There was, of course, no need at all for Jermayan to wrap his own blade as well as Kellen's, but Kellen supposed it had something to do with Elven notions of propriety and fair-dealing. As it was, he felt bad about the sacrifice of the undertunic. He just hoped they weren't going to need it later.
Though he tried his hardest, Kellen didn't manage to land another blow on the Elven Knight, but for the first time, a bout with Jermayan didn't leave him feeling afterward as if he'd run ten miles uphill in his armor, and Jermayan actually seemed to approve of his progress. Kellen was feeling pretty good about things as they went on again.
The feeling didn't last. He'd started feeling unaccountably nervous as they rode along… twitchy, really, as if something were watching them, but though he kept looking around, he never managed to spot anything.
They were riding through a forest, one that was suffering less from the effects of the drought than other places in Elven lands, as it grew along the banks of a river Jermayan said was called Angarussa the Undying, which even now ran strongly, though far lower in its bed than it should have been.
'It runs above caves, doesn't it?' Kellen asked suddenly.
'The Caverns of Halacira are very near here, yes,' Jermayan said, puzzled. 'The Undying goes down into them and runs underground for some distance.'
'I have to look for something,' Kellen said. 'Stop.' He'd seen the Angarussa last night in his dream, and something… wasn't right here.
Shalkan halted, and Kellen dismounted. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he headed toward the sound of the river, trying to feel the same sensation he had last night in his dream. It was frustrating, like trying to listen for music you weren't even sure was there at all, made worse because he knew he wasn't going to like what he found, and didn't actually want to find it.
He walked toward the river, not looking so much as listening, until he reached the spot. Or perhaps it wasn't listening, it was feeling. The way he felt the Wild Magic.
Here.
He looked down, and discovered he was standing directly over a patch of low-growing flowers. They looked like tinyl lilies.
'Jermayan?' Kellen called.
The Elven Knight quickly joined him.
'What are those?' Kellen asked, pointing downward.
Jermayan stared at the ground. 'They look like starflowers,' he said. But he didn't sound at all sure, and his voice was shaken. He stepped quickly backward, off the patch of flowers.
'Are starflowers supposed to be… black?' Kellen asked, when Jermayan said nothing more.
'No,' Jermayan said with certainty. 'Starflowers are—or ought to be— white. Silvery white. And they glow at night. They should be beautiful.'
Idalia had said to look for things that were 'just plain bad,' and the more that Kellen looked at the spreading patch of sooty black flowers, the more he was sure they fit into that category. He didn't know what real starflowers looked like, but these looked wrong. He stepped back carefully out of the flowers.
'What should we do about them? I don't want to just leave them here.' He didn't know why, but he knew he couldn't leave those so-called flowers there. They felt—obscene. Or poisonous. Or both.
'Let me,' Shalkan said. 'If this doesn't work, we can dig them up and bury them.'
The unicorn approached the patch of black flowers and knelt so that he could touch them with his horn. As he did, the flowers curled up and withered, the effect spreading swiftly until in a few moments there was nothing but bare earth where the patch of flowers had been.
Shalkan rose to his feet again and shook his head strongly, as though he were shaking something nasty from his horn.
'I suppose this means we're on the right track,' he commented blandly to no one in particular.
BY THE END of their third day on the road the travelers had left the borders of the lands claimed by the Elves
