As if in reply, the owl-eagle screamed once more and flew off to the north and west, landing on a branch and looking back for all the world like it expected them to follow it. Kethry put her hand on her partner's arm to restrain her for a moment. 'What are we going to do about the horses?'
'Damn. Release them, I guess. They'll head straight back to camp in the morning.' Tarma didn't look happy about the decision, but there wasn't much else they could do; they certainly couldn't leave them, nor could they ride them through dark woods when they couldn't see where to put their feet. And leading them would be just as bad as riding them.
On the other hand, walking back to camp across the Plains in midsummer-
'Let's just leave them unhobbled, and try to get back before morning,' Kethry suggested. 'They won't stray until then.' Tarma grimaced, but pulled the hobbles from her mare's feet and threw them on the pile of tack, while Kethry did the same. When she looked up, the owl-eagle was still there, still waiting. He didn't move until they were within a few arm-lengths of the tree -- and then it was only to fly off and land in another tree, farther to the north and west. Kethry had had a little niggling doubt at first as to whether her partner had read the situation correctly, but now she was sure; the bird wanted them to follow.
It continued to lead them in that fashion for what felt like weeks, though by the moon shining directly down toward the tree branches, it wasn't much past midnight. It was impossible to tell where they were, now that they'd left the road; one enormous tree looked like every other enormous tree. For the past several candlemarks, she'd been feeling an increase in ambient mage-energies; her skin prickled so much with it that she felt forced to shield herself, and she wasn't entirely sure that time was passing at its normal rate.
'Where are we?' she whispered finally to her partner.
Tarma stopped for a moment and peered up at the moon. 'I don't know,' she admitted. 'I'm lost. Someplace a lot west and some north of where we started. I don't -- I don't think we're in the Pelagiris Forest anymore; I think we're in Pelagir Hills country. I wish we'd brought Fur-face with us, now.'
'I hate to admit it, but I agree-' Kethry began.
And that was when an enormous, invisible fist closed around them.
The bird shrieked in alarm, and shot skyward. Tarma cursed; Kethry was too busy trying to breathe.
It's the paralysis-spell, she thought, even as she struggled to get a little more air into her lungs. But she couldn't breathe in without first breathing out, and every time she did that, the hand dosed tighter on her chest. That's-supposed-to-be-
A darkness that had nothing to do with the hour dimmed the moonlight, and her lungs screamed for air.
-lost-
Blackness swooped in like a stooping hawk, and covered her.
Her chest hurt; that was the first thing she knew when she woke again. She opened her eyes as she felt something cool and damp cross her brow, and gazed with dumb surprise up into a pair of eyes as blue as Tarma's, but in an indisputably male face crowned with frost-white hair.
Indisputably? Not-quite. There was something unusual about him. Not that he was she'chorne, that she had no trouble spotting. Something like that, and not even remotely evil, but very, very different.
Beyond the face were bars glinting and shining as only polished metal could; and two light sources, one that flared intermittently outside of her line of sight, and one that could only be a witch-light, hovering just outside the bars.
The stranger smiled wanly when he saw that she was awake, and draped the cloth he'd been using to bathe her forehead over the edge of a metal bowl beside him. 'Forgive me, lady,' he said in oddly-accented Shin'a'in. 'I did not intend to lure anyone into captivity when I sent out my bond-bird.'
'That owl-eagle was yours?' she said, trying not to breathe too quickly, since every movement made her chest ache the more.
'Aye,' he replied, 'I sent her for my own kin, but she saw your magic and came to you instead. Now she is frightened past calling back.'
'But I didn't-' Kethry started to say, then saw the wary look in the Hawkbrother's eyes. We're being watched and listened to. For some reason, he doesn't want whoever caught us to know his bird can See passive mage- shields, the way Warrl can. She struggled to sit up, and the Hawkbrother assisted her unobtrusively.
They were in a cage, one with a perfectly ordinary lock. Beside them was another-with no lock at all- holding Tarma. The Shin'a'in sat cross-legged in the middle of the contraption, with a face as expressionless as a stone.
