But having access to this node is going to be bad enough! She shuddered at the idea of Mornelithe with that much power in his hands. This nexus was far more important, far more powerful than the Birdkin guessed. If they had known, they would have either drained it or built their Vale here. Nyara closed her eyes and saw her father's face, slit eyes gleaming down at her, gloating with power beyond her weak imagination as she trembled.
With that much power, she would never be free of him.
She straightened and walked into the circle of stones before the nest.
Her foot stirred a tiny stone as she moved, and the human and gryphons sprang up, gryphons with talons bared, Darkwind with his dagger drawn.
They relaxed when they saw her; Treyvan sitting back down with a sigh.
'Gesssta sssaid that ssshe would assk Nyarrra to some ssstand watch thisss night for usss,' Treyvan told Darkwind. 'Ssshe sssseesss well by night, and we trussst herrrr-'
'You shouldn't,' Nyara replied, stifling a sob. 'oh, you should not have trusted me.' Darkwind seized her by the arm, and pulled her into the stone circle.
'Just what do you mean by that?' he snarled.
And slowly, holding back tears, she told them.
*Chapter Eighteen ELSPETH
This was, possibly, the strangest land Elspeth had ever crossed. There were no roads and no obvious landmarks; just furlong after furlong of undulating grass plains. There were clumps of brush, and even tree-lines following watercourses, but grassland was the rule down on the Dhorisha Plains. It was truly a 'trackless wilderness,' and one without many ways of figuring out where you were once you were in the middle of it.
Right now, the Plains were in the middle of high summer; not the best time to travel across them. Nights were short, days were scorching and long; the grass was bleached to a pale gold, insects sang night and day, down near the roots. Otherwise there wasn't much sign of life, no animals running through the grass, no birds in the air. Or rather, there was nothing they could spot; the Plains might well teem with life, as hidden in the grass as the insects, but silent. Here, where the tall, waving weeds made excellent cover, there was no reason for an animal to break and run, and every reason for it to stay quietly hidden where it was.
A constant hot breeze blew from the south every day, dying down at sunset and dawn, and picking up again at night. And not just hot, but dry, parchingly dry. Thirst was always with them; it seemed that no sooner had they drunk from their water skins than they were thirsty again. Elspeth was very glad of the map; since they had descended into the Plains near a spring, she'd puzzled out the Shin'a'in glyph for 'water'- the water that was very precious out here in the summer. This was not a desert, but there wasn't a trace of humidity, day or night, and there would be no relief until the rains came in the fall. The mouth and nose dehydrated, skin was flaking and tight, and eyes sore and gritty, most of the time. Many of the water sources shown on the map were not springs or streams, which would have been visible by the belt of green vegetation along their banks, but were wells. There was no outward sign of these wells anywhere; in fact, they were frequently hidden from casual searching and could only be found by triangulating on objects like rocks, a mark on the cliff wall, a clump of ancient thornbushes. There were detailed, incredibly tiny drawings of the pertinent markers beside each water-glyph. Elspeth marveled again and again at the ingenuity of the Shin'a'in and their mapmakers. And she was very glad that she did not have to travel the Plains by winter. A bitter winter wind, howling unchecked across those vast expanses of flat land, would chill an unprotected horse and rider to the bone in no time. And there was little fuel out here, except the dried droppings of animals and the ever-present grass. Would it be somehow possible to compact the grass into logs?
There were no natural shelters from the winter winds either, at least that she had seen. Small wonder the Shin'a'in were a hardy breed.
Since their goal was the northern rim of the Plains, they had chosen to follow the edge, keeping it always on their right as they rode. But Elspeth wondered aloud on their third day out just how the Shin'a'in managed to find their way across the vast Plains, once they were out of sight of the cliffs. And soon or late, they must be out of sight of those natural walls. How could they tell where they were?
Skif shrugged when she voiced her question. 'Homing instinct, like birds?' he hazarded. 'Landmarks we can't see?' He didn't seem particularly interested in the puzzle.
The sword snorted-mentally, of course
Like seafarers. With the stars and a compass, you can judge pretty accurately where you are. I expect some of those little scribbles on your map are notes, readings, based on the compass and the stars. And I know the lines they have cross-hatching it are some way of reckoning locations they have that you don't.' Elspeth nodded; she'd heard of such a thing, but no one in landlocked Valdemar had ever seen the sea, much less met those who plied it. They both had compasses, bought in Kata'shin'a'in, though Skif had complained that he couldn't see what difference knowing where north was would make if they got lost. She'd bought them anyway, mostly because she saw them in places where the Shin'a'in often bought made-goods.
She reckoned that if the Clansmen needed and used them, she should have one, too. She bit her tongue when he complained, and somehow kept herself from pointing out that on a featureless plain, if he knew which way north was, he would at least be able to prevent himself from wandering around in a circle.
