She tugged Benayu by the sleeve.
“I think there’s two Eyes on this gate,” she whispered. “One of them’s warded, though. And I think it’s new.”
He stopped and concentrated. The others waited.
“I can’t feel anything except the old gate guard,” he said. “But if you’re sure there’s something there that must mean it’s got a powerful ward, so you’re right. Bother. You three are probably safe to go on, but you’d better split up. Ribek can take Sponge, and Saranja and Maja can wait a few minutes and then ride Rocky through. I’ll come my own way and meet you further down the road. Don’t wait for me. I can travel faster than you, and we want to get on.”
The dawn mists had melted away into a clear still morning when they came to a small stand of lime trees growing close beside the road. As they passed it a pigeon came gliding down onto the roadside turf, strutted for a moment and became Benayu.
“Know I was there, Maja?” he asked.
“I didn’t feel a thing—not even when you changed.”
“Great. Shape-shifting’s small stuff, mind you. You didn’t notice my screen, either? Then we’re getting somewhere. I’ll need to find out a lot more about screens if I’m to operate at all out in the Empire.”
They headed south all morning, stopping for their midday meal at the bridge over the river that they had seen from the escarpment. This meant both river traffic and road traffic, so there was a small market, with stalls selling food for man and beast. There was also a horse dealer, buying from travelers who’d come this far by road and were now journeying on by water, and selling to those going the opposite way. Saranja looked the horses over and Ribek made a show of doing so, while Maja and Benayu watched from the side. Using the same technique that they had with the jewel dealer in Mord, they bought a couple of nags, and saddles and harness from one of the stalls, so that henceforth all four of them could ride.
The new horses’ characters emerged as the days went by. Pogo was a flighty gray gelding, inclined to shy at trifles whenever he was bored. Levanter was an amiable idiot. If a horse could get something wrong, he got it wrong. Rocky was manifestly glad of their company, but at the same time tolerated no nonsense from either of them, and kept them in line quite as much as their riders did. Pogo was immediately besotted by him, while after a few days Levanter seemed to decide that his best hope of doing the right thing was to copy whatever Rocky did. This worked reasonably well once Ribek had learned to allow for it if he wanted him to do something else.
Late that first afternoon the road reached the southern limit of the plain. They had just moved in under the first trees when Maja stiffened, suddenly aware of something large and powerful coming swiftly from the south. It was horrible. She recognized it at once, the same sudden nausea of the spirit that she had felt just before the explosion back at the sheep pasture, while she and Ribek and Saranja had been waiting to cross the old ford.
“Benayu!” she shouted. “Watchers coming! Fast! That way!”
He stared south for a moment, then slithered from the saddle, closed his eyes and stood motionless, pale with concentration. Maja could sense his protective network weaving itself around him. Still concentrating, he reached out and pulled her inside it.
“All right,” he said. “Grab hold of Jex in your other hand, Maja. Hang on to your feathers, Saranja. You should be all right, Ribek. Just take Pogo…Now!”
The wave of change swept down over the woods and broke across them like silent thunder, felt as a sudden electric tension in the air, enveloping Benayu’s screen for one aching moment, and then gone. The jar of it pulsed down Maja’s arm to the hand that held Jex, who seemed for that moment to soften into living flesh and then was granite again. Rocky neighed and kicked. She opened her eyes to see Benayu close beside her, breathing heavily, pale and sweating, and beyond him Saranja and Ribek struggling to control the horses. That wasn’t the only reason why they looked shaken.
“They’re doing a sort of generalized sweep as they go,” muttered Benayu. “Checking out any serious magicians they pick up. How did it feel, Maja?”
“Your screen? All right, I think. Not as if it was anywhere near breaking.”
“Why now, all of a sudden?” said Ribek. “It’s four days, isn’t it?”
“I don’t get it,” said Benayu. “And Maja says that second Eye on the southern gate was new. I don’t think that first fellow I trapped in the cottage would have been up to putting it in. You’d have known, Maja, wouldn’t you, if any more actual Watchers had shown up?”
“Yes, I think so. Only not if they came in secret.”
“They weren’t making much of a secret coming just now,” said Saranja.
“Somebody put the new Eye in,” said Ribek.
“I don’t think it was Watcher stuff,” said Maja. “That’s got a funny yucky feel. I felt it just now when they went over.”
Benayu sighed in anxiety and frustration and shook his head.
“No point in guessing,” he said. “All I know is the further we are from Mord, the better.”
The road wound mainly uphill through wild country, ancient woods, tangled with undergrowth and half-fallen trees, alternating with stony, scrub-covered hillside. They met a few travelers going north, but apart from one or two battered roadside sheds didn’t see a building until they came in the dusk to an official resting camp, with fees and bribes to pay, but food and fodder to be bought, and other travelers for Ribek to question casually about the possibility of crossing the country southeastward to visit a sister he hadn’t seen for sixteen years. She lived at a town called Parangot, down beyond Tarshu, he said. He was told he’d need to make a long twelve days’ journey south before he found a good Imperial road, twice as much making the crossing and then, well, it depended how far south of that his sister lived. They hadn’t heard of Parangot. Not surprising, as he’d made it up, but someone happened to mention that it was a good thirty days on from where they were to Tarshu.
As they slept under the stars Jex spoke in Maja’s dreams. His voice seemed only slightly less faint and strained than before.
“I have important news. Some of my friends are now aware of me, and have spoken directly to me, though I still cannot answer or question them. Our road south is closed to us. The Watchers have been wholly preoccupied with preparations to meet the coming attack on Tarshu, and were not prepared to lose any more of their number until that was finished, so sent only a junior magician to investigate the loss of two of themselves beyond Mord, and then a more experienced one to investigate the first one’s disappearance.
“This work is now finished. My supposition is that meanwhile this second man must have discovered something that they believe to be connected with the coming assault by the Pirates. Hence the urgency with which fresh Watchers have now arrived.
“Once at the pasture, they will speak with the shepherds and look into their minds, and search for magical traces in the cottage where Fodaro lived with Benayu. I think we must assume that they will then know whose brother Fodaro was, and from that perhaps guess whose son Benayu may be.
“Furthermore, they have set up checkpoints on this road at which all travelers are rigorously examined. You must leave it as soon as you can. Other roads south are less strictly watched, apart from random checks at way stations of licenses to practice magic. Tell the others.”