She nodded. “But you are doing well, for the first time. Now… again for the parry. This time, keep your wrist flexible, not stiff, so you can follow the motion of your blade and keep hold of it. Then it will be your turn to try…”
By the time the lesson was over, the light was fading rapidly, and Alon’s tunic was wet now with sweat, rather than rain. He hung it up to dry, then pulled on another shirt. “I will be back presently,” he told Eydryth and started back down their trail, out of sight.
The songsmith began making camp, shaking her head over the dampness that had invaded her bedroll, even through its tallow-soaked covering. Unfastening the saddlebag, she took out the meat jerky and her small cooking pot. Simmered in water with crumbled journeybread to thicken it, the jerky would make a hot, though tasteless, meal.
It was full dark by the time Alon returned. Eydryth had let the fire die down to coals, so she could make out his form only as a dark blot against the yellow stars that marked the camp-fires of their pursuers.
“They are closer,” she said, eyeing the distance between them measuringly as Alon sat down with a weary sigh. He murmured a quick thanks for the plate she offered him.
“If they can keep up their pace, by this time tomorrow they will be almost upon us,” the bard observed as she spooned up the last of her own meal. Hesitantly she bit her lip, then declared, “Tomorrow morning we had best go our separate ways, Alon.”
“No,” her companion said flatly. “They cannot possibly catch us tomorrow. The rocks will slow them, as today they slowed us.”
“If not tomorrow, then surely the day after. We must part, so that I can go on faster alone!”
He turned his head to regard her, but she could not read his features in the faint light of the campfire. “If they are closer tomorrow night,” he said evenly, “I will do as you say. Fair enough?”
“Yes,” Eydryth said, feeling her throat grow tight as a harpstring. “Alon… I… I am grateful to you, for trying to aid me. I… I wish you well.”
He made no reply.
They reached the first slope of the mountain pass by the next evening, but Eydryth took no joy in their accomplishment. On the morrow they would be fortunate to make half the distance they had covered today, and a detachment of guardsmen, with no horses to lead over the thin, stony soil, would have no trouble catching them.
Turning to scan the rocky hills over which they had so laboriously toiled, Eydryth frowned, puzzled. There was no sign of the witch and her troop. When she pointed this out to Alon, her companion suggested that perhaps their pursuers had lost the trail.
“But she can follow us by her witch-jewel,” Eydryth argued. “You said so yourself.”
“The use of the Power wears hardly upon the user,” he said. “She may have weakened, finally. Or, it may be that she could not force herself to travel this far east.”
The songsmith shook her head slowly, remembering the Estcarpian woman’s determined expression. “If she had to be tied upon her mount and led, she would not give up. It is more likely that they are camped tonight in one of the valleys instead of on top of a ridge where we could see them.”
“We have lost them,” Alon insisted. “I scanned our path frequently today, and there was no sign of them. I believe that tonight we may rest without fear.” He turned away from her, calling back over his shoulder, “I will be back presently.”
Steel Talon had brought them a rabbit earlier that day, so Eydryth busied herself skinning it and putting it into their cooking pot with several handfuls of vegetables and a few pinches of herbs. Then she took her sword out of the quarter-staff and practiced with it, lunging and parrying with an imaginary opponent. At last, sweating and panting, she halted, only to see last rays of the setting sun hang over the mountain peak towering above her, then vanish.
Still Alon did not return. He must be delaying deliberately, she thought with mounting irritation. It is grown too dark now for a lesson.
Scowling, she strode off down the slope, determined to give her errant pupil a lecture on the importance of daily practice if he wished to achieve any proficiency.
As she walked, however, she was struck by a sudden thought. What if he has been captured, and I am now marching into a trap?
The songsmith began moving with a scout’s caution, shifting her weight with care on the stony ground lest she send a pebble skittering, taking advantage of every boulder, every scrap of concealment her rugged surroundings had to offer.
It was thus that she came upon her companion as he knelt on the stony ground, chanting softly. In one hand he held a swatch of black horsehair, which he was sweeping over a distinct hoofprint in a patch of loamy soil. Straining her ears, Eydryth caught snatches of what he was chanting, and realized it was that arcane form of the Old Tongue.
As she watched, tight-lipped with angry realization, Alon fell silent. He rose to his feet, arms held high, and suddenly the hoofprint, a scrape on a rock caused by a horse’s metal shoe, and a mound of horse droppings all glowed violet—
—and vanished.
Mist rose out of the ground and began coiling down the hillside, snaking along their back trail. The songsmith knew instinctively that it would erase all traces of their passage as it flowed over the earth.
Alon stood for a moment more, arms raised; then he sighed audibly and his shoulders sagged. Magic does indeed wear hardly upon the user, Eydryth thought bitterly, her cheeks hot with fury and shame, remembering how she had confided in him about growing up in Kar Garudwyn. How could I have been such a fool as to not realize the truth?
Only a moment did the young man allow himself to rest; then he trudged back up the slope, obviously hurrying as fast as his tired legs would take him.
Eydryth let him draw even with her hiding place, then stepped out, barring his path. “I see now why you were so confident that the witch could no longer trail us,” she said, her voice pitched low despite her anger.
He halted and stood staring at her for a long moment, his face a pale oval in the last glow of twilight. Finally he said, “I am sorry. You are right to be angry.”
“By the Sword Arm of Karthen the Fair, I certainly am!” Eydryth hissed, so furious that she found she was trembling. “I trusted you, and all the while you were doubtless laughing at me up your sleeve! The great Adept—for you are no simple village Wise Man, or one who merely dabbles in arcane lore, that much even I can tell—the Adept, companying with the poor Powerless songsmith, using his magic to protect her—” She swallowed, the taste of anger like bile in her mouth. “Well, I can protect myself from now on! I don’t need you!”
“I know that,” he said, quietly.
His ready admission took her aback.
“You assumed without asking that I had no Power,” he reminded her. “I did not lie outright.”
“You allowed me to believe what was not true,” Eydryth flared. “That is the same thing!”
“You have the right of it,” he agreed, wearily. “But… Lady… by the time I realized what a mistake I had made, I was in too deep to extricate myself gracefully. I knew you would be angry, and I did not want to hurt you.” He hesitated, then continued, in a low voice. “And yesterday, when you began saying that we must part, I knew that if you were to learn the truth, then you would indeed go your separate way— and I did not want that to happen.”
As he spoke, Eydryth heard a note in his voice that broke through her ire. Her face flushed again, but not from anger, and she could feel her heart pounding, as though she had been sprinting. “I did not want you to risk falling into the witch’s hands again on my behalf,” she said awkwardly. “That would be poor repayment indeed for your aid.”