But at the campfire that night, Macenion seemed to have walked out part of his bad temper, and regained his original charm. He lit the fire with one spell, and seasoned their plain boiled porridge with another. He set a spell to keep the horse and pony from wandering. Paks wanted to ask if he could not set one to guard the camp, so that they could both sleep through the night, but thought better of it, and offered to take the first watch instead.
Hot as it had been in the afternoon, it was cold that night, with that feeling of great spaces in movement that comes only on the flanks of mountains. Nothing threatened them that Paks could see or hear, but twice the hair on her arms and neck stood straight, and fear caught the breath in her throat. Macenion, when she woke him at the change of watch, and told him, simply laughed lightly. “Wild lands care not for humans, Paksenarrion—neither to hunt nor hide. That is what you feel, that indifference.” She surprised herself by sleeping easily and at once.
For two days they climbed between the flanks of the mountain. Midway of the second, they were high enough to see once more the caravan route below and behind them, and the twist where it crossed the spine of the Copper Hills. Paks could barely discern the pale scar of the route itself, but Macenion declared that he could see another caravan moving on it, this time from west to east. Paks squinted across the leagues of sunlit air, wavering in light and wind, and grunted. She could not see any movement at all, and the brilliant light hurt her eyes. She turned to look up their trail. It crawled over a hump of grass-grown rock—what she would have called a mountain, if the higher slopes had not been there—and disappeared. In a few moments, Macenion too turned to the trail.
To her surprise, the other side of the hump was forested; all that afternoon they climbed through thick pinewoods smelling of resin and bark. Paks added dry branches to Star’s pack. They camped at the upper end of that wood, looking out over its dark patchwork to the east, where even Paks could see the land fall steeply into the eastern ocean. Macenion gazed at it a long time.
“What do you see?” Paks finally asked, but he shook his head and did not answer. She went back to stirring their porridge. Later that night he began to talk of the elves and their ways—the language and history—but most of it meant little to Paks. She thought he seemed pleased that she knew so little.
“My name’s elven,” she said proudly, when Macenion seemed to be running down. “I know that much: Paksenarrion means tower of the mountains.”
“And I suppose you think you were named that for your size, eh?” Macenion sneered. “Don’t be foolish; it’s not elvish at all.”
“It is, too!” Paks stiffened angrily. She had always been a proud of her name and its meaning.
“Nonsense! It’s from old Aare, not from elves. Pakse-enerion, royal tower, or royal treasure, since they used towers for their treasuries.”
“That’s the same—” Paks had not clearly heard the difference in sounds.
“No. Look. The elven is—” Macenion began scratching lines in the dust. “It has another sign, one that you don’t use. Almost, but not quite, the same as your ‘ks’ sound—and the first part means peak or high place. The elven word enarrion means mountain; the gnomes corrupted it to enarn, and the dwarves to enarsk, which is why these mountains are the dwarfenarsk—or in their tongue, the hakkenarsk. If your name were really elven, it would mean peak or high place in the mountains. But it doesn’t. It’s human, Aaren, and it means royal treasure.”
Paks frowned. “But I was always told—”
“I don’t care what you were told by some ignorant old crone, Paksenarrion, neither you nor your name is elven, and that’s all.” Macenion smirked at her, then pointedly lifted the kettle without touching it and poured himself another mug of sib.
Paks glared at him, furious again. “My grandmother was not an ignorant old crone!”
“Orphin, grant me patience!” Macenion’s voice was almost as sharp as hers. “Do you really think, Paks, that you or your grandmother—however worthy a matron she may have been—know as much about the elven language as an elf does? Be reasonable.”
Paks subsided, still angry. Put that way she could find no answer, but she didn’t have to like it.
Relations were still strained the next day when they came to the first fork of the trail. Macenion slowed to a halt. Paks was tempted to ask him sharply if he knew where he was going, but a quick look at the wilderness around her kept her quiet. Whether he knew or not, she certainly didn’t. Macenion turned to look at her. “I think we’ll go this way,” he said, gesturing.
“Think?” Paks could not resist that much.
His face darkened. “I have my reasons, Paksenarrion. Either path will get us where we wish to go; this one might provide other benefits.”
“Such as?”
“Oh—” He seemed unwilling to answer directly. “There are ruins on some of the trails around here. We might find treasure—”
“Or trouble,” said Paks.
His eyebrows went up. “I thought you claimed great skill with that sword.”
“Skill, yes—but I don’t go looking for trouble.” But as she spoke, she felt a tingle of anticipation. Trouble she didn’t want, but adventure was something else. Macenion must have seen this in her face, for he grinned.
“After these peaceful days, I daresay you wouldn’t mind a little excitement. I don’t expect any, to be sure, but unless you’re hiding a fortune in that pack, you wouldn’t mind a few gold coins or extra weapons any more than I would.”
“Honestly—no, I wouldn’t.” Paks found herself smiling. Ruins in the wilderness, and stray treasure, were just the sort of things she’d dreamed of as a girl.
Macenion’s chosen path led them back west, by winding ways, and finally through a narrow gap into a rising valley, steep-sided, where the trail led between many tall gray stones. These stood about like tall soldiers on guard.
“What are those?” asked Paksenarrion, as they began to near the first ranks of them. The stones, roughly shaped into rectangles, gave her an odd feeling, as if they were alive.
“Wardstones,” said Macenion. “Haven’t you ever seen wardstones before?”
Paks gave him a sharp look. “No. I wouldn’t have asked, if I had.” She didn’t want to ask, now, what wardstones warded or whom. But Macenion went on without her question.
“They’re set as guardians, by the elder peoples,” he said. “Humans don’t use them, that I know of. Can’t handle the power, I suppose.”
Paks clamped her lips on the questions that filled her mind. How did they guard? And what?
“It’s the patterns they make,” Macenion went on. “Patterns have power; even you should know that—” He looked at her, and Paks nodded. “If intruders come, then, it will trouble the pattern, and that troubling can be sensed by those who set the stones.”
“Are we intruders?” asked Paks.
Macenion laughed, a little too loudly. “Oh my, no. These are old, Paksenarrion, very old. Whatever set them is long gone from here.”
“But are they still in those—those patterns you spoke of?” Paks felt something, an itch along her bones.
Macenion looked around. “Yes, but it doesn’t matter—”
“Why not?” asked Paks stubbornly. “If it’s the patterns that have the power, and they’re still in the patterns, then—”