“We go to seek comrades long overdue,” offered Toli. “They were sent to-”

“To derive the truth from certain rumors now growing in the land,” said Quentin tactfully.

Esme’s brow became suddenly troubled. “They rode to the south, your friends?”

“Yes; south along the coast. Why?”

“Good sirs, I greatly fear for your friends.” Her voice quavered on a note of sharp concern. “I do not wonder that they are long overdue-or that they may not return at all.”

Quentin leaned forward in keen attention. Toli laid aside the utensils and watched Esme carefully. “What do you know about this?” asked Quentin calmly enough, but there was no mistaking his anxiety.

“Only this”-Esme saw the effect her words had had on them and chose her way carefully. “It was between Dorn and Persch that I lost my companions two days ago.”

TWELVE

“THERE YOU are,” said Quentin softly as he moved quietly up to stand at Toli’s shoulder. “I should have known you would be stargazing.”

“I could not sleep, Kenta. The star is growing.” The light of the late-night sky gleamed in the Jher’s upturned face.

“It looks the same to me,” Quentin said without conviction. “It will be dawn soon; perhaps we should make ready to leave. Our new companion’s words have troubled me; it would ease my mind to be on our way. I would not like to think that Theido and Ronsard were trapped because we didn’t warn them and prevent it.”

“Yes, the star grows each night, and evil increases,” replied Toli. He turned and looked at Quentin, his large dark eyes filled with a light Quentin had rarely seen. “I will make ready the horses and wake the lady. I fear the day is already far spent.”

He slipped away noiselessly to leave Quentin pondering his words and peering up at the star glowing brightly in the east. Quentin heard a soft tread behind him, light as a shadow, and Esme came to stand beside him.

“So you know about the star too,” she said.

“We have been watching it, yes-though what it betokens is not certain.”

“There is no need to spare me your worst suspicions. Our priests are well-acquainted with heavenly signs and the reading of portents. I know what they say about the Preying Star. But I am not afraid.”

“Then you are braver than I, my lady. For I must admit that I sometimes feel very much afraid when I look upon it.”

Toli brought the horses, and the three mounted up. They left the shelter of the aspen grove, slipped out into the waning night and moved across the starlit hills. Behind them rose the cragged wall of the Fiskills and the narrow trail beside the sea. They had come through that pinched corridor late in the afternoon and had pushed on into the sloping foothills on the other side to find their camp for the night.

Although extremely curious about his new charge, Quentin had not pressed her for details of her story. She did not seem inclined to talk about the loss of her companions, nor about the mission which took her to King Eskevar. But her fearful thoughts on the safety of Theido and Ronsard had unsettled him, for he had been feeling a vague uneasiness regarding them himself. She had put words to his doubt and had made it real and urgent.

“They must have gone south toward Halidom,” Quentin had reasoned as they sat around the campfire after their supper. “Otherwise, Esme and her party would have met them on the road between Dora and Persch.”

“But why would they go so far?” Toli had asked. Quentin had shrugged. “I will ask them that when next we meet. Perhaps they saw something which took them there. These empty villages are mystery enough for me.”

They had lapsed into silence and uneasy rest. Quentin’s restive mind gnawed at his unanswered questions like a hound with a twice-picked shank. He felt better now that they were moving again.

He listened to the cadence of their passing in the deepest part of the night. Soon the horizon would begin to lighten in the east as the sun rolled back the darkness for another day. But now they rode as night’s children slipping unseen through the sleeping world.

Quentin struck once more along the coastal road, a wide, rock-strewn path which linked the seaside villages. If Ronsard and his knights were to be found it would likely be along this road, although there were other, more infrequently traveled routes to the north through the brown Wilderlands. These were tracks which the traders used to traverse the vast and empty Suthlands and bring them to the more populated regions of the north.

The empty villages-first Persch, then Yallo and Biskan-had greatly troubled him; though he sought time and again for a logical explanation, none was forthcoming. He wondered if Theido and Ronsard had discovered them as well. They must have if they had passed through, or the towns may have been abandoned after the knights had ridden on. There was no telling how long ago they had traveled the road, where they might have stayed, or who they might have seen.

Quentin hoped, though reason told him six armed knights were a match for anything, that they had not encountered whatever it was that had overtaken Esme’s party.

They rode for an hour or more, following the rising and falling trail as it climbed and descended the gently undulating hills along the coast. At each crest they could see the great sea, lying dark and still in the distance. Gerfallon was not troubled by the mere vexations of mortal men; he slept in his deep bed, and his creatures with him.

Quentin stopped at the crest of the next hill and waited until Toli, with Esme sitting behind, hands on knees, had drawn up beside him. Blazer jigged sideways, impatient with the delay.

“What do you think that could be?” asked Quentin, nodding in the direction of the dark northern hills. A fault leaden smudge could be barely seen glowing in the sky faraway. “If I did not know better, I would say that the sun was coming up in the north today. A false sun that would be.”

“I have seen such false sunrises, and you may suspect some misfortune is at hand.”

“What is it?” asked Esme.

“Fire,” said Toli.

“Are you certain? It does not look like a fire to me,” said Quentin, leaning forward in his saddle for a better look. “Why, it would take a pile of wood the size of a-”

“Village.” Toli supplied the missing word.

“You do not think…” cried Quentin with growing alarm. “Illem lies in that direction!”

“Yes, a league to the north, I would say.”

“Then we waste time talking,” said Quentin as he turned his horse toward the glow in the sky. “We may be of some help. Let us go!”

“Hold tight, my lady,” said Toli as he snapped the reins. Riv leaped from the track and bounded after Quentin’s gliding shape.

As the horses galloped at full speed, the glow on the horizon brightened and spread. At half a league it covered the far hills and deepened with an ugly reddish hue. The hanging gloom of smoke could be discerned against the darker curtain of night.

In the east the sky had grown pearly with the coming of the dawn, making the glow ahead seem even more ominous and unnatural.

Quentin reined to a halt at the bottom of a deep ravine. In the spring the thaw from the Fiskills filled the dry bed with icy water. Now it was filled with weeds and brush, the waters having long since emptied into the sea.

“I think Illem lies just beyond the ridge,” said Quentin. The ravine carved its way through a long trough of a valley bounded on three sides by low ridges. From the bottom of the dry stream bed the sky to the north shone as rust and the smoke rolled away on the landward wind.

“Something is wrong,” said Toli. “We should proceed with caution until we can find out where the enemy lies.”

“I agree,” said Esme. “We are only three against who knows how many.”