Author's Note: Well, what do you know, I managed to get something out in a semi-decent time frame for once...it's a miracle, it really is.

"And we're back to you, Cassie," Horace said, transferring the book from his best friend to his wife.

The camp buzzed with activity as tents came down and Rangers repacked their equipment and tied on their saddle bags. Already, the first few riders had departed, heading back to their own fiefs.

"Where else would they be heading?" Halt grumbled.

"Oh, I don't know," Gilan said, with false cheer. "Out on a mad chase after two ape-bear assassins that can freeze people with their eyes alone and take three knights to kill just one?"

Halt glared at him. Will sniggered.

Will was fastening the ties on their saddle packs, having replaced the few items they had taken out. Halt sat a few meters away, frowning thoughtfully as he studied a map of the area surrounding Solitary Plain.

The Plain itself was a vast, unmapped area, with no roads and few features indicated. A shadow fell across him and he looked up. Gilan stood there, a worried look on his face.

"Halt," he said in a low, concerned voice. "Are you sure about this?"

"Would I be doing this if I wasn't?" Halt snapped. Gilan raised his hands in surrender, and Pauline elbowed her husband gently.

"Dear..."

Halt harrumphed, but said nothing further. His nerves, already strained at the idea of exposing his apprentice to danger, had come dangerously close to snapping at Gilan's question in the book.

Halt met his gaze steadily. "Very sure, Gilan. It simply has to be done."

"But he's only a boy!" Gilan protested, looking quickly to where Will was tying a pack roll back in place behind Tug's saddle.

"Thank you, Gilan."

"You were!"

Halt let go a long breath, his eyes dropping from Gilan's as he spoke.

"I know that. But he's a Ranger. Apprentice or not, he's a member of the Corps, like all of us."

Will brightened visibly at that.

He saw that Gilan was about to protest further, out of concern for Will, and he felt a surge of affection for his old apprentice.

"Gilan, in a ideal world, I wouldn't put him at risk like this. But this isn't an ideal word. Everyone's going to have to play his part in this campaign, even boys like Will. Morgarath is preparing for something big. Crowley's agents have got wind that, on top of everything else, he's been in touch with the Skandians."

Will muttered something that caused Alyss to nudge him reproachfully.

Cassandra merely shook her head. "You'll be saying worse before the books are over," she told the other girl. Alyss's lips thinned considerably. She knew the gist of what had happened to Will in Skandia, but he had never told her the full story. She'd asked Halt, but he'd refused to tell her, saying it was Will's choice, not his.

"If it makes you feel any better," he'd told her, a rare, sad smile on his face, "I doubt he would have told Horace the whole thing either."

"The Skandians? What for?"

"What do you think?" Gilan muttered.

Halt shrugged. "We don't know the details, but my bet is he's hoping to form an alliance with them. They'll fight anyone for money. And apparently, they'll fight for anyone as well," he added, his distaste for the mercenaries obvious in his voice.

"Give it a few years, Halt. They'll grow on you," Will said dryly. Halt managed a tight, humorless smile.

"The point is, we're shorthanded enough while Crowley tries to raise the army. Normally, I wouldn't go after the Kalkara with a force of less than five senior Rangers. But he simply can't spare them for me. So I've had to settle for the two I trust most - you and Will."

Both Will and Gilan flushed red at the praise.

Gilan grinned crookedly. "Well, thanks for that, anyway." He was touched by Halt's confidence. He still looked up to his old mentor. Most of the Ranger Corps did.

Halt looked surprised. Crowley looked at him.

"You didn't know?" he asked, a small - and genuine - smile forming on his face.

Halt shook his head. "I had no idea."

"Besides, I thought that rusty old sword of yours might come in handy if we run into those horrors," Halt said.

"Oi! My sword is not rusty!"

The Ranger Corps had chosen wisely when they allowed Gilan to continue his training with the weapon. Although very few people knew it, Gilan was one of the finest swordsmen in Araluen.

"Who, by all reports, was beaten by an old one-handed man," King Duncan said dryly.

"Dad!" Cassandra groaned.

But Gilan conceded the point. "He was an excellent fighter," he said simply. "Even for a Skandian," he added. Sir Rodney looked thoughtful, but Baron Arald elbowed his friend.

"Don't even think about it," he hissed.

"Think about what?" Sir Rodney asked innocently.

"You know what."

Cassandra cleared her throat, and the two men looked up apologetically.

"As for Will," Halt continued, "don't sell him short. He's very resourceful. He's quick and brave and a damn good shot already. Best of all, he thinks quickly. My real thinking is that if we get on the trail of the Kalkara, we can send him for reinforcements. That'll help us and keep him out of harm's way."

Gilan scratched his chin thoughtfully. Now that Halt had explained it, it seemed the only logical course for them to take. He met the older man's eyes and nodded his understanding of the situation. Then he turned to organize his own kit, only to find that Will had already repacked it and tied it to his saddle. He smiled at Halt.

"You're right," he said. "He does think for himself."

"And, on occasion, the both of you as well," Will contributed.

Halt glared at him.

The three of them rode out a little while later, while the other Rangers were still receiving their orders. Mobilizing the Araluen army would be no small task, and it would be the Ranger's job to coordinate it, then be ready to guide the individual forces from the fifty fiefs to their assembly point at the Plains of Uthal. With both Gilan and Halt assigned to searching for the Kalkara, other Rangers had to be tasked with coordinating the forces from their fiefs as well.

There was little said between the three companions as Halt led the way to the southwest. Even Will's natural curiosity was subdued by the magnitude of the task ahead of them. As they rode in silence his mind's eye kept conjuring images of savage bearlike creatures with the features of apes-creatures that might well prove to be invincible, even for someone of Halt's skill.

Eventually, however, as monotony set in, the horrific images receded and he began to wonder what plan, if any, Halt had in mind.

"Halt," he said, a little breathlessly, "where do you hope to find the Kalkara?"

"Well, never would have been nice, but seeing as that wasn't an option...anywhere but Gorlan," Halt replied dryly.

He looked at the serious young face beside him. They were traveling at the Ranger's forced march pace-forty minutes in the saddle, ridding at a steady canter, then twenty minutes on foot, leading the horses and allowing them to travel unburdened, while the men ran at a steady trot.

Every four hours, they would pause for one hour's rest, when they ate a quick meal of dried meat, hard bread and fruit, then rolled into their cloaks to sleep.

The thoughtful look on Sir Rodney's face was back, but this time it seemed to have spread to Baron Arald and King Duncan as well. The first two were having another of their silent conversations, while the King seemed content to keep his own council for now.

They had been leading the horses for some time now and Halt judged that it was to rest. He led Abelard off the road and into the shelter of a grove of trees. Will and Gilan followed, dropping the reins and allowing their horses to graze.

"The best way I can think of," Halt said, in answer to Will's question, "is to start at their lair and see if they're in the vicinity."

"Do we know where that is?" Gilan asked.

"Best intelligence we have is that it's somewhere on the Solitary Plain, beyond the Stone Flutes. We'll scout around that area and see what we can find. If they're in the area, we should find that the odd sheep or goat is going missing from villages nearby. Although getting the villagers themselves to talk will be another matter. Plainspeople are a closemouthed bunch at the best of times."

"What are they at the worst of times?" Jenny wanted to know.

Halt shrugged. "Trying to kill you."

"What's this Plain you're talking about?" Will asked, thorough a mouthful of hard bread. "And what on earth is a Stone Flute?"

"The Solitary Plain is a vast flat area - very few trees, mainly covered in rock outcrops and long grass," Halt told him. "The wind seems to always be blowing, no matter what time of year you go there. It's a dismal, depressing place and the Stone Flutes are the most dismal part of it."

"But what are…" Will began, but Halt had only paused briefly.

"The Stone Flutes? Nobody really knows. They're a circle of standing stones built by the ancients, smack in the middle of the windiest part of the Plain.

"Nobody has ever worked out their original purpose but they're arranged in such a way that the wind is deflected around the circle, a constant keening sound, although why anyone thought they sounded like flutes is beyond me. The sound is eerie and discordant and you can hear it from kilometers away. After a few minutes, it sets your teeth on edge - and it goes on and on for hours."

"Sounds like a lovely place," Lady Pauline commented dryly.

Will was silent. The thought of a dismal, windswept plain and stones that emitted a nonstop, keening wail seemed to take the last vestige of warmth from the late afternoon sun. He shivered involuntarily. Halt saw the movement and leaned forward to clap him on the shoulder encouragingly.

"Cheer up," he said. "Nothing's ever as bad as it sounds."

"Ha-ha," Will muttered. "Yeah, right."

"Now let's get some rest."

They reached the outskirts of the Solitary Plain by noon the second day. Halt was right, Will thought, it was a vast, depressing place. The featureless ground stretched out before them for kilometer after kilometer, covered in tall gray grass, made rank and dry by the constant wind.

The wind itself almost seemed to be a living presence. It rubbed on their nerves, blowing constantly and unvaryingly - "is that an actual word?" Cassandra asked, looking up doubtfully from the book.

Horace shrugged. Alyss deferred to Lady Pauline, who looked thoughtful.

"It follows the correct structure," she began, "with 'vary' as the root of the word, and the suffix '-ing' added to transform it into an adjective. With the addition of the prefix 'un-' to make the word negative, we transform the meaning instead of the part of speech - instead of 'to differ in size, form, or nature', the word now means 'to be constant in size, form, or nature'. We are now left with 'unvarying', a widely accepted and used word.

"The controversy, I believe, springs from the addition of a second suffix, '-ly'. The suffix '-ly' is generally held to have three standard uses - one, to indicate similarity to the root word, for example, the word 'motherly'; two, to indicate an action was done in the way indicated by the stem, example 'wrongly'; three, to indicate the occurrence of an event at a particular interval. In the case of 'unvaryingly', the suffix '-ly' is used in the second manner, to indicate that the wind was blowing in an unvarying manner. Therefore, as all prefixes and suffixes are used in the proper manner and the word is used in the correct fashion of a word - to convey distinct meaning - we can conclude that 'unvaryingly' is, in fact, a word."

(The author promptly added 'unvaryingly' to her spellcheck's dictionary.)

Understanding dawned on Cassandra and her father at the same moment, half a heartbeat after Lady Pauline had finished speaking. Baron Arald was working through Lady Pauline's rapid-fire dissection of 'unvaryingly' at a slightly slower pace, and came to an understanding a couple seconds behind the King and his daughter. Sir Rodney and Horace looked hopelessly confused. The Battlemaster turned to his friend, while Horace turned to Cassandra for explanations.

Crowley just stared, while Halt tried not to look smug. Alyss beamed at her mentor, who smiled back.

...from the west, bending the tall grass before it as it swept across the flat ground of the Solitary Plain.

"Now you can see why they call it the Solitary Plain," Halt said to the two of them, reining Abelard in so they could come abreast of him. "When you ride out into this damned wind, you feel as if you're the only person left alive on earth."

Cassandra coughed something that sounded suspiciously like "Celtica," and Horace turned a snort of laughter into a hasty cough that fooled nobody.

It was true, Will thought. He felt small and insignificant against the emptiness of the Plain. And with the felling of insignificance came an accompanying feeling of impotence. The wasteland they were riding across seemed to hint at the presences of arcane forces - forces far greater than his own capabilities. Even Gilan, normally cheerful and ebullient,

"Ebullient?" Gilan repeated, raising an eyebrow in Will's direction.

Will glared back. "Hey, I didn't write this!"

"Boys..." Alyss started, just as Cassandra cleared her throat.

Both Will and Gilan shut up instantly.

seemed affected by the heavy, depressing atmosphere of the place. Only Halt seemed unchanged, remaining grim and taciturn as ever.

"That's Halt," Crowley said, nudging his friend affectionately.

Gradually, as they rode, Will became aware of disquieting sensation. Something was lurking, just outside the range of his conscious perception. Something that made him feel uneasy. He couldn't isolate it, couldn't even tell where it was coming from or what form it took.

The paranoia of all those present took a giant leap upwards. Those armed - most of the assembled, with Jenny being the only exception, unless one counted her spoon (Will did) - checked their knives or swords or slings.

It was there, ever present. He shifted in his saddle, standing in the stirrups to scan the featureless horizon in the hopes that he might see the source of it all. Halt noticed the movement.

"You've noticed it, then," he said. "It's the Stones."

Gilan muttered a curse.

Jenny frowned. "Was it really that bad?" she asked nervously.

Gilan shook his head. "Not the Stones themselves, no. They're just...grating," he explained, pausing to search for the right word.

And now that Halt said it, Will realized that it had been a sound - so faint and so continuous that he couldn't isolate it as such - that had been creating the sense of unease in his mind, and the tight cramping of fear in the pit of his stomach. Or perhaps it was just that as Halt said it, they came into proper earshot of the Stone Flutes. Because now he could isolate it. It was a unmelodic series of musical notes, all played at once but creating a harsh, discordant sound that jangled the nerves and unsettled the mind. His left had crept unobtrusively to the hilt of his saxe knife as he rode, and he drew comfort from the solid, dependable touch of the weapon.

Will - and several others - were doing the same thing now.

They rode on through the afternoon, never seeming to advance across the empty, featureless Plain. With each pace their horses took, the horizons behind and before them seemed to neither recede no draw closer. It was as if they were marking time in an empty world. The constant keening sound of the Stone Flutes with them all day, growing gradually stronger as they traveled. It was the only sign that they were making progress. The hours passed and the sound continued and Will found it no easier to bear. It wore at his nerves, keeping him constantly on edge. As the sun began to sink at the western rim, Halt reined Abelard in.

"We'll rest for the night," he announced. "It's almost impossible to maintain a constant course in the dark. Without any significant land features to set a course by, we could easily wind up going around in circles."

Gratefully, the others dismounted. Fit as they were, the hours spent at forced march pace had left them bone weary.

Sir Rodney made a few addendums to his mental notes.

Will began scouting around the few stunted bushes that grew on the Plain, searching for firewood. Halt, realizing what was in his mind, shook his head.

"No fire," he said. "We'd be visible for miles and we have no idea who might be watching."

Will paused, letting the small bundle he had gathered fall to the ground. "You mean the Kalkara?" he said. Halt shrugged.

"Them, or Plainspeople. We can't be sure that some of them aren't in league with the Kalkara. After all, living check by jowl with creatures like that, you might well end up cooperating with them, just to ensure your own safety. And we don't want them getting word there are strangers on the Plain."

"Who are the Plainspeople?" Jenny asked curiously, leaning forward.

Gilan went to answer, then stopped, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. "They're...difficult to explain. We don't really know much about them. Nobody's ever managed to establish any sort of lasting contact with them, but they've never really made a problem of themselves either. In the end, we both sort of try to forget the other exists."

Gilan was unsaddling Blaze, his bay horse. He dropped the saddle to the ground and rubbed the horse down with a handful of the ever-present dry grass.

"You don't think we've been seen already?" he asked. Halt considered the question for a few seconds before answering.

"We might have been. There are just too many unknowns here - where the Kalkara actually have their lair, whether or not the Plainspeople are their allies, whether or not any of them have seen us and reported our presence. But until I know we have been seen, we'll assume we haven't. So, no fire."

Jenny was frowning again. "If you were seen," she asked slowly, "wouldn't you still want to have no fire? Wouldn't it blind you if they decided to attack?"

It was (rather predictably) Gilan who answered her. "It's a matter of knowing how to use the fire," he explained. "It can be just as much a help as a hindrance in a fight, depending on who you're fighting, how much experience you have, and how intuitive you are. But it's as good as a big lit-up sign that screams 'Here I am! Come kill me! if you haven't."

Jenny nodded, and smiled at Gilan, who flushed.

Crowley sniggered. Halt elbowed him gently.

Gilan nodded reluctantly. "You're right of course," he said. "It's just I'd happily kill someone for a cup of coffee."

"Light a fire to brew it," Halt told him, "and you might end up having to do just that."

"I believe that would be a something, Halt," Will said seriously.

"Two somethings, actually," Horace contributed.

Halt glared at them both.

I apologize for the deconstruction of 'unvaryingly'. My spell-checker didn't recognize it as a word (it kept trying to turn it into 'unvarying'), so I felt compelled to add something about that.

Also, I am a giant nerd.