This first day was coming to an end now, the sun sinking low. The few trees in sight cast impossibly long shadows across the land. The rising breeze was taking all warmth along with it, reminding her that their cloaks were not stylish luxuries or mere rain protection.
Ah, yes, rain …
Tantaerra studied the sky, sniffed the air, and relaxed. Oh, there'd be night-damp and a heavy dawn mist, but she couldn't sense any coming rain.
Which was good, because rain would have made her misery complete.
They were riding right into a messy, long-drawn-out war, and a land ravaged by it. On a mission that looked to be, to put it gently, suicidal, if not utterly impossible. With a companion she trusted not at all.
All day long she'd been keeping a close eye on the man who was calling himself Ahrkholm, and although he wasn't as obvious about it, she could tell The Masked was, too. Ahrkholm had shown no signs of tossing any knives their way, but it was hard to forget that sudden, casual, and entirely unannounced volley of daggers the self-proclaimed High Investigator had hurled at Zreem. He'd recovered at least three of them-who knew how many more he had hidden on his person? If she herself were anything to go by …
She couldn't stay awake forever, and neither could The Masked. Just one of those knives could end their lives in an instant-this very night, perhaps, long before they got anywhere near the killing traps and fell magics that undoubtedly guarded a wizard's tomb.
She rode nearer to The Masked. "I fear knives in the dark," she told him, nodding in the direction of Ahrkholm, who was riding off to their right, smiling his easy smile. "What'll we do?"
"Take turns staying awake and keeping watch," he replied.
Tantaerra yawned suddenly. Gods, where had that come from? It must have been hearing the word "awake."
"Stay awake how?" she asked sharply.
"We find a stream. The one keeping watch stands with one foot in it. The water will be cold, believe me. When that foot goes numb, go and step on a stone we've warmed by our fire-which we'll let burn out, but the stone'll stay hot a long time. Then take your burned foot back to the cold water. When you get bored, change feet. But make sure the wet one is unshod."
"Great," Tantaerra told him. "Well, at least footwear isn't going to get overly damaged in all of this to-do."
"Neither," The Masked reminded her, "is your throat."
∗ ∗ ∗
That evening and the next, The Masked and Tantaerra were quietly hostile toward Ahrkholm. He fell into smiling silence, and rode away from them as each dusk deepened to camp off by himself, somewhere out of sight.
Though they stood watch, neither he nor anything larger than very small prowling things came anywhere near where they slept.
The dawns were shiveringly cold, but the saddlebags of the Telcanor horses supplied kindling as well as frymeat and little three-legged cauldrons for broth.
On their second morning, Tantaerra looked up from the broth she was tending as the first wisps of steam started to rise from it, saw that Ahrkholm was still nowhere to be seen, and asked suddenly, "So …the mask that cursed you …they took it, yes? You're free of it?"
He laughed sharply. "No such luck, I'm afraid. When they removed the mundane mask, I managed to activate the temporary illusion trinket I carry, just in case I need to go unmasked. By the time they got to my crotch, where the real mask was stuffed down my breeches, it had already moved to my face, where the illusion hid it as well.
Tantaerra winced. "Moved? So it's alive?"
The Masked nodded grimly. "I think so."
Tantaerra paused, considering, then set the matter aside. "So how come you don't use illusion spells all the time?"
The Masked shook his head. "Do you have any idea how much an illusion spell like that costs, princess?"
Tantaerra sighed, wrapped her hands around the cauldron to warm them. "Fair enough. So what of this Ahrkholm? What do you think he's really after?"
The Masked shook his head. "Unbridled speculation can be more dangerous than not knowing, little one. Bide, watch, and listen, and perhaps he'll let something slip."
His gaze lifted to look over her. "And here he comes now."
So by day they rode as three, deeper into a deserted Molthune of burned barns and neglected fields, closer to Nirmathas.
The Masked and Tantaerra always moved their camp after Ahrkholm left them, suspecting he'd direct Molthune's patrols to find and capture or kill them-but no matter where they went or what detours they tried the next day, Ahrkholm found them before daylight failed, to silently ride beside them.
As they muttered to each other forehead to forehead in the deepening night, reaching agreement that it was now too risky to light a fire, Tantaerra whispered, "You think he has magical powers?"
The Masked shrugged. "Some magical means of tracing us, perhaps. Competent spellhurlers are rarer than all the tales will have you think."
"So what then?"
The Masked shrugged. "Await his treachery or some revelation of what he's up to. What else can we do?"
Tantaerra nodded-and then froze.
By all the gods! For the first time in years, I'm trusting a man. She looked at him, a dark shape in the gloom, lying down with his cloak wrapped around himself, preparing to sleep while she stood first watch. Trusting her.
He was only one man. Yet would this trust be as foolishly misplaced as every earlier instance?
The night gave her back no answer.
∗ ∗ ∗
Tantaerra reined her tired mount to a halt. "Is that what I think it is?"
The Masked nodded. "The Inkwater," he confirmed. "The border."
"There's no bridge, is there?"
"None. And the water's fast and cold."
"Then we can't take the horses across."
"Your tactical brilliance continues unabated."
Tantaerra made a rude sound, and gave him a rude gesture to go with it. "Suppose you demonstrate your tactical brilliance by telling me what we do now."
"Dismount. We're too close to the river as it is. Both Molthune and Nirmathas loose a lot of arrows and bolts across the Inkwater-and riders are nice tall targets."
"Back to that hollow we just rode through?"
The Masked nodded approvingly. "As good a place as any. Better than most."
"Any sign of Ahrkholm?"
"Yes. He's two hills that way. Right-there."
Tantaerra peered along the masked man's pointing arm, but could see only rolling hills, a hedge along a long-abandoned farm fence line of old stumps and boulders, and long grass swaying in the breeze. A lot of long grass, swaying in the breeze.
She waved in exasperated dismissal at the view, and turned away.
"He ducked down when I pointed," The Masked told her. "I think he's afraid of you."
"Very amusing," she muttered. "So, clevertongue, how're we going to get into Nirmathas without wearing a few dozen arrows each? Wait until dark?"
"Wait until dark. After using what remains of the day to find the best place to cross."
"And that would be?"
"A good thick stand of trees on the Nirmathi side, or better yet a forest. A forest downstream of a swamp, so we can cross level with the swamp, where Nirmathi bowmen can't wait in a tidy line to send arrows down our throats, and drift with the river flow down to where we can go ashore under cover of bushes and trees, somewhere a little drier than the sucking mud of full swamp."