“There,” he snarls, staring down the ribbon pathway into the new valley below us and lifting his arm.
I follow where he is pointing. Some way below us is what looks like a black smudge. I blink, rub my eyes, and look again. The smudge swirls, a miasma of smoke and oil.
“What is it?”
“The Dunnie,” Warden growls. “It was waiting for us.”
“It knew where we were going?”
“It is patient. It can wait.”
“But how did it know?” A fear grips at my heart. Is nothing, no one in the Yeavering trustworthy?
“The Dunnie never acts alone. Something else must be controlling it. Something with magic.” Warden spits. “Something with the ability to scry.”
“Scry?” I don’t take my eyes from the thing below us. It makes my skin crawl.
“The ability to see from a distance,” Warden rasps.
“What do we do?”
Warden turns to me, and his serious face morphs into a grin. “Something no one will expect.” His forms swirls into that of his Brag, and he sweeps me up into his arms, then onto his back. “Hold on, my sweet mare. Hold onto me as if your live depends on it.”
He explodes in a fury of hooves and muscle, but not down the track, not towards the Dunnie. Instead, he leaps the wall beside us, and we’re thundering across the pasture, away from the creature supposedly lying in wait for us.
I think I hear a long, thin cry of frustration, but I can’t be sure. All I can do is bury my head into Warden’s skin and clutch at him, tighter than I’ve ever held on to anything in my entire life.
WARDEN
Ishould have told her. I should have explained to my lady there is only one creature in the entire of the Yeavering who can control a Dunnie. But my creeping suspicions as to what was keeping Hazel at the tavern in the Night Lands, about what has been at our heels since we escaped, is slowly crystallising.
The Thegn.
I wanted the showdown with it. I wanted the chance to regain my mortality. But I did not want it to involve my Hazel.
She should be safely inside the Shadow Keep, growing round with our child, content and safe to gestate in peace when I take on the one thing which can give me back all I have lost.
Once I kill him.
And Hazel was not supposed to be here when I did the deed.
If I thought she might be protected with the Bluecap, I would take her. But I know the Shadow Keep is the only place which is safe from the Thegn. I will not bring the creature to his door either. Annoying though Linton may be, neither he nor his mate deserve to be visited by this foul thing.
I should have told her. I should have told her everything, not half of what is true. My mortality is only the surface of what wasdone to me by the Thegn. I cannot just kill it. I have to obliterate it as if it had never been.
But such a deed will not be easy and it will not be clean. Hazel cannot be part of it. I can’t risk any part of her being caught up in what I will have to do.
I increase my pace, exploding across the landscape, putting distance between us and the Dunnie. I don’t bother to check if it follows because it will. Instead I concentrate on our path back to the Night Lands.
“Slow down,” Hazel bellows, her fingers digging into my flesh. “Warden, stop. It’s gone.”
The last thing I want to do is stop. But my lady has asked me, and I cannot ever deny her.
“It won’t stop,” I say as she drops from my back. “It will never stop.”
“What does it want?”
“It wants what its controller wants.” I scan the landscape, which sweeps down to the sea, the scent of the salt water on the breeze.
