, but Marrow led them right past. Just as Chetiin had suggested, there were no more traps. Accounting for variations forced by the landscape, it seemed to Ekhaas that they were heading consistently to the east.
The realization brought a chill to her flesh. She leaned close to Dagii. “We’re heading for the Mournland.”
“I know.” His voice was taut. “They must make their camp close to the border. No one would be likely to wander this close.”
The guess was proved wrong as they came around the shoulder of a hill. Across a broad, very shallow valley the dead-gray mists of the Mournland’s border rose into the sky. Ekhaas had been close to the mists before, close enough to hear the screams and roars of the unseen monsters that made the cursed land beyond their home. Tonight, in this place, the mists were quiet, hanging like a drifting, billowing curtain. The valley, marked by the small, dry riverbed, lay empty but for a few withered trees under the moonlight. There was no elf camp.
They all stopped and stared. Ekhaas looked away to the north and the south. “Maybe they turned aside here,” she said.
Marrow’s hackles rose and she growled. “They didn’t,” Chetiin translated.
“Who would want to make camp in the Mournland?” asked Keraal with a grimace.
“Someone who wanted to hide from prying eyes or magics,” said Dagii. “Someone desperate or frightened enough might flee there to throw off pursuit.”
“Do you think the Valaes Tairn were that frightened of us?”
“No,” Dagii said. “All the more reason to believe they’ve camped there.” He slipped off down the gentle slope into the valley, moving from stunted tree to stunted tree.
“He is mad, isn’t he?” muttered Chetiin, but he moved down after the young warlord.
One by one, they followed Dagii in to the valley. Only Marrow didn’t stick to the dubious cover of the trees, instead flowing like a sleek black shadow along the faint rise and fall of the valley floor. Nose to the ground, she trotted all the way to the very edge of the mists before returning to join them in the shadow of the crumbling riverbed. She snarled and whimpered, and Chetiin said, “That’s the way they went, but the mists smell”-he paused, searching for the right word to translate the worg’s language-“wrong. Unnatural.”
Ekhaas searched her memory for anything she’d heard of the Mournland. “They say that laws of life and death are suspended there-that wounds don’t heal and dead flesh doesn’t decay. Water, plants, and animal life are tainted.”
“It’s true,” said Chetiin, his scarred voice unexpectedly soft. “I’ve been there. Don’t count on your healing songs, Ekhaas. Don’t count on anything-nothing is as it seems. We’ll need to be careful. If the Valenar raiders have made camp inside the border, they’ll be extra vigilant because of the Mournland’s dangers.” His face tightened. “The mists may be a problem. They’re disorienting.”
“Won’t Marrow be able to track through them?” asked Dagii.
Chetiin gave him a curt nod, “Yes, but they confuse more than just your sense of direction. If you feel anything… odd, if you feel like you just want to lie down and sleep, fight it.”
“We’re going in and out,” Dagii said. “We won’t stay long and we won’t fight unless we have to. We see what we need to of the Valenar camp and then we leave.” He looked around at each of them, then nodded to Marrow. The worg loped up the bank, Dagii close behind.
There was no need for a warning to stay together. Ekhaas knew that they all understood it implicitly. The wall of mist drew closer and closer as they climbed the valley’s far slope-then all at once, they were inside it, as if the Mournland had reached out to claim them.
Moons and stars were completely cut off. By rights, she shouldn’t have been able to see any better than a human in the dark, but somehow she could. A dim radiance seemed to permeate the mists, as if they caught the moonlight, rendered it thick and opaque, and smeared it through the air. She could see no more than two paces in front of her. Chetiin was a shadow and Dagii, walking beyond him, a ghost. Ekhaas felt no shame in reaching ahead to put one hand on Chetiin’s shoulder and reaching back so that Keraal could grasp the other.
The mists were slightly cool, but not cold. If she stopped moving and the heat of her body warmed the air around her, she probably wouldn’t feel anything at all. Sounds were at once magnified and muffled as if she held a great glass vessel around her head. Her footfalls on the ground-which was dry in spite of the mists-were as quiet as if she walked on green grass, yet her breathing was loud in her ears. She swallowed and heard it like a big stone dropped from a height into a still pond.
It was impossible to tell if they were moving. The mists were constant, the rise of the land-or maybe its fall-so gradual that it could have been level. She understood what Chetiin had meant when he said the mists could be disorienting. It would be easy to wander in circles. Easy too to simply stop and stand still…
“Ekhaas.” Keraal’s voice. A push from behind her. Startled, she stumbled. Her hand left Chetiin’s shoulder. Instantly, the goblin’s small hand seized hers in a hard, rough grip.