Coryn knew that this Tower was no more home to these men than it was to bugbears, but she decided to let the point pass, for now. A truce had been offered, she realized, and though the very thought was repugnant to her-and the Tower-she understood that she could buy some time.
"Thank you," she said, still watching Kalrakin.
"Now, it will take some time, perhaps a day, to make all the necessary preparations," continued Luthar smoothly. "There are several very nice guest suites in the Tower, and you are welcome to have your pick of them. Perhaps you would care to rest, refresh yourself, in readiness?"
"Yes," she replied, standing up. Her eyes never left Kalrakin's face; she could sense the emotions roiling inside the towering sorcerer, knew that he was forcing himself to go along with Luthar's hospitality. But why?
"I will look at the guest suites immediately," she said, speaking as she imagined a great noble lady would. She addressed Luthar but stared defiantly at Kalrakin as she walked out of the dining room.
"And I will take the one with the strongest lock on the door."
Chapter 16
A Fence around a Forest
She is a slippery one," Jenna said in a mixture of disgust and admiration. The red robe she was wearing was dusty and damp as the enchantress came wearily up to Dalamar. The dark elf was sitting on a moldy log, his head in his hands. "I thought she would be too frightened, too overwhelmed by the wilderness, to try to sneak away. Yet she has vanished utterly! Lunitari knows, we've looked everywhere up and down the trail. Where could she be? Damn it, what if something has happened to her?"
"Silly of her to run off like that," Dalamar said, shaking his head wearily. "You must have given her the scare of her life, with your heated outbursts-not to mention your invisible cone of silence."
"I'm not the one who tried to take advantage of her!" the Red Robe retorted. "Come on. She is hiding her tracks. We have to try to think like her and figure out where she went." She tugged on the lead, and the three heavily laden mules shuffled their feet with a barely perceptible shift in momentum. The enchantress cursed under her breath. "I never knew how good Coryn was with these mules. These animals are as stubborn as, well, mules!"
"We've already wasted a day searching for a trail that vanished on dry stone," Dalamar said, raising his hand to stop her momentarily. "If I were to guess, I'd say she went looking for the Tower. Why not? She heard us talk about it, over and over. She knows it's supposed to be in the vicinity. Why don't you give me access to your artifacts and see what I can find out?"
The red-robed mage narrowed her eyes. "You have nothing left of your old life? Not your spell book, not a ring, or a staff, or even a few bottles of potion? You don't have a lot of bargaining power, not much to offer me in return."
"On the contrary," Dalamar retorted. "We are partners in this quest. We are both looking for the Tower, but we both know that we will need the most powerful wizard of each of our three orders, working in concert, to restore the powers of godly magic. I know that you are the mistress of the Red, and I am the master of Black. And there is no White wizard anywhere, so far as we have been able to learn. But you and I both know that for some reason-perhaps he is losing his wits, in the wake of his return to our world-Solinari has appointed this naif, this silly wench, as his own champion. She is destined to wear the White Robes!"
"Ridiculous! First of all, she is neither naif, nor silly wench," Jenna replied tartly. "She does know some magic. True, it's mostly wild magic, but at this point I don't believe that she is destined for anything. Be careful, Dalamar, lest your arrogance lead you into another mistake."
Jenna was right: The dark elf could not afford to be wrong, but he suspected that Jenna still was not telling all that she knew or believed.
"Perhaps you are right. But have a care of your tone, Red Robe." Dalamar pushed himself to his feet and started to pace before the massive log.
The forest was gloomy and cool, even early in the afternoon of a sunny summer day. The ferns were wet, and Dalamar looked down with distaste, seeing that the hem of his black robe was repelling the water that would have soaked a mundane garment through within a few seconds. "I still think she went looking for the Tower. Where do you think she went?"
"Her trail ends at the rim of this canyon," Jenna explained.
"Yes, on smooth stone. She's a hunter-she knows how to hide a trail. But I don't think she backtracked. Let's try pushing ahead, looking for the Tower ourselves."
Jenna agreed, and for nearly an hour they followed the stone ledge along the canyon, seeking signs that anyone had passed before them.
"There," said the dark elf at last, pointing to an almost invisible scuff where a branch had been smashed against a stone. "She went this way."
Dalamar started along the faint trail, noting a few crushed ferns where hasty feet had tripped. It was not long before he came to a pine tree standing at the rim of a small ravine. The brittle branches at the base of the tree were crushed, and when he knelt, he spotted dried drops of blood on the needles strewn along the ground.
"Hmm. She was determined to keep going, to get away from us."
"Well, we weren't very pleasant company," Jenna said, drawing a raised eyebrow from Dalamar.
"This way, then," the dark elf said. There was another crushed fern, then the footprint of a small moccasin in a muddy depression, and more signs of passage through the delicate undergrowth. The game path wound faintly among the lofty birches, meandering along the ravine, deeper into the forest.
Soon they came to a massive deadfall, a thick birch lying across the path. A bristling nest of stubby branches stood like a picket fence along the top of the log.
"Here's where she went down on a knee, broke those branches on the bottom so she could pass under it."
They struggled past the fallen tree. Squatting down on the other side, Dalamar could only see a stretch of muddy patches with a few deer tracks and some prints that belonged to either a small wolf or a large dog.
"We lost her," Jenna said.
"Or rather," Dalamar suggested grimly. "This is where Wayreth Forest found her."
Jenna looked shocked. "No, you go too far with your imaginings! Do you think… It couldn't be possible!" She pursed her lips, frowning.
"But it is possible," the dark elf said bitterly. "Give me a better explanation." He looked up at the treetops, the sky, and raised his hands.
"What about us?" demanded Dalamar, furious not with Jenna but with the forest, the Tower, the gods themselves. "Where is our entry?"
"Perhaps," she replied dryly, "the forest prefers her for some reason."
The dark elf snorted, planting his fists on his hips, and glaring at the murk of the wood. He was mocked by the mundane trees, the rotting vegetation, the utterly unremarkable surroundings. "We could look all day and never find Wayreth," he declared in disgust, "unless it chooses to let us."
"Such is the way of Wayreth," Jenna said with a shrug. "But my senses tell me that the wood is near-or at least, it was here."
"So do mine," Dalamar agreed.