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I opened my eyes and looked back across the bridge toward the rolling brown plains that I knew remained behind me, behind the hill, then eastward at the light dusting of snow on the very tips of the uncovered rock of the Little Easthorns. Further to the west, to my right, just barely visible, a hint of gray clouds had begun to billow, as if to represent the chaos of the wizard who resided in the rocks of the unseen Westhorns that lay beneath or beyond those distant clouds.

The Westhorns, and Antonin, would have to wait, at least for a while, until I had seen enough of Kyphros and the autarch to ensure the answers to Brettel’s questions and my own doubts.

While it was just past mid-morning, the menace that awaited me lay some distance ahead, and like Gairloch, I was thirsty. Hungry or not, I also needed to eat.

The river water was cold, cold enough both in drinking and in washing the grime from my face to encourage my appetite, and to open some trail bread and dried fruit from two packages near the top of the saddlebags provided by Brettel. Being able to perceive what was inside closed sacks had some advantages in the dark and when you didn’t want to open sealed provisions. I grinned, thinking how I had wondered how Justen always knew where things were.

Still munching on the bread, I wondered about the soldiers ahead, and about the vulcrows, the ones I had not seen, only felt, over the next hill, and those circling further away.

The breeze from the south increased, and with it came the odor of ashes and charred hides. I had to concentrate to finish the slice of the second dried apple. After filling my canteen and taking another long swallow of cold river water, I reclaimed Gairloch from his browsing.

“Come on. It’s time to figure out what’s ahead.”

Whufffff…

Gairloch’s steps became more skittery as we neared the top of the hill beyond the bridge.

Yeee-ahh, yeee-ahh, yeee-ahh…

Just before the crest of the hill at the right edge of the road was a square limestone marker, no more than knee-high. Only two words—“Kyphros” set above “Gallos,” with a line separating the two. But someone had tried to scratch a skull next to the “Kyphros.”

Casting my senses ahead of me, I could feel nothing living…except for the vulcrows perched in a barren low tree just beyond the hilltop.

Whuffff…

We passed the marker and continued over the crest, the odor of ash even more pronounced in the light breeze.

“…uuugggghhhh…”

My guts nearly wrenched out of my body, and I swallowed hard to keep the just-eaten bread and fruit within me.

Except for the two vulcrows perched on the leafless trunk of a white oak, nothing lived.

Except for the road, which only bore a white dusting, thick white ash covered the entire hillside nearly a kay in every direction, so white that it first looked like a blanket of snow. Only a few blasted tree trunks, all white oaks, poked through the calf-deep ash.

Yeee-ahh…

The pair of vulcrows flapped into the late morning sky, heading south toward those circling the higher hills.

Wheeeeeeee…

I didn’t blame Gairloch as he pulled up short of the ash.

“Easy…easy…”

There was nothing there. My staff was cool to the touch, and nothing lived. Nothing.

But I knew that the white ash represented the remains of men, women, horses, grasses, trees, birds, insects, and even fall flowers.

My guts twisted again.

Wheeeee…eeeee…

“Easy…easy…we have to go on.”

More than ever I had to go on, deeper into the war zone that was Northern Kyphros, deeper into the destruction that seemed so unnecessary to me, and so critical to Antonin and the white wizards.

“…come on…” I patted his neck and flicked the reins.

Skittish step by skittish step, Gairloch carried me straight down the ash-dusted road.

At the bottom of the hill the ash ended, almost as though a line had been drawn, and the fall grasses and the scrub brush resumed. The road clay was again damp, and I wondered if the rain had been created to damp the ash into place.

I shook my head. Who knew why the chaos-wizards