Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [66]
"Ahem!" said Tavish, speaking loudly enough that the dragon could hear if he was still in the area. "If Newt has been waiting here for six years, he undoubtedly has something of great importance to show us… to show you, my princess. Perhaps, however, one of the rest of us could carry news of the invasion back to Blackstone and hence to Callidyrr."
"I'll go," Hanrald said immediately. "I'm the fastest rider, and the two of you can remain here to protect the lady Alicia."
The princess scowled at the notion that she needed protection, but then she realized that the duke's son had meant no offense. Indeed, his suggestion made sense, although she realized that she didn't wish to part with any of her companions.
"Very well," she agreed, thinking for a moment. "However, we still haven't gained concrete proof that the northmen intend to attack Callidyrr, and it seems surprising that if this was their plan, they would send a small force rather than their entire mass of warriors.
"Have your father's men stand at the Fairheight Pass and bar the road to the northmen if they should get that far. But don't attack them unless they give you absolute proof that their intentions are warlike."
"Yes, lady," replied Hanrald with a bow.
She felt a sudden rush of affection toward this young nobleman. For the first time, she thought about him as the heir to the mighty duchy of Blackstone, before she remembered, with a bitter sense of regret, that the crude brute, Gwyeth, was his older brother and hence first in line for his father's title. If not for that, in their later years, and with the pleasure of the gods, she would be monarch over all the Ffolk, and Hanrald might become her most powerful subject lord on the island of Alaron.
"May the… goddess watch over you," she said.
Smiling grimly, Hanrald whirled his horse through a circle and spurred the steed back toward the path. Riding over the rolling highland in an easy canter, he swiftly shrank into the distance.
"Newt?" asked Tavish as they watched the man ride. "Are you still here?"
"Of course!" Grinning broadly, the faerie dragon reappeared. "Now I can show you?"
"If you don't, there'll be trouble," the bard said ominously. "Where is this 'thing' we have to see?"
"Come on!" Newt darted away. Unfortunately he popped out of sight in his excitement, and they couldn't see where he went.
"Wait! Come back! Newt!" A chorus of cries brought the dragon back into sight, and he finally preceded them across the undulating terrain at a more sedate, and visible, pace.
For several hours, they followed the rolling surface of the highlands at a brisk canter. The rugged crest of the Fairheight Mountains loomed to their right as they traveled northward, so they knew that they remained on the Gnarhelm side of the border that bisected Alaron.
Though the ground dipped wildly to the sides, rising and twisting through a chaotic network of valleys and ridges, Newt led them along a path that kept to the high, yet easily traversed, regions of heather.
Eventually their path-it could not be called a trail, since there was no evidence that anyone had followed this route in the memory of man-took them up a soft domed rise in the land. At the top, they found a smaller hillock in the very center of the grassy, rounded summit.
The dragon finally paused, hovering before a square black hole that indicated a passage into the oddly symmetrical hillock. "A burial mound," Tavish said softly. "And a great one, at that."
Alicia, too, recognized the earth-covered tomb for what it was. The grassy dome rose perhaps thirty feet into the air and formed a perfect oval shape. The low door was framed by a heavy timber over the opening, though the weight of years had bent the beam gradually downward.
"But a barrows mound of the Ffolk? Here, in this kingdom of the north?" she asked, puzzled and awed. "And one so huge as I have never seen before!"
"This was not always the territory of the northmen," Keane reminded