Part 4: In the Meadow One Morning

So far they were holding their positions. Like a traveller who crosses the path of a black bear in a lonely place, Lila kept watching them, not blinking, not turning aside. She edged sideways, until her fingers brushed Katriona's shoulder. More was not necessary. The sound of a sword being removed from its sheath was proof enough of that.

At the same instant that Katriona drew her sword, a kind of fuzzy, intermittent disruption passed in a wave through the uncreatures ranged above them. They still held their position. Lila guessed that wouldn't last much longer.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Katriona, stooped, moving from Elanee to Luan and Eyepatch. They woke and readied themselves more quickly than she had hoped. Even Luan pulled himself upright in near silence.

"There's a gap in the shadows near the river bank," said Elanee close to her ear. The shadows flickered again. Most had bestial forms, all claw and tooth and mandible. But on the right, one was human-shaped. Lila didn't look too closely, in case she knew who it was – or had once been.

"Keep an eye on them for me," she told Elanee. "Don't turn your back on them." She wanted to see the gap for herself. Standing at the western edge of the basin, it was clear that the path down to the river still lay open. Precisely the path they'd been planning to take and there it was, served up to them like meat pie at a tavern. Lines of shadows, about two files deep in living terms, blocked the northern and southern routes along the grassy flood plain. She couldn't see any more shadows waiting in reserve, but that didn't mean they weren't there.

"I don't like it," said Katriona.

"Me neither," said Lila. To the others, she said – was it paranoia to worry that the shadows were listening? "Follow me and cut down whatever gets in your way."

She ran from the hollow between the limestone buttresses and down the slope beyond. Her boots and stockings were lying abandoned beside a mound of scree. Never mind that. Didn't the Aglarondi Knights fight bare-foot through choice? Or perhaps it was the Knights of Alaghôn...

For about twenty yards, she made straight for the river and the west. Rocky soil became soft and springy under her naked skin. To her right and left, the double lines of shadows watching, unmoving. As she reached the midpoint between the hollow and the eastern bank, she wheeled round abruptly, and drew her sabre. Flight turned into a charge. She accelerated. Held the blade in outside guard, hilt loose in her hand, ready for the first rotating cut from shoulder to waist.

At such a moment, it would have been really useful to have a glowing sword surrounded by a numinous aura that could decide the outcome of a battle by its mere presence. Coincidentally, she owned one. What a damn pity she'd left it at home along with her eye-shadow and lip rouge.

She was on them. Bringing down her sabre, she slashed through the first three shadows that stood in her way. Three more. She struck again. Sliced down, up and across. Where the restless patches of cold darkness had been was again the reality of sun on the grass. She sped up, the mellow sunshine of an early summer morning seeping into her right cheek, her heart pounding; the statue head bouncing against her hipbone. She was clear. Still, she ran. There was nothing to do but run. Had the others understood? She was running so hard that she couldn't even hear whether there were footsteps behind her. Were they being surrounded and pulled down like deer? And still, she ran.

Only a fit of coughing brought her to a halt. It doubled her over; she spat phlegm to the side, hacked and choked and wheezed.

Someone slapped her on the back. Eyepatch. Another barefoot warrior. He wasn't breathing too easily himself. Then Elanee came to a stop beside her. Next Luan. And finally Katriona.

Elanee's hair and skin were back to their normal colour. Nor did she seem to have been overly taxed by the sprint.

"You're looking better," Lila managed to gasp at the druid, before forcing herself upright and setting off again at a steady jog, readjusting the straps of her haversack as she went.

Her heart rate sank from the agonizing to the merely uncomfortable. Just as she felt she could keep up the pace for as long as necessary, she found her feet sinking into an inch or more of clinging black mud wherever she set them. For a stretch of half a mile ahead, the green full-bladed grasses became scarce, while clumps of reeds sprouted from the dank earth. The rotting and musty smell of a river bed at low tide spread across the plain and under her nostrils. A dozen streams of Haresrun and Redfell were sucking, squelching, and drawing her back as she strained towards the higher ground. She wasn't even jogging anymore, but engaged in a fight for each step forward.

"I wish that you had brought the Sword of Gith with you," sighed Elanee, as she overtook. "It could have proved most useful."

"You think?" Lila grunted, wondering whether she was too much in pain to be irritated.

"Oh yes," said the druid, looking almost as pleased as Grobnar did if you asked him a question that couldn't be answered with a 'yes' or 'no'. "It might have stopped both ambushes. Even if you did not trust yourself to use it, the sword would have served as a deterrent."

If Lila could have gritted her teeth, she would have. Panting, she felt surprised. It turned out that the burning in her lungs was compatible with feelings of extreme annoyance at the druid's gift for telling the unprettified truth at precisely the wrong time.

Dragging on every shred of air, taking it in through huge gasps as if she was in a rose garden and it was the last night before the end of the universe, she threw herself into the struggle. At last, the ground was becoming more solid. She put on a burst of speed, and was able to overtake Elanee in revenge. The mire lay behind. Haresrun too.

Of course, it couldn't go on. All at once, her anger broke, her strength too, and her legs began shaking. They wrenched her into a kind of hopping walk. Needing to stop, not daring to. And Elanee breezed past her again. In terms of the druid's likeability, the black-out overnight had been a real improvement.

Lila dropped back among the other three humans. It was probably for the best. Officers who led the charge when the enemy was some distance to their rear were vulnerable to having their motives questioned. Speed was not the quality troops most valued in their commanders.

They carried on together in silence, except for the thump thump thump of their feet and their harsh breathing. Eventually, Elanee allowed herself to be absorbed by the group of her four slower companions, as they huffed and puffed around heaps of gritstone moraine that sprawled at intervals across their path like bodies after a battle.

A renewed attack by the shadows would have been quite welcome. Any opportunity to stand still. The eastern flank of Redfell on their right seemed determined to last forever. But why wish them further north? Whatever progress they made was progress in the wrong direction; Crossroad Keep was getting further and further away. All that supported her was the resolution that she wouldn't be the first to crack. She wasn't going to supply Torio or anyone else with yet more material.

Relief came from an unexpected source. Elanee had briefly run ahead of the group, and returned from her excursion with more than an expression of self-satisfaction.

"About a mile ahead," she said, "there is a building."

"What?" said Katriona, moving from a jog to a walk and from a walk to a standstill. Giving thanks to the Gods, Lila copied her sergeant's example. "What...kind of building?" Katriona was so out of breath that she had to pause after every other word. "A sheepfold? A barn? A cottage?"

Elanee shrugged. "I cannot say. It seemed large. It is perhaps a farmhouse of some sort."

"A farm? They'll have food and drink!" Luan whispered eagerly. His hair was stuck to his head with sweat. Lila felt her own forehead, but there was hardly any moisture there. She was too dried-out to sweat.

"Their supplies aren't going to be tainted, are they?" Lila asked. "The taint wouldn't have got inside – for example – beer barrels?"

"Beer barrels!" said Eyepatch, closing his left eye in anticipated rapture.

"I do not know," Elanee replied. "But the farm could be a trap."

"Hear that?" said Katriona, addressing Luan and Eyepatch and, Lila suspected, herself, in intention if not in direction of speech. "No running in their headlong before we've scouted the bounds."

Without debate, but through the mutual consent that derives from mutual exhaustion, they carried on at a walking pace. Lila had to resist the urge to look continuously over her shoulder at the way they'd come. If there were shadows in pursuit, they wouldn't be visible to the naked eye.

It took longer than she'd hoped to come within sight of the building Elanee had spotted. A high wall was the first sign of it, jutting out from behind the last westerly trespass of Redfell. At first, she feared that what lay ahead was a farmhouse in the past tense. Soon, however, the sloping line of a gable emerged, and she realised that what she had taken for the house itself was nothing but the garth wall. Individual beams and chimney stacks could be distinguished, all bright and neat in the morning sun; they looked fantastically normal. After the night she'd had, a gingerbread cottage or hut with chicken legs would have hardly warranted a raised eyebrow.

The garth and its contents stood on a shelf of land a few feet above the floodplain. Instead of curving round in a protective oval, each end of the garth wall approached the valley side, where it shrank and continued up the fell in parallel ascending lines, travelling towards the north-east. For defence at the rear, the farm had to rely on the steepness of the climb, and on the massive rear wall of the farmhouse. No smoke blew from the dozen chimney pots. Was that a warning, or a reassurance?

"Wait," said Lila, reckoning they were close enough. "Elanee, would you...?"

The druid nodded, and slipped away. At full strength, she might have transformed herself into a beast or bird, as Lila had seen her do so often in the past. But today she kept her own form, and relied on the dun colouring of her clothes and on her instincts to lend her discretion.

Lila was able to observe her darting across the floodplain with a crablike gait as far as the long grasses that bordered the river's edge. A crow flew from a young willow on the further bank. She looked away just long enough to ascertain that the crow hadn't been startled by something worse. It was long enough to lose Elanee.

"Where -?" Luan began.

"Shh!" Katriona cut him off without looking away from an alder bush that lay ten yards from the iron gate in the garth wall. Lila stared and stared at the bush. Once, she thought she saw a flash of russet hair. But it could just have been a beam of light shining on last year's dead leaves.

Her attention drifted from her immediate surroundings to the group's immediate future. "Don't travel at dawn and dusk," he'd said. Well, they'd survived the dawn, barely. They had about twelve hours to get to a secure position; no one would escape the next sunset trap. That much was sure. They could cross the river and cut straight across the country to the Neverwinter Road, and its somewhat regular patrols. That would mean hoping to evade whatever snare the shadows had been trying to lure them into at the hollow. And it would mean crossing the river.

Hunter's Brook was not nearly as narrow as it had seemed from the slopes of Haresrun; added to that, it was murky, deep and flowed past its banks with a deceptive speed. No lazy river of the plains was this. Thus far, she hadn't noticed any piles of tree trunks or unused joists lying helpfully abandoned on a spit of land.

Elanee stepped from a fold in Redfell's western flank. Precisely the direction from which Lila hadn't expected the druid to approach. She could teach Neeshka a thing or two about stealth. Hells, she might be able to catch Bishop out. Not when he was sober, but – well, he was rarely sober these days.

"Nothing," said Elanee. "I watched and listened. I felt no trace of our enemy. There was-" she paused, frowned. "-there was something. Something that did not belong to the Shadow Empire."

"It could be the farmers," suggested Luan.

"No," said Elanee. "There are no dead creatures there, and no living ones either, save for the skaters on the garth pool and the wrens in the fruit trees."

"Good," said Eyepatch. "That means there's no one to set up a racket when I eat all their food and drink all their drink."

Katriona gave him a sharp look, but didn't upbraid him. For her part, Lila was imagining a larder full of biscuits and cheese and bottles of sweet cordial and many other delightful things. Apricots preserved in brandy. Smoked fish and salted ham. Ginger cake. She pressed her hands against her stomach. Oh gods, the thought of a slice of pie with pickles and wine...

"We can leave a note..." said Luan. He was eyeing the garth gate like a dog watching his master devour a sausage. "And it's war-justice, like the extra taxes. They can't hold it against us."

"Absolutely," said Lila, although left with the strong impression that Luan had never met any of the local farmers. Those she'd encountered would, if offered a hundred coin for nothing, have wanted to know why it wasn't a thousand. "Come on."

Sabre bared, just in case of surprises, she led the group towards the elaborate cast iron gate. Behind the gate, she could see a cobbled path winding towards a farmhouse built on a quasi-manorial scale. The panelled wooden door was bordered by two statues of elven hunters; one carried a bow, the other a wand and a knife. The central mass of the building rose up for three storeys with no windows at ground level, arrow slits on the first story, and round glazed windows at the top, behind which the true living quarters must lie. So far, so promising: there was plenty of room for a kitchen.

One yard before the gate, she stopped. Flat on the ground and with sharp edges of clearly recent manufacture was an engraved flagstone. It was made from the same basalt that was used to reinforce the Keep's outer wall. Her first thought was to wonder who was buried under it. Then she read the message, cut into the surface in squat, forceful characters.

THIS DWELLING IS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF KNIGHT CAPTAIN LILA FARLONG.

NEITHER THIEF NOR MONSTER NOR ANY INTERLOPER SHALL CROSS THIS THRESHOLD WITH IMPUNITY.

TRAVELLER, TAKE HEED.

STRANGER, BEWARE.

BANDIT, ENTER AT YOUR PERIL.

Fucking damnation. She remembered now. How five families in the Keep's vicinity had refused the evacuation order for fear of looters. It had seemed a good idea at the time to persuade the mostly elderly and intransigent inhabitants of remote farms to leave for safety, offering to ward their houses. A party of young mages from the Cloaktower had done the actual warding, but the man she'd asked to design the wards was...

In a fury of hunger and disappointment, she struck the garth wall. With her gauntlets, she packed quite a punch. But that was nothing in comparison with the force that knocked her from her feet, and swept her several yards back, so that she landed in a heap on top of Luan and Eyepatch. Bars of light were glowing along the joins in the old garth wall. Behind the gate itself, she saw as she picked herself up, there was something forming. Humanoid and muscular, but consisting of displaced swirls of colour, without any facial features save for a pair of white eyes that glared much as its designer was wont to.

"What is it?" Katriona asked.

"I'm not sure," said Lila, helping her two soft landings to stand up. "I've never seen anything exactly like it before. It might be a magical golem."

"Is it one of the evacuation measures? Can we get past it?"

"Yes, it is, and no, we can't. Not unless there's a loophole built into the enchantment."

Lila stepped carefully onto the flagstone. She kept her eyes on the golem-creature. It stayed where it was, arms folded, implacable.

"I am Lila Farlong," she said, enunciating each word separately, though her knowledge of arcane creations did not extend to an understanding of their perception of the material world. It might not matter if she spoke clearly or spoke gobbledygook. "The Knight Captain of Crossroad Keep. Let me pass."

The golem let its arms fall to its sides. Her breath caught on the sudden onrush of hope. Could the golem actually have been enchanted to recognise her?

No.

"No one may pass." There was a voice, which came from everywhere, save from the golem's mouth, for it had none. And the voice was really voices. Five young, and in the background, lurking under them, the hoarse echo of someone familiar. "No one may pass, except those that bear the blood of the family. The key is blood. Go, stranger."

"How about a message? Can you at least send a message to the Keep?"

"Blood of the family is the key. The key is blood."

She squeezed her eyes shut. Damn you, Ammon Jerro, she thought. Damn you. Couldn't you have altered your spell just a little bit? Couldn't some part of you have decided to do things differently?

She stepped back from the gate. Was there a means of altering the magical defences so that they sent a warning to Crossroad Keep? Sand would have known, though if he were here, they could have sent out a hidden signal from the moment the first alarm sounded. Next time she'd lure him out of the library with promises of an all-expenses-paid trip to the classiest magic shops in Neverwinter. Let there be a next time...

Not wanting to see the expressions of her companions, or for them to see hers, she watched the river that sped so assuredly southwards. Angry at herself for her dejection, she made herself trace the river's northern pathway. It couldn't stay deep and dark for long. All the hills on its eastern side were lofty, blue and grey at their tops. The far horizon was a great brown fell that stretched from west to east, a seemingly unavoidable barrier from which only mountain streams would flow.

As she was mastering herself, she listened to the conversation going on behind her, waiting to see if she would have to intervene.

"Blood of the family..." Luan murmured.

"Pity they're not here," said Eyepatch. "I'd make sure that thing there got what it wanted." He might be joking.

"It wouldn't need to be much, I reckon," continued Luan. "Could you be kin to the folk that lived here, sergeant. Not mam or sister, like, but cousin? A really distant cousin."

Katriona didn't answer immediately. Then she muttered. "I suppose it's possible," and Lila heard the sound, which had become unmistakeable, of steel scraping on steel.

"No," she said swiftly. Spinning round, she saw Katriona walking towards the gate, her right hand holding a dagger, her left arm bare. "No," she said again. She pushed the knot of horror that had risen in her at the sight to one side, as she reached for the words to convince them that Katriona mustn't carry out her intention. "The spell couldn't be tricked that easily. I know the man that made it. Blood would mostly like be only the first stage."

"But surely it's worth trying?" said Katriona. The blood she was so willing to shed flushed through her cheeks.

"No," said Lila, "It's not. Believe me, it's not."

"We need more provisions. We'll be able to get back to the Keep much faster if we're marching on full stomachs and with enough to drink."

"The Keep is just a few hours away. But we'll never reach it if we throw our lives away on these wards for the sake of a hunk of bread that probably isn't even there. We're so close now!"

"We were so close, until the shadows drove us miles off course. This diversion will cost us at least two hours, perhaps much more."

"And those shadows are all the more reason to press on and not tarry about here."

"I don't bleed slowly," Katriona snapped back with acid in her voice.

Lila scowled.

"Er, Knight Captain? Sergeant?" It was Luan. He looked embarrassed to see his superiors quarrelling; Eyepatch looked amused. However trying the circumstances, Lila regretted throwing away the last tattered fragments of the illusion of control.

"Yes?"

"Elanee is waving to you." He pointed. Elanee was standing near the north-western section of the garth wall. As Lila and the others caught up with her, she beckoned them along the wall to the place where the ascent of the fell began. An area of grass a couple of feet wide seemed dirty – smudged. Stooping, in obedience to Elanee's direction, she saw that so did some of the stones at the wall's base. She ran a finger across them, as gently as she could to avoid another flying lesson. The tip of the finger came back covered in black powder. Ash.

"Something got fried by those wards pretty bad," Eyepatch observed.

"A shadow," said Elanee. "But it was not the enchantment that drove it away. Look."

Growing all along the outer rim of the garth in such profusion that Lila was amazed she hadn't noticed it earlier was a thick line of shrubs, no higher than dandelions, and of a similar form, though with tiny seed pods in place of the lion's fuzz of teeth.

"Do you recognize them?" Elanee asked, allowing a smile to sneak into the question, for all that her face was as earnest as ever.

"Can we pass on the lesson in botany?" said Katriona, still pink-faced from the argument. "What is it?"

Elanee ignored her. "Lila. You must remember."

Uneasy to be the sole object of the druid's unblinking green-eyed stare, Lila played for time. She plucked one long leaf from among the hundreds that were thriving at her feet, and examined it. Variegated colours, and edges that a very tidy caterpillar appeared to have gnawed on in regularly diminishing increments. Nature was strange. Then she knelt down and pressed on one of the pods. It burst open with such a defiant pop that Lila wondered if the plant's sap consisted of some marvellous organic parallel of smokepowder. A dozen miniature black pearls spilled out onto her thumb and forefinger. And the smell that rose off them...she remembered that smell instantly.

"Meadefloss," she said. Danan Starling had held the root clasped in his cold little fist at West Harbour. Elanee nodded.

"The warlock sought me out to examine me on its properties and growing conditions some months ago. Now I understand why."

"And what are its properties?" Katriona demanded. She hadn't been at West Harbour, and was no doubt mystified.

"I was about to ask the same question," said Lila. "I thought you had to be dead to benefit from it."

"A single species of plant can have many effects, not all recorded in the books of knowledge. Not even in the Blacklake Archives. I would advise you against consuming the root. It's poisonous to the living."

She pulled up a specimen to reveal a thick, twisting root as black as the seeds. That was what Danan had held. His mother must have kept some in her store of medicinal herbs. Had she given a root to her youngest son at the very last, after realizing there was no escape, and no rescue coming? Lila felt herself staring down into the subterranean passages where her mind had wandered for too long the previous year.

"What about the seeds?" she asked, careful not to look at Elanee's eyes or at the black root lying on her palm.

"Highly poisonous." Lila made a great show of ridding herself of the seeds, wiping her hands on her breeches as an ineffectual but elaborate precaution. "To snipes and sparrows," Elanee finished.

As Luan and Eyepatch laughed, the deadness that had been gathering in her heart seemed to fracture in response to the men's mirth, whether it was genuine or not. "And the leaves?" she asked.

"Are supposed to have a mildly restorative effect. More importantly, they and the stems are edible, and contain moisture. Every part of the plant is harmful to shadows. This is the one thing in the whole valley you can eat that is certainly pure."

"You can still feel it then? The taint? The power of the King of Shadows?"

When Elanee answered, the smile had left her voice; so much so that Lila wondered if it had ever really been there at all. "Oh yes, Lila. He is here. More than ever."

They all stuffed their pockets and pouches with the leaves and stems, as Elanee instructed. While Katriona turned northwards, and the two soldiers with her, Lila chewed on a bitter stem, grateful for every drop of sap, and waited for Elanee. The druid was harvesting the plants, but not for their foliage. It was the roots that she was tucking within her pouch of thick bear-hide. Clearly, it was not just Lila who believed in being prepared for all eventualities.

The group hugged the bank of the river for the next part of their journey. Perhaps it lasted an hour, or half that, or twice as much. As a reason, Lila cited the need to find a good fording place. She was also eager to stay out of the shadow cast by the peak that had thrust itself up behind Redfell. Katriona identified it as Bald Kelin. Its grey severity and the harshness of its crags made it look like one of the Sword Mountains that had been dumped in the wrong place by an inattentive god.

The ground became firmer, and grass meadows replaced meadows of reeds, until Lila found herself climbing over a stone wall into a field that had apparently been used for grazing. Over the field, which was empty of sheep and cows, then over another wall, and another abandoned field. And another. And another. To their left, Hunter's Brook continued to be wide, dark and unhelpfully deep. As they moved further north, the river sank further away from the travellers, so that by the fourth field the banks were fifteen feet deep and getting deeper.

After surmounting yet another dry stone wall, it was with the indignation of surprise that Lila saw, not a field with a wall on the further side, but a field with a purple blaze of heather driving through it. And over the river – there was a bridge.

Lila strode towards it, delighted. Finally, to be homeward bound! And without the need to entrust herself to the cold waters of Hunter's Brook. She stopped at the edge of the heather, and turned her face in thanks to the sun. She only realized what she'd almost walked into when she went over to inspect the bridge. It was a much larger structure than would be found in this half-wild half-settled land. She didn't understand why no one in the group had spotted it earlier. Its exterior was formed from uniform stone blocks and mortar. One hexagonal pillar delved down into the water to provide support. Stained marble slabs lined the crown and balustrade.

"This bridge – it's definitely not the one that was here before," said Katriona. "The one I crossed wasn't so much a bridge as a pile of rocks."

"Does it matter?" said Luan. He shifted from foot to foot in impatience to be on the move again. A few moments ago, and Lila would have been champing at the bit along with him, but that was before she'd realized what she was looking at.

To her right, the trail of heather flared on, as far as the side of Bald Kelin, where it terminated amidst scree and loose earth dislodged from the higher slopes by the last winter's storms. Once on the western bank, the heather, now mingled with bilberry bushes and cotton-sedge, advanced westwards, disappearing into the mouth of a narrow valley edged with trees that broke off from the one they were in as if it was itself a tributary of the river.

"It's not a bridge, Luan," she said. "It's a viaduct." He looked blank. They probably didn't have many viaducts in New Leaf. "It was built more to carry a canal than people."

The temptation to glance eastward nagged at her to see if anything had changed in the pyramid of scree that had tumbled to the hill's foot. Or to see if, perchance, the corners of an ancient earthwork might be just peeping around its edges.

"So what should we do?" said Katriona. "The way I see it, we can cross this bridge – or viaduct, if that's what it is – or we try to cross the river right here – the only other choice is to keep going north."

"North-east, now," said Elanee. "The brook is curving eastwards, back towards its source in the mountains."

In step with Elanee and Katriona, she moved to the bank, and looked at the river fifteen feet below. The banks weren't that steep. All five of the group were in decent enough shape to cope with the scramble on both sides; and if they held hands as they crossed, that should be a sufficient defence against currents and missteps. The meadefloss should help them recover from any side-effects of their dip in the claimed waters. Yet she hesitated before stating her case to the others.

"Don't Sir Darmon's lands begin somewhere near here?" She knew that one of the young knight's portfolio of estates in theory shared a border with the northern limit of the old territory that was attached to the Keep. In theory, because it had been decades if not centuries since the old boundaries had possessed a toehold in reality. Reality was brigands, village militias, and broken roads.

Elanee shrugged. Lines on maps drawn by generations of long dead humans in Neverwinter wouldn't be of much relevance to her. But Katriona looked interested.

"Yes – in fact, we could be in Darmon's lands already. The border lay between Redfell and Bald Kelin." She paused. When she spoke again, her mood had changed completely. She glowed with excitement. "He's never bothered with the dales, but on their north-western edge, he's got a tower house. Calls it 'Fort Revier'. She pulled a face in disdain, though enthusiasm quickly took over her again. "It's not ten miles from here. Less even. It could be five miles away."

"And would it be manned? Supplied?" Her own excitement was rising in response to Katriona's. Lila twisted her hands together behind her back so that if they shook, it wouldn't be visible.

"In these times? In that place? I'm sure of it. I even heard him bragging about it when he visited Crossroad Keep. Has walls twice as thick as ours, he said." If Katriona was right, then they were practically saved. They would have strong walls around them long before sunset. The shadows that were probably lurking in ambush to the south could go on lurking in vain.

Thinking back to the maps she'd studied both alone and in company with one or another of her friends, she thought she could recall a tower house a few miles west of the Neverwinter Road. Hadn't she and Neeshka laughed themselves sick at the name? Dun Leikbotty, or something of the sort. She couldn't blame Darmon for changing it, if it was indeed the same Fort Revier that Katriona had mentioned.

She flexed her arms and shoulder blades. The prospect of a bath in the river no longer gave her cause for dread.

"Luan, you cursed nitwit!" barked Eyepatch. She looked around in confusion.

"But it's safe – Captain – see!" Luan was calling to her from the opposite bank. He must have slunk across the bridge while they were talking. Blast the boy. Nitwit was too weak a term for the provocation. And it was just the kind of thing she'd have done in his position, if she'd been his age. She still wanted to strangle him.

No shadows had appeared. They might yet, of course.

"Should we follow him?" Elanee asked.

"I suppose it can't cause any more problems," said Lila. "Yes. We'll follow the daft muppet."

The bridge was about twelve feet wide. Eight of those feet were full of heather, bilberries, and young gorse bushes. Raised paths of small, flattened cobble stones ran along the left and right sides close to the balustrades. The path on the right was cracked in some places, and seemed to threaten to drop any unwise burden directly into the river along with a load of masonry to see them on their way. The left side, where Lila walked, felt as solid as the Blacklake Bridge in Neverwinter. Despite the pleasing smoothness of the old pebbles under her naked feet, she left the path as soon as she could, though the cobbles did not end with the bridge. At intervals overgrown, they nevertheless continued beside the ex-canal for as far as the eye could see.

In the background she heard Katriona upbraiding Luan, but her thoughts were already tangled up with the group's next move. There was really only one possible choice.

"What did you think you were doing, man? If I'd known you had cheese sauce for brains, I'd have paid Edario to make a suit of armour for the smartest of the castle mice, and put it in charge of the wagon instead of you. Don't you go getting any ideas again. If you feel one creeping up on you, run it past someone brighter than you first. A dead badger would do."

"I don't see what I did wrong!" Luan shouted. "We're where we ought to be. You were all just hanging around there arguing – you wouldn't have noticed if the shadows were doing a barn-dance around you."

"Was this all your training brought you? A tantrum in hostile territory after ignoring your officers? You're too young for this. You should never have been recruited." Ouch. Katriona could really twist the knife when she wanted too. When Luan spoke again, he sounded close to tears.

"I just want to go home. Even if you don't – even if you don't care if you die out here -"

"Luan," said Katriona with less of the drill sergeant about her, "We all want to get back to the Keep. But rushing off headlong into who-knows-what isn't going to help us." The squall was calming. Though storms still rose and fell in the voices behind Lila, the initial violence was past.

Ahead of her, the dry canal headed westwards into a steep-sided valley. A gorge might be a more appropriate term. Couldn't go north because the hill there was too steep. Didn't want to go south because the enemy was waiting there. That left the west. Without waiting to argue her decision with the others, she set off. She was going to rush headlong into who-knows-what.

It did come as a relief when she heard the group hurry to catch up. A headlong rush was much more fun when in company. Well, it could depend on the company.

"I do not like it, Lila," said Elanee. "We should leave this path and that —,"she indicated the strip of undergrowth that might once have transported goods across the heartlands of the Illefarn Empire.

"Yes," sighed Lila. "But we can't climb out of here yet. We've no rope, and the western face near the river was almost as bad. Believe me, I don't like it more than you. We'll get out of here just as soon as we find somewhere scalable that won't break our necks or have rocks falling on our heads."

Elanee seemed to accept her judgement, in that she didn't argue. Lila half-wished she would, or one of the others. But they were simply glad to be moving towards somewhere safe. The problem was, on this occasion she didn't trust herself. It felt as if every decision she'd made over the last couple of days had been wrong.

The gully was narrow, and partly filled with trees and bushes. The travellers were obliged to walk on the cobbled path, since there was nowhere else that would allow them to make easy progress save the canal itself. After about a mile, Lila crossed to the northern edge – or bank, as she increasingly thought of it – to inspect the rock face there more closely. Her foot sank two feet below the level of the path, and as she took another step, mud wormed and well up between her toes.

After reaching the other path, she learned nothing about the cliff, except that it was too high, had few ledges, and a large number of overhangs, all of which she had known before already. What she had not noticed at first was the iron ring sticking out of the rock just above the ground. Another mile, and she had counted fourteen of them.

The tendrils of weeping willows sagged in green despondency and brushed against the faces of her companions who still walked on the left-hand path. The moorland plants were gone from the canal trench; at present, it was full of grass and nettles, occasionally interrupted by pools of stagnant rainwater. With every pool they passed, the humidity seemed to rise.

As Lila undid the ties of her jerkin and the laces near the neck of her tunic, she heard footsteps not far behind her. A willow tree, larger and older than all the previous ones, lay at a bend in the cutting. At first, Lila assumed that one of her companions had decided they were tired of being bashed in the eye unnecessarily, and had crossed the former canal to walk on her side.

She plodded onwards. A breeze chilled the nape of her neck. Shuddering, she looked around. There was no one on the path behind her. On the other side of the canal, Katriona, Luan, Elanee and Eyepatch were walking in single file, swatting flies and branches aside as they went. Feeling sick to the stomach, and keeping a hand on her sabre hilt, she moved on. Although she listened with an intensity that would have impressed Kana, the footsteps didn't recur. But she didn't relax her guard. The dingier alleys of Neverwinter had taught her the hard way not to dismiss unexplained noises.

"Did you hear that?" said Eyepatch. His phlegmatic manners for once couldn't disguise his unease. "A bell. I heard a bell ringing somewhere behind us."

"I heard nothing," said Elanee coolly. "What sort of bell? A temple bell?"

"Naught like that. It sounded just like – your regular hand-bell, right? Like the one that girl Shandra used to have to summon the geese for feeding time. You really heard nothing?"

They all shook their heads, Lila vigorously. She didn't want to add to the sense of panic. Everyone was already walking faster as a result of the bell that no one but Eyepatch had heard.

A hundred yards further on, the cutting grew wider. Some kind of long dark shape lay across the whole canal. Lila thought it might be a tree trunk.

"Hooves," said Elanee. "I heard hooves."

"Where?" Lila asked. As expected, Elanee pointed back towards the river valley. "Can you still hear them?"

Luan drew his sword. "Should we run?"

"No," Katriona replied, though the question had been addressed to Lila, but drawing her sword likewise. "Running targets are easier to pick off. Just keep your wits about you – if you have any, that is," she said, smiling with casual grimness. At times like this, the woman had a charisma that set her apart. It wasn't knightly valour, or the kind of dark light that gave men of Bishop's stamp their attraction. It was essence of drill sergeant, refined, distilled, and more reassuring than a draught of whiskey.

Her sabre in her right hand, and her knife in the left, Lila advanced on the ambiguous shape that lay ahead. It wasn't a tree trunk. Nor did it have a nest of shadows lying in wait behind it. What she had first sighted after rounding the bend in the cutting proved to be the upper rim of two vast wooden doors. As the twin paths went past them, they descended a slope and continued on, as before, but at a level ten feet lower than they had been. The same was true of the canal. Another pair of gates lay on their sides in a deep pool of water, having apparently rotted away from their supports.

The canal trench had been full of earth before the upright pair of gates; after them, and ten feet below the travellers, water was everywhere. Still water, patched with flowering lily pads, and lined with bulrushes. It was a beautiful sight, and sad as well. A frog's croak echoed around the pool beneath the gates. Lila caught a glimpse of its back legs before it vanished below the surface with a very unspectral plop.

"Why did they build doors here?" Luan asked in bafflement. Lila couldn't help; she hadn't seen anything of the kind either. What did a load of water want with two sets of damn enormous gates? And gates were expensive! The new ones she'd ordered built at the Keep to replace the old pair blown up by Qara cost as much as a year's bread and board for a platoon.

"I'm from Sembia," Eyepatch volunteered unexpectedly. "Leastways, I was born there, and it's full to choking with canals – well, in the south it is. They use 'em there to stop the fields from flooding, and for trade too. This thing here is called a lock, and those are lock gates. They let boats go up and down. Water never flows uphill, right? Not unless there's a mage-type casting a spell to trick it into thinking down is up and up is down. But with these gates, you don't need spells. Patience and elbow grease, sure, but not magic. Mystra could hand in her notice tomorrow, and no one in Daerlun would even get their feet wet."

"That sounds mad," said Luan. "Wouldn't the water eat through the wood a ten-day after the gates were in place?"

"These gates are a good deal older than a ten-day," said Lila. "For now. I'm not sure how much longer they'll stay like that." A few pieces of rusted metal lay at her feet. She guessed they had once belonged to a winching mechanism of some sort that had controlled the gates.

"Stairs," said Elanee.

"What?" Lila had no idea what the elf was talking about.

"Stairs. There are stairs behind you. Cut into the cliff face."

It was true. Narrow and worn, with nothing so luxurious as a handrail; it was no wonder that she had failed to see them initially. But stairs nonetheless.

Her four companions crossed the canal gingerly, although the section right before the lock gates was as thickly packed and dry as the paths.

"Up?" Lila asked. Ammon hadn't explicitly told her to shun ancient staircases. Though she suspected he would want her to, anyway. But this one led in the right direction, northwards, aloft and back onto high ground.

"Up," Katriona confirmed. She went first, followed by Eyepatch, Elanee and Luan. Lila brought up the rear. As she put her foot on the lowest step, she took a last look at the scene of peaceful decay in the cutting. At the pools green with algae, and the aged masonry and fallen gates. Twenty yards further along the left-hand path, a grey heron stalked from a forest of bulrushes. It must have been there all the time, and moved so little that no one had remarked its presence. It resumed its hunched vigil beside a tiled drainage channel.

The ascent was slow and long. Each step was more suited to a child's foot than that of a human adult. Only Elanee was able to climb them upright; Lila was immediately forced to rely on her hands and knees to keep herself stable. Halfway up the cliff, the roots of a barren thornbush had left the stairs in disarray, rupturing their surfaces and transforming them into a chequerboard of grips and slips.

Lila had to wait for what seemed an age, bent double and clinging onto the step ahead of her, looking neither down nor up, before it was her turn to cross. Afterwards, to her relief, the climb became easier. The steps became a little broader, and regular. When she pulled herself onto an expanse of soft grass at the top, she discovered that someone had even placed a marker stone at the head of the stairs.

She stood up. They were at the edge of a huge plateau. It spread out before her, a blend of field and moorland, gently declining towards a line of trees whose crowns formed a rising diagonal, driven into skew-whiff growth by the wind. Beyond, the plateau rose again, ending in a tumulus on which a large house stood.

"This must be Deramoor," said Katriona, grinning outright. "From the northern end, we should be able to see Fort Revier. Perhaps the Neverwinter Road too."

"It's nice up here," said Luan. 'Nice' was not the word Lila would have chosen, but she knew what he meant. She spread her arms wide and leant back, turning her face to the sun. A mild breeze cooled her skin. Foxgloves shook their purple heads amongst green and golden blades of grass, cornflower and yarrow and other meadow flowers unknown to her. Above her, the sky was pure blue, as blue as only a perfect summer's day could be. The aches and pains that had been tormenting her fled.

"What do you think, Elanee?" she asked. "Is this an improvement?"

"Anything is an improvement on that tainted gorge," the druid replied.

"Can you feel his power up here?"

Elanee shook her head, unsmiling. "I feel nothing."

Deramoor felt like an island in a rough sea. The hills of the east and south rolled towards them as Lila stared out at the vista from the cliff's brink. She recognised the conical top of Bald Kelin, Redfell's furrowed slopes and the flat brow of Haresrun. Further west were more hills that she didn't know, nor much cared to, though she knew that if she walked west then south for ten miles over ridges of heather and peat, she'd find herself on the summit of Marlside, as familiar to her as the beer and steamed pudding in her uncle's tavern, and be able to look down on the turrets and battlements of Crossroad Keep.

"I'm sure they're back already," said Katriona, following Lila's gaze.

"Hm?"

"The men. They fled into farmland south of the road. Haven't had any hills to climb. They're probably having lunch in the mess right now."

"You really think so?" said Lila, recalling the innumerable shadows that writhed in the setting sun all across the Great East Road.

"They'll be fine," said Katriona."After all," she added, "I trained them. And Draygood's got his head screwed on the right way. He'll keep them in order, I don't doubt."

"If you're right, there'll be search parties or scouts setting out. But they'll think we're dead, at the Keep. Last seen surrounded and horrifically outnumbered, about to be mown down."

"Unlikely. They know you too well, Lila." Katriona smiled, a glint in her eye. "And they know me too. They won't give us up for lost just yet."

A heat haze lay over the summits of the hills. Closer, by a clump of thorn trees, small birds were fluttering to and from their nests. For now, Lila found it easy to accept her sergeant's confidence as entirely right and justified. She smiled back. "I believe you. Okay, so it's north over Deramoor, and then down and west towards Fort Revier."

After waiting for Eyepatch to return from emptying his bladder behind a bush – how it was possible that his body had any moisture left to lose was a mystery to her – the group set off again. She didn't trouble herself with thoughts about what might be in the kitchen of the house that overlooked their hike through the blossoming heath. Most probably the house was deserted, the cupboards empty. In any case, she had a new fantasy to propel her tired feet onward: herself and the other four being ushered into a whitewashed old tower house by a cluster of astonished guards in the livery of Neverwinter. 'Captain Farlong!' one of them would say. 'This is a surprise. What brings you here?'

Perhaps Darmon himself would be there. He'd attempted to pay court to her once, sending gifts to amuse her. A parrot. A strange kind of drum from the Spine of the World. A string of Calim pearls. His interest had arisen shortly after Nasher had presented her with the Keep; the tokens of his affection – less the parrot, whom Neeshka now owned, and whom she called Helm – ended up being sold off along with many other unsolicited presents from strategically-minded suitors to pay the builders. She thought suddenly of Ammon, who'd granted her his brother's old sabre on long loan.

It was a pity about Darmon. About his avarice or political single-mindedness or whatever it was. But if Fort Revier was as, and where, she hoped it would be, all would be forgotten. He would be restored in her estimation to the laughing knight who'd taken his men out to drink in The Sunken Flagon, and footed every copper of the bill himself. For months afterwards, she'd wanted to be Darmon.

"What are you going to do when you get back to the barracks?" she heard Eyepatch say as he ambled beside Luan.

"Why are you asking?" Luan didn't sound perfectly trusting.

"Don't look at me like that. It's not a game. I'm just curious, is all."

"I don't see why. I won't do anything special. Maybe write to my family so they know I'm okay. And then read. That lad as works for Aldanon gave me a book from the library. A soldier's diary from fifty years ago. I thought he was mad when he gave it to me, but I've ended up really getting into it...it's the way he's interested in everything and everyone. Everyday things count as much with him as battles, and the men digging the privies have as much to say as the officers. You feel you're there, and he's sitting by a fire on campaign and telling you all about his life."

Eyepatch snorted. "It's not your mate in the library who's mad! Lad, you are a soldier. What do you want to read about someone else in the same line of work as you? Here's what you should do: get back to the old castle, and ask for leave, starting A.S.A.P. Then you take yourself off to Neverwinter or Waterdeep or anywhere with a few good taverns, and you take the prettiest girl you see there on your knee and tell her your story. About fighting shadows, and all that."

"I'd rather read," said Luan.

"Read!" Eyepatch shook his head in exasperation, and turned to Lila for support. "He just wants to read, and there's women up and down the country crying out for want of him. Isn't that a selfish thing? Go on, Captain, what do you say?"

A pink fog was spreading along Luan's neck. "I don't like the women in the taverns," he muttered.

Lila smiled, but didn't answer, not wanting to involve herself too closely in Eyepatch's banter. She wasn't sure if it was headed towards procurement or matchmaking.

"So what are you going to do when you get back to the Keep?" she asked him to deflect his current train of thought.

Eyepatch grinned. His face creased into a hundred lines of wry amusement. "Oh. you know me, Captain... I'm going to say my prayers and go to bed, like a good boy..."

"I wouldn't have imagined anything else," she said, and winced at the dry ache in her throat. She chewed on a wodge of meadefloss leaf and stem; it didn't make her less thirsty, but it did have a soothing influence on her desiccated larynx.

They were approaching the trees. Rowan and aspen, mainly. The belt of spindly woodland was thicker than it had seemed from a distance. Its floor was composed of moss, and earth, and rotting pieces of wood. Despite the gales that the trees had endured, they had still pushed out a fine thick crop of leaves, making the most of their brief highland summer.

Hanging from many of the branches were peculiar charms: a ring of wood, not more than an inch thick, suspended by a leather thong, and with a primitive face cut out of the centre. Nothing more complex than eyes and a mouth. On some the mouth turned upwards in a smile, on others plaintively downward. Lila reckoned there must be more than two hundred of the things in that part of the wood alone, and, while some might have been left there yesterday, the more shrunken, worm-eaten heads could have been turning in the hilltop winds for as long as she'd been been alive.

"Carregs," said Katriona. "I made them when I was a child to hang in the orchard. But I used turnip more often than wood. You could get more detail in without the splinters and cracks."

"I made them too," said Luan. "But in New Leaf they're called heegies. And I cut out suns on mine, not faces." He paused. "We'll make another the next time I go back, me and my sister. It was fun."

"Why make the things at all?" said Lila. It had slowly dawned on her, after leaving her mad little swamp village, that weirdness was by no means monopolized by West Harbour. Every string of houses numerous enough to have a name would also be guarding a dark secret, a collective delusion, or a kind of shared blind-spot. In Neverwinter, for example, there was an ill-kempt old man who insisted on living in an outdoor privy, and over time the locals had accepted this state of affairs as entirely normal, looking askance at travellers who suggested that the man should be restored to his natural habitat, that was to say, to an asylum.

"Tradition, I think," said Luan. "It's what we've always done." Lila was glad this macabre tradition hadn't crossed into the merelands. The grinning, leering, sobbing faces wouldn't have done much to lighten the sour milk fogs that spurled out of the pools, and mingled with the sea mists.

"Yes, but why? What's the point?"

"I dunno that there is one. Does there have to be?"

Lila couldn't answer that. Had she been keeping company with officers and mages too much, she wondered, to train her to look at once for a clear purpose behind every act? Dancing didn't have a lot of point to it either, or drinking wine from Tethyr instead of cut-price from Amn, but she had still done both.

"My grandmother said I should say a prayer when I hung a new carreg up on a tree," said Katriona. "Not to any god by name. Just to whichever was listening."

That made a kind of sense, though by the standards of the Neverwinter temples, the practice would be judged as extremely heterodox. Priests tended to view piety as being best expressed through donations of coin, the larger the better. These ornaments weren't a natural part of modern religion. What did the gods want with unlucrative trinkets?

"We are treading on prayers," said Elanee. She was right. The mulch that had gathered on the floor was doubtless fed by these offerings, decayed smiles crumbling under the press of each footstep.

Sharp juniper blended into the boisterous smell of sheep and of – something else. Clear of the trees was a field of short-cropped grass. A flock of about forty sturdy sheep along with numerous lambs of that spring's vintage were the mowers who kept the field well-trimmed. As the ewes saw the travellers appear on the border of their territory, they set up a bawling, and the lambs who had been daring to run around the bracken-topped knolls to the east came racing back to their mothers, arriving straight at their teats, and tugging and glugging with all the power of their little bodies.

"Anyone here milked a ewe before?" Lila asked.

"Of course," said Katriona. "But a better question is – anyone caught a ewe before? There's a reason shepherds have dogs and sheepfolds."

"There are five of us," said Lila. "I'm sure two humans, or a human and an elf must be worth as much as one sheepdog." Katriona's eyelashes trembled, and her mouth creased in what might be the foretaste of some tart pleasure.

"We will see," she croaked. Despite the scepticism, Lila guessed she'd be as game as the rest of them with a drink of fresh milk as the prize.

First they had to reach the field. A large dry ditch was in the way. Not a canal, thankfully. It was probably an alternative to a wall for a farmer who hadn't fancied lugging more stone up from the local quarry than he absolutely had to.

"Be careful," said Elanee, pointing to something that lay just where Lila had been going to put her foot. It was a rusting trap. The folding kind, with teeth. This one wouldn't have posed any threat to her, however. Its iron jaws had already snapped shut around some small animal, of which only the bones remained.

"A rat," said Elanee. "It was a rat."

"Extreme, this trap, don't you think?" said Lila.

"You think the farmers should just let the predators carry off their lambs?" Katriona drawled. "I'd expect her-" she meant Elanee "- to think that, but not you."

"I've seen these things being sold by the armourer's guild. They're supposed to be able to break a cavalry charge."

"Doesn't mean they can't work on foxes too," said Katriona.

Once in the ditch, Lila detected the smell she'd noticed earlier. It was stronger this time. Nor had it escaped the others. The nervous way they glanced around and twitched their fingers told her that. She followed her nose a short way along the ditch, and discovered the source; it was the stinking remains of a lamb. The carcass was open, and the guts within were blackening. Anything might have been responsible for the creature's death: sickness, a fall, a wild beast, a bad-tempered ewe.

Lila quickly looked away, and climbed into the field, where the living animals grazed and bleated. No one mentioned the lamb. Instead, they moved towards the flock.

"What about that one?" A plump ewe with one lamb was tearing up the grass a little distance away from her cohort.

"As good as another," said Katriona, before they split up and, each person holding their arms wide, encircled the lamb and the ewe. As they closed ranks, the ewe realized what was happening, and bolted through a gap to freedom, the lamb close behind.

They tried again with another ewe, this one next to the flock. It and its companions took flight to a far corner of the field near a fence that rounded the foot of the tumulus.

"Elanee? You really can't do anything?" said Lila.

"My spells have not returned," she replied. "I fear that even if they had, I would have no power to control their behaviour. The spells I prepare are aimed at defending us against dire wolves and mountain bears. Not against sheep."

Lila really wanted that drink. She normally hated milk on its own. Now the thought of it made her heart race as if she was close to the fountain of everlasting youth.

Speed had failed. That meant she'd have to count on her wits. If she could get hold of a lamb, that might make the mother easier to catch...

After pursuing the sheep to their retreat, she did manage to snatch up a lamb in her arms. It bleated loud enough to be audible on the next hill, wriggling and kicking, and – she realized – shitting, as it yelled its indignation out across the valleys.

"Shut the hell up, my darling," Lila hissed. "It's not for long. You'll be back with your mother soon."

All four of her companions, she noticed, were looking with curiosity at something a little to her left. She realized what was happening just a moment too late, when getting out of the way was not an option. As the ewe's skull made contact with her thigh, she was able to reflect, before falling over, that it was a stroke of luck the flock had been de-horned. The lamb scrambled out of her arms and rejoined its mother, where it comforted itself by draining an udder of milk and urinating at the same time.

Lila stayed prone on the ground, partly from pain, and partly from humiliation. The others, having caught up with her, burst out laughing. Katriona stopped to offer her a hand up, and then started again.

"You had that coming," said a voice. A male voice, unaccented, and not belonging to either Eyepatch or Luan. Lila looked around.

The speaker was a half-elf. Brown-eyed, brown-haired, and with a weathered face. His feet – covered by hunting boots – were standing on the lowest rung of the fence that divided field from farmhouse. A bow was in his hand, and drawn, and it was aimed at her.