John Draper, of King’s Highway.

Keri repeated the information over and over in his head, so that he didn’t forget, all the way back from the Chandler farm to Whitehill. Despite the fact that all of their company, save for Ghveris and the prisoners, were mounted, the return trip took quite a while longer than the ride out, when everything had been in a rush to save the farmers.

Whatever reluctance had kept the Chandlers in their home, despite the warnings of the Duchess and Baron Henry, had entirely subsided at the sight of soldiers burning a pile of bodies in their back field. The Chandler children had been set in the saddle to ride in front of two of the soldiers, while the farmer and his wife had been given Wren’s horse. The Varunan huntress herself had flown off to keep an eye on the raider camp where Baron Erskine would be waiting for his son to return.

That, more than anything else, made Keri shift restlessly in his saddle. If he could have thought of a way to manage it, he’d have already been on Wren’s figurative heels, following the bat as she winged her way across the frozen valley. Tobias, however, was a good soldier, but not a good commander, and he was not subject to Keri’s orders to do anything.

They could have sent four or five men back to Whitehill, to fulfill the dual purpose of escorting the farmers and the prisoner, and delivering a message that they were pressing on before the enemy could escape. If Keri had his way, they would have done so. He’d even considered just riding after Wren himself, but as much as desperation to be off gnawed at him, he had to admit that fighting twenty or more raiders with just the two of them would have been foolhardy. And there was no guarantee they’d be able to find a path into the mountains that Ghveris, with all his monstrous size and weight, would be able to traverse.

So it was that dawn found them once again before the gates of Whitehill, where they paused to deliver three men whose wounds were light enough that they could march into the hands of the city sheriff. The dungeon was good enough for common men, it seemed, but Rowan Erskine was headed straight for the castle itself.

Even this early, there was life stirring in the city. Smoke trailed up from half a dozen bakeries, where the morning bread was already in ovens, and the scent of it trailed out into the streets, causing Keri’s belly to rumble. Nevermind the fact none of it would truly nourish him, his nose wasn’t aware of the difference. With any luck, Liv’s mother would have breakfast waiting for them all in the great hall by the time they’d made their way up the hill.

The guards atop the castle wall saw them coming well before the returning soldiers arrived, and the gates were open and waiting. They rode into the courtyard, where Keri saw they were not the only ones who’d been awake the entire evening.

One scene, Keri recognized for what it was immediately: high level Authority training. Liv, dressed in her armor and with her wand at her hip, stood with her feet set wide and her body braced, slim shoulders set in determination, at the center of the training ground. To her left and her right, respectively, her two teachers from the mage’s guild simultaneously flung darts of coherent blue and gold mana at her.

Rather than throw herself aside, raise a wall of ice, or conjure a frozen blade with which to parry, Liv raised her hands, as if to shield her face from assault, and a great weight erupted forth from her in a wave. Geometric patterns of ice spiraled out from her boots across the cold, hard mud of the yard, and one of the blue darts disintegrated. The other, unfortunately, hit Liv right in the center of the enchanted steel breastplate he’d given her at Mountain home, knocking her back a pace to the sound of an exclamation of pain.

The more peculiar activity came from the inside of the curtain walls, where Sidonie was drawing sigils in chalk on the stone, working her way around clockwise from the gate. Rosamund and a slip of a girl Keri didn’t recognize followed her. The unfamiliar girl was carrying a bucket, from which lifted an unending stream of glittering white dust, which occasionally sparked with flashes of bright blue or gold. As Rose proceeded in her friend’s wake, the stones of the curtain wall carved themselves, as if by an unseen hand, with channels that precisely followed the chalk outlines. White dust flew into the channels, where it solidified into engravings of what looked like mana stone. What, precisely, they were warding against was unclear, but the general thrust of the work was obvious.

“Blood and shadows!” Liv exclaimed, from across the courtyard, and once Keri had slid down out of his saddle he couldn’t help but glance to watch her.

The half-elden woman was rubbing at her shoulder, presumably to ease the sting from the impact from another one of those conjured mana blades the mage’s guild used so frequently. While she was wearing nearly the entirety of her armor, she’d forgone her helm, leaving the wind to tease strands of hair as white as fresh-fallen snow from her braids. If they’d been about to step onto a battlefield, Keri would have been tempted to scold her about it; but for practice in the yard, he supposed the older human mages could be counted on not to hit her in the head.

Her cheeks were flushed pink with the chill, sharp air of the winter morning, and when she turned toward the dismounting riders, her ice-blue eyes met Keri’s for just a moment, and then she smiled. Without even thinking about it, he found himself smiling back.

Liv held up a hand to her teachers, the old man and the severe-looking woman, then strode over to where Keri was standing. Ghveris stepped up at his right side, looming over the courtyard, and Rowan Erskine, his hands bound with rope, was already being dragged toward the great hall by two soldiers.

“You got there in time?” Liv asked, in Vakansa. There was the faintest hint of an accent about her words, despite the summers she’d spent with her family in Kelthelis, but Keri would never dream of embarrassing her by mentioning it.

“The invaders fell easily,” Ghveris rumbled. “Wren has gone to observe their encampment.”

“I see you nabbed a hostage,” Liv remarked, glancing over her shoulder to watch Erskine being shuffled into the keep. “Julianne will make good use of him.”

Keri stepped forward, and lowered his voice so that only the three of them were close enough to hear. “There’s more than that,” he said. “Your great-uncle warned me to be on the lookout for signs of the cult of Ractia, and we found this on one of the enemy slain.” He extended his gloved hand to Liv, with the small icon of the blood goddess in his palm.

Liv reached forward, hesitated, and then lifted the small statuette of stone. She held it up before her face and peered at it. “Doesn’t really look anything like her in the face,” she pronounced, after a moment. “You can tell whoever made it has never actually seen her. But the intent is clear enough.” She set the figurine back down into Keri’s palm.

“The man who carried it is dead,” Keri told her. “But the captives told us his name. John Draper, of King’s Highway.”

“King’s Highway is Sherard Lands,” Liv said, with a look on her face as if she’d bit into something unexpectedly bitter. “That’s what they renamed the old Eastern Highroad after Roland the Third went out there back when they were arranging his marriage to the Dowager Queen. It was only about fifty years ago, and Master Grenfell’s still got a few maps that use the old name.”

“This is the same Dowager Queen who tried to kill you in Freeport?” Keri asked. He felt the sudden urge to crush the idol in his hand.

Liv nodded. “She was born a Sherard. It doesn’t surprise me Erskine would have a few soldiers from their lands; I’m sure they’ve thrown themselves behind Benedict’s war effort with everything they can spare. You think there’s a cult in Sherard lands?”

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Keri shrugged. “I’ve always suspected her followers wouldn’t be limited to the north, but Lucania never wanted to look for enemies. They’ve had years now to burrow themselves in.” He sighed. “If I had my own troops here, I’d have headed into the mountains already - I wouldn’t even have come back here. Wren’s gone to keep an eye on the raider camp, but they’ll know something is wrong by now. I’m worried we’ve lost our chance to catch them.”

Liv reached out with one hand and placed it on Keri’s shoulder. He felt it as a weight, only - her glove on the steel of his pauldron, but he knew she meant the gesture to be a comfort.

“Honestly, there’s too much to do and not enough people to get it all done,” Liv admitted. “If they pull back across the mountains and stop raiding our farms, that’s a victory for us. Matthew will have people out searching the burned homes today, to dig up however many of those stones they’ve hidden. We mostly know what they do now, by the way. They cause people with no Authority to be plagued with nightmares. Sidonie’s warding the castle against it, now.”

“I was wondering what she and Rose were doing over there,” Keri said, then turned and pulled the stone they’d captured from Rowan Erskin out of his saddlebags. He handed it to Liv. “I expect you and your teachers will find something to do with this, in that case.”

Liv nodded. “As soon as they’re done warding the walls - this evening or in the morning, perhaps - I’ll take them both up to Bald Peak. That waystone is a weak point in our defenses until I get it under control.” She considered it for a moment. “You know, I could send you through to Mountain Home -” Keri flinched, in spite of himself, and could only hope that Liv didn’t notice.

“-or to Al’Fenthia,” she said, quickly. “You could grab your soldiers there - Linnea and Olavi, isn’t it? Take a small, fast group, whoever’s ready, and ride for the mountains. Chase Erskine south and make sure they don’t linger around.”

“I don’t wish to step on your adoptive brother’s toes,” Keri said, though the idea had occurred to him several times on the road north from the ambush.

“I’ll talk to Matthew,” Liv promised. “Henry will go along with what he decides; once he rides south with my great-uncle today, Matthew’s to be in full command of Whitehill. So far as military matters go, at least.”

☙

All of it took longer than Keri would have wished for, but by the next morning they were off to the waystone at Bald Peak. Sidonie and Rosamund had worked late into the night, halting only for breaks to eat. Liv’s teacher had pulled out an unreasonably enormous hunk of mana stone, the sort of thing that Keri could only imagine would be lying around in a town built next to a mine. That had kept the two young ladies working well past whatever natural limits they might have had.

Young Rowan Erskine had given his parole to Duchess Julianne and Baron Henry in front of witnesses, including every one of their knights, and was now hardly treated like a prisoner at all, save that there was a guard watching him at all times. Otherwise, once his wounds were treated, he’d been invited to join the high table as a guest during the evening meal, though he’d been stripped of his armor and sword.

The two hunters native to Whitehill had been feasted, along with the returned soldiers, at midday, and then returned to their home. Keri had watched Liv sit with them for a while, laughing and smiling at the side of the woman, down at the tables where the soldiers ate. Though Emma looked to be the older of the two, Keri doubted that was the case.

With little else to do, he’d spent the afternoon helping Liv to train her Authority. Though Keri hadn’t put much practice into it himself, he was well aware of the theory, and he was also capable of being delicate enough with his family’s word of power that, if she let one of his beams of light through, Liv would suffer nothing more than a bit of sunburn. Even Duchess Julianne had joined in for a short while, calling lightning down from the sky in a blast that, to Keri’s eyes, looked a bit too dangerous for training.

The ride to Bald Peak, after breakfast the next morning, passed quickly enough, with Ghveris eating up the miles alongside their horses in his pounding, earth-shaking run. The soldiers manning the guard shack piled out when they approached, but Liv had sent a pigeon ahead, and they were expected. Keri swung down out of his saddle and strode directly onto the waystone, threading his way through the new icewalls Liv had raised when last they passed through.

“I’ll send you across,” Liv said, slipping down out of her saddle to join him. She knelt down next to the sigil for Al’Fenthia, and pressed one hand to the stone.

“You know it’s ridiculous that you use these things so casually, without any assistance,” Keri teased her.

Rather than turn to face him, Liv shifted so that she was looking up at Bald Peak. “I have all the mana I need right there,” she said. Light began to build, erupting from the sigil and spreading across the stone, and she quickly walked off into the snow.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Keri called to her. The last thing he saw from Liv was a wave, and then all the world was consumed in blinding light.

☙

It took perhaps a bell for Keri to round up a score of House Bælris riders, and indeed, when he came back through the waystone, he brought over the first group of cavalry from House Däivi, as well. They’d only recently reached the tree-city, having rode hard to catch up with Liv’s great-uncle Eilis, and when Keri told them their elder was heading south to the fortified pass where battle was expected to come first, they would not wait any longer.

Linnea and Olavi helped to share the burden of the crossing, and when Keri found himself at the foot of Bald Peak again, it was with over forty Elden riders at his back, crowded onto the circle of white stone so tightly they could hardly keep from falling off. If he’d been expecting Liv, Rosamund, or Sidonie to be waiting, he was disappointed: only Ghveris and the Whitehill guards watched for their arrival.

“Follow the road south to Whitehill,” he told the Däivi commander, a short, wiry woman named Aura. “Report to Lord Matthew there, and he’ll see that you have a guide to the pass.” When the riders had set off, in a spray of white powder, Ghveris lumbered over from where he’d been waiting at the base of the icewall.

“We hunt, now?” the Antrian asked.

Keri nodded. “You’re coming? I had thought you’d remain to watch over Liv,” he admitted.

The enormous war-machine shook his head. “Wren Wind Dancer is in more danger,” he said, with a voice like grinding gears. “The Lady of Winter wore her crown into the mountain. There is nothing there that can hurt her.”

Keri bit back his first response. Ghveris seemed to regard Liv as a fledgling Vædim, the heiress to Kelris, and to have transferred his loyalty to her. The loyalty wasn’t a problem, and the war-machine had proven himself a formidable ally - but it made Keri uneasy that he seemed to have placed Liv into the same category as the old gods.

“We’re headed west, then,” Keri said, putting the worry aside for the moment. “We must count on Wren to spot us coming, and make contact on her own to guide us into the enemy camp.”

They rode across the white fields of the valley, alternating between a trot to cover ground, and then walking the horses to rest them. Ghveris sometimes fell a bit behind during the faster paced riding, but would always catch up while the horses were recovering. For his own part, the Antrian juggernaut seemed to require no rest whatsoever: Keri imagined he could simply run through the night, pushing through drifts of snow that would halt any normal man.

The sun had crested, then began its descent, by the time that Wren flew down and perched on Ghveris’ shoulder. She shifted forms as she landed, but the war-machine’s enormous armored plating was broad enough that the huntress was able to huddle there, wrapped up in her winter cloak, as easily as in the saddle of a horse.

“They broke camp this morning,” Wren called over to Keri, “burned everything they didn’t take with them, and set off south over the mountains.”

“Can you show us the route they took?” Keri asked, and the huntress nodded. Her directions led them up game paths that switched back and forth up the lower slopes of the mountains, heading southwest. There was no pass here - at least, nothing through which an army could be marched. Even making their way with two dozen was difficult, and often they had to dismount and lead the horses through the snow along thin ledges above the tumbling, half frozen river that came down out of the peaks.

It was there, with scraggly pines rooted into the soil on either side, that they rounded an outcropping of granite and found themselves face to face with a sigil-graven white stone, set into the trail. Before Keri could even shout a word of warning, there was a flash of light. Shards of stone flew at them, and all around Keri, horses began staggering on their feet, then falling. A wave of great weariness came over him, so that he could hardly keep his eyes open, and he found himself thrown from the saddle as his own horse went down.

Keri had just enough time to see Ghveris and Wren collapse, unconscious in the snow, before crossbow bolts began to fall down on them from the heights above.