Kellen started in on his hair, and discovered to his dismay that there were knots and twigs in it now. But he managed to drag the comb all the way through it at least once, and then discovered that in one of the pockets of his new breeks was a long leather tie-band, ornamented with some of Idalia's careful beadwork. So they wouldn't be leaving the Wildwood completely behind! He looped it around his unruly hair, then picked up the heavy wooden packsaddle, and followed Idalia outside.
The day was already appreciably lighter than when he'd gone in, but the world was still the ghostly no-color of false dawn. Out in the forest, wisps of fog drifted among the trees, like spirits. Idalia had led both animals up to the door while he'd been dressing. She'd just finished tightening Coalwind's girths, and Kellen set the packsaddle on the ground and held the mare steady while Idalia soothed her into accepting the bit and bridle. Coalwind was fascinated by Idalia's trader hat, and kept trying to seize it and pull it off Idalia's head; Idalia finally let her have it for an instant, taking it back once the last buckle was tight.
"There you are, my girl. I'm afraid you'll be less frisky by the end of the day." She sighed. "Of course, so will I."
"Me too," Kellen offered. "It's not like either of us have done a lot of riding lately."
"True enough," his sister replied. "Maybe there'll be a village inn up the road; Greenpoint is supposed to be about a day's ride from here. If we're lucky, we'll sleep indoors tonight, but we can't count on doing that very often."
He nodded, but he couldn't help thinking: And maybe less often the closer it gets to the time that the City is planning on sending in their flunkies. Travelers wouldn't exactly be welcome at that point, when more and more fugitives would be on the road. And any one of them might be a City spy.
Idalia tethered the mare once more, and turned to help Kellen with the packsaddle. Prettyfoot accepted it with good grace; the mule was an experienced campaigner, and was used to early-morning departures.
Once both animals were tacked up, Idalia and Kellen made several more trips back and forth into the cabin to load the mule with their supplies. Kellen's discarded buckskins joined Idalia's in the pack reserved for last-minute things; they might well need them again sometime. Idalia tied everything in place with a speed and efficiency that led Kellen to believe that she'd done this before.
"It's easy enough, really," she said when she caught him looking. "You'll learn it yourself, with time. Balance the weight evenly from side to side for the beast's sake, also make sure that there's nothing that can dig or press or gall; just as if you were carrying the load yourself—and just as if you were carrying the load yourself, don't ask them to carry beyond their strength. A mule won't do it, and a donkey can carry a pack bigger than it is, but a horse will try for you until it kills itself. Heavier to the front than the back, just as you would want the weight higher than lower in your own pack. Make sure nothing can shift or crumple. Put the things you'll need on the way where you can get at them without unpacking everything. Make the whole easy to load and unload fast. All it takes is common sense and a little experience. You've got the one, and you'll have plenty of opportunity to get the other."
At last the packing was done, and Idalia went back inside one last time to see if they'd missed anything. She came out with two steaming wooden cups, and a second hat tucked under her arm.
"Hot cider to wake us up—we'll stop in a few hours for a better breakfast—and your hat. Now you can be a proper Mountain Trader."
Kellen took the hat and placed it on his head. It was thick felt, dyed a deep green to match his clothes—the only other time he'd seen such fabric was in the winter boots some of the City laborers wore—and quite the most outlandish item he'd ever seen. It had two long dangling leather cords that could apparently be used to tie the hat upon the head, so that despite its enormous brim—quite as wide as a cartwheel, in Kellen's untutored opinion—it could not be blown off. It was like wearing one of those round sunshades that fine ladies of the City carried on sticks to protect their lily-white complexions from the sun.
It was rather dashing, actually.
Kellen decided he liked it.
Hat in place, Kellen drank the cider—quickly, before it cooled. He set the cup down on the doorstep, realizing with a pang that it was all real. They were leaving here, now, and they were never coming back.
"Let's go," Idalia whispered; there was a harsh tone in her voice that startled him, and he turned to peer at her.
He could see by her face that she was trying hard to be calm, not to give in to the same sense of loss that he felt. She swung quickly up into the mare's saddle and started off. Kellen walked behind, leading the mule.
It might have been some last spell of the Wild Magic, or simple kindness on the part of those revelers who remained, but no one called after them to wish them a final good-bye.
THEY headed along the path away from the clearing and into the Wildwood in silence as the sky continued to lighten and the morning birds started the dawnchorus. Fog still lingered in hollows and low-lying ravines, but it was dissipating. When Kellen looked up through gaps in the trees to the hills, he saw sunlight gilding the tops of them, and the sky was a pleasant blue dotted with white, puffy clouds.
Eventually Shalkan would join up with them, and Kellen hoped it would be soon: his new boots didn't hurt yet, but that didn't mean he wanted to walk any great distance in them.
The cabin was long out-of-sight, and they were past the farthest point Kellen had ever been to on this road, when Idalia reined in.
"I thought he'd be here by now," she said, in tones of faint puzzlement. "I know I'm, well, hardly a unicorn's usual traveling companion, shall we say, but he did say it would be all right."
Kellen looked around, as puzzled as she was, and finally caught a glimpse of white through the trees behind them. He knew that furtive shape; knew it well, but why was it lagging so far behind?
"He's following us," Kellen announced in mingled tones of amusement and disgust. He handed Idalia the mule's lead-rope and walked back the way they'd come.
Shalkan stepped daintily out onto the trail and regarded Kellen with narrowed eyes. The unicorn's long equine face was not particularly well designed to convey emotion, but Kellen had never had any particular trouble sensing Shalkan's moods, nor did he now.
Shalkan was irritated.
But at what? What had Kellen done to deserve that look?
Finally the unicorn snorted. "No hat," Shalkan said flatly, staring at Kellen's head in disgust.
Kellen reached up, slowly, and touched the brim. He'd forgotten he was wearing it, actually, but Shalkan seemed to have taken a complete and irrational dislike to it. To a hat"1.
"It keeps the rain off," Kellen said.
Shalkan put his ears back and switched his long tufted tail. "It isn't raining. And it is an abomination," the unicorn said crossly. "Either get rid of it—or walk."
Kellen looked helplessly back at Idalia. She shrugged, and held out her hand for the hat; he could tell she was having a hard time keeping her face composed. Grumbling under his breath, Kellen unknotted the chinstring and walked back to pass the hat to Idalia, who tied it on the back of her saddle, her face carefully expressionless.
What does he think he is, a fashion critic?
Hatless, Kellen went back down the trail to "acquire his mount."
He was still without proper saddle or tack for the unicorn, and so was riding Shalkan bareback, but so long as they didn't have to run for their lives, he ought to be able to manage not to fall off. The unicorn's fur was still as slick and slippery as ever, but he did his best to balance carefully and not give Shalkan any further cause for complaint. After a moment though, he thought he could guess the real source of the unicorn's bad temper. Shalkan was twitching under him as if he were being defiled by sting-flies. The hat had nothing to do with it.
Shalkan might have agreed to travel with Idalia. He might agree there was a very good reason to do so. But the unicorn w
as a creature of magic, bound by magic's laws. Just because something was necessary didn't mean you had to like it.
He began to have a bit more sympathy for his friend. Apparently the hat was only an excuse for an exercise of irritation, and a way to vent some of it.
Poor Shalkan; Kellen wondered what it felt like. Was it like a rash you couldn't scratch? Or a headache? Or that twitchy feeling he got in his legs when he'd been awake too long and couldn't lie down yet? Or all of them?
"You ride on ahead," Kellen called. Idalia looked back, nodded with understanding, and nudged Coalwind with her heels, increasing the distance between them.
Shalkan sighed, stretching his neck out very long and shaking his head. He also stopped twitching. Idalia was still in sight, and if anything attacked either of them, the other could get there quickly enough, but this arrangement was going to make it rather difficult to have a conversation, other than with Shalkan.
"It really is a very stupid hat," the unicorn said, in as much of an apology as Kellen was going to get.
"Idalia thinks that if we look like Mountain Traders, we'll blend in better," Kellen offered meekly. Although how Kellen was going to blend in at all while riding a unicorn was another question altogether.
Shalkan sighed again. "A good plan, as far as it goes. And the sooner we are over the border—where there is no need to blend in at all—the better for all of us."
Kellen made no comment. The unicorn followed after Idalia at a sedate walk.
"I'll—see if I can get used to her," Shalkan said after a moment. "This isn't safe."
"No, it isn't," Kellen agreed, and left it at that. But he did take one last look over his shoulder as they crested the tallest hill they'd passed so far. Their little cabin wasn't visible, but in the farthest distance, dim and as tiny as a child's toy, he could see the carved walls of Merryvale. No hnger Merry, he thought with a sigh. He wondered if he'd ever see the place or any of the people in it again.
It was a melancholy thought.
Chapter Seventeen
Into Elven Lands
THEY KEPT NORTH and west, and by the end of the first sennight, Kellen and Idalia were able to ride side by side. If she noticed that Shalkan had early on had problems with her presence, or if it continued to bother Shalkan, neither ever commented except for Shalkan's single, oblique remark at the beginning of the journey.
On the rare occasions that they were able to find a roof to sleep beneath in village, croft, or smallholding—for Idalia's Wildmage skills guaranteed them a welcome everywhere in the Western Hills—Shalkan would leave them an hour or so before they reached it, and if any of their hosts found it odd that their visitors should arrive one mounted and one on foot leading a pack mule, none of them said anything about that, either. By the end of their second sennight of travel, Idalia informed Kellen that they were unlikely to encounter any more dwelling-places, for though they were still far from the borders, they were close enough to them that no one was likely to settle there for fear of encountering Elvenkind.
By this time, they were well into extremely steep hills—or small mountains, it didn't matter which you called them. Heavily wooded, with nothing for a sign of civilization except the road itself, they had to choose their camping places carefully. Idalia did something subtle that warned dangerous wildlife off, but there were other dangers, including human rogues. By now, in the lands they had left behind, the City Lawspeakers were proclaiming the sovereignty of Armethalieh through every hamlet and village, the members of the Militia were moving in, and the Scouring Hunt was coursing in search of Wildmages and Otherfolk.
Kellen wasn't sure exactly how far the High Council had extended the borders, but one thing he did know for sure was: the one thing the Hunt wouldn't find was him and Idalia. Kellen hoped that the discovery would send his father into a fit of apoplexy.
In their third sennight of travel (as far as Kellen could tell; he was actually starting to lose track of how long they'd been on the road, he discovered), he started to wonder if maybe the smallholders had a good reason for not wanting to encounter Elves.
Until now, the two of them had been traveling through lands fairly similar to those around the Wildwood: a landscape of high granite hills and deep river valleys filled with forests of hardwood and evergreen. They'd had no trouble finding good grazing for their animals to supplement the grain they'd brought, or water for drinking and cooking and washing.
Now that began to change.
It had been late summer when they left the Wildwood; now it was— maybe, if you stretched a point—the very beginning of autumn. The trees should just be starting to turn; the leaves yellowing. Later—the change of seasons was apparently similar to what he'd been used to in the City, only much more intense and extreme—would come the riot of autumnal color, then brown, then winter bareness.
But here the leaves were already withered and brown—too soon. The grass was sere, and the horse and mule mouthed it without pleasure. Shalkan made no complaints, but Kellen had no difficulty in telling that the unicorn was deeply troubled.
Worse followed the farther west they went. The smaller streams were muddy and low; the rivers that should have been swollen with late-season rain ran shallowly at the bottom of their beds. Sometimes they were forced to rely upon Shalkan to find water for them, which meant that Kellen walked while the unicorn roved along the periphery of their path, hunting for water.
The closer they came toward the Elven borders, the worse it got. The grass now was parched and dry, hardly worth the effort of chewing for the animals, and the bushes were withered and skeletal.
Shouldn't it be raining? Somewhere? Where's the water?
But Kellen—no farmer—wasn't quite sure that something was actually wrong, or if it was, how badly wrong. All his life he'd heard about the enchanting, green, misty beauty of the dangerous Elven lands, but so much of the old wondertales had been wrong. It was always possible that the stories had gotten it all backward. And Idalia—whose face became more grim by the day—wasn't saying.
But he was sure of one thing. Idalia had not expected to find things in this condition. And neither had Shalkan.
IT was midmorning, somewhere in their second fortnight of travel (Kellen was thinking hard, counting back and trying to remember exactly how many days they'd been on the road). They'd left open country behind, and were riding through woodland once more. The warmth of the early-autumn day contrasted oddly with the sere winter-bleakness of the barren trees. The forest floor beneath the animals' hooves was thickly carpeted with fallen leaves, and the travelers made a faint, crackling, shuffling sound as they moved through the leaf-litter. The road they followed was now a bare little track, hardly a road at all; it wasn't what Kellen had pictured to himself when he'd thought of a road through Elven lands.
The forest seemed much too empty, even to Kellen's untutored senses. Not only should there be deer and birds, rabbits and squirrels, but Oth' erfolk as well: sylphs and dryads, fauns, brownies, pixies, gnomes… the animals might flee from mounted strangers, but the Otherfolk should be drawn to both Shalkan and Idalia, and even if he couldn't see them, Kellen ought to at least be able to sense their presence with his Wildmage senses. But these woods were silent and empty. It gave him a very creepy feeling. It felt as if they were riding through a graveyard.
"Declare yourselves," a hard voice said abruptly.
Kellen blinked. A man had appeared out of nowhere, stepping in front of Idalia's horse.
No, not a man. An Elf.
He wore clothing the same winter brown as the woods they rode through, his simple tunic and close-fitting leggings embroidered with a complicated pattern in grey that would make him impossible to see from even a few feet away, for the stitching mimicked the lines and shadows of the forest itself. He was holding a smooth-polished stave as tall as he was, and a bow and a quiver of arrows was slung over his shoulder. Over the tunic was a cowl and hood. The hood was pushed back now, and Kellen could clearly see the Elf's poi
nted ears and shell-pale skin.
Where had he come from? He hadn't been anywhere in sight before.
"Idalia, Wildmage, and her brother, Kellen Tavadon, also a Wildmage."
Idalia answered promptly. "Seeking sanctuary in Elven lands, swearing no harm to tree, root, and leaf. Llylance, I see you," she added formally.
The Elven guard sighed with relief and suddenly looked far less austere. He loosened his grip on his quarterstaff, leaning on it now instead of holding it ready to strike. "Idalia! By the First Leaf, you return in a good hour! We had word of your coming. An escort waits to accompany you down into the city."
"We thank you for your kindness and the honor that you do us," Idalia said. Kellen had never heard her speak so ceremoniously before. He hoped this wasn't going to be something they had to do all the time while they were here.
A second Elf appeared at Kellen's side, also seeming to sprout directly from the forest floor itself. He was dressed almost identically to Llylance, save that he held his bow ready to fire.
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