Aylis smiled and said, “Captain Brekk, I would say that was quite sufficient.”
Brekk frowned and asked, “Then, my lady, can you tell us what this is about?”
“Indeed,” said Aylis, and she extended her hand in a welcoming gesture toward one of the massive tumbled-down stones. “I give you our scout, the Lady Aylissa.”
Of a sudden, one of the shadows at the base of the block vanished, and in the morning light stood a fox, red with black legs. And upon the fox’s back rode a tiny maiden dressed in mottled grey leathers, a bow across her shoulders, arrows in a quiver fastened to her hip. And at no urging, it seemed, the fox stepped forward across the pave stones of the ruins of Caer Lindor. Blue-eyed and pale she was, her brown hair bound away from her face by a rune-marked strip of leather ’round her brow, her mane falling to her shoulders. And only the murmur of the faint breeze and the rustle of the leaves of the overgrowth of ivy sounded in that moment, for it was not certain that anyone even breathed. And when she reached the stone before Captain Brekk, the fox came to a stop and Aylissa looked up at the Dwarf.
“Lady Aylissa,” said Aylis, “I present Captain Brekk; Captain Brekk, I would have you meet Lady Aylissa and her fox, Vex.”
Brekk found his voice at last and knelt on one knee and said to the Pysk, “Lady Aylissa, now I see why Captain Aravan made us swear the oath that we did. This I would say as welclass="underline" we could ask for no better scout. Welcome to the warband.”
Brekk raised a hand, and the assembled warriors with one thunderous voice called out, Chakka shok! Chakka cor!
At this roar, even as Vex flinched down, in reflex Lissa’s ‹wild-magic› cloak of darkness sprang up ’round both fox and rider, leaving them hidden in shadow.
Just as Brekk opened his mouth to apologize for startling the tiny Pysk, “I told you they were rowdy,” came a call-Lady Jinnarin’s-and two more shadows vanished from the base of a tumbled-down block, revealing two more Fox Riders.
Down through the Greatwood they fared, angling a point east of due south, and as they rode, now and then they glimpsed among the trees and tracking alongside them a Bear or a Wolf or at times a hawk or falcon. Aylis could see by their ‹fire› that these were no ordinary animals, but were instead shapeshifters. When she spoke of them to the Pysks, “They are Baeron,” said Jinnarin. “A few of those Folk have the power to become the animals you see.”
“Some never become men again,” said Farrix.
“And some never shift into the creatures that they can become,” said Aylissa.
Aylis smiled and said, “I learned about them at the College of Mages on Rwn, but until I met Bair, I had never seen one-never seen a shapeshifter, that is.”
In midafternoon on the fifth day of travel, a distant and continuous roar came into hearing, and the farther they rode the louder it grew.
Riding alongside Brekk, Aylis asked, “What would that be?”
Brekk smiled. “Wait and you will see.”
On they fared and still the sound grew louder. At last they emerged from among the trees to find themselves along the lip of the Great Escarpment, a sheer drop falling away for a thousand feet or so to fetch up against the banks of the Great Argon River. As Aylis looked about, her gaze followed the run of the escarpment, and some thirty miles to the west she saw a huge cataract plunging over the brim of the sheer drop and down.-Nay, not one cataract but two. And even this far from the cascades, still the roar was considerable.
“The great one is Ctor-Shouter-also known as Bellon Falls,” said Brekk. “There the Mighty Argon plunges over. The smaller fall farther west is Silver Falls, or as the Elves name it, Vanil.”
“Now I see why, if the Olorin Ferry got this far and went over,” said Aylis, “none would survive the plunge.”
They camped that night along the strip of land between the trees of the Greatwood and the verge of the escarpment, and the distant roar of two waterfalls lulled them to sleep.
Over the next several days, league upon league they fared along a gentle downslant of land between the forest and the edge of the escarpment, the great, sheer bluff to decline and decline to finally come to an end. And still they rode southerly between the marge of the Greatwood to the east and the Argon River to the west.
Some three weeks after leaving the ruins of Caer Lindor they came to the Glave Hills, and there did the trees of the Greatwood come to an end.
The next dawn, Aylis and Lissa and the warband said their good-byes to Jinnarin and Farrix, Aylis and Jinnarin and Lissa teary-eyed, Farrix snuffling, his voice quavering, as he embraced his daughter and whispered words of advice as well as words of farewell.
Then the warband turned southwesterly and fared into the grassy plains of Pellar: a Mage and a Pysk and forty-two Dwarves, seventy-six ponies, one horse, and a fox.
Jinnarin and Farrix rode to the top of one of the hills and watched them go. And as the warband dwindled in the distance, after a long while Farrix said, “Well, my love?”
Jinnarin turned to Farrix and smiled through her lingering tears. “Yes, my love.”
And they turned Rux and Rhu down the back slope of the hill and rode into the forest beyond.
17
JOURNEY TO THE EROEAN
LATE SUMMER TO EARLY AUTUMN, 6E1
Down across the plains of Pellar rode the warband, Aylis and Aylissa in their midst, and whenever they could they stopped at crofters’ and replenished their supplies; they especially sought grain for the animals, though Vex provided for her own fare-finding voles and field mice and quail eggs and other such when Aylissa gave the vixen permission to hunt. They stayed on the outskirts of several small towns, taking every opportunity to relax in hot baths and to eat warm meals and to drink a mug or two of ale, good or bad. Yet every dawn found the travellers up and about and making ready to resume their journey.
Some eighteen days after saying good-bye to Lissa’s parents, they crossed Pendwyr Road nigh the Fian Dunes and continued on southwesterly.
And fifteen days after that, they came into sight of the broad waters of Thell Cove. Aylis looked leftward, and just as Aravan had said, in the near distance a long stone bluff covered with vines rose up and graced the shore. She led the warband to the place where the sheer cliff began to rise, and there they hobbled the animals, all but Vex. They waited until low tide, and Aylis then took the lead, and, following Aravan’s instructions, she guided them wading afoot along the high and solid rock bluff, with its long creepers dangling down. Following immediately after Aylis came Brekk, and riding on his shoulder was wee Aylissa, and he bore Vex in his arms. The fox had suffered herself to be carried only after Aylissa had had a long chat with her. The Dwarves had watched this conversation in amazement, for Lissa had postured and barked, whined and turned and twisted, Vex replying in kind. Aylis smiled, for millennia past in the First Era she had seen Jinnarin do the same. Finally, Lissa looked up at Brekk and said, “She’s ready. But if I were you I’d watch my fingers. Vex is likely to nip.”
But Brekk reached down and chucked Vex under her chin, and then grasped the top of her muzzle and gave a very slight squeeze. Vex took no action whatsoever when Brekk lifted her up.
And then following Aylis, the warband sloshed along a lengthy but shallow underwater ledge to come to a strange fold in the vine-laden stone, where the bluff curled out into the water and back, to form a wide and deep channel leading toward a thick dangle of the long, trailing plants.
Aylis paused and gestured to the fold and said, “Aravan tells me that this turn in the stone is all but undetectable from the outlying waters of the cove. It makes the entry to the grotto nigh invisible.”