Completely baffled, Sturm gave a last look toward the courageous gardener and turned away.
Though hardly a hero, Cyren had been resourceful enough to herd the horses up the bank. Nervously they pawed the high grass, their big, rolling eyes returning again and again to the dodging spider. Sturm mounted Acorn and pulled Mara up in the saddle by him; she in turn had grabbed Luin's reins and brought the big Solamnic mare in tow behind her. As though the whole escape had been planned for months, Acorn's squat legs moved with quick purpose as she trotted them out of bow range and finally out of earshot.
Sturm looked back one last time before the limbs and undergrowth blocked his view of the river. Jack stood smiling bravely, framed in needles and branches and new leaves. He was taunting the bandits, waving his sword and dancing in a peculiar bawdy fashion Sturm thought he remembered from some lost and cloudy time.
The bandits held back for now. Jack had shown them his skill with the weapon, and none of them wanted to be the next to test his swordsmanship.
But it wouldn't be long. Sturm shook his head, and a great sadness overtook him as he turned to the trail ahead of him, leaving Jack Derry behind. If it weren't for Mara, he would be side by side with the gardener, braving the Nerakans and hobgoblins until victory or death. But she was helpless and frail and…
"Keep your eyes on the trail, Solamnic!" the helpless, frail little thing commanded as she grabbed his ear and jerked him back to proper attention. "I won't have Jack Derry risk his fool neck so that you can break ours!"
They traveled an hour, silent and lost in their lonely thoughts. Though he scarcely knew the gardener, Sturm mourned fiercely, his face hidden in the dark folds of his hood. Yet there was puzzlement equal to the grief.
"Jack," he said to Mara at last, as the two of them rode south through the rising night. "Why did he call me Jack?"
The elf maiden reached into the layers of fur that covered her. The moonlight splashed on the silver flute in her hand.
"So they would come at him and not at you, simpleton," she replied, and she lifted the flute to her lips.
"I don't understand, Mara," Sturm said, interrupting the first notes of the music.
"Remember the snares and ambushes Jack told you about? The ones this Bonito-"
"Boniface," Sturm interrupted. "Lord Boniface of Foghaven."
"Boniface, Bonito…" Mara said dismissively. "Whoever was trying to trap or dismantle you. As I see it, Jack figured the bandits to be one of the snares:"
"And calling me Jack…" Sturm began, the idea dawning on him.
"Meant that the other young human male was the one they were looking for," Mara said. "The one who would do something foolish and Solamnic like hold them all off while we escaped."
"So Jack was… was masking as me!" Sturm exclaimed, trying in vain to turn Acorn back on the path.
"Are all the Brightblades this nimble-witted?" Mara asked ironically. "Get hold of your mare, Master Sturm, before she takes us all the way to Neraka!"
The dark came suddenly and swiftly, as it often does near the end of winter. Sturm had roamed through high grass and farmland, searching fruitlessly for the path to Dun Ringhill. Western Lemish, it seemed, was as featureless as the face of a moon, and just about as hospitable.
As far as Sturm could see, there was no lantern or lamp, no smell of woodsmoke in the air, no sound of herd or watchdog. It was an uninhabited country and a place without landmark.
Sturm dismounted from the mare. The countryside rolled ahead of him, and the clouds blocked the stars so thoroughly that he couldn't tell north from west, much less tell direction by the heavens.
"So much for Lemish," he said disgustedly. "Nothing but a pasture, this is."
Mara stayed in the saddle, squinting as her sharp elf eyes scanned all possible horizons.
"Dun Ringhill is somewhere around here," she said. "Of that much I'm certain."
The grass stirred behind them, and Cyren scrambled into the open, trailing a single white strand of webbing.
"I thought you had been in these parts before," Sturm said, looking up at the girl.
"True enough," Mara said quietly, "I met Jack Derry once-not far from here."
"What? How did you come to meet him? And who really is Jack Derry?" Sturm asked, stretching Solamnic politeness out of curiosity. For after all, there might be something the elf could tell him, something to lead them to the village, to Weyland the Smith and to eventual safety.
"My money has it he's awaiting us in Dun Ringhill. The first step in finding this village is to know west from east. Sunrise will tell us that quick enough."
She peered at him through the furs, her dark eyes intent and questioning.
"You know well that it will not," Sturm grumbled. "Not quick enough, that is. The countryside is filled with bandits, and we'd best not camp in the midst of them."
"Then we steer by starlight," Mara proclaimed and lifted the flute to her lips again.
"Starlight?" Sturm asked skeptically. "M'lady, look at the clouds…"
But the elf had closed her eyes, an eerie music rising from her instrument. It was a Qualinesti plainsong, sacred to Gilean the Book. Crisp and staccato, the notes filled the moist air around them, and Sturm looked about uneasily, sure that the music would give them away to the bandits.
Mara played, and a silver light shone in her hair. For a moment, Sturm thought she was glowing, then gradually he noticed the same light spreading over his arms and shoulders, over Acorn's neck and the chestnut flanks of Luin behind them. White Solinari had broken through the thick mask of clouds, and the road behind him and before him was as clear and dazzling as midday.
"As I feared," Mara said, the song over and the clouds returning. "We've listed a bit to the south. We'll strike the river again if we keep on as we're going."
"How… how did you do that?" Sturm asked, turning Acorn forcefully from the trail that the stubborn little mare insisted on following.
"Gilean mode," Mara said quietly, "with the High Mode of Paladine placed in its silences. When you combine them, it's a song… of revealing. It dispels clouds and night, stills waters so you can look to the bottom of pond and river. In the hands of the great bards, it unmasks the dissembling heart."
She smiled at Sturm, who caught his breath at the depths of her hazel eyes.
"But I am no great bard," the elf concluded quietly. "With my music, we are lucky to see a momentary change in the weather."
Sturm blushed and nodded, yanking once more at Acorn's reins.
"Well, the clouds parted long enough," Mara said, pointing due east. "There's our direction. That way lies the Darkwoods."
"But where on the woods' edge can we find Dun Ringhill?" Sturm asked. "The stars don't tell us that. If only we had Jack Derry here!"
"Ah, but Jack is lost or upriver or… elsewhere," Mara said. "Leaving us alive if no wiser."
"He believed I could find the way," Sturm muttered disconsolately. "He trusted that I was my father's son, that I am more resourceful than I feel."
"My dear boy," Mara said with a crooked smile, "what in the name of the Seven makes you think that?"
"He told me," Sturm said, "that the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. What else could that be but talk of fathers and sons?"
"Perhaps something a bit more… arboreal?" Mara asked. "Or a simple riddle that your thoughts of fathers have kept covered? After all, Jack couldn't give you directions to Dun Ringhill. Bandits have ears, after all, and would follow us like hounds."
Sturm nodded. It made sense. Jack was, after all, a man of concealments and riddles. Seated on the increasingly unruly mare, Sturm mined his knowledge of tree lore, of gardening, of the mythical ancient calendar of the dryads that supposedly followed a symbolism of trees. None of it helped. He felt as though he were back in the maze of Castle di Caela or in the thickest reaches of the Green Man's fog.