“It’s true, and they have laid siege to the city of Ildakar. So far, the wizards there have held them off, but now General Utros is dividing his forces, sending thousands of troops on exploratory missions. Sooner or later that great force will move north.”
Linden looked at the papers on his desk as if one of them might contain instructions for a situation such as this. Behind Nicci, the two escort soldiers muttered in surprise.
“I can’t emphasize the danger enough. Lord Rahl needs to know, and you must prepare. We have to fortify not only Tanimura, but all the cities up and down the coast. We need the D’Haran army.” She unwrapped the cloth from the glass rectangle Elsa had created. “Here is the proof you need.”
Nicci turned the magical window with its implanted images so Linden could see Utros’s ancient army covering the plain.
“They have already begun to move, General, but you have the advantage of time and distance, so long as you begin your preparations now.”
Linden stared at the images in the glass. “Dear spirits…”
CHAPTER 48
As the expedition departed from Cliffwall, Verna felt optimistic. The company included General Zimmer and half of his D’Haran soldiers along with the guard escort that had accompanied Renn on the journey from Ildakar. Captain Trevor and his men were pleased to be going home, although none of them relished the thought of another hard trek.
“A journey doesn’t need to be difficult if you know your way,” Verna said to the uneasy Renn, who was torn between his desire to go home and his wish to stay at the comfortable archive. He expressed his worries about getting lost, running out of supplies, fending off wild beasts, and countless other wilderness hazards. This time, though, they all rode horses from the D’Haran expeditionary force, and General Zimmer’s men knew how to make efficient field camps along the way.
Riding along, the wizard looked over at Verna. “I much prefer this to walking on sore feet, although I may change my mind after several days in the saddle.” He shifted his position, holding on to the reins of his ash-gray mare, and rubbed his already sore buttocks. “In Ildakar we have few horses. The city was bottled up for so many years, where would we ride? How would we feed them?”
“Didn’t your nobles use carriages to travel about the town?”
“Oh, sometimes, but they live in the higher levels and rarely need to go down to the lower districts, since they have household servants to run errands for them.” He rocked back and forth as the horses continued at a fast walk.
Verna stared ahead at the severe line of mountains that rose out of the great green bowl that had once been the Lifedrinker’s Scar. The wizard seemed intimidated by the range ahead of them, remembering the hardships of their first crossing. The people of Cliffwall had spoken of the legendary beauty of Kol Adair, although Renn had an entirely different experience of the windy mountain pass. He had complained about the thin air, stumbling over loose rocks, fighting through willows in the tundra. He hadn’t seen much beauty.
As they rode toward the rugged mountains, Verna tried to sound reassuring. “We’ll guide you better this time, Renn. I am certain of it.”
“I trust your word, Prelate, and when we reach Ildakar, I will return the favor and show you our hospitality.” He lowered his voice. “After we give a cautious report to Sovrena Thora.”
Verna said, “Nicci and Nathan will help, I’m sure.”
Six of her fellow Sisters of the Light accompanied her and Amber, while four remained at Cliffwall to continue their studies with the other scholars. An additional dozen gifted scholars and students rode with the party, intent men and women who had studied the preserved records and learned much magic. They had been wisely afraid to exercise their abilities, having seen the previous mishaps caused by naive and uncontrolled amateurs, but Verna thought these earnest trainees could learn more by doing than by merely reading. This expedition might give them a chance to stretch their abilities.
Oliver and Peretta shared a horse. Looking ahead, they pointed out interesting landmarks to each other and also Amber, who seemed just as starry-eyed about her adventures since leaving Tanimura. The three young people had become fast friends, and Amber talked about her brother who had stayed behind to defend Renda Bay.
Verna listened to their conversation, but kept her thoughts to herself. She had traveled for much of her life, wandering with Sisters Grace and Elizabeth in search of Richard Rahl. Verna hadn’t known at the time that her two companions were secretly Sisters of the Dark working for the Keeper. So many things had slipped beneath Verna’s notice that she felt embarrassed and ashamed. She hoped that would never happen again.
By the good spirits, she was still here in another land and another situation. The Sisters of the Dark were gone, the veil to the underworld forever sealed, and the Keeper locked away. Magic had changed. Prophecy was gone. The Palace of the Prophets had been erased, but Verna was still prelate, even though their order had little meaning anymore.
For days they traveled into the hills, following Trevor’s best guess of the route, though General Zimmer expressed gruff skepticism about trying to retrace the path of a party that had been lost and miserable in the first place. They could see the high mountain pass ahead, and Peretta had memorized descriptions of Kol Adair from the ancient records. The party camped at night with cook fires, tents, and warm blankets.
Renn sat at the main campfire next to Zimmer, Verna, and Sisters Rhoda and Eldine. The wizard helped himself to a second plate of mashed beans. “Ah, I remember when Lani and I would have the servants prepare feasts for only the two of us, and we would enjoy calm conversation long into the night. She was such a wonderful woman.” He smiled. “Did I mention that Lani could call songbirds? They would flutter and sing around us. We’d sit outside and the larks would provide better music than any minstrel.”
“She sounds very nice,” Verna said. “Was she a sorceress? What happened to her?”
“Thora turned her to stone.” Renn’s expression darkened. “Once a person has been frozen with the petrification spell, nothing can revive them. Even the wizard commander said he couldn’t reverse the magic.” He glanced away.
The group climbed higher into the mountains, and the days and nights grew intensely cold. General Zimmer looked at the rugged ridgelines ahead, where a relatively clear path for the horses switchbacked up the slopes. “We should push ourselves hard so we can be over the pass before sunset. If we can get back down to the tree line, we will have a much warmer camp tonight.”
“And plenty of firewood,” Trevor added.
The soldiers hunched down on their saddles, wrapped in cloaks as they rode into the cold wind. Oliver and Peretta huddled closer to each other in the saddle, warm and content as they wrapped one blanket around the two of them.
The horses plodded along, climbing to the summit of the pass, where the vista suddenly unfolded before them, a world full of black, glacier-hung mountains. The group paused to marvel at the peaks, the frozen waves of ice that slid down the crags, the waterfalls of snowmelt running down sheer gorges, the jewel-like lakes, the lush hanging valleys.
As the sun dipped lower in late afternoon, shadows spread out in the bowl beyond Kol Adair. Renn gestured toward the vista. “You see what I told you? Imagine picking your way over those mountains, down into the valley, then back up over this pass. What a nightmare!”
Peretta drank in the view, filing every detail in her memmer’s mind. Oliver marveled at what he saw, though his eyesight was poor.
Zimmer spotted the path that zigzagged down the slope on the opposite side of the pass, but the shelter of the tree line seemed a long way below. “I’ll send scouts to reconnoiter the best way. With the steep rocky trail, I don’t want the horses to break a leg, and we certainly don’t want to pick our way down in the dark.”