It would be a long time before she was missed, and longer still before anyone remembered she'd left with the stranger who'd been drinking with Garen Miq all night, and who had never come back to the inn. By then, Garen Miq would be long upon his road eastward.
Her body would never be discovered.
By the time Prince Zyperis was finished with her, there wouldn't be enough left of it to recognize as a human woman, and the forest scavengers would take care of what was left.
IN the World Without Sun, Queen Savilla watched the threads of her weaving slowly draw together. And smiled.
ON THE WHOLE, Idalia was rather pleased with her little brother. He could so easily have been sullen and intractable, spoiled and softened by City luxuries. Granted, he was no Wildlander yet, but he was willing to learn, and ready to contribute what he could to the household. Oh, sometimes he sulked, and sometimes he brooded, and often enough he whined, but that was in the nature of the adolescent male, and Idalia had expected a certain amount of temperament out of him. The wonder was, there was less of it than she would have anticipated.
Summer had come and gone, and in the past dozen sennights, Kellen had settled fully into the life of a forester of the Wildlands. With Idalia's help and guidance, he'd begun work on an addition to Idalia's cabin, for with winter coming on, they'd need more space—even if it was only enough space for a second bed.
But even though the first frosts were still sennights away, the days were already perceptibly shorter, and work kept both the young Wildmages occupied from dawn till several hours after dusk. There was always wood to chop—logs to fell for the walls of the addition and firewood to stockpile for the coming winter as well—food to hunt and to forage for, clothes and tools to make and mend, and in addition to all of that, not a day seemed to pass that did not bring someone to Idalia for healing or advice. And every time Kellen was sure that the world held no more surprises, something always came to jar him out of his complacency.
Take the weather, for example.
Of course the seasons changed in the City. There was even rain— though always at night—and sometimes fog. Snow fell sometimes in the winter—though never on the streets and walkways, of course.
But the sort of violent weather that Idalia described so casually was something that Kellen had never imagined experiencing, and the first time that rain had fallen during the day, he'd been so indignant over losing a day's work that Idalia had laughed quite hard.
Last night a storm—the first great storm of the autumn—had thundered through the Wildwood, waking both of them from their sleep. After the first thunderclap, Idalia had turned over and gone back to sleep, but Kellen had been unable to. He'd sat up for a long time afterward, listening to the fury of the storm battering at the walls of the cabin, startling in shock at each crash of thunder and flare of lightning, unable to believe that Idalia was just sleeping through it all as if it were nothing. It seemed impossible to him that the little cabin could withstand such battering without being swept away; he imagined Demons riding each thunderbolt, seeking him out.
But not even the roof leaked.
At last he was reluctantly forced to admit that if Idalia was sleeping so soundly, this must be normal—though down deep inside, Kellen wondered indignantly how anything this noisy and chaotic could possibly be normal. He made himself lie down again, and sent himself to sleep imagining what would happen in the City if such a storm ever came to play among the bell towers of Armethalieh…
The High Council would have a fit.
In the morning, Kellen discovered that even though the storm had been what Idalia called 'normal,' the high winds it had brought with it had still caused a certain amount of destruction. The two of them had spent most of the forenoon repairing the storm's damage: rebuilding the woodpile and the cairn beside the necessary pit, and locating those objects that had been blown away by the wind. It had taken a Finding Spell to locate the cauldron, which had gotten itself lodged between the branches of a tree…
IDALIA watched Kellen moving about the cabin's grounds with an amusement she tried very hard to conceal. She still remembered her own shock at encountering untamed weather for the first time—something not permitted to occur in Armethalieh—and Kellen still seemed rather surprised by it, to judge from the silence with which he finished his part in repairing the storm damage and resumed his work on the addition to the cabin.
Fortunately the lashings on the tarp had held fast, or they'd be looking all the way to the High Hills for it, if Idalia was any judge of winds. The storm had been strong enough to take down half the woodpile, after all. She picked up a broom and turned toward the house. There was soot and ashes all over the main room, courtesy of the winds that, had gotten past the dampers and blown down the chimney, and it wouldn't sweep itself out the door.
'Idalia! Idalia!'
A troupe of fauns—the little creatures almost never traveled anywhere alone—came rushing into the clearing, tumbling over themselves with the frantic urgency of their mission. They looked around wildly, spotted her, and bounded over to where she stood by the chopping stump, arranging themselves in a semicircle in front of her.
