A search through their saddlebags produced provisions enough that they wouldn’t starve any time soon. Zala offered Tylocost venison sausage and a roll of pounded vegetables and seeds called “viga,” nomad trail food. He accepted the latter. Sitting in the sand by the small creek they ate their rough meal. Zala asked where they were headed.
“The Great Green. That’s where Tolandruth is.”
She chewed a mouthful of spicy, smoky deer meat. “How do you know?”
“Reason, dear.” He drank water from his cupped hand. “That pair of giants he called wives are members of the Dom-shu tribe. Exiled from imperial territory, where else would he go but to his wives’ people?”
His reasoning was impeccable, but now that they were away from Juramona and the rampaging nomad hordes, Zala wondered how much she could trust him. Was this slippery Silvanesti taking her to Tolandruth, or merely leading her on a wild goose chase?
“You must trust me, dear,” he said, deducing her thoughts with irritating accuracy. “You’ve kept your part of our bargain, now I shall keep mine.”
“The Great Green is vast. What makes you so sure we can find him?”
False dawn was brightening the eastern sky. Tylocost had finished the viga. He dipped his hands in the creek and shook them dry. “Think of Lord Tolandruth as a mountain peak,” the elf said. “He stands above most men, and such a landmark can be seen from far off.”
He smiled, and for the first time Zala did not shudder at his looks.
From its usual temple-like calm, the house of Voyarunta’s daughters had taken on all the frenetic activity of market day in Daltigoth. Every possession had been turned out, piled in twin heaps outside the door. Miya and Eli dragged items to the door while Tol and Kiya sorted them into “take” and “leave” piles.
The morning had begun on a contentious note. Kiya said she would accompany Tol to Juramona, but Miya declined, using Eli as her excuse. The boy protested; he wanted to see “Jury Moona” for himself.
“Are you going to abandon Husband now?” Kiya demanded. “And me? After all we’ve been through together?”
Miya returned her sister’s glare. “I’m not abandoning anybody. You’re the ones leaving!”
“Where Tol goes, I go. And so should you.”
They argued through breakfast, through Eli’s bath, and through the first stages of sorting their belongings for the trip. Finally, Tol intervened.
“Eli stays. War is no place for children-and he needs his mother.”
Eli complained and Kiya argued, raising Miya’s ire and pulling her into the fray. Tol’s shout finally put an end to the discussion. He rarely asserted himself directly over his boisterous family, but when he did they obeyed resentfully.
The sisters and Eli returned to packing. Baskets and blankets were flung, clothes trampled, and gear deliberately mislaid. If the rift between Miya and Kiya hadn’t been so serious, Egrin would have laughed.
He was heartily glad his friend had chosen to return to Ergoth. Once there, Egrin was certain Tol would realize the Tightness of joining the fight against the bakali and the nomads.
“Blanket!” shouted Miya, flinging a brown horsehair cloth at Tol. It hit him on the back of the head, enveloping him in its dusty folds.
“We have blankets!” Kiya retorted. She was shouting, too, of course.
“It’s for the horse!”
“What horse?”
Miya, flushed from her exertions, paused in the open doorway. “You don’t intend to walk all the way to Daltigoth, do you?”
“I’ve done it before!”
Tol dragged the blanket off his back. “We’re not going to Daltigoth,” he said, waving away the clouds of dust. “And if we buy horses, we’ll buy blankets for them, too.”
“Then give it back!”
Kiya snatched the heavy cloth and flung it at Miya. The latter stood aside and let it go winging into the hut’s interior. From within came Eli’s howl of protest. The boy stomped out and threw the blanket at Miya’s feet.
“How do you stand it?” Egrin asked, his mouth close to Tol’s ear.
Tol smiled. “You get used to it. If they didn’t shout at each other every day, I’d think I’d gone deaf.”
By midday Tol had worked the “take” pile down to three bundles of manageable size, one for each of them to carry. The chosen equipment was spare indeed-a water bottle each, a bedroll, dried and smoked rations for the road.
Egrin asked about weapons, and Tol went inside. He stood on a block of firewood and reached up into the rafters, halfway between the chimney vent and eaves. Visibly alarmed, Miya asked what he was doing.
“Fetching Number Six.” This was the remarkable steel saber he’d been given by a dwarf merchant, after Tol’s party saved the dwarves from bandits in the Harrow Sky hill country.
Miya hurried over. “I’ll get it for you!”
Before she reached him, the tip of Tol’s buckskin-wrapped bundle snagged on something further down the rafter. A small leather box fell to the dirt floor.
Miya tried to pick up the box, but Tol’s hand closed over it first. He opened the box. For the first time in six years he beheld the millstone, the ancient Irda artifact that possessed the ability to absorb any magic directed at the one who possessed it. After gazing at it for a silent moment, he tugged a small leather bag from under his sash belt. After dumping out its contents-four silver coins-Tol put the millstone in and tucked the bag inside his pack.
Miya’s eyes were screwed shut, her body braced to receive his fury, but it never came. Instead, he patted her cheek. Her eyes flew open in shock. At that moment Egrin and Kiya entered.
“What’s this?” Kiya sputtered.
“Just thanking Miya for keeping my weapons safe and sound,” he said, winking. Miya’s face was bright red. “You know me, I don’t always take proper care of these things.”
He handed the leather-wrapped sword to Egrin. The old marshal had seen the box overturned on the floor and recognized it as the one Eli had been playing with. He said nothing, only freed the saber from the oily buckskin. The iron hilt was frosted with tiny flecks of rust, which oil and sand would soon remove. Number Six’s blade still had the slight bend it had acquired in a battle with Mandes’s mercenaries, six and a half years ago.
Egrin presented the hilt to his friend. “Your sword, Lord Tolandruth.”
Tol took Number Six. “Thank you, Lord Egrin,” he said wryly.
By midafternoon the trio was nearly ready to depart. Egrin was alone in the sod hut with the Dom-shu sisters, as Tol said his farewells to Eli outside. Once more, Egrin found himself the unwitting cause of an argument between members of Tol’s family.
The old warrior was nearly ready to join Tol outside, when he noticed Kiya holding a piece of jewelry. Crouched by her pack, she was wrapping a beaded headband in soft leather before packing it. The headband was very fine: multicolored beads worked in an intricate pattern, with a fringe of tiny, carved ivory animals on its lower edge. Its ties were as long as Egrin’s forearm, and were decorated with more carved beads and ivory animals. When he commented on its beauty, Kiya’s reaction-and Miya’s-took him by surprise.
“Jewelry?” Miya exclaimed, hurrying over to investigate: “Sister owns no jewelry, except-”
“Shut up!” Kiya snapped.
Miya demanded, “Why are you taking your burial beads?”
Although Egrin didn’t know the particulars, the term “burial beads” certainly had a gloomy ring to it. However, Kiya brushed aside Miya’s question, reminding her that they were going off to fight, after all.
“Besides,” the elder Dom-shu added, directing a glare first at Miya and then Egrin, “it is my concern and no one else’s.”
Egrin nodded quickly, embarrassed to have intruded on such a private matter. Miya gave her sister glare for glare, but said nothing more.
Outside, they found Tol kneeling by Eli. The boy was trying not to cry but he was failing. When his mother appeared, he hurried to her and held her hand tightly.
Chief Voyarunta and his senior warriors had come to see the travelers off. The crow’s feet had vanished from
