As Elenai woke, she realized the voices intruding into her confused dream were those of N’lahr and Kyrkenall. They spoke in low tones on the other side of the camp. She could see the leaves in the canopy overhead, which meant dawn had come and gone and that, once again, she’d probably only managed a few hours’ sleep. And this was the last she’d get before they crossed the shifts.
She stilled, listening in on Kyrkenall in midsentence: “… for a long time.”
“It’s hard to adjust,” N’lahr admitted. “I’m seven years out of step. I had … plans. And I’ve yet to learn all that’s been taken from me.”
Several moments passed with only the dull clank of tin on tin.
Kyrkenall’s next question was hesitant. “Were you awake in there?”
“No. Praise the Gods. I’d probably have been driven mad.”
“Oh, yes, praise them roundly.” Kyrkenall’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “In their infinite wisdom they locked you away and let everyone think you were dead while the Naor waxed in power and our defenses rotted away. Nice fucking job.”
“Asrahn would tell you not to blaspheme.”
“Sure,” Kyrkenall said quietly. “I wish he would. Not that I was ever that good at listening.”
N’lahr broke the morose silence with a different line of questioning. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What’s been done with my savings?”
“I think they divided your effects between a couple of second cousins.”
“Which ones”
“I don’t know. One had a big nose. The other was kind of cute. I didn’t talk to anyone. Wait. You had money?”
“Not much, but it was a start.”
“What were you saving for?”
There was a pause while Elenai wondered if she should rise and let them know she could hear, but it was oddly pleasant to listen to them talking. Besides, sleep still clung to her. It wouldn’t take much to lose herself to the darkness again.
“Well. I thought I’d get some property. For when I retire.”
“You? Retire?” Kyrkenall laughed. “Did you honestly think you’d ever leave the corps?”
“I thought I might, when the war was over. If I lived.”
“That’s always the hurdle, isn’t it. Wait—the war was practically won. Did you plan to retire straight after?”
N’lahr actually sounded a little defensive. “I’d been thinking about it. Don’t tell me you never thought about what you’d do when the war was over?”
“I planned on having a lot more baths, and a lot more sex.”
N’lahr chuckled. “And here I was thinking you’d changed.”
“You think I’ve changed?”
“A little.”
“How?”
Elenai smiled to herself as N’lahr subtly needled his friend.
“I thought you’d grown a little more careful with age. It might have been wishful thinking, though.”
“I’m practically the soul of caution now. I learned it through abstention, righteous contemplation, and devoted prayer.”
N’lahr snorted.
One of them stirred the fire before Kyrkenall spoke, serious once more. “Something’s been bothering me.”
“Do tell.”
“I just can’t believe Denaven and his lot brought Belahn in on their side.”
“It probably wasn’t easy. I’d guess Denaven worked on him a while.”
“That snake’s always working on someone. Maybe he’s more like a spider, except they’re a lot easier to kill.”
“I underestimated him,” N’lahr admitted. “I thought him ambitious, but not treacherous.”
Kyrkenall said something softly.
“You were right,” the commander responded. His tone changed as he shifted subjects. “Your squire’s handling herself well.”
Elenai stilled even further, for a moment forgetting even to breathe.
“She’s not my squire.”
“Then whose squire is she?”
“She’s more just along for the ride. You don’t see her spending her spare time polishing up my sword or saddling my horse, do you?”
Is that what he expected her to be doing? She supposed she really hadn’t been acting the part of a real squire. But hadn’t he told her to stop being deferential to him?
“She sleeps more than we do,” Kyrkenall went on. “You think old Temahr would have let us sleep longer than him?”
Both men laughed.
“Are you saying we should send her on pointless elk hunts in the rain?” N’lahr asked good-humoredly.
“She’s holding her own. With us. That’s pretty good. And she’s picked up on the hearthstone a lot faster than I’d ever have guessed. She’s also pulled me right out of it a few times.”
N’lahr agreed. “It sounds like she’s shown some real ingenuity.”
She couldn’t help smiling at that.
“Asrahn trained her,” Kyrkenall said, and silence fell. Even from here she sensed their mood had become somber, then his voice grew so soft Elenai strained to hear him. “Do you really think we’ll find her?”
He had to mean Kalandra.
N’lahr’s answer was simple. “Yes.”
“And do you think she’ll be as messed up as Belahn?”
“No.” N’lahr’s voice was heavy. “But I’m worried about her, too. And beyond that, we need Kalandra. We needed Belahn.”
Some rustling and clinking carried on for a few moments and then it became quiet awhile.
Kyrkenall broke the silence. “Mazakan doesn’t know he’s going to get you. And Irion.”
“I don’t have the faintest idea how I’m going to get near enough to fulfill this damned prophecy.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“Right now we’ve other things to worry about. Speaking of which, it’s time to rouse your squire.”
“I think she’s our squire.”
“Whatever she is, it’s time to wake her.”
“Great. Time to ride again. If I find out that they’ve stopped chasing us, I’m going to be pretty irritated.”
From the sound of rustling clothes and footfalls she imagined him rising and striding her way. She closed her eyes, hating the deception she played but hating more the thought of revealing that she’d eavesdropped.
Thus she shammed a stir as he drew close.
“Time to wake,” he urged, and Elenai sat up on her bedroll, blinking in the pale sunlight. Despite being fairly alert, she ached terribly in her shoulders and thighs. And there was dried dirt all over the back of her hand, stiff as a second skin. Dawn might already have arrived, but the sky was darkening and the wind rising.
“How long did I sleep?”
“Six hours.”
It didn’t seem that much. “And how long did you sleep?”
“About three hours.”
“You should have let me take some of the watch.” Elenai was feeling especially self-conscious after he’d jokingly referenced her sleeping in.
“You’re our only mage,” he explained. “We’ve got to keep you fresh. Well, fresh-ish.” He didn’t look at all disappointed with her.
Nearby trees shivered in the wind as the sky darkened further.
Kyrkenall noticed it with a frown. “We may be in for a rough crossing.”
She took a close look at him for the first time that morning. He needed a shave and the dark circles under his black eyes gave him a hollowed-out look.
“Grab your gear and some griddle cakes. N’lahr’s saddling the horses.”
She nodded and took a deep breath, centering herself. It was time for morning prayers. Before she could move, a confused jumble of images washed over her—a blur of galloping horses and arrow flights. Men and women in khalats rode hard toward them, weapons bared. She saw a dozen different versions of the same moment playing before her at the same time. Sometimes Gyldara led, sometimes Tretton. Sometimes a sober-faced Decrin was shouting for the others. But always they drove on, and their swords were raised to strike.
Death was coming. Fast. Unless they fled now, in one direction. “Northeast.”
“What?” Kyrkenall asked, half turned.
“We should ride northeast!” she practically shouted while rising. “And fast.”
“Easy there. No magery—”
“The Altenerai are coming,” she said through gritted teeth. “We need to go. Now! Northeast.”
Kyrkenall froze for two heartbeats, staring at her as if suddenly remembering something. Then he raced off to N’lahr while she snatched up her bedroll.
The first time she’d glimpsed the future she’d thought it was related to her connection with the hearthstone. This time it had come while the hearthstone was off. There was no doubting this vision’s veracity, though—it was clearer and stronger than last time. Such was the certainty of the images, she had little time to trouble herself with their origin or what it might mean for her.
When Kyrkenall returned with N’lahr, the commander had questions. “How do you know they’re nearly here and why do you suggest that direction?” She hadn’t noticed last night, but he looked drained, and drawn. Probably he hadn’t had a proper rest since before the Battle of Kanesh, seven years ago.
Elenai struggled to find words, so Kyrkenall answered. “She’s done this once before, and it saved my life. Same look in her eyes. If she’s wrong, what does it hurt? We were going to go north anyway. Now we just veer a little.”
N’lahr’s eyes were piercing. She opened her mouth to say more, to try to make him understand, but it wasn’t necessary.
“Right,” he said. “Northeast.”
They mounted up and started off, advancing across the forested hilltop that had sheltered them for half a night. The low-slung branches they pushed through and dodged swayed wildly in the stiff winds. They diverted past a rocky outcrop shaped like an anvil until they looked down on a deep grassy valley with gently sloping sides that wound back the way they’d come and stretched on to the northeast as if laid out for them.
It was filled with an immense herd of animals. Gusts brought them the pungent scent of the massive wild oxen known in Kanesh as “eshlack.” Each stood half again the height of a full-grown horse and were crowned by a pair of long, downward pointing horns. Thousands of the shaggy gray beasts grazed fitfully, heads up and down watching the weather. Here and there smaller, younger eshlack chased each other through the grasses as if excited by the bluster. Sentinel beasts, near the edge of the herd, stamped and shook their manes, dark eyes peering keenly at the blue-coated trio through wind-whipped shaggy strands of fur.
“That’s a whole lot of dangerous meat,” Kyrkenall remarked loudly before they started down the grassy slope, parallel to but maintaining a respectful distance from the herd.
“Eshlack live in Kanesh,” Elenai called up to him. “Not The Fragments.”
Kyrkenall half shouted his reply to be heard over the wind and cattle. “They could have wandered over through the Shifting Lands during a calm spell.”
Elenai’s horse snorted at the scent of the eshlack they neared. She would have preferred riding her chestnut, but he trailed on the lead line, along with the other spares. Kyrkenall, as usual, rode Lyria.
They kept to the upper slope, downwind of the wary cattle. Elenai couldn’t help looking both at them and behind. Despite her own cautions, it was Kyrkenall who first spotted their pursuit.
The archer called warning: “Behind us!”
Elenai glanced over her shoulder, and her breath caught. Mounted troops had topped the forested line they’d come from two miles back. A half-dozen figures sat saddle.
They were too far away for Elenai to recognize all of them, though she picked out two. Tretton was in the lead; there was no missing the dark face and short gray beard that hid the chin strap of his helmet. The sturdy figure on the larger horse a few yards back could only be Decrin. The sun gleamed off the round buckler on his arm, emphasizing his identity as the bearer of the Shining Shield.
She would have liked N’lahr to suggest a more brilliant plan. Instead, he yelled, “Loose the spares!”
He meant the mounts. As she released the lines, Elenai sighed at thought of the chestnut lost to her, lamenting she’d never bothered to name him.
They kicked their animals into a hard gallop, setting the nearer oxen to bellowing alarm. Hundreds more raised their horned heads and snorted indignation at the intrusion of riders.
Surely, the border wasn’t too far off. If the Shifting Lands were shifting, they might be able to lose their pursuers in the chaos. They’d be much less trackable there now that the hearthstone was inactive. She grimaced that it had become worse to be caught by Altenerai than a shift storm.
Even as she thought it, the sky ahead thickened with black clouds, and flashes of lightning played sharply from earth to heaven. A storm to hide them! The agitation of the gigantic cattle grew. More stirred and bellowed as she and N’lahr and Kyrkenall rode on the slope above them.
Thunder rolled. And from ahead Kyrkenall shouted a warning. “Naor!”
Before she could even worry about where the Naor had come from or what they were doing, a flight of arrows sped from a rise of boulders ahead. N’lahr diverted downslope toward the herd and she rode with him. The flight went wide, but the half-dozen archers hidden among the rocks were already launching another sally.
No matter that he rode a running horse along an uneven hillside on a windy day, Kyrkenall was returning fire. As Elenai searched the distance ahead to learn the strength of their foes, she saw one archer sprawl backward across dark boulders, a black-feathered arrow standing out from his face.
They had chanced upon a small Naor troop, for some reason taking its ease on the slope of the valley beside the eshlack. A red-cloaked officer goaded a handful of bowmen to fire even as another ten rushed to climb onto their restive mounts. So far the Naor shots were inaccurate despite the narrowing range, likely because Kyrkenall’s arrows sent them scurrying for cover. Or it might be that the Naor thought them the advance attack of the larger force of Altenerai behind.
Elenai leaned away from an oncoming arrow. It passed within an arm’s length of her head.
The sky darkened further and clouds tumbled over one another. A startling sheet of lightning lit the entire horizon, and a blast of thunder shook the air. There was answering thunder from below when the eshlack began running along the floor of the valley toward its southern exit, as if they were one mighty beast with ten thousand legs. They apparently didn’t care for the flurry of nearby human activities, nor the light show in the sky.
The Naor only managed to throw out five horse warriors in an interception line. N’lahr, riding point, plowed straight into them. With a single slash he cut through a leveled spear and into a horse’s neck, dropping one opponent in a flurry of kicking hooves. His backhand strike slashed through sword arm, scale armor, and the chest of a second foe. Kyrkenall sent a shaft at short range straight through another warrior’s heart. In an instant they were through with only a few errant arrows reaching out for them.
She didn’t have time to feel relief, for the stampeding cattle were spreading out as they ran past. One lowered horns and charged her.
Elenai reached into the inner world to access magics, seeing, once more, the possible outcomes strung before her like beads. She acted upon the information without deliberation, veering closer to the herd. The beast, struck by an arrow either from the pursuing Altenerai or Naor, swung left, goring the air where Elenai would have been.
Was she glimpsing futures because she’d spent so much time using hearthstones? How far forward could she see? The visions seemed restricted mostly to immediate moments.
Her horse squealed nervously to be so near the mass of gray animals galloping the opposite direction on either side, and she carefully swung him back into line after her companions. She’d lost some ground and urged him to a faster pace. From behind came a shout. Elenai risked a glance, saw that Tretton’s horse was down near the boulders and four Naor were running for him. Her heart was in her throat. Much as she feared capture, she didn’t want the alten killed.
Kyrkenall had seen. He spun in his saddle and launched two arrows, one after the other. They struck through one attacker’s knee and another’s chest. Both dropped. A mass of dust raised by the eshlack interposed itself before she saw the resolution to the older alten’s situation.
When Elenai next checked behind, a single blue-coated pursuer followed at a mad pace, golden hair streaming after. Gyldara. She was gaining, and reached for more arrows to put to her bow despite the distance between them.
She was damnably good. Her missile snapped past Elenai and struck Lyria’s side, where it stuck out at an angle. Elenai gasped, then realized the arrow had embedded itself along the edge of Kyrkenall’s saddle. He tore out the shaft, fitted it to his own bow, twisted to fire.
Gyldara and her horse went down in a jumble. Somehow the alten threw herself free and came up in a crouch with her bow, fitted another arrow to it.
Elenai was impressed despite herself. She tensed at the thought of an arrow soaring at them on the wings of deadly skill, then saw Gyldara stare at her bow. Her fall had broken its tip, and the string hung slack. The woman flung it aside in anger.
They galloped on, and soon Gyldara, too, was lost behind with the Naor and the rest of the Altenerai. The stream of eshlack dwindled to a few stragglers, the dust their swifter relatives raised blowing in fits with them. Soon all that remained was the storm-eaten sky. The entire horizon was a swirling wall of gray and black, shot through with flashes of blue-and-yellow lightning. Its breadth and power were terrifying. N’lahr paused just a few dozen feet shy of it.
For once, even he looked nervous.
“Denaven’s got to be doing this,” Kyrkenall spat.
N’lahr nodded and looked to Elenai. “Can you get us through?”
She reached out to the storm through the inner world, her Altenerai ring flashing blue. It was like laying hand to a great, quivering muscle. “It’s stronger than the last one,” she said dubiously.
“But you’re stronger, too, right?” Kyrkenall prompted. His ring was already alight, as was N’lahr’s.
“I’ll have to use the hearthstone.” She wished the thought didn’t thrill her so much. Partly because she feared it, she looked at N’lahr.
He met her eyes. “Are you up to this, Elenai?”
“We don’t have much choice, do we?” She reached into the hearthstone, trying not to savor too much the rush of power and pleasure that permeated her to the core. She shuddered involuntarily.
“Ready?” N’lahr asked.
She nodded, then, when she saw him fighting his mount forward, she reached forth with threads of intent and calmed their horses.
N’lahr led them into the storm.
At first she fought only to keep the winds away. Then, after the first few hundred yards, the landscape shook, and melted. Grass, rock, trees—all that lay ahead swirled away into tiny black motes. Heart slamming, she reached out and, with the hearthstone, firmed the ground beneath them. Apart from the narrow band of naked dirt, they soon existed in a nothingness buffeted by angry winds. Darkness stretched away in every direction. The horses rolled nervous eyes, and she sent soothing energy to them again, wondering how often she’d have to do that.
“Can you keep us moving?” N’lahr called to her. His voice was strangely muted, no matter that she’d gentled the nearest air currents, as if sound wasn’t working normally.
She stared at him in disbelief. “Can’t we just stay here until the storm blows through?” That’s what Kyrkenall had told her Altenerai usually did during a storm, protected by the power of the sacred rings, which reinforced their own reality amidst one that constantly changed.
N’lahr shook his head. “If this is Denaven’s doing, he won’t let this end.”
He might, she thought, when he tires. But how long could he hold it? And suppose he came after them. What if he came near enough to fight her for control of the hearthstone? How close would he have to be for that?
“When we needed to carry on,” Kyrkenall said, “Kalandra used to shape matter ahead of us to form roads.”
Elenai wanted to tell them that she wasn’t the peerless Kalandra. It was hard enough to ward off the intense energies trying to invade their little zone of order. But then maybe it wasn’t impossible. She’d just have to strengthen the environment ahead a bit.
She looked out farther and found the void alive with glowing, whirling motes of energy, each sparkling with potential. Why not? She started small, astonished at how simple it was to coax those bits close with threads of desire, to sculpt them into forms similar to the gray soil under hoof, to firm them into place. In moments she’d extended their narrow point of land a few feet forward.
“Good,” N’lahr called. And he urged his mount ahead with a click of his tongue.
Elenai choked back a cry of amazement and coalesced more soil before N’lahr, setting threads to calm each of the mounts again a moment after.
“Keep it coming,” Kyrkenall said with a grin, and he followed in the wake of his friend.
Didn’t they realize she was just experimenting?
There wasn’t time to explain. She threw more of the mixture together as her horse walked after the others of its own accord, then repeated the actions again and again. After fifty feet she was feeling a little stretched and risked letting go of her attention upon the material behind. It slipped away like mounded sand into the waves. Too late she realized it might be easier to shift the soil over which they’d traveled so that it would lift again ahead of them.
The winds rose, tore at their hair, set the horses sidestepping close to the right edge. Once more she eased their fright, then elected to stay tethered to them by threads of will so it would be easier to send soothing commands.
“Can you keep the ground coming faster?” Kyrkenall asked. “I think the storm’s getting worse.” He stared at the void beyond her shoulder, his ring shining like a beacon.
She wanted to tell him she was weaving energies as quickly as she could, but she didn’t have excess mental strength to reply. And so she winged the soil they’d crossed beneath the ground holding them and fitted it ahead. Over and again she repeated the process. There was one close call when the lead horse’s hooves almost stepped into nothingness, but she somehow accelerated the process she used, too frightened to actually be pleased with herself.
The Altenerai must have thought her more capable than she was, because N’lahr increased the pace. She’d thought Kyrkenall the more reckless, but the swordsman pushed into a canter as the winds howled, and then a gallop.
Gritting her teeth, she kept up the preposterous demands, maintaining the horses and flinging then firming the dirt and anticipating the worst of the wind gusts with counter ones of her own. All the while they rode through the vast darkness, like heroes in a tapestry woven by some drug-addled madwoman. She’d heard tales of Altenerai travels through the storms, but never such a one as this.
She was just about to congratulate herself for managing so well when she sensed presences riding the empty currents of nothingness.
Something followed them.