“It never changes,” she said.
Hytanthas didn’t ask what she meant. He understood perfectly.
The demarcation between the area influenced by Nalis Aren and the land beyond had not seemed so obvious on the way in. The oppressive atmosphere had come up on the elves gradually. On the way out, the shift was abundantly clear. The predominant color of the landscape quickly changed from black to green, and the exhausted elves began to walk faster. Those on foot dropped weapons and walking sticks, packs and bindles, pushed past the guards on horseback, and broke into a run. The elves drawing carts and wagons let go the traces and joined the celebration.
“What ails them?” asked Samar.
Riding alongside, Alhana answered, “They smell home.” Delirious with relief, the Qualinesti threw themselves onto the greenery, stroking grass and ferns as if they were the finest silks. Tears flowed, streaking dirty faces. An aspen tree no more than six feet high was nearly trampled by worshipful elves.
Even Porthios was not immune. He stood to one side of the trail, a fern frond in his hands, pulled the feathery green leaves through his gloved fingers again and again. Only Alhana saw, and she smiled. Giving in to the inevitable, she called a halt. Since all but her guards had stopped anyway, no one objected.
A clear-flowing, shallow stream served as a bathing pool. The elves went down in shifts to wash away the filth of Nalis Aren. While Kerian was at the creek, she spotted a strange Kagonesti in the trees some distance away. None of the other bathers noticed him until Kerian pointed him out. After a few minutes, he darted away.
“Should I go after him?” asked Hytanthas.
“Why? You’ll never catch him.” Kerian squeezed water from a cloth onto her face. The crisp, clean water running over her skin was the best feeling in the world.
The tonk-tonk-tonk of a forester gourd-drum sounded. Kagonesti of the region hung large, dried gourds on a frame and rapped them with hardwood hammers to send messages over long distances. The constant noise was not a comforting sound to outsiders. Samar posted a mounted patrol around the caravan. Porthios slipped into the woods.
The drumming ceased after two hours. Before the elves had time to do more than marvel at the silence, a party of armed Kagonesti emerged from the trees. Samar’s guards prepared to charge, but Kerian told them to stand down.
“Don’t you recognize our Immortals?” she said, using the name bestowed on the Kagonesti by the Bianost volunteers.
Nalaryn and the rest of his Kagonesti clan approached at an easy lope. They looked fit and relaxed, a sharp contrast to their haggard comrades in the caravan.
Kerian clasped Nalaryn’s arm and greeted him enthusiastically.
Nalaryn gripped her arm. “You are fewer,” he said. “The black lake has taken lives.”
The drums had told Nalaryn of the caravan’s arrival. As he and his band were coming to rejoin it, Porthios met them on the way. “The Great Lord remains in the forest to cleanse his soul of the black lake,” Nalaryn added.
Alhana came forward to welcome the Kagonesti. “Was your quest successful?” she asked.
“It was.”
Alhana exhaled sharply. “Tell me!”
The Kagonesti had seen griffons in flight, as many as forty aloft at one time over the Redstone Bluffs. Nalaryn also reported no signs of elf or human intrusions. “No one has walked there in many, many days.”
Alhana was ready to leave at once. However, she quickly realized she had to temper her enthusiasm. The Bianost elves needed rest. Even her own guards, and their few horses, could do with a respite. Nalaryn asked about pursuit, but Kerian shook her head. The enemy’s problems were worse than their own.
The discovery of griffons put an end to Hytanthas’s talk of leaving and to any thought of attacking the bandit-held city of Mereklar. They must make for Redstone Bluffs with all possible speed.
The choice of route was a ticklish one. Remaining in the forest would be safest, and Nalaryn could guide the caravan, but Alhana favored a bolder solution. The road was more direct, and would be easier going than bumping through the forest. Mereklar lay on that road, but why not skirt it, under cover of darkness? Gathan Grayden had led his bandits out to pursue the elves. He certainly wouldn’t expect the rebels to return and pass directly under their enemies’ noses.
Kerian regarded Alhana with surprise, and the Silvanesti queen joked, “A plan worthy of the Lioness, isn’t it?”
Fatigue and the boundless relief of having left Nails Aren behind them engendered recklessness. Alhana’s plan received unanimous support. The caravan would follow the old Qualinesti high road past Mereklar on its way to Redstone Bluffs and the griffons.
“Should Orexas be told?” Samar said.
Alhana said, “No need,” just as Kerian exclaimed, “No!” Alhana was certain Porthios would approve the plan. The Lioness didn’t care what he thought of it.
They passed the night in the meadow beyond the shadow of the Lake of Death. After dawn the next day, the caravan rolled on. The Kagonesti Immortals were the last to depart. By the time they did so, no trace of the elves or their ponderous train remained.
Breetan Everride was beginning to feel she had made a terrible mistake. She and Sergeant Jeralund had been searching the province between Mereklar and Nalis Aren for more than a week, looking for the rebel army. They’d found nothing. Word arrived from Lord Gathan’s headquarters of a disaster in the lake region which had nothing to do with the elves. Scores of soldiers had died from the effects of the lake’s pestilential miasma, only to rise from their graves as revenants and slay their former comrades. Gathan beat a hasty retreat, convinced the elves he sought had been destroyed by that same evil.
Having found no traces of the elves herself, Breetan wondered if Gathan was right. Jeralund tried to buoy her flagging spirits.
“I’ve been hunting and fighting elves most of my life,” he said. “They’re not bound by the same laws as men. Things that sicken men and possess their bodies may have no effect on elves. I’m sure the rebels will appear.”
Still, Breetan could not shake the feeling that she had erred, and badly. If true, her career as a Dark Knight would be over. There would be only one honorable course of action remaining: death by her own hand.
Then the sergeant made a discovery.
On the limbs of a hawthorn bush, he found scraps of dirty brown linen hanging as if to dry. A sniff revealed a strong stench of rot that must have come from the Lake of Death.
“The Scarecrow wraps himself in rags like these,” Breetan said, daring to hope. Jeralund dismounted and prowled through the undergrowth.
“Lady! Footprints!”
They were the soft impressions left by rag-wrapped feet far narrower than a human’s. Elves had come this way.
Shading her eyes against the setting sun, Breetan mused, “Heading west. But going where?”
“To Mereklar?” suggested Jeralund.
The Order’s Mereklar envoy had suggested that, but Breetan still dismissed the idea. The footprints had been made since the last rain, six days past. It was only eight miles to Mereklar. In six days, the elves could have covered that distance and back again, yet there had been no attack on the city. If Mereklar was not their target, then perhaps something that lay beyond it?
Jeralund shrugged, “There’s little beyond it, Lady. Forest, a few small crossroads, and mountains.”
He picked his way through the brush, finding more tracks by the lone elf. Without a doubt, the fellow was headed west. As Jeralund pointed out, there was no way to know whether the tracks had been left by one of the rebels they sought. The lone elf could be nothing more than a Kagonesti out on a hunt.