Darkburn Book 1: Fall by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

However, she asked nothing else. Instead she spoke again to Eled.

“Shall I tell you about the town I come from?”

Eled nodded.

“It’s north of the hills and west of the mountains,” she said. “A very long way from the sea. None of us has ever seen the sea. There are some small lakes a dozen miles away where people can catch fish; but they are muddy lakes, and the fish are even muddier. Not many people venture so far from Obandiro in any case. They are content at home.”

The homeplace that she described was very different to Caervonn. It sounded as if Obandiro were barely even a town – more of a large, sprawling village, with no tall buildings except a bell tower at the marketplace. Its greatest glory seemed to be that marketplace, an area where three hundred people could gather; in Yaret’s awed tones, an enormous number.

Rothir suppressed a smile.

“How large is your population?” he inquired.

“Perhaps a thousand and a half.”

“That’s not many.”

“No.” She was silent for a moment. “There have been setbacks through the years. We have suffered blight and famine, and endless winter storms that blow down from the north, and of course the fever… But for the last twenty years or so, Obandiro has thrived.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said, feeling a little ashamed of his former amusement.

“And what is your house like?” asked Eled.

“It’s outside the town,” said Yaret, “a couple of miles away. I live on my grandparents’

farm – well, just a small-holding, really. A few sheep and goats and chickens. But they have a large house. It has three floors! It’s built of wood and so old that it’s mostly held together

with ivy. Everything creaks, especially at night. The stairs play tunes when you use them: one tune for up, and one for down.”

Eled laughed.

“Downstairs are the kitchen and the living quarters, and upstairs are the looms, because the light is better there for weaving. That’s where my grandfather will be busy right now, clattering away at his loom and making the whole house shake. Once, when I was about eleven, I tried to climb up the ivy on the outside wall to surprise him at his work, but the ivy wasn’t strong enough; that’s how I broke my nose. And my collarbone as well.”

“You’re a weaver,” said Eled experimentally.

“Yes. Grandfather is the main weaver. I help him in the winter, but I’m not so skilled as he is. His cloth is always perfectly smooth and even. It’s in great demand. Gramma spins the wool, but downstairs to avoid the racket of the looms. Half a dozen of her cronies in the town spin wool for us as well. I do a bit of spinning, and look after the animals.”

“What about your parents?” asked Rothir.

She looked past Eled at him. A cool, withdrawing gaze.

“My mother died of fever along with my small brother, soon after he was born. I don’t remember much about it; I was only three. My father died when I was six. A lion got him while he was out hunting. I remember that. But I’ve had a good life with my grandparents.”

Rothir’s inclination to smile had gone entirely. A reminder that Caervonn’s was not the only tragedy, he thought: every family had its own disasters, often barely visible and managed without fuss. People just got on with whatever had to be done, because what alternative was there?

“You said three floors,” said Eled. “What’s on the third floor?” Rothir was pleased by his attention to this detail.

“That’s the cellar,” Yaret answered with some pride. “My father and grandfather dug it out. In winter it’s full of piles of roots and sacks of oats and boxes of apples and shelves of cheese. My grandmother makes Kelvhan cheese; it lasts for ever.”

“And smells worse the older it gets,” Rothir commented. “How close are you to Kelvha, then? I thought your town lay further to the east.”

“It does. We’re a long way from Kelvha. But my grandmother is from Outer Kelvha –

very outer – where our distant kinsmen settled many years ago, after our people migrated from further north.”

“Your people,” said Eled enquiringly.

“The Bandiran. We came south about four centuries ago. Many settled where I live at Obandiro, north of the Coban hills. Others kept going west past Melmet, to Ioben. That’s where my grandmother is from.”

“Very outer Kelvha, indeed,” said Rothir.

“You know it?” she asked in some surprise.

“I’ve travelled through both Melmet and Ioben; in the past some of us have hired ourselves as wolf-hunters to the Baron of the Broc. I have travelled a good deal, though more to the west than in the direction of Obandiro. If I have passed close by, it was without realising Obandiro was there. I admit that I’m not quite sure that I have ever heard its name.”

“Good,” said Yaret. “That’s the way we like it.”

“Where did your people come from, when you migrated from the north?” asked Eled, impressing Rothir again.

“Up in the hills, behind a land called Horva,” Yaret said.

“I know Horva. It’s a hard life they have there,” commented Rothir. It was an unyielding land of semi-nomadic herdsmen with scrawny cattle and bad-tempered sheep. “I didn’t see any settlements in the hills beyond,” he added.

“I don’t think anyone lives there any more. There was an earthquake – more than one: a series of them. The town was destroyed and the waters changed their courses. The Bandiran decided to leave and settle elsewhere, but the Horvans didn’t want us. So we kept going. We have no written records from the time. But there are plenty of tales and ballads about it, especially by our bard, Madeo.” She said the name with a kind of reverence.

“I have not heard of Madeo,” said Rothir.

“I expect not. But Madeo was one of the leaders of the exodus and after that a great traveller in the new lands, whose songs have gone down through the generations.”

“Could you sing any of them?” asked Eled eagerly.

“Not while we are riding. Maybe later.”

Rothir found himself somewhat dejected by the tale. Did the Vonn also face four hundred years of exile, with no hope of return? If that were to be the case, what was the point of anything that he could do?

We can try to make things better, he reminded himself. Just stick to now. Do whatever needs to be done, without fuss.

He plodded on, the muffled thud of Poda’s hooves beating a leisurely rhythm: too slow, too slow, too slow.

Mile after weary mile they walked, their progress snail-like even once they left behind the giant boulders of the Hayle; for they needed to halt every hour or two when Eled began to slump. Once he nearly fell from the horse before Rothir, reacting to Yaret’s sudden cry of alarm, quickly moved across to hold him up.

“I’m all right really. I can go a bit further,” said Eled apologetically. So Rothir agreed, although he knew that this long ride could not be good for his companion.

When they stopped for the night Eled’s leg was red and swollen. Rothir tended to him, trying in vain to engage him in gentle conversation while he reapplied the star-moss dressing.

Meanwhile Yaret built the fire and cooked up a mix of oats, biscuit and dried fruit – fast if uninviting food. She unpacked small pots of salt and honey, but Rothir, seeing her prepare to add a spoonful of honey to the mix, said, “Save it.”

“It’ll make it tastier for Eled.”

“Save it.” He could not give a reason. He just had the feeling that some unforeseen emergency or need might yet occur; though what sort of emergency could require a small pot of honey, he did not know. But he was uneasy with foreboding and could not have spelt out why.

Perhaps it was the rank and rotten smell that pervaded this whole area. Now, with the Hayle left far behind, they were beginning to traverse swampier ground. The land was pitted with numerous small ponds and shallow, reedy lakes which were fringed with sad bedraggled trees. The wetness of the surroundings should have been reassuring, if Rothir’s theories about the darkburns were correct; but the place stank of rotting vegetation.

After a little searching they found a spot that was dry enough to spend the night. However, there was no refuge from the smell. It was not as bad as the stench of darkburns, but bad enough.

“Is this still the Loft, in your parlance?” he asked Yaret as they ate their limited provisions.

She shook her head. “I doubt it. It feels too depressing.”

It is our situation that is depressing, Rothir thought. They finished eating in near-silence and Yaret set aside the remnants for the morning. She did not sing any ballads as she had promised; nor did Eled ask for them. Indeed, as soon as he had eaten he fell restlessly asleep.

Rothir studied him with concern. As his anxiety for Eled grew, so too did his affection and respect for the young man. He must not fail him.

While he unpacked his gear he had come to a decision. Now he turned to Yaret.

“I’d better tell you who it is that we are fleeing from.”

“Apart from darkburns? Rothir, you don’t have to tell me anything that you would prefer to keep to yourself.”

“I know that. And I thank you. But I think it would be wise, so that you’re prepared.”

She pulled a face. “All right. Go on.”

“It is not just the darkburns that we have to fear,” he told her soberly. “It is the people whom the darkburns lead – or at least who follow after them, and who are much more numerous. The darkburns sometimes act as trackers for them. Also the terror instigated by the presence of a darkburn gives them a significant advantage in a fight. These people are called stonemen.”

“Stonemen…. I think I may have heard of somebody like that,” she said slowly. “Odd drunken tales in inns, again. Men who worship stone, or are made of stone, one story said. I didn’t believe it.”

“They are certainly not made of stone,” said Rothir. “They are human. But they do worship stone, after a fashion, and have their own strange rituals.” He did not want to go into detail. “It is enough to say that recently – in the last dozen years or a little longer – they have become much more aggressive. They nurture hatred of all other peoples, and hunt down those who don’t share their beliefs.”

“Why? What’s changed to make them start doing that? Have they been persecuted?”

Rothir shook his head. “Not by us. In the past they were simply a secretive tribe in the lands towards the sea; they kept to themselves. It’s not clear what has altered.”

“Have they attacked Caervonn?”

“They have in the past, twelve years ago.” He thought of those first bloody battles underneath the city walls, and decided not to elaborate. “Afterwards, once our group of Riders had been exiled, a truce was called between the stonemen and Caervonn. It did not include us exiles and they have hunted us down ever since. But Caervonn itself has been peaceful, until lately: however, it seems that now the situation may have changed.”

“You don’t know?”

“No news comes out of Caervonn now,” said Rothir sombrely. “The stonemen have also had several encounters with Kelvha, whom they hate. This year there has been a marked increase in their attacks on Kelvha’s south-east borders. But they attacked Kelvha first, not the other way around. And perhaps hate is the wrong word. The stonemen simply regard all those who don’t share their culture and beliefs as not fully human.”

“That’s always dangerous,” commented Yaret.

“It is. It seems that over the years their beliefs and practices have become much more extreme,” said Rothir carefully. “Also, they drug themselves. That may account for some of the change.”

“But not all of it?”

He considered before saying, “There may be somebody behind it. The same somebody who is behind the darkburns. For the appearance of the first darkburns twelve years ago coincided with the rising of the stonemen… and with other things.” The towers of Caervonn stood in memory before him, no longer beautiful but burning.

“How would I know a stoneman?”

“You’ll know one as soon as he comes running at you with an axe.” At once Rothir wished he had not said that. “They wear red tunics and they often paint their faces. Daub them with grey. And they wear a crown of stones. Like the darkburns that they drive before them, they are an increasing threat across an area that grows wider by the year.”

“But you do not know what the darkburns are,” said Yaret.

“No.”

“Yet you think the same wizardly power may have instigated all these attacks?”

He was silent for a long moment. “We think so.”

She nodded. “I thank you for your confidence.”

“Don’t thank me,” Rothir said. “It’s not good news.”

“I have one more question, if I may? It’s not about the Vonn.”

“Ask.”

“I have now seen two darkburns,” said Yaret. “Yet no stonemen. So the one does not always follow the other?”

“It usually does, in my experience at least. When the lone darkburn attacked our camp I assumed a dawn attack by stonemen might be imminent. That is why I made us leave.”

“And the creeping thing in the forest? I saw no stonemen there.”

“Luckily for you.” Rothir felt suddenly very weary. None of this was easy to explain; not least because his own understanding of events was so incomplete. He did not like not knowing what was going on.

“Well,” said Yaret, “we had better copy Eled now, and go to sleep.”

“I wish that I could sleep as soundly as he can,” Rothir answered.

“Ah…” She made a movement of her hand towards him, almost as if she would have patted his arm, before thinking better of it.

Definitely female, he decided, before recognising his own prejudice: for neither Tiburé nor Maeneb would ever have done anything of the sort. Indeed he expected no such tenderness from most of the women that he knew. His riding-partner Parthenal would be more likely to give him a kind pat.

The night was cold, and frequently disturbed by plaintive bird-calls. The donkeys stamped noisily and huffed in uneasy indignation. When it was barely light Rothir arose and woke his comrades. Yaret stood up and, still half asleep, did her usual morning ritual, not bothering to conceal it this time as she touched first the ground and then chest, lips and forehead with a floppy hand and her eyes closed.

Rothir urged them both to get moving. Despite his urgency, he felt bad about giving them so little rest. The fact that neither of them complained did not reduce his sense of guilt.

They ploughed through mud and splashed around the reedbeds. The stink of decaying vegetation grew stronger the further east they went. Far to their right, the dense bulk of the Darkburn forest still marched alongside the swamplands, keeping pace with them. Yaret’s troubled gaze was often drawn to it.

“I never realised that it was so big,” she said. “My grandfather’s map only showed a little scrap of woodland. But it just goes on and on.”

“In a dozen miles or so it will start to bend increasingly round to the south, following the Darkburn river. But we’re at a safe enough distance from it here.” Or so he hoped. Yet to move further from the Darkburn would slow them down.

And Rothir now judged, with a deep wrench of his gut, that they were not going to be in time to make the rendezvous. Tomorrow – however little he liked the idea – he would have to leave the other two and go on ahead alone.

“Oh,” said Yaret. Her horse had stopped. Eled swayed in front of her, eyes half-closed; but it was not that. She was staring down at one of the stagnant pools, her face stricken.

“What is it?” Following her gaze, Rothir jumped down from Poda to take a look. Under the pool’s surface there was a dark, thick shape which after a few seconds he identified as an old tree stump with some roots still attached. Perhaps she had taken it for a drowned person.

“It’s only a piece of wood,” he said.

“It’s... burnt.”

“Perhaps. But it’s not human.”

“I didn’t think it was,” said Yaret, still staring. He could not work out why. “Is it a darkburn?”

He reached into the cold water and fished it out to reassure her that whatever it was, it was innocuous. The object was half as long as he was. Tangled in the weed, it came up draped with wet green strands: a twisted lump of blackened, sodden something that might have once been either wood or charcoal.

“More likely a bit of tree; although I suppose it’s possibly a darkburn,” he said. “Or was once. It could have been in there for years.” He tipped it back into the pool and dried his hands on his breeches.

“How would a darkburn end up in the pool?”

“Unknown,” said Rothir, climbing back onto the horse. Yaret’s face held a tight expression, almost of pain, despite the harmlessness of what he had pulled out of the water.

He realised that the pain was reflected on Eled’s face, although for different reasons. Best to keep moving while they could.

“Let’s get on,” he said, and urged Poda to a swifter walk.

“Eled is not well,” said Yaret’s voice, about five minutes later. “I think he’s going to–”

Rothir wheeled Poda round quickly; but not fast enough. Eled had gone limp. He abruptly collapsed forwards and sideways in the saddle, and in trying to hold him, Yaret slid off too.

They fell together heavily onto the damp ground.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” cried Yaret, scrambling to her feet. “I couldn’t hold him. Is his leg all right?”

Luckily the ground was soft; and Eled had fallen on his good side. Nonetheless the splint had twisted round his broken leg. The bark support had flown off somewhere.

Rothir lifted him gently and carried him to a dryer spot, where he laid him down. The weary eyes had opened and were bewildered and ashamed.

“I’m not much use,” Eled whispered. “Like an old man.”

“Does your leg hurt badly?”

“Not really.” Eled was lying. His pain was obvious, and there was nothing that Rothir could do about it apart from trying to settle him more comfortably where he lay. He cursed himself for driving Eled on when he knew that he was suffering.

“I’m sorry,” Yaret said again.

Rothir stood up. “I should have been paying more attention. I was trying to lead us on too fast. No; lie still, Eled. Take a rest. You may as well rest here awhile as anywhere else.”

“I’ll find the piece of bark,” said Yaret, and she ran back a little way to where the bark support lay floating in a pool. She lifted it out and then dropped it, withdrawing sharply from the brink.

“Rothir.”

“What?”

“It’s another one.”

He walked over to look. “It’s another dead stump,” he said, gazing down into the brown water. The thing was a twisted trunk maybe a metre long.

“No,” said Yaret. “It’s not.”

“If it’s a darkburn, it’s drowned, inert, just like the last one. I’ll show you.” He rolled up a sleeve, reached in and heaved the charred, twisted lump of wood out of the water. He heard Yaret’s sharp intake of breath.

And in the same instant he became aware that the stump was warm beneath his hand. Its gnarled, black, broken limbs began to steam even as they dripped water back into the pool.

Belatedly, he realised that the water had felt warm too.

“It’s not dead,” said Yaret hoarsely, and it writhed suddenly in his hands. He dropped it as if it had burnt him. Another moment, and it might have.

The darkburn fell at the edge of the pool, twitching. Rothir kicked it back into the water.

Seizing a large stone from the bank in both hands he dropped it in on top of the thing. There was movement for a while beneath the surface; and then stillness.

When he turned round Yaret was crying. At least, tears glistened in her eyes although she did not move a muscle nor make a sound. His instinct was to put his arms around her. He kicked the urge down as firmly as he had kicked the darkburn. Not the right place, nor time, nor the right thing to do. He decided to feel mild irritation instead. There was no need for tears.

“We’re safe from it,” he told her. “It can’t hurt us from in there. It couldn’t even get out on its own, let alone with that rock of top of it.”

She did not answer. He saw her swallow as she picked up the bark support and passed it to him. It had cracked down the middle, but was still usable.

“What is this place?” muttered Rothir as he took it. “A darkburn graveyard?”

“Yes.” She murmured something that he could not catch.

“What was that?”

“I was... saying words for the dead.”

“For darkburns?”

“For any dead.”

Rothir felt his exasperation grow, although part of it was with himself. “These aren’t dead, because they were never alive. Graveyard was the wrong word to use. Better to say they are inactive.”

Yaret did not reply. She walked over to the donkeys and put her arm around Dolm’s neck, as if to draw comfort from his sturdy nonchalance.

Rothir shook his head and went to offer Eled a drink of water. It was fortunate that they were carrying plenty, for he was unwilling to fill the waterskins from these peaty pools. How many of them held darkburns – inactive or otherwise? Did some of the ponds steam, or was that simply his imagination?

While Eled rested, he took a brief stroll around, pretending to scan the landscape but in fact surreptitiously checking the many pools near his feet. He thought he glimpsed half-hidden in their brown waters more submerged and twisted shapes. Had some fight involving darkburns happened here? Or were there so many darkburns wandering through this area, and so much water, that some inevitably ended up in it?

He wondered how long the writhing thing had been underwater for. How long it would take before it died… Or became inactive, rather.

On rejoining the others, he said briskly, “I can see a drier path ahead of us. Do you feel able to go on?”

Eled nodded, although he was clearly still in pain. Nevertheless, Rothir helped him to stand up without further delay. He wanted to be out of this place of drowned darkburns as soon as possible, and to get away from the Darkburn forest.

There was no getting away from the river altogether – its tributaries were everywhere: every watercourse within thousands of square miles ended up feeding the Darkburn. But once they reached the Gyr Tarn he would breathe more easily.

He pictured the still lake that lay cupped in its shallow bowl within the bleak, bare foothills of the Gyr. There were caves on its perimeter where Yaret and Eled could shelter, while he himself rode on to the meeting-point behind the craggy hills. The Gyr tarn would be a safer place than here to leave Yaret and Eled – if it came to that.

So, his urgency still stronger than his guilt, he helped them mount the horse, and led the small troop on.

Chapter 13

By evening they had left the watery flatlands behind and were back on drier if more hilly ground. From the summit of the nearest hillock Rothir could already see the Darkburn begin its long slow curve towards the south. Eventually it would double completely on itself, not once but twice, before surging south and east again, making for the sea.

On the far side of those vast loops of river lay the lands around Caervonn. Within the protection of the first bend, the stonemen had their hideouts, but exactly where was anybody’s guess. The river was uncrossable at most points; and the forest all but impenetrable.

However, the stonemen had a few well-defended crossing points, where the waters slowed and broadened and boats could be manoeuvred over them. Rothir knew that some were not too far from here, so he was not surprised when shortly before dusk he saw the tracks of stonemen. The only surprise was that these were the first that he had found.

The rope-soled footprints were unmistakable: about a dozen stonemen had passed this way since the last heavy rain. They were heading south towards the river, maybe after giving up the search for the Riders. He hoped so, and did not point the footprints out to Yaret, since she appeared not to have noticed them.

They halted for the night in a dip between hillocks, the best shelter that offered itself.

Although the ground was dry enough, the chill thin breeze of evening warned of the approaching autumn. He wished it would hold off a little longer; but Yaret at least did not seem to feel the cold.

“I’m used to it,” she said. After her cloak had been incinerated by the darkburn, she had produced a spare one from her pack, and now she unparcelled from amongst her woollen samples a finely woven blanket to wrap around Eled. Despite its lightness it was remarkably warm to the touch.

“Made with goat hair,” Yaret said, with a wistful reverence that made Rothir think it must be her most valuable piece of goods. Eled smiled and nodded as he pulled it round his shoulders; yet he looked worn out with the slow labour of this journey.

They feasted on stale bread and Rothir’s tough dried meat. There was probably abundant game to be shot nearby – he had seen the spoor of deer and, more worryingly, wolves and moorhounds – but he felt no inclination to waste time trying to hunt any of it down.

“Tomorrow we should reach the Gyr Tarn,” he told Yaret, “which is a lake within those westward hills that you can see. There I think I shall have to leave you with Eled and go more swiftly on alone to meet my friends. But there is good shelter at the tarn: there are deep, dry caves, and streams with clean water, and it’s a long way from the forest.”

She merely nodded and went back to tending Eled’s leg. The man’s young face looked old and lined, and while she applied fresh star-moss to his leg, she began to sing to him. It was some low, soothing chant: a lullaby perhaps, and reminded Rothir unexpectedly and painfully of his own mother. She must have sung one like it, long ago, before she left.

Once Eled appeared to be asleep Yaret stood up and gave her twilight greeting to the donkeys, feeding them a meagre handful of oats. Meanwhile Rothir rubbed the horses down despite his own fatigue. He was worried about the strain the double load was putting onto Narba. It could not be good for his horse, carrying two riders day after day.

Perhaps he would have to risk mounting Eled on Poda instead… But no. The mare was still too liable to be startled, veering or stopping suddenly. The risk to Eled was too great.

Let tomorrow’s problems wait until tomorrow. He set himself to sleep.

It was a broken night, punctuated by the faint rasping shrieks of moorhounds: thankfully they were far away. Between his few hours of sleep Rothir was calculating times and

distances. How long would it take to carry Eled to the Gyr Tarn on this uneven ground? He turned over restlessly.

“Could you send a signal to your friends?” asked Yaret in a whisper in the dark. “Smoke, perhaps?”

“They might think smoke meant a darkburn,” he murmured back. “And it would have to be a big fire for smoke to travel far enough.” He did not add the objection that to him was obvious: any signal that could be seen by his friends would also be visible to enemies. “We still have many miles to go,” he added. “Try to sleep now.”

Then he lay awake some more worrying about Yaret. He was grateful for her willingness to help although he did not fully understand it. For some reason she had volunteered for this journey, and had not baulked at the prospect of being left to care for Eled on her own. Until today she had shown no sign of weakness. Yet he doubted her resilience; not because she was a female, but because she was a village pedlar with no experience of fighting or of stonemen.

And those unshed tears beside the pool could signal that she had had enough. He knew that she was tired: she had her own timetable to keep to, and might well still decide to just abandon Eled if the journey became too difficult or strayed too far from her route home.

Could he blame her? No. But he would.

When he woke, however, Yaret was already up and performing her usual morning ritual.

When she turned to greet him she appeared eager to move on. If it was a pretence, it was a good one.

Eled, by contrast, was exhausted and could scarcely eat the biscuit that was offered him. In one way this made Rothir’s decision easier: he would definitely leave them both at the Gyr Tarn.

It was a long trudge through a drab, scrubby, bumpy land, much inhabited by tenacious flies. He expected at any time to see the tracks of stonemen – or the men themselves.

The bumps in the ground became mounds, then small hills, growing ever steeper and higher. At last, as they rounded one, the true hills south of the Gyr revealed themselves, suddenly much closer than before. Their barren slopes appeared as grey and smooth as lead, although they were actually clad with stony scree that slid treacherously beneath the feet. But he would not need to cross the hills that way.

“How far is this lake you spoke of?” asked Yaret.

“Not much further. In fact, you can see it now. That’s a corner of the tarn just edging into view.” The still water, mirroring the hills, looked like polished metal. He was impatient to reach it. All the same, they had to stop twice more for Eled to lie down on the ground and rest.

“I don’t think he can take much more of this,” said Yaret in an undertone, while Eled lay drowsing. His fingers and eyelids fluttered. “No matter how great his courage, no man can defeat his body indefinitely.”

“I know. I’m driving him too hard. But we’re almost there now.”

“Leave us here, and ride on to your friends,” she said.

“It’s not safe here. It’s too exposed.” Rothir gazed to the hills north of the tarn, greener and more rugged than those to the south. That way lay his path. They had perhaps three miles to go to reach the water and the shelter of the caves.

He knew those caves well: one made a particularly good resting-place, with its entrance hidden in a deep clough – as narrow as an alleyway – where a thin waterfall hurtled down towards the tarn. Inside, the cavern had been worked by miners long ago, hunting for copper: the blue-tinged rocks could still be found strewn around the deserted lake. In the high-roofed cave they had created, there was room enough for twenty people and even for a dozen horses, if you could only persuade them to go in.

“One last haul,” he urged. “Then you and Eled can rest, while I go on.”

“How long will it take you to find your friends?”

“A matter of hours. It is only another five miles or so, but some of the terrain is hard.” He pointed northward of the tarn. “Up there is a pass that leads between those hills and over high ground to an area of tall crags. One of those crags is called the thumb; if you saw it you would know why. At the base of the thumb is our rendezvous. It’s easy to remain hidden there, yet there are long views in all directions.”

“And you’ll bring your friends back here to find us?”

“As quickly as possible,” he promised.

“And then what?”

“And then… we have some other friends further to the north, where we might be able to take Eled,” said Rothir.

“How far?”

“A good distance.” There was no need to mention Farwithiel. The name would mean nothing to Yaret, and in any case they would send her on her way home before they reached that stage. She asked no more questions, but merely nodded and got ready to remount.

“I’ll go up behind Eled again,” said Rothir. “You take Poda.”

“All this is hard on your horse.”

“It is. But Narba will be able to rest soon; I’ll ride Poda onward once we reach the Gyr tarn.”

On these bare hillsides the cold wind nudged and tweaked them, insinuating itself into his clothes. He worried that despite his cloak and blanket Eled was growing chilled. As they made the final descent towards the water, he had to hold the young man up. Eled seemed barely conscious; he would slump, and then struggle to sit straighter for a few brief moments before beginning to collapse again.

Rothir glanced back. Yaret was not far behind, glancing back herself at the laden donkeys which plodded slowly after them at a distance. It seemed the donkeys were enjoying this journey no more than he was. Then Eled began to slump again, so that he had to concentrate on holding him upright.

It was Yaret who alerted him.

“Rothir. I think there’s something moving over there.”

He looked south, and cursed. “You’re right. It’s a group of people.”

“Yours?”

“No.” Even at this distance he could see the red of their tunics. The stonemen did not bother to disguise themselves. The group was too far away to count accurately; it might hold about a dozen. Stonemen tended to travel in squads of ten or more.

And that dark blotch in front of them… He knew without being able to see it clearly that it was a darkburn.

If we can see them, they can see us. But there was no other path that they could take down to the tarn. His only hope was that they themselves were better camouflaged both by the drabness of their gear and by the roughness of the land along their trail. They would not stand out against the hillside: but that was the best that could be said for their position.

They had just one last mile left to go. Yet it would surely be only a matter of time before they were observed. He thought they could not have been spotted yet, because the distant group was not moving quickly. The stonemen were on foot but would be marching much more speedily if they had already seen their prey.

He could not spur the horse on any faster. Even the donkeys had caught him up. His mind was moving more swiftly than his steed.

“They’re stonemen,” he told Yaret. In front of him he felt Eled stiffen. “But I don’t think that they have seen us yet.”

“What can we do?” she asked.

“From the cave it’ll be possible to hold them off: its narrow entrance means they can’t attack more than one or two at a time. Give me Poda’s right-hand saddle-bag.”

She unstrapped it and handed it over.

“Now you will ride to the rendezvous,” he told her. “Turn left at this mound and you’ll see where you need to follow the pass over the hills. Watch out for bogs in the moorland. You can’t miss the crags or the thumb. Find my troop and tell them we will be inside the Gyr cavern.”

Her eyes were wide. But after a second all she said was, “How will I know them? What are their names?”

“Tiburé is the leader. Parthenal. Arguril. Maeneb. Now go.”

Still she hesitated. “But how will they know that they can trust me?”

“Say… say the dwarf sent you.” She blinked in bafflement. “Go!”

Yaret kicked at Poda’s flanks to drive the mare ahead. She turned round only once to say,

“Look after the donkeys!” and added something in her own tongue which he assumed was meant for the donkeys themselves.

“Rothir,” said Eled, his voice full of doubt.

“Yes, I know.” He watched her disappear round the bend of the track. By the time he reached it himself, Poda was already moving ahead in a swift trot towards the pass, hooves scraping and rattling on the stones. He almost shouted to Yaret to be careful. But there was no time to be careful.

There was no time for anything. He urged Narba on and his horse began to scramble downhill, struggling to find a good footing on the stony ground.

“Can you stay on if I dismount and lead him?” asked Rothir.

“Yes,” said Eled. “Stonemen?”

“They haven’t seen us yet.” But of this he could no longer be sure. When he glanced that way, he thought that they had speeded up.

At least Eled was fully awake now, so that he stayed more or less securely on Narba’s back as Rothir led the horse down to the tarn’s still shores. Only one long, slow ripple crossed the water: the legacy of some unseen fish.

He guided Narba to the narrow valley cut into the hillside with its thin tumbling stream.

Up that stone crevice, two yards from the stream, was the entrance to the cavern. It was concealed until you came right up to it.

Narba seemed to recognise the place and walked up to the cave without needed to be persuaded. The two donkeys did not want to follow. They stopped by the stream, and let Rothir unload their packs, only to shy away when he tried to urge them towards the cavern.

Instead they kicked and frisked their way back down the valley to the cold waters of the tarn.

He took the packs inside. Then he helped Eled descend in a controlled fall from the horse before carrying him in his arms through the narrow entrance, into the echoing shadows. It occurred to him that he might be walking into a tomb.

He shrugged the thought away and settled Eled on a dry section of the earthen floor. Narba walked sedately in behind him; but by the time Rothir went out again to look for the donkeys, they had disappeared.

Probably gone after Yaret, he thought. Well, he wasn’t going to venture into open view to hunt for them; and he couldn’t keep them safe in any case. If the stonemen saw them, they might take them for wild donkeys… provided they hadn’t already marked them earlier on, walking behind the horses.

The stonemen might know about the Gyr cave: or they might not. But he had to assume the worst. And he had to be ready. He unsheathed his sword and stood it up against the wall inside the entrance.

“Sword,” said Eled, and although Rothir knew it could be of no practical use, he fetched his friend’s sword and laid it by his side. Then he propped Eled up to give him a drink of water.

“Now what?” breathed Eled.

“Now we wait.”

He had, he thought, perhaps half an hour at most before the stonemen reached him.

At least an hour for Yaret to find the other Riders of the Vonn. Probably more like two.

Another hour for them to return here.

That was assuming she got there at all. It was not an easy path through all the bogs and crags, especially for an inexperienced rider on a nervous horse. Once more he wondered if she might just decide to abandon the task; would she consider Poda a fair exchange for her two donkeys?

No. She wouldn’t leave the donkeys.

They are the only things to hold her to her word, he thought, with a sudden sinking of his heart. If they were here, she would return for them. But once the donkeys catch up with her, there is nothing to bring her back. No reason for her to find Parthenal and the others. She can go home, or go wherever she likes. I really needed to hold on to those donkeys…

Well, now it was too late.

Chapter 14

Poda huffed and snorted as she scrambled up the gravelly slope towards the head of the pass.

Yaret needed all her energy to cling on to the sweating horse. At one point she looked back briefly: she could no longer see the tarn beyond the swell of rising land, nor the distant group of stonemen; but the donkeys were following her, fifty yards behind. Even from here she could recognise the indignant set of Dolm’s ears.

She waved them away and gave all her attention to the track ahead. Although she had told Dolm and Nuolo to look after the two men, it seemed that the donkeys were intent on looking after her. Or just looking after themselves. Well, that was fine – so long as they stayed away from any stonemen.

Stonemen. The name filled her with bafflement and a vague dread. All she knew about them was in the form of grimly muttered rumours. She should have asked Rothir exactly who they were, how to elude then, and what they might do. She had asked very few questions out of courtesy, because Rothir’s business was not hers.

Except that now it was. Her heart was pounding as hard as Poda’s and she realised that as well as being frightened, she was angry. She was furious with herself for being afraid, because she hated being afraid.

And even greater than the unformed fear of stonemen was the over-riding dread that she would fail in this supposedly simple task. You can’t miss it, he had said. But of course she could miss it. She had no idea where she was. She was angry with Rothir for sending her away; for putting her into this position, where she might so easily fail.

Or where she might be tempted to escape – to abandon him and Eled to the stonemen and head home. She could gather the donkeys and just leave. The temptation was there.

But it was not strong. Rothir was trusting her to find his friends: and she did not want to fall short, because over the last few days she had come to trust Rothir. A tough, indomitable man, but also one who looked after Eled with painstaking care…

So where in this wilderness were those other friends of his? And what if she did find this crag he called a thumb? How could she stop his fellow riders from shooting her the minute they saw her galloping up on their lost comrade’s horse?

Galloping. That was a laugh. As the slope flattened, Poda chose her own combination of scrambling and cantering. It was hard enough for Yaret just to hang on to her back – and it was painful. She was already saddle-sore, and the soreness seemed to have suddenly increased four-fold. Her thighs hurt, her hips hurt, her back hurt, everything hurt. It had seemed irrelevant while Eled was hurting so much more. But now that she was alone she could not ignore it.

Poda slowed as they again ascended. She plodded upwards for half an hour or so, until they reached what must be the high point of the pass: a broad, rounded, grassy bridge between two hills. On either side the land fell away steeply. Yaret looked back over her shoulder: the donkeys were no longer visible.

But something else was. There was a movement down below her, on the west side of the pass.

Yaret looked for one second, and then said a quiet “Stop” to Poda, who instantly obeyed.

If her heart had been thumping before, it was racing now as she swung herself carefully out of the saddle. Holding the bridle, she led the horse down the eastern slope as quietly as she could. It was too treacherous to risk riding down. She guided Poda as stealthily as possible –

which she felt was not nearly stealthily enough – and as low down the slope as she dared, before the ground beneath her feet became too steep for safety.

Then she cautiously led Poda on ahead, afraid of slipping further down the slope yet equally afraid of climbing back up to the top. As it was, she still felt horribly exposed; anybody could be watching her from the eastern hills. Those jagged peaks seemed to gaze down at her, stern and cold and disapproving.

Despite never having seen one before, she knew it was a stoneman that she had glimpsed below the path. Thankfully he had been facing the opposite direction. He had been looking out for anyone approaching the high pass, not for somebody already on it.

He had been only about twenty yards away. The red of his tunic was the same as that of the distant group which Rothir had identified. He had carried a short sword, and an axe was slung from his belt. She had seen only the back of his head, which was shaved, and bore some kind of studded circlet. That was all that she had taken in; but it was enough.

Fearful of making any noise, she continued to lead Poda on what seemed an endless crawling track. Not until she was another mile away and hidden from the pass by rising ground did she dare to re-mount and return to the main path. Or what she hoped was the main path.

She must be going in the right direction at least, for a set of distant crags came suddenly into view, rising untidily into the sky. None of them looked like a thumb. Yet surely one of them must be? She urged Poda into a bone-shaking trot, and then, as the ground continued to level out, into a canter. Conscious of the thudding of Poda’s hooves, she prayed that nobody was close enough to hear them.

How long had she taken now? Close to an hour, surely; and still none of the crags seemed to be the right one. There were no trees growing up here – tall rocks and low, stunted bushes provided the only cover. A harsh east wind bit through her clothes and flattened the grass.

Abruptly the grass turned darker, longer: no longer grass at all, but reeds. As Poda began to splash and flounder, Yaret pulled her up in alarm. Although the water was only an inch deep, below it she could feel Poda’s effort as she detached her hooves from sucking mud.

Again Yaret dismounted. She retreated squelchingly, leading the horse back to dryer land, trying to avoid the reeds and jewel-bright moss of the bog. Plenty of star-moss here, she noted dismally, now that she had no time to gather it. Following the dry ground meant a wide detour to the left, in the lee of the highest hill, the crags slowly turning to present new faces to her.

She guided Poda past the reeds, testing the path constantly. At last she looked up with a weary sigh: and saw the thumb. From this angle it was obvious, nail and all, pointing straight up at the clouds. It was about sixty feet high.

But it was still some distance away, and she dared not ride on this uneven ground. Instead she ran, pulling Poda alongside her. At times they pulled each other.

It must be well over an hour by now, she thought, as the thumb loomed higher and closer.

It seemed to perch on the edge of a cliff; below it was a plain patched with different greens that stretched away for many miles, and far beyond that a mountain range that she had never seen before, blue and purple and streaked with distant rain. Dark clouds were filling the sky.

She was at the rendezvous – and she was alone. There was no-one here.

Panting and breathless, she trudged the last few yards up to the thumb: a huge stone signal to nobody. Despair filled her like an ache. She was too late. Rothir and Eled had been depending on her to fetch help. And she had failed. This land was empty of people and of hope. What should she do now?

A man stepped out from behind the thumb, although surely there was no space there for him to have hidden himself. Tall and stern of face, he gripped a long sword as if he was strongly tempted to use it.

“Where did you get that horse?” he demanded.

She stared at his clothes, realising that in style and colour they were like Rothir’s.

“Which one are you?” she asked him, still breathless. “Are you Tiburé?”

“Tiburé? Hardly.” He looked her up and down, his eyes narrowing in a way that made her wonder if he had in those few seconds seen straight through her male mode. She felt surreptitiously for her knife. Just because Rothir seemed a decent man did not mean that all his friends would be.

“Rothir sent me,” she said. She saw no belief in his cold imperious face, and added urgently, “He said to tell you that the dwarf sent me. Which one are you?”

His expression changed. “Parthenal. Where is he? What’s happened?”

“He’s with Eled in the cavern by the Gyr tarn. He said you’d know it. Eled’s badly injured. Broken leg, head wound. Rothir is unhurt but there was a troop of stonemen coming when I left. He sent me to find you.”

“How many stonemen? How far away?” This was another speaker who had stepped out from behind the thumb of rock: one who was older, with greying hair, not as tall nor as well-built as Parthenal. Yaret realised with a faint shock that this one was a female in male clothing, although not too bothered about maintaining the voice or manner of male mode.

Yaret herself made sure to keep her voice low as she answered.

“There were maybe ten or twelve of them. I don’t know if they saw us, but they were little more than a mile away and heading for the tarn. And I saw one lone stoneman on the pass, high up on the west side. I think he was guarding it. He was looking the other way. But it’s taken me too long to get here. You need to go and help them.”

With the last two words her voice began to shake. She clamped her mouth closed.

Again as if by magic, two more of them appeared: a younger man and woman, leading a string of horses. Only when Yaret stepped aside did she see the hidden dip they had emerged from – a shielded hollow scooped out of the cliff behind the crag, high above the plain.

With a few terse words in their own language, all four mounted their horses. All carried long swords and bows, and probably other, less conspicuous weapons. Parthenal was already beginning to spur his horse away when the grey-haired woman turned in the saddle and spoke to Yaret. She must be Tiburé, the leader, for she was the eldest and had an air of command.

“You can stay here if you wish.”

“I don’t wish,” said Yaret, indignant. She did not intend to abandon Eled and Rothir at this point. Swinging herself up onto Poda’s back she winced and set herself to endure the saddle-soreness once again.

Poda was still reasonably fresh, having walked so much of the way up here. She needed to be, for the troop set off much faster than Yaret had dared ride on this terrain. They skirted the bog surefootedly and then rode at a canter towards the pass. But they did not take the high path where Yaret had seen the stoneman. Instead they dipped down to the east, picking a lower route across a stony slope.

Poda scrambled behind them, seeming to be comfortable following horses that were familiar to her. Yaret did not need to try to steer her. Now and then she risked a look around, hoping to see her donkeys, but the craggy hills seemed bare of any life apart from a single distant antelope.

They descended into a narrow, steep-sided valley where they had to ride in single file alongside a leaping stream. This wound down and round small hillocks until Yaret had lost all sense of direction. The constant sound of the stream overlaid the occasional mutterings of the riders. They moved quietly, but even faster than she had realised: it was a shock to catch a sudden glimpse of the iron-grey tarn ahead.

The valley opened out on to its pebbly shores. Before they emerged into the open, the riders stopped: the two women took up their bows, and the two men unsheathed their swords.

Tiburé looked at Yaret.

“Stay here if you wish,” she said again, and again Yaret replied, “I don’t wish,” though with less confidence this time. Unclipping her own hunting bow from the saddle she gripped it tightly in her hand. She had never used it to shoot men, and did not particularly want to start now. Her stomach clenched as the rider nodded and led the way out of the valley to the tarn.

Yaret threw her quiver across her back and then spurred Poda after the others. Although she now felt horribly afraid of what might lie ahead, her worst fear was for Rothir and Eled.

What if she had indeed been too late, and both of them now lay dead inside the cave? It would be her fault. She did not think that she could bear it.

There was no life to be seen as they cantered along the edge of the dark water. But as they approached a fissure in the hillside, the sound of shouting became abruptly audible. It was almost a relief.

She rounded the corner behind the others and saw the group of men – seven or eight of them, all with studded circlets round their heads. Then there was no time to think about anything other than trying to stay on Poda at the same time as drawing her bow. There was not even time to aim properly: the nearest stoneman was turning towards them, shouting as he charged, raising a curved sword in one hand and an axe in the other.

He staggered and then fell with an arrow in his chest before Yaret could release her own arrow. The younger woman was already restringing her bow.

And then Parthenal, on horseback, was swinging his sword at the remaining men, striking down the nearest with swift and ruthless skill. The man toppled over with his head almost detached from his body. At the same time an axe flew through the air, narrowly missing Poda. Yaret took quick aim and fired at the thrower. Her arrow landed in the man’s shoulder an instant before Parthenal cut him down too.

The remaining stonemen rallied and charged again: but they were also under attack from the other side. For Rothir leapt seemingly straight out of the hill, blood-streaked sword in hand, and laid about him with grim efficiency. It was immediately clear that his skill with a sword, like Parthenal’s, was greater than the stonemen’s. They swung their swords and axes with indiscriminate clumsiness as if relying simply on their strength of numbers.

But their numbers were becoming fewer. There was no more shouting. The only sounds were grunts and wordless cries: the twang of bowstrings and the hiss and grating crash of swords. The younger woman had dropped her bow and was using a long knife: another stoneman staggered and collapsed as she pulled it from his chest.

Yaret released several more arrows without being able to tell if they made any difference.

Although three more stonemen fell, she doubted if any of them were due to her. Now there were only two wounded stonemen left on their feet.

“Give yourselves up,” commanded Parthenal. The two panting, bloodstained stonemen looked at each other. A second later, to Yaret’s horror, they ran onto each other’s outstretched swords. One of them was still alive as he toppled over, blood bubbling from his mouth, hands groping at the blade that pierced his body.

With a swift downward stroke Rothir finished him off. Then he let his sword fall clattering to the ground and leaned back against the rocky wall, as if in weariness and disgust at what he had just done.

Chapter 15

“You didn’t have to kill him. We could have kept him for questioning,” said Tiburé severely.

“You know how that’s always gone before,” answered Rothir in a husky growl, sounding spent. He bowed over in exhaustion, hands on his knees.

“It’s still worth trying to get information out of them.”

“He would have died in any case,” murmured the other, younger woman.

Yaret unobtrusively said Oveyn for the dead stonemen, fleetingly touching her forehead and barely mouthing the words. It was not unobtrusive enough. The grey-haired Tiburé gave her a mistrustful look.

Rothir, straightening up, looked at her also, with a brief nod of acknowledgment.

“I’m glad you made it,” he said gravely.

Yaret nodded back. She too was very glad to have arrived in time, but her stomach seemed to have tied itself into a tight knot and her throat had closed up.

She had seen dead men before. She had never seen one deliberately killed. Across the dead stonemen’s red tunics a darker red was spreading. Their faces, streaked with daubs of grey paint, were now doubly streaked in blood.

These were only human beings, she thought, not made of stone at all, but flesh and skin, their breath extinguished in an instant. The only things of stone about them were the ones studding the circlets round their heads.

Yet when she lowered her eyes to the stoneman lying nearest to her feet, it was not a circlet that he wore. There was no band of cloth or metal: only stones. They must be glued somehow to his scalp.

“Anyone hurt?” said Tiburé briskly. “Arguril, your hand is bleeding.”

“It’s just a small cut,” said the youngest man.

“Rothir, how much of that blood on you is yours?”

“Some. Not too much,” said Rothir. “And Eled is safe inside the cave. He was untouched.”

Tiburé looked around. “Can we assume the stonemen are all dead? None ran off to get reinforcements?”

“Stonemen don’t run off,” said Rothir heavily. “It was a troop of twelve, led by a darkburn, but they split up before they arrived at the tarn. I killed four men at the entrance to the cave. The others didn’t get here till a short while ago: they’d been distracted by the donkeys.”

“What donkeys?”

“Oh,” said Yaret, “are they all right?”

“I have no idea.” Wiping his forehead on his bloodied sleeve, Rothir bent stiffly to pick up his equally bloodstained sword. “All I know is that as the stonemen came around the tarn, your donkeys set up a mighty braying from the far end of it. Most of the stonemen set off to pursue them. They probably thought that we were with them: and the donkeys must have led them a fair dance, because it took a long while before they came back here to find their fellows dead.”

“What happened to the darkburn?” Tiburé asked.

Rothir shrugged. “I didn’t even need to fight it. It ran straight past me and up the track.”

He gestured to the far end of the fissure, which narrowed to a steep upward path leading to higher rocks above. “Perhaps it got confused by the cave or the shadows. I don’t know. I didn’t have the chance to check: the stonemen followed right behind it.”

“I’ll go and have a look for it now,” said Arguril eagerly, and he strode up the fissure and began to nimbly climb the steep path.

“Be careful,” Parthenal called after him. Arguril waved a casual hand in answer.

Tiburé was counting corpses. “There are eleven dead men here. Maeneb? What do you think – is there a twelfth man nearby?”

She was addressing the younger woman, who to Yaret’s bemusement did not look down at the bodies scattered around her feet. Instead she turned her face upward. Her solemn features were perfectly symmetrical, giving her the appearance of an idealised yet emotionless statue as she stood there with her eyes half closed, seemingly listening to the sky. The other riders waited, expectant, until at last she shook her head and muttered something in their language.

“Maeneb thinks that at least one stoneman may be still at large,” said Rothir, glancing at Yaret; evidently he was translating into Standard for her benefit. “Did you see any others?”

“I saw a watchman just below the pass on my way up,” said Yaret. “If he’s lying dead here, I might know him.”

“How?” said Parthenal sharply.

“By the pattern of studs around his head. Two very close together behind his left ear, and none behind his right.” She made herself bend down to examine the bloody head of the last stoneman to die. “Not this man. Nor that one.”

As she moved over to inspect the next few corpses, she had to push down a surge of revulsion. It was not just the fact that these men were so newly dead: there was something about the studs stuck to their scalps that turned her stomach. Each was a worked and rounded stone. The skin around them looked so sore and red that it was almost as if the stones had been driven straight into the flesh… but that surely was not possible.

“Not these ones either,” she said, trying to ignore the nausea that was swelling in her throat.

“There are more over by the cave,” said Rothir. The bodies were tumbled just inside the narrow entrance; he and Parthenal pulled them out for her to examine.

“No. None of these. The watchman is not here.”

“Are you sure?” demanded Parthenal.

“Yes.” She swallowed. “Those stones around their heads. They look as if they’re…”

“Sharpened, and drilled through the skull,” said Parthenal.

Yaret stared up at the tall man, appalled. “But why? And how could anyone survive that?”

“They don’t all survive,” said Rothir. “For those that do, that’s what makes them stonemen. In their own minds they become invincible. As cold and unbreakable as stone. It appears to be a rite of passage.”

“But who would endure that? What must it do to them? The pain! And the infection, and the damage. Who would want to – to promote such an idea?”

“You may well ask,” said Rothir grimly.

“They drug themselves for infection and the pain,” said Parthenal. “They seem to be impervious to pain when fighting too. It’s apparently a mark of rank and courage for them to endure as many stones as possible.”

Yaret looked down at the dead men and away again. Courage? Why waste courage on such pointless agony?

“Are you all right?” said Rothir tersely. It was clear he would have no patience with any squeamishness.

“Yes. None of these men have the same pattern of stones as the watchman that I saw.”

“Very well. There’s not much that we can do about him,” said Tiburé in her no-nonsense manner. “He’ll be far away by now. But I doubt if he’ll be able to find his company and bring reinforcements back here quickly. Let me see Eled. Meanwhile, get these bodies out of sight.”

They began to drag the corpses further up the alley, so that no sign of them was visible from the tarn. The bodies left long trails of blood. Yaret helped the younger woman, Maeneb, move the last of them, the man who had impaled himself upon his comrade’s sword. Maeneb

dropped him just before they reached the pile of bodies, her revulsion seemingly even greater than Yaret’s own.

Yaret said Oveyn again, underneath her breath, because once did not seem to be enough.

Maeneb looked at her aloofly. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” Yaret amended this, because it was not nothing. In some circumstances it was everything. “It’s just something we say after a death.”

“Even an enemy’s death?”

“Any death.” But particularly for a death that you had caused, thought Yaret. It was an acknowledgement if not quite a plea for pardon.

Arguril came striding back down the slope at the end of the alley. At Parthenal’s enquiring look, he shook his head.

“I could see the darkburn’s trail for a little while,” he reported, “but then it disappeared as it crossed the higher ground. And there’s no scent of it that I can follow. It’s headed out into the wild.”

“Very well. Can you take the horses to the tarn to drink?”

The younger man began to gather the horses, with Rothir’s help, and led them down towards the tarn. Yaret followed, guiding Poda to the water’s edge.

There she gazed around in the forlorn hope that she might catch a glimpse of distant donkeys. The tarn looked like a great bronze mirror; the falling sun painted amber fires across the bleak hills to the south.

But they are cold fires, she thought, and this is a cold world. Some bird circled way up overhead: apart from that, there was no life visible beyond the noisily drinking horses. She scanned the slopes again, in vain, for donkeys. The sickness in her throat increased, and she turned to stroke the mare, murmuring words in Bandiran.

Seeing Rothir glance at her, she said, “I am thanking Poda. It was she who fulfilled the task, not me.”

“It was both of you, I think,” said Rothir. “You did well. Don’t worry too much about your donkeys. I expect they will look after themselves.”

“Yes. If they’re alive.” She found that it hurt to speak.

“Those donkeys saved my life most probably, and Eled’s too, by drawing away so many of the stonemen for so long. I am grateful to them.”

Yaret nodded and bit her lip.

“I can only tell you that when the second group of stonemen arrived at the cave,” said Rothir, seeming to pick his words with care, “there was no blood to be seen on their weapons or their clothes.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s something.”

“Arguril? Give the horses another minute to drink, and then we need to get back out of sight.”

So after a last long look for the donkeys she turned back into the stone alley, and entered the cave.

It was much bigger than she had expected: the narrow opening led into a high, vaulted space. Even the horses – once they had been persuaded to squeeze in through the entrance –

had ample room to wander round inside. As her eyes adapted to the dim light she saw that the cavern appeared to be part natural, part worked by tools. It was cool but the floor was largely dry.

Well beyond the entrance, in the shadows and lit by a pair of candles, Eled lay, with Tiburé kneeling down beside him to inspect his injuries. Yaret crouched by his other side and touched his hand.

“Eled. How do you feel?”

“Weary,” he said with a half-smile. “Although Rothir was the one doing all the work.” His sword lay beside him, untouched and unbloodied.

“You will do the same for him some time,” said Yaret.

“I hope not,” said Rothir, looking down at them. “I’d prefer not to be in this situation again.”

“I’ll give you a little ethlon,” said Tiburé. “Only a few drops, mind. But it will be enough to quell the pain and make you more comfortable.”

Holding a small vial to Eled’s lips, she trickled a minute amount of a brown liquid into his mouth. It must have acted as a stimulant as well as a painkiller: for within a few seconds, his tense face relaxed yet paradoxically became less sleepy. Once again he looked suddenly much younger.

“Rest now, Eled,” said Tiburé. “We will take counsel outside the cave. We’ll let you know what we decide.” She stood up and looked at Yaret. “You may stay here with Eled.” It was not a suggestion but a command.

“Yaret should join our counsel,” Rothir told her.

Tiburé, frowning, put a question to him in their own language.

He answered her in Standard. “It was Yaret who found Eled after he fell from his horse, by the Darkburn river head, and looked after him for several days before I got there. Eled had been pursued by a darkburn of a new sort.”

“What sort?”

“Ask Yaret,” said Rothir shortly, “but not in Vonnish.” He turned away, looking very tired. Parthenal put a hand on his shoulder, speaking gently in their tongue.

“Yes, I’m fine,” said Rothir, as the two men left the cave together.

Tiburé raised an eyebrow at Yaret. “Come, then,” she said brusquely, so Yaret patted Eled’s arm and followed her out into the daylight. Even though twilight was imminent, it seemed momentarily dazzling after the deep gloom of the cave.

Tiburé sat on a rock, an austere, authoritative presence; the others stood, with Maeneb some way apart from the others. It was a strange counsel with the bodies of their slaughtered enemies lying so close and being ignored by all.

When Tiburé questioned Rothir in Vonnish, he answered in Standard – presumably for Yaret’s benefit. Briefly he told them how he had found Eled and Yaret near the Darkburn forest and how together they had cared for Eled until the camp had been attacked at night.

She noted that he referred to her only by her name, not mentioning her gender. Yet she was sure that he knew. He was leaving it up to her to say – or not. At the end of his account he added, “Stick to Standard: Yaret does not talk Vonnish.”

“Then we’ll save it for our secrets,” said Parthenal, with a twist of his mouth. Standing next to Rothir, he was the taller of the two men; not quite so broad, but darker and more handsome. Indeed, he was very good-looking: as his assessing gaze moved up and down Yaret, she again felt that he had seen straight past the crooked nose and journeyman’s clothing. She had experienced that sort of look before, but only when she’d been in female dress back home.

“You had better introduce yourself, Yaret, and tell us your account,” said Tiburé without a smile. Yaret wondered if the grey-haired woman was always this dry and stern.

“I am Yaretkoro Thuleikand, a weaver and pedlar of cloth from Obandiro in the north,”

she said. Then, since the presence of the two women seemed to make it safe, she added,

“daughter of Hath, grand-daughter of Thuli.” And she bowed as gracefully and formally as she could manage, first to Tiburé, and then more generally to the others. “I am glad to have been of use.”

“Of great use,” put in Rothir, “as should already be plain.” But Yaret observed without looking at him that Parthenal’s gaze had chilled.

“Rothir guessed my gender very quickly,” she explained, “but was wise enough to say nothing, for which I am grateful. It was easier for Eled to think me male.”

Then she described her first sighting of the riderless horse and the finding of Eled. They listened in grave silence to her description of the creeping darkburn she had seen down by the river. As before, she found it difficult to describe something she had seen so briefly, yet had felt so strongly.

“Burning inside?” queried Tiburé with a frown.

“Red, like an ember.” Yaret could tell that they were sceptical.

“We have come across nothing like that,” said Arguril, digging impatiently at the ground with his sword. “A crawling darkburn?”

“Yet Eled said the same of it. And I saw its trail,” Rothir answered.

“And when did Rothir find you?” Parthenal asked her.

“On the fourth day,” said Yaret. “I made camp and tended to Eled in a sheltered opening in the rocks near where he fell. He regained some consciousness on the first night but was not lucid for a day or two. Since then he has remained largely as you see him now: he cannot maintain detailed thought or even stay awake for very long. The head injury must be severe. I also feared infection of his leg, and I still fear that the enforced travel of the last few days will have inflamed it.”

Tiburé was staring at her with a faint frown. “Why did you do all this?”

Yaret was silent. Surely it was obvious that she had had no choice?

“What am I supposed to say?” she said at last. “Because I am some sort of hero? That is not true. What else could I do? He needed help, and I was there.”

“Well, we all owe you our gratitude.”

Yaret bowed again. “I take your thanks,” she said, although she could still sense Parthenal’s suspicion of her.

“So, what next?” asked Tiburé of the group in general. “Do we follow the stoneman sentry, and hope to intercept him? Do we keep looking for the darkburn that ran off? Do we just leave now? And if we do, where can we take Eled to be cared for and be safe?”

Each began to speak in turn; Maeneb entirely in Vonnish, and Parthenal and Arguril in a mixture of Vonnish and Standard.

Yaret watched them as they spoke. Arguril was proud, frowning and heated: Parthenal cooler and more measured. Maeneb was more detached still, speaking without looking at anybody and sounding as if she plucked words out of the air at random. As far as Yaret could discern, Arguril was eager to pursue one of other of their enemies, while Parthenal wanted to ensure Eled’s well-being above all else. Where they could carry him to seemed to be a matter of debate.

Only Rothir spoke entirely in Standard. “We might convey him to a village. Go east to Herval: perhaps they would take him in. But then what? What if Herval were attacked? In any case, how could we just leave Eled there, not knowing when he might recover? No; my vote is for Farwithiel. There we know he would be safe.”

“Only if the Farwth allows us back there, and lets us stay,” countered Tiburé in a tone of doubt.

“And it’s a long way to back-track,” said Parthenal. “At this rate it could take us another month before we can return to–” He stopped for a moment before resuming his argument in Vonnish.

“I’ll go back inside the cave if it’s easier,” offered Yaret.

“You understand that we cannot fully trust you,” said Parthenal, still cool.

“Of course. I cannot fully trust you either,” said Yaret equably, turning to depart.

“This is unnecessary,” said Rothir with some impatience. “Yaret has gone out of her way to keep Eled alive for over a week now. We cannot doubt her goodwill. But I expect she would like to go home and has no further interest in our doings or our destination.”

“I certainly ought to go home,” she agreed.

“And tell no tales there?” demanded Parthenal sardonically.

Yaret shrugged. “I am not given to telling tales. If you wish me to say nothing on my return home, I will say nothing.”

“And what will you tell your people?”

“I got lost. A donkey fell down a hole. I fell in love in Moreva. I got ill at Deloran and had to stay there for an extra week.”

“That wouldn’t work,” said Rothir. “Tell them what you told me of Deloran.”

“What?” said Tiburé sharply. “Deloran, the farmstead a dozen miles from the Darkburn head? Bruilde’s place?”

“Yes. You know it too, then?” asked Yaret. “Just over a week ago, when I called there, it was deserted. The whole place was burnt out. A recent burning: its stones were warm.”

“What happened to its people? Did you discover that?” asked Tiburé with fierce urgency.

Yaret saw that their faces were now turned to her with anxiety – and in Maeneb’s case, possibly with horror.

“I assume they got away,” she said. “The carts were gone as well as all the animals. They didn’t take many of their possessions. But I saw no evidence that anyone had died.”

“Could you tell what caused the fire? Where it started?” Parthenal demanded.

She shook her head slowly. That had worried her, until other more immediate worries had pushed it right out of her head. Now she recalled the scene.

“The outbuildings were burnt as thoroughly as the house,” she said. “The area around Deloran was unharmed, so it was no wildfire. The flames could perhaps have leapt from one building to another on a high wind.”

“Not without burning the woods around as well,” said Tiburé. “The look-out platform in the cedar tree? Was that burnt?”

“I do not know the look-out,” she said, startled. But there was much about Bruilde that she had not known. She remembered her grandfather’s letter, still sealed and buried deep in her pack inside the cavern. Although that was private, she could perhaps look at it now. Grandda would not mind in the circumstances.

“What about elsewhere? Was there anything unusual?”

“I heard rumours of fire and war,” she said a little hesitantly, “on my journey south, at Moreva and elsewhere. And I found that things in some places were… not quite as normal.”

“Explain,” said Tiburé severely.

“Please,” added Rothir, which earned him a half-amused look from Parthenal.

“Just let me get my map and order book,” said Yaret. She went into the cave to retrieve them from her pack, and tucked the letter to Bruilde into her pocket.

Back in the dimming daylight, she spread the map open on a flat rock and pointed out her route. She had copied it from Grandda’s old worn map, adding her own notes and observations.

“Here I started, at Obandiro.”

“Never heard of it. I thought there was nothing there,” said Parthenal, before Tiburé shushed him.

“Here are the towns and villages I passed through on my way to Outer Kelvha. At Moreva I found people to be edgy and anxious. There was a shortage of supplies; Kelvha had been buying them up. The same at Gorod. Nobody knew quite why, although I heard tales of fighting on the borders. There is always something going on in the Kelvhan borderlands, but

this time it seemed worse than normal; yet there was a lack of definite news.” She thought for a moment. “I did not see the usual number of Kelvhan traders.”

“What do the Kelvhans trade there?” asked Arguril.

“Leather-work: saddlery chiefly. Horses, but not their best ones. Flashy war-gear –

ornamental breastplates and badges and whatnot that would be useless in an actual battle.”

“You don’t like them,” said Parthenal, half amused again.

“I don’t like what they sell,” she said. “They keep all the most serviceable stuff and trade what’s inferior. I think they see the Outer Kelvhans as lesser people than themselves.”

“Did you speak to any Kelvhans on this journey?”

Yaret shook her head.

“You said your grandmother is from Ioben, in Outer Kelvha,” Rothir said. “Do you know the language?”

“I know my grandmother’s language, Ioben, which is similar to our own. I can get by in Kelvhan. I don’t speak it well.”

Parthenal said in fluent Kelvhan, “But you speak it just well enough to trade, perhaps.”

“Yes,” answered Yaret, also in Kelvhan. “And order food, and talk about the weather. I find their tenses difficult.”

“They are complicated,” said Rothir, in Standard. “Where else did you go?”

Yaret consulted her order book, reminding herself of where she had heard what. Only vague tales for the most part; they sounded like nothing in the retelling. She told them anyway, in case they meant more to the Riders than they did to her.

“In the Gostard Inn I heard rumours of a burning.” She recounted her visit there and the story spread so eagerly by the unpleasant man. “He blamed a wizard called Liol,” she added.

“Liol?” repeated Parthenal, and laughed. Rothir looked indignant.

“That seems unlikely,” said Tiburé, inscrutable.

“He did not know what he was talking about,” said Maeneb, very quietly.

“So the innkeeper told him. But I heard more rumours of burnt villages elsewhere, before I got to Deloran and found it razed. All in all, there was a general sense of wariness and fear: of drawing in of horns, and stocking up, and hunkering down, and readiness for war.”

“War against who?” said Rothir.

Yaret shrugged. “Unclear. Kelvha got mentioned, but perhaps purely because they are the most warlike people around those parts.” She folded up the map and put it back inside her order book.

“You travel a wide range,” said Tiburé. “Why is that?”

“I suppose I do. But my grandfather liked to travel, and selling his cloth gave him a good excuse. Once he became unfit I just kept following his route. I enjoy travelling too.”

“Why?”

Yaret considered. “I like the solitude. Only it is never solitude, walking the land.”

“What about the towns?”

“I have never seen one I prefer to Obandiro,” she said. Parthenal laughed.

“You never meet with trouble?” Maeneb asked her. “Being female, I mean, even if you are disguised?”

“We call it not disguise, but male mode. There are some who choose it permanently in Obandiro. When I am travelling it usually keeps me safe enough. I don’t have to maintain it the whole time, because there are several on the route who have become friends and know me; like Bruilde.” She put her hand inside her pocket and felt the folded sheets of paper.

What would Grandda want her to do? Coming to a quick decision, she pulled the letter out.

“My grandfather wrote me a letter every year to give to Bruilde,” she said. “He knew her from a long time ago. And she would send back a reply. I never read any of the letters,

although he would tell me bits out of them. Gossip, mostly, little anecdotes. So I expect this one is much the same. I will read it out and see.”

“How did he know her?” Tiburé asked.

“Through trying to sell her a nice plaid cloak, I expect.” Yaret carefully broke the seal and unfolded the sheets. It gave her a small wrench of the heart to see her grandfather’s familiar slanting handwriting. It was almost as if she had him next to her, tall and smiling; stooping now – always leaning on a stick – and saying the words along with her as she read aloud.

“ ‘My dear Bruilde,

‘How time goes on! I wonder sometimes on these cold spring mornings how many more letters I will write to you; how many more winters my old bones will carry me through. Ah, but we were young once, weren’t we? And I remember as if it were last week that summer evening with the swallows darting above us so wild and free – do you remember too? With the scent of cut grass sweet in the air, when I carried you to the hay-barn and we–’ Oh,” said Yaret, staring at the letter in her hands. “Oh my. I had no idea.”

Grandda had vanished from beside her. The others waited, silent, until Tiburé said dryly,

“It seems he knew Bruilde very well.”

“Yes… Better than I thought.” Some re-ordering of her assumptions would be necessary.

Later on. She looked down at the letter again, glad now that Grandda was not here beside her after all.

“I think I’d better skip that bit.” She turned the page. “But here is the news, such as it is.

‘The apple harvest was good this year and our roots practically leapt out of the ground, so our cellar will be well-stocked. Just as well, as trade has thinned from the west, whence tales come with every traveller of blight and fire. I have had this story from a pair of stockmen and three shepherds hunting for work as well as various pedlars of small goods. Of course they want to think it’s more than ordinary disaster. Yet the blight is nothing out of the ordinary, I think, it sounds like common root rot after all their rain.

‘But the fire… now that is something else, Bruilde. Something unexplained, and it makes me very uneasy. Even in a stormy season, lightning does not strike three, four, five times and hit a homestead or a forthouse every time. Not many survivors seem to have been left; and those that did escape tell garbled tales. The places were fired by black monsters, they say, by stinking ghouls. Make of that what you will.’”

“Darkburns,” muttered Arguril. Tiburé gave him a look and he fell silent.

“ ‘Thuli has another view of all this,’ ” read Yaret, before raising her head to explain,

“Thuli is my grandmother. I wonder if she – well, anyway.” She bent to read again.

“ ‘According to her, it is only to be expected because of the lack of reverence that people have nowadays for the hidden ones and the old ways. Obandiro, of course, being the exception; so we shall never suffer from these blights. Thuli does enough obeisance to protect the whole town – well, our side of it at least. She is always putting food out for them. When I tell her it’s a pointless task – because the hidden ones don’t eat – she says that they appreciate the act. Thuli is a sensible woman in so many ways, yet quite irrational about this.’ ”

“Hidden ones?” asked Tiburé.

“Oh,” said Yaret, who was pondering her grandparents’ relationship, “you know. Lins and hobs and woodwones. My grandmother takes them very seriously.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” said Arguril.

“That’s because you don’t have a grandmother,” Parthenal told him.

“But what are they?”

“Your territory, I think, Maeneb,” said Tiburé.

“Spirits of the land,” said Maeneb in a clear, silvery voice. She seemed distracted, as if she were listening for something else. “Spirits of water, trees, and earth. They exist in many legends. People give them gifts and honour them. I have never seen one.”

“Well, you wouldn’t,” Yaret said. “They’re hidden. Look at them and they disappear.”

“I have never felt one either,” added Maeneb.

“You believe in them,” Rothir said to Yaret, his face grave while Parthenal’s was still amused.

“I… don’t disbelieve. Certainly I would never say aloud that lins don’t exist.”

“In case they hear you?”

“Quite.”

Tiburé sighed. “Well, whether they exist or not, I think we can dismiss them as the cause of burnt-out homesteads. What else does your letter say?”

Yaret turned to the last page. “ ‘I wish you would tell me what you think about all this, Bruilde. Have you heard such stories in your own parts? Could it have anything to do with the one you call ignoble? It is all a long way from you, I know, and probably has no relevance.

‘I also am too far away from you. I wish I could see you. I am keeping well enough, apart from the old bones, and am well looked after. Thuli is a good wife – at least she often tells me so – but I miss your wickedness, Bruilde. I miss your…’ ” She let the hand holding the letter fall. “He never intended me to see this. Read it yourself if you wish.”

Tiburé took the letter from her. After a moment she said, “You can hear this bit. ‘I know you will take care of Yaret, as you always do, and I think you can trust her with more information than you have in the past. She has led a sheltered life but her judgement is good….’ And then he writes his farewells. He signs the letter, Ilo. What is his full name?”

“Ilodi Juleikend.”

The older woman shook her head. “Bruilde never mentioned him. Not by that name, at least.”

A sheltered life, thought Yaret. Really? Sheltered from what – apart from her grandfather’s secrets? She felt a spike of disappointment and resentment towards the old man who had cared for her so well all her life, and had concealed so much. Some of the resentment was on her grandmother’s behalf. She thought of the solid, clever and commanding but otherwise unknowable figure of Bruilde. Then she broke her usual rule and asked a question.

“How do you know Bruilde?”

Rothir answered. “She is one of us.”

“Bruilde? One of the Vonn?” Although Yaret was startled into the second question, she did not really expect any further explanation.

Nor did she get one. Tiburé, directing a look of reprimand at Rothir, said sternly,

“Enough of gossip. We need to decide on what to do with Eled. Where do we take him?

Where do we go next?”

Chapter 16

“Home would take too long. Eled would never make it,” said Rothir decisively. “I vote for Farwithiel.”

“Farwithiel,” said Maeneb, nodding.

“You think the Farwth will allow it?” Tiburé asked her.

“I don’t know. But it’s worth a try.”

“I vote for Herval,” said Arguril.

“Parthenal?”

The tall man was silent. “There is no good answer,” he replied at last. “But if the Farwth will permit it, Farwithiel is the safest place for Eled.”

“It’s not where we need to be,” said Arguril impatiently.

Tiburé cut in. “We have voted for Farwithiel. We shall set out at first light tomorrow. But the journey there does not need all of us.”

“In that case,” said Arguril, “I offer to go back home as messenger.”

“I will bear that in mind. However, to begin with, we shall all travel together. Yaretkoro: you had better accompany us on the first part of our journey. Judging by your map, you will able to turn northward after two or three days and cut across country to your own town. But initially you will be safer with us than travelling alone.”

Yaret bowed.

“Really?” said Rothir. “Safer?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“What would you have voted for, Tiburé?” Arguril asked her.

“That is irrelevant. Let’s eat now, and rest while we can.” Tiburé looked up at the dimming sky. “Night will fall soon.”

“And tomorrow the stonemen will come,” said Maeneb.

They retreated into the cave. Arguril busied himself in setting out food; bread and salted meat and fibrous dried fruit. Yaret contributed some of her own supplies, but had to force herself to eat. Concern for her two donkeys gnawed at her, along with wonder and revulsion every time she thought about the stonemen.

And as for her grandfather… She did not think she was naïve. With adulthood had come the awareness that her grandparents must have some secret elements to their lives. She had just not expected this particular secret.

And he thought she’d had a sheltered life! Yaret tried to consider this objectively.

Although she saw herself as adventurous, it was true she’d never ventured very far from her grandfather’s route.

All the same, she’d had to learn to look after herself. If she was sheltered – from stonemen, from war, from the woes of the world – then it was because Obandiro was sheltered. Was that a bad thing?

Well, let it be. She tried to put her grandfather out of her head, and listened to the others talking.

They spoke quietly in Vonnish, their voices echoing around the space. Maeneb said little and sat back from the others. Rothir attended to Eled, who was propped up against the cave wall, feeding him bread and talking to him in a deep, reassuring murmur. Eled still looked exhausted: barely awake enough to eat, let alone reply.

Of the other three, Arguril seemed the most voluble – he was keen to make his voice heard, she thought, although he deferred to his elders. Parthenal and Tiburé seemed to speak as equals. Some of the time she had the feeling that they were discussing her.

But she had no proof of that. When odd words that she knew leapt out from their conversation, they were chiefly place names. Kelvha was mentioned, and a place, or thing, called Thield. That recurred several times. Huldarion was another word that sprung out as being a likely name; there was something in the way they said it, with respect and even awe, that marked it out to her.

Other words caught her attention too. The Vonnish word for bread, she realised as they offered it around, was not so different from the Standard, except that the consonant was softer and the vowel had slipped and become long and low. As the waterskins were passed from hand to hand she discovered that the same applied to the Vonnish word for water – and when they talked about the drowsing Eled, she thought she recognised the words for sick and sleep.

It seemed to her that Vonnish might be a dialect or relative of Standard rather than an entirely separate language.

If so, however, it was not a dialect that she could easily understand. The words that echoed gently round the cave for the most part meant no more to her than the wistful chatterings of the Darkburn. She remembered those bubbling waters, the grasses and dead leaves at its verge… the leaning trees, a cage of branches… an insect clutching at a stem, climbing, climbing… and her head rolled forward, waking her with a start.

She opened her eyes, to see Tiburé looking at her with a faint, thin smile.

“Lie down before you fall over,” she advised; so Yaret did.

She awoke to grey light and movement around her. The Riders were getting ready to leave. Despite the cloak that someone had thrown over her, she was cold and stiff. She had to flex each of her aching limbs in turn before she could rise and gather up her gear.

What should she do with all her baggage? There were no donkeys to carry it for her now; and it hardly seemed fair to burden the Riders’ horses any further. They could take her bedroll and remaining food but not everything else.

“Leave what you don’t need,” said Tiburé, seeing her staring down at her packs.

“I don’t carry stuff that I don’t need,” she answered shortly. No doubt Tiburé would see no necessity for her pile of woollen cloth and samples; but she couldn’t leave them all behind.

Quickly she picked out the best of the samples and folded them into her light canvas backpack, along with a bit of extra clothing and one or two other precious possessions – the map and letter and Gramma’s honey included. She would carry that pack herself rather than burden one of the Riders. It was not heavy.

She left behind her second pan, the undelivered cloth and the less valuable samples, her oldest shirt, the inedible dried meat and – with a wrench of regret – her musical gourd. It was not heavy, but it was an awkward shape to carry. She hoped some future visitor to the cave would appreciate it.

Rothir came up while she was still staring at the gourd on top of the pile.

“Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded. “Then can you bear to ride behind Eled again?

Tiburé is light enough to do it, but you’re used to him, and Narba has become used to you.

Later, when we’re on easier ground, others can take a turn.”

“All right.” She turned resolutely away from her belongings, shouldered the backpack and walked out to where the horses waited. “Which way are we going?” she asked Parthenal.

“North.” He pointed to the head of the fissure, at the steep uphill path.

“I would like to look for my donkeys first, if there is time,” she said.

“No time, no point,” said Parthenal. Emerging from the cavern, Rothir added,

“Parthenal has already scouted the side of the tarn to check for any pursuers. None were visible. Neither were your donkeys.”

Yaret bit her lip. How could she leave without Dolm and Nuolo? How could she abandon them without even knowing what had happened to them? She almost felt inclined to say that she would stay behind and wait for them to reappear, foolish though that would be.

“We might have a better chance of seeing them from higher up,” suggested Rothir.

She nodded. Then she helped him to mount Eled onto Narba’s back and settle his leg into its support, before climbing up herself.

“How do you feel?” she asked Eled, and got the reply “Better.” She doubted if it was true.

They were the only two on horseback. All the others led their horses rather than ride them up this steep and dangerous path. When Yaret looked down into the valley on her right she could pick out the trail left the previous day by the darkburn, and imagined it racing through the tussocky grass. Although there was no lingering smell or taste of fear, the mere sight of the charred trail made her stomach clench.

Rothir, who was leading Narba, took it slowly, pausing at times to choose the easiest way.

“It’s lucky he’s such a stolid horse,” he said.

“Yes,” said Yaret. She was clinging tight to Eled, not through fear for herself but because of the awareness of her responsibility for the injured man. Once more he bore his trials stoically. Yet she could tell when the jolting hurt him – not by any sound he made, but by the frequent tensing of his body.

She began to sing to him, softly, a travelling song whose repetitive phrases were meant to match the rhythm of a walking horse. It seemed to help to distract Eled: the tensing became less noticeable.

“I like your songs,” he said.

“Do you? What do you like best about them?”

“It’s… I… They’re just nice.”

She felt like weeping for the childishness of the comment. He seemed a man simplified and stripped down. What remained was, she thought, a very likeable man; but there was not enough of him.

At least the songs carried them up the narrow, winding path without Eled beginning to slide off. As the hillside rose the stream beneath them did not, but became increasingly distant, a thin flickering ribbon held by a gash in the ground. She tried not to look down at that alarming drop: but none the less her attention was caught by a long, sparse waterfall which threw itself from a rocky shelf to break into a sparkling haze of droplets before reforming as the stream below.

“Look there,” said Tiburé suddenly, pointing to the waterfall’s base. Yaret gazed down at the pool where it landed, but could see nothing strange until Arguril said,

“Is that the darkburn?”

“It looks like it,” said Rothir.

And then she realised that the black stone almost submerged in the water was not a stone at all: and that the curling spire of mist above it was not spray but steam.

“It must have fallen from the path, or simply stumbled the wrong way,” said Tiburé.

“Not very clever, are they?” commented Arguril.

“They have no thoughts that I can decipher,” Maeneb said in her bell-like voice. “That is not to say they have no thoughts.”

Nobody volunteered to go and check the drowned darkburn. They moved on, up to the brow of the hill. But as they neared it, another, higher brow appeared.

“Wait here,” said Parthenal. He strode up to the further ridge and when he reached its top lay down on the ground to look over it at a view she could not see.

“All seems clear,” he reported on returning, “but we can take nothing for granted.”

No donkeys, then. She might have to resign herself to losing them for ever.

If they were alive, they could, it was true, look after themselves; there were probably wild donkeys in the area that they could join with. They might even be capable of making their way back home. Although it must be a two week journey from this spot, Nuolo and Dolm

were used to long expeditions and always seemed to head off in the right direction. But she would not know where to begin to search for them in this wide, bleak, chilly landscape.

“Maeneb? What is your opinion? Can you detect the stonemen?” asked Tiburé.

Maeneb tilted her head reflectively and then spoke in Vonnish. Yaret was able to pick out a word that might have meant movement – Maeneb said it twice – and another word that she thought might be ‘west’.

“Then we will not go west,” said Tiburé in Standard, confirming her impression. Arguril began to object until Tiburé quelled him with a look. “I’ll ride behind Eled now,” she said.

Yaret dismounted with relief.

The respite did not last long, however. After a short rest for Eled’s sake – during which Tiburé administered a couple more drops of the medicine she called ethlon – they all mounted their horses and continued at a much faster pace than before.

This time Yaret found herself seated uncomfortably on Tiburé’s wiry black horse, which was sure-footed enough but showed no inclination to respond to any of her instructions. She used legs and reins in vain before giving up and letting the horse choose his own path.

Looking west she saw the crags where she had found the riders; she thought she identified the distant pointing thumb, but it was already retreating as the troop rode on. Arguril was muttering impatiently.

“We can’t go any faster,” Tiburé told him.

“You could try.”

“I could try,” added Eled. “The ethlon is doing its job. I do feel better now.”

“Well…” Tiburé urged the horse into a gentle trot, and then into a canter. It lasted only a few moments before she pulled up again, saying something about Eled. Yaret could see that despite his assurances he was trembling.

“It’s not good for the horse either,” said Rothir.

“But we’re too slow,” said Arguril obstinately, and continued with a stream of Vonnish in which Yaret again noticed the word ‘Thield.’ At the mention of it, Tiburé shook her head.

None the less Arguril kept making the same plea, or something like it, until they reached a cliff edge that descended steeply to the plain which Yaret had glimpsed briefly from the thumb.

When she paused to gaze down at it now, she saw that apart from the Coban hills far to her left there was nothing in this landscape that she knew. It was twined with streams, and dotted with strange bulbous trees. The distant mountains showed their edges like stone knives.

Between the mountains and the plain, but far away, there was a strange blank patch of white: an enormous fog bank, maybe. She wondered if it hid some lake.

“Come on,” said Parthenal sharply, and she followed the others as they descended from the land of crags by a rough staircase cut into the cliff. It was a long, awkward descent, and no less awkward when they reached the bottom. The plain was punctuated with rocks that stuck out of the ground at all angles, smaller than the thumb but no less singular: grey fingers reaching from the soil. The bulbous trees squatted amidst them but their needle-thin leaves gave little cover.

The group wound their way through this land for some hours, crossing and re-crossing the meandering streams, always heading towards the mountains. By the time they halted, the summits were tinted pink by the falling sun. They looked like giant flint arrowheads.

That made her think of home: of sitting on a wall while Colne the fletcher showed her how to knap stone into an arrowhead, and his son Dalko – her lover at the time – stood laughing at them nearby. A very long time ago it seemed now, and in a different world. A softer world of easy comfort and long meals and Dalko’s over-ready laughter. This world was altogether sharper and more vivid and there was nothing she could see in it to laugh about at all.

As they unloaded the horses under one of the bulbous trees, some discussion was going on. Arguril looked pleased; it seemed that he had at last won his argument.

“Arguril will leave us tomorrow morning,” Rothir told her. “He’ll head west.”

“Is it not dangerous for him to go that way? I thought that Maeneb said…”

Both Parthenal and Rothir turned to look at her. Parthenal’s eyes had hardened.

“She said what?” he demanded. “Maeneb said nothing in Standard.”

“But your Vonnish word for west is similar. Also path. And movement. And tired, and sick. And a great number of your other words, I think. They are like the Standard words turned round and shifted.” She spoke several of the Vonnish words that she had heard, to demonstrate.

Parthenal raised one eyebrow. Rothir was silent for a moment before saying,

“You’re right, they are related. Most people don’t realise; not that quickly, anyway. It is true that there may be stonemen to our west, but they march on foot. Arguril will be reasonably safe on a swift horse, on open ground where he can see them coming.”

Yaret was tempted to ask the meaning of Thield, or of Huldarion. Instead she nodded and held her tongue.

Turning to attend to Eled, she tried both to make him comfortable and to keep him sufficiently awake to eat and drink. Rothir handed her some sops of bread and shredded meat which she offered to the sick man, feeding him by hand, for when her raised his own arms they were shaking. It worried her. Even the sodden bread seemed difficult for him to swallow.

And it was cold in the darkening air: again, they risked no fire. She sat with an arm around Eled beneath the goat-hair blanket, hoping to give him extra warmth. Parthenal sat nearby and watched them, his intent gaze unsettling. Maeneb stood apart, looking out on sentry duty.

“Any sign of stonemen?” Rothir asked her. Maeneb shook her head.

“Perhaps they’ve given up,” said Arguril.

“That does not change our plan,” said Tiburé severely.

“How many days to this place called Farwithiel?” Yaret asked, and heard the resignation in Rothir’s voice as he replied.

“At this rate, three or four.”

“We’re going backwards,” muttered Parthenal.

“You don’t have to come backwards with us,” Rothir said. “Go on with Arguril.”

Parthenal shook his head. “I’ll be needed more here.” You need more than one man, Yaret thought was the implication, though between them the three women and Rothir could surely handle Eled.

But Parthenal might think that they would need to fight. Tiburé was obviously capable with a sword, and she had witnessed Maeneb’s skill with a knife as well as bow. None the less they would not have Parthenal’s strength or reach.

And as for she herself… she had not been fast enough with her bow in yesterday’s fight.

She needed to sharpen up. To not be a liability, which was how Parthenal undoubtedly saw her at present.

“Why are the stonemen pursuing you? Are you at war?” she ventured to ask.

“Yes,” said Parthenal at the same time as Rothir answered, “No.”

“Undeclared,” said Rothir.

“Long-standing,” said Parthenal. “We have been enemies for a dozen years.”

“Since we left Caervonn,” said Rothir, earning a dubious glance from Parthenal.

“That’s a long time for a war to come to no conclusion,” Yaret observed.

“We are not at war,” said Rothir. “Call it a series of incidents, if you like.”

“But much more frequent over the last year,” said Parthenal.

“And the darkburns? Have they also been at war with you a dozen years?”

“Not independently. They are used by the stonemen.”

“We think they were created twelve years ago,” said Parthenal, “as instruments of war.”

“No, the darkburns are much older,” said Yaret without thinking.

“Older? What makes you say so?”

“Ah….” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Or at least, I can’t explain. It’s just a feeling.”

“Then don’t hypothesise. It doesn’t help,” said Rothir abruptly. “We need knowledge.

Feelings are no use.”

Parthenal looked at him keenly and said a few words in Vonnish. One of them was ‘tired.’

Rothir shrugged and nodded.

Yaret became aware of her own tiredness. The rising moon was brightening as the sky darkened.

Huntress of the heavens, look after my donkeys, she thought. Waves of weariness and sadness rolled over her as she began to unroll her bedding. The Riders too were stretching out, wrapped in their cloaks, seeming oblivious to the hard chill of the ground. But to her it felt harder and chillier than it ever had.

She was trying to set her mind to sleep, when the peace was broken by a sharp cry from Maeneb. Somewhere behind her there was a clatter of stone on stone and a faint snort of breath.

All the other riders were instantly on their feet, swords outstretched and ready. Yaret scrambled upright, fumbling for her bow and quiver – too slow again, she thought.

Then Parthenal laughed. Trotting out of the dusk towards them came two shadows that hardened into a pair of donkeys: first Dolm, and then Nuolo. Dolm wandered up to Yaret and stuck his head in her pack, hunting oats. Nuolo butted her gently in the chest.

Yaret stroked the donkey’s rough back and hugged them both, not caring what Rothir or the other Riders thought. Her feelings for her donkeys might be of no use to anybody but she would not be without them. Gladness flooded through her. She gave her silent, heartfelt thanks to the huntress of the sky, even though the donkeys must have been already close by when she had made her plea.

But that didn’t matter, for here they were, unharmed. They were safe; all of them, safe now. She would take the donkeys home with her and Eled would be cared for at the place they called Farwithiel. As Nuolo nuzzled her, Yaret smiled into the dusk. The donkeys’

reappearance was a sign that everything would be all right.

Chapter 17

Parthenal, as usual, was awake before the others. Rothir was still snoring gently beside him.

There was a rustle from Arguril, getting ready to wake; but Parthenal felt no inclination to jump up himself. He lay on his back and looked at the last stars in the western sky before the daylight overwhelmed them.

As he watched them fade into the blue glow of dawn he allowed himself, for a moment, to think of the person he had wanted for so long. Still did want, too often, he admitted to himself, since he could admit it to nobody else. Certainly the only person he had ever loved.

If he could love, as opposed to simply want: that seemed sometimes doubtful.

And these were stupid thoughts for a cold dawn, with a day of hard activity ahead. He sat up and Rothir snorted into wakefulness.

“Get up, dwarf,” said Parthenal.

“Urgh,” said Rothir, his broad back emerging from his blanket. Parthenal thought that perhaps he was wrong about being unable to love. He loved Rothir, if affection and respect and familiarity were love. Maybe they were worth more than love. Then, for a second time, he pushed all such pointless thoughts away.

Once the troop woke there was little time wasted. They were all ready to set off again within a quarter-hour: indeed, Arguril was mounted before that, impatient to be gone. There had been some debate the previous evening as to whether he should take with him Eled’s scroll. It had been decided that he should. It was a risk, but the risk of Huldarion receiving no word at all was worse.

And the word of the Farwth was what they had been sent all this way to gather – along with any information they could get about the current positions of the stonemen. Hence they had scouted the area, trying to ascertain where the enemy bases were, and how great their numbers.

Too great, was the answer. As for their bases… They were growing, constantly shifting along vast stretches of the Darkburn, chiefly to the river’s south but increasingly crossing the water to move north and west. Parthenal had seen their tents, flimsier than Thield’s but more far numerous. Their camps seemed better organised than he had expected; for their stone crowns, and the drugs they took to endure them, did not encourage independent or coherent thinking. The stonemen’s aims – as far as he could gather – were to hunt, to fight, to kill, or else to die. Organisation was not a strong point.

However, they were adept at tracking. Or at any rate, the darkburns that ran before them were. The only advantage of that, he thought, was that it meant the stonemen could not ride: horses would not tolerate being so close to a darkburn for so long. The stonemen only tolerated it because they were drugged by ethlon or whatever else they dosed themselves with. But they had to hunt on foot.

The strange woman had got up and was talking caressingly to her donkeys in some unknown language. It bore no relation to Standard; and he felt suspicion all over again of her swift grasp of Vonnish. When she saw him looking she gave him a smile, as if she couldn’t help herself.

“I’m telling them to keep up with us today,” she said. “They haven’t got as much to carry now, so they should cope.”

Parthenal nodded. Talking to donkeys? She wasn’t that simple, surely. Was she really just a pedlar? What pedlar chose to cross the wilderness around the Darkburn – let alone a female one? And she knew Bruilde. That ought to be in her favour. But it wasn’t.

“We won’t be travelling fast,” said Tiburé, carefully mounting her own horse onto which Rothir had already lifted Eled. The injured man looked tired and drawn: when Parthenal spoke to him he seemed hardly to be there.

Parthenal felt a small ache of compassion and fear. He was fond of Eled, who was usually so cheerful, thoughtful, keen to please. But Eled was better off at the moment if his mind was somewhere else; so Parthenal let the compassion slide away.

Tiburé was right – they did not travel fast. Despite his tiny dose of ethlon, Eled was sleepier than on the previous day. Once they left the crags behind the going was good, yet Tiburé’s only attempt at cantering was quickly curtailed when Eled began to slide off the horse.

It was frustrating, for Parthenal knew that they would soon arrive at the more difficult terrain along the Thore – the river which ate its way down through the northern hills to wind east of the Gyr, and eventually meet and swell the Darkburn. On the rocky cliffs above the Thore they would have to dismount and lead the horses; and then trek miles upriver to find the crossing place, for there was no bridge across the chasm.

“Too slow,” muttered Rothir.

“I know.” Parthenal glanced over at him sceptically. “Do you think that Narba gains any benefit from having only you on his back instead of the other two, dwarf? I’m not sure he feels any difference.”

“Just because you’re a beanstalk,” said Rothir. Then he looked back at the woman, who was in turn looking back at her donkeys trailing in the rear. “Are you all right, Yaret?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m just keeping an eye on the donkeys. I can’t believe they actually found me.” Again she smiled, and Parthenal recalled the joy with which she’d greeted the returning animals last night. It had transformed her face. Some of that light and gladness was still there. It might have made her attractive if other attributes had been different.

He trusted that he had not shown his brief disappointment at the Gyr cave when he had realised Yaret was a woman, rather than a slight and not unappealing young man. It had been a jolt to his consciousness, and not a pleasant one. How could he be attracted to a woman?

Even one in breeches.

“We don’t want those donkeys holding us up,” he muttered to Rothir in Vonnish. “I hope they won’t give us trouble.”

“Why should they?” Rothir countered.

“They’re already lagging behind. And we could really do without a passenger.”

“Eled is the passenger – and he wouldn’t be here without Yaret. She’s cared for him tirelessly, without a word of complaint. She’s asked no questions either.”

“Why not? Stupidity or cunning?”

“Neither,” said Rothir tolerantly. “Just common charity, which you’re a little short of at the moment.”

“Maybe I am.” Parthenal sighed. “I’m frustrated. We should all be half-way home to Thield by now.”

“You voted for Farwithiel.”

“I did. But it’s going to take forever to get there, and then get back home again.”

Rothir studied him. “It’s not like you to be so impatient.”

“It’s not like you to be so resigned, dwarf.”

That was a word that was almost the same in Vonnish as in Standard. Yaret, riding just behind them, must have heard it; for in the pause that followed she asked,

“Why do you call him dwarf?”

Parthenal slowed so that she could catch them up: a reluctant attempt at common charity.

“Rothir is a dwarf,” he said.

“But he’s not that much shorter than you are,” she objected. “And he’s probably heavier.”

“Much heavier,” said Parthenal. “He’s disproportionate. Too broad in the body, legs too short.”

“Hardly,” said Yaret.

“Thank you,” said Rothir.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, whether in amusement or puzzlement he could not tell.

“So what does he call you?” she asked Parthenal.

“I am unfailingly polite,” said Rothir.

“Hah,” said Parthenal. “Any name he can think of. But he doesn’t have much of an imagination.”

“Give me some ideas. What should I call him?” Rothir asked her, surprising Parthenal; for Rothir was not generally so open with new acquaintances. After a week on the road together she must seem like an old one. It would take more than that for Parthenal to trust her.

“Oh… Well, I suppose most people could be labelled as some sort of animal,” she said, looking ahead at the others. “So Arguril is a hunting dog. Tiburé is a lioness. Maeneb is a hare.”

Parthenal was momentarily taken aback by the insight of these assessments.

“And Parthenal?” said Rothir.

“Polecat,” said Yaret, evidently without thinking, because her smile faded as she looked at his forbidding expression. He let all his suspicion and disapproval show. Polecat?

“And I suppose I’m a bear,” said Rothir.

She considered this. “No. I’m not sure what you are. Silly idea, forget it. Do you think it’s going to rain?”

“Not for a day or two,” said Rothir. “But it’s always foggy around Farwithiel.”

“Is that the place we saw from the crags that was covered in cloud?”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t be going that far,” said Parthenal.

“I know. It’s a pity,” she said. “Back home in Obandiro we have a story about a strange land that is always surrounded by fog.”

“And what is inside the fog, in your story?” asked Rothir, with interest.

Yaret glanced back at the donkeys again, seeming to give herself time to think before she answered. “Well, there is a tree.”

“A tree,” repeated Parthenal.

“Yes.” She shrugged apologetically. “I am allowed to say so much, but the rest of the story is Ulthared. That means, in our land, it is a thing forbidden to speak of openly. Like Thield is for you.”

“What?” At once, by instinct, his hand was on his sword hilt.

“What do you know about Thield?” asked Rothir. He did not seem to be angry.

She spread her hands. “Nothing. I don’t know who or what it is, except that you keep mentioning it in your conversations. And Parthenal’s reaching for his sword proves it is both significant and Ulthared. If you want to keep it secret you should really call it something else.”

“You should really stop noticing so much,” said Rothir drily. “How do you talk about things that are Ulthared without calling them by name?”

“There are ways.”

“And how many things in your country are Ulthared?”

“Some.”

“I expect you cannot tell us how many, because it is Ulthared.”

“Quite.”

Rothir grinned. “Well, we are paid back for our secrecy,” he said.

“I have not asked to know any of your secrets,” she replied. “I merely mention that they are not quite secret enough.”

“Acknowledged.”

She turned to Parthenal. “Nor yours,” she said formally.

What was that supposed to mean? She couldn’t have guessed that fast. Although his secret was not a secret in this company, it was one that it was not always safe to tell elsewhere – in Kelvha, for example. It was certainly Ulthared where some people were concerned.

“What sort of tree?” asked Rothir.

She shrugged again. “Ulthared. All I can tell you is, the tree has a place in the stories by our bard Madeo.”

“Stories, plural?”

“There are a number of them, stories within songs, all about the same thing,” she said after a moment.

“Which is….”

“Ulthared.”

“Of course,” said Rothir. He seemed to be enjoying himself; whereas Parthenal wasn’t. He felt like cursing every time Eled needed readjusting on the saddle or Yaret hung back to urge on her donkeys. It was all so slow; and he was aware of growing snappy.

Yaret looked at him sidelong and moved forward to talk to Maeneb – or rather, to try.

Parthenal noted with grim amusement that she got little encouragement from her new companion. He could have told her beforehand that it would be a wasted effort. The hare: it fitted. Maeneb was not exactly timid, but she was apart. Aloof. Quick-moving, distant, wary.

After a while Yaret gave up.

They meandered on until Tiburé called a halt. Eled needed yet another rest. So they stopped beneath a grove of barrel-trunked trees in milky sunshine, and tried to relax while Eled slept.

Feeling too restless to keep still, Parthenal left the others sitting while he strolled around.

When he was a little way past the trees, he became aware that Yaret had followed him.

He turned to face her. “What is it?”

“I did not mean to offend you by anything I said before.” Her face was earnest. “I would not want to make an enemy of you.”

“We are not enemies,” said Parthenal, although an inner voice still growled, Really?

Polecat?

“I’m glad of that. You would not be a good man to have as an enemy.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re dangerous,” she said, as if it was obvious.

“Despite my secrets?”

“I do not ask about your secrets.” She looked at him steadily. “Although I think I may know one of them.”

He thought, if she makes a derogatory remark I may just kill her. “Go on.”

“I think you might be what in Obandiro we call sideways.”

“Sideways.”

“So that you look sideways for a partner, towards your fellow-men, not opposite towards women.”

“I see. So what is the opposite of sideways?”

“Well, it’s opposite,” she said, “or occasionally both.”

“And which are you?”

“I am opposite, I think,” said Yaret.

“You’re not sure?”

“Who is ever quite sure, in all circumstances? But if I have offended you by saying this I am sorry, again. It is not a matter for offence in Obandiro and none is intended.”

“What made you think I might be sideways?”

“The way you looked at me,” she said, “when you thought I was a man. I’ve seen that look before, but not while I’ve been wearing breeches. Is Rothir also sideways?”

“Rothir? No.”

“I only ask because he is your partner.”

“Not in that way,” said Parthenal. He did not know whether to feel annoyed or not. There was no condemnation in her manner. But within the troop only Rothir ever referred to the matter openly. “And you cannot be sure that I am sideways either. Do not think that.”

Nonetheless he knew he had already as good as admitted it.

“Of course not.” She gave him a slight bow.

“Donkey,” added Parthenal, as a small revenge.

She smiled. “Thank you. I am happy to be a donkey.”

“Really?”

“Of course. You could have said much worse. I think they’re getting ready to set off again.”

“Wait. Why did you follow me to tell me this?”

He could not read the expression in her eyes. Yet her tone was gentle.

“Because you need to be more careful,” she replied.

As they remounted the horses Parthenal wondered if she really wanted to demonstrate some sort of power over him. But it was also true that he should have been more careful. It didn’t matter this time, but it might have. She had detected it so fast. Would everyone be able to see the desire that flamed into his eyes? Polecat. It was too perceptive, and he didn’t like it.

This time they rode on with Maeneb holding Eled up on the horse before her; unwillingly, Parthenal could tell. Maeneb’s aversion to touching other people was not so great that she could not overcome it, but it meant that she did not keep as firm a grasp on Eled as she should have done.

Or possibly Eled himself was not coping so well. Time after time he slipped and had to be hurriedly readjusted in the saddle, and all too often needed lifting down so that he could lie exhausted for a few more moments on the grass. Rothir knelt next to the young man, talking quietly to him and trying to reassure him that they did not need to hurry.

But all the time Parthenal was conscious that the stonemen might still be on their trail.

“This is taking far too long,” he muttered to Tiburé while Eled dozed. “If we are being followed, they could catch us before sunset at this rate.” When he scanned the landscape, it was impossible to see far through the scattered clumps of trees.

“Maeneb? What do you hear?” asked Tiburé.

“I can hear nothing while I’m riding up behind Eled,” complained Maeneb. “It’s too distracting.”

“But now?” coaxed Tiburé.

Maeneb tilted her head, her eyes half-closed. Parthenal listened to the wind in the trees; the snuffling of a horse: tried to hear what Maeneb heard, and failed.

“I hear them,” she said at last. “A great number, I think, many more than we expected. But they’re quite distant to the south and west, many miles away.”

“Well, that’s something,” said Tiburé. “Is Eled ready? Let’s move on.”

Parthenal helped Eled back on to the horse with a pang of pity, which he suppressed. Were he in the same situation, he would not want pity. If pity had its way they would not move Eled at all. He slapped Eled’s good leg and said,

“All right?”

“All right,” said Eled, who clearly wasn’t. The pity surged through him again.

Once they were moving on, Yaret said quietly, “What does Maeneb listen for? Can you say, or is that Ulthared?”

Parthenal thought it probably was, but Rothir answered.

“She can sense where people are.”

“You mean… sense their minds?”

“Yes.”

“Is this a common talent amongst you, reading minds?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Parthenal. “We can all do it.”

“You are joking?” She looked alarmed.

“We don’t read minds,” said Rothir. “And neither does Maeneb. She senses people’s presence and their moods. She may read the tendency of their thoughts, but I think that’s all.”

Parthenal said, “Maeneb is half of a different race. So she is not quite the same as the rest of us.”

“No, that’s obvious,” said Yaret, turning to check for the donkeys. They were a long way behind, and she pulled on her horse’s reins. “Dolm! Hurry up. What is it?”

“They will come if we ride on,” said Rothir.

“But they shouldn’t be this slow. I think there’s something wrong with Nuolo.”

“She looks all right to me,” said Parthenal impatiently.

“She’s uncomplaining. Donkeys don’t show pain the way that horses do.”

“We can’t afford to stop, and waste more time,” he said, exasperated.

Reluctantly, Yaret continued to ride on; but with many a backward look. After another mile the trailing donkeys were almost out of sight. She whistled several times and then stared hard at them.

“It’s Nuolo,” she said under her breath, and before Parthenal could try and stop her she had dismounted. She ran back over the uneven ground towards the donkeys, with greater swiftness and agility than was currently possible on horseback.

“Can we not just leave those dratted donkeys?” muttered Parthenal. When Yaret reached them she began to carefully examine Nuolo, checking her hooves and running a hand along her legs.

“Eled needs to get off again,” warned Maeneb. Parthenal let out a sharp sigh of vexation, and went to lift Eled from the horse and set him down to slump against a tree.

The donkeys and Yaret came straggling up to meet them at a snail’s pace. It was obvious to him now that Nuolo was going lame; she walked haltingly, her head dipping.

“Have a look at her,” said Rothir to Parthenal, so with another sigh of exasperation he went over to examine Nuolo, handling her gently; more gently than he would a horse, for her legs felt fragile by comparison.

He straightened up and stroked her. Her delicacy touched him in a way that he did not bother to define. Delicacy was weakness. “She’s got a swollen knee joint,” he said. “She may have twisted it.”

Yaret, her face full of distress, said, “That’s bad, isn’t it? She really needs to rest.”

“We cannot slow down for the donkeys,” Parthenal told her.

“But Nuolo can’t keep up,” said Yaret. She gazed at her donkeys. “Perhaps I should stay here with them while she heals.”

“No. That would not be safe,” said Tiburé emphatically. “You would have no means of escape if the stonemen caught up with you. You’d be far safer to continue with us to the cliffs along the Thore. From the far end of the cliffs, if all is clear, you can continue northward towards your own country.”

Yaret gazed at the donkeys. He saw her face changing, turning resolutely grave.

“I shall have to leave them here,” she said at last.

“You can still bring Dolm,” said Rothir.

“I can’t. He won’t come without Nuolo. And I can’t leave her on her own.” She began to unload the donkeys’ packs and strap them on to Poda. The smallest bag she transferred to her own back. “I should have looked after them better,” she murmured.

“How?” demanded Rothir.

“They’ll be fine here,” said Parthenal bracingly, because he was desperate to move on.

“The stonemen won’t hurt them. They aren’t interested in donkeys. And this is good pasture for them. They’ll thrive while Nuolo recovers. In a few weeks when all danger is past you can always come back and look for them.”

“Yes.” She knelt and embraced Nuolo’s long pale head, talking to her in a low voice. She did the same with Dolm, stroking his ears as she spoke to him. Then she stood up and climbed back onto Poda.

“Let’s get moving,” she said, and looked straight ahead, expressionless, as they began to ride away. All her former joy had vanished.

Chapter 18

They were two or three miles further on before Yaret finally looked back over her shoulder.

By that time the donkeys had long vanished. Parthenal had already been checking more surreptitiously, and had seen them disappear with a feeling of relief.

“Parthenal’s right; they will be fine,” said Rothir.

“Yes. I’m sure they will,” she said, expressionless. “I shall just have some explaining to do to my grandparents.”

“Well, your grandfather will also have some explaining to do to you, I believe.”

“Yes. You had better tell me where these cliffs are that we’re going to.”

“In another ten miles or so,” said Parthenal, “we will come to the chasm cut by the river Thore. The gorge is many miles long, and hundreds of feet deep. It’s quite a spectacular place.”

“I am sure.”

“You cannot help but admire it,” Parthenal went on, aiming to distract her from the vanished donkeys. “But there’s no bridge. The chasm is too wide. So we’ll continue along the cliffs on this western side until they drop down low enough for us to descend to the river.

You won’t need to cross it with us. If you continue along this side, after another five miles or so you’ll see the Coban hills to the west.”

“Very well. I can work out the route from there. And you?”

“Meanwhile we shall ford the river and go east to Farwithiel,” said Rothir.

“And what if the stonemen are still after you?”

“If they haven’t caught up with us by the time we reach the Thore,” said Rothir, “they have little chance of doing so, and they will know it and most likely give up. East of the Thore is not a good place for them.”

She did not ask why not. She merely nodded.

“Without the donkeys you won’t be able to carry much gear,” said Rothir thoughtfully.

“You’ll need a horse. Tiburé?” he called over. “I think that Yaret should be allowed to keep Poda when she leaves us.”

Tiburé paused, looked at Eled, and after a moment’s consideration nodded. “That seems fair payment for your service.”

“I don’t want payment,” Yaret said.

“Take it,” Rothir told her.

“Well… A horse would certainly make things easier. But what about Eled? Won’t he need Poda to ride home, once he is healed?”

“It looks as if that won’t be for a while. And they have horses in Farwithiel,” said Parthenal, watching Eled drooping yet again in front of Maeneb.

“But she’s a very fine horse. It’s too valuable a gift,” said Yaret reluctantly.

“Eled’s life was a valuable gift,” said Rothir. “It merely repays the debt.”

“There is no debt.”

“Do you want the horse or not?” demanded Parthenal impatiently.

After a moment’s silence, Yaret said, “Thank you.” Rothir looked over at Parthenal with his eyebrows raised. Parthenal shook his head. He was feeling rattled. Nothing was going as it should. He hated the constant stop-start of this journey. And it was so slow.

They trudged on, now climbing gradually but steadily. The sun began its long slide through the cool afternoon, yet its lengthening light conferred no warmth to the scene around them. The grass was yellow and the stocky trees dropped sharp needles on them as they rode.

This is a land prepared for winter, thought Parthenal, and he shivered.

At last Tiburé said, “Ah! Here is the Thore. I thought we’d never get here; but there is the path that leads to the cliffs. Maeneb? Is there anyone behind us?”

Maeneb looked back and listened briefly. Then she shook her head.

As they continued riding, a wide fissure in the ground became visible to their right, snaking towards them until their path lay parallel to it. This was the top of the famed cliffs above the Thore.

Parthenal dismounted and approached the edge of the ravine to take a look. Only once he came close could he hear the surging rumble of the waters, so far down were they.

He had been here on a few occasions and the sight and sound never failed to impress him.

At the bottom of the gorge, the Thore looked small and thin, hardly more than a stream; but he knew that despite appearances it was a wide, strong river and that the drop down to it was even further than it seemed to be. The sides of the gorge were sheer red sandstone, perpendicular in many places; yet a surprising number of stunted trees or stubborn thorn bushes dotted the walls, clinging perilously to narrow perches.

“I have heard of this place,” said Yaret sadly, “but never imagined that it could be so…”

“Majestic?” he suggested.

“High.”

“It is certainly that. Are you afraid of heights?”

“Not normally,” she said, “but this is something beyond my experience.”

“We will not ride, but will walk the horses along this section of the path,” said Tiburé.

So only Maeneb and Eled remained mounted, with Rothir guiding their horse along the track while keeping as far as possible from the cliff-edge on their right.

At first that sheer edge was still several yards away. Before they had travelled very far, however, more rocks intruded to their left and pushed them closer to the brink. The rumbling of the river from below became more audible: a ceaseless, threatening thunder.

They moved carefully. Parthenal, leading the group, did not try to hurry on this path, although without a two-hundred foot drop by his side it would have felt easy enough. One slow mile they went, then a second, slower mile; every step a measured one, taking constant care, although the roar of the river gave him a strange sensation as if this place was not quite real. As if he could float away across the cliffs unharmed, aloft on unseen wings…

Don’t let yourself be hypnotised by it, he thought; and he paused to gaze down, sternly fixing in his mind the long sheer drop to the tumultuous water.

Then he looked up and across the chasm to the far side. A haze lay over it. Otherwise it appeared much the same as the land they had just walked through, with a patchwork of thin trees and bushes fading into mist.

That similarity, he knew, was deceptive. They might be permitted to find a path through to Farwithiel… and they might not.

But they still had to cross the river to get there. They were now above the chasm’s deepest point, and there was a long way yet to go. Not wishing to pause, Tiburé had taken over at the front of the group. Parthenal moved back from the river’s roar and was following the others when Maeneb cried out suddenly.

“Eled is slipping again!”

Quickly he pushed forward to assist her, holding up the slumping Eled. Meanwhile Rothir steered the horse to a less narrow section of the path, for this would be a dangerous spot for Eled to fall.

“Wake up,” Parthenal told the young man. “Hold on tight, Eled. Just a little further, and then you can rest.”

Ahead of them, the trail was crossed by a broad rock platform that overhung the gorge by a foot or two. It was the widest section of the path for some way; so here Rothir halted

Maeneb’s horse. Carefully he and Parthenal together lifted Eled down and laid him on the stone slab to recover his strength.

Parthenal feared that it would take a while. Eled was barely conscious; his eyelids were fluttering.

“I should not have done it,” said Rothir quietly. “I should have taken my chances with him in the Coban hills. I should not have brought him all the way to the Gyr Tarn.”

“So now you would be stuck in some benighted Coban village, while we hunted high and low for both of you,” said Parthenal.

“There were other options.”

“Forget them. This is now,” said Parthenal. Kneeling down to pull the woollen blanket closer around Eled – he did not know where it had come from, presumably the pedlar – he saw how Eled tried to lift a hand to aid him, only to let it fall aside as if the effort were too great.

Parthenal felt a sudden lurch of his heart in case Eled should die here, on this hazardous blade of rock above the beating waters and so far from home. An unusual sense of fear and panic washed through him. From Eled’s drawn face, he thought the young man must feel the same anxiety.

“Take it easy, Eled,” he said, raising his voice over the rushing river of sound. “You’re just tired. Don’t worry; there’s no need for haste. You can rest here for a while.”

Even before he finished speaking he could smell it.

“What?” he said, at the same time as Rothir shouted harshly, “Darkburn.”

The stench of burning and decay enveloped them like sudden night. Parthenal sprang to his feet, drawing his sword with a swift ringing hiss, but his limbs had already become weak.

He was ensnared by a swelling fear which was expanding swiftly into a storm-cloud of horror: a spreading flood of blind despair, which filled him with the certainty of imminent disaster – of fast-coming oblivion – of death. It almost overwhelmed him.

The darkburn was on the path ahead. He had not expected anything to come from that direction. It was rushing at them, tall and dense in its smoky indistinctness and moving on what might be ragged legs. He felt the heat pour from it as it whirled onto the stone platform.

Behind it clumps of weed burst into flames. The very rock seemed to crackle with the heat.

Parthenal’s hand around his sword-hilt felt as feeble as Eled’s. His mind was a chaotic mass of fear and loathing and dreadful grief and anger. He did not know how to untangle the emotions nor how to deal with them. He was aware that somebody was wailing and hoped that it was not himself.

He saw Rothir lift his sword as if it weighed as much as a tombstone and swipe it at the darkburn, which spun away for a second. That reminded him of what he had to do although he did not know where to find the will or strength. He thought of the man he loved, and the will came: with the will, the weakness lessened enough for him to raise his sword and try to cleave the darkburn with it.

The darkburn charged, hurling itself between the two men in an onrush of unbearable heat.

The horses panicked: Poda tried to flee, neighing wildly, and Parthenal was aware of Yaret attempting to control her so that the horse would not trample Eled in her fright.

He hacked at the darkburn and it seemed to pause although it did not break. This one was not to be so easily broken. Both he and Rothir struck again, in unison, and then had to leap back from its heat.

But caught between his sword and Rothir’s the darkburn seemed to flounder. Throwing itself forward in a hurtling rush, it missed them both. Before he could strike at it a third time, it spun to the edge of the precipice and went straight over. It fell in a long dark blur towards the churning waters far below.

In his weakness Parthenal did not dare to look over the edge after it in case he fell too. He collapsed to his knees on the warm rock and tried to regather his strength. But the rapid thinning of the cloud of horror told him that the darkburn must have truly gone.

“More,” called Rothir’s urgent voice, and he raised his head to see the stonemen running down the path towards them in the darkburn’s wake. Seven or eight. Before he was on his feet they had already charged the Riders.

Tiburé, wielding her sword against the first one, almost sliced the man’s arm off: Maeneb had her long knife out and was slashing at another. As usual the stonemen had little concept of self-defence – it was all attack, brutal and direct. Parthenal’s sword clashed heavily on an upraised axe as two stonemen leapt over to assail him. He had to fight against the feebleness that still made his limbs as lax as reeds.

They would not get Eled, he told himself furiously, he would not let them: and filled with wrath, he smote again and again until first one and then the other stoneman crumpled underneath his sword-blows, painted extravagantly in their own blood.

But two more ran forward to replace them. And behind them yet more stonemen were arriving, howling and yelling now that secrecy was no longer needed. Where had they all come from? Why hadn’t Maeneb detected them?

No time to think about that. Get ready for the next onslaught. The panicking horses helped him, unintentionally, by getting in the attackers’ way. One stoneman was kicked under the chin by a flying hoof and was hurled backwards into Rothir, who picked him up and threw him off the cliff. Another was knocked down and trampled by Tiburé’s horse: Tiburé made short work of him.

But on the stone slab, close to Eled, Poda neighed and reared up frantically while Yaret tried to pull her away from the injured rider. Hooves slipping on the rock, the horse fell over on her side. She landed heavily, close to the cliff-edge, neighing in distress.

Yaret was beneath her. She was trapped by one leg which was held fast under the weight of Poda’s body, right next to the precipice. Parthenal had to slash at a stoneman, sending him flying with a thump of his sword-hilt, before he could risk another glance Yaret’s way.

Her head was over the edge. She was trying to pull herself free: but the weight of the horse on her foot was immovable. Rothir hacked the head half off a stoneman and shouted something. Parthenal could not decipher the words over the harsh clatter of metal on stone and the pounding of the waters far below. When he tried to move over to help Yaret, two more stonemen ran forward to assail him.

He parried the blow of the first, ripping the sword from the man’s hand to spin high and glittering in the air before it disappeared over the cliff. But meanwhile the second stoneman leapt up onto Poda’s belly and swung his axe down fiercely, to where Yaret lay trapped and helpless.

The axe smacked into rock with a crunch. The stoneman jumped off Poda and kicked Yaret, hard.

Parthenal saw only the sudden flailing of her arms and legs as she was thrown over the precipice. Then she was gone. Time stopped. He stood with his mouth open, trying to take it in.

There was a roar next to him. Rothir charged like a madman; three seconds later the stoneman standing triumphantly by Poda had followed Yaret over the edge and down into the chasm with a sword-wound through his heart. Rothir was yelling incoherently as he laid about him. Two more of the enemy fell to his sword, while Parthenal, coming swiftly to his senses, finished off another. Maeneb cut the throat of a fourth.

He ran to Tiburé’s aid: there was blood on her face as she fought off the last of the stonemen. An instant later the man lurched forward and collapsed with Parthenal’s sword embedded in his back.

“Is that all of them?” said Tiburé, panting. She did not seem to realise what had happened.

Nor, fully, did Parthenal until Poda rolled over and finally struggled to her feet, her hooves skidding on a pool of blood, and they saw the booted foot that had remained trapped beneath her. Then sickness and horror lurched over him, as dreadfully as if the darkburn had just reappeared.

Rothir flung himself on his stomach at the cliff’s edge and looked over. Parthenal knelt there too to gaze down, although he had little hope.

There was no hidden ledge still holding Yaret. She was not clinging to any of the small gnarled shrubs that dotted the cliff face. No outreached hand stretched up for them to haul on.

Her body was not even visible down below; the river might have already swept it away, along with the dead stonemen and the darkburn. He listened to its constant, busy noise which was itself a kind of silence.

At last Rothir sat up and wiped a hand across his face.

“I’m going down to look for her,” he said.

“Rothir. She’s dead,” said Parthenal.

“She might not be. I have to make sure.” Rothir was having difficulty speaking.

“She won’t have survived that fall,” said Tiburé. “Quite apart from her foot.”

“I don’t know,” said Maeneb with a kind of wail. “I don’t think she’s alive. I can’t hear anything. But I didn’t even hear the stonemen coming. I was listening in the wrong direction.

And then Eled…” She made a despairing gesture.

Parthenal walked over numbly to check on Eled, who still lay motionless where they had laid him down. He was, miraculously, untouched by the fight. The stonemen had evidently not thought him worth attacking. Perhaps they had assumed him to be dead already, for he was only half conscious at best.

“I’m going down to look for her,” said Rothir again, his voice hoarse and almost unrecognisable. “I have to.”

“There’s no way down to the water,” said Tiburé, “not for another five miles. And then after fording the river you would have to backtrack downstream. The only path along the bottom is on the far side of the water. And we cannot move Eled yet. And even if we could move him now, it would be almost dark by the time we finished our descent to the ford.”

“I’ll go alone, now,” said Rothir.

“It would still be dark,” said Parthenal, “before you could reach this section of the Thore.”

Rothir, sitting by the cliff edge, put his head in his hands.

“I’ll try and get some food into Eled,” said Parthenal after a moment. “That might help. So might some more ethlon.”

“His mind is more awake than his body,” said Maeneb mournfully. “But it wanders.”

Rothir raised his head. “We told her she’d be safe! She was our responsibility. We told her she’d be safe!”

“We could not have foreseen it,” said Tiburé, although it was perfectly clear to Parthenal that they both could and should have foreseen the ambush. They had looked behind for their pursuers and not ahead. They had placed too much reliance on Maeneb when she had Eled on her mind.

Numbly he reached for the bag that was still strapped to Poda, to find some food for Eled.

It was Yaret’s bag. She had been wearing her backpack when she fell: her most precious possessions had gone down with her. Such as they were.

Her foot still lay there on the rock. He did not know what to do about it. In the saddle-bag he saw a shirt and dropped it on the bloody foot to shroud it. Then he found oats and biscuit and made a mush of them with water to feed to Eled. All this time Rothir sat with his head in his hands.

“Something happened,” murmured the sick man, his eyelids fluttering.

“We were attacked. But the stonemen are all dead. You rest, and we’ll move again in a little while,” said Parthenal. He did not want to be the one who told Eled.

“We may as well all eat now,” said Tiburé. Almost as if nobody had just fallen over the cliff. But Tiburé was always practical. Tough as granite. She began to distribute the last of the bread – stale and hard – along with cheese and dried apple.

Everything felt like stone and sawdust in Parthenal’s mouth. Rothir looked at the food in his hand as if he did not know what to do with it. Then he began to eat, determinedly, the muscles of his throat and jaw working. He looked like a man in dreadful pain. Parthenal’s own grief and horror were focused on Rothir: he tried to spare some grief for Yaret too. He hoped it had been quick. Surely it must have been. A few seconds at most before she hit the bottom. Or drowned. That would have taken longer.

He wanted to stop imagining it. This is now, he thought, but I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was back then, before it happened. I wish it could be stopped. I didn’t know her. But there will be no forgetting this.

No-one spoke. They listened to the snarl and roaring of the waters down below. Tiburé gave Eled a few drops of ethlon, and he roused himself.

“Had we better move on? I’m ready now,” he said, lifting his head to look around. “Are we all here? Where’s Yaret?”

“Yaret went ahead,” said Tiburé. Nobody contradicted her. Rothir hoisted Eled to his feet and Parthenal helped to lift him on to Tiburé’s horse. They walked past the dead stonemen and slowly, carefully along the cliff with the waters echoing in their ears.

After a mile or two the sound grew louder; the sides of the gorge were becoming less high, or else the river had not cut a way so far down. Parthenal watched the water rushing closer: grey, fast and careless except where it swirled into great pools before dancing its way out again. Its song was an unremitting blur of noise. By the time they descended to the crossing place it was almost deafening.

Here the water was at its broadest and less than a yard deep. None the less they had to ride the horses across with care because of the swirling current and the rocks underfoot. A slip could mean being swept away through the deepening gorge for many miles, all the way down to the Darkburn...

That name now seemed to grip like an iron clamp on Parthenal’s chest. He saw the ragged darkburn falling with its burden of despair. And Yaret falling after it. He had the sense of a door closing, of some light shut out.

By the time they reached the far side of the swiftly-flowing Thore, twilight was cradling them. Its soft blue presence was no consolation.

“I need to go and look for her,” said Rothir again, dully.

“At first light tomorrow,” said Parthenal, “we will go together.”

Those must be splashes from the river crossing that marked Rothir’s face, for Rothir never wept. But as darkness covered them, Parthenal to his dismay found himself weeping a little, silently, for his friend.

Chapter 19

The weight of the horse was unbearable. Yaret could feel the bones of her foot cracking beneath it. But she was trapped.