"For a moment, it seemed that all lay in disaster," Blackstone explained. "But now-the coming of these northmen is like a gift from the gods! Now all depends upon you."
"I am ready, my father!"
"Pay careful attention, and obey my commands to the letter," the earl stressed. "Assemble two dozen of your most trusted archers. Tell them they will be well rewarded. Take crossbows and gather bolts from the armory-bolts from the royal stock, feathered in the king's colors."
Gwyeth nodded, knowing that his father's arsenal, like the arms of all King Kendrick's vassal lords, included an extensive supply of arrows in the royal colors, for use when the earl's men-at-arms were outfitted for a mission of the king's business.
"Ride along the shepherds' trail. Bring yourself through the pass in good haste, ahead of the High Princess," continued Blackstone. "It shouldn't be difficult. Your party will be young warriors, while they ride with two women!"
"Aye. And then what, Father?" growled Gwyeth. The memory of his humiliation at Keane's hands still burned fiercely within him, and he sensed the approaching moment of his vengeance.
"Find this body of northmen, while yourselves remaining concealed. You'll have the high ground and can look downward from the heights to espy them."
"And when they're discovered?" Gwyeth had begun to perceive the earl's plan.
"You attack from ambush. Remain hidden, and use your horses to escape-but only after several of them have been slain. Do I make myself clear?"
"Indeed, my father!" Gwyeth smiled, his beard split by a cruel leer. "The princess and her companions shall ride into the face of a force enraged by the death of their comrades!" Suddenly his expression darkened. "But, Father, Hanrald rides with them!"
"Aye." Blackstone sighed and straightened his back as if to relieve an ache in his spine. Then he shook his head. "Damn that wench! A keen ruse, to take my son with her. He's all but hostage!"
He turned his dark eyes on his other son, and the hardened determination there was obvious to Gwyeth. The earl grunted awkwardly, clearing his throat, and continued. "Hanrald will have to take care of himself. If he dies, it will be in cause of his family's destiny. No warrior could ask for better."
For a moment, Blackstone's mind wandered back to a night twenty years before. His wife had perished on that night, and the third Blackstone son had been born. Yet even then, he had questions about Hanrald-questions that the woman's untimely death had prevented him from having answered. And as the years had passed, he had seen Hanrald grow, becoming a different sort of person than the earl or either of his older sons.
Indeed, as he thought about it, he was glad that it was Hanrald with the princess and not Gwyeth-Gwyeth, his son who would one day rule as earl!
His mind returned to the present as that same young nobleman rose to his feet and bade his father farewell.
"Aye-good riding, Son," Blackstone said, his voice husky. "And good luck."
"I feel the presence of something up there in the hills." Alicia indicated the high, rock-bound ridges that rose to either side of the steep and winding trail, occasionally visible through the blowing wisps of cloud. The rain varied from drizzle to full downpour, never ceasing entirely, and served to further mask their surroundings.
The cantrev of Blackstone had disappeared several hours before, masked by the enclosing shoulders of mountain and thickening cloud. Now the four riders huddled under their cloaks, yet tried to remain alert.
"You noticed it, too," said Tavish with a frown. "It doesn't seem to be a menace, but I have a sense of eyes watching me."
"There's nothing there!" objected Sir Hanrald, squinting upward and running his eyes across the rocks.
"Always trust a bard when she has a suspicion," warned Keane lightly, and Hanrald laughed.
"True. Indeed, lady, I would apologize for my father's oversight three nights past. Beyond politeness, it would have been a rare delight to hear the music of your harp fill our hall."
"It's nothing," Tavish said with a wave. She looked on the young man with new appraisal, however. "Your father strikes me as a man who has little care for music."
"Aye, or gentleness of any sort, I fear," agreed Hanrald. "Since my mother's passing, at the time of my birth, Caer Blackstone has been a house of manly habits. It could use the brightening of a woman's touch or voice."
"It's hard for me to think of music as a womanly art," objected Alicia. "Have you forgotten the great Keren, who perished during the Darkwalker War yet sent his song to the harp of every bard in the land?"
Hanrald laughed again defensively. "I am corrected, my lady! But, in truth, there is a sound to a woman's voice that can be far more pleasant than any man's, at least in a house that is home to a father and his sons alone."
Alicia, too, laughed, feeling at ease with the good-natured young nobleman. Indeed, she enjoyed a sense of mission and comradeship with these three Ffolk that cast a pleasant shade of adventure over their mission.
"Perhaps I spoke too quickly," the princess replied. "But I rejoice in the fact that we are a people whose women can make themselves warriors, or bards, or farmers, as they will."
"Not like the men of the north," agreed Tavish. "There they place a woman beside the hearth and keep her there lest she cease bearing babes-sons, it is to be hoped!"
"Are there women in Callidyrr-women of the Ffolk? — who practice sorcery?" inquired Hanrald.
Keane answered the question. "There are a few, just as only a few Ffolkmen study the arcane arts."
"How long have you possessed such mastery?" asked Alicia. "Those weren't the spells of an apprentice that you hurled at the iron golem!"
Keane shook his head modestly, and once again the princess sensed that talking about his ability made the mage uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the lanky tutor offered some explanation.
"I began my apprenticeship very young, working for the palace alchemist in Callidyrr. He noted that I seemed to have some aptitude and brought me to your father. That was shortly after you were born," he told Alicia.
"But how did you progress so far?" she wondered. "I didn't think we had masters in the Moonshaes capable of such teaching!"
"We don't," Keane admitted. "But on my journeys to Waterdeep-those periods you and Deirdre refer to as 'days of freedom'-I studied with some of the greatest wizards of the Sword Coast."
Alicia blushed, embarrassed to hear that Keane knew about the sisters' relief when they received respite from their lessons.
Keane continued, smiling thinly at her discomfort. "Because of my, er, aptitude, I have been able to progress smoothly through the studies that, so I am told, generally are the province only of much older magic-users."
They rode along in easy comradeship, concentrating again on the trail as it began to cross back and forth along a steep slope, leading in this zigzag fashion to a notch between two summits high above them.
"There!" Alicia spoke suddenly, twisting in her saddle to look behind them. "I saw something move this time. I'm certain of it!"
"And over there!" Tavish pointed upward, and this time they all saw it: A dark shape moved along a bare slope of rock before darting out of sight.
"Four-legged, I'm certain," Keane announced.
"A wolf?" inquired Alicia, her hand going to the hilt of her sword. She had been weaned on tales of the dire wolves that had long inhabited the wild places of the Moonshaes.
"Can't be." Tavish actually sounded wistful. "The only place they live anymore is the Island of Gwynneth, and even there hunters have killed most of them. They've been rare for many years."
"There's another one-and another," added Keane, pointing to the slope below them. "Why, they're hounds!"
"More of them down there," Tavish added. "I should say dozens, and those are only the ones I can see!"