As Lidia went down the main road east, she fought the urge to look over her shoulder constantly. She knew that someone — possibly several someones — had been keeping an eye on her movements, and this latest encounter only proved that point further.
No one was out here, either ahead or behind, except for the sun slowly climbing above the horizon and wide, empty plains. Still, she kept her guard and her movements brisk, glancing behind her now and again, then side to side as she left the long stretches of farmland and went deeper into the forested wilderness.
Several hours after she'd set out, the sun was nearly overhead in a clear blue sky, and she'd found her moment to turn aside, past the iron post and the guard that kept watch over the road, but before the main road that led to the keep. Instead, in the middle of the forest, she found a small trail that cut through a patch of woods, not far from where the grey fortress kept its vigil.
When she was later asked why she went this route, the only reason she could think of was that she wanted to keep herself unpredictable, the incident with Valen still weighing on her. Of course, it wouldn't make a difference — whoever wanted to know where she was would undoubtedly find out eventually. But at that moment, she had thought it would be an excellent way to keep her arrival clandestine.
She followed the narrow footpath stamped down by many heavy feet through the underbrush, winding more or less in a straight line away from the road and towards the keep. She had thought that it would lead directly there along the side rather than having her make her entrance towards the main gate.
But instead, when the woods gave way, she found herself along the edge of a tournament ring, several hundred feet wide and shaped oddly. It was almost rectangular, but one side was diagonal, as though the fencing had taken off in its own direction and was only reined in by a connecting fence on either side. The arena floor was covered in sand.
She stopped and took in the sight for a moment: the dozen or so rows of sun-bleached wooden benches along each side, the long row of stables some distance away, extra lengths of fencing and wooden tilts leaning against the bottom row of benches. All was quiet for now, and here she was alone, but there was no doubt that the Radiant Heart would be hosting tournaments here during the summer.
She wondered whether it was also where the Baron hoped to face her, too. She approached the ring, driven by curiosity tempered with the desire to pass here without a trace and going no further than the fence where the sand met the grass.
As soon as she drew near the fence, however, she stopped in place, taken suddenly by a strange sense that she was without something important. She twisted her head in all directions, scanning for some new threat, but she was still alone. More utterly alone, perhaps, than she had ever been.
For the dark well, its power, the presence that lay in its darkest depths, was completely gone — as though it had never been, or had forever been removed from her reach. Without it, she felt strangely hollow, her thoughts silent and thin.
Gone, too, was the warmth in her spirit, the silent reassurance of the Crying God. She shivered, willing herself not to panic without the reassuring shield around her mind, suppressing the urge to break into a blind run like some poor frightened beast scampering to safety.
She stood there dumbly for a moment, trying to determine what to do next, until her legs and some unthinking part of her reached an accord. She started walking again without any plan or destination, trying to corral her thoughts around what had just happened to her, what she ought to do next —
Her feet carried her past the fence towards the benches, and everything flooded back, seemingly without interruption, manifesting itself as a surge of awareness and strength that, until this moment, she had simply taken for granted.
Lidia leaned on her staff, letting out a sigh of relief and looking behind her towards the seemingly ordinary tournament ring. She finally could think straight, and she felt she understood what she had just passed through.
Somewhere in The Laws and Customs of Amn, she'd read that magic could not be used in tournaments and judicial duels. She had taken this simply as another way for the Cowled Wizards to exert control or another manifestation of Amnians' fear and distrust of magic. She'd assumed that if spellcasters had a dispute, they probably resolved them extralegally or through some other means if they thought they couldn't get away with a magical duel.
But the Order reinforced this law, seemingly, by having this place in a dead-magic zone, torn open in the fabric of reality during the Time of Troubles. In this ring, spells couldn't draw power, nor could enchantments hold. Both sputtered out or ceased to function altogether, and only the most potent spells could ever restore magic here.
Lidia's knowledge of magic had its limits, but she didn't think any of her teachers went as far as to say that a dead-magic zone cut off gods from people — she recalled an old philosophical debate she'd overheard about whether Helm could tear a hole in the Weave so large that it would render him powerless. Still, the gods' most visible manifestations of their favor would cease to exist here, too.
And, if she were expected to duel the Baron here, she would be fighting for her life, robbed of her most valuable instincts and protections, cut off from everything that set her apart.
She'd do what she must, regardless, she grimly thought as she hoisted her pack and started walking a little faster, traveling parallel to the road east towards the keep. Still, for both her sake and the Baron's, Lidia hoped Lanka would answer her summons.