— 25 —

Arkoniel had watched the Alestun road hopefully in the months since Iya’s visit. Spring had passed with no visitors. Summer burned the meadow brown, and still no one but tradesmen and Tobin’s messengers raised any dust above the trees.

It had been another blisteringly hot summer; even the valley around Alestun, spared the worst of the ongoing droughts for years, was struck. Crops withered in the fields and new calves and lambs died in the meadows. The river shrank to a gurgling stream between cracked, stinking expanses of mud and dead water plants. Arkoniel stripped to a linen kilt again and the women went about in their shifts.

Be was working in the kitchen garden late one afternoon in Lenthin, helping Cook dig the last of the yellowed leeks, when Nari shouted down to them from a second floor window. A man and a boy were coming up the road.

Arkoniel stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. “Do you know them?”

“No, it’s strangers. I’ll go.”

Watching from the gate, however, Arkoniel recognized the broad-set, grey-bearded man walking beside Nari, but not the little boy perched among the baggage on the sway-back horse the man led.

“Kaulin of Getni!” Arkoniel called, crossing the bridge to meet them. It had been ten years or more since he’d watched Iya give the man one of her pebble tokens. Kaulin had been solitary then. His little companion looked no older than eight or nine.

“Iya said I’d find you here,” Kaulin said, clasping hands with him. He gave the younger wizard’s stained kilt and sunburned chest a wry look. “Turned farmer, have you?”

“Now and then,” Arkoniel laughed. “You look like you’ve had some hard traveling.”

Kaulin had always been ragged, but it was the boy who concerned Arkoniel. He seemed healthy enough, and was brown as a trout, but he kept his gaze on the horse’s dusty withers as Arkoniel approached and he read more fear than shyness in those wide grey-green eyes.

“And who’s this, then?” asked Nari, smiling up at the child.

The boy didn’t look up or reply.

“Did a crow steal your tongue?” she teased. “I’ve got some nice cold cider in the kitchen. Would you like some?”

“Don’t be rude, Wythnir,” his master chided, when the child turned his face away. Grasping the back of the boy’s ragged tunic, Kaulin hoisted him down like a sack of apples. Wythnir promptly retreated behind the man’s legs and stuck a finger in his mouth.

Kaulin scowled down at him. “It’s all right, boy. You go with the woman.” When Wythnir didn’t move, he grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him none too gently to Nari. “Do as you’re told!”

“There’s no need for that,” Nari said tartly, taking the child’s hand. Then, more gently to the boy, “You come along with me, Wythnir. Cook has some lovely cakes baking and you shall have the largest one, with cream and berries. It’s been a long while since we’ve had a little boy to spoil.”

“Where did you meet with Iya?” Arkoniel asked, following with Kaulin. “I’ve had no word from her in months.”

“She found us up north a few weeks back.” Kaulin pulled a pouch from the neck of his tunic and shook out a small speckled stone. “Claimed she found me by this and told me to come here to you.” He looked around the tidy kitchen yard and his expression softened a little. “Said we’d be safe here.”

“We’ll do our best,” Arkoniel replied, wondering what Iya expected him to do if Niryn and his Harriers were the next ones up the road.

Like all those Iya would eventually send him, Kaulin had seen glimpses of chaos and a rising queen in his dreams. He’d also watched fellow wizards consigned to the Harrier’s fire.

“Your mistress won’t say what her purpose for us is, but if she stands against those white-robed bastards, then I’ll stand with her,” Kaulin declared, as he and Arkoniel sat in the shadowy hall after the evening meal. It was too hot still for even a candle, and so they made do with a light orb Arkoniel cast in the hearth.

Cook had made up a bed for Wythnir upstairs, but the boy silently refused to be parted from his master. Arkoniel hadn’t heard him speak all afternoon.

Kaulin looked down sadly at the child curled asleep on the reeds. “Poor lad. He’s had reason enough not to trust strangers, these past few months.”

“What happened?”

“We were up in Dimmerton, back at the end of Nythin. Stopped at an inn there, hoping to earn our supper. One young fellow in particular was taken with my tricks, and stood me a jug of good wine.” He clenched a fist angrily against his knee. “It was strong, and perhaps fortified with something else, for next thing I know I’m running off at the mouth about the Afran Oracle and how I thought the king had brought the plagues on by ignoring it. He was agreeable to my opinions and we parted friends, but that night a maidservant woke me, saying a mob was coming for us and we’d better run for it.

“I wasn’t so fuddled I couldn’t fend off a pack of drunken wizard baiters, but who should be leading them but my drinking companion? Only now he wore the Harrier’s robe. There was only one, thank the Light, but he managed to give me this mark before we got free of him.” He pushed back his sleeve, showing Arkoniel a livid, puckered scar that ran the length of his forearm.

Arkoniel’s heart sank. “Did you tell him anything of the visions?”

“No, that’s locked safe away in my heart. Only you and Iya have heard me speak of—” Kaulin hesitated and cast a furtive look around. “Of her.” Kaulin pushed his sleeve down and sighed. “So, what are we to do here? We’re not so far from Ero that the Harriers might not find us again.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Wait and keep each other safe, I guess.”

Kaulin said nothing to this, but Arkoniel could see by the way he glanced around that he wasn’t reassured by this vague battle plan.

Later, Arkoniel sat at his window and watched the moonlight glimmering on the river. Kaulin had been halfway up the hill before anyone had noticed him. The day Orun’s men had come thundering up the road to demand Tobin, his only warning had been a cloud of dust above the trees, and that had given them little enough time. Without Tobin here, he’d grown lazy.

Now there was even more reason for vigilance. Sheltering wizards who fled the king’s Harriers was a far riskier undertaking than guarding a child whom no one was yet seeking.