It was a melancholy thought.
THEY KEPT NORTH and west, and by the end of the first sennight, Kellen and Idalia were able to ride side by side. If she noticed that Shalkan had early on had problems with her presence, or if it continued to bother Shalkan, neither ever commented except for Shalkan's single, oblique remark at the beginning of the journey.
On the rare occasions that they were able to find a roof to sleep beneath in village, croft, or smallholding—for Idalia's Wildmage skills guaranteed them a welcome everywhere in the Western Hills—Shalkan would leave them an hour or so before they reached it, and if any of their hosts found it odd that their visitors should arrive one mounted and one on foot leading a pack mule, none of them said anything about that, either. By the end of their second sennight of travel, Idalia informed Kellen that they were unlikely to encounter any more dwelling-places, for though they were still far from the borders, they were close enough to them that no one was likely to settle there for fear of encountering Elvenkind.
By this time, they were well into extremely steep hills—or small mountains, it didn't matter which you called them. Heavily wooded, with nothing for a sign of civilization except the road itself, they had to choose their camping places carefully. Idalia did something subtle that warned dangerous wildlife off, but there were other dangers, including human rogues. By now, in the lands they had left behind, the City Lawspeakers were proclaiming the sovereignty of Armethalieh through every hamlet and village, the members of the Militia were moving in, and the Scouring Hunt was coursing in search of Wildmages and Otherfolk.
Kellen wasn't sure exactly how far the High Council had extended the borders, but one thing he did know for sure was: the one thing the Hunt wouldn't find was him and Idalia. Kellen hoped that the discovery would send his father into a fit of apoplexy.
In their third sennight of travel (as far as Kellen could tell; he was actually starting to lose track of how long they'd been on the road, he discovered), he started to wonder if maybe the smallholders had a good reason for not wanting to encounter Elves.
Until now, the two of them had been traveling through lands fairly similar to those around the Wildwood: a landscape of high granite hills and deep river valleys filled with forests of hardwood and evergreen. They'd had no trouble finding good grazing for their animals to supplement the grain they'd brought, or water for drinking and cooking and washing.
Now that began to change.
It had been late summer when they left the Wildwood; now it was— maybe, if you stretched a point—the very beginning of autumn. The trees should just be starting to turn; the leaves yellowing. Later—the change of seasons was apparently similar to what he'd been used to in the City, only much more intense and extreme—would come the riot of autumnal color, then brown, then winter bareness.
But here the leaves were already withered and brown—too soon. The grass was sere, and the horse and mule mouthed it without pleasure. Shalkan made no complaints, but Kellen had no difficulty in telling that the unicorn was deeply troubled.
Worse followed the farther west they went. The smaller streams were muddy and low; the rivers that should have been swollen with late-season rain ran shallowly at the bottom of their beds. Sometimes they were forced to rely upon Shalkan to find water for them, which meant that Kellen walked while the unicorn roved along the periphery of their path, hunting for water.
The closer they came toward the Elven borders, the worse it got. The grass now was parched and dry, hardly worth the effort of chewing for the animals, and the bushes were withered and skeletal.
Shouldn't it be raining? Somewhere? Where's the water?
But Kellen—no farmer—wasn't quite sure that something was actually wrong, or if it was, how badly wrong. All his life he'd heard about the enchanting, green, misty beauty of the dangerous Elven lands, but so much of the old wondertales had been wrong. It was always possible that the stories had gotten it all backward. And Idalia— whose face became more grim by the day—wasn't saying.
But he was sure of one thing. Idalia had not expected to find things in this condition. And neither had Shalkan.
IT was midmorning, somewhere in their second fortnight of travel (Kellen was thinking hard, counting back and trying to remember exactly how many days they'd been on the road). They'd left open country behind, and were riding through woodland once more. The warmth of the early-autumn day contrasted oddly with the sere winter- bleakness of the barren trees. The forest floor beneath the animals' hooves was thickly carpeted with fallen leaves, and the travelers made a faint, crackling, shuffling sound as they moved through the leaf-litter. The road they followed was now a bare little track, hardly a road at all; it wasn't what Kellen had pictured to himself when he'd thought of a road through Elven lands.
The forest seemed much too empty, even to Kellen's untutored senses. Not only should there be deer and birds, rabbits and squirrels, but Oth' erfolk as well: sylphs and dryads, fauns, brownies, pixies, gnomes… the animals might flee from mounted strangers, but the Otherfolk should be drawn to both Shalkan and Idalia, and even if he couldn't see them, Kellen ought to at least be able to sense their presence with his Wildmage senses. But these woods were silent and empty. It gave him a very creepy feeling. It felt as if they were riding through a graveyard.
