sheltering shadows of the adjacent gulch, but not so Rowen. The ranger continued to push hard, leading them up a sandy creek at a near gallop for several long minutes, then abruptly dismounting to double back along a dangerous slope of blond bedrock. When they reached the summit, they mounted again and trotted across another exposed summit, then repeated the process three more times before Rowen finally dropped into a winding gulch and stayed there.
The ranger scanned the sky one last time, then waved Vangerdahast and Tanalasta up beside him. “We’ll follow this gully up onto Gnoll Flats,” Rowen said, “then turn south toward the Storm Horns. The stonemurk could be pretty bad up there, but it’ll die down for a while about dawn. We’ll be looking for a pair of mountains Alusair has been calling the Mule Ears.”
“We’ll know them when we see them, I take it,” Vangerdahast said. He did not bother asking Rowen’s reason for detailing the route. With the ghazneth on their trail, being separated was one of the more pleasant reasons it was wise for everyone to know the way. “Is that where we’ll meet Alusair?”
Rowen shifted in his saddle and was a little too careful to keep his eye on the trail. “Actually, no. That’s where she was three days ago, when she received Tanalasta’s sending.”
“And where is she now?” Vangerdahast was all too confident he would not like the answer.
Rowen shrugged. “We’ll have to see.” He turned to Tanalasta. “You can follow a trail, can’t you?”
“I can,” said Tanalasta.
Rowen nodded as though he had expected no less and drew a somewhat surprised smile from Tanalasta. Not seeming to notice the effect he had on her, he continued to address the princess, ignoring Vangerdahast entirely.
“Alusair was somewhat, er, reluctant to suspend her search,” the ranger explained. “We’ll return to the last camp and track her from there.”
“Then she hasn’t found Emperel.” Vangerdahast leaned on his saddle horn and stretched over to infuse himself into the conversation. “So what has she been doing up here?”
“Following him, obviously,” said Tanalasta. “Will you let the man speak, Vangey?”
Vangerdahast shot a scowl at the princess, but she did not seem to notice. Her gaze was fixed too sternly on the ranger.
“Continue, Rowen.”
“As you command, Princess.”
“She asked you to call her Tanalasta,” grumbled Vangerdahast. The cad was winning her favor far too quickly with that respectful act of his. “And why not? You’ve already seen the crown jewels.”
“Vangerdahast!” Tanalasta gave him a withering scowl, then looked back to Rowen. “Must I call on Rowen to remind you who is the royal here?”
Rowen’s eyes grew bright and white in the moonlight. He glanced between the princess and Vangerdahast, allowing his sword hand to drift uneasily toward his sword pommel. The wizard started to utter a dark warning, then caught himself and thought better of it. The more he picked on the boy, the more determined Tanalasta would be to like him.
Vangerdahast looked away, preparing himself for a distasteful task. “I hope the princess will forgive me. I was only trying to put the boy at ease.”
“His name is Rowen,” said Tanalasta.
“Please, if the Royal Magician wants to call me a boy, I won’t be offended,” said Rowen. “To tell you the truth, it’s been so many years since I’ve been called that I find it funny.”
“Then I am happy to make you laugh, Rowen,” said Tanalasta. “From henceforth, the Royal Magician may address us as ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ and we will call him ‘grandfather.’”
“I am sure the royal court will find your decision most amusing,” Vangerdahast replied, finding himself grinding his teeth. As trustworthy as Rowen might be, Vangerdahast could not have the princess falling in love with a Cormaeril. After the Abraxus Affair, that would be tantamount to bedding a Sembian. “If we are done making young Cormaeril laugh, perhaps he could tell us about Emperel?”
Rowen looked to Tanalasta, and when she nodded, began. “There really isn’t much to tell. We picked up his trail a few miles east of Halfhap and followed him across the Stonebolt Trail toward Shouk’s Ambush, then he suddenly found someone else’s trail and followed it south to a tomb in the foothills.”
“A tomb?” Vangerdahast asked.
“How old?” Tanalasta asked. “What type?”
“It was very old, Milady,” said Rowen. “As for the type-I’m no expert on such things. It was set beneath the roots of a great twisted oak, black of bark and so filled with rot that it’s a wonder the thing was still standing. There were old glyphs carved into the trunk such as I have never seen.”
“Glyphs?” Tanalasta asked, growing excited. “Were they Elvish?”
Rowen shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. They were very sinuous and graceful.”
Tanalasta said, “They sound Elvish.”
“As does the tomb,” Vangerdahast agreed.
“You’re thinking Tree of the Body…”
“But twisted and black?”
Rowen’s head pivoted back and forth between his escorts, not quite keeping pace with the exchange.
“Twisted and black,” said Tanalasta. “Yes, that is interesting.”
“No elf would sprout such a thing, and if it’s rotting…”
“There are evil elves.”
“True, but drow grow mushrooms, not trees,” Vangerdahast said. “And they live underground.”
“I’m talking about wood elves, not drow. Don’t you recall the Year of Distant Thunder?”
Rowen turned to Tanalasta and said, “If I may-“
“The Bleth family, of course,” said Vangerdahast, cutting the cad off, “but Mondar was in the wrong there.”
“They could have told him that before they killed his whole family,” Tanalasta said. “It was a massacre-an elven massacre.”
“Excuse me!” Rowen said, raising his voice loud enough to be heard. “But I am sorry to disappoint you. The elves have nothing to do with this tomb.”
Vangerdahast and Tanalasta both frowned, then asked together, “You’re sure?”
“We found some garish old rings, a silver hair comb,” said Rowen, “and a lady’s stiletto hidden in the handle of a brass fan.”
Tanalasta raised her brow. “That’s certainly not elven.”
“Nor were the vambraces in the next tomb,” said Rowen.
“The next tomb?” Vangerdahast gasped. “There were two?”
Rowen shook his head. “Three… so far, all opened. Emperel followed whoever he was tracking to each of them. We think that’s where be ran into the ghazneth.”
Vangerdahast and Tanalasta fell silent, trying in their own ways to make sense of what the ranger was telling them. The tombs Rowen described did not belong to the Sleeping Sword. Vangerdahast visited that cavern periodically to inspect its condition and renew the stasis spell that kept the young lords in suspended animation, and he knew for a fact there was not a tree within two miles of it.
“These tombs,” Tanalasta said. “Were they all similar?”
“Some seemed older than others,” said Rowen. “Or at least the trees were larger, and they had the same glyphs carved into the trunks. But the things we found in. each one were different. In the last one, it was a war wizards’ throat clasp.”
The ranger gestured to the unfastened clasps at the throats of his two companions.
Vangerdahast raised his brow. “I don’t suppose you have that clasp with you?”
“Sorry. Princess Alusair said-“
“I can imagine what she said,” Vangerdahast replied.
“Quiet!” Tanalasta hissed.
The princess guided her horse over in front of her companions, forcing them to a stop. Vangerdahast’s eyes went instantly to the sky and his hand to his throat clasp. If the ghazneth had found them anyway…
Tanalasta’s shadowy hand reached out to catch him by the arm. “Orcs,” she whispered.
