“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or turn you into horseshoes.”
Have mercy on the poor horse.
Out of the temple square and back down the paths that Darya found, they picked up the thread of their journey again.
The spell coiled about all three of them. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but for the first few hours, he was aware of it and thus of Darya in a way he hadn’t been of anyone before. She felt much like another hand, or the breastplate on his shoulders: a presence he knew well without thinking about it. Unconsciously, they began to walk in rhythm. Even when she went ahead to scout, Amris stayed an unvarying distance behind her.
If I worked out how to expand this farther,Gerant said, perhaps it could be of use in larger groups.
“Not that we’re generally in those. But if you can teach others, it could come in handy in war, from what I hear of that.” Darya glanced back at Amris.
He ducked under a fallen roof beam, just low enough to have clipped his head otherwise. “The price might be too great to have it widespread. If soldiers feel it when one of them is injured or dies, they’d break easily, and if they didn’t break, they’d be distracted. For the officers, though… It might do us good in any number of ways.”
It would make your decisions harder.
“Such choices should be hard.”
Darya, meanwhile, was frowning. “I hadn’t thought of that. Amris’s bruises don’t pain me so I’ve noticed, and I’m guessing it goes the other way around.” Amris nodded. “But would I feel it if he jumped off a cliff? And how strongly?”
I’m not certain. I don’t believe the tie would be enough to kill you, or even leave you helpless if you greatly needed not to be, and I believe I could shield either of you from the worst of it,said Gerant. But I couldn’t swear to that, and I couldn’t speak at all in any more detail. It’s a fascinating question. Don’t test it.
“So much for my plans.”
“I will do my utmost,” Amris said, putting a hand to his heart, “to stay away from cliffs.”
“Thank the gods we’re on the ground now.”
They were, and that ground was less treacherous. As they left the center of the city, the buildings became smaller, and their destruction more complete: wood and clay did not stand up to time as marble and granite did, much less to storms and invasion. Some bits of oak and stone remained to clutter the road, and a few piles of broken bricks, but the streets were largely clear. On either side, roofless walls leaned against one another, and rough indentations showed where foundations had once stood.
That was less foreboding than the huge buildings in the city’s center and their shadows, but it was also sadder. Even those who’d gotten out before Thyran’s army and all that followed had left their lives behind. Now there was nothing left of those, save for crumbling walls and faint marks in the earth.
The old world, the world Amris had known, was gone. At the edge of its ruin, a wilderness rose up, thick and green and trackless.
* * *
Darya wanted to cheer the first time she saw the tree line from street level. Soon there wouldn’t be any more streets. Soon there wouldn’t be any more undead—she was fairly sure they didn’t venture outside the city—or unstable buildings or streets full of rubble. Normally she relished the chance to wander the fallen cities, but in this case, she couldn’t shake Klaishil’s dust from her heels quickly enough.
She settled for grinning and pointing. “There. And”—Darya glanced over her shoulder, calling the skyline back in her mind—“roughly the same place we came in.”
Now to find the wasteland your horse has produced.
“I’m sure Ironhide stopped eating sometime. And he’ll be rested, which is lucky for us,” she said, trying not to eye Amris and his armor too obviously.
“How far have we to go before Oakford?”
“Thirty miles. Two days, more or less, given the ground.” Two days before she could tell the fort’s commander about the situation, send messages to the Adeptas and, well, not turn it over to them exactly—because Darya didn’t think she couldturn overthe possible end of the world—but not be one of only three people who knew of it. More experienced tacticians would make decisions. People with big armies would send them. She’d do her part, andknowher part.
When she stepped into the shade of the forest, the world felt steadier beneath her, and far more familiar. The woods hadn’t produced threats from the past or companions whose good looks she couldn’t think about. Under the trees, she hadn’t vicariously remembered mobs and fire and blood on the snow.
Home, she thought,or at least getting closer.
At first, when Darya peered into the forest and didn’t see the dappled-gray hide of her gelding, she thought impatience had made her misremember how close to the city she’d left him. Then, dangling from a large pine tree, she saw the loose ends of her picket line. She started swearing, but only in her mind. As silently as possible, she drew her sword.
No big cat leaped down as she approached the tree, Amris at her side. No monster sprang from the shadows, and Darya saw no motion anywhere save that of small harmless creatures.
But below the tree, and on the ground all around it, the grass was trodden down—not as a single horse would crush it by grazing, but by more beasts with more purpose—and when Darya reached for her rope, she saw that it had been neatly cut.
The pulse in her throat began to pound. She knelt and examined the tracks: there were sets from horses and from longer creatures with ten legs. All led out along the path she’d originally come on—toward Oakford.
