Suddenly D’arvan stiffened, alerted by. a disturbance among the nearby trees. Sending out his consciousness into the forest, he perceived the warning message of the arboreal guardians. Intruders! There were people at the boundary of the Valley, trying to gain entrance. He turned to Maya, “To the bridge, my love—and hurry!” With a flash of her heels, the unicorn was gone, D’arvan, taking the opposite direction, hurried off to the other side of the woods to see who the intruders might be.
“Gone? What do you mean, she’s gone?”
Tarnal took a hurried step backward in the face of Vannor’s rage. It had been bad enough, the young smuggler thought, entering this unnerving place. He and Remana had been trapped for some time, pinned a tree by, a pack of the meanest-looking wolves he had when suddenly the sheltering trunk behind him had simply picked up its roots and moved When he looked round again, the wolf pack had simply vanished, and a broad, leaf-arched avenue had opened before him, heading down into the crater. Tarnal sighed, and cursed Yards roundly under his breath. Terrifying though the encounter with the wolves had been, it was nothing in comparison to having to tell Vannor that his daughter had vanished.
“What the bloody blazes does Yanis think he’s playing at?” Vannor’s tirade continued, unabated. “How could Zanna have slipped out like that, unobserved? What a fool I was, to trust my daughter to that halfwit imbecile! And as for you ...” His rage turned on Remana. “I thought you were supposed to be looking after her. I trusted you, I—”
Remana looked stricken. Tarnal sighed. Might as well get it over with, he thought. “I was on guard that night,” he interrupted the furious merchant. “I never thought she’d . . . And then she knocked me out ...” The words dried in his mouth beneath Vannor’s withering, contemptuous glare.
“She had tried this trick already with Tarnal, before you came to join us.” Remana came to the young man’s rescue.
“Honestly, Vannor, we never thought she would do it again. But she had quarreled with Yanis, because she thought he should be doing more to help you, and, I think, because he wouldn’t take her when he went south to trade. He went off to sea that same day and didn’t tell us what had happened between them, and Zanna never said a word, though I thought she was rather quiet. She left that same night.”
Remana bit her lip. “If you blame Tarnal, you might as well blame me, too. It was I who taught Zanna to sail, and to navigate the passage outside the cavern. Yanis is still in the southern oceans—he doesn’t even know. Tarnal and I thought we should come at once to tell you. Gods, Vannor—I’m sorry. Dulsina, you were wrong to trust me.” There were tears in Remana’s eyes. “She left a note, explaining what had happened, and what she planned to do. She’s gone to Nexis.”
Vannor maintained a stony silence. Tarnal wished he would do anything, even hit him with those tight clenched fists, rather than just stand there with that look of loathing on his face. Dulsina stepped forward and took hold of the merchant’s arm. “Vannor, don’t blame them too harshly. You know what Zanna is like—she takes after you. There’s no stopping her once she gets an idea into her head.”
“And that makes it all right, does it?” Vannor growled, turning on Dulsina. “They should have taken better care of her! They—”
“They didn’t, as it happens.” Dulsina’s flat tones brought the merchant up .short. “Now,” she went on, “the question is, what are we going to do about it? Raging at Tarnal and Remana won’t get Zanna back.”
“You’re right.” Vannor seemed relieved to be doing something positive. “Hargorn, there’s a change of plan. You’re still going to Nexis—but I’m coming with you.”
“Vannor, you can’t!” Dulsina gasped. “There’s a reward out on you. You’ll be recognized! And what about the rebels? You’re their leader—”
“Then they had better choose another bloody leader!” The expression on Vannor’s face brooked no argument.
“Dulsina, fill a pack for me. Fional, you’re still going to Wyvernesse. Get a couple of ponies from these idiots—it’s the least they can do in atonement, I should say”—he turned a scornful look on Tarnal and Remana—“and bring my son back with you. I want him safe here with Dulsina.”
“But—” Fional stammered.
“Don’t argue with me!” Vannor roared. “Dulsina, is that pack ready yet? What’s keeping you, woman?”
As Dulsina, for once knowing better than to contradict the merchant, came running up, Tarnal swallowed hard, and went to Vannor. “I want to come with you,” he said firmly. Vannor scowled at him. “Come with me? After what you’ve done? You’ve got a nerve, boy! Get out of my sight. I never want to set eyes on you and your Nightrunner friends again.”
As the travelers said farewell to their companions and walked out of the clearing along the path that opened out before them, D’arvan closed his eyes, unable to watch, as they left the haven he had created and went out again into danger. He could have stopped them, he knew. For the son of the Forest Lord, it would have been simple to change the paths between the trees, and deny the wanderers egress; to bring them back in a circle to the safety they had left. But he would have been wrong to do so. They must play their parts in the fight against Miathan, even as he must, and all he could do was pray for their safe return.
Hargorn wiped his numb and dripping nose across his sleeve. “By Chathak—I’d forgotten how cold it can be out here!” he muttered to Fional, who would be leaving them for Wyvernesse once they had cleared the trees. Remana and Tarnal would be following him, once they had rested from their arduous journey, but Vannor had not permitted the archer to wait for them. Once more, Hargorn wished that the rebels had been able to bring horses to this desolate place. But in these days of famine, horses were a scarce commodity, for most had been eaten long ago. Unless he could find any on his journey to Nexis, he and the merchant would be forced to go without.
Before the three men stretched the endless bleakness of the moors, the black rock of their wind-scoured bones poking out in places from a ragged cloak of shriveled bracken and heather, patched with night-gray turf that was harsh and brittle with a skin of crackling frost. Behind the wanderers, the trees that ringed the precipitous edge of the Vale thronged tight and close, as though huddled together for warmth. Goaded by the bitter, whining wind, their bare, twisted branches clawed at the clouding sky.
The archer nodded, his usually smiling mouth twisted down into a grimace, “It was easy to forget—in there!”
Frowning, he turned to the older man. There was no point in talking to Vannor, who had remained grimly silent ever since they had set out. The others did not dare mention their concern for Zanna in his presence, and Fional wracked his brains for another topic. “Hargorn, what do you think was protecting us in the Valley? Do you think it was Aurian’s mother? If it was, why didn’t she show herself?”
The veteran shook his head. “I’ve no idea, lad—though I remember Aurian saying that her ma was a pretty solitary sort. Still, after all that happened, you’d think she would show herself—if it was the Lady who was taking care of us in there!”