word deliberately to distract him.
He managed a smile of sorts. “We had better start making plans, then.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “That’s why I’ve called a Gathering. The landwalkers can leave without us today. We’ll catch up later, after we’ve discussed this among ourselves. Tonight you and I will tell the war council our plans.”
Her gaze shifted away from him. She looked over his shoulder and narrowed her eyes.
“There’s Speaker Vreez. I must go now. When I join my tribe to discuss ideas, Tryss, I hope you’ll have plenty of them.”
“I will,” he promised.
She nodded, then managed a half-smile for Drilli. Walking past him, she strode away toward a trio of older men.
Tryss felt Drilli’s hand curl around his. “If I complain about you spending all night talking with Songmaker again, kick me,” she murmured.
As the last massive tree trunk was lowered into place across the road, Kar heard footsteps behind him.
“That is my favorite so far.”
Kar glanced back at the approaching man. Fin, Lem of the Tarrep warriors, was tall for a Dunwayan. He was handsome, though, and kept his beard short. The tattoos on his face accentuated slightly tilted eyes and an intelligent gaze.
“I see that the hidden dartfly nest is the true obstruction, but why did you set fires at either side?” Fin asked.
“Smoke subdues dartflies,” Kar explained. “The wood is mytten. It burns slowly and makes much smoke when green. The smoke will keep them within the hive until the logs are disturbed.”
“Lessening the chance a few stray dartflies will warn of the trap’s nature.” Fin nodded. “I see.”
He barked out orders to the fire-warriors and his clan members, then turned away. Kar followed as his leader started along the road to the pass. The rest of the men followed silently, the last driving an open tarn carrying tools and materials for their traps.
The way twisted and turned. Parts of it were steep. Kar considered every feature for potential. He still had a few trap ideas he wanted to try, but they needed the right sort of terrain. When they had been walking for an hour they turned a corner and Kar came to a halt.
“Ah.”
Fin smiled. “I thought you’d like this.”
The road continued steeply between two rock walls. The walls leaned inward, nearly touching. Wedged between them, several paces along the “passage,” was an enormous boulder.
Kar stroked his beard, then started walking again. He moved to the walls and examined them. There were plenty of seams and creases running the length of the passage. He looked up at the boulder as they passed beneath it, then continued his inspection of the walls. At the end of the passage the walls drew back from each other again, forming the sides of a narrow ravine filled with rocks and huge boulders. The road wound onward.
He turned around and walked back. Coming out of the passage he saw what he was hoping for.
Just above the turn, in the place he had been standing when he first saw the suspended boulder, was a wide ledge. Sighing happily, he beckoned to the fire-warriors and told them what he wanted them to do.
Less than an hour later they had finished. The firewarriors looked tired. Their task had demanded constant concentration. Their brows glistened with sweat despite the cold, and their gold brow-bands were dulled with dust. He hoped they would not be too tired for their next task.
Looking up at the walls, he could just make out the two thin ropes following the creases in the rock. Their path was guided by small iron rings set into the stone. He followed the ropes to the ledge, where they were attached to sand-filled sacks supporting a carefully arranged pile of rocks.
He then traced the strings back along the wall, his assistants following as he marched up the steep passage between the walls. He did not even glance at the boulder above. When he reached the end of the passage, he found Fin waiting for him.
The clan leader was frowning, but he said nothing as Kar ordered the sorcerer-warriors to roll the nearest off the huge boulders across the passage entrance. Fin remained tense and silent as small iron rings were set into the boulder’s surface and the strings attached. Only when Kar declared the trap set did Fin call Kar over to explain.
“You did not use the suspended boulder.”
“I did,” Kar assured him. “It is a distraction.”
“How so?”
“The enemy will be too busy worrying that the suspended boulder is a trap to notice the ropes.”
Fin nodded slowly. “And when the enemy’s sorcerers move this boulder out of the way, they will trigger the fall of the massed rocks on the ledge back at the turn. You strike not at the head of the army this time, but at its guts.”
“They will put their fire-warriors at the front of their army, to shield against traps or remove blockages.”
Fin chuckled. “What will you come up with next, I wonder.”
Kar smiled. “We still have not used the acid.” He looked at the fire-warriors. “That will require alert and rested minds for safe handling.”
“Yes. We all need a rest. Let us find a place to sit.” He gestured to the man driving the tarn. “Bring us food and water.”
As the men settled onto rocks to rest and eat, Kar gazed at the road ahead. The pass and Hania were still many hours walk away. He, Fin and their assistants had fallen far behind the rest of the Dunwayan army, but they would catch up eventually. In a day or two they would enter the pass and join the Circlian army.
He smiled. Then they would join in the greatest battle between mortals ever to take place in Northern Ithania.
The Plains of Gold were crisscrossed with roads. Those the Dreamweavers had been taking were smaller and less maintained than the main east-west road the army was following. Sometimes they ran parallel to the main road and sometimes they took a different direction, but in general the Dreamweavers were able to keep pace with the army fairly easily.
Today they had been forced to travel along an uneven grassy track that wandered far from the army’s path. Arleej was unconcerned, however. Local farmers had told them that the track would soon meet with a more frequented road, which ran directly south to meet the east-west road. At that point the Dreamweavers would begin following the army at a cautious distance.
Leiard glanced at his student. Jayim was watching the ground before the arem, a crease between his eyebrows. He had grown more confident and skilled at driving the tarn now, but still needed to concentrate at the task. It was too much to expect the boy to receive lessons at the same time.
Jayim now had a tendency to stray away from lessons into speculation about Auraya or the coming war. When Leiard grew tired of fending off the boy’s questions he simply gave his student the reins.
“I have a question,” Jayim said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“You’ve been teaching me the same sorts of things you did back in Jarime - apart from the mind links. I’d have thought you’d concentrate on teaching me to heal with magic. After all, that’s what we’re here for.”
Leiard smiled. “Teaching magical healing always presents us with a dilemma. How can I teach you to heal when you have no injuries to practice on? We Dreamweavers do not harm others or ourselves in order to provide subjects to heal.”
The boy was silent. “So I won’t learn to heal until we get to the battlefield.”
“No.”
