On the third day from Khulinin Treld, Nara cantered over a hill and down into a bowl-shaped gul y.
She paused at the edge of a half-frozen, muddy pool.
Do you remember this place?
Gabria stared down at the dark pool. "Very well. I still have the scars on my hands." She ran her hand down Nara's neck. "A small price to pay for the gift of a friend."
In one motion, they both looked up to the top of a nearby hill where a small cairn of rocks could stil be seen on the crest. It was there that Gabria had buried Nara's first foal.
She had come across the wild Hunnuli trapped in the mud and fighting for her life against a pack of wolves. Gabria had driven off the marauders and spent two days digging out the pregnant mare with her bare hands. She had tried to save the foal, but it had died during birth. She had laid it to rest among the rocks.
Thinking of the foal, Gabria belatedly remembered Nara's current condition. The mare was almost ten months into her pregnancy. Shamefaced, she ran her hand down Nara's silken neck. "I'm sorry,” she said softly.
Nara nickered. There is no reason to be so.
"Let's camp here tonight,” the young woman suggested.
The mare tilted her head and looked at Gabria with her wise eye . There are stil several hours of daylight left. We could be in Corin Treld by nightfall.
Gabria shook her head. "We need to rest. Besides, I want to face the treld in the light of day." They found shelter in a shallow overhang in the side of one of the hills. Nara went to graze while Gabria built a small fire, ate her meal, and lay down on her blankets. Darkness came quickly, for the sky was overcast and the air was heavy with the threat of snow. Gabria closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
She was very tired, and she knew tomorrow would be a trying day, but her thoughts could find no rest. Her mind kept returning to the reality of the massacre and the dream-images of her clan's grave mound. What would she find tomorrow?
Had her family been buried with honor or were the bodies stil there, rotting into the grass? She tossed and turned as her imagination envisioned every possibility, then jumbled the imaginings together with the real memories of the carnage.
Phantoms drifted through her mind with half-remembered faces and voices silenced by death.
Outside Gabria's meager shelter, Nara came to stand against the cliff wall. The horse's eyes reflected the firelight, glowing like gems against the darkness.
Gabria remembered lying in the dark that night long ago, watching the eyes of the wild, trapped mare and wondering what would become of both herself and the horse. She never imagined the incredible events that were to fol ow. Now, she and Nara were going back to the place where the chain of events had begun.
Gabria sat up and leaned back against the rock. No, that's not quite true, she thought. The chain of events led back to Medb and his greed, and even farther back to the generations of clanspeople who had zealously avoided magic. It went back to the destruction of the Sorcerers, to the blossoming of the magical city of Moy Tura, to Matrah who compiled his great tome, to the early magic-wielders who had experimented with magic, and as far back as Valorian, the hero-warrior who had first used magic to defeat the evil gorthlings of Sorh. Gabria was only a small part in a story that actually had begun centuries before and would continue long after she was dead.
The woman laughed. Seen in that perspective, her worries and inner turmoil were merely threads against a vast tapestry of clan history and human events. All of her frightened imaginings would change nothing about the treld or her dead clan. What was done, was done. She would simply have to wait until morning to settle her personal fears. She lay down again, pulled her cloak up to her chin, and let her thoughts relax. This time she drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.
Snow was falling the next morning when Gabria awoke. It was a light, fitful shower that patterned Nara's dark coat with tiny stars and dusted the ground with powder. The mountains were completely obscured behind a wall of cloud. Gabria shook the snow off her belongings, ate a quick meal, and mounted Nara. They left the gully without a backward glance and trotted slowly north through the swirling snow. Corin Treld was not far by horseback, but Gabria did not want to miss it in the billowing storm.
Fortunately the snow shower did not last long. A little before noon, as Nara crested a ridge near the treld, the snow stopped and the clouds began to break.
Gabria felt her heart pounding. "It's not far,” she said. "It's just across that stream and up the next hill." Nara broke into a canter. She went down the ridge, leaped the stream without missing a stride, and ran up the slope of a long, treeless hil . Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds and poured down on the land. The Hunnuli reached the top of the hil and stopped.
For a breathless moment, Gabria wondered if they were at the right place. The area looked similar to the home she remembered: the broad meadow surrounded by trees on two sides and backed by the dark, tree-clad mountains; the small stream that clattered along its stony bed; and the pile of boulders by the copse of trees where children used to play. With a stab of pain, Gabria realized this was the same meadow, it just looked different without its once-thriving treld.
Gabria flung up
