They followed the trail until it turned into a wide road, and then steered the children away from the heavy cartwheel ruts towards the animal trails which weaved across the moors. The thick purple heather was a paradise for monarch and blue butterflies, and the birds and lizards which feasted on them were just as welcome to the higher carnivores. There were no wolf packs or badger sets, but every hill held a sprawling rabbit warren and shy, stocky wild ponies peered down at the intruders from their knolls. The trails didn't really go anywhere, but it was possible to cross the moorland by picking a direction and weaving slowly back and forth between the brambles and tangles of thistles.
When the moors curved down into miniature valleys there were grottos of shoulder-high ferns and deep pools of water, where they refilled their flasks every morning and sternly forbade the children to play. While the moors looked serene in the warm summer sun, there were still hiding places for immortals and wild cats and foxes which wouldn't attack a full grown human, but would think a small child was delicious.
"Can't we tell them to leave them alone?" Sarralyn asked at her lesson that evening when Daine pointed this out. Her mother nodded, and then gestured across the open acres.
"If I had my magic on I could feel every one of the people about as far as you can see. I could talk to them, or make them freeze in their tracks. I could feel where you are, too. I've never been able to see the boys. If one of them wanders off it'd take a few minutes to coax the people into helping me search, and scrying takes time, too. It takes less than a minute for a hungry cat to maul a rabbit. You've seen the drawings in your book." She winced at her daughter's panicked expression and then ruffled her hair. "Sometimes the most important thing about our magic is forgetting we have it. When I'm looking after my cubs I think like any human mother. Thinking like a mage just gets me into trouble."
"But…" Sarralyn stopped talking when her mother went strangely quiet. Recognising the pain which darkened the woman's eyes, she gave her hand a squeeze and went to tell her father. He listened quietly, and then kissed the little girl's forehead and told her to go and play with her brothers.
Sarralyn reluctantly drifted away, but found herself watching her da even while the twins were squealing and pulling at her hair. He never even looked at ma, just threw another branch under the bubbling stew pot and turned back to his book. After a while her mama stood up and walked away down one of the rabbit trails, and still her father did not move.
"Da…" The girl started towards him, and then stopped herself. She had no idea what she had meant to say. For a moment she had been utterly convinced that her mother was as vulnerable as herself or the twins. After she had warned Sarralyn about the predators, it seemed as if her mama was almost goading the world into attacking her. Sarralyn shook the thought out of her head. She knew that if she herself was in danger, then her mother would make her feel safe. Even alone and unarmed, her mother couldn't possibly be hurt.
Daine did not return to the camp until late that night, long after the sun had set. Sarralyn had not managed to fall asleep, but kept dozing and waking at the slightest sound, thinking her mother had come back. The fire was almost in embers, but a soft mage light hung in the sky above the sleeping family, leading the woman home. Sarralyn hated the unmoving dull shadows it cast. It made her feel as if the air was stale.
Daine threw grit against the warding spell until Numair woke up and let her through, and then she stripped off her muddy clothes and lay down beside him. Sarralyn rolled away when she heard them start making the soft sounds of 'we'll explain when you're older'. The whole day had confused her so much that the adult-ing barely registered. She was more curious about their silence. Why hadn't her father asked mama where she had been all day?
The next morning was just as confusing. Sarralyn was woken up by a low, hissed argument. Her father had picked up mama's clothes, and was whispering something as he shook them towards her. Mama shrugged and made some flat replies, which seemed to make her husband even angrier. Then he growled a curse and dropped the tunic back into the dirt. Sarralyn craned her head and saw dark, rust-coloured stains on the fabric.
"Were you berry picking, mama?" She mumbled, pushing herself upright. The woman was so startled that she gasped. She had to force herself to smile, the child noticed. There was nothing genuine about the expression.
"Good morning, love. Did you sleep well?"
"Are they blackberries? I hate them, but if there are bilberries…"
"There aren't any berries." Her father interrupted, and stuffed the clothes into one of the packs. "Some feral cats brought down a deer last night."
Sarralyn stumbled for words, and gestured weakly towards the bloodstained clothes. "Did you make it all better, mama?"
"She wasn't trying to heal it." The man said bitingly, and then he closed his mouth with a snap when Daine looked at him. There wasn't anything threatening in her expression, just a level curiosity which made his blood crawl. He might have expected the same chilly courtesy from any other cat. "Snap out of it, Daine."
"I'll wake up the boys." She stood up and walked to the other side of the fire pit. Everything she did was mechanical and false, even when she kissed the children. Numair forced himself not to watch her farcical affection. He busied himself packing up the camp.
When he finally looked up he saw his daughter chewing nervously on her fingernails. Guilt flooded through the man. Every time he and Daine had argued they tried to keep their children out of it. When they were angry they called each other into another room rather than shout in front of their family. Both of them had quick, stubborn tempers. While they knew that they were just as quick to forgive each other, their children would not understand that. An argument over something as banal as an unwashed stew pot could sound terrifying to a child. Sarralyn had already been caught in the crossfire when her mother had defended her from the immortals. Now, she looked as though she was about to cry over a few sharp words.
"Come here, Sa." He opened his arms, and winced at the slow way she ventured into them. "We're not angry at you, love."
"But you are angry, aren't you?"
"If you want me to answer that, daughter mine, you'll need a notebook and a piece of graphite. It's far more complicated than angry. My head's all in a muddle."
She frowned and scratched at her nose. "Is mama's head muddled, too?"
"You have no idea." He laughed a little, muffled the sound behind his fingers, and then pulled a comb out to start taming Sarralyn's unruly hair. "When your mama is muddled she finds other people to speak to who have the same worries that she does. If she's lonely she finds a warren of rabbits, or if she's worried she flies with hawks and memorises every detail in the sky until everything else just falls away."
"She went to be with the cats." Sarralyn prompted. Numair's hand paused, and then he started teasing out a tangled knot.
"She needed to shout at someone."
"Me?" The girl watched her father shake his head, and her lip wobbled. "You, da?"
"Not even me." He tweaked her nose and then gathered up her hair into braids. "This morning we were arguing because I asked her why she didn't shout at me. I think I'd rather have her calling me all the bad words she knows, than take it out on some deer."
"Cats need to eat. It would have died anyway." Sarralyn said absentmindedly. Numair shot her a sharp look, which she missed. The girl twisted in his arms as soon as he tied off her second plait, and her face was stubborn. "What do you do when your head is muddled, da?"
"I get used to it. I haven't had a sensible thought since the day I was born!"
"Oh, you're being fair daft." She sniffed and pulled herself away. "What's for breakfast?"
They left the campsite later than they were planning. The twins started to squabble over their breakfast, and before long they were both wailing at the tops of their voices. Numair waited until Daine wasn't looking and then sketched some hasty symbols in the air. The twins were suddenly, completely silent. Their mouths moved, and their faces were red, but the sound couldn't make it past the odd haze in the air.
"I needed to make sure it worked." The man said unrepentantly when Daine shot him an amused, exasperated look. "It'll wear off in an hour."
"Where are we going?" She replied, smiling a little. Numair pulled out a map and showed her a thin grey line etched between the stark black markings of rivers and mountains. The woman's brow furrowed. "A rabbit trail?"
"It is now, but it wasn't always." Numair pointed out a large patch of rocks to the east. "It leads here. I rode along here once, when Jon sent me as a courier in the war. He told me to drive the horse hard, but it couldn't get a grip on these mossy moors. Then I found that trail, and we sped up. Why should the ground be hard there? It's just another part of the heath. When I made camp I dug down a little and found cobblestones."
"So it used to be a real road." Daine murmured, tracing it with her fingertip. "Where did it go?"
"That's the thing. After I got back I went to the archives and searched for every ancient map I could find. It's no wonder this place was abandoned, Daine. It was…" He stopped and looked at Sarralyn. She was chasing a butterfly, and one of the feral cats was chasing her. The man cleared his throat. "It used to be a mage college."
"How long ago?"
"Who knows? The only map I could find was made hundreds of years ago, and even that was drawn after it was destroyed. I know what happened to it, but I have no idea what it was."
She looked intrigued. "Maybe we could find out!"
"Maybe." He smiled and folded up the map. "The children can have fun scrambling over the ruins, at least. If we start now we'll get there by sunset." He paused expectantly, and Daine closed her eyes as she ran her fingers along the map.
"There is something there." She murmured, almost to herself, as the very edge of her mind felt the glimmer of bronze light. "Bears, I guess. You've got a few caves on this map for them to shelter in." She pushed her awareness out a little further, gasping a little at the extra effort, and then answered Numair's unspoken question. "There aren't any immortals nesting there. Even a hurrock wouldn't want to tangle with a bear. We should be fine."