All the rest were gone, too, from that earlier time—the Ohmsfords, Morgan Leah, Wren Elessedil, Damson Rhee, all of them. Rumor and he alone survived. They were outcasts in more ways than one, solitary wanderers in a world that had changed considerably during the time of his sleep. But it wasn’t the changes in the Four Lands that worried him this morning. It was his sense that the events that would transpire because of his reading of the map and his search for the magic it detailed would require him to become what he had always worked so hard to avoid—a Druid in the old sense, a manipulator and schemer, a trader in information who would sacrifice who and what he must to get what he believed necessary. Allanon, of old. It was what he had always despised about the Druids. He knew he would despise it in himself when it surfaced.
And surface it would, perhaps changing him forever.
The sun crested the horizon in a splash of brilliant gold. The day would be clear and bright and warm. Walker felt the first rays of sunlight on his face. Such a small thing, but so welcome. His world had shrunk to almost nothing in the past few years. Now it was about to expand in ways he had barely imagined possible.
“Well,” he said softly, as if to put the matter to rest.
He knew what he must do. He must go to Arborlon and speak with Allardon Elessedil. He must convince the Elven King they could work together in an effort to discover the secret of the map. He must persuade him to mount an expedition to go in search of the magic of which the map spoke, with Walker in command. He must find a way to make the Elven King his ally without letting him see that it was the Druid’s idea.
He must reveal just enough of what he knew and not too much. He must be cautious.
He blinked away his weariness. He was Walker, the last of the Druids, the last hope for the higher ideals his order had espoused so strongly when it had been formed. If the Four Lands were to be united in peace, the magic must be controlled by a Druid Council answerable to no single government or people, but to all. Only he could achieve that. Only he knew the way.
He bent to Rumor and placed his hand gently on the broad head. “You must stay here, old friend,” he whispered. “You must keep watch for me until I return.”
He rose and stretched. Hunter Predd slept in a darkened room and would not wake for a while yet. Time enough for Walker to catch an hour’s sleep before they departed. It would have to be enough.
With the moor cat trailing after him, fading and reappearing like a mirage in the new light, he abandoned his watch and descended the stairs into the Keep.
4
His worn black flight leathers creaking softly, Redden Alt Mer strode through the Federation war camp on his way to the airfield, and heads turned. For some it was the mane of red hair streaming down past his shoulders like fiery threads that drew attention. For some it was the way he carried himself, fluid, relaxed, and self-assured, a big man who exuded strength and quickness.
For most, it was the legend. Seventy-eight confirmed kills in 192 missions, all flown in the same airship, all completed without serious mishap.
It was good luck to fly with Redden Alt Mer, the old boots swore. In a place and time where an airman’s life expectancy was rated at about six months, Alt Mer had survived for three years with barely a scratch. He had the right ship, sure enough. But it took more than that to stay alive over the front. It took skill, courage, experience, and a whole basketful of that most precious of commodities, luck. The Captain had all of them. He was steeped in them. He’d lived almost his whole life in the air, a cabin boy at seven, a First Officer by fifteen, a Captain by twenty. When the winds of fortune shifted, the old boots said, Redden Alt Mer knew best how to ride them.
The Rover didn’t think about it. It was bad luck to think about good luck in a war. It was worse luck to think about why you were different from everyone else. Being an exception to the rule was all well and good, but you didn’t want to dwell on the reasons you were still alive when so many others were dead. It wasn’t conducive to clear thinking. It wasn’t helpful in getting a good night’s sleep.
Walking through the camp, he joked and waved to those who acknowledged him, a light, easy banter that kept everyone relaxed. He knew what they thought of him, and he played off it the way an old friend might. What harm did it do? You could never have too many friends in a war.
He’d been three years now in this one, two of them stuck here on the broad expanse of the Prekkendorran Heights while Federation and Free-born ground forces hammered each other to bloody pulps day after day after day. A Rover out of the seaport of March Brume, west and south on the Blue Divide, he was a seasoned veteran of countless conflicts even before he signed on. It was no exaggeration to say that he had spent his whole life on warships. He’d almost been born at sea, but his father, a Captain himself, had managed to reach port with his mother just before she gave birth. But from the time he’d taken that first commission as a cabin boy, he’d lived in the air. He couldn’t explain why he loved it so; he just did. It felt right when he was flying, as if a net of invisible constraints and bonds had been slipped and he had been set free. When he was on the ground, he was always thinking about being in the air. When he was in the air, he was never thinking about anything else.
“Hey, Cap!” A foot soldier with his arm tied against his body and a bandage over one side of his face hobbled into view. “Blow me a little of your luck!”
Redden Alt Mer grinned and blew him a kiss. The soldier laughed and waved with his good arm. The Rover kept walking, smelling the air, tasting it, thinking as he did that he missed the sea. Most of his time in the air had been spent west, over the Blue Divide. He was a mercenary, as most Rovers were, taking jobs where the money was best, giving allegiance to those who paid for it. Right now, the Federation offered the best pay, so he fought for them. But he was growing restless for a change, for something new. The war with the Free-born had been going on for more than ten years. It wasn’t his war to begin with, and it wasn’t a war that made much sense to him. Money could carry you only so far when your heart lay somewhere else.
Besides, no matter who you were, sooner or later your luck ran out. It was best to be somewhere else when it did.
He passed out of the sprawling clutter of tents and cooking fires onto the airfield. The warships were tethered in place by their stays, floating just off the ground, ambient-light sails tilted toward the sun off twin masts. Most were Federation built and showed it. Big, ugly, cumbersome brutes, sheathed in metal armor and painted with the insignia and colors of their regiments, in flight they lumbered about the skies like errant sloths. As troop transports and battering rams, they were a howling success. As fighting vessels that could tack smoothly and quickly, they left something to be desired. If they were ably commanded, which most weren’t, their life expectancy on the front was about the same as that of their Captains and crews.
He walked on, barely giving them a glance. The banter that had passed between himself and the foot soldiers was absent here. The officers and crews of the Federation airships despised him. Rovers were mercenaries, not career soldiers. Rovers fought only for money and left when they chose. Rovers cared nothing for the Federation cause or the lives of the men that had been expended on its behalf. But the worst of it was the knowledge that the Rover officers and crews were so much better than the Federation crews were. In the air, faith in a cause did little to keep you alive.
A few taunting remarks were tossed at him from behind the anonymity of metal-clad hulls, but he ignored them. No one would make those same remarks to his face. Not these days. Not since he had killed the last man who’d dared to do so.
The sleeker, trimmer Rover airships came into view as he neared the far end of the field. Black Moclips sat foremost, polished wood-and-metal hull gleaming in the sunlight. She was the best ship he had ever flown, a cruiser built for battle, quick and responsive to the tack of her ambient-light sails and the tightening and loosening of her radian draws. Just a shade under 110 feet long and 35 feet wide, she resembled a big black ray. Her low, flat fighting cabin sat amidships on a decking braced by cross beams and warded by twin pontoons curved into battering rams fore and aft. Twin sets of diapson crystals converted to raw energy the light funneled from the collector sails through the radian draws. Parse tubes expelled the converted energy to propel the ship. The bridge sat aft with the pilot box front and center on the decking, its controls carefully shielded from harm. Three masts flew the ambient-light sails, one each fore, aft, and center. The sails themselves were strangely shaped, broad and straight at the lower end, where they were fastened to the booms, but curved where spars drew them high above to a triangle’s point. The design allowed for minimal slack in a retack and minimal drag from the wind. Speed and power kept you alive in the air, and both were measured in seconds.