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  Yet her mount’s tension only increased, his back stiffened to a choppy stride.

  “Something’s not right,” she announced, uneasy.

  “Do you think?” Lara paused. The others drew rein. Bunched together, Heralds and Companions, everyone listened.

  The surrounding forest seemed ordinary, loud with birdsong and fragrant with the last dew drying under the early sun’s warmth. Insects buzzed. A foraging creature scuffled in the brush, and a squirrel jumped, rustling through the canopy. Jess’s trail-wise experience perceived nothing wrong, and Lara’s best judgment agreed.

  Arif pressed his Companion ahead, eager to redress his muddled shirt and level his outstanding score.

  “It’s all right, Kaysa,” Lara consoled, perhaps with sincerity. “Better to alert us for a false alarm than say nothing.” Nobody admitted her blindness might lie at the root of her jumpy unease. Humiliation flamed Kaysa’s cheeks. Too well, she recognized tolerance masked under the trappings of courtesy.

  Long since, she had learned to weather the cool isolation when folk chose to gloss over her inconveniences. Unwilling to ruffle the seamless partnership shared by the three Heralds, she patted Lark’s neck and said nothing more.

  The forest in fact sounded peaceful around her. The play of warm air carried no untoward scents. But the unsettled moment gnawed at her. As if for a split second, a wrongness had almost suspended all sound and movement in the surrounding trees. Perhaps she fretted over a phantom conjured by imagination. Yet Lark’s tension under her touch had been real enough, an event without precedent, even amid the vulnerable uncertainty of the days she had traveled alone.

  Kaysa focused on her innate perceptions. Nothing disturbed her sensitive ears. Lark’s demeanor stayed docile. Reason argued she had cause to be anxious, days removed from familiar ground. Plunged into unknown territory with strangers, she did feel displaced, challenged at every turn by new trials. The Heralds could not fully grasp what she faced. Untroubled, they lapsed back into their habitual camaraderie. Jokes led to teasing and fond reminiscences of former assignments. Kaysa followed a half-step behind, while Arif’s gravel bass described settling a knife brawl between two drunks in a tavern, and Jess topped that anecdote with another, funny enough to fold them in their saddles, about being trapped in a sheepcote by a raging bull.

  “I thought Lara was going to wet herself,” Jess claimed, though she insisted he’d been the one to soil his breeches dodging a charge. Talk turned to the pleasure of the dark beer shared in the aftermath.

  Kaysa smiled wistfully, left out as Arif related the hilarious story of steering Jess’s unsteady step from the Halfway Inn’s tap room, then his Companion’s concern, and the well-meant head bump to prop him erect that knocked them both sprawling into a pigsty.

  The exchange of adventures and spirited quips beat the tedium of winding yarn and rope. The workaday task of weaving paled beside the richness of lives led beyond any backwoods villager’s upbringing. Kaysa ached with yearning. Could a blind girl ever be Chosen? Was she even capable? If she could not evade a mad bull, or stride fearlessly into a fight to defend Valdemar’s peace, did she deserve the privilege of being a Herald? How could she manage the responsibilities of the Queen’s justice in the wider world?

  Truthfully? She could not find her way home! Without Lark’s guidance, she would have been utterly lost, unable to leave the bounds of her village. Now en route to Exodus on a rough trail, she battled the dismal likelihood that she was incapable. Lark’s presence had admitted her into the company of the Heralds dispatched to ascertain Tarron’s fate. What business had she impeding their mission on the chance she might recall an overlooked clue of significance?

  Kaysa swallowed, inwardly shamed by the possibility that she had been selfish.

  A chill raked her to gooseflesh. Lark shuddered, and this time, she almost caught the fleeting sense of the disturbance that seized the forest. So brief an impression, she could have assumed her perception was playing tricks on her. Already Lark steadied. Ahead, Arif’s growled repartee upbraided Jess until Lara’s brisk interjection cooled their roughhousing.

  Nothing had distressed them. When Kaysa broached the incident, they listened. But since their Companions remained untroubled, no credible evidence supported her experience.

  “Lark might be responding to your stifled fear, a reaction to having been traumatized,” Jess pointed out. Patronizing, perhaps, but who knew better than the Chosen how Companions related to human minds?

  “Lark’s been damaged, besides,” Lara qualified, a practical effort to salve insecurity. “Since none of our Companions can read him, we have to assume that Tarron’s loss left him badly shaken. For all we know, the pair might have been savaged by brigands. Our report to the Queen’s Council will determine the course of further investigation. If worse trouble brews farther west, prompt word could be crucial.”

  To that purpose, Lara and Jess forged ahead. Only Arif hung back. Perhaps more sympathetic to humiliation while wearing an inside-out shirt, he lent Kaysa’s concern gruff encouragement. “We’re not saying you didn’t catch something we missed. Keep your ears pricked and shout out if it happens again.” Against her self-conscious uncertainty, he added, “Promise you will.”

  Kaysa nodded, too upset to speak. She trailed the party of Heralds, too aware of the dampened morale suppressing their carefree conversation.

  Maybe they took her precaution seriously, the rapt quiet a sign of attentive communion with their Companions. Riding behind in bleak isolation, Kaysa whispered to Lark, “Better hope we were wrong. I’d gladly take the embarrassment.”

  For if danger pursued them, she would be dead weight, reliant on the Companion to flee if protection required a fight.

  Yet the fair weather morning passed without incident. Arif snatched the moment to right his shirt when they stopped to eat. Kaysa perched on a boulder, munching her share, while Lark browsed beside her. The placid rhythm of his jaws and the dry warmth of his hide told her all was well. Birds chirped overhead, the same songs that filled the forest at home in the moist scent of greenery under noon sun. She might have paused to rest with the lunch basket she carried to her father and brothers at work at the rope walk, had she not parted ways on the irreversible journey to Haven.

  The Heralds enjoyed their cold meal with the purposeful air of folks short of time on a mission. Only Jess’s quick laughter showed nerves, doubtless because he had a vengeful dig coming from Arif.

  The Heralds remounted promptly and set a brisk pace into the afternoon. But their scheduled plan met obstruction again, when a washout entangled by a wrack of deadfalls forced them off the narrow trail. Kaysa clung to Lark’s mane through the impasse, her senses overwhelmed by the rattle and swish of thrashed branches. Nothing bothered Lark’s poise. No queer gap disrupted the tranquility of the forest. Frogs croaked from the reedy banks of a creek, silenced only by their splashed passage. Nothing but birds’ wings whirred through the whisper of boughs overhead.

  The Heralds rejoined the trail without mishap, speculating about which of two preferred taverns might still have rooms: the one the bards favored, with comfortable beds, or the hunters’ lodge, which served heartier fare.

  “Not tonight, anyway,” Arif grumbled, morose. “Unless you want to risk traveling past dark, we’ll have to camp in the wild.”

  “I have no difficulty with riding late,” Kaysa ventured.

  But Lara dismissed her effort to make up for the morning’s slow start. “The inns will be full by sundown. Better to rest the Companions than to spend the night in the hayloft scratching fleas with the barn cats.”

  Jess added, breezily cheerful, “Rise early and ride, and we’ll snag a late breakfast and a hot bath before we move on.”

  No one berated Kaysa, although a blind girl in a rough campsite had little of worth to chip in. Reliant on the Heralds, she could only stay mindful as the day
cooled toward dusk. Her attentiveness detected nothing amiss, even when Lark turned his neck for a prolonged glance behind.

  “Do you see something?” Kaysa listened, intent.

  But the fallen hush as the birds roosted was normal, and the place selected for their overnight stay was a pleasant hollow set in the curve of a brook.

  “A Herald’s favorite,” Jess confided cheerfully as he helped Kaysa remove Lark’s saddle. His steps marked by the scuff of his heels, he ran on, “The stones for the fire pit have been here for as long as anyone can remember.”

  No shed with stored provisions graced the site, however. “Bears,” Arif admitted on inquiry. “Nothing built here would withstand the hungry marauders.”

  But there was a lean-to with a thatched roof, sufficient to keep the dew off their gear while they spread their blankets under the stars.

  “Who knows?” Lara added, unpacking the last of the generous fare bestowed by the inn’s kitchen. “The Herald-Mage Vanyel may have slept here. He and Stefan could have toasted their supper under the summer sky, just as we are. Here’s Arif. He’ll find you a seat.”

  “I just need a walking staff to find my own way.” But Kaysa’s preference was disregarded as Arif took the suggestion and guided her to a log by the fireside. She settled there, aware the gesture aimed to bolster her spirits. Even though Jess cut the stave she requested, she could not gather kindling or contribute much beyond aimlessly stirring a readied pot. While she could smell meat if it burned and poke a potato to tell if it was done, such skills were scant use among three sighted folks, efficiently busy. She became the loose end, her offer to scour the cooking utensils politely turned down. No one belabored the reason: that a dropped a knife or pan might drag someone else from their rest for a tiresome search.

  She was not faulted for her shortcomings. But when Lara assumed the duty of clean up, Kaysa followed, determined to dry and stow the gear in the saddle pack. She found Arif at the streamside ahead of her, engrossed in conversation with Lara.

  Their voices were too low to be overheard. Yet the sudden silence that met Kaysa’s approach spoke plainly.

  Her parents and her brothers broke off that way when she caught them in discussions of her disability. Too well, Kaysa recognized the stiff embarrassment, then the familiar, bright tone of pretense as nervous reaction prompted a swift change of subject. The evasion struck her keen ear like false notes.

  Arif would have been questioning her sorry misjudgment. Arguing, surely, against her concern, that her outspoken alarms were a worthless distraction. Her awkward intrusion would be brushed aside, the delicate problem deferred until later. The Heralds would shelter her feelings before the inevitable decision to relieve themselves of the hindrance.

  Nothing Kaysa could do eased their straits. She had come too far. The Heralds could scarcely abandon her in the Pelagiris Forest. Likely, once they reached Exodus, she’d be handed over to a paid escort and sent safely home.

  Miserable, Kaysa spun on her heel. She spread her blanket and tucked up to rest, while behind her Jess admired a rising, full moon she could not see. At Ropewynd, she would have swept the yarn loft and locked up, then laid the kitchen fire for the next day while her brothers finished their chores. On familiar ground, she was self-reliant, not a trial to everyone’s nerves.

  In daydreams, her yearning for challenge beyond the horizon had never included the setback of wrestling with her incompetence.

  The Heralds banked the fire and turned in at length. Kaysa listened to their breathing deepen with sleep. Yet she could not settle. While the other Companions kept watch, Lark reclined, legs folded, his relaxed contentment a comfort to her anguish. All seemed well. Nonetheless, her worry persisted, chafed by the unhappy suspicion the Heralds could not relieve themselves of her presence quickly enough.

  Time passed. The croaking frogs in the brook and the hoot of a hunting owl joined the whispered drip of dew that marked the depth of the night. The woodland rhythm lent her no grasp of the hour. At Ropewynd, caught wakeful, she listened for the rattle of the baker’s boy’s handcart as he fetched wood to light the bread ovens in the wee hours. The bells of the dairy cows, come in for milking at sunrise, broke the still calm of daybreak, soon followed by the delightful aroma of the first baked loaves, set out to cool.

  Here, the crickets’ chorus rasped unchanged through the buzz of Jess’s snores.

  Kaysa’s eyelids drooped when the change came again: a fleeting, gapped moment, not quite like silence, as though a ripple of shock had crested and passed. She shoved erect. Her hand sought Lark, tucked behind her. His coat was warm to her touch, without any trace of a tremble.

  Uneasy, afraid, Kaysa dared not believe her senses played tricks on her. If she distrusted her instincts, too timid to rely on herself, what in the wide world did that make her to anyone other than a helpless burden? Fear threatened to define her. The blind girl who startled at nothing became the nuisance the able-bodied dismissed with innocuous kindness.

  And yet something was not right. Kaysa stroked Lark’s shoulder again. He suffered no tremors, no damp, breaking sweat. The Companion lifted his head, lipped her hair, then blew a soft snort. Unlike yesterday, he displayed no alarm.

  Kaysa swallowed. She could put her faith in Lark or in herself. Rouse the Heralds, perhaps for nothing, and suffer redoubled disgrace as they humored her. Or she could act now, because Tarron may have died because he had recognized his dire peril too late.

  Nothing did not kill. Reproach harmed no one, truly, but her. Only cowardice shrank from hurt pride.

  Kaysa kicked off her blankets and grabbed her staff. She groped past the firepit, guided by its radiant warmth, until she encountered a form in repose. Lara’s, by the faint scent of sausage grease ingrained from cooking their supper.

  “Get up,” Kaysa whispered as she prodded the Herald.

  Lara stirred, quickly wakeful. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Not for certain.” Braced for ridicule, Kaysa pushed on, “But I’ve noticed something not right, maybe stalking us. We ought to leave, now.”

  “You heard something?” Lara’s query seemed forbearing, though her alert movement suggested she listened.

  Kaysa strove to explain. Not about what she had heard but what she had not: What was missing.

  Lara did not wait for justification but gently roused Arif and Jess. “Trouble, maybe,” she said softly. “Kaysa thinks so. My Companion’s not bothered, but better if we aren’t caught napping.”

  Arif fumbled for his boots, perhaps planning to scout. Maybe Jess would have lingered for questions. But the oppressive grip of the forest closed in until the air bore down like a weight.

  Not silence at all, Kaysa realized, but a dense pressure that dampened her eardrums. As she labored to breathe, the invasive scent struck her like a damp cloth in the face. A rank smell, atavistic, saturating the breezeless night with such potency that she exclaimed aloud.

  “What smell?” Arif demanded, short of sleep and transparently irritable.

  Kaysa answered with bone-deep certainty, no matter that her experience set her apart. “Like a wet dog with bad breath, only worse.”

  That moment, a Companion snorted. Hooves stamped in the darkness. Lark surged to his feet and joined the jostling herd.

  “Boar, maybe,” Jess remarked, his lanky frame arrived at her shoulder with a fragrant armload of split birch. “Not likely to trouble us near a fire.” He set to, fanned the stirred coals to life and built a fresh blaze from the embers.

  Not a boar, Kaysa realized. At Ropewynd, the musky scent only lingered where the creatures wallowed in the wood. Whatever approached raised a reek strong enough to cause nausea. Through Arif’s crack inviting the odds on whether they’d have fried pork for breakfast, Kaysa realized, chilled: the frogs’ croaks in the brook had swelled at regular intervals, trailing raggedly off into silence. But t
his moment, their singing did not return. More, the crickets were quiet on all sides, not just where the dank odor wafted on the breeze.

  “Now,” Kaysa cried, urgent. “We need to leave now!” She bent, scrounged two sticks of kindling, and cracked them together. The echo bounced off the lean-to. She moved that way, swinging her stave until she banged the support pole. Behind her, the huddled Companions stopped milling. Jess stopped joking in favor of lighting a torch, expecting to drive off a wild animal or, better, to speed its departure.

  “Hurry!” Kaysa fumbled through the piled strap leather. “Leave the bedrolls and packs.”

  “Lark’s uneasy, not panicked.” Lara’s reproof stayed exactingly patient. “If it’s only a boar . . .”

  Kaysa barked her knuckles against a saddle, hopefully hers. An exploratory sweep of her hand sought the scar on the seat, stained yet by the coppery tang of Tarron’s dried blood. Contact scorched her fingers. No surprise encounter with spark or flame, but a poisonous scald that seared her bare skin like acid. “Magic!” she shouted, “The marks left by Tarron’s killer are burning my palm!”

  That shattered indulgent pretense at last.

  One of the Heralds jostled against her side. Arif, by the pungency of the bracken cut to pillow his head. “Let me see.”

  “No!” Kaysa pushed him away as the puzzling details slid into place. “Don’t touch! For Chosen, the residual taint may be deadly.” No longer hesitant, she qualified swiftly, “That’s why Lark trembled! Other stains on his saddle blanket did not wash clean. The residue seems to react to the magic used by whatever’s tracking us. Nothing bothered my village or me until Lark and I joined your company. The Companion remembers what destroyed his Chosen. With the blanket in direct contact with his skin, the sting as the spell engaged would trigger his traumatic memories.”

  She had missed the uncanny sensation before, while her clothing protected her.

  “We have to leave. Now! I’ll ride bareback.” Freed of his tainted tack, Lark would not feel the goad that panicked him. But Kaysa could not abandon the evidence needed as proof to inform the Queen’s Council. “The saddlecloth stays with me. Find a blanket. I’ll bundle it.”