“Following the Tarmaks. They are about three days’ march behind.”
“Is Crucible
“He is still alive and still a prisoner. They keep him in the center of the army and keep guards around him. I cannot get close.” She fluffed her feathers, a habit she had when something bothered her. “Someone else is following you now.”
Linsha rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. Memories of the night before were coming back with painful clarity, and she remembered something one of the draconians had said, something about a bounty.
“Bounty hunters? Did the Tarmaks put a bounty on me?”
“It’s possible. I saw maybe twenty or thirty humans and draconians riding in the Tarmak army, and other small bands are roving along the trails in this area. But no, this is someone else. Sir Remmik.”
“What?” Linsha sat bolt upright and stared at the owl in astonishment.
“Sir Remmik and three Knights. I saw them last night. They are following your trail. I think they’re going to Duntollik, too.”
Linsha was too dumbfounded to speak. What was the Knight Commander doing free of the Tarmak army? Had Sir Remmik and some of his Knights escaped?
“I told Falaius about them,” Varia went on. “I said you might want to send someone back for them, but he refused. We don’t have time. We have to get the Grandfather Tree in two days’ time. They’ll just have to catch up.”
“You talked to Falaius already?” Linsha demanded. “How long have you been back? What time is it? How long was I sleeping?” She struggled to her feet, dislodging the owl from her shoulder.
Varia fluttered to the large rock and perched, waiting while Linsha found her sword and the poniard and shoved them into the scabbards at her belt. “It’s still morning,” she said. “You’ve only slept a few hours, according to Mariana.”
Linsha, balanced on one foot, glared around at the grassy bank. “Where is Sir Hugh?”
“Oh, he left a little while ago. He volunteered to go speak to the tribal leaders at the Grandfather Tree.”
“He left!” Linsha snapped. “Oh, for pity’s sake, wasn’t anyone going to tell me anything?” She struggled forward on one foot, sore and aching and annoyed with the whole world.
“I just told you,” Varia said.
“Stop it, right there,” Mariana called from the top of the riverbank. “You shouldn’t climb this without help. Your ankle has a bad sprain.” She jogged down the slope and put an arm around Linsha’s shoulder.
Linsha transferred her glare to her friend. “Why didn’t someone wake me up sooner?”
“You were on guard duty half the night, remember? There was nothing you needed to do. Now we have broken camp and are ready to go.”
“Sir Hugh managed to get up and be useful,” Linsha said, grumbling, but listening to herself, she had to admit she sounded rather petulant.
“Sir Hugh was just coming on guard duty when we were attacked. He’d already had some sleep. And he does not have an injured ankle. He can get there faster. Now stop sounding like a fretful child and be grateful you are still alive. Not everyone I know survives a fight with three draconians.”
Mariana hefted some of Linsha’s weight onto her shoulders and helped her up the steep bank to the grassy grove where they had pitched their camp the night before.
Linsha saw the horses were already saddled and the gear packed. Off to one side in the trees, she saw a pile of bodies-the bandits from the night attack. Everyone in her party was upright and alive. Thank the absent gods for that.
Varia winged past her and came to land on the pommel of the saddle on Linsha’s horse. While Falaius and the others mounted, Mariana gave Linsha a leg up then sprang onto her own mount.
Moments later they were gone, and the dust slowly settled over the dead.
Linsha had always found a way to feel at home wherever she went. Her family home was in Solace, to be sure, but she had traveled so much during her lifetime that she had learned to adapt. After all, one place was much like another in the background. Anywhere she stayed for more than a day or two she soon felt comfortable, even in Schallsea where her parents had forced her to go, or Palanthas, or Haven, or Sanction, or Missing City. Everywhere there were the same rocks and dirt and people and plants and animals. Only the trappings and the names were different.
Everywhere she could find something familiar.
Everywhere except the interior of the Plains of Dust. This drear, rugged land even she found difficult to embrace.
While her party had followed the Toranth River the past few days, she had been comfortable enough. Although she much preferred a city, here along the river there was abundant water and forage and prey for the hunters’ bows. She found peace in the voice of the swiftly rushing water and pleasure in the wind as it swept through the willows and cottonwoods lining the banks. There were colors to please the eye-green in the rushes and grasses, a touch of autumn gold in the leaves of the cottonwoods, soft reds and tans in the rocks, and the vivid blue of the vast sky.
But that afternoon when the horses crossed the river’s ford and trotted over the line of hills at the valley’s borders, all of the bright color and rushing life of the river drained away to burned reds and umbers, drifting sand, and the endless solitude of the desert. Linsha had seen the southern end of the wastelands from the sky when Iyesta took her on a flight to Thunder’s realm, but this was the first time she had seen the desert from the ground, and she did not like it. It looked empty and hostile to her eyes.
She stopped her horse on a small bare hill and looked out over the barren emptiness. There was nothing to see but sand dunes, windswept rock, and a few scruffy hills.
Falaius came to a stop beside her, his tanned face split with a smile of pleasure. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said. “I have loved this land since my eyes first opened upon it.”
Linsha looked at him as if he had just declared his devotion to draconians. She remembered though, before she said anything stupid, that the big Plainsman came from this desolation. What was dismal to one could be home to another.
“Why?” she said. “What do you see that is so beautiful?”
He swept an arm around to encompass the vast sweep of the land. “I cannot name any one thing. The desert is a vast entity unto itself. It simply is, and what you make of it is entirely up to you. You can look at it as a great, terrible emptiness or you can enter it with open eyes and see beauty and subtlety wherever you look.”
Linsha tried not to be skeptical as she viewed the desertlands. To her, it still looked like a wasteland, the backside of nowhere. But for Falaius’s sake, she tried to find something to appreciate.
“What is that trail over there? Does it go to the ford?” she asked, pointing out a faint track to their north that stretched like a dusty ribbon to the western horizon. Any track that led out of that desolation was worth appreciating.
Falaius’s expression grew grave. “That is the trail of the Qualinesti. The centaurs who found us this morning told us they talked to several stragglers at the river. The main body of refugees passed by here about nine or ten days ago.”
Linsha glanced up at the hot sun then down at the pale track. She could not imagine what that trek must have been like for the elves. To have lost their lands, their homes, so many of their friends and family; to have to cross that treacherous desert to find other elves who did not want them. What courage that had taken.
“They must have had a great faith in their leaders,” she said softly.
“So I understand. You can ask more about them if you like,” the old Plainsman said. “The man who led them across the desert is meeting us at the Grandfather Tree.”
“What is this Grandfather Tree?” she demanded. “Where is it?”
“You’ll see tomorrow.”
He gave Varia a wink and urged his horse downhill.
For the rest of the day, the small party of riders rode in the sweltering heat and dust, deeper and deeper into the great desert. All too quickly the influence of the river and the grasslands fell away behind them and rough, arid lands surrounded them. The sun burned hot in the sky and the dry desert wind blew plumes of red dust and
