ELETIAN WAYS

“What do you mean we’re leaving the road?” Karigan demanded. They’d stopped alongside a field that went off into the woods.

The flurries alighted gently on Enver’s shoulders and hair. The pony, Bane, had gone gray with the snow clinging to his shaggy coat.

“There are other ways,” Enver said simply, his expression betraying nothing as he looked up at her.

She shifted in her saddle. “I studied the maps. We’re going to follow the Kingway to—”

Enver raised his hand in a placating gesture. “There are ways. Eletian paths where the land knows my kind. They require no map.”

She pursed her lips. It was not what she planned, and she was leery of trusting to an unmarked, unmapped path, no matter how fine the guide. Estral glanced between the two of them but said nothing.

“You propose going across country? Don’t you think that would be rather impossible for the horses?”

“These Eletian ways are perhaps more accommodating to horses than your roads. Your captain has traveled such.”

“Hmm.”

“We may travel more efficiently if we leave the roads,” Enver said.

This from a member of the race that had designed the crazy spiraling roads of Argenthyne. She snorted.

“Perhaps Lady Estral, with her Eletian blood, can see,” Enver said.

Estral looked at him in surprise. “See what?”

He held his hand out to her. “Come, and I will show you.”

She dismounted and led her horse over to where Enver stood at the edge of the road.

“It is how the light falls.” He pointed across the field to the fringe of the woods. “Do not look directly, but with your side vision. See how the light falls upon the land?”

Karigan crossed her arms, watching skeptically as Estral tilted her head and gazed into the distance. Condor stomped a hoof. Enver murmured instructions to Estral while Karigan’s toes grew numb as she waited. The minutes passed by, snow mounding on her shoulders. She was about to tell Enver to give up when Estral’s sharp intake of breath forestalled her.

“I see it,” Estral said. She turned to Karigan, her face alight with wonder. “I see the path he speaks of.”

Karigan had to concede that Eletians accessed sources from beyond human ken. They were magical beings, after all, but she was still wary.

“Perhaps,” Enver said, “I could show you, too, Galadheon. After all, you are Mirare. If you remove the patch covering your eye—”

“No! I am not Mirare, and never ask me to uncover my eye again.” She remembered all too painfully the last time her eyepatch had been removed in the presence of an Eletian.

Enver bowed. “My pardon. I meant no offense, only to show you the path.”

“It’s beautiful,” Estral said.

“I would not lead you astray.” Enver handed Bane’s lead rope to Estral and stepped up to Karigan’s stirrup. “I will not ask you to bare your special eye, but if you give me your hand and you use your ability, perhaps you will see.”

Still skeptical, she glanced around to ensure no one else was on the road with them who would witness her using her ability. They were alone. She held her hand out and Enver clasped it between both of his. The heat of his touch was startling even through her mitten. She almost forgot to fade. When she did so, the already white and gray world turned even grayer, and it was almost as if time slowed the fall of each individual snowflake that flashed white as they tumbled down around her.

“Look, Galadheon,” Enver said from somewhere far away. He pointed, seeming to shed a blur of energy from his hand that lanced across the field toward the woods. “Use your side vision, let go your focus.”

She turned her head slightly, let her vision relax. The pattern of the falling snow mesmerized her. Snowflakes landed on her eyelashes, feathered her cheeks. She may be faded out, but she was still real and solid. Then she saw a flicker of light—she almost missed it for the flash of individual snowflakes. Then another, and another. She forced herself not to look dead on or focus. Soon there was a stream of tiny blue-white flames that flowed across the field, like the fairy lights in children’s tales. All else might be gray in her vision, but this was not. The lights flared and fairly hummed.

And then vanished in a blink.

She dropped her fading and sat there lost in thought until Enver released her hand. She had almost forgotten he’d been holding it. A dull headache pounded in her temple. She glanced at Estral, who had turned ashen. It occurred to her that her friend had never seen her use her ability before.

“You were . . .” Estral began.

“Like a ghost,” Karigan finished. She’d heard others describe her thus. In the daylight, she would not have faded out entirely.

Estral nodded vigorously, still pale. “I knew you could do that, but . . .”

“Seeing it is different.”

Estral nodded again.

“The way appeared to you,” Enver said, “did it not?”

“I saw something,” Karigan admitted.

“You saw the way.”

Enver was nothing if not persistent. She sighed. It would not be the first time she had followed Eletians without maps.

“You say this path of yours is more efficient and easier on the horses?”

“Yes, Galadheon. We will travel with more speed than using your roads and trails.”

“Very well,” she said, still with some misgiving, “we’ll give it a try.”

He nodded solemnly. “Then I must call to my mare so we can all ride.” He turned to face the field and spoke in Eltish, using a normal tone. The breeze took the words from him and carried them away.

That was it? Karigan wondered. They sat but for a moment before Condor gave a deep-throated whicker. Estral’s gelding, Coda, and Bane the pony both raised their heads and pricked their ears. A horse appeared cantering across the field where she’d seen the path. The jingle of harness came to them as the horse neared. She was silver-white in the gloom, her mane and tail streaming out behind her. She slowed to a trot, then a walk, and then halted before Enver. She was one of the most beautiful horses Karigan had ever seen, fine-limbed, her neck a graceful arc. She made Condor and Coda look plain and rangy. Oddly, she was already tacked. Enver stroked her neck and spoke softly to her in Eltish.

“Is she real?” Estral asked.

“Quite real,” Enver replied. “The terrial ada, who have befriended the Eletian people, consent to bear us now and then.”

“Terrial ada?” Karigan asked. “Is that a breed?”

“No, Galadheon, but a race of horsekind rare to these lands.”

A race of horsekind? She had a feeling that if she asked Enver to explain further, his answer would prove even more esoteric. She decided to wait and see if the horse passed gold nuggets and moonbeams.

“She is called Muna’reyes. It is Moonmist in the common tongue.”

The mare nickered and bobbed her head.

“You may call her Mist. She will allow it.” With that, Enver mounted in one swift motion.

Mist’s bridle bore no bit, and the leather of the reins and saddle was ornamented with twining tree and birch leaf patterns. Enver retrieved the lead rope to Bane, and the pony pranced right up beside Mist, arching his stubby neck as though to impress her. She bobbed her head, her mane wafting softly like threads of silk.

“I shall lead us along the path now. You have but to follow.” Enver reined Mist off the road and into the field.

Karigan let Estral follow next, and took up the rear. Condor stepped off the road into the snowy field and proceeded in an energetic walk as if he were as anxious to follow Mist as Bane. As she rode, she was aware of nothing that differentiated the path from the surrounding countryside, except maybe they followed a long furrow between drifts that made it easier for the horses. Soon they entered the woods.

As the day wore on, the farther they got from the castle, the more the sky cleared and the flurries let up. The interlacing of the branches above them further minimized the snowfall. Karigan had to admit that with Enver’s guidance, the going was smooth. There was little underbrush to hinder them, no low-hanging branches she had to duck beneath. Windfalls did not block their way, and the snow was not at all deep.

They rode in silence away from the signs of human habitation, encountering only a doe and yearling, chickadees and nuthatches, along the way. This was the Green Cloak Forest they had entered, and the country would get wilder still.

They rode until twilight when Enver halted at a natural clearing. Or, was it? Was it of some magical making as the path they followed? They set to caring for the horses, and she saw that just like any other horse, Mist was untacked, brushed, and blanketed, and that she drank ordinary water and ate grain. And, indeed, her droppings looked pretty normal, too, though Karigan did not inspect them close up. The main difference was that Enver did not halter or hobble Mist. Even so, she did not wander far. Perhaps she’d turn to smoke and drift away in the night, and return only when Enver called her.

They readied their camp, Enver drawing out a muna’riel to illuminate the clearing. They needed no additional light from the lanterns Karigan had brought along. She collected wood while Estral struggled with their tent. Soon, she had a cheery fire blazing, and put a kettle over it to boil water for tea. As they ate a simple meal, the clouds appeared to disperse altogether above the boney branches of the trees. The stars shone eye-piercingly sharp.

“Would you like to try singing?” Enver asked Estral.

“No. I am sorry. I am . . . I am afraid.”

Enver bowed his head in acknowledgment.

“Will this path we’re on,” Karigan asked, “take us directly to the p’ehdrose?”

“No,” Enver replied. “There are branching ways, and it may be my people have left none that lead to the p’ehdrose.”

“You don’t know where they are? How do you know how to find them?”

“Not all worlds share the same space as ours,” he replied. “You, Galadheon, would know this better than most.”

She began to get an idea of why the Eletians had requested her for this mission. It was not her they wanted so much as her ability to cross thresholds . . .

“Why did no one mention this before we began?”

“Lhean did not say?” Enver asked, looking genuinely surprised. “The habitation of the p’ehdrose will be sensed more than seen.”

“Like the path,” Estral murmured.

“In a way,” Enver replied. “Your king knew as much. He is perceptive, for he comprehends that not all in the world follows the same rules when etherea comes into play. It is most likely, Galadheon, we will not need your ability to find the p’ehdrose.”

With the way things usually went, Karigan doubted such would be the case.

“Look,” Estral said. She pointed toward the sky.

They all looked up and through the trees where glowing waves of green stretched across the sky.

“The northern lights,” Karigan murmured. “It is the first I’ve seen them this winter.” It felt like an omen.