“You’re going with me.”
“It would slow you down. I hope you can take some shape that flies, for that’s what’s needed now. You’ve got to go south. Gamelords, how I prayed for a Shifter outside that cavern.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You have to leave me. The warning must be brought to our people, Peter. As soon as possible, delaying for nothing at all. I’ll meet you when you return. Ah. Where? Listen, if you follow this trail down to the northwest, past where the village of Bleem was, you’ll come to a trail leading north. The trail forks. The right-hand one goes to the giants, and the left-hand one goes up over the mountain by a huge red pillar of stone. I’ll meet you there, by the red stone, with or without Sylbie. I’ll go get her. Maybe I can find someone to take care of her and the baby, bring them south to Mavin. If not, I’ll keep them with me, but they should be taken farther from Fangel. I don’t like the idea of the baby that close to Valearn.”
He wasn’t listening. But then, he hadn’t been reared on nursery stories of Valearn. “I don’t want to leave you! I’ll carry you with me.”
“I don’t want you to leave me. But you can’t carry me and Sylbie and the baby without wasting time, and we can’t just leave them here alone.” Briefly I let myself melt against him, let all the turbulent feelings I had quelled for season after season burgeon between us until a new kind of storm began to batter at me, melting me. “I don’t want you to leave me. And whichever of us gets to the pillar first is to wait for the other one—forever, if need be. I don’t want you to leave me, but I have to ask you to.”
“Jinian, I swear by all the gods and most of the new ones, if we get out of this ...”
“Yes. Now go.” I didn’t watch him, not out of any sense of dismay at the changes, but simply because I was crying and didn’t want him to see. I heard odd sounds, a strangled cursing, and then the irregular beat of wings. When I turned at last it was to see a blackwinged form staggering across the sky. Evidently Peter had not recently practiced wings. The thing looked more like a dragon than a bird, and it was not built for speed. Even as I watched, however, the black silhouette elongated, became more slender, more streamlined. It plunged out of sight against the southern clouds.
So much for that. I dried my face, noticing in passing that all my hermitish notions seemed to have left me. So much for the lonely life, then. If there were any future, I would spend it with Peter.
If there were any.
I plodded a league away, seeking the cave, calling softly when I should have been near it, and only after wreathing the area with Inward Is Quiet, a pacifying spell when done in the passive mode, to be sure no one lurked there with evil intent. No response. I walked another league, repeating the call. Nothing.
Now seriously worried, I returned the way I had come, this time casting back and forth either side of the trail. Halfway to the place I’d met Peter, I found it, a cave well dug in sandy soil, half-hidden behind a fallen tree. And tracks around it. Boots. More than one pair. Two parallel lines, where someone’s feet had been dragged. The soil still moist. It had not happened long before. A baby nappy drying on a branch. It, too, still damp. Half-hidden under a stone, the baby trousers Roges had sewn, their bright checks showing up against the dun earth.
I didn’t need window magic to peer into the past and learn what had happened. Huldra had been watching, through a Seer, perhaps. Through a sending, perhaps.
Or perhaps Valearn herself had hired some Rancelman to help her find the food she yearned for. It did not matter which. More than one person had come here to drag Sylbie and the baby away. Up the hill a way were the tracks of horses, not on the trail. That’s why I hadn’t seen them as I searched. They did not join the trail to Fangel for another league beyond.
Weariness left me. I went at speed through the waning day, forgetting the ache in my legs. At sunset the trail left the forest, sloped downward along the meadow toward the walls of Fangel. When dark came, the city would lie in a cataleptic sleep; watchers would watch, but they would not be the people of Fangel. Huldra? Valearn? Perhaps the Duke of Betand?
There was no spell I could cast that Huldra might not be able to counter. Worse, if I used any spell at all, anyone competent in the wize-arts could smell it out. My use of the arts would say “Jinian” as loudly as the Fangel curfew gong. The only advantage I had was that they all thought I was dead.
I sat, arms wrapped around knees. Shortly it would be night. If Sylbie was to be saved, it could not be put off until the morrow. On the morrow there might be no Sylbie, no child. The walls of Fangel loomed, the gates still open but shortly to close. I dared not use a spell, not the least one in my art, for Huldra was there and watching, there and waiting. Huldra might have learned much from the return of her sending. Full of Storm Grower’s blood and d’bor wife’s water, it might have had much to tell her.
So. Get in. Without a spell. Without being seen.
There were wains moving in and out of the north gate when I arrived, hay wains, others that had been loaded with meat and vegetables for the markets and were now returning empty. My hair was thrust up under a cap, my
