A vulture glanced up and fixed its dark stare on Lander’s hiding place. A chill ran down his spine, for in the bird’s look he saw the sable eyes of his mother. The expression seemed at once rapacious and dangerous, devoid of tenderness and demanding of veneration. The Harper’s stomach knotted with an emotion somewhere between fear and anger. He felt his mother reaching out from Cyric’s palace, imploring him to remember her face, to open his mind to her now as he had refused to open his spirit when she lived.
Lander forced himself to look away. The last thing he wished to do, now or ever, was contact his mother’s spirit. She had chosen her new home, and to yield to her call would be to betray all that he had come to believe.
The Sembian kept his good eye closed, clearing his mind by concentrating on nothing but his breathing. His mother had reached out from her grave once before, after he had joined the Harpers, and he knew from that experience a bitter contest of wills would follow if he allowed her a hold in his thoughts.
At last Lander’s stomach settled and his body relaxed. Sensing that his mother had retreated, the Sembian opened his eye. Once again the vulture was just a vulture, patiently circling the camp with its fellows. The Harper could not even tell which one had looked at him.
Lander kept a close eye on the approach to their ridge for the rest of the afternoon. If his mother had found him through a vulture, then Cyric might also know where he was. If what the Zhentarim were doing in Anauroch was important enough to the evil god, and if Lander posed a big enough threat to his plans, it did not seem unlikely that the Prince of Lies would try to communicate that information to his followers at the base of the mountain.
Twice Lander thought that a patrol was approaching the ridge, but each time the search party turned onto a different path. It appeared that either Cyric was not guiding the Zhentarim, or Rahalat had somehow turned them aside. Whatever the case, Lander was thankful. Fleeing during the heat of the day would have been hard on his wounded shoulder. If Ruha was sun-sick, he did not think it would do her any good either.
Periodically rotating search parties, the Zhentarim continued to feast and rest all day. Several times, Kadumi volunteered to change places, but Lander did not accept the offer. It made no difference to the Harper whether he spent the day watching the Zhentarim or sitting with Ruha, and he suspected that the youth knew more about preventing sun-sickness than he did.
When the sun dropped below the western horizon, both Kadumi and Ruha joined Lander. They all sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the birds of prey that nested on Rahalat’s craggy slopes take wing with eerie silence. As the raptors spiraled down toward the spring, the cautious vultures widened their circle to give their ferocious cousins a wide berth.
“We should sneak away under cover of darkness,” Kadumi said at last. “There is no telling how long the Zhentarim will rest at this oasis.”
“Even in the dark, it is too dangerous to move until the invaders are gone,” Ruha countered. “We would have to travel along the ridge all the way to the bottom of the mountain. Sooner or later, somebody would see our silhouettes.”
Both the widow and her young brother-in-law looked to Lander for his opinion. Before giving it, he glanced at the camp. Already, dusk had cloaked the site in purple shadows and the dark-robed Zhentarim had disappeared. The hundreds of campfires they had kept burning all day twinkled in the night like orange stars.
“We have plenty of water and milk,” Lander said. “Let’s stay one more day. If the Zhentarim know we’re still here, they’ll be expecting us to leave in the dark.”
Ruha nodded. “I’ve been resting all day, so I’ll take the first watch.”
After telling the widow to wake them if she felt weak before her watch ended, Lander and Kadumi agreed, then went down to sleep near the camels.
The Harper did not wake until shortly after dawn. Ruha sat atop the ridge, and Kadumi was still lodged between the two boulders that he had claimed as his bed last night. Lander stretched his sore muscles, then climbed up the hill and sat next to the widow.
“You should have wakened me,” he said, taking a healing potion from his pocket.
Ruha shrugged. “You seemed tired, and I had slept all day.” She regarded the glass vial in his hand. “What’s that?”
“A potion for my shoulder,” Lander explained. He opened the vial and drank the bitter contents in one swallow.
“Magic?” Ruha asked, one eyebrow raised.
Lander made a sour face and nodded. “Nothing else could taste that bad.”
The widow studied him with a shocked expression. “Don’t let Kadumi see you drinking those,” she said. “The Bedine think ill of those who use magic.”
Lander grimaced at his blunder, then slipped the empty vial back into his pocket. “You don’t think magic is wrong, do you?”
Ruha shook her head. “I understand, but no one else.” She studied him with an uncertain expression in her eyes, then nodded her head as if making up her mind about something. “There is something I must tell you, but only if you swear not to tell Kadumi or anyone else.”
“Of course,” Lander replied, wondering what the widow would tell him that she would not tell one of her own people.
“Sometimes I see mirages from the future,” Ruha began. “That is what happened yesterday, when you and Kadumi thought I was sun-sick.”
Lander nodded. “It did seem odd that you were affected and not me. What did you see?”
Ruha looked away. “I’m not sure. Someone is going to try kill you,” she said. “He will attack from behind, with a dagger. You will be wounded.”
Lander raised his eyebrow, unsure of how to take the news. “You’re sure?”
The widow met his gaze evenly. “It is my curse that what I see always happens.”
“Could you see what he looked like?” Lander asked.
Ruha shook her head. “All I saw was a dagger slicing along your ribs. I don’t know who was wielding it or what the outcome will be.”
“Or when it will happen?”
The widow shook her head.
The warning did not frighten Lander, for he had long lived with the idea that the Zhentarim might try to assassinate him. Still, knowing that such a thing would occur—without knowing when or where—made him feel rather helpless. While sobering, the knowledge that such an attack would occur contained no hint as to what should be done about it—if, indeed, anything could.
“Thanks for the warning,” Lander said. “I’ll try to be careful about who I let behind me.”
“It will do no good,” Ruha said. “No matter what, you will be cut.”
“At least you didn’t see the dagger stuck in my heart,” Lander said.
“I just thought you should know,” Ruha replied. “I didn’t say this to upset you.”
“I know,” the Harper replied, looking toward the base of the mountain and hoping to change the subject. In the growing dawn light, he saw a few wisps of smoke rising from a half-dozen dying fires, but otherwise the camp seemed empty and motionless. “Are they gone?”
Ruha nodded. “Their fires died last night, but I thought they had just fallen asleep. I didn’t realize they were gone until nobody stirred with the dawn.”
Lander studied the camp for a few minutes more. When he saw a vulture appear out of the east and drift straight into camp, he realized that there was no sign of the birds that had hovered below the ridge all day yesterday. The Zhentarim had, indeed, slipped away in the night.
“If the vultures are bold enough to land, then they’re gone.” The Harper called, “Kadumi, wake up! It’s time to go.”
As soon as the youth woke, the trio untethered the camels and led them down the mountain. By the time they reached the bottom, the sun had risen into the blue sky and the rosy morning light had faded to its usual white blaze. They paused at the spring to let the camels drink, then moved into the camp. Dozens of vultures took wing and hovered fifty feet overhead, watching the three companions with black, jealous eyes.