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Tracking the monster began with locating the site where it landed after its plunge down Mount Selinnia.
The slender, pole-like trees that grew parallel to the mountain’s steep slope had fallen with the monster. They lay tumbled and broken at Mt. Selinnia’s foot. Upslope, uprooted trees and disturbed rocks marked the monster’s rapid fall. Somehow the alien creature had survived. Its damage must be minor, for the ranger Ivhart had seen it stomp away. Heading west.
West. The direction filled Desora with dread.
West. Away from the Wilding’s eastern border to the Wastes. There the sorcerers of Frost Clime were based. There dragons still survived.
West, out of the Wilding ruled by the Kyrgy Lord Horst.
West, toward Desora’s hut and the High Meadows of the monster’s first kills and the unsuspecting village of Mulgrum.
Desora squinted at the trail ahead. At the beginning of their pursuit, ripped-away tree limbs, unearthed rocks, and stomped grass and brambles had marked the monster’s passage. Yet soon the creature had regained the sorcered mysts that shielded it and soared above the ground.
They followed only with the aid of the sprites. Tiny scouts zoomed back to consult with the queen. She flew at the apiary’s center, only a few feet ahead of Challoch. The armored guard rode in the vanguard of their whittled-down column.
Captain Brax rode rearguard. Two guards, one fore and the other rear, four rangers, and Desora. Seven, that was all that would fight the monster.
If they caught it before it reached Mulgrum.
A jingle of bridle and the thud of horse hooves lifting from walk to canter signaled a rider coming along the short column. Desora turned her head and saw Brax. She guided her horse to a wide spot in the trail and reined in.
He joined her, his big destrier jostling the crowded space, but her mild gelding merely shifted over into the weeds underneath the ancient trees. Brax lifted his chin. A memory flashed, the scruffy lift of his face asking a mute question.
The memory surprised her, but multiple memories had surprised her over the past days. The flashes never overwhelmed. After years of blankness, they opened shadowy doors and windows that she had never suspected. It was hard to reject any of those fragments. For too long she’d desperately wanted any signs from her past. And Brax centered many of those lost images.
Never once, though, had she received any flash of her lost wizardry.
She didn’t grieve that magical loss. The strong, rooting depths of elemental Earth had replaced it.
So, to Brax’s unasked question, Desora offered a smile and a shrug. “Sun’s setting.”
“Challoch will be on lookout for a campsite.”
“How is Ivhart holding up?”
He gave a quizzical look. “You expect him to have trouble? Horst healed him.”
She glanced at the rangers, well past them now. “Exactly. Horst healed him. Dark Fae don’t give their gifts lightly. What bargain did he wrest from Ivhart when he healed his broken arm?”
“Borrowing trouble?”
She shrugged. “Best to be prepared.”
“The Kyrgy is our ally.”
Desora merely shrugged again. She urged the gelding back to the trail. “We’re falling behind.”
Brax followed but stayed beside her. “You have reason for your concern?”
“No,” she admitted baldly and kicked the gelding to a canter.
Shouts came from ahead.
Brax surged past her, his big warhorse thundering into a trot. Desora didn’t spur her horse to greater speed. The shouts hadn’t the urgency of battle. She heard no clash of steel.
A sprite darted to her then returned, flitting quickly. At this sign of the queen’s concern, Desora did urge the range-runner to greater speed.
First, she spied the rangers, still ahorse, milling restlessly on the trail. Ahead of them were the big destriers. Sunlight flashed on the guards’ armor. They had their swords out, ready, but they were in battle defense. Then she caught a whiff, foul and horrid. The tang of blood drowned any under-scent.
When she reached the rangers, they parted for her to ride through. Brax and Challoch had dismounted to examine the ground. Ahead, in the dimness under the trees, the apiary swirled in a mass of twinkling jewel-colored lights.
Then she saw the pale grey and sooty black hump athwart the trail.
It lay inert. As she rode closer, she distinguished an arm, the shape of a head ... the dark red of blood on warty grey skin. The exploded chest.
Desora swallowed but pushed the gelding closer until it balked at nearing the creature on the trail.
The troll had fought and died hard. Brax had knelt just beyond the creature to examine the churned ground, the rocks torn from the trail, the roots ripped out. A few understory trees had broken limbs. Bushes looked squashed. She looked again at the dead troll and saw its legs were gone—. Choking, she turned away again.
Memory recalled the ranger torn in two by the ogre they had fought.
That was a memory best forgotten.
She managed not to vomit.
When she looked back, careful to keep her gaze unfocused on the troll, Challoch had ridden ahead. Brax tracked sign off the trail.
Desora rode forward. She let the range-runner pick its way around the dead troll.
Brax straightened and watched as she passed, but he didn’t call her back. From the limp leaves, she knew the fight between the troll and whatever had killed it had been hours ago.
Whatever had killed it. She lied to herself. She knew very well what had happened. The monster had come upon the troll. It hadn’t stayed to absorb its life energy ... which meant it knew they followed. It would have gulped some of energy then moved on.
It would be hungry. All creatures needed rest and energy to restore themselves. Yet it fled from them.
She didn’t understand these tattered bits of information, yet she knew they were important.
Would it rest tonight? Or would it keep moving, staying ahead of them, heading west?
They would have to rest. The apiary didn’t cast enough light for night travel. She couldn’t cast a fiery sphere to light their way. Lord Horst could do so, but he was on his own trail, after the sorcerer and the wyre. Were they headed to the Wastes? Or did the sorcerer know another archway to use for a portal?
How many sorcerers could open a portal to the monster’s world? How many monsters would enter through it?
That, she definitely did not want to contemplate.
Brax had returned to the trail. She swung the gelding to face him as he remounted. “Not that far ahead,” he answered her unspoken question. “Couple of hours.”
“The time we needed to destroy the Wind Arch, climb back down, and settle our plans,” she agreed. But two hours. In that time it would decimate the whole village. “Do you think it will stop traveling for the night? Seek a place to rest?”
“It can lay down in the middle of the trail to rest. What would dare to attack it?”
That was a good point. Then she remembered the bloody evidence behind her on the trail. “This troll did.”
“May be the other way around. It was waiting, and the troll blundered into it.”
“Does it remain on the trail?”
“Looks like it. Surprises me, too, Desora. Aloft in the myst, it doesn’t need to follow any trail. It can pick a straight line and go. Shift around the trees, go up and down the ridges, yet it follows the trail.”
“That would make sense, wouldn’t it? If it’s running. It doesn’t know where it’s going, so it picks a trail to follow. It doesn’t know anything about this world.”
“It knows trails. It knows trails will lead it to sustenance.” Brax grimaced. “The trail to High Meadow. The trail to Horst’s palace.”
“A trail to the meadow where the white harts grazed.”
“And now this trail. What’s up with the sprites?”
She hadn’t noticed their frenzied behavior until he pointed it out. A twinkling light would leave the sphere to approach them then return, and the apiary would swirl. Then other lights would detach, some to them, some forward on the trail, before returning.
Desora slid off the gelding. Brax caught her reins, and she hurried to the swirling apiary.
A sprite detached to meet her. It jabbered. The spell that had enabled her to understand the queen must be fading. How much longer would it last?
Then another sprite zoomed close. “The queen—the queen. Stop. Stop!”
She stopped obediently.
Challoch had disappeared around a bend in the trail. The sunshine that had glinted on armor faded as the sun descended below the horizon.
Desora glanced at Brax and his big warhorse, snorting, tail flicking but otherwise steady and still, like her placid gelding. The rangers’ horses, waiting far back from the dead troll, shifted restlessly, evidence of their riders’ impatience.
When she turned back, a core of sprites had detached from the apiary. The queen and her entourage flew closer before the twinkling knot paused, hovering. The queen detached. The core lost its whorling shape then reformed into a tighter knot, their colors a chaotic mix.
“It is that you have questions, Lady de Sora?”
She bowed, ever courteous. “Did your scouts report this dead troll?”
“They did so.”
“Why did you not warn us of it?”
“What matters a warning? It is dead. It is no threat.”
That was true enough, but advance warning would—what? Prevented their worry? As the queen said, the troll was no threat.
Lord Horst had attacked the trolls living in the Caves of Trantorr Mountain. That attack had expelled both trolls and the ogre.
“Are there any other trolls or ogres ahead of us?”
“The scouts scent only trolls, no ogres.”
“Only trolls. How far ahead are they?”
“Some run before the monster. Some run behind it. They do not run toward you.”
But will we run into them? “Any gobbers?”
The queen huffed. “Should danger approach, you will be warned.”
A sprite zoomed in. It flitted past the swirling entourage and flashed past the queen. Then it darted back and hovered near her. Their dragonfly wings nearly brushed. It gave that jangling shriek, waited for the queen’s response. She only nodded and waved a hand. The scout sprite swooped away, back along the trail.
The queen turned to Desora. Her sapphire eyes blinked slowly. “Another troll is ahead on the trail. It is not yet dead.”
