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with Dyran and eventually taking the estate from his father.
Thank the Ancestors, Cheynar had been wrong about Valyn, and had been
impatient to take up the hunt. If he'd questioned Valyn a moment longer&
But he hadn't. Shadow had come in sometime later how long, he
couldn't say, his mind was still fogged with the effects of Cheynar's
spells and managed to wake him up. That was when he realized exactly what the
results of all this would be, when Lord Cheynar returned, successful or not,
from his hunt.
First, as soon as he recovered from the draining of his own magic, he
would be at Valyn again, and this time he would not stop until he knew
everything the young elven mage did.
He would learn that Shadow wasnot the trained bodyguard he was
supposed to be. He would learn why Shadow was with Valyn andwhat Shadow was.
And he would have a halfblood in his possession.
Then he would report everything Valyn had done to Lord Dyran possibly
turning Shadow over to him, possibly not; he might choose to eliminate the
"dangerous halfblood" himself. It didn't much matter. The moment Cheynar
returned, Shadow was doomed, and so was Valyn.
Though he had been weak-kneed and shaking, Valyn had laid his plans
and packed everything he thought he might need and so did Mero. In the
morning, claiming that they were following Lord Cheynar on his orders, they
set out for the wilderness with packs and horses.
Within hours of entering the confines of the forest, they lost the
horses one, while they were setting up their first camp, to something they
never even saw, only heard; the second to a broken leg as it fled whatever had
carried off the first.
At least they hadn't lost the packs.
Perhaps it was just as well. If the horses or their remains were ever
found, it might be assumed that Valyn and Shadow had fallen victim to the
unknown predator as well. A young and zealous elven lord might well have
decided to follow Cheynar on his father's behalf, with or without orders. That
would give them at least the semblance of innocence, and might prevent Cheynar
from being suspicious about why they had left the estate so abruptly.
Losing the horses left them afoot, but gave them an unexpected
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advantage. Cheynar and his hunters completely overshot the actual location of
the wizards, and were now far beyond them. Valyn and Shadow, on foot, but with
superior information, found their campsite just before the rains came pouring
down out of the leaden, sullen sky.
It would not be long until every trace of the trail of the group was
wiped out. The girl's track, on the other hand, was so clear that it would
probably withstand a flood and that, given her actions so far,had to be
deliberate.
Valyn hitched his pack a little higher on his shoulders, and set off
on the girl's trail, bow in hand, with Shadow following closely behind,
keeping mental track of her. In this much, at least, Valyn had an advantage
over Shadow; one of the expected pastimes of young lords was hunting, and
Valyn had a great deal more practice at handling his bow than Shadow had. In
fact, it was a violation of rules that Shadow knew the use of weapons at all.
Only fighters, gladiators, and assassins, all of them carefully conditioned
and trained, with special coercions on their collars, were allowed the use or
knowledge of anything other than a simple kitchen-knife. Mero's possession of
weaponry had raised no eyebrows in Cheynar's household, since he was assumed
to be an assassin/bodyguard but in Dyran's, it could have been punished with
death.
So Valyn took the lead, in case they roused something else as
formidable as whatever killed their horses. And if an arrow tipped with
elf-shot couldn't kill whatever came at them, magic certainly could.
Or so I delude myself. Valyn had taken a look at the prints left by
the thing that killed their horse, and had a fair notion of its speed. If it
or another like it was lying in ambush for them, he wasn't sure he'd have the
time to get that first shot off.
But he wasn't going to tell that to Mero. The young man was already
apprehensive enough about being out in this untamed forest. Mero knew life
between four walls very well; he was adept at intrigue and the ways to
circumvent nearly anything. Out here, he was quite lost.
"How far ahead of us is she?" he asked over his shoulder. Mero was
plowing doggedly through the underbrush, plainly miserable, head down and
shoulders hunched.
He couldn't help it; the cruelly logical and analytical part of him
added:And paying no attention to anything around him, just on the ground in
front of him .
"I think we can catch up with her just after dusk," Mero said, his
voice muffled and indistinct. "She'll probably make camp about then. I doubt
Cheynar will be close enough to pick up her trail until tomorrow, he's off
west and south of here, sure as anything that the goat he's following is her."
Valyn choked on a laugh.
"I just thought I'd tell you," Mero continued, with just a hint of
sullenness, "there isn't anything close enough to be dangerous for well, for a
lot farther than we need to worry about. Iam checking. I'm not as useless as
you might think."
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