Thirty-Eight

  The next day we walked in the sunshine, up and down easy grassy hummocks rather than the strange ridges of the Drearwold, with our packs full of fresh provisions from the firbolgs. These included mushroom pies, honeycakes, seed loaves, and clumps of dried berries. They had apparently thought we’d have the appetite of a typical firbolg family of five.

  Our map told us we would walk these hills for a full day or more before entering land that became broken and rocky. We walked with our guard down a bit, I admit, despite our surprise run-in with the troll a couple days before. We were side by side, with Caiside in the middle between me and Freydis.

  “Caiside,” I said, “you had mentioned firbolgs as if they were a threat. I was dreading them more than the trolls. But Highview and Liatris were courteous hosts.”

  “Quite refined people, aren’t they?” she answered. “I didn’t know they would be. Live and learn.”

  I cannot say if the emerald meadows and easy slopes we traversed were really the most beautiful I had ever seen, or if they just looked that way by comparison after having just spent a week or more in the Drearwold. But the grass seemed to wave in the breezes in a more stately manner than I had ever seen, and the skies seemed more blue. Here and there we would pass a copse of trees alongside small streams which crossed the landscape.

  In the very late afternoon, at one of these small stands of trees near another stream, we set down for the night. Tall grass grew near the water. Highview had told us that a fire would be safe, in this quiet landscape, so we lit one.

  It was while Freydis was combing among the trees for more dry wood that she found a scarf. She brought it out to show it to me and especially to Caiside.

  “I found this in there. It’s clean. It looks like it could have been dropped there just yesterday.”

  She held it out, dangling, as if she didn’t want to be too close to it.

  It was dark red, with a black sea serpent motif sewn in. The serpent looked rather menacing.

  “Caiside,” she said. “Are these colors and that sea dragon associated with – ”

  “Wastemoor,” Caiside said. “Indeed they are. That’s a scarf you might see a soldier there wear, beneath his helmet. But it’s here. And it looks quite fresh, doesn’t it.”

  “A soldier?” Freydis repeated. “From Wastemoor?”

  “That’s part of their accoutrement, yes,”

  “Do you think anyone from Wastemoor would really be out here? All the way out here in these empty lands? It’s a long way.”

  “Indeed it is,” Caiside said. “Hmm.”

  She paused, and mulled for a moment.

  “You know,” she resumed, “if there is anyone here, there would only be one reason why. Speaking realistically. They would have found out about Slade’s hoard. I suppose it’s not hard to believe they would pry the location out of him somehow if they knew about it.”

  “You think a smuggler’s store would be enough for them to bother with?” Freydis asked. She was sounding increasingly alarmed.

  “Well,” Caiside said. She now seemed reluctant to talk, compared to her loquacity of the past few days. And weeks.

  “I’m afraid,” she continued, “that Slade might have some things of particular sentimental value to The Mage, so . . . possibly they might bother with trying to find it, yes.”

  “Things of value to the Mage herself? You’re saying her – personal effects, something like that? Are you serious?”

  And Caiside sang a song, now, which she accompanied with a very disturbing amount of shrugs and pursed lips and raised eyebrows. She made a ridiculous physical effort to suggest that what she was saying was all hypothetical, but her words and very specific examples contradicted this, to my mind:

  If you must deal with rulers who are used to giving orders,

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  you’ll find that they are not content to keep within their borders.

  Take one who has just lost, say, an old present from her pop;

  she’ll raze a path before her. And be uninclined to stop.

  Let’s say this far-off potentate has missed – I am just guessing –

  a journal, or a diary, she uses for confessing.

  It’s safe to think that she will take some measures to retrieve it.

  And were I told some heads would roll if needed, I’d believe it.

  Perhaps this unnamed woman has a corps at her disposal

  who’d love to go out . . . sacking. They would leap at the proposal.

  You almost cannot blame her if she sends them out to search

  for lockets, or her baby teeth. You know – her stolen merch.

  I imagine they might scour some hills, and tear some woods asunder,

  and launch an expedition to recuperate some plunder.

  If they could find lost birthstones, say – for she is known to hoard them –

  this Mage could be mad generous in seeking to reward them.

  “Caiside!” Freydis shouted at her. “What are you saying? What have you gotten us into?! And put out the fire!” She darted over and started kicking the logs and stamping out the flames. Caiside just sat still and said:

  “I have been quite transparent all along.”

  “No you have not! You talked about Slade acquiring things like old weapons, and jackalope antlers! Torques and coins! Things like that! Not – personal effects of the most powerful witch in the world! A diary?! Her baby teeth?! How on earth did he get any of that?”

  “Well, I am not completely, supremely certain that he really has such things. These are just some stories which were told to me.”

  “By him?”

  “And others. But if he does have such belongings, well, it would have been through trading, you know. No, he never crept into the chamber of The Mage himself and made off with an amulet, nothing like that. But – conjecturally – if one of her handmaids did, and they perhaps wanted to exchange it for a wyvern claw, well, they would have had a good idea whom to talk to.” She shrugged.

  “Unbelievable,” Freydis said as she continued kicking dirt onto the coals. “I would have never agreed to this had I known it was a race against some praetorian guard from Wastemoor.” She looked up to the sky and then slapped her hands on her face.

  “I am not at all certain that it is,” Caiside said.

  “But that scarf! Where else would it have come from?”

  Caiside shrugged. “It might not be . . . well, never mind. It clearly is the scarf of a Wastemoor soldier. But it didn’t necessarily come straight from one’s head, you know. It may have been traded, stolen, who knows.”

  “And it appears out here, in the middle of nowhere,” Freydis said. “Just coincidentally when we are here, and when you have escaped, and when they – or the Mage herself – may have figured out what you have been pursuing now that you’re out.”

  Freydis lifted her hands to her head. I had never seen her this rattled.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “That’s it. I’m heading back down. Maybe it will be easy enough to find Highview again, and he can escort me through the Drearwold. I think he would. And then I’ll have to skirt that sick dryad.” She was talking to herself, now, not caring what Caiside or I wanted to do.

  “You can’t go now,” I said. “Or you shouldn’t, anyway. It will be getting dark soon. Wait until morning.”

  “Just sit here and wonder if whoever dropped that scarf just saw our fire?” she said.

  “All right, we’ll move one copse back,” I said. “The last one we walked through isn’t far. But I don’t think you want to walk at night, cousin. No matter how quiet it was during the day.”

  She looked down and shook her head, but said:

  “Very well. But let’s backtrack like you said.”

  She bent to grab her bag, but just then there was a rush through the tall grass beside the stream, and then a galloping thump, and snorting. A form – a huge animal – charged toward us. I could see gray hide, and plates, and one long twisting tusk.

  In the blur I recognized it as something I had heard about, but never seen; something I had taken to be legend, much like firbolgs:

  It was an armored land narwhal.

  .

  .