and were well into the mountains. It was no longer difficult to find water—these lands were not suffering under a magical drought—and the water barrels the mule carried were now empty, to save weight.
But even without drought to afflict it, it was a hard land, one of rocks and hidden springs, near-barren hills covered with sparse grass and scrubby bushes. The small party spent as much time going down as up, often having to detour out of their way in order to find a path that Valdien and the mule could follow. Even a few days and a few miles had made a difference in the weather, and now Kellen was glad of the protection his armor offered in more ways than one, for the days were chilly and the nights decidedly cold.
Kellen's lessons continued—morning, noon, and night—and with every exercise, he became more comfortable with both sword and armor, more confident of his skill, and above all, his endurance, coordination, and strength increased almost with every new lesson. Jermayan was a matchless teacher, patient and firm, and most of all certain of Kellen's excellence.
In addition to the disciplines of combat, Kellen had learned many other things as well—how to care for his sword and armor, how to get into and out of his armor easily, how to cope with the dozens of small chores of life on the road. He realized now how many of those Idalia had handled on their flight from the Wildwood, but now he was learning to take care of them himself.
He was also learning how to care for and even saddle Valdien as well as Shalken—not because Jermayan intended ever to leave that particular task to him, but because, as the Elven Knight constantly reminded him, they could never foresee what disaster might He ahead. It might come to pass in the future that Jermayan wouldn't be able to take care of Valdien himself, either due to injury, or… for some other reason.
Though Valdien blatantly preferred Jermayan's attentions to Kellen's, and made no secret of it, the pack mule was more than willing to become a friend to anyone who fed her and brushed her and cleaned her hooves. Lily, for all the high-flown poetry of her name, was a very tolerant and down-to-earth sort (though Kellen supposed that went with being a mule), patiently enduring Kellen's rather clumsy (at first) attempts at hostlery. But by the time they were out of Elven lands, he could see to her needs as well as Jermayan could, and nearly as fast.
He'd been a little surprised in the beginning to find an Elven Knight so expert at such homely tasks, but as Shalkan reminded him, Jermayan hadn't always been an Elven Knight. He'd begun as an apprentice, doing even more lowly tasks. And even in a city as beautiful as Sentarshadeen, garbage had to be hauled away and manure composted for the gardens Kellen had admired so much.
Maybe so, Kellen agreed. But it was still hard to imagine the stately and graceful Elves doing any of those things, even though he'd seen Morusil pulling weeds and Iletel up to his elbows in mud—or potter's clay, anyway.
Though—at least when Jermayan managed to get past his guard and land an especially stinging blow—it was nice to imagine there'd once been a time when Jermayan had been getting hit that hard on a regular basis.
TO Kellen's secret relief—if you could call it relief, to see such disquieting things—they saw enough signs of the Barrier's influence along their way to assure them that they were definitely on the right track. One day it had been strange tall structures of mud, as if wasps had built giant nests upon the ground. Jermayan told Kellen that these were termite hills, and that the nest-builders were creatures that rightly belonged to the deserts of the far south.
Another day they had seen a flock of starlings flying far overhead in an intricate unnatural pattern that had gone on for as long as the riders had been able to see them. Starlings normally flew in a pattern that looked, from a distance, like a thick, billowing ribbon going from horizon to horizon, as they left their daytime foraging ground to seek the groves of trees where they would perch overnight in such numbers that they outnumbered the leaves of the trees. This flock still looked like a ribbon, but a ribbon that was looping in on itself until the loops formed a multipetaled flower, and the birds flew the loops over and over and over again. There were birds lying exhausted on the ground under the flock, and more dropped out of the sky even as they passed.
TODAY they rode through the bottom of a narrow gorge. On either side, sheer granite walls rose straight up; the only way out was straight ahead, through a dense birch forest. The ground underfoot was thick with fallen yellow leaves. None of them was very happy about their route, and it was not one that Kellen would have freely chosen, but there didn't seem to be any other way, not if they were to keep to anything at all like their proper course northward.
Suddenly a flash of blue on the ground off to his right caught his eye. Kellen looked toward it. One of the drifts of leaves at the base of the trees was… blue?
'Look there,' Kellen said, pointing. 'I'm going to go check that. That's not right.'
Shalkan stopped, and Kellen dismounted, with far more grace and assurance than he'd exhibited even a few days previously. He walked toward the strange blue leaves, drawing his sword as he did—the gesture was almost second nature by now. Behind him, Jermayan was dismounting as well, telling Valdien to stand.
When he reached the pile at the base of the tree, Kellen prodded it with the tip of his sword.
Not leaves.
Butterflies.
Dead butterflies, blue ones, hundreds of them. They'd flocked here, drawn somehow by the Barrier's power —did butterflies flock, or swarm?— and frozen to death in the harsh northern autumn. He sighed, depressed by the senseless destruction of so much innocent beauty.
