Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [185]
She decided then to go to Tsaia, where she’d never been, and find Dorrin Verrakai. Dorrin had known Kieri for years … she would understand his actions, perhaps even his thoughts, as Arian could not yet. Though that would not matter, so long as the taig would not open for her and Kieri.
Two days later, she crossed the border on a trail Brek and Taris had told her of. “The Verrakaien use it to come here. No reason you can’t use it the other way; you’re a Squire, after all.” The forest on the other side of the invisible line looked the same, smelled the same. It had a taig, of sorts—she could sense it, unlike the taig of Lyonya. She sensed damage in it, but recent healing. Even so much connection eased her heart, and strengthened her belief that she had been right to come this way.
She rode cautiously, aware that some in Tsaia might think her an invader. Once more she wished she had not left her Squire’s tabard back in Chaya; it would have given her legitimacy. For most of a day she saw no sign of human habitation other than stumps of trees someone had cut—here five or six, there a single one. Toward evening, she smelled smoke and halted. Foresters? A farmstead tucked into the woods? Or—far more dangerous—brigands, even fugitive Verrakai?
Dismounting, she slipped the bit from her mount’s mouth and tied on a nosebag with a few oats to occupy his mind while she went scouting. The low winter sun, this late, barely lighted the forest, though a few gleams picked out a lichen here, a tuft of moss there, far up on the tree trunks. Now she could hear voices—male voices—and she moved ever more carefully, alert to every hint the forest could provide. Smoke from an open fire: dried wood, not green. Oak and cedar, she thought. The breeze, moving toward her, brought a whiff of horse and some kind of meat cooking.
She reached out to the taig and felt its calm unconcern. She felt into the tree she hid behind, and received the same feeling, flavored with its own pick-oak resonances. Like all oaks, it had absolute certainty in its own rightness, stiff to its twigs. Through it, she felt up and down and sideways, to the root hairs that almost met the root hairs of the other trees nearby, to the twigs that touched now and then in the wind.
So those ahead had set sentries … that suggested something more dangerous than foresters cutting firewood. There—there—and there. A voice called, loud enough to break her concentration on the taig. Then a clanging: someone banging on a pot with a spoon, probably. Whoever it was feared no listening ears.
Arian went back for her horse. Mounting, she rode toward the camp sounds and smells, and when a horse somewhere ahead whickered, she let her own mount answer. Voices now louder … she rode on, following the obvious trail.
“Halt!” came a voice, and two blue-clad riders blocked her way. One was a young woman whose blue tabard had a knot of red and green on her heart-shoulder; the other was an older man who looked like a seasoned soldier. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“I’m from Lyonya,” Arian said. “I am seeking Duke Verrakai. Are you Verrakaien militia?”
“Are you from the king?” the young woman asked.
“No,” Arian said. “But I have news, told me by forest rangers, I believe the duke will want to hear.”
“You have not yet given your name,” the young woman said.
“Nor have you answered my question,” Arian said. “We know in Lyonya that Verrakaien were attainted and only the new duke’s militia is legitimate. Are you Verrakaien militia, or fugitives?”
The man laughed. “You’re bold to ask that question, coming alone as you are … but in fact we are the Duke Verrakai’s militia. I served with her when she was your king’s captain.”
“And you might have known by my colors,” the young woman said, flushing a little. “I’m a Marrakai, now squire to the duke.”
Arian bowed slightly. “I’m Arian, a former forest ranger myself, which is why they trusted me with their