— 42 —

The stars were fading when Arkoniel and the others set out. Hain drove the children in the cart; the rest rode. Wythnir clung behind Arkoniel’s saddle, his meager bundle wedged between them.

“Where does this road go, Master?” he asked.

“To the mining towns north of here, and finally to the coast, west of the isthmus,” Arkoniel replied. Iron, tin, silver, and lead had drawn Skalan settlers into the mountains centuries earlier. Some of the mines still produced enough to keep people there.

He said nothing of the history Lhel had taught him; how Skalan soldiers—Tobin’s ancestors among them—had used this road to make war against Lhel’s people. The Retha’noi had been great raiders and warriors, but their magic had been even stronger and more feared. Those who’d survived had been branded necromancers and driven deep into the mountains. They were no longer hunted; but they remained exiles, driven from the fertile coastal lands that had been theirs. When Arkoniel and Iya ventured into the mountains in search of a witch, they’d felt the sullen animosity that still smoldered in the hearts of that small, dark race.

He’d done as Lhel asked, told them nothing of her, only that they were to meet a guide who would lead them to safety. They came upon her just after dawn. She stood waiting atop a boulder by the road.

The others reined in sharply. Malkanus reached into his pouch, readying some magic against her, but Arkoniel rode between them.

“No, wait. Don’t!” he said. “This is our guide.”

“This?” Malkanus exclaimed. “A filthy hill witch?”

Lhel folded her arms and scowled down at him.

“This is Lhel, an honored friend well-known to me and to Iya. I expect you all to treat her as such. Illior brought her to us years ago. She shares the vision.”

“Iya approves of this?” asked Lyan, who was old enough to remember the raids.

“Of course. Please, my friends, Lhel has offered her help, and we need it. I can vouch for her goodwill.”

Despite Arkoniel’s assurances, tensions remained high on both sides. Lhel rode grudgingly on the cart beside Hain, who leaned away, avoiding her touch as if she had the Red and Black Death.

They reached the first pass that day and toiled up through the steep valley beyond as the air grew colder and snow crept down the sides of the peaks to edge the road. The trees were sparse and stunted, leaving them at the mercy of the wind. Wolves howled nearby at night, and several times they heard the screech of catamounts echoing between the peaks.

The children slept together under blankets in the back of the cart while the older wizards tended the fires and kept watch. Totmus’ cough grew worse. Huddled among the others, he coughed and dozed but could not rest. Under the suspicious stares of the Orëska wizards, Lhel brewed a tea for him and gently coaxed it into him. The child brought up alarming gobbets of green phlegm and seemed the better for it. By the third night he was laughing with the others again.

The wizards remained wary, but the children were more easily won over. During the long, weary hours in the cart, Lhel told them stories in her broken Skalan and showed them pretty little spells. When they stopped each night she disappeared into the darkness, returning with mushrooms and herbs for the stewpot.

The third day they descended along the edge of a gorge, and the forest rose up to meet them again. Hundreds of feet below, a blue-green river tumbled between the echoing walls. Just beyond the ruins of an abandoned village, they turned west along a tributary stream and followed it into a small, densely wooded valley.

There was no road. Lhel led them along the riverbank, and into towering hemlock. Soon the forest was too dense to take the cart any farther, and she led them on foot along a smaller brook to an overgrown clearing among the trees.

There had been a village here, but not one built by Skalan hands. Small, round roofless stone huts stood along the riverbank, none of them larger than an apple cellar. Many had fallen in and been reclaimed by moss and creepers, but a few were still sound.

A few weathered logs still leaned at disparate angles around the edge of the clearing, marking where a palisade had kept out wolves and catamounts, and perhaps Skalan invaders, as well.

“This good place,” Lhel told them. “Water, wood, and food. But you must build soon.” She pointed up at the sky, which was slowly filling with grey clouds. They could see their breath on the air today. “Snow soon. Little ones must have warm place to sleep, yes?”

She walked to one of the huts and showed them holes drilled in some of the top stones. “For roof poles.”

“Will you stay with us, Mistress?” Danil asked, holding the witch’s hand tight. The day before Lhel had shown him how to call field mice to his knee, something even Arkoniel had not thought the child capable of. The little boy had followed the witch around like a puppy ever since.

“For a time,” Lhel replied, patting his hand. “Maybe learn you more magic?”

“Can I learn, too?” asked Totmus, wiping his snotty nose on his sleeve.

“And me!” the twins cried eagerly.

Lhel ignored the glares from the older wizards. “Yes, little ones. All you learn.” She smiled at Arkoniel and he felt another surge of that strange assurance that things were falling into place as they were meant to.

Under Lhel’s direction, the servants made several of the old foundations habitable for the night, building makeshift roofs of saplings and boughs.

Meanwhile, Malkanus, Lyan, and Vornus took Arkoniel aside.

“Is this your Third Orëska?” Malkanus demanded angrily, jerking his thumb at the children tagging along after Lhel. “Are we all going to be necromancers now?”

“You know it’s forbidden,” Vornus warned. “She can’t be allowed to go on teaching them.”

“I know the histories, but I’m telling you, they’re not entirely correct,” Arkoniel maintained. “I’ve studied for years with this woman, and learned the true roots of her magic. Please, just let me show you, and you’ll see that it’s true. Illior would never have guided us to her if we weren’t meant to learn from her. How can that not be a sign?”

“But the magic we practice is pure!” said Lyan.

“We like to think so, but I’ve seen Aurënfaie shake their heads at some of our work. And remember, our magic is no less unnatural to our kind than Lhel’s. We had to mix our blood with the ’faie before we had any wizards in the Three Lands. Perhaps it’s time to mingle with a new blood, one native to Skala. The hill folk were here long before our ancestors arrived.”

“Yes, and they killed hundreds of our people,” Malkanus snapped.

Arkoniel shrugged. “They fought off the invaders. Would any of us have done differently? I believe that we’re meant to make peace with them now, somehow. But for now, believe me when I say that we need Lhel’s help, her kind of magic. Talk with her. Listen with an open heart to what she tells you, as I have. She has great power.”

“I can feel that,” muttered Cerana. “That’s what troubles me.”

Despite Arkoniel’s assurances, the others went away shaking their heads.

Lhel came to him, and said, “Come, I’ll teach you something new.” Walking back to the wagon, she searched through the baggage and pulled out a copper basin, then set off along the stream, leading him deeper into the forest. The ground was steep here, and the banks tiered with mossy ledges and shaggy frost-burned clumps of fern and caneberry. Thick stands of cattail rushes waved at the water’s edge. She pulled up one and peeled the fleshy white root. It was fibrous and dry so late in the year, but still edible.

“There’s plenty to eat here,” Lhel said, as they moved on. Pausing again, she plucked a large yellow mushroom from a rotting tree trunk and offered him a bite. “You must hunt before the snow comes, and smoke the meat. And collect wood. I don’t know if all the children will see springtime. Totmus won’t, I think.”

“But you healed him!” Arkoniel cried, dismayed. He’d already grown found of the boy.

Lhel shrugged. “I did what I could for him, but the sickness is deep in his lungs. It will come back.” She paused again. “I know what they said about me. You spoke for me, and I thank you, but the older ones are right. You don’t know the depth of my power.”

“Will I ever?”

“Pray you don’t, my friend. But now I’ll show you something new, but only you. Give me your word you’ll keep this to yourself.”

“By my hands, heart, and eyes, you have it.”

“All right then. We begin.” Cupping her hands around her mouth, Lhel let out a harsh, bleating call, then listened. Arkoniel heard nothing but the wind in the trees and the gurgling of the stream.

Lhel turned and gave the call across the stream. This time a faint reply came, then another, already closer. A large stag emerged from the trees on the far bank, sniffing the air suspiciously. It was as large as a palfrey, and had ten sharp prongs on each curving antler.

“It’s the rutting season,” Arkoniel reminded her. A stag in his prime was a dangerous thing to meet this time of year.

But Lhel was unconcerned. Raising a hand in greeting, she began to sing in that high, tuneless voice she sometimes used. The stag let out a loud snort and shook its head. A few shreds of antler velvet fluttered from the prongs. Arkoniel saw a piece fly loose and noted where it landed; if he survived this encounter, he knew of a concoction that called for it.

Lhel sang on, drawing the stag across the stream. It splashed up onto the bank and stood swinging its head slowly from side to side. Lhel smiled at Arkoniel as she scratched the beast between the antlers, calming it like a tame milk cow. Still humming, she drew her silver knife with her free hand and deftly nicked the large vein just under the stag’s jaw. A freshet of blood spurted out, and she caught it in her basin. The stag snorted softly, but remained still. When an inch or so of blood had collected in the basin, Lhel passed it to Arkoniel and laid her hands on the wound, stopping the flow with a touch.

“Stand back,” she murmured. When they were safely out of reach, she clapped her hands and shouted, “I release you!”

The stag lowered its head, slashing the air, then sprang away into the trees.

“Now what?” he asked. A thick, gamy odor rose from the basin, and he could feel the lingering heat and the strength of the blood through the metal.

She grinned. “Now I show you what you’ve wanted so long to know. Set the basin down.”

She squatted beside it and motioned for Arkoniel to do the same. Drawing a leather pouch from the neck of her ragged dress, she passed it to him. Inside he found several small herb bundles wrapped in yarn, and some smaller bags. Under her direction, he crumbled in a handful of bindweed flowers and some tamarack needles. From the small bags came pinches of powdered sulfur, bone, and ochre that stained his fingers like rust.

“Stir it with the first twig you find within reach,” Lhel instructed.

Arkoniel found a short, bleached stick and stirred the mix. The blood was still steaming, but it smelled different now.

Lhel unwrapped one of the firechips he’d made for her and used it to light a hank of sweet hay. As she blew the pungent smoke gently across the surface, the blood swirled and turned black.

“Now, sing as I do.” Lhel let out a string of strange syllables, and Arkoniel struggled to copy them. She would not translate the spell, but corrected his pronunciation and made him sing it over until he had it right.

“Good. Now we weave the protection. Bring the basin.”

“This is how you hid your camp, isn’t it?”

She answered with a wink.

Leading him to a gnarled old birch that overhung the brook, she showed him how to coat his palm with the blood and mark the tree, singing the spell as he did so.

Arkoniel winced a little; the blood felt thick and oily on his fingers. Singing, he pressed his hand to the peeling white bark. The blood stood out starkly against it for a moment, then disappeared completely. There wasn’t even a trace of moisture left.

“Amazing!”

“We’ve only just started. It does no good, just one.” Lhel led him to a large boulder and had him repeat the process. The blood disappeared just as readily into the stone.

As the sun sank behind the peaks and the shadows went cold, they made a wide circuit around the camp, creating a ring of magic that would confound the senses of any stranger who happened to stray near it. Only those who knew the password—alaka, “passage”—could pass through it.

“I used to watch you and the boys trying to find me.” Lhel chuckled. “Sometimes you looked right at me and never guessed.”

“Would this work for a town? Or for an army on the field?” he asked, but she only shrugged.

They finished their work under a rising full moon and followed the flickering glow of the campfires back to the others, who’d been busy in their absence. Two of the stone circles were snugly capped and some of the supplies had been carried up from the cart. Dry wood lay stacked by a newly dug fire pit and Eyoli was chopping more, mostly large fallen branches the children had dragged from the woods. At the stream’s edge, Noril and Semion were busy butchering a fat doe.

“It’s a good omen,” Noril said as he worked the hide free of the carcass. “The Maker sent her right into the camp while we were putting on the second roof.”

Dar and Ethni soon had chunks of venison spitted over a crackling fire along with the heart, liver, and sweetbreads. While the meat cooked, Arkoniel explained about the protection spell and the password. Cerana and Malkanus exchanged suspicious glances, but Eyoli and the children ran off to test it.

It seemed like a lucky start. There was plenty of meat for everyone that night, and bread to go with it. After supper, Kaulin and Vornus produced pipes and shared them around the circle as they listened to the night sounds. The crickets and frogs were silenced for the year, but they could hear small creatures pattering in the woods. A large white owl swooped across the clearing, greeting them with a mournful hoot.

“Another good omen,” Lyan said. “Illior sends his messenger to bless our new home.”

“Home,” Malkanus grumbled, pulling a second cloak around his shoulders. “Out in the wilderness with no proper food and drafty chimneys to live in.”

Melissandra took a long pull from one of the pipes and blew out a glowing red horse that flew twice around the fire before bursting with a bright pop over Ethni’s head. “Some of us have made do with a great deal less,” she said, and smoked out a pair of blue birds for Rala and Ylina. “We’ve got water, good hunting, and shelter.” She gave Lhel a nod. “Thank you. It’s a good place.”

“How long will we be here?” Vornus asked Arkoniel.

“I don’t know yet. We’d better get some proper cabins built before the snow flies.”

“Are we carpenters now?” Malkanus groaned. “What do I know about making cabins?”

“We can see to that, Master,” Cymeus assured him.

“Some wizards know how to do an honest day’s work,” Kaulin threw in. “More hands make less work, as they say.”

“Thank you, Kaulin, and you.” Arkoniel stood and bowed to Dar and the other servants. “You’ve followed your masters and mistresses without complaint, and made us comfortable here in the wilderness. You’ve heard us talk of the Third Orëska. It occurs to me now that you are as much a part of it as the wizards. For now we’ll build with logs and mud in exile, but I promise you, if we keep faith with Illior and accomplish the task we’ve been set, we’ll have a palace of our own one day, as grand as any in Ero.”

Kaulin gave Malkanus a jab with his thumb. “You hear that? Take heart, boy. You’ll be living soft again before you know it!”

Dozing in Ethni’s arms, Totmus let out a ropy cough.