“Pay him no heed, Rowen,” said Tanalasta, still covering herself with her arms. “Old Snoop is famous for skulking about the palace halls. One does not dare hold a personal conversation without first examining every garderobe and alcove within twenty paces.”
Though twenty paces was actually something of an underestimate, Vangerdahast feigned hurt. “Even were that true, Princess, I was not skulking this time.” He stepped to the edge of the water and opened Tanalasta’s weathercloak. “I was speaking with your father.”
Rowen’s face grew as pale as the moonlight, then he glanced across the circle of boulders. “The king is with you?”
“Hardly.” Vangerdahast motioned the ranger out of the water, then averted his own eyes so Tanalasta could slip into the cloak. “Will you hurry? We may not have much time.”
“Time?” Rowen climbed out of the pool, being very careful not to look back. “Why not?”
“The king is in Mabel,” Tanalasta explained, slipping into the weathercloak. “They were far-speaking.”
Rowen spun on Vangerdahast. “Magic? Alusair warned you!”
“It was the king she didn’t warn, young man,” Vangerdahast bristled. “Now, be a good lad and fetch the horses.”
“Of course.” Rowen’s expression changed from anger to chagrin. “You’re right, we don’t have much time.”
The ranger sheathed his sword, then snatched up his saddle and rushed off in the direction of the horses. Tanalasta started to follow, but Vangerdahast caught her by the arm.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Princess?” He pointed toward her neatly folded tunic and trousers. “You really shouldn’t tempt poor Rowen. It’s unfair to vaunt a prize he has no chance of winning.”
“Who says he doesn’t?” The princess snatched up her clothes and stepped behind a boulder.
Vangerdahast groaned inwardly. He pulled a gold coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air, then spoke an incantation as it started to fall. The coin stopped at about eye level.
“Vangerdahast, have you lost your mind?” Tanalasta peered out from behind her rock. “That’s what attracts it!”
“So I’ve been told.”
Vangerdahast plucked the coin out of the air and began to rub it between his palms. A faint green aura appeared around the coin, barely brighter than the moonlight illuminating it against his palm.
“Now, watch and learn, my dear, watch and learn.” Vangerdahast waited until Rowen returned with the horses, then asked, “Which way will we be traveling, young man?”
When Rowen pointed into the hills, Vangerdahast turned and flicked the coin in the opposite direction. It whistled down the gulch and sailed out over the flatlands, vanishing from sight like a shooting star.
“A false trail?” Rowen asked.
Vangerdahast nodded. “It should buy us an hour or two.”
“You may be underestimating the ghazneth’s speed.”
Rowen crouched behind a boulder, then pointed toward the mouth of the gully, where the distant silhouette of a moonlit ghazneth was wheeling out over the plain.
“How long will your coin stay in the air?” Tanalasta asked.
“About as long as it takes the ghazneth to catch it,” Vangerdahast continued to stare out over the empty plain, astonished at how quickly the dark creature had faded from sight. “How long that will be, who can say?”
“But sooner than we’d like,” concluded Tanalasta.
The princess stepped from behind her boulder, now fully clothed, both bracers clasped on one arm and the weathercloak thrown unclasped over her shoulders. The bracers would not radiate magic until she transferred one to her bare wrist, but closing the cloak’s clasp would automatically activate several magics sure to draw the ghazneth’s attention. Vangerdahast pulled his own weathercloak over his shoulders, leaving it unclasped, then they mounted and quietly left Orc’s Pool behind.
9
The slope lay blanketed in shadow as thick as ink. Vangerdahast rode in silence, keeping a careful watch on the dark sky behind them, cringing inwardly at the constant clatter of horse hooves on shifting stone. He expected to see the ghazneth come streaking out of the mists above Orc’s Pool at any moment, but his greatest fear was that he would not see it at all, that it would swoop in from some unwatched corner of the sky and disembowel them all before he could cast a single spell. His fingers kept tracing patterns of protection. Only the knowledge that the magic would draw the phantom like a signal fire kept him from uttering the incantations to activate the enchantments.
Finally, the companions crested the top of the hummock and began to traverse a barren, moonlit clearing lacking so much as a boulder to hide behind. They did not have even the stonemurk to conceal them, for the rolling hill lands made the wind too erratic and scattered to sustain its load of sand and loess. The trio urged their mounts across the clearing at a trot.
Vangerdahast finally began to relax when they reached the other side of the hillock and descended into the sheltering shadows of the adjacent gulch, but not so Rowen. The ranger continued to push hard, leading them up a sandy creek at a near gallop for several long minutes, then abruptly dismounting to double back along a dangerous slope of blond bedrock. When they reached the summit, they mounted again and trotted across another exposed summit, then repeated the process three more times before Rowen finally dropped into a winding gulch and stayed there.
The ranger scanned the sky one last time, then waved Vangerdahast and Tanalasta up beside him. “We’ll follow this gully up onto Gnoll Flats,” Rowen said, “then turn south toward the Storm Horns. The stonemurk could be pretty bad up there, but it’ll die down for a while about dawn. We’ll be looking for a pair of mountains Alusair has been calling the Mule Ears.”
“We’ll know them when we see them, I take it,” Vangerdahast said. He did not bother asking Rowen’s reason for detailing the route. With the ghazneth on their trail, being separated was one of the more pleasant reasons it was wise for everyone to know the way. “Is that where we’ll meet Alusair?”
Rowen shifted in his saddle and was a little too careful to keep his eye on the trail. “Actually, no. That’s where she was three days ago, when she received Tanalasta’s sending.”
“And where is she now?” Vangerdahast was all too confident he would not like the answer.
Rowen shrugged. “We’ll have to see.” He turned to Tanalasta. “You can follow a trail, can’t you?”
“I can,” said Tanalasta.
Rowen nodded as though he had expected no less and drew a somewhat surprised smile from Tanalasta. Not seeming to notice the effect he had on her, he continued to address the princess, ignoring Vangerdahast entirely.
“Alusair was somewhat, er, reluctant to suspend her search,” the ranger explained. “We’ll return to the last camp and track her from there.”
“Then she hasn’t found Emperel.” Vangerdahast leaned on his saddle horn and stretched over to infuse himself into the conversation. “So what has she been doing up here?”
“Following him, obviously,” said Tanalasta. “Will you let the man speak, Vangey?”
Vangerdahast shot a scowl at the princess, but she did not seem to notice. Her gaze was fixed too sternly on the ranger.
“Continue, Rowen.”
“As you command, Princess.”
“She asked you to call her Tanalasta,” grumbled Vangerdahast. The cad was winning her favor far too quickly with that respectful act of his. “And why not? You’ve already seen the crown jewels.”
“Vangerdahast!” Tanalasta gave him a withering scowl, then looked back to Rowen. “Must I call on Rowen to remind you who is the royal here?”
Rowen’s eyes grew bright and white in the moonlight. He glanced between the princess and Vangerdahast, allowing his sword hand to drift uneasily toward his sword pommel. The wizard started to utter a dark warning, then caught himself and thought better of it. The more he picked on the boy, the more determined Tanalasta would be to like him.