From out of the morning mist came muffled cries, emanating from nearby, the village proper. Hearing those cries, Bueren Rose glanced at her father, thinking Jale looked like a ghost standing in the dooryard of his beloved tavern, his Hare and Hound. A small breeze wandered by, tugging at her red-gold hair. The sign above the tavern door swung wearily, bolts creaking. Beside her, her father Jale looked terrified. She thought-a stray thought, like a stray curling of mist-that her father had run this tavern all his life. When he was only a child, he’d started out as a potboy in the tavern, his duties no more than those of young Firthing who held that job now, a scrubber of pots and dishes, emptier of slops from the guest chambers. In time he became the cook’s boy, learning how to prepare dishes he’d become known for along road from Sliathnost to Qualinost. He’d been taught to cook by his mother. From his father, an old Forest Keeper retired from service after too many wounds, Jale had learned how to tend bar and toss out troublemakers. Since before the coming of green Beryl with her fangs and her Knights, there had been the Hare and Hound. Since before the Chaos War, this tavern had stood.
The breath of Sir Chance’s horse steamed in the cold morning air. Bridle and bit jingling, the battle-beast tossed his head. Bueren thought the horse’s eyes looked wild, red and eager. Worse, though, his rider’s eyes shone winter-gray and cold.
Shivering, she slipped her hand into the crook of her father’s arm. Upon the road, emerging from the mist, figures came walking toward them, men, women, and children herded to the tavern by two more of Chance Headsman’s Knights. With rough laughter, the Knights urged the villagers to speed by the pricking of swords, the bruising nudges of lances. A child cried out and fell. Her father grabbed her up swiftly and held her in his arms, away from the iron-shod hooves of a charger. One or two of the younger elves showed the marks of resistance, blackened eyes, bloody heads, a broken wrist swelling.
Chance Headsman threw back his visor, his glance alighting on each elf as the Knights drove them to stand in the tavern yard, a huddle of frightened women, angry men, sobbing children. Not one of them had a weapon, not even the small belt knife every villager carried as part of his daily gear. The Headsman looked at all those gathered, men, women, and little children clinging, as though he knew something about each of them. Last his eyes touched Jale. Bueren Rose held her father’s arm tighter.
Shouting, as though on a battleground raging with screaming and war cries, the Headsman cried, “It is commanded!”
At their mothers’ skirts, children stirred and whimpered. In her father’s arms, the girl who had fallen buried her face in his shoulder. Overhead, a crow called.
“By order of my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol,” bawled the Headsman, “he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone, for crimes of murder and insurrection, the woman Kerianseray, a Kagonesti servant late of the household of Senator Rashas of Qualinost, is declared outside the law.
“By Sir Eamutt’s order, such decree renders her a person deprived of any consideration under the laws of her king. Neither will she receive the grace nor benefit of the laws of green Beryl, the dragon who rules here.
“All who see this woman are commanded to refuse her succor, denying her aid of food or weapon or shelter. All who see her are ordered to capture her by any means necessary and to bring her alive to Lord Thagol in Qualinost. There, she will he beheaded, her head piked upon the eastern bridge. This sentence shall be executed within the sight of the citizenry of the city.
“All who are so foolish as to aid her will share in her crime and so in her sentence. It is commanded!”
Howling, their voices like demons, the five Knights then spurred their chargers, torches whirling over their heads. Hooves tearing up the ground, the largest of the horses, that of the Headsman, sprang directly toward Bueren. She screamed, clutching her father. The great beast plunged between them, breaking her hold, flinging both aside. A sword flashed like lightning. Sir Chance spurred past them, and Bueren scrambled for her father, for the old elf was lying still upon the ground. The cries of the villagers became distant to her; they had no more voice man a breeze in the trees as Bueren lifted her father from the dusty dooryard. Blood ran in a thin line on his neck, all the way from ear to ear.
“Father,” she whispered. She lifted him, and her scream rang in the tavern yard, louder than the pounding of hooves, louder than the yowling of Knights. Her father’s head rolled from his shoulders and fell bloody into the dust. Her wails of woe were heard over the crackling of flames, the roar of fire as Chance Headsman’s men proceeded to put the Hare and Hound to the torch.
Firthing, the potboy, dropped to his knees beside Bueren. White in the face, his eyes glittering like polished stone, he took her hard by the shoulders. Thin, not half-grown into manhood, still he was strong, and his grip hurt. In her ear his voice grated.
“Come away, Bueren Rose. Come away!”
All around her, people panicked, Knights yelled, horses thundered. Villagers cried out, children wailed, and somewhere in tiie sky, ravens gathered. Firthing pulled at her now, on his feet, urgent. He jerked her to her feet She followed Firthing, running out of the dootyard, away from the fire, the screams and her dead father.
On the third morning since her flight from the Hare and Hound, after two days of hiding in the little cave to allow Ayensha to rest in stillness and begin to heal, Kerian went walking in the forest to check her snares. These she’d set using skills she only half-recalled from childhood, but the best hunters last night had been owls. Her snares were empty this morning. She sighed, hungry, and began a search for pinecones to free of their nuts. These she found in plenty, and a good stout branch to strip of twigs. She gave this to Ayensha for walking. She gave her most of the pine nuts, too, sweet and rich with oil.
“It isn’t much,” she said, “but I’ll find a way to feed us better soon.”
Leaning upon the sap-scented staff, Ayensha accepted the food and hobbled round the shelter to take water for herself. It was clear to both women that Ayensha would not lead today.
“Tell me the way,” Kerian said. “Speak the map.”
Ayensha lifted an eyebrow. “So. You remember the old phrase.”
Kerian said stiffly, “Yes, I remember things, Ayensha. Speak the map.”
In a voice small with pain, Ayensha did, with words painting a map upon which hills ran crowned by tall piles of stone, of pine marching on eastern ridges, and a narrow river in a deep chasm running south and then veering suddenly east In all lands and at all times, this was the manner in which Kagonesti relayed information, be it a message carried upon the lips from one tribe to another, a tale as ancient as the time before the Cataclysm, or the safest path to a meeting site. Ayensha spoke the way to the eastern border of the Qualinesti forest, where the Stonelands lay between the kingdom of the elves and fabled Thorbardin, the hidden realm of dwarves.
They made their way through the stony forest. Though Ayensha directed and Kerian led, Kerian did not imagine them safe. They traveled deep into the wood, far from the road, and the Qualinesti Forest seemed as well behaved as it ever had.