She stopped suddenly, conscious of eyes on her. She turned, slowly. Oh, yes, eyes indeed. She made a questioning sound in her throat. The muzzle turned toward her, amber eyes staring hungrily. Wolves. They had smelled the blood. Well. Why not? These men had forfeited the right to any sanctified burial and the herb had used up its potency. It could not make a wolf be more wolf.
“Take them,” she said, staring into those yellow eyes. “Leave the horses alone!”
She went away, back to the place where her own horse waited. Behind her was the sound of feeding, the usual furor over reinforcement of status: it was the way of wolves.
She reviewed what she had heard the men say about the prior. Now she knew who. Now she had an idea why. She returned to her campsite, breakfasted, saddled her horse, and rode back to the trail that had entered the road from the west. If she was not wrong, this would be the way to the Vulture Tower.
The track, obviously the way the woodcutters went, was well traveled in its earlier stages, wagon-wide and rutted deep, though any wagoneer who tried it in snow time would find it muddy going. Precious Wind rode beside it, where the mud was somewhat mitigated by grasses. Other trails led away on either side, as wide and as mired, though not as deep. The newer the trail, the newer the stumps cut along the way. The men from the abbey were making clearings, not cutting the forest down from edge to edge, and she nodded approvingly. Clearings were good for game.
The final few side trails were only horse or deer trails, leading vaguely north or south, but Precious Wind continued west. She estimated that from the place she was now, it would be the better part of a day’s ride to the abbey, and it was only moments later that she saw the top of the tower thrusting up through the trees ahead. Leaving the horse hidden, she approached on foot, stepping where she would leave no footprints. It was a stubby, cone-roofed tower, a privy built at the south side, a stable on the north, the rooftop barely taller than the closest trees. She went around the stable and found the tower had been set on the very rim of the valley. The ridge at her feet fell away a lethal though not towering distance. It ended in a stony flat with another ridge at its outer edge. These precipitous ridges alternating with wide, flat ledges continued westward, each corrugation a bit lower than the one before, a giant’s washboard, the whole extending south farther than she could see. This was the west edge of the so-called Highlands of Ghastain. The cliffs went on north, around the corner, where they formed the south wall of the valley they had traveled through to Benjobz. Far to the west, all the way down, a pale line of roadway cut through the lighter green of pasture in a straight north-south line. This was the road that ran gently downward toward the Lake of the Clouds after passing the Old Dark House, its location marked only by the top of an ugly, black tower thrusting above the trees.
Everything between the place where she stood and that distant road was a patchwork of brush, broken trees, and stone—stone piled in enormous heaps or fallen in avalanches that had broken through the ridges farther down. Every flat surface reflected sunlight from barely hidden pools or pits; every slope was awash with little runnels of meltwater. Maps had told her that this vast slope ended far to the south in the marshes around the Lake of the Clouds. In its current flooded state it was the mid to northern end of the legendary Dragdown Swamps. Precious Wind felt no urge to explore it.
Inside the tower, a cistern had been built at the left of the door, the stairs at the right, spiraling a quarter turn onto a lower floor where the cells were, then on around the tower wall once more and through a hole in the floor above. The trap that closed the access was leaning against the wall, but she went up the steps as she went everywhere: very carefully, making sure no one was above her. The stairs entered a half-circle room with one window and one door. A half-full water bucket sat beside the fireplace, where a dry kettle was suspended above a pile of powdery ashes. A small cupboard stood in the corner, and she used her handkerchief to open the door to see a small store of food: bread, cheese, dried meat, dried fruit, a few potatoes, a tightly lidded box of tea, a few bottles of cider, a basket of candles—scant comfort for anyone who had to stay here long. A plate and an empty mug stood on the table along with a box holding a man’s personal belongings, presumably Jenger’s: a razor, soap, cloths and sponges for washing himself. Also a comb cut from tortoiseshell and a well-made brush with clumps of hog bristles set into tiny holes in a carved wooden back. Both the comb and the brush held long, dark hairs.
Carefully, still using her handkerchief, Precious Wind removed all the hairs from the brush and comb, wrapped them in a bit of paper she found on the table, and
