The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [12]
It was nearly a hundred leagues from the Black Tower of the Runebreakers to Calavere. The idea of walking the entire way had filled Grace with despair, but with little other choice they had set out on foot on Midwinter's Day, and much to their surprise, they made good time. Perhaps too good. After they made camp each night, Falken would judge the landmarks, and by his estimates they would have covered more leagues than seemed possible.
“Something's not right about this,” Falken said the third night of their trek, and Grace agreed. As they walked, she would keep her eyes fixed on a distant hill, measuring their progress toward it. Then they would pass through a copse of trees or descend into a ravine, and when she caught sight of the hill again it would suddenly loom close, as if it had leapfrogged over the intervening miles when she wasn't looking.
“That's just not possible,” Beltan said, scratching his head after one such instance, and Tira had laughed, as if he had told a marvelous joke.
Grace looked at Tira, but the girl only bent her head over the half-burnt pinecone she had plucked from the campfire, and around which she had wrapped a rag, as if it were a doll.
Soon they left the wild reaches of the western Fal Sinfath and moved along the borders of Brelegond. Several times they caught sight of a troop of knights in black armor riding heavy warhorses, their shields marked with a silver tower and red crown. Durge and Beltan would draw their swords, Vani would vanish into the shadows, and Lirith and Grace would use the Touch to weave illusions to divert the eye.
They needn't have bothered. Each time, the knights rode on without getting close. The runelord Kelephon—whom the Onyx Knights knew as their supreme general Gorandon—wanted both Grace's blood and the magical sword Fellring, which he had failed to wrest from her in the dead kingdom Toringarth. What would he have done if he had known his knights had come within a half a mile of her more than once? Only he wouldn't know.
“You're keeping them from seeing us, aren't you?” she whispered to Tira one night as they curled together on the ground. The girl's little body was so warm Grace hardly needed her cloak, which she had thrown over them as a blanket. The snow curled into steam as it landed on them. “Just like you're helping us walk faster than we should be able to.”
Tira snuggled against her and went to sleep.
The Onyx knights were not the only peril they encountered on the road. Sometimes, those first few nights after they left the Black Tower, whoever was standing watch—Beltan or Durge or Vani—would see a pale glow atop a distant hill or ridge. The Pale King had failed to gain Sinfathisar and Krondisar at the Tower of the Runebreakers, but his minions still searched for the Stones.
However, before they left the tower, Travis had taken a rusted iron pot he found—their old cooking pot from a hundred years before—and had held it in his hands while he spoke the rune Dur. The pot shone with blue radiance, and when the light dimmed, in its place was an iron box. The box was surprisingly delicate and perfectly formed; whether or not he cared to use his power, his ability was growing. Travis slipped the Stones into the box and shut it. On its lid were angular symbols.
“What are they?” Grace asked, touching the runes on the box.
“A warning,” he said, and tucked the box inside his tunic.
The Pale King's wraithlings could see the trail of magic