The songsmith heard the sound of trotting hooves, then a snort. A black shape trotted into view, stirrups flapping loose from an empty saddle. Then a dark shape winged its way over to land on the cantle of the saddle, balancing there.
Monso! Monso and Steel Talon, together!
As Eydryth watched, the Keplian and the falcon circled the camp, still moving at that deliberate pace.
Circled once…
Twice…
Thrice…
Magic, she realized, feeling a prickle run up her spine that she remembered from times when she had seen Joisan or Kerovan use the Power. The animals are bespelling the camp!
For a moment fear clutched at her; then she realized that the beasts were circling from right to left, deasil—not widdershins, not contrary to the path the sun followed in the sky. Eydryth relaxed. Nothing that followed the Left-Hand Path could move so.
When the third circle was completed, the Keplian halted, then gave a blasting snort. None of the sleeping figures around the faintly glowing campfire so much as stirred.
“Good,” Alon muttered, then rose and walked over to the nearest guardsman. A moment later he was back, in his hand a knife. With a few tugs, he severed Eydryth’s bonds. “We must go quickly,” he said, not troubling to lower his voice. “The thrice-circle will not hold past first light.”
The songsmith stared from the sleeping forms to the beasts standing a few paces away. “They did this?” she whispered, in awe. “How could a horse and a falcon cast a sleeping-spell?”
“Beasts have their own magic,” he told her. “And neither Monso nor Steel Talon is an ordinary animal, do not forget.”
“What about the sentries? And the witch?”
“Asleep, too.” He took her hands in his, began chafing them briskly. She was shocked to feel how swollen his own fingers were. When she made a sound of distress, he glanced down at them, flexing them gingerly. “The guard was not gentle,” he agreed ruefully. “They made it only too plain that I was not the favored prisoner.”
A moment later, he stood up, then reached down a hand to pull her to her feet. Both of them stamped, wriggling their toes, wincing at the pinpricks of pain as the blood flowed freely once more.
Finally, he caught up her cloak, draped it around her shoulders. “Come,” he said. “We must hurry.”
Eydryth followed him into the camp, marveling at the peacefully sleeping faces that never altered as they searched for their belongings. In the moonlight even the witch appeared different, her stern countenance rendered relaxed and vulnerable with sleep. So great was the Power of the beasts’ thrice-circle that she did not even have time to grow alarmed, Eydryth thought with awe.
“Find your weapons,” Alon called, from across the camp. “I am gathering a few supplies. We must travel fast and light.”
The songsmith located her sword and staff, then, on impulse, took the lieutenant’s blade and swordbelt from where they lay beside his slumbering form. “Here,” she said, holding the sheathed blade out to her companion, “put this on.”
He took it, then hesitantly did as she bade.
“Not like that! Lower, so it rests down on your hip… so.” She slid the leathern strap into place around his lean middle. “I will begin teaching you to use this, when we have time.”
In the moonglow she saw him smile wryly. “You think it necessary for me to learn a soldier’s skills?”
“I do,” she nodded firmly, hands on hips as she surveyed him. “If we are to company together, even for the space of a day, I want you armed. I cannot go on protecting you!”
He laughed as he picked up the bag of food he had garnered. “No, I suppose you can’t—though last night you did it very well.” He glanced down at the sword at his side. “I can hardly wait.”
After losing the tethered horses, the freed prisoners waved torches and blankets, sending the mounts racing away, snorting and kicking, into the darkness. Then Alon swung up on Monso’s back and aided Eydryth up behind him.
“To Lormt,” he said, turning the Keplian’s nose to the east.
Eydryth nodded. “To Lormt,” she echoed. “And may woe betide any who attempt to delay us further!”
Riding through the late-night darkness was frustrating, because they could not take advantage of their mount’s superior speed. Much of the way the woods were too thick, and in the open, the chance of Monso sinking a foot in some ground-dweller’s burrow and breaking a leg was too great. The travelers were forced to keep to a walk or a jog trot, when everything urged them to run—run!
Still exhausted by the events of the day, Eydryth found her eyes closing again as she perched on the Keplian’s rhythmically swaying rump. In the waning moonlight, the landscape surrounding them appeared spectral, unreal. Her eyelids closed…
She jerked awake when Monso stopped, realizing that she had been dozing with her cheek pressed against Alon’s shoulder. Warmth flooded her cheeks as she hastily straightened. “Are we there?”
“No, we are still perhaps an hour’s journey away,” he said.
The darkness was fading; a rosy glow tinged the east. Dawn was not far off.
The songsmith narrowed her eyes as she surveyed the shadowed land ahead of them, seeing upthrust ridges of grey rock and growths of new timber. In the far distance she could make out a cottage with a thatched roof. The entire countryside had a curiously raw, jumbled look to it. “What happened here to stir the land so? The Turning?”
“Yes,” Alon replied. “Lormt itself was protected, though. The Ancients who constructed its walls and towers embedded spheres of quan-iron—the blue metal like that found in the eyes of your gryphon—in the foundations of the towers. The base of one tower had crumbled, causing its sphere to be lost over the ages, so, when the ground heaved, that tower fell, taking part of another tower and the connecting wall with it. But the other two stood fast.”
They allowed Monso to crop the grass for a few minutes while they stretched their legs, shared a few bites of food, then laved their faces at a swift-running stream. The water had obviously flowed down from the mountains that now smudged the eastern horizon, for it was so chill it made Eydryth’s teeth ache.
She could barely keep her eyes from searching their trail, her ears from straining for the sound of hoofbeats, though she knew that their captors would only now be awakening. The skin at the nape of her neck prickled as she envisioned the witch’s fury at discovering that her quarry had escaped once again. “The thrice-circle spell the beasts set will be wearing off by now,” she said. “We must not tarry, Alon.”
He remained unworried. “We have several hours’ start on them, and when we set off again, Monso can move at speed.”
“But they know our destination.” She remembered the witch’s cold grey eyes and swallowed anxiously. “And the witch… she will not give up easily.”
He tightened Monso’s girth, his expression sobering. “Then we must continue to elude them. I have no wish to spend my days rotting in some jail in Rylon Corners.”
Once they were astride again, he loosened the reins slightly and bent forward. “Go,” he whispered, and the Keplian, with a snort, plunged forward eagerly.
The land around Eydryth blurred as her wind-whipped eyes watered. She clung to Alon’s belt grimly, using every bit of her riding skill and balance to stay on as Monso galloped, trying to spot obstacles and changes of direction so they would not catch her unawares.
The sun was nearly a handspan past the horizon when Alon drew rein, bringing their mount to a plunging halt. “Lormt.” he announced, breathing hard from the effort of curbing the sidling, wheeling Keplian.
Eydryth peered out from behind his shoulder to see a river that ran past a cluster of half-timbered cottages and a larger building that might have been an inn. Just beyond them lay a high stone wall, and the outlines of massive stone towers. As Alon had mentioned, one corner of the structure was naught but a tumbled pile of rubble, while the outlines of another tower could still be seen, though it was perhaps half-demolished.