by Anne Logston
When he pulled his head back inside, Lahti was awake and watching him. She was as grimy as he, her hair matted with sweat and her clothes dirt-stained, but Val found himself marveling once again at how lovely she looked to him.
“Time to go?” she asked.
“If you’re ready,” he said gently. “A patrol only just passed by. I don’t think there’ll be another anytime soon. If we wait a short time, it should be safe to continue on to the borders. If it’s as late as I believe, it should be near dawn when we reach the border of Golden Flower territory and leave Swiftfoot lands.”
“And then what?” Lahti asked worriedly. “The Golden Flowers will be about by day.”
“And the Swiftfoots still by night,” Val agreed. “But we have no choice unless we lose another half a day or more. At least we’re well rested. Have you eaten your fill?”
“We have plenty of travel cakes,” Lahti assured him. “We can eat as we go. Come. I’ll take the lead until the sun rises.”
As Val had suspected, they passed through the remaining Swiftfoot territory without difficulty, as the wide patrol had just passed them by. Golden Flower territory was both easier and more difficult; they could see more clearly and move faster by daylight, but just as they could see more easily, so they could also be seen. Most of their extra speed was negated by the additional need to keep under cover of sheltering bushes, scurrying up trees or into hiding at the least noise, and zigzagging widely from their course to avoid patrol trails. By the time night fell, both were shaking with exhaustion. They camped only long enough to snatch a few hours of sleep, bolt their cold travel food, and stumble on. Without mounts, they’d be days working their way around to the western edge of the forest.
Then there would be no obstacles except the murderous Blue-eyes—and a City full of humans.
Chapter Five—Ria
“This has got to be the most foolish thing you’ve ever talked me into,” Cyril panted, swatting leaves out of his face. “More shame to me for letting you do it.”
“Shhh,” Ria scolded. “The wall guards will hear you.”
“I hope they do,” Cyril grumbled, lowering his voice nonetheless. “Then we’ll both be comfortably locked in our rooms until the wedding, instead of out here risking our lives.”
Ria ignored that last comment, especially the reference to the wedding, and pulled Cyril along the wall, waiting for the guard to pass. As soon as the footsteps faded into the distance, she turned back to Cyril.
“Hurry,” she whispered. “We have to climb over.”
“Over that?” Cyril asked incredulously, gazing up at the wall to the keep’s grounds.
“That’s nothing,” Ria said impatiently, tucking the end of the rope she held into her belt. “We’ve climbed worse. Now come on.” She scrambled nimbly up the stones.
“Not since we were children,” Cyril growled, but he was climbing behind her with rather more difficulty despite his greater height; his larger hands and feet did not fit as neatly into the cracks in the stone as Ria’s, and his clumsy riding boots were less suited for climbing than Ria’s soft leather footgear.
Ria reached the top of the wall, panting. She glanced around to make sure none of the guards had seen her, then braced her feet against the crenellations of the wall, giving Cyril a hand over the edge. They took the rope ends from their belts and pulled up the packs tied to the other ends of the ropes, then dropped them over the far side of the wall and half-scrambled, half-fell down after them. As Ria had planned, it was only a short run from their crossing point to the nearest tumbledown building, and they squatted, panting, as far inside the wrecked building as they dared.
A rat squeaked and scampered along one wall, and Ria shivered, but her disgust was almost drowned in excitement. This was a true adventure—nothing at all like raiding the pantry for sweets in the middle of the night, or pulling a good trick on Lady Sivia. Ria’s heart pounded joyfully. She’d never felt this frightened—or this free—before. It was worth the risk of being caught and punished. It was worth any risk.
“Did they see us?” Cyril gasped.
“I don’t think so. No.” Ria watched the next guards cross the top of the wall right on schedule, peering vigilantly into the castle grounds and outside. “We’ll wait here and rest until the next guard goes by, then start working our way east.”
They waited, Cyril thankfully silent, until the next guard had passed. They scrambled from one ruined building to the next until they could see the outer wall, then stopped to rest again inside what looked to have been a bakery.
“At least we’ve made it this far,” Ria said, sighing with relief. “You’d better cast your spell here.”
“It isn’t good for very long,” Cyril said dubiously. “Especially when I’m trying to hold it while I’m walking around. I’ve only just mastered it.”
“We don’t need it for very long,” Ria told him. “It’s only a few dozen steps to the wall. The spell’s only got to hide us just long enough to get out of sight of the wall guards. It’s dark enough that that won’t be very far.”
“You’ll have to stay right with me, too,” Cyril warned her. “I can’t make it extend very far. I’ve never tried to cover anybody but myself before.”
“I’ll stay right beside you,” Ria agreed impatiently. “Now will you do it, please?”
“All right, all right, don’t rush me,” Cyril said nervously. “I’ve only done this a few times. If you rush me, I’m sure to botch it up, and then it’s right back to our rooms.”
As Cyril began his spell, laying out herbs and powders and colored candles and reading a chant out of a book, Ria began to have her doubts. Lady Rivkah never needed such paraphernalia; most often she never even spoke a spell aloud, needing nothing but a gesture or a word or a brief pass with a rod to make the spell effective. She’d told Ria that an expert enough mage usually progressed beyond such trappings. Cyril must indeed be as rank a novice as he’d said. And what if he failed? Would they even know if the spell didn’t work? Short of the guards raising a shout, that is!
Cyril continued his chant, weaving a complex pattern of gestures and tracing a design in the dust on the ground. Jenji chittered and poked his head out the neck of Ria’s tunic, dancing from paw to paw, his little nose quivering excitedly against Ria’s neck. Mage’s familiar—was Jenji a magic-spotter, and did his excitement mean that Cyril’s spell was taking effect? Ria fervently hoped so.
Well, nothing for it. As soon as Cyril finished his chant and stowed his book back in his pack, he turned and nodded to Ria, who nodded back. She felt no different, and she could certainly see Cyril, as well as herself if she looked; she’d just have to trust Cyril’s paltry skill. From what he’d told her, his simple spell couldn’t cover sound or scent, but hopefully they wouldn’t be getting close enough to the guards to betray themselves in those ways. Cyril would have to concentrate on holding the spell, too, so Ria shouldered his pack as well as her own and led the way back out of the building, holding his hand. She’d just have to find a place in the wall gap where he wouldn’t stumble and knock himself on the head while climbing through the debris, or the spell would surely drop.
Luck was with them. As rebuilding the defensive outer wall had been made a priority by High Lord Sharl, many of the fallen blocks had been cleared away, the broken stone reshaped and used in rebuilding the crumbling sections, or cut down to be used for other buildings in the city. Even the smaller debris had been cleared; Ria imagined it was probably being used to help fill in the great crack in the street before her foster mother and Yvarden tried to seal the top. There was a relatively negotiable path past what debris remained in the gap, and Ria took Cyril’s arm, guiding him carefully through. They paused in the gap, waiting to be sure there were no guards close enough to hear them, before they continued onward.
Then there was the moat to cross, but it had fallen into neglect over the years and the water had mostly drained away, leaving nothing but a thin layer of scummy liq
uid over the foul-smelling mud at the bottom; the greatest difficulty in crossing was making certain that Cyril didn’t slip in the sucking mud, or letting the wall guards see mysterious tracks appearing in the bare mud where it wasn’t covered by water. Then they were on open ground, with nothing between them and the forest but grass and the occasional wildflower.
About halfway across the open space, Cyril sagged and sighed with weariness. Ria helped him down to the ground, sitting down beside him. Jenji, silent in Ria’s tunic during their flight, clambered up to Ria’s shoulder and sat there quietly, rubbing against her ear.
“That’s it,” Cyril said tiredly. “I can’t hold it anymore.”
Ria glanced back at the city. The figures of the wall guards seemed very visible to her.
“Can you see the guards?” she asked.
Cyril squinted back at the city.
“I can see the edge of the wall,” he said. “I think. There’s some light in the city, and I can see the outline against that. But no guards. Oh, wait—yes, there’s something moving. I think,” he added dubiously.
“Then they can’t see us, not with the moon behind them,” Ria said relievedly. “Rest for a bit and then we can go on easily.”
“What about the elves, though?” Cyril asked, a frown wrinkling his brow. “How do we know where we should go? I mean, there’s a lot of forest.”
“You’re the one who always tells me I should read the histories and look at the maps,” Ria said impatiently. “Lord Sharl marked the road where he came out of the forest before. It goes right to the center of the forest where the Altars are; he said so. All we have to do is reach that road and follow it right on in. According to Lord Sharl’s map, Rowan’s village wasn’t too far from the center. It’s a pity your spell wasn’t good enough to conceal horses. It’ll take an awfully long time on foot. Days and days, at least.”
“We couldn’t have gotten them through all that debris or across the moat without being discovered, nor hidden them in those tumbledown buildings, anyway,” Cyril said practically.
“You’re right about that,” Ria agreed reluctantly. “Maybe the elves can help us get to Inner Heart more quickly. Didn’t Lady Rivkah say they rode on great deer? Maybe they’ll give us deer to ride.”
“They’ll more likely shoot us,” Cyril said sourly. “They shot at Mother and Father, remember?”
“Of course they won’t shoot at us,” Ria said impatiently, tucking the protesting Jenji back down into her tunic. “I’m an elf, aren’t I? Your mother and father were humans, and your father said himself that the elves have always tried to keep humans out of the forest, but the common road is for all the elves to use, including me. Now come on, will you, before somebody realizes we’re gone and raises an outcry. We’re still close enough to the city that they could probably catch us before we reach the forest.”
Cyril sighed, but he took his pack back from Ria and rose to his feet.
“You know, the only reason I agreed to this is so you wouldn’t run off and try it alone,” Cyril said at last, as they walked. “And I wanted a chance to talk to you.”
“If you just want to go on about how I owe it to all our people to marry you, don’t bother,” Ria said shortly. “I already got that lecture from Lady Rivkah and Lord Sharl, too.”
“There’s no need for you to be so angry at me about it,” Cyril said mildly. “I didn’t tell them to lecture you about it. For that matter, I didn’t tell them to have us betrothed. I don’t see why you’re so upset, though. I know you haven’t found someone else, and we used to be such friends, you know.”
“Yes, we used to be good friends. I was good friends with Cook, too, and most of the horses and cats and dogs. Being friends with somebody doesn’t necessarily mean I want to marry them,” Ria retorted. “And you haven’t been much of a friend to me these past few years, either. Every time we were together, you’d get impatient and shoo me off. I thought probably you didn’t like me anymore.”
“It’s not exactly that.” Cyril glanced at her sideways. “It’s just I was tired of hiding in haylofts and playing seek-and-find about the keep. I wanted to get on with other things in life. You didn’t seem to want to grow up. And then—”
Ria waited, but when Cyril didn’t continue, she prompted, “Then what?”
“Then I started thinking about our betrothal,” Cyril said a little hesitantly. “At first I resented it a little, too. I mean, I’d rather have chosen my bride myself; who wouldn’t? But I guess I never got as angry as you did. I mean, I suppose I got used to the idea. And I liked you as well as anyone I’d known—better, really, than the few girls of noble family I’d met when we visited Cielman. They all seemed rather stuffy and boring and only interested in stupid, petty things. You’ve never been boring, even when you made me so angry I thought I’d kick your bottom from one side of the keep to the other. So I thought maybe it’d be all right, maybe we’d even learn to love each other in time like High Lord Emaril and High Lady Vesana did. And as I got older, I started to think about you and me as—”
Again he stopped.
“As what?” Ria said impatiently. “As husband and wife? As High Lord and Lady of Allanmere, dressed in scratchy finery and stuck at stuffy formal suppers and council sessions?”
“As lovers,” Cyril said at last, very softly.
Ria glanced over at him in amazement.
“You can’t mean that you’re really interested in that sort of thing,” she said. “I mean, have you ever seen how strange it looks?”
Cyril gave her a funny look, and Ria could see the blood rush to his cheeks.
“Well—have you?” he said evasively.
“Oh, mostly animals,” Ria said carelessly. “Sometimes some of the servants came to the stables to have a tumble in the hay when they didn’t know I was hiding in the loft. And I peeped in through the keyhole at Lord Sharl and Lady Rivkah once or twice. What about you?”
“Well, never mind,” Cyril said hastily. “But I thought it might not be such a bad thing. You and me, that is.” He looked at her rather anxiously. “Don’t you think?”
“Well, we can try it if you want,” Ria said, shrugging negligently. “The servants and your mother and father wouldn’t keep doing it if they didn’t like it, I suppose. But I don’t have to marry you for that, and I don’t want to marry you. Or anybody else, either. And don’t give me the what-else-will-you-do-to-live speech, either. I’ve already gotten that, too. I know I don’t have any money or any goods or any useful skills to get by on my own in the city.”
“So that’s what we’re doing,” Cyril said, realization and anger beginning to tinge his voice. “After all that you went on about how wonderful it would be if we could make contact with the elves before Father did, how proud they’d be—that was all so much dung in the pile, wasn’t it? You just wanted to run off to the elves, and you needed me to help you get away from the keep. That’s it, isn’t it? And what were you planning to do with me if they did take you in? Leave me standing there at the edge of the forest looking like a fool?”
“Of course you wouldn’t look like a fool,” Ria said impatiently. “What could be better? There we’d be, talking with the elves, and if I was with them, that’d make it all the easier to get them to talk to Lord Sharl, too. What better way to get them to negotiate than to bring me back to them? They’d know you meant them no harm, and I could tell them about what good allies the humans of the city would be. Your parents would be proud then. And we wouldn’t have to leave you standing there,” Ria added hastily. “You could come along, too, if you wanted.” She grinned a little to herself; duty-stricken Cyril would never leave the city and his parents for any great length of time, so the offer cost nothing to make.
“Oh, thank you,” Cyril said sarcastically. “After you lied to me, I’m supposed to believe my father will be delighted to find I’ve crept away with you in the night and helped the city’s High Lady-to-be run off to the elves? I should run straight back to the city
and tell Mother and Father what you’re up to.”
“By the time you get back, I’ll have already reached the forest, and long since, so go ahead if you really want to,” Ria said practically. “Or were you planning to throw me over your shoulder and carry me back by force?”
“I should,” Cyril said with a sigh.
“Then one of us is going to get hurt in the fight I’ll put up,” Ria retorted. “I can match you wrestling most of the time, and if I run off in the dark, you’ll never catch me. And even if you do, you’ll still get in trouble for helping me get this far, too. On the other hand, if we can meet with the elves, at least you’ll get credit for getting the elves to speak with you.” She shrugged. “Fight or walk?”
Cyril was silent for a moment; at last he sighed.
“Walk,” he said resignedly.
They approached the forest a little more closely, then stopped.
“Where’s the road?” Ria asked puzzledly. “It should be right ahead, according to the map.”
“It has been sixteen years,” Cyril reminded her. “A lot of this part of the forest was trampled and burned, too. They may have moved the road, or just let it grow up. Maybe they don’t need a road anymore.”
“There has to be a road,” Ria insisted. “Remember what Lord Sharl said about the Forest Altars at the center? All the elven clans visited them at least occasionally, and the road was how they got there. It’s a holy place, like a temple. Maybe they’ve concealed this end of the road, but we know where it should be. We’ll go a little ways into the forest there, and then start looking.”
“If we get that far,” Cyril said grimly.
“We will,” Ria said confidently. “Look, we’ve gotten this close and nothing’s happened.” They were well within arrow range now, close enough to touch the leaves of the first thin growth of trees.
