The guard, used to obeying orders from almost everyone, didn’t question her. He took the keys and set off. A few minutes later he was back, herding Big Red at a slow shuffle, the wrist and ankle irons still attached. She stood aside to let them enter, closed the door, and flattened the guard with a blow to the neck.
Her brother glanced at her. “Very efficient. Do you plan to dispatch the entire garrison this way?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” She worked the keys into the wrist and ankle locks, and the chains dropped away. He rubbed his wrists appreciatively and looked around for a weapon. “Never mind that,” she said, gesturing impatiently.
She took a sheet of paper from the commander’s desk, one embossed with the Federation insignia, and wrote a brief note on it with a quill pen and ink. When she was finished, she eyed it critically, then nodded. “Good enough. You’re a free man. Let’s go.”
She slipped the dirk back in her boot, and they walked out of the command shack and across the yard toward the gates. Her brother’s eyes shifted about nervously. Prisoners and guards alike were watching them. “Are you sure about this?”
She laughed and shoved him playfully. “Just watch.”
When they reached the gates, the two guards she had given her weapons to on entering were waiting. She waved the insignia-embossed paper at them. “What did I tell you?” she asked brightly, handing the paper to the first guard.
“Let me have a look at that,” he replied suspiciously, squinting hard at the paper.
“You can see for yourself,” she declared, pointing at the writing. “He’s released to my custody until all this gets straightened out. I told you it wouldn’t be that hard.”
The second guard moved closer to the first, peering over his shoulder. Neither seemed entirely certain what to do.
“Don’t you understand?” she pressed, crowding them now, jamming her finger at the paper. “The army can’t afford to keep its best airship pilot locked up in the stockade with a war going on. Not because of one Federation officer who thinks it’s a good idea. Come on! Give me back my weapons! You’ve looked at the order long enough! What’s the matter, can’t you read?”
She glared at them now. Neither guard said a word.
“Do you want me to wake up the commander again? He was mad enough the first time.”
“Okay, okay,” the first guard said hastily, shoving the piece of paper at her.
He handed back her knives, rapier, and sling and shooed them out the gates and back into the encampment. They walked in silence for several dozen paces before Redden Alt Mer said, “I don’t believe it.”
She shrugged. “They can’t read. Even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. No one could make out what I wrote. When they’re asked about it, they’ll claim I had a release order signed by the commander. Who’s to say I didn’t? This is the army, big brother. Soldiers don’t admit to anything that might get them in trouble. They’ll fuss for a day or two and then decide they’re well rid of us.”
Her brother rubbed his arms to restore the circulation and glanced at the cloudless sky. “Three years in this forsaken place. Money or no, that’s a long time.” He sighed wearily and slapped his thighs. “I hate leaving Black Moclips, though. I hate that.”
She nodded. “I know. I thought about taking her. But stealing her would be hard, Big Red. Too many people keeping watch.”
“We’ll get another ship,” he declared, brushing the matter aside, a bit of the old spring returning to his step. “Somewhere.”
They walked through the camp’s south fringe to where the passes led downward out of the heights toward the city of Dechtera and the grasslands west. Once across the Rappahalladran and the plains beyond, they were home.
Ahead, Furl Hawken stood waiting in a draw with a dozen more Rovers and the horses and supplies.
“Hawk!” Redden Alt Mer called, and gave him a wave. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the fading outline of the camp. “Well, it was fun for a time. Not as much fun as we’ll have where we’re going, of course, wherever that turns out to be, but it had its moments.”
Rue Meridian smirked. “My brother, the eternal optimist.” She brushed stray strands of her long hair from her face. “Let’s hope this time you’re right.”
Ten minutes later, they had left the Federation army behind and were riding west for the coast of the Blue Divide.
6
At first light, the Druid known as Walker slipped from the sleeping room he had been given in the summer house on his arrival the night before. Arborlon was still sleeping, the Elven city at rest, and only the night watch and those whose work required an early rising were awake. A tall, spare, shadowy figure in his black robes, hair, and beard, he glided soundlessly from the palace grounds and through the streets and byways of the city to the broad sweep of the Carolan. He was aware of the Home Guard who trailed him, an Elven Hunter assigned to him by the King. Allardon Elessedil was not a man who took chances, so the presence of a watchdog was not unexpected, and Walker let the matter be.
On the heights, where the Carolan fronted the sprawl of the Westland forests, visible all the way to the ragged jut of the Rock Spur south and the Kensrowe north, he paused. The first glimmer of sunlight had crested the trees behind him, but night still enfolded the land west, purple and gray shadows clinging to treetops and mountain peaks like veils. In the earthen bowl of the Sarandanon, small lakes and rivers reflected the early light in silvery flashes amid the patchwork quilt of farms and fields. Farther out, the waters of the Innis-bore shimmered in a rough, metallic sheen, their surface coated with broken layers of mist. Somewhere beyond that lay the vast expanse of the Blue Divide, and it was there that he must eventually go.
He looked all about the land, a slow, careful perusal, a drinking in of colors and shapes. He thought about the history of the city. Of the stand it had made in the time of Eventine Elessedil against the assault of the demons freed from the Forbidding by the failure of the Ellcrys. Of its journey out of the Westland in the Ruhk staff and the magic-riven Loden to the island of Morrowindl—buildings, people, and history disappeared as if they had never been. Of its journey back again, returned to the Four Lands by Wren Elessedil, where it would withstand the onslaught of the Shadowen. Always, the Elves and the Druids had been allies, bound by a common desire to see the lands and their peoples kept free.
What, he asked himself in dark contemplation, had become of that bond?
Below the heights, swollen with snowmelt off the mountains and spring’s rainfall, the Rill Song churned noisily within its banks. He listened to the soothing, distant sound of the water’s heavy flow as it echoed out of the trees. He stood motionless in the enfolding silence, not wanting to disturb it. It felt strange to be back here, but right, as well. He had not come to Arborlon in more than twenty years. He had not thought he would come again while Allardon Elessedil lived. His last visit had opened a rift between them he did not think anything could close. Yet here he was, and the rift that had seemed so insurmountable now seemed all but inconsequential.
His thoughts drifted as he turned away. He had come to Arborlon and the Elven King out of desperation. All of his efforts at brokering an agreement with the races to bring representatives to Paranor to study in the Druid way had failed. Since then, he had lived alone at Paranor, reverting to the work of recording the history of the Four Lands. There was little else he could do. His bitterness was acute. He was trapped in a life he had never wanted. He was a reluctant Druid, recruited by the shade of Allanon in a time when there were no Druids and the presence of at least one was vital to the survival of the races. He had accepted the blood trust bestowed by the dying Allanon hundreds of years earlier on his ancestor Brin Ohmsford, not because he coveted it in any way, but because fate and circumstance conspired to place him in a position where only he could fulfill its mandate. He had done so out of a sense of responsibility. He had done so hoping that he might change the image and work of the Druids, that he might find a way for the order to oversee civilization’s advancement through cooperative study and democratic participation by all of the peoples of the Four Lands.