Jenny picked up her sword and circled the clearing with battle ready steps. “Is it over?”
“She’ll be back,” Athan said on a pained voice. “She doesn’t like to lose.”
“Then we best be going,” Jenny said then took in the agony present in Athan’s expression and the way he leaned heavily on Dnara and Treven. “What did she do to you?”
“Don’t know,” he said before coughing and spitting to the side. A patch of blood appeared at his feet. “But it hurts.”
Dnara tugged open his shirt and splayed her fingers over his chest. “There is no wound, but... But there is something there. I can...” She closed her eyes and let the magic seep in. “I can feel it.”
“Stop,” Athan gasped then cried out in pain.
Dnara snatched her hand away. “I’m sorry!”
Athan looked worse than before but tried giving her a reassuring smile. “None of this is your fault.”
Before she could argue, Jenny added her strength to leverage Athan up into Treven’s saddle. “We’ll figure it out later,” she said. “For now, we run. You two head for the Thorngrove, fast as...” Jenny paused to look into Treven’s eyes then softly rubbed his nose. “Fast as sweet Treven can carry you.”
“And you?” Dnara asked as Jenny helped her up into the saddle behind Athan, handing her the reins.
“I have her blood on my blade,” Jenny replied and mounted Rupert. The black stallion’s face had been cut by raven claws, but he seemed still ready for a fight, as did Jenny. “I can track her now. I want to see if she follows you, and possibly cut her wings off if she does.”
Dnara tightened her hold on Athan as he slumped forward in the saddle. “You’ll hurry back to us?”
“Aye,” Jenny promised. “And I’ll see if I can find some medicine, perhaps, though I know not what ails him.”
“There might be something useful left at the tower.” Dnara held onto that hope. “Keeper Ishkar had books on magical injuries.” And Dnara wished she’d spent more time reading them instead of the herbal remedy books with pretty illustrations of plants.
“Ishkar?” Jenny balked, then shook her head. “Explain it to me later. To the grove with you!”
And with that, Jenny slapped a passing hand to Treven’s rear before nudging Rupert into a run in the opposite direction. Dnara held onto reins and forester as Treven jolted into an uneven canter before finding his balance down the knoll’s westward slope.
“Hold on,” she said to Athan, but he gave only a squeeze of her hand in reply. “It mustn’t end like this,” she spoke more quietly in a prayer to gods she no longer believed in, and pressed her cheek to his back.
The wind howled past her shoulder, urging a faster run. Treven heeded the wind, breaking into a thundering gallop through a moonlit field. The everbright lantern illuminated the path before them as into the first night of spring they journeyed together.
29
Well into the night, Treven ran as fast as the wind with Dnara and Athan upon his back. Not until the tall cedars of the Thorngrove came into view did Treven slow his pace. Breathing heavily through flaring nostrils, Treven reached the northern edge where trees met untamed fields. At this arcing line drawn across the land, so strangely distinct when one paused to gaze at it, Treven stopped and stared into the waiting darkness. He turned his long face to look up at Dnara with one questioning black eye.
Tired in the saddle, Dnara too stared into the trees with weary eyes. Athan remained silent, but he gave her forearm a weak squeeze. Pressing her ear to his back, she listened to the uneven rhythm of his heart, once more feeling the unnatural presence of whatever malicious weapon Melakatezra had wielded. The object resonated with a vibration that made the hairs on her arms stand upward. Athan let out a quiet grunt and Dnara retreated from the object. Whatever it was, she could not simply drive it out as she had the blight.
“I don’t know the way back to the tower from here,” she said, to which the wind responded with a tug on her hair to the east. “But it seems the wind does. Can you follow it, Treven?”
Treven nodded with a bob of his large head then faced the forest again. His first step was a tentative hoof scraping the mossy earth just over the line of deep green and shadow that abnormally separated the forest from the field’s freely moving long grass. The wind blew through the grass, shifting the moonlight with it, then it headed into the forest, shaking the evergreen branches in a visible path. With head kept low, Treven followed the wind’s direction and left the open field behind.
Dnara held onto Athan and reached past him to give Treven an encouraging pat. His withers twitched in response as he carefully chose where to step. The groundcover thickened into leafy brush. Nettles and thorns caught on Dnara’s dress, and she spread her cloak over all she could in the hopes of offering some protection to Treven’s exposed flank. Treven snorted and shook his head free when twining thorns caught his mane, only to be met with sharper briars.
“Perhaps I should go alone?” Dnara asked, but Treven shook his head, let out a determined neigh and plowed onward.
Just as the thorns seemed unpassable, Dnara ducked low with Athan under a tree branch then lifted her head to find Treven standing in a clearing next to a meandering brook. “I know this place,” she said, and an odd sense of home came over her, along with an unexpected excitement. “Follow the brook northwest.
