'Another thing that isn't where it's supposed to be,' Kellen said grimly. 'But is it just an accident… or is this another trap?'
'Were any of them traps?' Shalkan asked simply. 'Or were they all just the sort of misfortunes that would have happened to any traveler that passed this way?'
'Either way, we'd better move on,' Jermayan said tiredly, getting to his feet. 'Where there was one, there may be more.'
THEY made an unsatisfactory camp in one of the hilltop groves, keeping a sharp eye out for more rogue shepherds—or anything else. At this point, Kellen didn't trust anything, not a starling, not even a mouse. Before the light failed entirely, there was time for a few minutes of sparring practice with Jermayan, and Kellen was relieved to find that it was still as easy for him as it had been before the battle.
That night Jermayan began drilling him in the rudiments of shield-fighting—how to draw an attacker's blows to your shield, how to fight using your sword one-handed for greater reach. But there was not time for much of that before it was too dark to see, and neither wished to risk a misstep or a foul blow in the dark.
In the morning, they struck camp and moved on quickly, none of them willing to linger in such inhospitable territory. By early afternoon they were crossing terrain that was dangerous enough in its own right, without the help of brigands, bandits, or questionable shepherds.
They weren't trekking now so much as mountain-climbing, their progress slowed to the slowest walking pace by the need to test every foothold before proceeding along slanting, tilting, nearly invisible trails. Shalkan led—the unicorn was as surefooted as a goat—with Kellen clutching the saddle tightly and trying not to look down.
To Kellen's surprise, for all his size, Valdien was nearly as nimble as Shalkan, the Elven destrier able to follow any path Shalkan chose. The mule scrambled along behind, patient and uncomplaining—or perhaps, now that it had escaped the fangs of wolfhound and ice-tiger, desperate to remain with its 'herd' and the protection of the two Knights.
'Once these hills were lush with forests,' Jermayan said when they stopped to rest. 'Sweet-smelling cedars as far as the eye could see, and flowering alyon, and fragrant vilya. In my grandsire's time, we built ships from the trees that grew here in the Forest of Tilinaparanwira to sail the oceans of the world. Our home was here in these forests, and in the mountains beyond as well. In those days, we thought ourselves masters of all.' Jermayan sighed, as if the ancient memory pained him.
Kellen looked around. It was hard to imagine anything at all growing here, let alone trees tall enough to provide the masts for an ocean-going ship.
He glanced at Jermayan. The Elven Knight was smiling ruefully, seeing the expression of skepticism on Kellen's face.
'But my grandsire lived a very long time ago, as the Children of Men reckon time—just as the Great War itself was so long ago that you have schooled yourselves to forget it. We ride now across the lands where many of the battles of that war were fought—and because of that, for tens of your generations, no blade of grass grew from this tainted earth, no bird flew through these accursed skies. Have you never wondered why the holdings of the Children of Men are so few in this land, yet your cities are armed and walled for war? Though you have purged the very hint of it from your histories, there is a reason for those walls, a reason why Men are so few when they breed so rapidly.' He closed his eyes for a moment, as if weary. 'But now Life returns. I wonder—is it that which has roused Life's old enemy from its slumber?'
There was no answer he could make to that, and Kellen didn't even try. They rode on, with Kellen trying to imagine what this place might have looked like when it was as lush as the Flower Forest around Sentar-shadeen must have been before the drought. Jermayan had said the Great Alliance had paid a terrible price for their victory; looking around at a landscape so scoured that grass barely grew here now, Kellen was only now beginning to imagine what it must have been like.
'Look there,' Jermayan said a few moments later, pointing off to the left.
Kellen looked. Halfway down the slope—probably a couple of miles away; distances could be deceiving here —he saw an odd row of tall narrow boulders standing in a line on what looked like a gentle sloping plain. Kellen knew from his experience today that that sort of terrain was particularly treacherous. Either it was gravel over rock, and just as slippery as oiled glass as a result, or it was a thin layer of topsoil over granite, which meant that the footing would hold just long enough to give you a false sense of security before giving way and sending you tumbling to the bottom of the slope.
He took a closer look at the boulders, since they seemed to be what Jermayan was pointing at. They didn't look like the rest of the stone around here, which was mostly pale grey granite. The boulders were black, and looked as if they were made of something else. He couldn't tell what, though, and had no particular desire to investigate more closely, having spent most of the morning getting up an incline that looked pretty similar to that one.
'That is Ulanya, where the last of the Dark-corrupted dragons fell with his Mage. It is said the dragon's bones endure to this day. As you see.'
'Huh,' Kellen said, shaking his head as they rode on. If those boulders were dragon-bones, Kellen revised his desire to see a living dragon. Judging from the size of them—if they really were dragon-bones, and not just funny- looking rocks—a full-sized dragon must be larger than the Council House where the High Mages met. No wonder both sides in the war had wanted to get their hands on them!
