the best place to seek clues to his current whereabouts.”
She removed a narrow gold ring from her finger and pressed it into Zala’s hand. “This was a gift from him to me. I had a wizard place a spell of finding on it. The power of the spell is limited to the width of the horizon, so don’t use it until you think yourself close to him. Once you find him, give him the ring and he will know that I sent you.”
Zala couldn’t help asking the obvious question. “Majesty, what of the imperial mages? Surely they could find and summon this man much more quickly than I.”
The empress’s forthright manner became suddenly evasive. “He cannot be moved by magic,” she replied, looking away. “Even the ring will fail if…”
Her voice trailed off. Zala waited patiently. The empress shook off her odd mood and added, “He must be found the hard way. Rely on your own wits and skill.”
Zala vowed she would. She always had.
The empress explained that ten thousand crowns had been deposited with Zala’s partner in Caergoth. When the huntress returned with her quarry, another twenty thousand would be paid to her on the spot. The sum caused Zala’s jaw to drop. She’d never dreamed of such a commission.
“What man is worth thirty thousand crowns?” she blurted.
“His name is Tol, once Lord Tolandruth, general of the Army of the North and champion of the late emperor, Ackal IV.”
Zala knew the name. Tolandruth had been an important warlord once, winning many battles against the Tarsans, but six years ago he’d fallen afoul of the current emperor and gotten himself banished. He must’ve done something pretty bad to lose his titles and position. No wonder the empress wanted their business kept secret. The emperor would not be pleased to know his chief consort was searching for a disgraced former hero of the empire.
“He may be dead, Majesty,” Zala warned.
“He’s alive,” was the unhesitating response. “I know it in my heart. Bring him to me. Quickly.”
Zala took her leave. Once out of the empress’s presence, she drew a deep breath. She was sweating beneath her deerskins, though the palace was cool enough. Here was a chance to make more money with one job than she could in fifty years of ordinary tracking. Her partner in Caergoth-her human father-was old and sick. Thirty thousand gold pieces would ease his burdens immeasurably.
However, the empress’s threats, delivered with practiced ease, were very real. If Zala failed, she would die; of that she had no doubt. The empire was broad, with many places to hide, but the Empress of Ergoth had a long reach. She must find this Tol swiftly and get him back to Daltigoth.
She pulled the hood over her head again before she exited the palace. Leaving the unnatural calm of the Inner City, she merged into the turbulent night.
The forest rose ahead, seeming solid as a city wall. The sun, playing hide and seek behind ragged clouds, would alternately illuminate the trees in golden light, then leave them again in shade. Thick undergrowth made it impossible to see more than a pace or two into the forest.
Egrin Raemel’s son sat on horseback a dozen strides from the edge of the Great Green. The former Marshal of the Eastern Hundred scratched his chin through a beard mostly gray; very little of its original auburn color remained.
Two decades had passed since Egrin last had entered this forest. Sword in hand, he’d followed the trail broken by his commander, Marshal Odovar. Only a few score paces inside, the dense undergrowth vanished as the branches of the majestic trees formed a dim, leafy canopy. There were few landmarks; one enormous tree looked very like another to open-country Ergothians. Within half a day, tribesmen had fallen upon their rear, driving them deeper into the woodland, and away from any hope of rescue.
But rescued they were, by a force of one hundred foot soldiers led by Tol, Egrin’s shield-bearer. The boy was barely seventeen. Born to farmers so backward they didn’t bother keeping track of birthdays, Tol didn’t know his precise age. His people moved to a different set of rhythms than town folk. A boy was old enough to do a deed when he was big enough and strong enough to accomplish it. Even after coming to Juramona and training as a warrior, Tol lived that way. More often than not, he succeeded.
The sun came out from behind the clouds again. Egrin mopped sweat from his brow. He didn’t relish entering the Great Green again. This time, it wasn’t forest tribesmen who worried him. There had been peace between the Dom-shu and the empire for years. These days, worse things than wild woodsmen inhabited the world. Inhuman things.
Although born in a wooded area himself, Egrin had been forced out at an early age. The small settlement of humans and elves in which his family lived was destroyed by raiders. His human mother was killed and his father, a Silvanesti elf, had vanished. Egrin had been left with a sympathetic human family at a settlement far from the woodlands. His new family insisted-for his own safety-that he hide his mixed lineage, going so far as to have his upswept ears cropped to a more “normal” shape.
He had been concealing his parentage ever since. He had told the truth to only two people: a wife, long dead, and Tol, the farm boy who had become like a son to him.
The broad meadow at his back, known as Zivilyn’s Carpet, was alive with spring wildflowers, just as it had been that day twenty years ago when he’d entered the Great Green with Lord Odovar. This time Egrin had traveled alone, and this time he had no Tol to come boldly, foolishly, to the rescue.
No, that wasn’t strictly true. Tol
Well, he wasn’t getting any younger, or any closer to finding Tol, just sitting here staring at the trees.
He dismounted and led his horse forward. The sway-backed beast was the only horse he’d found for sale for a dozen leagues in any direction. All decent animals had been rounded up and sold to the imperial army. As many horses as men had died in the last three battles-and men were more easily replaced.
Once he’d entered the shade, Egrin hoped the heat would abate, but it did not. The trees grew so close together they shut out any breeze, making the air stifling and oppressive. He’d forgotten that.
Further in, the tangled undergrowth thinned enough to allow him to ride. Brownie-the illogical name his gray-coated mount bore-sighed as Egrin settled on his back again, but the beast moved readily enough when Egrin tapped heels to his ribs.
They picked their way carefully through the great maples and broad oaks, until Egrin found the beginning of a trail. A less experienced eye would not have seen a trail at all. It was no more than a scuffed area of moss, a few rocks worn free of dirt, and the suggestion of an opening in a tangle of windfall trees, but Egrin knew someone had trod this way before.
Unable to get more than a general glimpse of the sun, he could only guess how far he rode that first day. Eight leagues, maybe nine, passed beneath Brownie’s hooves by the time daylight faded and the first mournful call of the whippoorwill echoed through the trees. He saw little game. Although a deft tracker, and considered stealthy by his comrades in arms, by forest standards Egrin was a great lumbering oaf, tramping and crashing through the woods like a rampaging bull. Wild beasts and forest folk easily kept out of his way.
On the second day, he found more trails, some quite obvious now that he was deep in the forest. Artifacts turned up. Small things, but the bits of woven cloth, tufts of fox fur tied to twigs, and shards of unbaked clay, indicated people had passed this way.
That night he heard distant drums, and a strange humming sound rising and falling through the black trees. The noise was eerie, like nothing he’d ever heard before, and he slept with his sword by his side.
First light of the third day brought visitors. Four brown-skinned foresters stood in plain view on the trail ahead, watching him. They wore buckskin vests and long, floppy trews. Tufts of animal fur on loops of fine cord hung from tiny holes punched in their earlobes. All four carried deeply curved short bows. The stiff bows could easily put a flint-tipped arrow through a man’s leg. If they were still getting bronze and iron from the Silvanesti, their arrowheads would penetrate his mail shirt.
Moving with great deliberation, Egrin packed up his meager camp. He lashed his bedroll across the horse’s rump, mounted, and rode toward the waiting men.
