Owlknight

Right against the rock, flush with it, the joint end of the lower leg bones. But the rest of the bone had been sheared off cleanly, leaving only the rounded ends, with the cuts lying flat against the surface of the rock.

Slowly, Wintersky picked up the two bone fragments, cleaned them off, and handed them to Darian, cut-end first, so that Darian could see for himself that the ends had not been crushed, as they would have been had the boulder landed after a fall, upon the unfortunate owner of the foot.

Another few minutes and the remains of a hard boot heel and sole were excavated from rotted tatters of thick canvas.

- Father - He knew that must be whose foot they had found; he had somehow known it the moment he touched the first bone. He knew it from the lurch in his heart, the dryness of his mouth, the surge in his blood. His father always wore his boots to sleep in, in case there was trouble in the night. He wore canvas-bodied boots coated in the same neutral wax as his leggings, so he would not leave scent marks to warn the game. The waxing had to be restored every few weeks or it would let the canvas rot. This had to be his father’s -

- but the ends of the bone were shiny, polished, as if they had been cut by a fine saw, then polished by a jeweler.

“Check with Mage-Sight. Is there any more sign?” Wintersky asked diffidently, laying the two bones down with the rest when Darian did not take them.

Darian closed his eyes, extended his senses, and - shook his head. “Nothing,” he said hoarsely, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

Together they looked at the bones, at the incontrovertible evidence that lay before them.

There was only one possible interpretation.

“They must have been caught in the Change-Circle,” Darian whispered. He did not for a moment doubt that his mother had been with his father - otherwise she would have made her way back to him. “They were caught in the Circle, and sent - where?”

Wintersky could only shake his head. “I don’t know, Dar’ian,” he replied. “I just - don’t know.”

A few hours later, Darian had cause to bless the caution with which Wintersky had worked, for he had managed to preserve the very few representatives of non-native vegetation that had taken root around the boulder. How they had come there, Darian had no idea, but they were not part of the normal flora of the Pelagiris Forest. Perhaps seeds had drifted in with the air that had come with the rock - perhaps they had been caught in a crack at the top of the boulder, for he had discovered by climbing up on top of it that it wasn’t perfectly sheared off. The top, flattened and cracked, looked like normally aged rock surface.

He carefully and reverently folded away the bones in one of his shirts in the saddlebag. He wasn’t altogether certain how they could be of use - but Firesong would know.

Surely we can use them to tell me whether Father is dead or alive. That would be some sort of closure; he could weep for them, and know they hadn’t come back to him because they couldn’t. It was a disconcerting feeling, to almost hope they were dead just so he would know at last, one way or the other. It was sobering and distressing at the same time, so he pushed it away from his thoughts through force of will, as he had become accustomed to doing by his training.

The dyheli were as excited over their own finds as Darian was; with all four of them equally eager to return to k’Valdemar, the young stags alternated their easy, distance-eating lope with bursts of full-out gallop. Darian had only to hang on; they would get him home faster than any other means except by air - though now he was regretting that he had not brought Kel along. Kel couldn’t have carried him home, but he could have taken those precious bones to Firesong.

He didn’t dare send Kuari ahead with the bones. For one thing, Kuari wasn’t that fast a flyer; for another, they needed his eyes when the sun set. Which was going to be very shortly. . . . The dyheli could see fairly well in the dark, but not at the breakneck pace they were setting now, and Darian was not willing to waste the power it would take to set mage-lights above and ahead of them; he preferred to use it to augment the dyheli’s strength. They needed Kuari’s night-sight, and the owl was happy to oblige.

Darkness gradually crept over the forest, and the dyheli linked their minds to Kuari’s. The owl swooped down from among the branches and flew a little ahead of the racing riders, about an arm’s-length higher than their heads. From this position, he could see anything that would trip the dyheli in any way - and so could they, through his eyes. Wintersky’s bird had already come down and was riding his shoulder, gripping the padding and hunched down with his wings held close to his body.

Darian guessed that it was just about midnight when the first light of k’Valdemar glimmered through the trees in the distance. The weary dyheli found an untapped reservoir of strength, and broke into a last, tired gallop.

They stumbled through the Veil, and into the waiting hands of the hertasi. Wintersky had turned his own attention to notifying the hertasi - and thus the Vale - of