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Wheeee…eeeee…

Slurrrrppppp…

A wet tongue woke me into near-darkness.

Thurrummmm…

Despite the thunder, no rain had fallen.

The ringing in my ears was gone, but not the shakiness in my hands, or the splitting headache that felt like thunder between my ears.

After crawling down to the brook, dunking my head and drinking, the shakiness subsided to an occasional tremble, and I realized my crawl had covered my trousers with mud. I also realized that Gairloch was hungry.

“Good horse…good pony…” I patted his neck, but he nipped at me just enough to indicate words weren’t what he wanted. Two grain cakes took care of his problem. He was a pig, but he’d saved my neck too many times to count. So I munched on travel bread, ignored my headache for a time longer, and brushed my four-footed savior.

Then I had some fruit and more bread and went back to sleep.

In the morning, I washed the mud off my trousers and laid them in the sun to dry. We both ate again before I washed myself up and even shaved. I was in no hurry. Antonin clearly hadn’t followed me, since I was still alive, and there was no point in heading into more trouble immediately. There was also no point in malingering.

So, slightly after mid-morning, I resaddled Gairloch, packed up the gear, and headed back to the road.

In one thing, I had been wrong. Coach tracks marked the cracking clay of the road.

I shivered, but there was nothing else I could do.

LIX

IN A WAY, following the coach tracks was a relief. At least, I knew that Antonin was not tracking me directly. But then, I wasn’t sure that he even knew that I—Lerris—existed. The other thought, even more disturbing, was that he didn’t really care, that nothing I had done mattered. Even worse was the thought that perhaps my actions actually benefitted the white wizard.

I frowned at the thought. Antonin had only seen my face once, in a crowded inn, and he had never heard my name. There would have been nothing to connect me to the ordered woodwork or even to the disasters I had created in Fenard. So all that he probably knew was that someone was working order in Gallos and Kyphros—someone strong enough or lucky enough to destroy a white wizard.

That destruction I still did not understand fully, except how close I had come to being destroyed myself. Nor did I understand why Antonin had not immediately set out after me. I could only shake my head and press on.

Gairloch dutifully carried me onward until we were clearly into the tree-covered rocks of the Little Easthorns, steep hills I would once have considered mountains. But then; the way I viewed a number of things had changed.

Around midday, when I was looking for another stream or at least a shaded place, we came down another incline into a small dry valley. Gairloch skittered slightly. Underfoot the surface seemed flatter, and I looked around. On the right was a thick grove of scrub juniper bushes. On the left was a large and whitish boulder. I reined Gairloch to a halt.

Whheeee…eeee…

My spine tingled as I studied the rock that looked no different than any other rock along the dusty road. I glanced toward the scrubby off-green of the junipers, felt the same way. Something…

I closed my eyes and concentrated on sensing what was really there.

Or, as it turned out, what was not there. Neither the juniper nor the boulder was really there—just the semblance of each. Behind the semblance was the flat white surface of another wizards’ road—one that flew as straight as an arrow down a narrow valley that appeared to stretch east from the Westhorns all the way to the Easthorns.

How many of the damned roads had the old chaos-masters built? Was that how they had held together their evil empire? How had the illusion lasted so long?

Then I felt stupid as I thought it out. The road was old, but not the illusion. Antonin and his coach—they used the road. No wonder he seemed to be everywhere.

Then I began to look at the coach tracks. There weren’t any. Something had smoothed