“What’s wrong with you? Come on—you can’t laze around all day. We’ve got to get moving soon.”
The thief looked up to see Hargorn standing over him. Glaring up at the elderly warrior, Grince told him in acid tones exactly where he could go, and what he could do when he got there.
Hargorn burst into mocking laughter. “Why don’t you make me?” he taunted. “You gutless, ball-less little turd.”
With a yell of rage, Grince leapt to his feet, fists clenched—to find that Hargorn was already standing several feet away. The veteran held up his hands placatingly. “Steady, Grince—I didn’t mean it. See, though—I knew you could get up if you tried. Instead of killing me, why don’t you go and get yourself some breakfast, lad.” He walked away chuckling.
“Poor old Grince, you look terrible.”
In his rage at Hargorn, he hadn’t noticed the Mage approach. “Here,” she said, “sit down for a minute and I’ll help you.”
“I daren’t sit down—if I do I might never get back up again,” Grince told her sourly. Nonetheless, he did as she asked. Aurian knelt down behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders, and immediately, the thief felt a tingling wave of warmth and well-being flood through his battered body. Within moments, it seemed, the aches and stiffness had melted away as though they had never existed.
“There.” The Mage was smiling. “That should get you through the day. No doubt you’ll have collected another set of aches and pains by tonight, but I can always help you again—and it will get better, I promise you. Why, in a few days you’ll be thinking you were born in the saddle.”
“Why—why thank you, Lady.” For the first time in his life, the words came easily to Grince’s lips.
Aurian laid a hand on his arm. “You told me yesterday that you have no friends. Well, you were wrong about that. You have friends here, and I’m sure you’ll find others when we get to Wyvernesse. But friendship works both ways, you know. You must trust folk, and they must be able to feel they can trust you. You won’t need to steal from the Nightrunners. They’re generous folk, and they’ll provide what you need.”
She rose to her feet, dusting bits of grass from her knees. “You think about it. Anyway, there’s taillin in the pot and some bread by the fire. Eat quickly—Forral is getting the horses ready now, and we must be on our way again.” She walked away toward the horses, leaving a very thoughtful thief behind her.
The Mage and her companions rode eastward for another three days, across the bleak and windswept moors. At last the land began to dip, and sunrise on the fourth day found them in a wild, primitive stretch of salt marsh and dune where a river had carved a shallow vale on its way down to an estuary. The land was grey and drear, the only vegetation sharp-edged marram grass and thorny sea-holly. The shrill, lonely cries of gulls and wading birds sounded on the bitter wind, as the red sun struggled vainly to free itself from the blood-tinged clouds smothering the hills to the east.
The Mage turned her horse northward along the coast and the others followed her in a straggling, weary string. Aurian chafed at their slow pace, anxious to get back on the trail of her foe. She was almost certain that Eliseth must have gone south, across the ocean, for scrying had failed to find a trace of her. At Wyvernesse, where the vast Earth-magic of the mysterious standing stone might be harnessed, she hoped to find out more. The Mage remembered the stone from her previous sojourn with the Nightrunners, but at that point, she’d had neither the time nor the need to examine it more closely. She had never forgotten it, but had stored its existence in her memory for the future.—As the companions rode northward, the coastline gradually grew more rocky, until at last they were riding along the top of a craggy cliff, looking down upon narrow beaches of shingle guarded by fanged and jagged rocks. Then, breasting one last rise, Aurian suddenly found herself in sight of her destination. There was the crescent bay, embraced by the reddish cliffs that rose behind it. And there, above the cliffs, was the smooth green knoll, crowned by its dark and sinister stone.
Even from this distance, Aurian could feel the stone’s power beating around her like dark, gigantic wings. She inhaled deeply and threw back her hood, letting the fierce exhilaration course through her body and taking it for her own. At her side, she felt the Staff of Earth begin to pulse in time with this other source of power, and at her back the Harp began to thrum in harmony with them both. Soon, she promised them. We’ll come back soon. Then she turned away from the glory and took her tired horse along the clifftop, toward the smuggler’s haven.
After a short distance the Mage came to a V-shaped niche in the cliff. Looking down, Aurian could see the beginnings of a path in the crevice—a narrow ledge that followed a fault line where the slabs of rock had slipped. It doubled sharply back the way they had come. Forral, who had never been here before, looked at it dubiously. “We have to take the horses down there?”
Aurian shook her head. “No, thank goodness. There’s a tunnel somewhere around here that they use to take their horses down when the weather’s bad. The only trouble is, it’s very well hidden, and I’m not sure I could find it again....”
Hargorn rode up, dragging Grince’s horse behind him. “If I remember rightly,” he said, “it’s in one of those gorse thickets, over there.”
The horses, who had been here before, delivering contraband goods to the Nightrunners, also seemed familiar with the way. They pressed forward eagerly, knowing there was food and a well-earned rest nearby. But when the companions reached the thicket of tall, leggy gorse, there seemed to be no way in. “Are you sure this is the right place?” Aurian was asking dubiously, when a voice that seemingly came from nowhere, cried, “Hargorn! By all the Gods—what are you doing here?”
One of the bushes was pushed outward, supported at the back by a wooden frame, and revealed a narrow, thorn-fringed passage that sloped down into the ground.—From its entrance a lithely built young man with tow-colored hair stepped into the open. He gasped in astonishment as his eyes fell on the Mage. “Lady Aurian! It is you! At last you’ve come back to us!” His face lit up with the broadest of smiles. “And Anvar too,” he went on joyously. “How lucky that I was keeping watch today, dull task though it usually is. Come, come.” He gestured them inside. “Zanna will be so glad to see you! I can’t wait to surprise her.”
The Mage leapt down from her horse and embraced Tarnal with delight, then followed him down into the steeply sloping tunnel, the others close upon her heels. They left their weary mounts in the stable cavern, where a young Night-runner lad came up to care for them. Aurian glanced back as they left the cavern to see the youth staring with wide-eyed curiosity after them; wondering, no doubt, who these strange visitors might be.
The huge torchlit cavern with its shingle beach was astir with people, all going busily about their daily business, mending fishnets and sails, performing essential repairs on the anchored smuggler vessels, and transporting bales and crates ashore from one of the ships and taking them into the storage caverns whose tunnel mouths spotted the rear of the massive cave. Tarnal stopped a little girl, who was running along with the serious mien of someone on an important errand. “Can you fetch Zanna . . . ?” he began, but the child interrupted him.
“She’s just over there.”
Zanna was dressed identically to her Nightrunners, in supple, waterproofed boots and sturdy seaman’s clothing. She was bending over one of the bales that had burst open, seemingly during transit, and shaking her head. “No, there’s water damage here, sure enough. This fabric will be stained for good. By all that’s holy, Gevan—can’t you be more careful? The whole bale’s lost. We can’t trade this—we’ll have to use it ourselves for—” At that moment she looked up and saw the Mage. “Aurian!”