Soon enough they were back on their road again, this time wearing cloaks to conceal their armor—not that any cloak Kellen wore could conceal what Shalkan was, or Valdien's armor, for that matter. But anything they could do to conceal their own armor might help them to avoid further attacks. Or it might draw bandits to them, who thought them easy prey. It was a gamble either way.
When they left the canyon and Kellen took his bearings, returning to their northward path, they found themselves heading up a narrow cleft in the rock, a track with sheer walls on either side. After the previous day's ambush, none of them liked it, but to seek another route would take them days out of their way, time they could not afford to lose. They had to act now as if Shadow Mountain knew they were coming, and in that case, speed was their best ally.
The path was barely wide enough for them to ride single file. Kellen and Shalkan led. This time Kellen wore his helmet, with the unfamiliar weight of the round shield strapped to his left arm. The helmet protected his head and face, but left him feeling closed in, unable to see the world very well with his side vision cut off. Fortunately Shalkan's senses were better than his own to begin with. He'd just have to trust Shalkan to spot any potential ambush.
As in fact the unicorn did, before the sun was very much higher.
'BACK!' Shalkan shouted suddenly, rearing up and turning in place.
Kellen took in the situation behind him at a glance. Valdien couldn't turn on the narrow path, and the destrier couldn't back up if the mule didn't move. Kellen leaped down from Shalkan's back and squeezed past Jermayan, grabbing Lily by her bridle and putting his shoulder into her chest. Speaking soothingly but urgently, he pushed, and to his great relief she backed up readily enough. Valdien followed swiftly, backing neatly, with Shalkan jammed in beside him.
Just as the Elven destrier was starting to move, a stone the size of a young pig hit the center of the trail right where Valdien had been standing a moment before. It landed with enough force to crack it in half, and a second later it was followed by another, only slightly smaller.
The travelers stared up at the walls of the gorge, knowing that if further attack should come, they were powerless to avoid it.
But no more stones fell. After a long moment Shalkan walked forward, looking down at the stones with dissatisfaction.
'I believe that they are gone,' Shalkan pronounced. 'Having failed to topple us, they had no wish to encounter arrows, I suspect.'
'They didn't originate from above,' Jermayan said unemotionally, gazing down at the boulders. 'Those are river stones—see how smooth? Not boulders from farther up the cliff. And soft enough—that's why the one broke when it landed. They were carried here from some distance away to be flung down at us.'
'By who—and why?' Kellen asked.
'These and other eternally unanswerable questions…' Shalkan commented with a sigh, shaking his head with a rattle of his armored collar as if flies bedeviled him.
His friend was right, Kellen realized with dismay. They had no way of knowing who was trying to kill them—or why. There were too many possible answers. And what was more, there might be no more sinister reason to this attack except an attempt to kill them and steal what they owned. After staring at the stone for a few moments more, Kellen mounted up, and they reluctantly continued on.
Eventually their path led them out of the gorge into a region of windswept hills covered with sparse grass. What few trees grew here were low, twisted by the constantly blowing wind. In the distance, Kellen could see taller hills dark with trees, and beyond them, true mountains at last, bare rock, their peaks white with snow. Perhaps Shadow Mountain was among them. I just hope we don't have to go all the way there to find the Barrier, Kellen thought worriedly. Such a journey would take months—and Sentarshadeen needed rain soon, for the sake of the spring crops.
As he rode, he'd been continuing to think about all that Jermayan had told him the night before—about the War, and the reason Armethalieh had outlawed the Wild Magic, and the Demons. It made a certain amount of horrible sense, and it certainly didn't make him feel any better about his own emerging Wildmage—or Knight- Mage—powers. True, Jermayan had said that the Wildmages who did fall to the Demons did so because they wanted to get out of paying the price for their powers and spells… but that was a temptation every Wildmage faced every time he cast a spell. Hadn't Kellen himself worried about it when he'd done his Healing Spell for Jermayan? What if the Wild Magic had asked a price that had interfered with him going to trigger Idalia's spell at the Endarkened keystone (and it still could, he knew, because the voice he'd heard hadn't been very specific about what his payment would be) what then? If he refused to pay the price of his magic, was he on his way to being Demon- bait, even though he only refused because it would get in the way of him fighting the Demons and saving Sentarshadeen?
It was all very confusing. And the confusion didn't stop here. Even if he paid his Mageprice this time, it was a choice he was going to face every time he cast a spell for the rest of his life.
It was worse, in a way, than when his fears had just been based on a formless misconception that the Wild Magic might be evil in itself. Now he knew it wasn't. Now that Jermayan had told him about the Great War he knew exactly how a Wildmage got himself into trouble using the Wild Magic, and that was worse, because it wasn't something that you could make up your mind once and for all not to do. It was a decision you had to keep making,
