Kerian was dragging on her boots. “Curse it! Pleasant scenery, clean water, and we start acting like farmers at a fair!” They were in unknown territory, and she hadn’t even posted pickets!
The elves quickly resumed their normal vigilance. Kerian ordered twenty riders to reconnoiter ahead. Another band of twenty she sent back toward the valley mouth, in case the nomads (or anyone else) overcame their fear and decided to follow them. Bow-armed flankers rode out from the main column to watch for danger.
With her warriors fully deployed, the Lioness felt more at ease. Favaronas, however, clutched his map in both hands and stared wildly, expecting any number of unnatural beasts to fall upon them.
“Calm yourself,” she told the scholar. “I don’t think it’s the sand beast this time; look at Eagle Eye.” The griffon was looking around, but didn’t seem particularly excited.
She swung into the saddle of a fresh horse. “It’s probably nothing more than echoes from an avalanche in the mountains.”
He blinked at her in surprise, then nodded slowly. They were all so primed to find something otherworldly in the valley, he’d never considered a simpler explanation. Still, he was glad when she sent Eagle Eye skyward. It wouldn’t hurt to have the griffon’s sharp eyes watching over them.
They forded the newly named Lioness Creek. Scouts met them, reporting they’d found a clearly defined path beyond a field of half-buried boulders. Leaving the archivist with the main body of the army, Kerian trotted forward to see.
Beyond the boulders, three elves sat on horseback in the center of a wide lane thick with alluvial sand. A fourth was on his knees, digging with his hands. As the Lioness arrived, he announced, “Pavement!”
She swung a leg over her horse’s neck and dropped to the ground. Sure enough, beneath four or five inches of blue-green soil, he’d found stone payers. The two blocks was clearly visible. Clearing a larger area revealed more payers and something even more interesting—a deep groove worn into the road. They had seen such ruts before. The grooves were made by wheels, passing over pavement in the same line year after year. This groove followed the slight downslope back toward the creek they’d just forded.
“Someone has called this valley home,” the Lioness said. Question was, was anyone still here?
She remounted and sent the scouts ahead. Her admonition to stay sharp wasn’t really necessary; the very brief respite they’d enjoyed at the stream was over. All were alert. When Favaronas moved up with the main body, he made note of the pavement on his sketch map.
The paved path led northeast, into the heart of the Inath-Wakenti. The elves followed it slowly, cautiously, encountering nothing untoward until after midday, when a scout galloped back with news. They were approaching stone ruins, very old and very big stone ruins.
Ruins dotted the continent, from Balifor to Sancrist Isle. When Kerian was on the run from the Dark Knights who occupied her country, she often sheltered in ruins in the western Kharolis Mountains, relics of a time before the Great Cataclysm. Growing up in the wild, she’d had little knowledge of ancient history. Most of what she knew had been learned from tales traded around the campfire, of the beautiful, doomed Irda race, the twins Sithas and Kith-Kanan, the decadent human empire in Ergoth. Tales stranger still were told of the realm of Istar, where magic reigned until a fiery mountain fell from the sky and destroyed the city. Where glorious, doomed Istar once stood was now the whirling maelstrom of the Blood Sea, not so far away from this place.
The Lioness sent out more flankers to sweep either side of the road. She kept to the path, leading the main column forward. All the reports she received were negative. No quarry had been found, either of the two-legged or the four-legged variety. Not so much as a rabbit or a bird crossed their paths. The widely spaced cedars and pines seemed bare of all life.
Irritated by the lack of progress, the Lioness decided to try a loftier view. She dismounted and walked a few yards ahead, whistling for Eagle Eye. The griffon came skimming in over the low trees to land in front of her. She slipped a strung bow over her head and swung onto the tiny saddle pad.
“Continue down the road,” she told her officers, then elf and griffon bolted skyward.
After years of Khurish heat, the rush of temperate air past her face was like a balm. The climate surely was better here than in Khurinost. Perhaps Gilthas was on to something.
Consternation flooded through her. What was she thinking? Trade her birthright for a little comfort? Never! Yes, this valley was more pleasant than the sweltering sandpit outside Khuri-Khan, but so what? It wasn’t her homeland. Wasn’t, and never would be.
