~Meriel~

North of Camistane, the land seemed to be nothing but hills, rolling in endless succession. The further they rode, the higher the hills got; judging by the blue-grey silhouettes on the horizon, the hills eventually became mountains.

There were plenty of trees to line the path, close to Camistane. They passed a number of great elms and willows. Their heavy canopies, not yet fully browned by autumn, made shady dens on the roadside. It was quite deep into the afternoon when Telis finally relented to Cad's complaints and allowed them to avail themselves of one of these dens. The walk had been long, and far harder than the ride. Meriel's feet didn't burn the way her thighs had after a day on the saddle, but they ached deeply. A blister on her toe had formed and burst within the space of a couple of hours, and now the open sore screamed every time the leather of her boot brushed against it. Sitting down with her back against the trunk of a particularly old elm, Meriel pulled the boot free. The fresh air on her foot was heavenly. She wiggled her toes gratefully.

"I keep expecting it to rain," said Helicent, sitting down beside Meriel. "The sky is grey and getting greyer."

"We'll find somewhere more sturdy to shelter soon, I hope," Meriel said. "A town, maybe. If it's going to rain, we could do with a roof over our heads."

"If we're even going near a town."

Telis had been frustratingly vague about the details of their journey. Meriel knew that their eventual destination was the Octal Tower, and that they were aiming for the kingdom of Falien. Telis had also made it very clear that they were all to be careful on the way to Falien. The road would take them briefly through far more hostile and dangerous lands.

Right now, Telis was stood on the road, not taking advantage of the elm's shade. Her arms were stretched out wide, palms facing up. Cad was watching her from a distance. From the look on his face, he didn't really understand what she was doing. For that matter, neither did Meriel. But Telis was a Magus, and Meriel didn't really know how Magi did things. She was inclined to trust in Telis.

Though that trust might well wear thin after a few days without a bed to sleep on.

"Hey," said Helicent. "Do you remember when we were young, that big tree down by the river?" Meriel's father had forbidden her from going down to the river, ever since she was old enough to go out and about. She and Helicent had pressed that to the very limit. There was a gnarled oak tree on its own a hundred yards or so from the river, on the moorland south-east of the Village; it was so old that even at the height of summer it was barely half-covered with leaves, and it was always infested with woodworm, but on warm days she and Helicent had gone there often. For Meriel, it had been an escape. Father was always insistent when it came to chores; when she could instead spend an hour or two away from him, lying on her back with Helicent pressed against her, gazing up at the leaves bustling idly in a light breeze, she was happy in a way she'd never found anywhere else.

"It's a shame we have to be back by evening," Helicent had said, on one of their last trips to the oak tree.

"We wouldn't have to if we were married," Meriel had replied. "We could stay here until it got dark."

She'd almost meant it. Being in Helicent's company always made Meriel's heart do funny things. Had they not both been girls, she imagined they might well have married. But girls were not supposed to marry one another, not supposed to feel love for one another, so Meriel had contented herself with what hours she could get with Helicent at her side. As they'd grown older, those hours had become rarer. Meriel's time had been spent keeping a tidy house for her father, while Helicent seemed to be forever hunting in the woods during summertime.

And now here they were. Together, under a huge elm.

"I missed this," Meriel muttered. "I don't think I'd ever tire of just being with you."

"You won't have to," Helicent told her. "I've come with you this far, and I plan to be with you until the end. No matter how far Magus Telis takes us."

Meriel let the silence take hold for a second. The only sound was Helicent's breathing next to hers, lapping over her. "Sometimes, when I was small, I wished I was a boy," she said. "Because if I was a boy, I could kiss you."

Helicent looked over at Meriel. A frown had creased her brow, and a corner of her lip had twitched. "Who says you'd have to be a boy to kiss me?"

"What would people think? Girls aren't supposed to love other girls."

"That's your father talking," said Helicent. "We can't help who we love. And from what my mother's told me, your mother wouldn't want you to try."

Meriel sighed. "I wish I knew more about my mother. Who she was. As a person, I mean. I know Telis says she's a queen, but that doesn't tell me anything about what she was like."

"Queen or not, your mother was kind," Helicent said. "Every time my mother spoke about her, she got this sort of glassy-eyed look. Like she was back in a daydream."

"It's funny," said Meriel. "Nobody else seems to know who she was. I've always found that strange. She must have had a family, who would have missed her when she was gone, but other than your mother nobody talked about her."

"Are we talking about mothers?" Cad's voice boomed as he strode towards them. "My mother nearly cried when Fer Huradon took me on," he said, his boots skidding on the dry dirt. "She had me pegged for a cobbler, like her father was. Something safe. She told me I wouldn't last a week smithing--that the forge would be the death of me. Now, the joke is well and truly on her, because it turns out I'm quite the smith."

Helicent raised an eyebrow. "Is that what Fer Huradon told you?"

"You say that as though it isn't true."

"I've not seen you at dice very often, of an evening," said Helicent. "So perhaps you wouldn't know. Men get very honest when they're lost to their drink. Tell stories. And I listen."

"Yeah? And what stories does Fer Huradon tell about me?"

Helicent smiled sweetly. "Ones about how you've not got a mind for the tricky jobs. How you're always thinking up one cockamamie scheme or another. That joke you pulled on poor Adey Talusi, for example, when you were supposed to be shoeing her horse."

Cad turned away, looking abashed. "It was well-crafted, I stand by that. Not my fault Fera Talusi started weeping."

"No," said Helicent dryly. "Why, who would ever imagine that a person might be upset if they were made to believe that their long deceased brother had returned to them?"

"What?" Meriel spluttered. "Cad, what did you do?"

Cad shrugged. "A bit of throwing my voice. Whispers in the dark, that sort of thing. Even made up a steel helm like the one her brother used to wear."

"When, again, you were supposed to be shoeing her horse," said Helicent. "That's why you're a useless smith, Cad. You can't focus on the jobs you're given."

"Only when they're boring jobs," he said. "Not my fault nobody in the Village ever wants anything interesting doing. Now, I bet the Magi at the Octal Tower want all sorts of fancy stuff made. Enchanted swords and the like. Perhaps they're in need of a blacksmith."

"I wouldn't count on it," Helicent said, drily. "There's more chance they just want to grind your bones to pulp for a spell."

Cad's eyes flashed wide. "They'd do that?"

Helicent shrugged.

"What if this is a trick? What if she's just leading us somewhere to die?" There was undoubtedly some panic creeping into Cad's voice. "They all said she was evil. Idden Baltly said it. We shouldn't ever have come, Hel. I don't mean to die in some dungeon far from home."

"If Magus Telis meant to kill us," Helicent said slowly, "she'd have done it already. We've been alone with her on the road all day."

"But what if they need us to die at the proper time? She might need our still-beating hearts or something."

Helicent shook her head in amazement. "By the Forger's eye, Cad, you have got to stop being an idiot. A minute ago you were talking about being the Octal Tower smith. Now you're convinced Magus Telis wants to murder us all. You didn't have to leave the Village, you know. I told you I meant to find Meriel, and stay with Meriel, no matter what. If Meriel trusts Telis, then so do I. And so should you."

Cad looked uncertain. Meriel was about to open her mouth to ask him what had got him so nervous--in all the time she'd known him, he had never been the sort to act panicked--when she caught sight of Telis walking towards them. Her strange meditation was at an end. Telis' hair had become bedraggled by their day's travel, and the suddenness of their departure last night, but she'd tied it into a bun that at least kept it under control.

"We should be on the road again," she said. "I'd like to be safely in Falien by night, and we still have several hours to walk."

Telis kept a brisk pace. The changing terrain--soft grass increasingly replaced by hard rock--did nothing to slow her step; Meriel knew that she was still carrying around that great tome on the stars in her saddlebag, but you wouldn't know it to watch her. The others, by unspoken arrangement, fell into a regular formation. Helicent kept to the rear of the group. She had her bow with her, and a dirk if need be, and her hunter's eye was more likely to spot something approaching them from behind. Cad walked to the left of the group, a little distance in front of Meriel and well clear of Telis, who he seemed to be regarding with some distrust.

By mid-afternoon, the fast pace was beginning to take its toll on Meriel. Sweat was almost dripping off her--and when they stopped for a second so Telis could recentre herself, or a gust of wind blew from Falien, the cold air felt like it was certain to freeze her sweat to ice on her face.

The land was poor here, what plants came up from the earth coming stunted and miscoloured. The further they had walked from Camistane, the worse it seemed to get. By now there was barely a tree to be seen whose trunk wasn't half-rotted with blight. Thick roots poked from the dry dirt, knuckles arced and contorted in pure agony.

"There's nothing here," Helicent murmured, as they passed beneath a bridge formed at the confluence of rising rocks. "Not so much as a mouse. There's always something."

Telis shook her head. "You'll find little to hunt in the Salted Lands," she said. "Be thankful we're only passing through."

"The Salted Lands?" The Captain in Camistane had used the same term. Meriel wondered what he meant by it.

"The kingdom once known as Otenlan," Telis explained. "I told you once that many of the Chains of men were severed in war. The war in Otenlan was the last such war, and the worst. Otenlan's king was an ambitious man. By custom, the Octal Tower and its holdings have always been outside purview of the Grasp's realms--but the king of Otenlan saw only land no king had laid claim to, and he wanted some." She paused for a second, looking past Meriel at the horizon. Her pupils dilated, then refocused. "Otenlan struck first. Always remember that, whatever stories you hear of the war. It does not excuse what came after... what we did... but it tempers it."

By now they'd all stopped walking. Cad leaned against a rotted stump, scratching his chin in feigned disinterest. "What came after?"

Telis harrumphed. "A story for another time, perhaps. You do not talk of the dead while you walk through the graveyard. Suffice it to say that the war was bloody indeed. At Faradwel, where the fighting was most fierce, certain Magi cast desperate, uncertain spells to defeat their foe. The result was a sickness that spread from the inside out, cursing Otenlan. Things grow here, but they do not prosper; when foolhardy men have attempted to resettle the Salted Lands, they've achieved nothing but to meet their own death and to strengthen the curse."

Suddenly, Helicent grunted. As Meriel turned, she saw Helicent midway through drawing her bow. Within a second she loosed an arrow, which flashed in an instant through Meriel's vision and made a fleshy putt sound as it hit its mark. The thing, whatever it was, had crept up to them almost. It was on a ridge of rock just above Cad's head, and raised on its hindpaws as if about to jump down. With Helicent's arrow in its belly, though, it instead slumped dead to the ground.

Meriel had never seen a creature quite like it. In shape it wasn't entirely dissimilar to a rat, but it had a brindled coat of black and red fur, matted, and it was at least five times larger than any rat Meriel had ever seen before. Its eyes were a poisonous yellow. Its claws, poking through cracked skin, were like daggers. Where its blood spilled from the wound Helicent had made, it seemed to bubble and steam in the way water did when brought to the boil. A scraggly green weed which was growing on the rock next to the dead creature, when a drop of the blood touched it, crumbled away to a withered husk in mere seconds.

"Got the bugger," said Helicent, triumphant. As she began to walk towards the felled beast, though, Telis raised a hand.

"Don't go near it."

"I've got to get my arrow back," Helicent said. "I only have a few. And if you haven't noticed, fletchers aren't two-a-penny in these parts." Turning her back on Telis, Helicent strode over to the dead creature and bent down to pick up the spent arrow. She gasped, then. It was easy to see why. Even as Meriel watched, the arrow appeared to melt away amidst angry wisps of boiling smoke. In a matter of seconds there was nothing left of the arrow. Helicent stood with her hand hanging uselessly in the air, curled into a claw to grip the shaft of an arrow that wasn't there anymore.

"I did tell you to stay away," said Telis, with an air of smugness.

"What was that thing?" Helicent hissed.

"An ash-rat." Telis looked so blasé about the thing, as though it hadn't just melted an arrow.

Helicent gave Meriel a significant look. "And what, pray tell, is an ash-rat?" Cad asked.

Telis met his eye evenly. "An ash-rat is a creature of the Salted Lands. It grew from the fire and the blood that so ravaged these lands, and it grew into something terrible. Be on your guard. Ash-rats are solitary creatures, but if one thought us a likely meal then others might well be of the same mind."

The thought of being food for one of those creatures made Meriel shudder. Cad looked sidelong at Telis. "What did your people do to this place?"

For a moment, Telis had a sour look of pure hate on her face, directed at Cad. In a blink, though, it was replaced by a cheerful smile. It was exactly the same smile as Meriel had seen from Telis many times before--when serving her tea, usually. "We've rested for long enough," she said, sweetly. "It's well past time we were moving."

Evening was slow in coming, but when it came it came quick. The first grasping of dusk gave way to the burning ruby of a sunset on the horizon in a matter of minutes. The setting sun twisted every rock and stubby plant into long shadows, spectral fingers poised to grab. Stark in the distance was Falien. A place of safety. It lay, still, in the warmth of the sun. Only in the Salted Lands had twilight already come.

It was made worse by the terrain. The endless sea of rolling hills which had carried them north from Camistane was by now a pleasant memory; the land that had replaced it was mountainous, bare craggy rock and prickly weeds and the ever-present threat of another ash-rat. Helicent hadn't loosened her grip on the haft of her bow since the first one. Her vigilance did reassure Meriel a little.

The road wended through a tight pass in the rocks. It was barely a horse wide, and surrounded by sheer cliffs of rock easily fifty feet or more in height. What daylight remained couldn't find its way into the pass. Instead they had darkness, and the cold chill of night. Meriel shivered in her dress and smallclothes, wishing Telis had had time to purchase the new clothes she'd talked of before they had to make their flight.

Something howled off in the distance. The way the sound bounced off the smooth stone made it impossible to tell where the noise had come from. Helicent, possessed of her instinct for hunting, perked up at once. She gripped her bow tighter, Meriel noticed, and let her eye wander widely around. Telis was calm, though. "A wolf," she said. "And not near enough to worry us."

Helicent pursed her lips, but said nothing. When she saw Meriel looking her way, she nodded her head at Cad, a little way off to the side. Cad seemed exhausted from the day's travel. He was walking at a shamble, wrapped tightly in his own arms for warmth.

"You didn't need to leave home on my account," Meriel told him, sidling in beside him.

Cad grunted. "Fine time for you to tell me that."

"If you want to go back, I won't stop you," said Meriel. "And Helicent won't, either."

"Ha. A fine promise." Cad shook his head. "You might not care, but that witch friend of yours will. She'll... bind me in flaming chains, or turn me into a bat, or... something."

Meriel shook her head. "Telis wouldn't. She's not like that."

"She's a Magus," said Cad, a little too loudly--both Helicent and Telis looked their way, though the Magus did so from beneath her travelling shawl. Unperturbed, Cad spread his arms out. "Look around you, El. Look at this. This land is unnatural, it's poisoned, and her people did it. It's just like--"

"If you're going to talk about what old Idden Baltly says, then don't bother," Meriel interrupted. "I don't want to hear it. Go home or stay here, Cad, I really don't care, but if you're going to stay then at least try to be civil with Telis. It wouldn't hurt you to actually get to know her at some point, too."

Cad had no answer to that. Meriel left him to his silence, and went back to being cold. She knew she had a shawl of her own in her saddlebag. If they didn't come upon a town soon, she'd stop and unpack it, and Telis' hope for a fast pace be damned. Here, in a narrow gap in a sea of endless rock, with all sorts of vantages for ash-rats and other monstrosities to lurk unseen, didn't feel like a good place to stop though.

"We're here," said Telis, at last, as they rounded a corner in the pass. The high rock seemed to fall away in favour of more gently-inclined stone. A short way ahead, a darkwood trestle-bridge, spattered with faded blue markings, crossed the span of a ravine. Shrubs poking out from the mountainside fluttered idly in the wind. On the other side of the bridge, the land seemed a little greener, the sky a little bluer. Even when night had fully arrived in the Salted Lands, there was still some remnant of the day just ahead. "This was once the border between Falien and Otenlan. Now, it's the border between blight and beauty. Our journey should be easier from here."

Meriel wondered what exactly 'easier' meant. Was it an end to blindfolds and paranoia? No more burly assassins trying to kill her in her sleep? All things considered, their brief sojourn through what the Captain at Camistane had called the Salted Lands hadn't been too taxing, despite Telis' words of caution and an all-encompassing gloom to both the dry road and its surroundings--but there was always a threat of something lurking out of sight. Helicent was convinced that they were being watched. Not by the sidhe, she said; by something far more sinister. Meriel would have happily walked through Falien a beggar if it meant she didn't have to fear for who or what might be behind her.

Perhaps Telis intended to purchase horses. That would be 'easier', certainly, and Meriel would be all the happier for it. Her feet ached horribly. Telis drove a hard pace, but she'd surely let them rest somewhere in Falien; there'd be trouble if she didn't. Meriel would have to pout. She had a good pout. Knowing her luck, Falien would turn out to be the Kingdom That Never Discovered Chairs.

The land around the trestle was quiet. A bird took wing from a jut of rock when Cad came too near it, vanishing into the sky, but otherwise there were no signs of life. "It's a good day's ride to Aptalis," said Telis, "but there are plenty of small villages between here and there. If need be we can find a farmer's hayloft to bed down in."

"Or a proper inn," Meriel murmured.

As they started across the bridge, her eyes wandered down, and she gasped. The ravine must have cut nearly a hundred feet beneath; at the bottom was a river whose surface was ravaged by foaming whites, and jagged rocks poked upwards. If the fall down didn't kill you, somehow, the rocks would make sure of it. Meriel leaned against the edge of the bridge until her legs stopped their wobbling.

"Come on, El," Cad called, striding on ahead. "No need to stand around."

"Stop!" Telis, who had spent much of the last hour in silent thought and hadn't spoken any louder than a whisper in that time, shouted so suddenly and so shrilly that Meriel jumped nearly out of her skin.

Cad froze, midstep, halfway across the wooden trestle.

"What is it?" Helicent asked.

"There are wards," Telis said. "Defensive spells laid upon the border. From the outside, I can't say what they're set to do--some are more deadly than others. Had we reached the other side of the bridge, we might have been killed. There are even ways to have the ward kill slowly, so by the time you realise the danger it's far too late to do anything but wait to die."

Cad took a long step back. Helicent laughed at him, but Meriel looked past him towards the far side of the bridge. There was nothing amiss there, that she could see. How had Telis spotted the ward?

"It's barbaric," she said. "Killing people without warning."

"Likely this particular ward does no such thing," said Telis. "I said there are ways, but it's unlikely Falien's Magi have used them. Those wards are best suited to places under siege. No, more likely the three of you would not have noticed a thing, but I would have found my abilities so dampened I might as well not have magic at all."

Cad shrugged. "Well, if that's all, why not just take the chance?"

"Weren't you listening, Cad?" Helicent grabbed his arm. "Magus Telis could lose her powers. How would we have got out of Camistane without her--it was her that killed that bandit, her that twisted the guard's mind so he'd open the gate."

Meriel gaped at Telis. "You bewitched him?"

"Just a prod," Telis admitted. "He'd have come to the same decision without my prompting, but we really didn't have the time to wait." She looked at Helicent. "And that was supposed to be an invisible cast. When we set up camp tonight, you can tell me how it was you knew what I'd done."

Helicent shrugged, and blushed, tugging at the hem of her breeches.

"So what do we do now?" Cad crossed back over the trestle towards Telis with his arms folded. "If we can't go forward, and we can't go back. Should we wait here? It would only take us a few weeks to die of hunger."

"You're an arse, Cad," said Helicent, shaking her head.

Telis sighed. "If they've closed their borders, there's nothing we can do. No way past. Our only option is the Salted Lands."

"This road?" said Cad. "That's not so bad."

"More fool you, boy, if you think a well-trod road on the outer border gives you the true picture of these lands," Telis hissed. "The poison spreads from the heart. If you tread blithely through the Salted Lands, you will die. Follow me, now. And keep close."

As the night began to enfold them, each step further into blighted Otenlan being met by ever-greater darkness, Meriel found it hard to think of any reason at all not to keep close. She met Helicent's gaze, and the pair shared a grim look: home sounds really good right now.

But was the Village really still home?